Porgo Manuscript (through Chapter 1)

Porgo Manuscript (through Chapter 1)

1924

First draft manuscript of the novel published as Porgy in 1925, and later adapted into the opera "Porgy and Bess." This excerpt includes only part of the full manuscript, through the end of Chapter 1, as well as a note on the manuscript's provenance and DuBose Heyward's notes on Gullah pronunciation. The full manuscript consists of 431 pages and is available in through the Charleston Library Society Special Collections.

In his 1954 monograph DuBose Heyward, the Man Who Wrote Porgy, Dubose Heyward's friend Dr. Frank Durham writes, "A study of the first draft of Porgy and of the more polished, typed version--both now at the Charleston Library Society--shows a good deal about Heyward's process of composition." Specifically Durham highlights Heyward's extensive correction of word choice in the first portion of this handwritten draft, often including misspellings, run-on sentences, and grammatical flaws. Compared to the typescript draft, which more closely resembles the published version, much of the flourished descriptions of characters and setting make way for action and plot.

Durham also points out the significance of Heyward's Gullah dialect sheet, which is included here. Heyward was a fluent Gullah speaker and his mother was a noted recorder of Gullah language and folklore, but in early drafts he struggled with conveying its unique pronunciations in a consistent written format. Though spoken Gullah is more or less unintelligible to English speakers, as it is a creole consisting of English and Western African linguistical elements, Heyward attempted to "suggest Gullah speech and at the same time make it comprehensible to the general reader." In the years following the publication of Porgy, the work of Black linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner documented Gullah grammar and vocabulary and helped elevate it from its perception as poorly spoken English to a distinct, complex vernacular dialect.

Copyright has not been assigned to the Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher.

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Ms. 80, Porgy manuscripts, c.1924.

English

Ms80

The Charleston Library Society has received from Mrs. DuBose Heyward the valuable and interesting manuscript of Porgy bequeathed this old institution by her husband DuBose Heyward.

The manuscript of this poetically interpretive story, which established his reputation as a gifted writer of fiction, will be appreciatively enrishined in this Library to which he expressed himself as indebted for help and will treasure his literary reputation which is reflected so much on the City he dearly loved.

The manuscript will be on exhibition in the Library and all who are interested will be welcome.

Sent to News and Courier and Evening Post on April 19, 1944

Dialect

Can                                Kin

Get                                git

Heaven                        Hibbin

Have                                Hav

Give                                Gib

Leave                        leabe

You                                Yer or you

Think                        t’ink

Used                                Usen

Children                        Chillen

Together                        tergedder

That                                dat

With                                wid

Porgo had gone where no one knew, where shadows go in sunlight, where the morning stars go in the crucible of day.

1

He came to town from God knows where and swell he brought no letters and even his God was a droll affair unmindful of his betters.

Porgo lived in the Golden Age when hazy. Not the Golden Age of a remote and legendary past; nor the [illegible] chimerical era treasured by an every man of only forty that existed never existed at all except in the heart of youth. That a nearly immediate golden age when a beggar man did not [illegible] to purchase a meaningful licence [illegible] the municipality with ten dollars for which he admitted return for a license authorized him to be peddle shoe string for a loaf of bread in order to beg of [illegible] a penny and it was fortunate for Porgo an age when men begging was a profession

with a splendid tradition behind it. To [illegible] to and it was fortunate, for, as the [illegible] is warm with the union of hearts, and the [illegible] man with an eye for barter, so was Porgo equipped by a hemificed providence for a career of mendicancy. In the Had he been blessed with In the first place Had he been blessed with sturdy legs instead of warped + crippled extremities he could scarcely have avoided the career of a stevedore on one of the great cotton wharves instead of the sturdy legs that would have predestined him for the a life of stevedore in one of the great cotton wharves he had warped and cuffed nether extremities quick to touch the heart and the pocket book and there was a look about his face that

2

But a golden age that existed where men not yet of middle life were boys in a city so old and forgotten that time had forgotten that had been made when beautiful things were fashioned by human hands, and had been providentially left and forgotten before it had been destroyed. In this city there persisted the Golden Age of many things, and not the least among them was that of beggery. Within the memory of the comparatively young men it was possible for a man to embark upon the time honoured career of begging to beg a penny of a passerby without first having exchanged a ten dollar bill with the municipality for a license granting authority to trade in shoestrings. In those days the profession was one with a grand tradition behind it. Over

A man begged because presumably he was hungry, just as a man of more energetic temperament worked for the same cause. (Note I) His antecedents and his mental age were his own affair, and he it said that in the majority of cases he was as happily oblivious of one as the other. Had it been otherwise

When While the Had it all been otherwise, had Porgo come a generation later, there would have been a repetition of the world old tragedy of genius without opportunity. For,

3

Instead of the sturdy legs that would have predestined him for the career life of a stevedore on one of the great cotton wharves, he had come into the world, totally inadequate nether extremities, quick to catch the eye, and the ready sympathy of the passer-by, and either by birth or through the application of a phylosophy of life, he had acquired a personality that would not be ignored and at once interested and subtly disturbed. There was that in his face that

Note I

And when a plea for help produced the simple reactions of a generous  impulse, a movement of the hand and the gift of a coin, instead of the elaborate and terrifying analysis of organized philanthropy.

4

differentiated him from the hordes of fellow practitioners who were hiding against competed with him for the notice of the tender-hearted. Passerby Where others bid eagerly for attention, and burst into voluble thanks and blessings, Porgo sat silent, wrapt. There was something Eastern, mystic about the intense introspection of his face look. He never smiled, and he acknowledged gifts only by a slow lifting of the eyes that had odd shadows in them. And He was very black and his hands were very large and then when flexed idly in his lap more formitable and muscular. This was the more noticeable on assembly his [illegible] muscular and almost seemed shockingly formidable in contrast with his frail body. Unless one were unusually preoccupied at the moment of dropping a coin in his cup, he

5

carried away in return a very definite, and somewhat disquieting impression: a sense of infinite patience and beneath it the vibration of terrific energy unrealized, but terrific, energy. No one knew Porgo’s age. No one remembered when he first made his appearance among the ranks of the local beggers. A woman who had married twenty years before remembered him because he had been seated on the church steps, and gave had given her a turn when she went in. Once a child saw Porgo, and said suddenly,

“I wonder what he is waiting for?”

That expressed him better than any other did. He was waiting, waiting with was the focal point of his live, being waiting with the concentrated intensity of a burning-glass.

6

As consistent in the practice of his vocation as any of the business and professional men who were his most valued clients, the earliest arrivals Porgo the was always ready to [illegible] the first arrivals in the financial district, Pro S. He was to be found any morning, by the first arrival in the financial district sitting against the wall of the old apothecary shop that stands at the corner of King Charles Street and the Meeting House Road. Long custom reinforced by an eye for the beautiful, had endeared that spot to Porgo. He could would sit there for in the cool of the early hours and look across the narrow thoroughfare into the green coolness freshness of Jasper Square where the children flew their kites, and played hide-and-seek among the shrubs. Or he would There Then when the morning advanced, and the sun poured its semi-tropical heat down between the [illegible] high twin rows of brick, to lie impounded there, like a stagnant pool of flame. He would experience a pleasant atavistic calm, and would doze lightly under the

terrific heat, as only a full-blooded African can. Toward afternoon a slender blue shadow would commence to grow about him that would lengthen broaden with great rapidity, cooling the baking flags beneath him, and turning the tide of customers home again before his empty cup. But Porgo best loved the late afternoons, when the street was quiet again, and the sun, [illegible] and deep of sunlight, deep with color, shot level over the low roof of the apothecary shop painting the cream stucco on the old dwelling opposite a high gold ruddy gold and turning the old rain-washed tiles of the roof to hammered burnished copper. Then the slender, white-clad lady who lived in the house would throw open the deep French windows of the second story drawing-room, and would play in the on through the dusk until Samuel came by with his wagon to carry him home.