― ― 7 Utopias False and True in Baldwin’s“Sonny’s Blues” David A. Farnell “Utopia”is not a word often associated with the immanent,* virtual,“not-yet”utopia, always present fiction of James Baldwin; indeed, his stories are and accessible through creative imagination. At the commonly filled with the dystopian elements of Harlem same time, the paper will consider that slippery slums or similar locales of hopelessness. But dystopia term, utopia, as well as the positives and negatives engenders dreams of utopia, and“Sonny’s Blues,”a of utopian longing, the benefits and the potential for masterwork of desperation, addiction, and redemption, destruction to be found in walking the knife-edge path contains within it three paths to utopia – two false, one to utopia, what Baldwin refers to in the story as the true. line between“deep water and drowning” (139) . Sonny, the narrator’s brother, seeks a way out of the dystopia of 1960s Harlem to a place where people Utopian Dreaming can communicate and commune with each other, and Because of the slipperiness of the meaning of thereby be free. He resists the temptation of one false “utopia,”it seems practical to go into definitions before path, religion – which provides, in the forms of Eastern proceeding on to the story. Typically, when the word mysticism and evangelical Christianity, a seductive is used, it implies a blueprint-like description of an promise of a utopian afterlife, in exchange for imaginary, perhaps impossible, perfect or near-perfect acceptance of this flawed world and an abandonment civilization. But this is far from the only meaning. Even of revolution – only to succumb to the second false in that implicit definition, the subjectivity involved path, heroin, which offers a spurious sense of control in envisioning perfection makes one person’s eutopia and communion in exchange for addiction, poverty, (or positive utopia)another’s dystopia(or negative and eventual death. utopia), or perhaps even anti-utopia(a utopia that But drawing upon his creative energies, he criticizes the very idea of eutopia).Claeys and Sargent masters a third, intensely personal path, music, and lay out some basic, simple definitions that work well by shattering the walls of alienation,“at the risk of as starting points for all these terms. According to ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to them, the basic term“utopia”refers to“a nonexistent find new ways to make us listen” (Baldwin,“Sonny’s society” that is “substantially different from the Blues”141), he creates an emancipating moment of one in which the author lives”and is meant to be anticipatory illumination for himself and his audience, “recognizably good or bad to the intended reader” (1). a shared space within here-and-now reality that The default assumption is that the society will be a Ernst Bloch calls a“Vorschein”of utopia that can good one, but when needed, the more specific term for be realized through art,“a countermove against the a“positive utopia”is“eutopia”; and when referring to bad existence,”a revolutionary vision intended not to a negative utopia, the term is“dystopia” (1-2). They comfort us into complacency, but to bring that bad define other categories of utopia, but these are the existence“to the point of collapse” (Bloch, Utopian ones which apply to this paper. Function... 109) . Beyond these basics, there are many extended, This paper will explore the theme of utopia deeper definitions of the term. Robert Nozick claims in Baldwin’s story, in the Blochian sense of an that utopia is just barely attainable in reality, * “Immanent”– in the sense of“inherent within”– is used here as the more proper term, even though its use often includes a sense of the“about to occur”of its homonym“imminent.”In Bloch, both terms often apply at once, but the sacred implications of“immanent” bring its meaning to the fore. ( 1 ) ― ― 8 福岡大学研究部論集 A 10(5)2010 describing it as a society in which “none of the from the real, but, on the contrary, by looking into its inhabitants [...] can imagine an alternative world they progress, into its horizon [...] a forward dawning, into would rather live in”(299) , while Karl Mannheim the New” (Principle 76-7). Elsewhere, he calls this defines utopia as something“which transcends reality “a contradicting countermove against the bad existence and which at the same time breaks the bonds of the (das schlecht Vorhandene) ,”and that this subjective, existing order” (173) , thus putting it always just out imaginative factor is a crucial complement to the of reach, a perpetual revolution that, when achieved, objective revolutionary action needed to improve has already fallen short of utopia. The disappointment society(Utopian Function 109). As Moylan writes of resulting from falling short may be one reason that so Bloch,“a‘utopian’ gesture is of no use to anyone but many(though not all)real-world utopian experiments the powers that be if it does not recognize that its end up failing catastrophically. hopeful journey begins in refusing the bondage of the In this paper, I will focus primarily on utopia as present” (274). described by Ernst Bloch in his massive 1400-page It may sound strange to define“utopia”as“hopes work, The Principle of Hope, and in other writings. and dreams,”but the vast majority of descriptions of Bloch, at once a philosopher, a communist of the old utopia – from Plato’s Republic to the Garden of Eden, school, and a Christian mystic, is by no means easy from More’s own Utopia to Bacon’s New Atlantis, from to pin down, but what I take from his (beautiful French poems about the Land of Cokaygne to hobo though sometimes impenetrable)explorations of the songs about the Big Rock Candy Mountain – nearly topic is that utopia – far from being an impossible-to- all are inspiring dreams rather than serious blueprints reach nonexistent land or society, or a future end-of- for the foundation of an actual society. They may well history we will one day achieve – is a process which have within them serious, radical proposals, but unlike, is always present in the here-and-now because it is say, The Communist Manifesto or Fourier’s Theory of present in the human imagination. This is of course the Four Movements, they are essentially fantasies and a dreadful oversimplification of a work that Frederic fictions rather than sober plans. Still, they shake their Jameson calls“a vast and disorderly exploration of the audience out of complacency, challenge assumptions, manifestations of hope on all levels of reality” (Marxism and thereby spark a desire for change. That change 120) , but attempting a thorough examination of Bloch may not – indeed, almost certainly will not – reach an in a paper of this scope would be impossible. Still, we objective status which we can call“utopia”; instead can cover the basics. it likely inspires a desire for smaller, more realistic The key concept for Blochian utopia is the“not- changes, baby steps in the right direction. But yet,”which he explains as“that which stimulates the considering the results of the most radical attempts wishful element in the expectant emotions always to make utopia real – the Soviet Union, North Korea, arising from hunger, that which possibly diverts Jonestown – baby steps are perhaps better. and fatigues us, or which possibly also activates and galvanizes us towards the goal of a better life: False Utopias daydreams are formed” (Principle 76 – all italics are As mentioned before, those daydreams and hopes Bloch’s) . This not-yet is a dream of the future, and which Bloch calls utopian are those which do not “The idea of the future as immanent to the present entrap us in escapist fantasy or acceptance of the [...] is embodied in [this] guiding concept of Bloch’s status quo, but I would like to refine that definition philosophy [...]”(Anderson 216) . That is, because somewhat for this paper. Bloch does not always make we can conceive it, the not-yet is here and now, in clear something which I believe is crucial to the the form of creative imagining. Bloch mentions that concept of utopia, and that is the idea of community. some of these daydreams are merely diverting, even A utopia for a single person or even a single family is “base, dubious, dismal, merely enervating escapist merely a selfish fantasy, and would be stretching the dreams”which may even be“combined with approval definition past the breaking point. Utopias have always and support of the status quo,”such as“the empty been concerned with communities which are radically promises of a better hereafter.”But his focus is on better(or worse, in the case of dystopias)than the those other daydreams, the ones that“have sustained ones in which we live. I think that Bloch does include men with courage and hope, not by looking away this idea of community, but not always explicitly – ( 2 ) Utopias False and True in Baldwin’s“Sonny’s Blues” (Farnell) ― ― 9 often, it seems to be an unstated assumption in his – the Hollywood portrayals of mainstream American work. dreams, a life from which these boys are excluded, What I have called “false utopias” in “Sonny’s begins to inspire rage and revolution. The false path Blues”are very much what Bloch calls“base, dubious, has the potential to become a true one. dismal, merely enervating escapist dreams” : processes This ambiguity arises again with the first of or paths which lead into traps, such as lazy fantasizing, Sonny’s false utopias, religion. The narrator is riding fatalistic acceptance of the status quo, or the slow in a taxi with Sonny, taking him home after Sonny’s death of addiction. We see all three of these false paths incarceration and rehabilitation, when he asks,“You presented in the story, before we see the true path for still want to go to India?”to which Sonny replies, Sonny. However, I should clarify that by“false utopia” “Hell no. This place is Indian enough for me” (111). I do not mean“dystopia.”False utopias merely lead The question refers to Sonny’s boyhood desire to go to nowhere. Dystopia often serves a utopian function, India and become a holy man,“sitting on rocks, naked, in that it also spurs to action, through bad dreams in all kinds of weather, but mostly bad, naturally, and rather than good, misery rather than hope. However, walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at one major difference from utopia is that dystopia can wisdom” (112) . Sonny’s reply indicates that Harlem be all too real. Heaven-on-earth is nearly impossible already provides more than enough poverty and to achieve; hell-on-earth is far easier. The real-world hardship for anyone seeking wisdom in that way, Harlem of James Baldwin’s experience, with its and also implicitly rejects the idea of individual poverty, violence, and oppression, certainly qualifies to enlightenment – as we shall see, Sonny is drawn to stand among the ranks of the many, many real-world a communitarian enlightenment, as more befits the dystopias, and its miseries have engendered many concept of utopia. But while Eastern mysticism is the utopias, false and true. wrong path for Sonny, that does not mean it is a false Also, just as utopia itself is subjective, so is the path for all; while it is often used, like all religions, to falsity or truth of that utopia. The false paths are reinforce the status quo, it – like all religions – can also false for Sonny, and the true path is true for him, but be a source for inspiration to revolutionary action. perhaps not for all. We also see the treatment of Western religion in the Actually, the first partly false, partly true utopia story, in the form of Christianity. All his life Baldwin, mentioned in the story has no clear connection to who became a born-again preacher in his teens yet Sonny; instead, it is for the high-school boys that the later rejected organized religion, had an ambiguous * narrator teaches. He describes the trap in which the and contentious relationship with Christianity that is amply documented, and it is often an issue with which younger generation finds itself: These boys, now, were living as we’d been living he struggles in his essays and fiction. In The Fire Next then, they were growing up with a rush and their Time, he recalls his conflicted feelings when preaching heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling as his faith crumbled, and we see the way in which of their actual possibilities. They were filled with religion can function as an impediment to social rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, progress: the darkness of their lives, which was now closing [...] when I faced a congregation, it began to take in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which all the strength I had not to stammer, not to had blinded them to that other darkness, and in curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once and get off their knees and go home and organize, more together than they were at any other time, for example, a rent strike. [...] as I taught Sunday and more alone.(104) school, I felt I was committing a crime in talking Their lives are lived in a dystopia, but they have about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile been blinded to that dystopia by the escapist fantasies themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life.(309) of Hollywood. And yet the blindness cannot last, and it is in the movie theaters that they dream“vindictively” * Many of the stories in Going to Meet the Man feature And thus, I am not including it in the count of“two false, one true.” ( 3 ) ― ― 10 福岡大学研究部論集 A 10(5)2010 this struggle, such as“The Outing,”which portrays phrase,“Shikata ga nai,” (仕方がない), or“It can’t be the evangelical-Christian adults as hypocrites who use helped,”a phrase that can provide comfort but also their religiosity as a way to network, to posture and runs the risk of inducing an attitude of fatalism. Even one-up each other, or to hide their own sins, as with though Sonny acknowledges the value of the comfort Gabriel, a deacon who physically and – it is implied derived from giving God the credit for all good and – sexually abuses his homosexual son, Johnnie(33) . evil in the world, he rejects that comfort along with its In“Come out the Wilderness,”Ruth considers the fatalism. Christianity of her New York relatives: Christianity appears again in the story in the form They, like her father, were earnest churchgoers, of a street revival outside the narrator’s home, where though, unlike her father, their religion was Sonny is staying. One man preaches while a woman strongly mixed with an opportunistic respectability solicits donations and two other women back up the and with ambitions to better society and their own preacher with“Amens.”Then they all break into a place in it, which her father would have scorned. hymn, with only“their voices and their Bibles and a Their ambitions vitiated in them what her father tambourine,”singing of how Christianity has“rescued called the“true”religion, and what remained of many a thousand! ” (130)Baldwin writes, this religion, which was principally vindictiveness, Not a soul under the sound of their voices was prevented them from understanding anything hearing this song for the first time, not one of whatever about those concrete Northern realities them had been rescued. Nor had they seen much that made them at once so obsequious and so in the way of rescue work being done around venomous.(208) them. Neither did they especially believe in the And yet, her father, he of the“ ‘true’ religion,”rejects holiness of the three sisters and the brother, they her when she is caught alone with a boy, even though knew too much about them, knew where they lived, and how.(130) nothing untoward had happened(211) . Her father’s religion divides him from his daughter rather than This song nevertheless“seemed to soothe a poison bringing them together. out of them,”but while it does bring them a moment But Baldwin often shows a respect for religion even of comfort, this comfort is described in individual, not as he criticizes those who use it for base purposes: communal, terms, and backward-looking rather than I was instructed to feed the hungry, clothe the forward. John Reilly describes it as“a familiar moment naked and visit those in prison. I am far indeed of communion” (143), but Baldwin’s words suggest it from my youth, and from my father’s house, but is at best an ambiguous communion:“the eyes focused I have not forgotten these instructions, and I on something within [...] they were fleeing back to their pray upon my soul that I never will. [But] The first condition”(130-1) . When Sonny comes inside people who call themselves“born again”today from listening to the song on the street, he remarks have simply become members of the richest, most of the singer,“‘What a warm voice. [...] But what a exclusive private club in the world, a club that terrible song,’”laughing(131). He acknowledges the the man from Galilee could not possibly hope – or benefits of Christianity, but implies that they are not wish – to enter.( “Open Letter...”784) . enough, for him at least. We see a more subtle, mixed view of Christianity This conversation moves into a conversation in“Sonny’s Blues.”It first comes up in the letter between Sonny and his brother about heroin, the the narrator receives from Sonny during his period closest thing to real, frank communication they have of incarceration and treatment, shortly after the shared so far in their lives. Sonny says,“‘When she narrator’s daughter has died of polio:“I sure was was singing before [...] her voice reminded me for a sorry to hear about little Gracie. I wish I could be like minute of what heroin feels like sometimes – when Mama and say the Lord’s will be done, but I don’t it’s in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and know it seems to me that trouble is the one thing that cool at the same time. And distant. And – and sure. [...] never does get stopped and I don’t know what good It makes you feel – in control. Sometimes you’ve got it does to blame it on the Lord. But maybe it does to have that feeling’” (132). Sonny’s frequent pauses some good if you believe it” (110) .“The Lord’s will indicate his difficulty in expressing himself so openly be done”is the American equivalent of the Japanese to his much older brother; Sonny’s addiction is one of ( 4 ) Utopias False and True in Baldwin’s“Sonny’s Blues” (Farnell) ― ― 11 many experiences in their lives that they have not conceptual, virtual, imaginary space – a topos, in Greek. shared, and communication difficulties have always The apparently good place where Sonny has been was, plagued their relationship. As the narrator says,“The for a time, a comforting false eutopia, but when he hits seven years’ difference in our ages lay between us bottom, he finds himself in a bad place, a dystopia. like chasm: I wondered if these years would ever operate between us as a bridge” (111) . A chasm of Utopia from Dystopia understanding is, indeed, the greatest obstacle to But, again, dystopia engenders utopia. Sonny turned happiness in the story, and is a major recurring theme to heroin to escape the dystopia of Harlem. When in Baldwin’s work, but we will return to this later. addiction becomes a new dystopia, he rejects it and The desire to be part of a real community, with climbs out of the pit. And the path he follows to do so understanding and even communion, is what Sonny is music, the true utopian path of this story. Although seems to be seeking when he tries heroin. The we usually think of utopia as being presented through narrator remembers the last time he saw Sonny the written word, Edward Rothstein writes, before hearing of his arrest; he finds Sonny living in But no other form of expression has been so an apartment with a number of other people, probably associated with the utopian dream as music. Music addicts,“and he treated these people as though they does not, of course, outline utopias such as those of were his family and I weren’t” (128) . As drug addicts, More and Marx; particular sets of social relations they share a utopian dream, creating familial bonds; are not expressed; there is no literal discussion but the dream is false, as are those bonds. Typically, of money or education or the moral life. But [...] Sonny and the narrator fight, even though the music creates an autonomous world of sound with narrator’s intention had been to heal the rift between its own set of laws and relationships, its own sort them, and Sonny ends up throwing his brother out. of order, its own conception of tension and release. The urge for community and communion is a And in the midst of these abstract orders are utopian urge, as is the desire to be“in control,”as to encoded visions of utopia and dystopia.(24) be in control of one’s own destiny is the very definition Rothstein is far from the only one who identifies music of freedom. But of course, trying to find those in a as a path to utopia, or even as utopia itself. Bloch heroin-filled needle is the falsest of false utopian paths. writes,“Among the arts, music has a very special Both community and control are illusions. As addiction juice [...]. The utopicum of this expression is the hour takes hold, control turns to slavery; as life becomes of language in music, understood as keenly hearing; is centered around the desire for ever-increasing doses a poesis a se [creation through itself] with passwords of the drug, the addict becomes utterly self-centered, allowing entry into the material tone-nature of all making community impossible. that wells up [...]” (Principle 1069-70). More simply, In the conversation about heroin that Sonny has Ben Anderson states that “Bloch’s explanation of with the narrator, Sonny tries to describe his addiction music is grounded upon an understanding of music as in spatial terms, as a place: anticipation. Bloch argues that music, by virtue of its “But I can’t forget – where I’ve been. I don’t just non-representational qualities, offers privileged access mean the physical place I’ve been, I mean where to the‘not-yet become’” (217). I’ve been. And what I’ve been.” Music permeates“Sonny’s Blues,”from the title “Where have you been, Sonny?”I asked. itself to the aforementioned street-revival gospel to [...] constant spontaneous appearances of music as the “Oh well. I can never tell you. I was all by narrator moves through Harlem. Near the beginning myself at the bottom of something, stinking and of the story, one of his students is“whistling a tune, at sweating and crying and shaking, and I smelled once very complicated and very simple, it seemed to it, you know? my stink, and I thought I’d die if I be pouring out of him as though he were a bird” (105) . couldn’t get away from it and yet, all the same, As the narrator walks with a heroin addict, an old I knew that everything I was doing was just friend of Sonny’s, they pass a bar where“a juke box locking me in with it.” (135-6) was blasting away with something black and bouncy Seeking community, he finds isolation; seeking and I half watched the barmaid as she danced her freedom, he finds imprisonment. These create a way from the juke box to her place behind the bar. [...] ( 5 ) ― ― 12 福岡大学研究部論集 A 10(5)2010 When she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the in a way that recalls the death of his uncle, who by doomed, still-struggling woman beneath the battered panicking failed to get out of the way of the oncoming face of the semi-whore” (107) . The narrator’s mother car.“He and the piano stammered, started one way, tells him that his uncle, a singer and guitarist, died by got scared, stopped; started another way, panicked, being run over by a car-full of drunken white men, marked time, started again; then seemed to have found right before the eyes of the narrator’s father:“Your a direction, panicked again, got stuck” (140) . But the father says he heard his brother scream when the car narrator listens, and this is crucial, because all through rolled over him, and he heard the wood of that guitar the story his failure to listen to his younger brother when it give, and he heard them strings go flying, and has resulted in a“chasm”between them. After the he heard them white men shouting, and the car kept death of their mother years before, the narrator a-going and it ain’t stopped till this day” (118). When “played the role of the older brother” (120)and, from Sonny rejects his brother and throws him out of the this false position – as implied by the phrase“played heroin den, the narrator stops himself from crying by the role”– asks Sonny about his future plans. Because whistling a blues tune(128) . he has also cast Sonny in the role of child, he does All of these moments of music are transformative not really listen to Sonny, but attempts to browbeat – taking one out of oneself, nourishing a fragile purity him into not pursuing his dream of becoming a jazz in a flawed world, comforting oneself against despair, musician. This failure to listen due to the assumption signaling death and horror with the cacophonous of false roles causes all their conversations to fail, “music”of a guitar run over by a car – but they are even the one about heroin that precedes the jazz all foreshadowings of the climax of the story, Sonny’s performance, although that conversation, in which jazz performance. After their conversation about Sonny bares his heart, lays the ground for the narrator heroin, Sonny invites his brother to come hear him to“open within”and truly listen to the music. play the piano with a group, the first time Sonny has Failure to listen is failure to communicate, and performed in more than a year. The narrator finds thereby failure of community. Communication, and himself in a new world, the jazz club, where for the community, is what Sonny has hungered after all first time he sees Sonny not as a little brother, but as a through the story, and what has compelled him to leader in his own right, a man recognized and admired follow utopian dreams in search of a better society. by his bandmates and audience. He begins to see that This failure of and hunger for community runs there are more dimensions to his brother than he had throughout Baldwin’s writings, and it often results, ever considered:“[...] it was clear that, for them, I was as with Sonny and his brother, from assumptions of only Sonny’s brother. Here, I was in Sonny’s world. Or, false roles in which the humanity of the players is rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question diminished and limited through stereotyping. Later in that his veins bore royal blood” (138) . the same collection, racism is the most obvious case, As the music begins, in an echo of Roland Barthes’ with Jesse, the sheriff’s deputy in“Going to Meet the “Musica Practica” (Barthes 149) , the narrator muses Man,”whose racism makes him feel powerful, but also makes him insecure, vicious, sexually dysfunctional, on the nature of music: All I know about music is that not many people “emasculated, from an emotional perspective” (Pratt ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare 49). Because of the role in which he casts himself(and occasions when something opens within, and is cast by upbringing and societal expectations) , he the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear cannot see African-Americans as fully human, nor, by corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing limiting himself to little more than being“the White evocations. But the man who creates the music is Racist,”can he himself be fully human. The castration hearing something else, is dealing with the roar of the lynched black man is symbolic of the emotional rising from the void and imposing order on it as self-castration of the racist, “self-estrangement, it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of threatening himself and society with impotence and another order, more terrible because it has no sterility” (Griffith 515). words, and triumphant, too, for the same reason. Baldwin touches on this again and again in his work, And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.(139) but despite the tragedy of it all, he offers a possibility Sonny does not, at first, triumph. In fact, he plays of hope and progress.“White people in this country ( 6 ) Utopias False and True in Baldwin’s“Sonny’s Blues” (Farnell) will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept ― ― 13 potentia)utopia. As Reilly points out, it does not and love themselves and each other, and when they blind its participants to reality(145). The narrator is have achieved this [...] the Negro problem will no “aware that this was only a moment, that the world longer exist, for it will no longer be needed” (Fire Next waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble Time 299-300) ;“The black and white confrontation, stretched above us, longer than the sky” (Baldwin, whether it be hostile [...] or with the intention of “Sonny’s Blues”142). But it is real. It is similar to the forming a common front and creating the foundations Zen Buddhist concept of kenshou(見性) , a moment of a new society [...] contain[s] the shape of the of illumination, and Sonny, like a boddhisatva(菩薩) , American future and the only potential of a truly valid cannot be free until all are. Without realizing, he has American identity” (No Name 470) . He puts it best, followed through on his childhood dream of Indian perhaps, with sad simplicity in“This Morning, This enlightenment, metaphorically “walking barefoot Evening, So Soon,”the story following“Sonny’s Blues” through hot coals and arriving at wisdom” (112) . in the collection:“For everyone’s life begins on a level Compared to the default definition of utopia, the where races, armies, and churches stop. And yet “blueprint model,”this Blochian immanent conceptual everyone’s life is always shaped by races, churches, utopia is arguably the truer utopia. When Jameson and armies; races, churches, armies menace, and have describes the way that, once capitalism and socialism taken, many lives” (150) . become practical political realities, Utopian Imagination Baldwin’s utopian dream, then, is of true community, gives way to Utopian Fancy(using Imagination and which requires self-knowledge so that we can be fully Fancy in Coleridge’s sense) , he demonstrates that, human – but this also requires seeing others as fully once achieved in the real world, utopia is always found human. To do this, we must have true communication, lacking, and so ceases to be utopia(Archaeologies 55) . which requires listening without false assumptions. I believe Jameson also leaves open the implication that That is what the narrator learns to do, in listening second-class citizens, denied the middle-class benefits to improvisational jazz, a form of music about which of a tarnished utopia and forced to live apart from he knows very little. Jazz is one of the few truly mainstream society in dystopian conditions, may well American art forms, and, not insignificantly, it is a have a truer grasp of the concept of utopia, in that black art form. The narrator has long locked himself they may stick with Utopian Imagination rather than into roles: responsible older brother, upwardly mobile Fancy. math teacher. Out of his element in the jazz club, The ephemeral, impractical, never-to-be achieved surrounded by people who don’t know who he is and and yet always-accessible utopian dream, a dream that practically worship his little brother, truly listening inspires to progressive, revolutionary action rather for the first time to an alien music created by that than entrapping, is the true utopia. It inspires those brother, the mask which society has placed on his soul who are open to it to transform themselves, to become falls away and he opens to utopian possibilities: more fully themselves and to see others equally as Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny fully, to accept them and to understand who they are. played. Every now and then one of them seemed More than the education plans, moneyless economic to say, amen. Sonny’s fingers filled the air with schemes, spartan rules on fashion, and ironically life, his life. But that life contained so many others. restrictive free-love fantasies that we see in“blueprint” [...] It was very beautiful because it wasn’t hurried utopias, the utopian dream as described in Baldwin’s and it was no longer a lament. I seemed to hear story, by avoiding concrete form, remains true. This is with what burning he had made it his, with what symbolized in the closing sentence of the story, when burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could Sonny sips from the drink his brother has sent him, cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and and then places it on the piano, before playing again, I understood, at last, that he could help us to be where“it glowed and shook above my brother’s head free if we would listen, that he would never be like the very cup of trembling” (142) . The“cup of free until we did.(141-2) trembling”is a reference to Isaiah 51:22, in which God This is a moment of perfection, a release from misery, promises the Jews that their punishment is over, and a communion between audience and musicians – they will no longer suffer his wrath. The world may an immanent “not-yet”(yet eternally present in wait outside“like a hungry tiger,”but communion, ( 7 ) ― ― 14 福岡大学研究部論集 A 10(5)2010 community, and communication are forever in reach, Trans. 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