Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

An Interview with Etheridge Knight

1996; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cal.1996.0170

1080-6512

Charles H Rowell,

Theater, Performance, and Music History

An Interview with Etheridge Knight Charles H. Rowell Click for larger view View full resolution Etheridge Knight Photo by Elizabeth McKim. This interview was conducted in the poet’s home in Indianapolis, Indiana, between mid-1975 and late 1978, after Dudley Randall issued Belly Song and Other Poems from Broadside Press. Part 1 ROWELL: Will you comment on what you consider the Black Aesthetic to be? KNIGHT: I think the Black Aesthetic differs from the European Aesthetic mainly, man, because it does not separate art or aesthetics from the other levels of life. It does not separate art from politics, art from economics, art from ethics, or art from religion. Art is a functional and a commercial endeavor. The artist is not separate from the people. If you were to trace the separation of art from life historically, you would trace it back to the Greeks when Plato and others made the “head thing” the ideal—reasoning being the ideal—there was a separation between reason and emotion. There was a separation. It is like people trying to separate church and state. How in the hell can you separate church and state? A man’s politics is determined by how he views the world, how he sees God. Aesthetics, to me, means how one sees beauty, truth and love as they relate to all levels of life—not just watching the sunset, but how one’s politics are dealt with and how one’s economics are dealt with. All art stems basically from economics. All the Western dances and all the songs that people call classical music grew out of formulas—European formulas. All of our blues and things that we considered cultural grew out of our economics. People sing about the river rising because their crops are going to be fucked up. It’s economics. I don’t make the distinction between aesthetics and ethics and politics or whatever other aspect of a man’s existence. One might say this is political, and this is not political. As Gwendolyn Brooks says, “just being Black in this country and walking down the street is a political act.” Anytime you walk into a place where there is a whole bunch of “peckerwoods,” you are making a political act. When you are wearing bell bottom pants and a beard and a big Afro, you are making a political statement by merely walking in there. Everything is political, everything is aesthetical, and everything is ethical. ROWELL: In other words, you are saying that our presence in this country is a political existence. KNIGHT: Yes. Absolutely, man, because when you are enslaved—when a whole [End Page 967] group of people is controlled by another group of people—every level of existence is political. There is no black preacher that ever preached that wasn’t making a political statement. If I had to lump it together, I would lump it closer to religion and economics. It is no accident that most of our leaders, even before Nat Turner, were religiously inclined. They have all been preachers. From Nat Turner to Malcolm X, they have been heavy into religion. I see religion as a total view of life. Religion includes economics, politics, ethics, aesthetics, and all that. That’s how I view religion. Historically, artists were connected with the church first. The priest and the artist were one and the same. ROWELL: That is not only true in the Western world; it is also true in the African world. KNIGHT: That’s the point. Somehow in the West, around about Greece, there was this separation—mind over matter—whatever this thing Plato and others go into. That is bullshit. ROWELL: Then, that was reemphasized during the European renaissance when things were systematized. Your concept of aesthetics jibes with the African world view or the traditional African way of life. The traditional African way of life does not departmentalize things. For example, religion, itself, is part of the African’s life. He lives his religion; he lives his humanism. KNIGHT: I was thinking how quickly, when the choir was singing last night, I, everybody, all the brothers and sisters up there, fell into the same rhythm...