Langston Hughes: Letter to the Academy

Letter to the Academy

The gentlemen who have got to be classics and are now old

with beards (or dead and in their graves) will kindly

come forward and speak upon the subject.

Of the Revolution.  I mean the gentlemen who wrote lovely

books about the defeat of the flesh and triumph of 

the spirit that sold in the hundreds of thousands and

are studied in the high schools and read by the best

people will kindly come forward and

Speak about the Revolution- where the flesh triumphs (as

well as the spirit) and the hungry belly eats, and there 

are no best people, and the poor are mighty and no 

longer poor, an the young by the hundreds of 

thousands are free from hunger to grow and study and

love and propagate, bodies and souls unchained

without My Lord saying a commoner shall never marry my 

daughter or the Rabbi crying cursed be the mating of Jews

and Gentiles or Kipling writing never

the twain shall meet--

For the Twain have met.  But please- all you gentlemen with 

beards who are so wise and old and who write better 

than we do and whose souls have triumphed (in spite 

of hungers and wars and the evils about you) and 

whose books have soared in the calmness and beauty aloof

from the struggle to the library shelves and the desks

of students and who are now classics- come forward 

  and speak upon

The subject of Revolution.

We want to know what the Fuck you'd say?

Langston Hughes- Moscow. 1933.