• Powerhouse is Playing” with Languages: Un/Shared Intimacies in Eudora Welty’s “Powerhouse”
• Hyunjoo Yu

In the early 1960s, the racially segregated world of Mississippi was undergoing groundbreaking changes. In 1962, James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, a school that was then a whites-only institution. This triggered a white supremacist backlash to which black Mississippians responded with protests on campus, economic boycotting of white businesses, sit-ins, etc., and racial tension inevitably started to build up in the city. The next year, Methodist pastors wrote and endorsed “Born of Conviction,” a statement calling for “no discrimination because of race, color, or creed” and, more specifically, for the integration of public schools (Reiff). The statement further spurred controversies and caused those pastors to be ousted from local religious circles. Amidst the politico-cultural strife regarding the racist education system, Millsaps College, a Methodist institution in Jackson, where Eudora Welty was invited to lecture and served as a board member, came face to face with “the problem of the color line” that W. E. B. DuBois had famously defined decades before. Although there were faculty members who openly rebuked the institutional racism and asked Millsaps to desegregate, the school was rather hesitant to make any controversial changes or declarations against the racist paradigm. In 1963, before hosting the Southern Literary Festival, Millsaps College officials expressed to Welty, who was invited as a guest speaker, that they “feared conflict” that could be caused by having an integrated audience (Marrs, “Fateful Stage” 77). As a response, Welty invited black scholars and students from Tougaloo College to attend in order to call out Millsaps’ conservative, complacent, and racist stance on apartheid, and more specifically, its earlier refusal to admit black students and a professor to the school’s theatre production on April 2, 1963 (Marrs, “Fateful Stage” 77; [End Page 201] A Biography 299). After delivering the seemingly apolitical lecture she had promised the school, Welty read her short story “Powerhouse” (1941) to the integrated audience.

“Powerhouse” was an unexpected work for a white southern woman writer living in the Jim Crow era.¹ Alfred Appel boldly suggests that “Powerhouse” is considered “the best story about Jazz” (102). Indeed, the story is inspired by an actual performance by jazz pianist Fats Waller that Welty attended. To capture what she had observed and felt during the experience, Welty wrote the story in one sitting; she reimagined Waller’s one-night-only ragtag big band performance in Jackson in the form of a fictional jazz musician, Powerhouse, as he stages a one-night performance in Alligator, Mississippi. In her attempt to faithfully transcribe the impression she had received from Waller’s jazz aesthetics, Welty forms her story in an almost improvised and conversational style (Bates 82). Looking at her biography, however, it can be easily concluded that Welty was also very much interested in black American culture. In spite of coming from a white middle-class family from segregated Jackson, Mississippi, Welty paid close attention to southern black communities and constantly tried to incorporate their presence in her works. Suzanne Marrs suggests that Welty’s college years spent in New York City familiarized her with Harlem artists. There, she “frequented music stores in the black business district,” and often attended jazz performances at the Cotton Club and Small’s Paradise (Marrs, “Fateful Stage” 75). In short, she was an avid outside observer of black American cultures.

Perhaps because of Welty’s well-known relish for jazz, literary critics commonly propound jazz and blues aesthetics as hermeneutics to read “Powerhouse” and its sociohistorical and literary significance. Daniel Burke, for instance, focuses on dramatic elements in the blues performance such as “the rapid tempo and exclamatory excitement,” which build up to the mysterious charisma and “volcanic energy” of Powerhouse (170, 174). Kenneth Bearden more directly foregrounds the improvisational characteristics in jazz and blues aesthetics and connects [End Page 202] it to the Signifying Monkey trope to read the subversive characterization of Powerhouse. Through the manipulation of language and his tale of Uranus Knockwood, Powerhouse becomes a trickster figure who employs sexual innuendos as an inside joke to poke...

• Powerhouse is Playing”与语言：Eudora Welty 的“Powerhouse”中未/共享的亲密关系
• 于贤珠

我n个早期20世纪60年代，的种族隔离的世界中号ississippi正在发生突破性的变化。1962 年，詹姆斯·梅雷迪思 (James Meredith) 成为第一位进入密西西比大学就读的黑人学生，这所学校当时是一所只收白人的学校。这引发了白人至上主义的强烈反对，密西西比州的黑人以校园抗议、对白人企业的经济抵制、静坐等作为回应，种族紧张局势不可避免地开始在该市积聚。第二年，卫理公会牧师撰写并认可了“Born of Conviction”，该声明呼吁“不因种族、肤色或信仰而歧视”，更具体地说，呼吁整合公立学校（Reiff）。该声明进一步引发了争议，并导致这些牧师被赶出当地宗教界。在关于种族主义教育系统的政治文化冲突中，米尔萨普斯学院，杰克逊的一家卫理公会机构，尤多拉·韦尔蒂 (Eudora Welty) 受邀在那里演讲并担任董事会成员，却面临着 WEB DuBois 几十年前著名的定义的“肤色问题”。尽管有教职员工公开谴责制度性种族主义并要求米尔萨普斯废除种族隔离，但学校对于做出任何有争议的改变或反对种族主义范式的声明相当犹豫。1963 年，在举办南方文学节之前，米尔萨普斯学院的官员向受邀作为演讲嘉宾的韦尔蒂表示，他们“害怕冲突”，因为拥有统一的观众可能会引起冲突（Marrs，“Fateful Stage” 77）。作为回应，韦尔蒂邀请图加卢学院的黑人学者和学生参加，以呼唤米尔萨普斯的保守、自满、[第 201 页结束] 传记299）。在她向学校承诺的看似与政治无关的讲座之后，韦尔蒂向综合观众朗读了她的短篇小说“Powerhouse”（1941 年）。

对于生活在吉姆·克劳时代的一位南方白人女作家来说，《Powerhouse》是一部意想不到的作品。¹阿尔弗雷德·阿佩尔 (Alfred Appel) 大胆地建议“Powerhouse”被认为是“关于爵士乐的最佳故事”（102）。事实上，这个故事的灵感来自于韦尔蒂参加的爵士钢琴家 Fats Waller 的实际表演。为了记录她在体验中的观察和感受，韦尔蒂一口气写下了这个故事。她以虚构的爵士音乐家 Powerhouse 的形式重新构想了沃勒在杰克逊的仅一晚的破烂大乐队演出，因为他在密西西比州的鳄鱼上演了一晚的演出。为了忠实地转录她从沃勒爵士美学中获得的印象，韦尔蒂以一种几乎即兴和对话的风格形成了她的故事（Bates 82）。然而，看看她的传记，很容易得出结论，韦尔蒂也对美国黑人文化非常感兴趣。尽管来自密西西比州杰克逊的一个白人中产阶级家庭，但韦尔蒂密切关注南部黑人社区，并不断尝试将他们的存在融入她的作品中。苏珊娜·马尔斯表示，韦尔蒂在纽约市度过的大学时光让她熟悉了哈莱姆区的艺术家。在那里，她“经常光顾黑人商业区的音乐商店”，并经常参加 Cotton Club 和 Small's Paradise 的爵士表演（Marrs，“Fateful Stage” 75）。简而言之，她是美国黑人文化的狂热外部观察者。她“经常光顾黑人商业区的音乐商店”，并经常参加 Cotton Club 和 Small's Paradise 的爵士表演（Marrs，“Fateful Stage” 75）。简而言之，她是美国黑人文化的狂热外部观察者。她“经常光顾黑人商业区的音乐商店”，并经常参加 Cotton Club 和 Small's Paradise 的爵士表演（Marrs，“Fateful Stage” 75）。简而言之，她是美国黑人文化的狂热外部观察者。

也许是因为韦尔蒂对爵士乐的热爱众所周知，文学评论家普遍提出爵士乐和布鲁斯美学作为解读《强者》及其社会历史和文学意义的诠释学。例如，丹尼尔·伯克 (Daniel Burke) 专注于布鲁斯表演中的戏剧性元素，例如“快速的节奏和令人惊叹的兴奋”，这些元素构成了 Powerhouse (170, 174) 的神秘魅力和“火山能量”。肯尼斯·比尔登 (Kenneth Bearden) 更直接地突出了爵士乐和布鲁斯美学中的即兴特征，并将[End Page 202]与 Signifying Monkey 比喻相联系，以解读 Powerhouse 的颠覆性特征。通过对语言的操纵和他的天王星诺克伍德的故事，Powerhouse 成为了一个骗子，他利用性暗示作为内部笑话来戳...