Essentials

by Jean Toomer

2022 Reprint of the 1931 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "Jean Toomer was one of the great literary figures from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's. His signature work, Cane , is familiar to most people who have studied African-American literature. Lesser known to readers is this brilliant work, Essentials , published in 1931. After his success with Cane , Toomer disappeared from the literary scene to pursue his own philosophical and psychological inquiries. Toomer sought enlightenment in the teachings of George Gurdjieff. During this time (1924-1935), Toomer published this slim volume offering his attempts to grapple with the experience of what it means to be human. Essentials is a collection of Toomer's ponderings in his search for wholeness in a fragmented world. Drawing on modern psychology and eastern religious belief Toomer falls into the company of Emerson, Thoreau and Gibran as he deals with that which is transcendent. He revives the use of aphorisms to convey timeless truths in a world which is incapable of moving beyond its limited definitions of life. Long ignored, this work gives us a glimpse of Toomer's metaphysical tendencies. Through it we capture another alternative view of dealing with reality. It is essential reading for anyone interested in metaphysics, African-American literature, and Toomer; it also serves as a example of a Black writer who refused to be limited by definitions of race for his life. Think on his words. Grow in the wisdom shared by a great literary giant of the 20th century." Amazon Review by Bonita L. Davis, on November 28, 2000

Genres: Philosophy, Classics

76 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Jean Toomer (December 26, 1894 – March 30, 1967) was an American poet and novelist and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance and modernism. His first book Cane, published in 1923, is considered by many to be his most significant. Of mixed race and majority European ancestry, Toomer struggled to identify as "an American" and resisted efforts to classify him as a black writer.

He continued to write poetry, short stories and essays. After his second marriage in 1934, he moved from New York to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where he became a member of the Religious Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) and retired from public life. His papers are held by the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Aberjhani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harlem Renaissance icon Jean Toomer first self-published the collection of aphorisms entitled Essentials in 1931. Hill Street Press of Athens, Georgia, republished it in 2000.

In this small powerful book, Toomer communicated in short bursts of insight some of his evolving spiritual ideas, such as the following:

-- "Each wrong idea kills one right instinct."

-- "The only man who can leave the earth to other men is he who has won himself."

-- "We do not suffer: seldom does our essence suffer; but pride, vanity, egotism suffer in us."

Many consider Essentials a masterpiece of its kind and rank it alongside Toomer's CANE, one of the defining literary masterworks of the Harlem Renaissance and modernism.

Aberjhani
author of I Made My Boy Out of Poetry
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked a lot of these "essentials." I tended to disagree with the more cynical ones ("Man is a breeding place of problems..."). Here are some sections I liked:

III: "We should have a strong and vivid true sense of actuality. We should have a strong and vivid true sense of potentiality...We should have a strong and vivid true sense of ourselves as wholes, made up of both actualities and potentialities... I would call this last mentioned sense a sense of oneself...Also, I would call it a sense of reality...Modern man is losing his sense of potentiality as regards himself. Hence he is losing his sense of himself and of reality...We are lopsidedly concerned with actualities."

XXVIII: "We experience alternating phases of expanded and contracted consciousness, of increased and diminished being...Depression is caused when we pass from a greater to a lesser state...In the lesser state we experience the hell of absence... Happiness is caused when we pass from a lesser to a greater state...In the greater state we experience the heaven of presence."

XLIV: "An artist is he who can balance strong contrasts, who can combine opposing forms and forces in significant unity...Real art demands the intense purity and wholeness of the very materials we artists often irresponsibly mutilate...One must become a man before he can be an artist...Far about a single talent I price a multiformed man...Art is a means of communicating high-rate vibrations."