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The Music of God, Man, and Beast: Spirituality and Modernity in Jonah's Gourd Vine

The Music of God, Man, and Beast: Spirituality and Modernity in Jonah's Gourd Vine The Music of God, Man, and Beast: by Anthony Wilson "Well there's two, Two trains running. Only one of them, mmm-hmm, Goes my way. One leaves at midnight, The other just before day." -- Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield), "Still a Fool (Two Trains)" In his 1994 essay "The Modern Idea of Culture," Louis Dupré claims that "the emptying of nature and the vanishing of man are directly connected with the death of God" (11). If we accept this assertion, at least in its figurative dimension, the title metaphor of Zora Neale Hurston's semi-autobiographical 1934 novel Jonah's Gourd Vine embodies modernity's most troubling aspects: Jonah's sanctuary withers away even as the solid foundations of community, self, and agency crumble in the modern age. In Jonah's Gourd Vine, John Pearson's sanctuary comes from his spiritual community, embodied in its purest form in the rhythms and music of African religion as it survives in the American South in the early part of the twentieth century, and later associated with the inextricably linked forces of his wife Lucy and the church. Modernity's general assault on religion, spirituality, and transcendence has been exhaustively documented. However, the southern African American in the late nineteenth http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Southern Literary Journal University of North Carolina Press

The Music of God, Man, and Beast: Spirituality and Modernity in Jonah's Gourd Vine

Wilson, Anthony
The Southern Literary Journal , Volume 35 (2) – Aug 12, 2003
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by the Southern Literary Journal and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of English.
ISSN
1534-1461
Publisher site
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Abstract

The Music of God, Man, and Beast: by Anthony Wilson "Well there's two, Two trains running. Only one of them, mmm-hmm, Goes my way. One leaves at midnight, The other just before day." -- Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield), "Still a Fool (Two Trains)" In his 1994 essay "The Modern Idea of Culture," Louis Dupré claims that "the emptying of nature and the vanishing of man are directly connected with the death of God" (11). If we accept this assertion, at least in its figurative dimension, the title metaphor of Zora Neale Hurston's semi-autobiographical 1934 novel Jonah's Gourd Vine embodies modernity's most troubling aspects: Jonah's sanctuary withers away even as the solid foundations of community, self, and agency crumble in the modern age. In Jonah's Gourd Vine, John Pearson's sanctuary comes from his spiritual community, embodied in its purest form in the rhythms and music of African religion as it survives in the American South in the early part of the twentieth century, and later associated with the inextricably linked forces of his wife Lucy and the church. Modernity's general assault on religion, spirituality, and transcendence has been exhaustively documented. However, the southern African American in the late nineteenth

Journal

The Southern Literary Journal – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Aug 12, 2003

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