In 1954, James Baldwin wrote a short essay, initially entitled as Husband and Homosexual, that was published New Leader and later reprinted as Male Prison Nobody Knows My Name (1961). At time of 1954 essay, Baldwin had just written critically-acclaimed Go Tell It on Mountain; and two years after his essay on Gide, he would publish Giovanni's Room, first novel American literature to deal successfully with issue of homosexuality (if one discounts Gore Vidal's failed attempt 1948 The City and Pillar.) In this essay, I will analyze place occupied by discussion of sexual identity Baldwin's early essays and fiction, primarily Male Prison and an early story, Outing, as well as a recently rediscovered essay, Preservation of Innocence (initially published Zero, Tangiers, 1949). Baldwin left New York for France Fall of 1948 and admitted later on that he had literally run off to Europe to save his life. In those years of post-World War II exhilaration Europe, black writer felt--as he put it introduction to Nobody Knows My Name--that whereas in America, colour of my skin had stood between myself and me, Europe, that barrier was down (11). It is remarkable however, that until very recently at least--including at official 1987 Baldwin memorial at New York's Cathedral of St. John Divine--very little attention has been paid to equally crucial sexual nature of American author's self-imposed exile. As a writer, Baldwin saw himself as literary heir--and sometimes artistic parricide--of other famous American expatriates, most notably Henry James and Richard Wright. In parallel, Harlem-born Baldwin located himself within another tradition, albeit a more discrete, camouflaged one: tradition of male authors of homosexual or bisexual persuasion, who have contributed to American literature and have often been expatriates at one point or another their artistic careers--Walt Whitman, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and, closer to our time, Gore Vidal, Edmund White and Melvin Dixon. It is also noteworthy that within this homo /bisexual tradition, there has been, from early on, an important African American presence.(1) The premise of this essay is that Baldwin's French exile was as much concerned with issues of critical and racial affirmation and identity as with more private aspects of his emerging sense of sexual emancipation, as a black man and a gay male. Remarkably, Baldwin's rhetorical articulation of an idiosyncratic discourse on sexuality began at time that he read Andre Gide and wrote his essay. The text by Gide that Baldwin focused on, Madeleine, Et Nunc Manet Te, is often overlooked Gidean canon. At first glance, it appears to be Gide's posthumous homage to his wife Madeleine. Just as Baldwin never adopted a publicly homosexual persona or stance of a gay activist during his lifetime--reserving this for last interviews and his indirectly autobiographical fiction--Gide chose not to discuss his matrimonial affairs until after his wife's death 1938, at a time when the most enlightened commentators [on his work] did not even know her real given (Madeleine vi). It must be noted that Madeleine Gide maintained a deliberately self-effacing role throughout her married life; there is only one known picture of her, and she left no writings that might provide her own account of years that she spent with famous writer. What we know about her is therefore through Gide's necessarily skewed perspective; very few instances that he mentions her at all his Journal, her husband refers to her by Biblical name Emmanuele. Furthermore, purely platonic nature of Gide's union with Madeleine contributed to her total obfuscation. In confessional, guilt-ridden tone that characterizes Madeleine, French writer admits that he is amazed at aberration which led [him] to think that more ethereal [his] was, more worthy it was of her--for [he] was so naive as never to wonder whether or not she would be satisfied with an utterly disincarnate love (16). …
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Jun 1, 2022
De Angela L Duff + 3
Open Access