Langston Hughes

Fantasy in Purple

Beat the drums of tragedy for me.
Beat the drums of tragedy and death.

stormy song

Black church tradition: spirituals about death aren't quiet. 'Stormy' suggests power, not peace—think 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' sung full-throated.

And let the choir sing a stormy song
To drown the rattle of my dying breath.

rattle of my dying breath

Death rattle—the literal sound of breathing when dying. He wants music loud enough to cover this clinical, unglamorous reality.

Beat the drums of tragedy for me,

white violins

Violins aren't white—he's describing the sound (thin, pale, ghostly) not the instrument. This is synesthesia, mixing sensory descriptions.

And let the white violins whir thin and slow,
But blow one blaring trumpet note of sun

one blaring trumpet

Jazz funeral tradition: the parade to the cemetery is somber, but the return trip celebrates with loud brass. Hughes wants the celebration part.

To go with me
to the darkness
where I go.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Jazz Funeral Blueprint

Hughes is choreographing his own funeral, and the instruments matter. Drums open and close the poem—in New Orleans jazz funerals, the bass drum keeps the dirge tempo on the way to burial. White violins are classical, European, associated with concert halls and "high" culture. The trumpet is jazz, Black musical innovation, Louis Armstrong.

The word "blaring" is key—trumpets can play softly, but Hughes wants it loud. One note, not a melody. "Note of sun" compresses two images: the brass gleam of the instrument and the sound itself as bright, life-affirming. This isn't background music; it's a declaration.

CONTEXT Hughes wrote this in 1927, during the Harlem Renaissance when debates raged about whether Black artists should pursue European forms or celebrate distinctly Black traditions. The poem stages this debate as a funeral: accept the classical violins, but demand the trumpet too.

Why Repeat the Whole Thing?

The poem is two identical stanzas—unusual enough that it demands explanation. This isn't revision or variation; it's exact repetition, like a musical refrain or a ritual chant. In Black church services and spirituals, repetition builds intensity. Saying something once is information; saying it twice is insistence.

The repetition also mimics the structure of a dirge or funeral march—the same rhythm, over and over, the sound of feet walking to a gravesite. But notice what doesn't change: the trumpet demand appears in both stanzas, identical. This isn't a wish that fades; it's a requirement that persists.

"Fantasy" in the title is doing work too. This funeral hasn't happened—Hughes is imagining it, staging it in language. A fantasy is both an imaginative escape and something unreal, possibly unattainable. The title suggests he knows this might not be the funeral he gets, but it's the one he's claiming in art.