[In Porgy] Dubose Heyward challenges attention and evokes a mood with his initial daring stroke: "Porgy lived in the Golden Age." It is a timeless, innocently grotesque world that Porgy knows, and the reader through Porgy. It is a Southern seaport, possibly Mr. Heyward's own Charleston, S. C., though the geography is not insisted upon. More specifically, it is Catfish Row, the glamorous retreat of the crippled darky, Porgy, and his friendly neighbors. The white world but vaguely impinges upon their absorptions, their sorrows, their tragedies and their rude but satisfying justice. The interventions of the whites are often meaningless, often disastrous, always impertinent. Mr. Heyward establishes by implication an antithesis in civilization which is not wholly to the glory of the white race. He conveys an intimate and authentic sense of the dignity, the pathos, the unending minor chords of a folk-melancholy, the latent high spirits, the primitive passion, the color, the movement, the intrinsic energy, the superstitions and the religious faith, the very essence of his chosen community. It is a noteworthy achievement in the sympathetic and convincing interpretation of negro life by a member of an "outside" race.

Although it is matter for wonder that Mr. Heyward has seemed to have gotten inside his characters and their surroundings, it is cause for rejoicing that he has communicated these things he has found to the reader. Porgy is at no time an alien being: his author has magically insinuated him into the very quick of attention. He deserves to rank with the fantastic Italian puppet, Pinocchió; such a creation as bankrupts in reality the next-door neighbor. Mr. Heyward's method is diametrically opposed to that of Ronald Firbank in Prancing Nigger, there was a delectable, a charming, a gay spectacle. Porgy is understood and his eyes are the eyes we see through, his ears the ears we hear by. Yet, amazingly, Porgy is merely an ingredient in the larger aspects of Mr. Heyward's intention: the evocation of a curious, wistful, day-dreaming mood.

Porgy is a beggar with a very subtle "line." There is an arresting look of contained power about him and an air of incessant, quiescent, yet intensified, waiting for something, some vision beyond experience, or some fulfillment transcending wish. The other beggars are envious of him, for, without apparent effort, pennies and nickels and dimes come to Porgy's unasking hands. His own kind are almost suspicious of this strong man with the wasted legs, who beseeches the dice: "Oh, little stars, roll me some light! Roll me a sun an' moon!" making his points and taking the winnings with that same calm, unquestioning silence.

It is almost a legend that grows up about Porgy. When his friend is jailed and he can no longer count on a lift in the friendly wagon, he is saved from threatened starvation by a goat and cart of his own, in which royally to make his rounds. Naturally, the penetrating qualities of the goat's smell complicate Porgy's leisure a bit and compel him to adopt the hustling tactics of an alien philosophy. In spite of himself, Porgy has become a "go-getter," and his reputation goes abroad in Catfish Row. In the casual manner of those childlike peoples, Porgy one night finds himself adopted as provider and protector to Bess, untamed, hard-living woman, who is temporarily widowed. Crown, her husband, in hiding until his last murder is forgotten, comes back for Bess one dark night. He is found with a knife in his ribs and Porgy's floor has a suspicious wetness for the early morning hours. And Bess has a shine of wonder in her eyes for the strength of Porgy's arms.

The law comes for Porgy and he runs away, racing the motor-driven patrol wagon in his absurd goat-cart, to the keen delight of the entire populace. He is wanted, it develops, merely to identify Crown for the Coroner's inquest, and is jailed for contempt of court. When he comes out Bess has been lured away by her all but forgotten cravings for gin and "happy dust." Porgy's Indian Summer of life is over.

Crap games, savage, moonlit fights, incongruous funerals, a terrifying hurricane sweeping over the harbor and battering at the frail houses of the darkies, a boat excursion and picnic, interventions of white man's justice and the close-mouthed loyalty of the negroes, rough-and-ready justice among the colored people, and, above all, the unforgettable character of Porgy, move through Mr. Heyward's pages in a lavish, yet reticent, magnificence of highly organized prose. Maria, the Amazonian fish-fry woman; the patient, hard-working Serena, the shifty yellow negro from New York, with his strange vices and insinuating ways, and Bess and Crown are all vividly individual. Maria's methods of adjusting matters more nearly to her liking are a delight; her effective cure of the dope-peddling New York mulatto, with the help of a well-aimed brick and a few well-chosen epithets and threats, is wholly satisfying. Even Porgy's goat is a person, a strong person, indeed, on its own account.