moderns. I cannot imagine any modern and earnest student of literary
artistry of that period who did not consider it necessary to study
James Joyce. I was privileged to have a few acquaintances of radical
sympathies among the moderns, and they all advised me to read Joyce
before I started to write. So I did. Some of them thought, as I, that
_Ulysses_ was even greater as a textbook for modern writers than as a
novel for the general public.
Yet after reading _Ulysses_ I said to my friends, as I had previously
said to Frank Budgen, one of Joyce's early admirers in London, that
D.H. Lawrence was the modern writer I preferred above any. I thought
_Ulysses_ a bigger book than any one of Lawrence's books, but I
preferred Lawrence as a whole. I thought that D.H. Lawrence was more
modern than James Joyce. In D.H. Lawrence I found confusion--all of the
ferment and torment and turmoil, the hesitation and hate and alarm, the
sexual inquietude and the incertitude of this age, and the psychic and
romantic groping for a way out.
But in James Joyce I found the sum of two thousand years, from the
ending of the Roman Empire to the ending of the Christian age. Joyce
picked up all the ends of the classical threads and wove them into the
ultimate pattern in _Ulysses_. There is no confusion, no doubt, no
inquiry and speculation about the future in James Joyce. He is a seer
and Olympian and was able to bring the life of two thousand years into
the span of a day. If I were to label James Joyce I would say that he
was (in the classic sense of the word) a great Decadent.
Some of my friends thought I showed a preference for D.H. Lawrence
because he was something of a social rebel. But it was impossible for
me seriously to think of Lawrence as a social thinker, after having
studied the social thinking of creative writers like Ruskin, William
Morris, Tolstoy and Bernard Shaw, and other social propagandists.
In fact, Lawrence's attitude toward his subject matter, his
half-suppressed puritanism, often repelled me. What I loved was the
Laurentian language, which to me is the ripest and most voluptuous
expression of English since Shakespeare.
If Joyce was _le maître_ of the ultra-moderns, Gertrude Stein was the
_madame_, and her house was open to all without discrimination. Even
Negroes. I cannot remember how often people said to me: "Haven't you
been to Gertrude Stein's?" ... "Everybody goes to Gertrude Stein's."
... "I'll take you to Gertrude Stein's." ... "Gertrude Stein does not
mind Negroes." ... "Gertrude Stein has written the best story about
Negroes, and if you mean to be a modern Negro writer, you should meet
her...."
I never went because of my aversion to cults and disciples. I liked
meeting people as persons, not as divinities in temples. And when I
came to examine "Melanctha," Gertrude Stein's Negro story, I could
not see wherein intrinsically it was what it was cracked up to be. In
"Melanctha," Gertrude Stein reproduced a number of the common phrases
relating to Negroes, such as: "boundless joy of Negroes," "unmorality
of black people," "black childish," "big black virile," "joyous Negro,"
"black and evil," "black heat," "abandoned laughter," "Negro sunshine,"
all prettily framed in a tricked-out style. But in the telling of
the story I found nothing striking and informative about Negro life.
Melanctha, the mulattress, might have been a Jewess. And the mulatto,
Jeff Campbell--he is not typical of mulattoes I have known anywhere. He
reminds me more of a type of white lover described by colored women.
"Melanctha" seemed more like a brief American paraphrase of Esther
Waters than a story of Negro life. The original Esther Waters is more
important to me.
Ernest Hemingway was the most talked-about of young American
writers when I arrived in Paris. He was the white hope of the
ultra-sophisticates. In the motley atmosphere of Montparnasse, there
was no place for the cult of little hero worship. James Joyce was
worshipped, but he had won out with a work that took men's eyes like
a planet. But in Montparnasse generally writers and artists plunged
daggers into one another. That atmosphere in its special way was like a
good tonic, if you didn't take too much of it. Good for young creative
artists who have a tendency to megalomania. And many of them do. And
also it was an antidote for the older ones who have already arrived and
are a little haughty, expecting too much homage from the young.
It was therefore exciting that Ernest Hemingway had won the regard
and respect of the younger creative artists and even of the older. I
remember Nina Hamnett pointing him out to me at the Dôme and remarking
ecstatically that Hemingway was a very handsome American and that he
had a lovely son. But it was long after that before I met him for a
moment through Max Eastman.
_In Our Time_, that thin rare book of miniature short stories, was
published, and it was the literary event among the young expatriates.
I cherish an unforgettable memory of it and of Montparnasse at that
time. A cultivated and distinguished American, liberal of attitude and
pocket to unpopular causes, was sitting at the Dôme, reading a copy of
_In Our Time_. He invited me to his table and offered a drink. He read
aloud Chapter III, and wondered whether there was a _double entendre_
in that last sentence: "It rained all through the evacuation." I said
I did not know and did not think it mattered, and I asked the _garçon_
to bring me a double cognac. My friend and host said: "They are talking
in a big way about this Hemingway, but I just can't get him. I like
the young radical crowd and what they are aiming to do. But this thing
here"--he pointed to _In Our Time_--"I don't like it. It is too brutal
and bloody."
"But so is life," I ventured to say, and not too aggressively, because
I was expecting my host to come across with a gift of money.
"The only thing I admire about this book is the cover," he said. "That
sure is in our time all right. If you like it you can have it." My hand
trembled to take it. The book was worth something between thirty and
fifty francs, which was more than I could afford. I have it still. It
became so valuable that I once consigned it for a loan. But I redeemed
it and, excepting my typewriter, I hardly ever trouble to redeem the
things I pawn.
Yet I would be lying if I should say here that when I read _In Our
Time_ in 1924 I thought the author soon would be one of the famous
American writers. I liked the style of the book, but I thought more of
it as a literary rarity, and that the author would remain one of the
best of the little coterie writers.
I must confess to a vast admiration for Ernest Hemingway the writer.
Some of my critics thought that I was imitating him. But I also am a
critic of myself. And I fail to find any relationship between my loose
manner and subjective feeling in writing and Hemingway's objective
and carefully stylized form. Any critic who considers it important
enough to take the trouble can trace in my stuff a clearly consistent
emotional--realist thread, from the time I published my book of dialect
verse (_Songs of Jamaica_) in 1912, through the period of my verse and
prose in _The Liberator_, until the publication of _Home to Harlem_.
But indeed, yes, I was excited by the meteor apparition of Ernest
Hemingway. I cannot imagine any ambitious young writer of that time who
was not fascinated in the beginning. In Paris and in the Midi, I met a
few fellows of the extreme left school, and also a few of the moderate
liberal school and even some of the ancient fossil school--and all
mentioned Hemingway with admiration. Many of them felt that they could
never go on writing as before after Hemingway.
The irritating pseudo-romantic style of writing about contemporary
life--often employed by modernists and futurists, with their
punctuation-and-phraseology tricks, as well as by the dead
traditionalists--that style so admirably parodied in _Ulysses_; had
reached its conventional climax in Michael Arlen's _The Green Hat_.
When Hemingway wrote, _The Sun Also Rises_, he shot a fist in the face
of the false romantic-realists and said: "You can't fake about life
like that."
Apparently Hemingway today is mainly admired by a hard-boiled and
unsophisticated public whose mentality in a curious way is rather
akin to that of the American who contemptuously gave away Hemingway's
first book to me. I don't think that that is any of Hemingway's fault.
And what excites and tickles me to disgust is the attitude of the
precious coteries toward Hemingway. One is not certain whether they
hate Hemingway because of his success or because of his rough handling
of some precious idols. The elect of the coteries could not possibly
object to the Hemingway style and material. For the Hemingway of _In
Our Time_ is the same Hemingway of _The Sun Also Rises_, _A Farewell
to Arms_, and the masterpiece of _Death in the Afternoon_. The only
difference I see is that whereas Hemingway is a little cryptic in the
earlier work, he is clear, unequivocal and forthright in his full-sized
books. _In Our Time_ contains the frame, the background, and the
substance of all of Hemingway's later work. The hard-boilism--the
booze, blood and brutality are all there. The key to _A Farewell to
Arms_ may be found in _In Our Time_. The critics whose sensibilities
were so shocked over _Death in the Afternoon_ will find its foundation
in the six miniature classics of the bull ring in _In Our Time_,
developed and enlarged with riper experience in the big book.
I find in Hemingway's works an artistic illumination of a certain
quality of American civilization that is not to be found in any other
distinguished American writer. And that quality is the hard-boiled
contempt for and disgust with sissyness expressed among all classes of
Americans. Now this quality is distinctly and definitely American--a
conventionalized rough attitude which is altogether un-European.
It stands out conspicuously, like the difference between American
burlesque shows and European music-hall shows. Mr. Hemingway has taken
this characteristic of American life from the streets, the barrooms,
the ringsides and lifted it into the realm of real literature.
In accomplishing this he did revolutionary work with four-letter
Anglo-Saxon words. That to me is a superb achievement. I do not know
what Mr. Hemingway's personal attitude may be to the material that he
has used, and I care less. All I can say is that in literature he has
most excellently quickened and enlarged my experience of social life.
XXII
Friends in France
I had been posing naked in Paris studios to earn my daily bread
and that undermined my health. The studios were badly heated. My
body reacted against the lack of warmth after being for many years
accustomed to the well-heated houses of America. I came down with
pneumonia. My French friend, Pierre Vogein, looked after me. Josephine
Bennett brought me fruit and ordered proper food. Louise Bryant sent a
doctor. Clive Weed had told her that I was in Paris.
Louise Bryant was aware that I wanted to write above all things. I
first saw her when she returned from Russia after the death of John
Reed. I think it was at Romany Marie's in Greenwich Village and she
was encircled by a group of nice young men, collegiate-like. At that
time she was a pretty woman with unforgettably beautiful eyebrows. She
had sent _The Liberator_ a pathetic poem about her sorrow, and we had
published it. I told her that the poem had moved me more than anything
that was written about John Reed's death. For the dead was dead, but
I felt that the living who really mourn are the sorriest thing about
death.
Louise Bryant and I came together again, I think at Max Eastman's. We
talked about John Reed. I asked if she knew that he had invited me to
go to Moscow in 1920, when I was in London. She said she didn't know
that, but was aware that Reed had become excited about the social
problems of the Negro group shortly before he fell ill.
At that time she was doing a brilliant set of articles about Russia
for a Hearst newspaper. We talked about writing. I was interested
in her opinion of so-called "bourgeois" and so-called "proletarian"
literature and art. Externally her tastes were bourgeois enough. She
liked luxurious surroundings and elegant and expensive clothes and
looked splendid in them. But her fine tastes had not softened her will
or weakened her rebel spirit.
Louise Bryant thought, as I did, that there was no bourgeois writing
or proletarian writing as such; there was only good writing and bad
writing. I told her of my great desire to do some Negro stories,
straight and unpolished, but that Max Eastman had discouraged me and
said I should write my stories in verse. But my thinking in poetry
was so lyric-emotional that I could not feel like writing stories in
that vein. She said Max Eastman was too romantic about poetry and
that I should write prose. She said she also could never get into her
poetry certain things that she got into prose. John Reed had written
some early stories about ordinary people with no radical propaganda in
them, she said, and suggested that I should do the same about my Negro
stories--just write plain tales.
And so now again in Paris, when she was sending me off to southern
France for my health, Louise Bryant warned me: "Remember our
conversation in New York, and don't try to force your stories with
propaganda. If you write a good story, that will be the biggest
propaganda." She gave me a check big enough to keep me living simply
and working steadily for three months.
I went to Marseilles, and from there visited some of the little towns
of the littoral. Finally I chose La Ciotat, a place about midway
between Marseilles and Toulon, having some eight thousand folk.
Boatmaking and fishing were the two main industries. The bay was fine,
and beautiful in the morning sunshine. But on the quay, where the
houses and hotels were, the morning sunshine didn't fall. There was no
kind of heat, not even fireplaces. My hotel was cold but I contrived
to work, wrapping myself from chest to feet in my Russian blanket and
leaving only my hands free.
After a month of it I went down to Toulon to hear Carmen by the Opéra
Comique Company from Paris. In a _bistro_ after the opera I met a girl
who spoke English. She was a little strange, different from the average
that one meets in sailor bars. She was friendly to me. I found out that
she had once been a little friend of artists and writers in Montmartre
and Montparnasse. She was the type of girl that seemed more suitable
for friendship with younger officers than with common sailors, but she
preferred the sailors. She worked too, in a store. She promised to find
me a room with a fireplace in Toulon, which she did, and sent me a note
about it the following week. But I had already paid another month's
rent in advance in La Ciotat.
When that month was ended, I took up residence in Toulon. The girl--her
name was Marcelle--had a sailor friend named Lucien, and all three of
us became very close friends. Lucien was more than an average sailor.
There are many such in the French navy, lads from middle-class and
lower middle-class families who choose the navy instead of the army to
do their compulsory service. The service is longer in the navy than
in the army. Also it is harder, without the privileges offered by the
army, in which the educated sons of the better classes can do their
compulsory service as cadets.
Lucien had been a cadet, studying to enter the navy as a career, but he
had failed his examinations and then decided to do his military service
in the navy. He read lots of books, but he wasn't literary. He gave
me my first French lessons. He said I should read Anatole France for
good French. He said he read everything of Anatole France's because he
wrote the purest and clearest French of any contemporary writer. But
he didn't get any kick out of the novels as novels. For stories about
French life he preferred Zola and Maupassant. I wondered if there were
many French readers who felt about Anatole France as Lucien did. He
assured me that there were many who liked Anatole France merely because
he wrote classical French.
Lucien was on the battleship "Provence." He invited me to go aboard and
introduced me to many of his friends. As Lucien had formerly been a
cadet, he had a few extra privileges. Very often he slept in town. And
he, Marcelle and I were always together. He loved to walk, and together
we explored the environs of Toulon. We hiked to La Seyne, Tamaris,
Bandol and Ollioules. I love the Var country more than any part of
France, excepting Brittany. Lucien was a Breton and he loved those
wonderful bare rugged rocks towering to the skies that make the Var
so dramatically picturesque. I told Lucien that I loved those rearing
rocks because they somewhat suggested the skyscrapers of New York.
But Lucien did not like the comparison; he could not imagine anything
American resembling anything French.
When his pals got their week-end vacation from the "Provence" we all
went bathing out at Cap Negre in the afternoon, and in the evening we
got together for a good time in the _bistros_ and _mancebías_. The
_mancebías_ of Toulon are like recreation halls for the sailors. Many
of the sailors who, like Lucien, had their girls in town, went to the
_mancebías_ to dance and meet their friends for a good time. Sometimes
they took their girls with them. There are dancing halls in Toulon,
but these are frequented mostly by the officers. The sailors find it
embarrassing to mix with the officers, so they prefer the _mancebías_,
where they are freer. The managers of the _mancebías_ are a pretty good
lot. They are friendly and cater to the whims of the sailors, as if
they were aware that they were entertaining a mixed group of the best
of the country's youth.
Toulon is dominated by the naval aristocracy, and its administration
seemed to me the best of any of the French provincial towns I visited.
To a casual observer, the civil administration seems subordinate to the
maritime administration. The sailors are protected much more than they
are aware. In Toulon there is nothing of that rotten civil complaisance
in the exploitation of the sailors which is a revolting feature of life
in Marseilles.
Soon after I went to reside in Toulon I received a letter from the
secretary of the Garland Fund. It informed me that the officers of the
Fund had heard that I was unwell and in need and that they desired to
help me for a time, while I was writing. Thus assured of fifty dollars
a month, I knuckled down to writing. It was grand and romantic to have
a grant to write, and I got going on a realistic lot of stuff. I was
sure about what I wanted to write, but I wasn't so sure about the form.
My head was full of material in short pieces, but I wanted to write a
long piece--a novel.
I returned to Paris toward the end of summer with a heavy portfolio.
I met a couple of publishers' scouts who didn't discover anything in
my lot. Clive Weed introduced me to Harold Stearns. Stearns's strange
tired eyes didn't want to look at me. Remembering something, he excused
himself, got up and went to the bar, and there forgot all about me. I
wondered why Stearns acted so strangely, as if over there in Paris
I had reminded him too much of civilization in the United States!
Another Yankee said that I should not worry about Harold Stearns for I
had nothing to offer him, and he had nothing to offer me but tips on
horses and booze. While I remained in Paris I saw Harold Stearns again
many times and always at the bar. He was something of an institution
in Montparnasse, and often I saw him pointed out to American students
who were discovering civilization in Europe as the man who had edited
_Civilization in the United States_.
Also in Paris I found Eugen Boissevain, who had previously helped me
much with encouraging praise of my poetry and with gifts of money. He
had been recently married to Edna St. Vincent Millay. I saw them both
together at their hotel and she gave me a book of her poems. There was
a happy feeling in his face that I never had seen there before he was
married, and I felt happy for it because I was fond of him. Miss Millay
I saw for the first time. In Greenwich Village I had often heard praise
of her, but we had never met, and when I arrived in Paris she had
recently left. In the literary circles of Montparnasse I heard her name
on the lips of foreigners and Americans, and all in praise of her--a
reverent worshipful praise. It was extraordinary: he-men, mere men, and
others--all used identical phrases in praising Miss Millay's elusive
personality. The only other white woman I knew who was so unreservedly
esteemed by all kinds of men was Isadora Duncan. I was puzzled and
skeptical of all that chorus of praise. But when I did set eyes on
Miss Millay I understood it. There was something in her personality
which was Elizabethan--as I imagine the Elizabethans to have been from
Shakespeare and history. And I saw her as a Shakespearean woman deftly
adapted to the modern machine age. When I searched for an Anglo-Saxon
word to fix her in my mind I could think of "elfin" only.
Sinclair Lewis was in Paris also, and he was very kind. He read some of
my stuff. He had been generous to many radically-inclined writers since
his first success with _Main Street_, and he hadn't seen any results.
But he gave me a sum of money, took me to dinner in a small quiet
place, and talked to me a whole long evening. In a shrewd American way
(chastising me and making me like it), Sinclair Lewis gave me a few
cardinal and practical points about the writing of a book or a novel.
Those points were indicative and sharp like newspaper headlines. I
did not forget them when I got down to writing _Home to Harlem_. I
remembered them so well that some critics saw the influence of Sinclair
Lewis in my novel. Scott Fitzgerald, in a note, said that the scenes
seemed in the Zola-Lewis line.
I left Paris again for Toulon to see what better I could do. About the
time I got back Lucien was just finishing his service and getting ready
to leave for Brittany. Marcelle was very sad, and I also. For I had
been looking forward to our spending much of our leisure time together
as formerly.
On the evening of Lucien's departure a gang of sailors from the
"Provence" and some from other boats and a few girls all crowded into
my room. Out of their small wages they had eked enough to buy many
bottles of ordinary white and red wine. I bought some cognac. My
landlady and her husband joined us and we had a great good time.
My friends knew that I was writing, but they knew nothing of my ideas.
I never told them that I had been in Soviet Russia. The French friend
whom I had met in Moscow had advised me that so long as I was staying
in France I should never do or say anything to let the authorities
think that I was making political propaganda. If I followed that line,
he said, I would never be bothered. I kept that advice, along with
Louise Bryant's, in my head and followed the line.
But toward the end of the evening, when we all began kissing one
another on both cheeks, Frenchwise, bidding Lucien a last farewell, a
sailor started singing the "Internationale." We all joined our voices
with his and heartily sang, I singing in English. One sailor jumped up
on my writing table and said: "After the world revolution there will
be no more white and black and yellow; we shall all be one fraternity
of men." My sense of the distinctive in the difference of color was
outraged, and I said, "We can still remain a fraternity of men and
guard our complexions." One of the girls said: "That's all well! We
wouldn't like you to change your color either."