Toomer, Jean, 1894-1967
Variant namesBiographical notes:
Poet.
From the description of Typed letters signed (2) : [n.p.], to Herbert J. Seligmann, 1945 Jan. 13 and 1948 Mar. 10. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 270875013
Jean Toomer and Carl Zigrosser shared a mutual interest in Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Toomer organized groups of followers in Chicago.
From the description of Correspondence with Carl Zigrosser, 1928-1931, n.d. (University of Pennsylvania Library). WorldCat record id: 155899534
Jean Toomer (1894-1967), leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was the author of Cane (1923). Born in Washington, D. C. and named Nathan Pinchback Toomer, his name was changed to Eugene as a youth, and he changed his name to Jean at age twenty-five. A writer, teacher, and lecturer, he became a follower of Georges Gurdjieff and later a member of the Society of Friends. He married Marjory Latimer in 1931 and Marjorie Content in 1934.
From the description of Jean Toomer papers, 1898-1963 (inclusive), 1920-1954 (bulk). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 702131728
After Jean Toomer became a leading literary figure of the Harlem Renaissance in 1923 with the publication of Cane, he turned to spiritual pursuits. These included attending Georges Gurdjieff's institute at Fontainebleau and later spreading the Russian-born spiritualist's teachings to groups in New York and Chicago from 1924-31, maintaining a long association with the Society of Friends from 1938-61, undergoing Jungian analysis from 1949-50, exploring dianetics in 1950-51, and returning to the Gurdjieff movement in 1953. He continued to write philosophical works during this period of self-development, but few were published. Essentials, a collection of aphorisms and poems, was privately printed in 1931.
Toomer was born Nathan Pinchback Toomer in Washington, D. C., on December 26, 1894, to Nathan and Nina Pinchback Toomer. When his father deserted the family less than a year later, he and his mother moved in with his famous grandfather, P. B. S. Pinchback, the son of a white planter and a mulatto former slave, who had briefly served as the governor of Louisiana. His family changed Toomer's first name to Eugene, after his godfather Eugene Laval. Although they lived in a white section of Washington, Toomer was sent to "colored" schools. From 1914-17, he attended the American College of Physical Training in Chicago, New York University, and City College of New York without taking a degree.
Except for a brief period during his mid-twenties when he was a clerk for the grocery firm of Acker, Merrill, and Condit Company and a substitute principal at the Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute in Georgia, Toomer never held a formal job. Instead he devoted his life to writing, teaching, and lecturing. When he turned twenty-five, Eugene Pinchback Toomer changed his name to Jean after such literary heroes as Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean and Romain Rolland's Jean-Christophe. Twenty years later he assumed the pen name of Nathan Jean Toomer or N. Jean Toomer, though he was called Jean by most of his family and friends throughout his life.
Toomer drew upon his Negro background and brief experience as principal of the all-black school in Georgia to write Cane. On September 29, 1923, his friend Countee Cullen wrote, "It's a real race contribution, a classical portrayal of things as they are." But as Toomer became more involved in the Gurdjieff philosophy, he resented being labelled a black writer. When James Weldon Johnson tried to include his work in a revised edition of The Book of American Negro Poetry, Toomer wrote on July 11, 1930, "My poems are not Negro poems...I see myself an American, simply an American." His racial affiliation, in fact, was an issue that haunted Toomer for the rest of his life. He continued to maintain that he was neither black nor white, but a member of a new race, a race of Americans. He wrote about this race in his only book on the subject, "The Crock of Problems."
On October 30, 1931, he married the successful writer Margery Latimer after they summered together in Portage, Wisconsin, at an experimental workshop for group living and self-observation. Their Gurdjieff-style experiment and interracial marriage received extensive adverse publicity. Margery died in 1932 after giving birth to their daughter, Margery Latimer Toomer ("Argie"). In 1934 Toomer married Marjorie Content, the white daughter of a wealthy stockbroker. They lived briefly in New York and Taos, New Mexico, before residing in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where Jean Toomer died on March 30, 1967.
From the guide to the Jean Toomer papers, 1898-1963 (inclusive), 1920-1954, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
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Subjects:
- American literature
- Education
- African American authors
- African Americans in literature
- Authors, American
- Arts
- Communication in marriage
- Dianetics
- Dreams
- Society of Friends
- Harlem Renaissance
- Interracial marriage
- Psychoanalysis
- Psychological literature
- Psychology and religion
- Race relations
- Religious literature
- Social history
- Spiritualism
- Streets
- Streets
- World War, 1939-1945
Occupations:
- Authors
- Spiritualists
Places:
- New Mexico (as recorded)
- New Mexico (as recorded)
- Pennsylvania--Doylestown (as recorded)
- India (as recorded)
- India (as recorded)
