Introduction

To attempt to form the judgement of a prospective reader is
a piece of impertinence from an introducer. Criticism is not
his office, and no self-respecting reader wants it from him.
I may, however, offer, out of my knowledge of Jean Toomer
gained from a long friendship of immense benefit to myself,
some advice as how best to approach his volume, *Essentials*.

Obviously, *Essentials* is a trial at direct communication.
Ordinarily, a writer or speaker has to use art to communicate
anything; that is, he has to persuade or enchant his audience
before it will consent to receive his kernel of meaning. But
occasionally questions occur to all of us that are really
serious and about which we are really in earnest. At such times
we turn to some friend and ask real questions, wanting the best
and most serious answers he can give. He doesn't have to
persuade us to listen, for we are in fact demanding of him to
say exactly what at the very back of his mind he really thinks
about the problem. He then can be simple and direct, because we
are simple and direct.

It is in a mood like this that we should consider the replies
to questions about the meaning of life that Mr. Toomer here
presents. There will be those who baffled by the unusual
character of some of his statements, will wonder, not about
them, but about the possible source of them. Plato? Buddhist
philosophy? M. Nietzsche, and so on? This will be a mistake and
a distraction. Jean Toomer, it is evident from the definiteness

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of his style, stands very much on his own legs. He is giving,
to the best of his ability, the essential data of his own
experience as a human being who is trying to grow past the
point where Nature ceases to have any interest in us.

A good portion of the prose in _Essentials_ is the setting
down of ponderings. It will be worth while for the reader to
distinguish the difference between meditation, reflection, and
pondering. The last is nowadays not much in evidence in
American writing. It used to be; there are examples _a few_ in
Poe's miscellaneous notes, in Thoreau's journals. Russian writers
are rather given to jotting down their ponderings, usually
highly emotionalized. And the classic examples of pondering
are in Pascal's _Pensées_. From a purely literary point of view
I am glad that Mr. Toomer is reviving the form among us,
for surely American writers cannot be content with the present
paucity of literary forms in use. How valuable these ponderings
are - as well as what the value is of the rhapsodic passages,
the poems, the short essays - is not, as I have said, for me to
estimate here, though the fact that I am glad to introduce
them to the reader attests to my high opinion.

All I shall say is, thoughts can be weighed with far greater
exactitude than most people think, and I recommend the formal
weighing of Mr. Toomer's thoughts. Test them for clarity,
scope, applicability, illumination, completeness and the other
qualities that determine how solid, how heavy, a thought is.
Put them on the scales with maxims or proverbs you have thought

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well of, with aphorisms by Schnitzler, epigrams by La Roche-
foucauld, reflections by Coleridge, and so on. In this way you
will discover the place (high, low or middling?) of Jean
Toomer as a maker of definitions and aphorisms, and this will
give pleasure to your sense of literary values. But more than
that, you will have forced yourself to concentrate on Mr.
Toomer's texts. He is, you will see, a concentrated writer,
attaching definite meanings to many words the mind ordinarily
slips over. For example. words like "being", "doing", "knowing",
"essence" have evidently a strong meaning for him. He demands,
it is clear, a concentrated reader. If you are willing to be
such, I think you will discover much of deep interest in
**Essentials**.

Perhaps you will be convinced by him that "all our lives we
have been waiting to live" and will see the futility of this
passive attitude. Jean Toomer bases everything on an active
attitude towards experience.

Gorham B. Munson