Fire !!

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Front page of the Fire !! Magazine by Aaron Douglas

Fire !! was an American literary magazine of the Harlem Renaissance . Planned as a quarterly issue, it appeared only in the November 1926 issue. It was distributed in the New York borough of Manhattan , in which the participating artists carried it out by hand. Fire !! was the mouthpiece of the young black generation. These young artists, between the ages of 20 and 31, were dissatisfied with the movement's established, older spokesmen. The original title was Fire !! A Quarterly devoted to the younger Negro Artists .

Emergence

Starting point of Fire !! was the famous Nigerati Manor artist colony in Harlem . Here, in the summer of 1926, the idea of ​​launching its own artists' magazine came up. Founding members included Wallace Thurman , Zora Neale Hurston , Aaron Douglas, John P. Davis , Richard Bruce Nugent , Gwendolyn Bennett, and Langston Hughes . Each of these authors should contribute $ 50 starting capital to print the first issue. The other expenses should be financed by the proceeds and donations. According to the authors, this magazine should meet the following requirements:

  • The magazine itself should not be understood as documentation of art, but rather represent a work of art itself. Much emphasis was placed on aesthetic aspects, e.g. B. Quality of the paper, format etc.
  • The magazine should be exclusively “devoted to the younger Negro artist”, i.e. only deal with “young” topics such as B. deal with homosexuality. Hughes described the young authors' intention in his essay The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain , published in The Nation on June 23, 1926 :
We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
  • The magazine should also be designed in such a way that it triggers the greatest possible scandal among the white and black establishment in order to fuel a media hype. There was a precedent in the history of the Harlem Renaissance when Carl van Vechten's novel Nigger Heaven was banned after publication, causing it to spread at lightning speed. The organizers wanted to use this hoped-for publicity boost and the associated higher sales of the magazine to publish a second issue and to advertise sponsors for their magazine.

The name of the magazine was chosen based on a spiritual by Langston Hughes .

content

Aaron Douglas provided the template for the title page and three other drawings.

Richard Bruce Nugent contributed with two drawings and the short story Smoke, Lilies and Jade .

Wallace Thurman was the chief editor in charge of the editorial commentary and a short story, Cordelia the Crude .

Zora Neale Hurston wrote the play Color Struck and the short story Sweat .

Gwendolyn Bennett published a short story, Wedding Day .

Arthur Huff Fauset contributed the essay Intelligentsia .

The poem part was contested by

Countee Cullen , Helene Johnson , Edvard Silvera , Waring Cuney , Langston Hughes , Arna Bontemps and Lewis Alexander .

At one dollar, the 48-page magazine was four times more expensive than other magazines of the time.

meaning

Fire !! was the first black writer's joint venture to come about without the money from wealthy white sponsors. This form of patronage was widespread among the creators of Fire !! however frowned upon. In the end, the magazine's financial difficulties were the reason why a second issue, although planned, could not be published and the co-founders (especially Thurman ) remained heavily in debt for years.

A group of authors (including Thurman and Hughes ) managed to establish themselves as speakers for a generation of young authors that had not been heard before with just one issue. But it must also be said that the main intention of the authors was not achieved, namely to frighten the black establishment in such a way that it came to a scandal and the edition was censored or even banned.

Fire !! did not find attention again until the 1970s / 80s, when new cultural and literary theories emerged. It was reprinted in the 1980s.

Trivia

In his autobiography The Big Sea , Langston Hughes describes how hundreds of copies of the magazine were destroyed by fire in a basement where they were stored.

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