My soul, too, has grown deep - Thoughts on the Poetry of Langston Hughes

The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln 

     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy 

     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

How does Hughes know all of this? How does he know these ancient things, the Euphrates, the pyramids, the “ancient, dusky rivers”?

I know I discussed this poem in college, and I have this faint remembrance that the consensus of interpretation was something about racial identity. The mention of “human blood in human veins” and the reverence to slavery and Lincoln supports this interpretation.

I don’t have the same racial identity as Hughes. But I still relate to this poem on two levels: one, that sometimes I imagine what my ancestors have gone through…stared into the eyes of old portraits and tried to understand how that person thought and felt. Sometimes I have thought about the experiences of my ancestors so much it feels like I’ve experienced it myself.

The second way I relate to this poem is—as usual with me—reading. I haven’t experienced a lot of things personally. My travels and adventures have been through reading. My understanding of things like slavery and war and racism has been learned through reading things like Langston Hughes’ poetry. 

I suspect that Hughes knew this would be the effect of his writing. I suspect this is why he wrote.