understanding of human suffering . Heyward ’ s original novel makes for difficult reading today , not just because of the dialect , but more due to Heyward ’ s apparently lofty remoteness from the scenes and characters he described . Porgy is described as having “ something Eastern and mystic about the intense introspection of his look . He never smiled and he acknowledged gifts only by a slow lifting of the eyes that had odd shadow in them . He was black with the almost purple blackness of unadulterated Congo blood …” Heyward was a descendant of one of the original Signers [ of the Declaration of Independence ]. That he was Old Charleston stock , civilised and sympathetic , but constitutionally incapable of the deeper act of empathy , showed in every line . And yet , he was unafraid to look into the darkest corners of society and report what he found there . It was still unusual in 1925 to find a novel which numbered a drug dealer , Sportin ’ Life , among its major characters , and a crippled black man as its protagonist . The link to Othello didn ’ t go unnoticed , and Nina Simone instinctively gravitated toward Gershwin ’ s latter-day “ Willow Song ”.
There is an odd almost-symmetry here . Heyward looked at the lives of black folks from his own perspective . Nina Simone knew the life from the sharp end , but she also had a foothold in white European culture , its highest rungs , at that , and she had positive experience of white teachers , Mrs Miller , “ Miss Mazzy ”, Vladimir Sokhaloff , figures who held the keys to that tradition . Nina Simone ’ s great success came through her ability to maintain a foot in both cultures and to allow communication – sometimes reciprocal , sometimes angry – between them .
By the 1950s , though , the songs of Porgy and Bess had become detached from the original opera , just as the songs of Cole
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