And the Alhambra lifted up its towers!
Africa's fingers tipped with miracles,
And quivering with Arabian designs,
Traced words and figures like exotic flowers,
Sultanas' chambers of rare tapestries,
Filigree marvels from Koranic lines,
Mosaics chanting notes like tropic rain._
_And Spain repaid the tribute ages after:
To Tetuán, that fort of struggle and strife,
Where chagrined Andalusian Moors retired,
She brought a fountain bubbling with new life,
Whose jewelled charm won even the native pride,
And filled it sparkling with flamenco laughter._
In all Morocco there is no place as delicious as Tetuán. By a kind of
magic instinct the Spaniards have created a modern town which stands up
like a happy extension of the antique Moroccan. The ancient walls merge
into the new without pain. The Spanish Morisco buildings give more
lightness to the native Moroccan, and the architectural effect of the
whole is a miracle of perfect miscegenation.
I loved the colored native lanterns, illuminating the archways of
Larache. I liked Ceuta lying like a symbolic hand-clasp across the
Mediterranean. And I adored the quaint tile-roofed houses and cool
watered gardens in the mountain fastness of Xauen. From Gibraltar I was
barred by the British. But that was no trouble to my skin, for ever
since I have been traveling for the sheer enjoyment of traveling I have
avoided British territory. That was why I turned down an attractive
invitation to visit Egypt, when I was living in France.
Once again in Spain, I inspected the great Moorish landmarks. And more
clearly I saw Spain outlined as the antique bridge between Africa and
Europe.
* * * * *
After the strong dazzling colors of Morocco, Paris that spring appeared
something like the melody of larks chanting over a gray field. It was
over three years since I had seen the metropolis. At that time it had
a political and financial trouble hanging heavy round its neck. Now it
was better, with its head up and a lot of money in every hand. I saw
many copies of my book, _Banjo_, decorating a shop window in the Avenue
de l'Opéra and I was disappointed in myself that I could not work up to
feeling a thrill such as I imagine an author should feel.
I took a fling at the cabarets in Montparnasse and Montmartre, and I
was very happy to meet again a French West Indian girl whom I knew as a
_bonne_ in Nice when I was a valet. We ate some good dinners together
and saw the excellent French productions of _Rose Marie_ and _Show
Boat_ and danced a little at the Bal Negre and at Bricktop's Harlem
hang-out in Montmartre.
I found Louise Bryant in Paris. It was our first meeting since she
took my manuscript to New York in the summer of 1926. The meeting was
a nerve-tearing ordeal. About two years previously she had written of
a strange illness and of doctors who gave her only six months to live
and of her determination to live a long time longer than that. She had
undergone radical treatment. The last time I had seen her she was plump
and buxom. Now she was shrunken and thin and fragile like a dried-up
reed. Her pretty face had fallen like a mummy's and nothing was left
of her startling attractiveness but her eyebrows.
She embarrassed me by continually saying: "Claude, you won't even look
at me." Her conversation was pitched in a nervous hysterical key and
the burden was "male conceit." I told her that the female was largely
responsible for "male conceit." Often when I had seen her before she
had been encircled by a following of admirably created young admirers
of the collegiate type. Now she was always with an ugly-mugged woman.
This woman was like an apparition of a male impersonator, who was
never off the stage. She had a trick way of holding her shoulders
and her hands like a gangster and simulating a hard-boiled accent. A
witty Frenchman pronounced her a _Sappho-manqué_. The phrase sounded
like a desecration of the great glamorous name of Sappho. I wondered
why (there being so many attractive women in the world) Louise Bryant
should have chosen such a companion. And I thought that it was probably
because of the overflow of pity pouring out of her impulsive Irish
heart.
I remembered, "Aftermath," the beautiful poem which she sent us for
publication in _The Liberator_ after John Reed died. Now it seemed of
greater significance:
_AFTERMATH_
_Dear, they are singing your praises,
Now you are gone.
But only I saw your going,
I ... alone ... in the dawn._
_Dear, they are weeping about you,
Now you are dead,
And they've placed a granite stone
Over your darling head._
_I cannot cry any more,
Too burning deep is my grief....
I dance through my spendthrift days
Like a fallen leaf._
_Faster and faster I whirl
Toward the end of my days.
Dear, I am drunken with sadness
And lost down strange ways._
_If only the dance could finish
Like a flash in the sky.... Oh, soon,
If only a storm could come shouting--
Hurl me past stars and moon._
And I thought if I could not look frankly with admiration at Louise
Bryant's face, I could always turn to the permanently lovely poem which
she had created.
* * * * *
I had spruced myself up a bit to meet the colored élite. Observing that
the Madrileños were well-tailored, I had a couple of suits made in
Madrid, and chose a hat there. In Paris I added shoes and shirts and
ties and gloves to my wardrobe.
The cream of Harlem was in Paris. There was the full cast of
_Blackbirds_ (with Adelaide Hall starring in the place of Florence
Mills), just as fascinating a group off the stage as they were
extraordinary on the stage. The _Porgy_ actors had come over from
London. There was an army of school teachers and nurses. There were
Negro Communists going to and returning from Russia. There were
Negro students from London and Scotland and Berlin and the French
universities. There were presidents and professors of the best Negro
colleges. And there were painters and writers and poets, of whom the
most outstanding was Countee Cullen.
I met Professor Alain Locke. He had published _The Anthology of the
New Negro_ in 1925 and he was the animator of the movement as well as
the originator of the phrase "Negro renaissance." Commenting upon my
appearance, Dr. Locke said, "Why, you are wearing the same kind of
gloves as I am!" "Yes," I said, "but my hand is heavier than yours."
Dr. Locke was extremely nice and invited me to dinner with President
Hope of Atlanta University. The dinner was at one of the most expensive
restaurants in the _grands boulevards_. President Hope, who was even
more Nordic-looking than Walter White, was very affable and said I did
not look like the boxer-type drawings of me which were reproduced with
the reviews of _Home to Harlem_. President Hope hoped that I would
visit his university when I returned to America.
There had been an interesting metamorphosis in Dr. Locke. When we met
for the first time in Berlin in 1923, he took me for a promenade in the
Tiergarten. And walking down the row, with the statues of the Prussian
kings supported by the famous philosophers and poets and composers on
either side, he remarked to me that he thought those statues the finest
ideal and expression of the plastic arts in the world. The remark was
amusing, for it was just a short while before that I had walked through
the same row with George Grosz, who had described the statues as "the
sugar-candy art of Germany." When I showed Dr. Locke George Grosz's
book of drawings, _Ecce Homo_, he recoiled from their brutal realism.
(Dr. Locke is a Philadelphia blue-black blood, a Rhodes scholar and
graduate of Oxford University, and I have heard him described as the
most refined Negro in America).
So it was interesting now to discover that Dr. Locke had become the
leading Negro authority on African Negro sculpture. I felt that there
was so much more affinity between the art of George Grosz and African
sculpture than between the Tiergarten insipid idealization of Nordic
kings and artists and the transcending realism of the African artists.
Yet I must admit that although Dr. Locke seemed a perfect symbol of the
Aframerican rococo in his personality as much as in his prose style, he
was doing his utmost to appreciate the new Negro that he had uncovered.
He had brought the best examples of their work together in a pioneer
book. But from the indication of his appreciations it was evident that
he could not lead a Negro renaissance. His introductory remarks were
all so weakly winding round and round and getting nowhere. Probably
this results from a kink in Dr. Locke's artistic outlook, perhaps due
to its effete European academic quality.
When he published his _Anthology of the New Negro_, he put in a number
of my poems, including one which was originally entitled "The White
House." My title was symbolic, not meaning specifically the private
homes of white people, but more the vast modern edifice of American
Industry from which Negroes were effectively barred as a group. I
cannot convey here my amazement and chagrin when Dr. Locke arbitrarily
changed the title of my poem to "White Houses" and printed it in his
anthology, without consulting me. I protested against the act, calling
Dr. Locke's attention to the fact that my poem had been published under
the original title of "The White House" in _The Liberator_. He replied
that he had changed the title for political reasons, as it might be
implied that the title meant the White House in Washington, and that
that could be made an issue against my returning to America.
I wrote him saying that the idea that my poem had reference to
the official residence of the President of the United States was
ridiculous; and that, whether I was permitted to return to America or
not, I did not want the title changed, and would prefer the omission of
the poem. For his title "White Houses" was misleading. It changed the
whole symbolic intent and meaning of the poem, making it appear as if
the burning ambition of the black malcontent was to enter white houses
in general. I said that there were many white folks' houses I would not
choose to enter, and that, as a fanatical advocate of personal freedom,
I hoped that all human beings would always have the right to decide
whom they wanted to have enter their houses.
But Dr. Locke high-handedly used his substitute title of "White Houses"
in all the editions of his anthology. I couldn't imagine such a man
as the leader of a renaissance, when his artistic outlook was so
reactionary.
The Negroid élite was not so formidable to meet after all. The
financial success of my novel had helped soften hard feelings in some
quarters. A lovely lady from Harlem expressed the views of many. Said
she: "Why all this nigger-row if a colored writer can exploit his own
people and make money and a name? White writers have been exploiting us
long enough without any credit to our race. It is silly for the Negro
critics to holler to God about _Home to Harlem_ as if the social life
of the characters is anything like that of the respectable class of
Negroes. The people in _Home to Harlem_ are our low-down Negroes and we
respectable Negroes ought to be proud that we are not like them and be
grateful to you for giving us a real picture of Negroes whose lives we
know little about on the inside." I felt completely vindicated.
My agent in Paris gave a big party for the cast of _Blackbirds_,
to which the lovely lady and other members of the black élite were
invited. Adelaide Hall was the animating spirit of the _Blackbirds_.
They gave some exhibition numbers, and we all turned loose and had a
grand gay time together, dancing and drinking champagne. The French
guests (there were some chic ones) said it was the best party of the
season. And in tipsy accents some of the Harlem élite admonished me
against writing a _Home-to-Harlem_ book about _them_.
Thus I won over most of the Negro intelligentsia in Paris, excepting
the leading journalist and traveler who remained intransigent. Besides
Negro news, the journalist specialized in digging up obscure and
Amazing Facts for the edification of the colored people. In these
"Facts" Beethoven is proved to be a Negro because he was dark and
gloomy; also the Jewish people are proved to have been originally a
Negro people!
The journalist was writing and working his way through Paris. Nancy
Cunard's _Negro Anthology_ describes him as a guide and quoted him
as saying he had observed, in the flesh market of Paris, that white
southerners preferred colored trade, while Negro leaders preferred
white trade. Returning to New York, he gave lectures "for men only" on
the peep-holes in the walls of Paris.
The journalist was a bitter critic of _Home to Harlem_, declaring it
was obscene. I have often wondered if it is possible to establish a
really intelligent standard to determine obscenity--a standard by which
one could actually measure the obscene act and define the obscene
thought. I have done lots of menial work and have no snobbery about
common labor. I remember that in Marseilles and other places in Europe
I was sometimes approached and offered a considerable remuneration
to act as a guide or procurer or do other sordid things. While I was
working as a model in Paris a handsome Italian model brought me
an offer to work as an occasional attendant in a special _bains de
vapeur_. The Italian said that he made good extra money working there.
Now, although I needed more money to live, it was impossible for me
to make myself do such things. The French say "_On fait ce que on
peut_." I could not. The very idea of the thing turned me dead cold.
My individual morale was all I possessed. I felt that if I sacrificed
it to make a little extra money, I would become personally obscene. I
would soon be utterly unable to make that easy money. I preferred a
menial job.
Yet I don't think I would call another man obscene who could do what
I was asked to do without having any personal feeling of revulsion
against it. And if an artistic person had or was familiar with such
sordid experiences of life and could transmute them into literary or
any other art form, I could not imagine that his performance or his
thought was obscene.
The Negro journalist argued violently against me. He insisted that
I had exploited Negroes to please the white reading public. He said
that the white public would not read good Negro books because of race
prejudice; that he himself had written a "good" book which had not
sold. I said that Negro writers, instead of indulging in whining and
self-pity, should aim at reaching the reading public in general or
creating a special Negro public; that Negroes had plenty of money to
spend on books if books were sold to them.
I said I knew the chances for a black writer and a white writer were
not equal, even if both were of the same caliber. The white writer had
certain avenues, social and financial, which opened to carry him along
to success, avenues which were closed to the black. Nevertheless I
believed that the Negro writer also had a chance, even though a limited
one, with the great American reading public. I thought that if a Negro
writer were sincere in creating a plausible Negro tale--if a Negro
character were made credible and human in his special environment with
a little of the virtues and the vices that are common to the human
species--he would obtain some recognition and appreciation. For Negro
writers are not alone in competing with heavy handicaps. They have
allies among some of the white writers and artists, who are fighting
formalism and classicism, crusading for new forms and ideas against the
dead weight of the old.
But the journalist was loudly positive that it was easy for a Negro
writer to make a sensational success as a writer by "betraying" his
race to the white public. So many of the Negro élite love to mouth that
phrase about "betraying the race"! As if the Negro group had special
secrets which should not be divulged to the other groups. I said I did
not think the Negro could be betrayed by any real work of art. If the
Negro were betrayed in any place it was perhaps in that Negro press, by
which the journalist was syndicated, with its voracious black appetite
for yellow journalism.
Thereupon the journalist declared that he would prove that it was easy
for a Negro to write the "nigger stuff" the whites wanted of him and
make a success of it. He revealed that he was planning a novel for
white consumption; that, indeed, he had already written some of it.
He was aiming at going over to the white market. He was going to stop
writing for Negroes, who gave him so little support, although he had
devoted his life to the betterment of the Negro.
I was eager to see him prove his thesis. For he was expressing the
point of view of the majority of the colored élite, who maintain that
Negroes in the arts can win success by clowning only, because that is
all the whites expect and will accept of them. So although I disliked
his type of mind, I promised to help him, I was so keen about the
result of his experiment. I introduced him to my agent in Paris, and my
agent introduced him to a publisher in New York.
Our Negro journalist is very yellow and looks like a _métèque_ in
France, without attracting undue attention. Yet besides his "Amazing
Facts" about Negroes he has written in important magazines, stressing
the practical nonexistence of color prejudice in Europe and blaming
Negroes for such as exists! Also he wrote in a white magazine about
Africa and the color problem under a nom de plume which gave no
indication of the writer's origin.
He might have thought that as he had "passed white" a little in
complexion and in journalism, it would be just as easy "passing white"
as a creative writer. Well, the Negro journalist deliberately wrote
his novel as a "white" novelist--or as he imagined a white man would
write. But the sensational white novel by a Negro has not yet found its
publisher.
The last time I heard about him, he was again a Negro in Ethiopia,
interviewing Haile Selassie and reporting the white rape of Ethiopia
from an African point of view for the American Negro press.
* * * * *
_Nigger Heaven_, the Harlem novel of Carl Van Vechten, also was much
discussed. I met some of Mr. Van Vechten's Negro friends, who were
not seeing him any more because of his book. I felt flattered that
they did not mind seeing me! Yet most of them agreed that _Nigger
Heaven_ was broadly based upon the fact of contemporary high life in
Harlem. Some of them said that Harlemites should thank their stars
that _Nigger Heaven_ had soft-pedaled some of the actually wilder
Harlem scenes. While the conventional Negro moralists gave the book
a hostile reception because of its hectic bohemianism, the leaders of
the Negro intelligentsia showed a marked liking for it. In comparing
it with _Home to Harlem_, James Weldon Johnson said that I had shown a
contempt for the Negro bourgeoisie. But I could not be contemptuous of
a Negro bourgeoisie which simply does not exist as a class or a group
in America. Because I made the protagonist of my novel a lusty black
worker, it does not follow that I am unsympathetic to a refined or
wealthy Negro.
My attitude toward _Nigger Heaven_ was quite different from that of
its Negro friends and foes. I was more interested in the implications
of the book. It puzzled me a little that the author, who is generally
regarded as a discoverer and sponsor of promising young Negro writers,
gave Lascar, the ruthless Negro prostitute, the victory over Byron, the
young Negro writer, whom he left, when the novel ends, in the hands of
the police, destined perhaps for the death house in Sing Sing.
Carl Van Vechten also was in Paris in the summer of 1929. I had been
warned by a white non-admirer of Mr. Van Vechten that I would not like
him because he patronized Negroes in a subtle way, to which the Harlem
élite were blind because they were just learning sophistication! I
thought it would be a new experience to meet a white who was subtly
patronizing to a black; the majority of them were so naïvely crude
about it. But I found Mr. Van Vechten not a bit patronizing, and
quite all right. It was neither his fault nor mine if my reaction was
negative.
One of Mr. Van Vechten's Harlem sheiks introduced us after midnight
at the Café de la Paix. Mr. Van Vechten was a heavy drinker at that
time, but I was not drinking liquor. I had recently suffered from a
cerebral trouble and a specialist had warned me against drinking, even
wine. And when a French doctor forbids wine, one ought to heed. When
we met at that late hour at the celebrated rendezvous of the world's
cosmopolites, Mr. Van Vechten was full and funny. He said, "What will
you take?" I took a soft drink and I could feel that Mr. Van Vechten
was shocked.
I am afraid that as a soft drinker I bored him. The white author and
the black author of books about Harlem could not find much of anything
to make conversation. The market trucks were rolling by loaded with
vegetables for Les Halles, and suddenly Mr. Van Vechten, pointing to a
truck-load of huge carrots, exclaimed, "How I would like to have all
of them!" Perhaps carrots were more interesting than conversation.
But I did not feel in any way carroty. I don't know whether my looks
betrayed any disapproval. Really I hadn't the slightest objection to
Mr. Van Vechten's enthusiasm for the truck driver's raw carrots, though
I prefer carrots _en casserole avec poulet cocotte_. But he excused
himself to go to the men's room and never came back. So, after waiting
a considerable time, I paid the bill with some _Home to Harlem_ money
and walked in the company of the early dawn (which is delicious in
Paris) back to the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Mr. Van Vechten's sheik friend was very upset. He was a precious,
hesitating sheik and very nervous about that introduction, wondering
if it would take. I said that all was okay. But upon returning to New
York he sent me a message from Mr. Van Vechten. The message said that
Mr. Van Vechten was sorry for not returning, but he was so high that,
after leaving us, he discovered himself running along the avenue after
a truck load of carrots.
Among the Negro intelligentsia in Paris there was an interesting group
of story-tellers, poets and painters. Some had received grants from
foundations to continue work abroad; some were being helped by private
individuals; and all were more or less identified with the Negro
renaissance. It was illuminating to exchange ideas with them. I was an
older man and not regarded as a member of the renaissance, but more as
a forerunner. Indeed, some of them had aired their resentment of my
intrusion from abroad into the renaissance set-up. They had thought
that I had committed literary suicide because I went to Russia.
For my part I was deeply stirred by the idea of a real Negro
renaissance. The Arabian cultural renaissance and the great European
renaissance had provided some of my most fascinating reading. The
Russian literary renaissance and also the Irish had absorbed my
interest. My idea of a renaissance was one of talented persons of an
ethnic or national group working individually or collectively in a
common purpose and creating things that would be typical of their group.
I was surprised when I discovered that many of the talented Negroes
regarded their renaissance more as an uplift organization and a vehicle
to accelerate the pace and progress of smart Negro society. It was
interesting to note how sharply at variance their artistic outlook
was from that of the modernistic white groups that took a significant
interest in Negro literature and art. The Negroes were under the
delusion that when a lady from Park Avenue or from Fifth Avenue,
or a titled European, became interested in Negro art and invited
Negro artists to her home, that was a token of Negroes breaking into
upper-class white society. I don't think that it ever occurred to them
that perhaps such white individuals were searching for a social and
artistic significance in Negro art which they could not find in their
own society, and that the radical nature and subject of their interest
operated against the possibility of their introducing Negroes further
than their own particular homes in coveted white society.