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Transcription: [00:35:24]
show you um one what-what this movement did I-I mentioned like to use to show you some of the problems that scholars sometimes have um dealing with this issue of homosexuality
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this is a big book: My Soul's High Song, this is Countee Cullen's collected work
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and what's very interesting is that when you talk about some of the um writers um in terms of tradition
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whom perhaps might have been homosexual Countee Cullen's name is always placed at the top
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now here you have uh Gerald Early putting in this big book, right
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uh now when it comes to the question of Countee Cullen's homosexuality
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it is reduced to a footnote [laughs] on page 19 um and-and-and Gerald Early, you know, is saying here um
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uh it is appropriate to address here the issue of homosexuality and why is it appropriate
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because on this page he makes reference to Countee Cullen's life-long friend, Harold Jackman
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and people have always speculated um you know, this relationship, also its key because Countee Cullen's, you know, heritage poem is dedicated to Jackman
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ok, and keep that in mind because I'm going to make a reference to that again
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In this footnote, Gerald Early says that following "it is appropriate to address here the issue of homosexuality as at least three major scholars have asserted that Cullen was homosexual, 'kay
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David Lewis in When Harlem was in Vogue, Jean Wagner in Black Poets of the United States, and Arnold Rampersad in The Life of Langston Hughes Volume 1 1902-1941
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There is however no evidence that Cullen and Jackman were lovers at least you identify who it might be right [[laughter]] 'kay right okay
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There um there is no evidence that Cullen was engaged in any homosexual relations with any other figures of the Renaissance 'kay
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Uh that that could be written another way that there were other people there that he could have engaged in [[laughter]] or with right [[laughter]]
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Some scholars have read letters and poem that seems suggestive in this regard but have offered nothing conclusive 'kay
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Now I read that on page 19
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I'm reading along and I get to page 59 nice long introduction and I come across this statement by Gerald Early
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and he is talking about the poem Heritage which is dedicated to ah Jackman
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He says here it is a curious observation that in Heritage considered by everyone to be Cullen's finest poem, his masterpiece, he uses the phrase "so I lie 5 times"
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it seems there is a great deal of lying [laughter] going on in the poem, not only lying as in the sense of opposing on less some of the narrative of poem Browning but lying in the sense of just honesty and duplicity
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Cullen was very taken with the art of lying or why else did he have his cat tell tall tales and that laws do and then my lives and then how I lost him or why else did he translate the Medea which is also about all about the lying of 2 lovers
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or why write a novel with the central character lies about his conversion
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the entire scope of Cullen's 1930s career seems a law philosophical and ascetic examination of the many created in nefarious dimensions of lying, deception, and hypocrisy
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now anybody who just or any study of homosexual literature knows that one of the key aspect of homosexual literature is that its coded [[laughter]] you know
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I mean you can read like Whitman again you know what I mean
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and the question is if he can make this statement about how he felt that Countee Cullen so designed this and that
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that perhaps you know what we could say is that perhaps in some of Countee Cullen's poems you know just just you mean you have to read it 2 different ways
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and I say that because many times that's how you have to read between the lines in terms of homosexual literature
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case in point um what is included in this book is Countee Cullen's novel One Way to Heaven
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now what you find in here is the main character Lucas has one arm okay
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that you have this like what you call like a deformity
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it's interesting I say that because sometimes in homosexual literature a character is presented that there is something wrong with them or how they might be perceived by society
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one writer who is a homosexual writer [[??]] who does this in many of his books is a science fiction writer Samuel Delaney
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who always have a character who has a certain maybe one leg is longer than the other or something like but he is an outsider okay
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and someone could say okay in this sense this represents you know the black character Sam Delaney
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he's a he's a black writer so this is the outcast that's him
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or we can say he might feel himself as an outcast as a homo as a homosexual and consequently these characters are a sign um to um the character in the novel
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I just say this that in terms of for critics if they're going to go back and and deal with this issue then they are going to have to know how to read the text again
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and so I always levy cause the Heritage poem like What is the African in Me? sat in there if you if you take there on another level it could be a love poem to one individual person who just happens to be black
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say you read it as a love poem to Harold Jackman who it is dedicated to and has a totally different meaning it's not about the [[??]]
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it is about the new black man lying on the bed [[laughter]] you know what I mean
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now that can get you into a lot of trouble but that's you know [[indistinct talking]]
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let me uh let me just mention this uh cause now I'm looking at this time and and I want to have time for
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Melvin Dixon recently came out with this book called Vanishing Rooms
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uh and this is a novel by another um major oh I don't want to say major a new African American writer who uh is writing gay novels I think Melvin Dixon is coming