G LR k $5.95 US & Canada March–April 2022 Artful Dodges LEV RAPHAEL Cold Marble, Hot Memories IGNACIO DARNAUDE Artists Bathing the Gay Away KEN BORELLI An Artist of Spain’s Generation of ’27 ALLEN ELLENZWEIG George Platt Lynes’ One True Passion ANDREWLEAR Prying Open the Museum Closet Pessoa: Creator of Selves BY ALFRED CORN In Praise of Lesbian Bars BY CHRISTINA SCHLESINGER Mad about Noël Coward BY ANDREWHOLLERAN Out Came de Beauvoir BY IRENE JAVORS Simone de Beauvoir
The Gay & Lesbian Review March–April 2022 • VOLUME XXIX, NUMBER 2 The Gay & Lesbian Review/WORLDWIDE®(formerly The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, 1994-1999) is published bimonthly (six times per year) by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational corporation located in Boston, Mass. Subscriptions: Call 844-752-7829. Rates: U.S.: $35.70 per year (6 issues). Canada and Mexico: $45.70(US). All other countries: $55.70(US). All non-U.S. copies are sent via air mail. Back issues available for $12 each. All correspondence is sent in a plain envelope marked “G&LR.” © 2022 by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved. POEMS &DEPARTMENTS A Writer Who Invented Selves 10 ALFREDCORN Portugal’s Fernando Pessoa fully inhabited his many poetic voices Mad About the Boy 14 ANDREWHOLLERAN Noël Coward’s song title captures his insouciance about being gay From Big Brothers to the Cubbyhole 17 CHRISTINASCHLESINGER Lesbian bars were once the beating heart of a vibrant subculture WITHERICAROSE Artists Bathing the Gay Away 20 IGNACIODARNAUDE For 400 years, water served as a pretext for depicting male nudity “Lynes marveled at male beauty.” 24 ALLENELLENZWEIG James Polchin talks with the author of George Platt Lynes An Artist of Spain’s Generation of ’27 27 KENBORELLI Gregorio Prieto pushed the avant-garde to its homoerotic limits Prying Open the Museum Closet 30 ANDREWLEAR Three works show how the Met disregards its gay-inflected art CONTENTS FEATURES REVIEWS CORRESPONDENCE 5 IN MEMORIUM— A Fierce Farewell to Artist Louise Fishman 6 CASSANDRALANGER BTW 8 RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. POEM— “Went to the Whitney” 13 JOANCOFRANCESCO POEM— “The Man Who Met Luke Warm” 16 JONATHANBRACKER ART MEMO — Cold Marble, Hot Memories 29 LEVRAPHAEL POEM— “Comment on Male Life” 32 RANDALL ROGERS ART MEMO — The Novel de Beauvoir Didn’t Publish in 1954 33 IRENE JAVORS AUTHOR’S PROFILE— Brian Broome: Writing at Busy Intersections 40 RICHARDM. BERRONG CULTURAL CALENDAR 47 ART MEMO — Frida and Vita: A Tale of Two Gardens 48 EMILY L. QUILT FREEMAN Jack Lowery —It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful 34 JOHNR. KILLACKY Virginia Woolf —The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway 35 NILS CLAUSSON BRIEFS 36 Allen Ellenzweig —George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye 38 JOSEPHM. ORTIZ Edmund White —A Previous Life 39 PHILIP GAMBONE Michael Nott, et al., eds. —The Letters of Thom Gunn 42 FELIXHAWLIN Heather Love —Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory 43 MICHAEL CIVELLO Anthony Veasna So —Afterparties: Stories 44 RUTHJOFFRE Joe Okonkwo —Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck 44 CHARLES GREEN Asali Solomon —The Days of Afrekete: A Novel 45 ANNE CHARLES Jacques J. Rancourt —Brocken Spectre 46 MICHAEL QUINN Lin-Manuel Miranda, director —tick, tick...BOOM! 50 RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. WEBSITE: www.GLReview.org • SUBSCRIPTIONS: 847-504-8893 • ADVERTISING: 617-421-0082 • SUBMISSIONS: Editor@GLReview.org Editor-in-Chief and Founder RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. ____________________________________ Literary Editor MARTHAE. STONE Poetry Editor DAVIDBERGMAN Associate Editors SAMDAPANAS PAULFALLON JEREMYFOX MICHAELSCHWARTZ Contributing Writers ROSEMARYBOOTH DANIELA. BURR COLINCARMAN ALFREDCORN ALLENELLENZWEIG CHRIS FREEMAN PHILIP GAMBONE MATTHEWHAYS ANDREWHOLLERAN IRENE JAVORS JOHNR. KILLACKY CASSANDRALANGER ANDREWLEAR DAVIDMASELLO FELICE PICANO JAMES POLCHIN JEANROBERTA VERNONROSARIO Contributing Artist CHARLES HEFLING Publisher STEPHENHEMRICK Webmaster BOSTONWEBGROUP Web Editor KELSEYMEYERS ____________________________________ Board of Directors STEWART CLIFFORD ART COHEN(CHAIR) EDUARDOFEBLES DONALDGORTON(CLERK) ROBERT HARDMAN DAVIDLAFONTAINE ANDREWLEAR RICHARDSCHNEIDER, JR. (PRESIDENT) MARTHAE. STONE THOMAS YOUNGREN(TREASURER) WARRENGOLDFARB(SR. ADVISOR EMER.) WORLDWIDE The Gay & Lesbian Review® PO Box 180300, Boston, MA 02118 Artful Dodges WORLDWIDE March–April 2022 3
tury, when Thomas Eakins (among other artists) used it to depict nude men in watery places. But that’s just one of many ploys that artists have used to tackle taboo subjects of various kinds. Andrew Lear goes back to the 17th century and shows how the Dutch master Frans Hals created a scene of revelry whose central figure is not a woman but boy in drag—a fact that art critics have conveniently ignored for years. Other works that skirted the censor’s eye include a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec whose lesbian overtones can scarcely be denied (though critics have tried), and a “portrait” by Modernist painter Marsden Hartley that reveals itself to be a tribute to his fallen lover, a soldier killed in World War I. Two 20th-century artists faced very different challenges in search of an artful dodge. Fernando Prieto of Spain, an artist of the so-called Generation of 1927 (which also included the poet Lorca), painted a number of same-sex interactions, including a series with two male mannequins making out in various positions—because who could object to a couple of wooden dummies getting it on? Photographer George Platt Lynes comes up in two articles stemming from Allen Ellenzweig’s new biography of Lynes, who became famous for his fashion and celebrity photos—but not so much for his many shots of male nudes. The latter were his true passion, but “standards” prevented their public display until long after he was gone. RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. THE THEME of “Artful Dodges” (with apologies to Dickens) refers to the ways in which artists have set about to circumvent restrictions on the presentation of the human body alone or in combination with others. Long ago, the freedom of Greco-Roman art was jerked to an abrupt halt by the rise of Christendom, and it seems that artists ever since have been working on ways to evade the Church’s strictures. The great dodge of the Renaissance was not to violate medieval standards outright but to revive the styles and subjects of Classical culture. The use of mythological settings—think Botticelli’s Birth of Venus—gave artists a pretext for depicting what had hitherto been forbidden. Or take Michelangelo’s David, which broke all the rules of decency, but its subject matter was a biblical story, and it rendered King David in the heroic style of the Greeks, so the artist got away with it. Michelangelo’s work proved to be the nose under the tent for subsequent artists, who used the Master as a pretext for their own elaborations of the body. The fact that Michelangelo was pretty clearly “gay” in our sense added an extra dimension to this legacy. A drawing discussed here by Ignacio Darnaude depicts a large group of men bathing in the nude, a shocking display that slipped under the radar because it showed heroic soldiers cooling off in the Arno after battle. Darnaude argues that the “bathing” motif became a ruse for artists from Domenico Cresti in a 1600 painting all the way to the late 19th cenSpring Break: ‘Artful Dodges’ FROM THE EDITOR 4 The G&LR
Homage to a Chicago Organizer To the Editor, It was a sad treat to see my friend Danny Sotomayor’s photo used to illustrate your chat with historian John D’Emilio discussing queer life in Chicago [Nov.-Dec. 2021 issue]. As a founding member of ACT UP in the Windy City, Danny was a role model for gay Latinos in his political activism, and again when he publicly disclosed his status as a person with AIDS. Our paths crossed at national organizing meetings and in-your-face protests, but the bulk of our friendship was forged in latenight, long-distance phone calls, when the rates were lowest, and we would gab for hours. The final time I saw Danny was in November 1991, in Manhattan, the day after his lover and partner Scott McPherson’s critically acclaimed dramedyMarvin’s Roomopened Off-Broadway. Having recently completed chemotherapy and struggling with an HIV-compromised immune system, Danny had great difficulty speaking. He broke into sobs trying to be understood. Their fierce caregiver, Lori Cannon, ordered me beforehand that I was not to show sorrow or shed tears during my visit. Danny needed to see his New York friends extending only love and steely happiness. Thanks, G&LR, for honoring the brave fighter Danny Sotomayor. His memory is a blessing. Michael Petrelis, San Francisco, CA Addendum to the Annual Obits To the Editor: Your “In Memoriam” feature [in the Jan.-Feb. 2022 issue] failed to include a mention of Rusty Warren (1939–2021), who died last May at the age of 91. Widely known as the “mother of the sexual revolution,” the comedian’s bawdy routines explored sex from a woman’s perspective. Her best-known song was “Knockers Up,” from the 1960 album of the same name. While living in Arizona, she and her life partner Liz Rizzo hosted numerous events and fundraisers for the LGBT community at their home in Paradise Valley. Rusty never became a household name, and her comedy act was too risqué for 1960s TV. Nevertheless, she released fifteen albums, toured extensively, and consistently played Las Vegas. The Advocate noted that, “although she remained in the closet for the early part of her life on account of her career, she came out later and performed on lesbian cruises throughout the 1990s.” Vance Wilson, Phoenix, AZ Thomas Mann and the real “Tadzio” To the Editor: Reading this magazine’s compelling review of Colm Tóibín’s novelized life of Thomas Mann in The Magician [Nov.-Dec. 2021 issue], I was drawn back to Mann’s novella Death in Venice, where his own same-sex desires were disguised as Aschenbach’s fascination with Tadzio. As we now know, the details of the novella closely resemble the author’s own experience in Venice when Mann encountered the charming and handsome son of a wealthy family who was visiting the city. During his own family’s visit to Venice, Mann became obsessed with seeing the real boy each Correspondence March–April 2022 5 ➙ – Dr. A ere transform y during the AIDS crisis w communit thers in T UP and o actions I had with A ter “The in C . wWizinsky tthe er Brier andMa Jennif er and Subjectivity in Global AIDS Signification: Pow ein, and an ess elst amFink eface b Avr Includes a pr y om 1982 t ears fr ers, spanning the y t meaningful pos esting f visually arr amples o x es nearly 200 e Featur ti M. alen or WilliamM. V dit al and Consulting E Medic -Feld a Lacher t and Jessic ech y Donald Albr Edited b Poste t, Ac Wa gains Up A t the ll: Ar tivism, and the AIDS The Power of Imag auci nthony F tional.” a t the activis man, r ery Posters,” by f ay, “Worlds o esent. o the pr ocially and s D. ess.rit.e http://ritpr Scholarly publish .edu ess@rit 19 | ritpr 75–58 du | (585) 4 1 , since 200 y titute o Te ster Ins ing at Roche f chnolog
day, whether in the dining room or on the beach, where “Tadzio” dislayed his seductive charms. Mann’s contact with German youths included those he knew personally and those that he merely glimpsed in lecture hall audiences, was where his eyes would fall upon such young men. He wrote about them in his closely guarded diaries, which were not published until twenty years after his death. Fast forward to the 1960s, when the openly gay film Italian director Luchino Visconti secured the movie rights toDeath in Venice. He searched Europe for a teenage boy who embodied the perfect youth to play Tadzio. He found him in Bjorn Andresen from Stockholm. Asking him to strip to his shorts during an audition, Visconti declared that Bjorn was “the most beautiful boy in the world.” Fifty years after Visconti’s film, a new documentary carries the same phrase as its title: The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (2021). The film’s directors (Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri) tracked down Andresen, now in his mid-sixties, to learn how this singular role played out in his life. We learn that upon the release of the Visconti film, Andresen was besieged with lavish praise, offers of money, and countless sexual proposals. A visit to Japan was particularly difficult, where his blond good looks made him a cultural sensation. Reflecting on his life, Andresen says that after the film, much was lost through years of drug and alcohol abuse, with few acting offers. Struggling through a difficult relationship and the loss of a child, his early fame came at a heavy price. One question that Mann’s novella and both films raise is: When does one’s personal life succumb to such public acclaim, leaving it open to unwanted attention and salacious gazes? Joe Ryan, Colchester, VT of the“Remembrance and Renewal” paintings that she created upon her return. They were exhibited at Simon Watson Gallery in 1989. Louise’s ability to transform her anger and spirit into abstract art has inspired me to deal with my anger and enrich my life with the community and political action. No words of mine can capture Louise’s art and righteous wrath and vigor. There are few artists among contemporary creatives as impressive, knowledgeable, and capable of making universalizing statements as Louise Fishman. The depth of her compassion and kindness defy description, and I am dumbfounded as I face her body of work and the legacy that she has left us. I knew Louise as a friend, a brilliant artist, an animal lover, and a lesbian sister for over sixty years. When I look at the diverse body of work that she leaves behind for posterity, I take comfort in the universality of her concerns, in her compassion, and in her continuous questioning of our values, ethics, and humanity, which she invites us all to confront. Cassandra Langer, a frequent G&LRcontributor, is the author of Romaine Brooks: A Life (2015). A Fierce Farewell to Artist Louise Fishman CASSANDRALANGER SINCE THE EARLY 1970s, I have followed the work and feminist activism of Louise Fishman (1939–2021). At certain times, her art expresses a parallel universe of feminist anger and radicalism for me. Although her work is universal and abstract, it echoes my personal history of feminist activism, a frustration during my own pilgrimage through the numerous social movements of the 1950s and ’60s when I was in college and then an NYU graduate student. Like Louise, my Jewish parents provided me with a strong sense of ethics and a moral compass that launched me into synchrony with Louise’s political activism of those decades. In 1973, when Louise integrated language into her work with the painting Angry Woman (consisting of 27 paintings, acrylic on paper, all 26 x 40 Inches), she touched on a shared level of pure rage. Most of her paintings associate the word “ANGRY” with names of friends, such as “Angry Jill” (Johnston, the critic and writer), or “Angry Bertha” (Harris, the author); others are well-known writers and art world people. They shared a consciousness that all women had oppression in common, and all were angry about it. Louise joined the radical groups Redstockings and Upper Westside Witch. One summer, she formed a women’s consciousness-raising group that included the sculptor Patsy Norvell, dancer-choreographer Trisha Brown, Carolyn Goodden, one of the founders of FOOD, the iconic SoHo artists’ restaurant. When the first artist group dissolved, Louise founded another, bringing in Patsy, Jenny Snider, Harmony Hammond, Sarah Draney, and other contemporary visual artists. This group lasted close to two years, and one of the results was a group show at Nancy Hoffman Gallery. In 1988, Louise toured the death camps of Europe with two friends. Their trip was sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation and was titled “Remembrance and Renewal.” Louise could barely contain the despair and anger she felt for the mass killing of European Jews. That handful of muck—including ashes from the crematorium—she scooped up from the Pond of Living Ashes at Birkenau was incorporated into each IN MEMORIAM 6 The G&LR Louise Fishman. Photo by Brian Buckley. Courtesy of Cheim & Read, NY.
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The Thin Straight Line A recurring theme of this column is what we’ve called “the fragility of heterosexuality”: the fear that exposure to same-sex images or ideas is all it takes to turn a straight person gay—and now science has found that this phenomenon is real! In an Australian study (published in Nature’s Scientific Reports), 180 self-reported heterosexual men and women were asked to read one of two articles on sexual orientation before taking a demographic survey with a series of questions about their sexuality. The test group’s essay explained that sexual orientation exists on a continuous spectrum and can change over time, while the control essay specified that there are three discrete categories (homo-, hetero-, and bisexual). And the result: those in the test group were 28%less likely to report that they were exclusively heterosexual and 19%more likely to say that they might give same-sex relations a try. What’s more, those in “the continuous group ... reported less certainty about their sexual orientation.” (For the record, those claiming to be exclusively hetero ranged from 66 to 84% in different experimental conditions.) The researchers stressed that reading one article is unlikely to change people’s actual behavior, only their willingness toadmit to pre-existing thoughts or fantasies. Still, if reading an essay is all it takes to bring out a whole new segment of budding bisexuals, worries about the risks of exposure to same-sex stimuli may be well-founded. The Closed Book of Mormon The richest person in Utah, Jeff T. Green, has announced that he’s leaving the Church of LatterDay Saints, and he issued a blistering letter to LDS president Russell Nelson accusing the church of “actively and currently doing harm in the world.” Noting its past policy of official racism, Green tore into its history of LGBT exclusion and opposition to equal rights. He also announced a gift of $600,000 to LGBT students and organizations at BrighamYoung University, which comes in for sharp rebuke. BYU’s Honor Code bans all forms of intimate same-sex behavior, while any display of support for gay rights is barred. Indeed the Code prohibits any form of gay rights advocacy, which Green compared to Russia’s ban on “homosexual propaganda.” However, a group with the euphemistic name Understanding Sexuality, Gender, andAllyship (USGA) has been meeting under the radar since 2010. Green’s gift—half of which will go to scholarships—will presumably help to legitimize the fledgling organization. It’s not entirely clear what prompted Green to take these actions now, but he was adamant about leaving the church: “After today the only contact I want from the church is a single letter of confirmation to let me know that I am no longer listed as a member.” Nonpastoral Duties Going from Mormons to Methodists, we witness a spectacle that would be inconceivable in the former realm but possibly okay in the latter. The focus is the pastor of the Methodist Church in Evansville, Indiana, Craig Duke, who surprised everyone by appearing in full drag on HBO’s reality showWe’re Here as part of a showgirl extravaganza. Claiming BTW 8 The G&LR ( '&**!% .,! *).! *12 "!2101. .,! +# -"0 / ! $!) 0 !*1!0. ! & & & %" B%+#/>@ >%+(H>(E %$$8%B$A;" ;" /"#/-FA>&(! #F%J %-;/$ 1F%>>., % #8()A;/>FJ ="! !;":$ +A>> 74%>$ FA+A"%$( 8(C/A8(+("$>@ ()%+#(! &A> >(+A"%8> $; >$;8A%" 5%8$A" 2/-(8+ (( ' %$ %##("( ' (" ="! ;" *#8A"G(84A"D <;8 =)%AF%-F( %$ =+%I;"@B;+ 9630 .%$-+&!3 #1/&!4+23 "!54 !31 "/-+2 =/$&;8 ;< +* )('&%# !$ "/.-& <8(( !;'"F;%! %$ B;FF(G(> . A"BF/!A"G ;"( +;"$& 8("$% LK /50 . ,+542 * 2) ('2-4&/45 +3 - . ?"A)(8>A$J ;< 2(F%'%8( , F
that his only motive was to support his pansexual daughter (who was probably mortified), he must have been anticipating some raised eyebrows when he parted with the words: “When the episode is over, I go right back to my home, my neighborhood, my church, my experiences as Craig where my pronouns, my race, my sexuality, and the way I express my faith is [sic] completely accepted.” But alas, the Methodists voted to relieve Craig of his pastoral duties, giving him an office job at a reduced salary. On a positive note, he’s made a lot of new friends at We’re Here, where “I was surrounded and immersed in a culture that I’ve never been immersed in.” Oh, he’ll be back. Con-fession Catching “ex-gay” practitioners cruising at gay bars or on Grindr was good sport for a while, but soon we realized that these guys aren’t “ex” anything but just con men with a racket. The latest outing involves one Jeffrey McCall, the leader of Freedom March, which stages rallies around the U.S. to recruit young people (and their parents) to sign up for “conversion.” Atypically, McCall seems to have come clean without being caught red-handed, admitting on social media that he’s had numerous affairs with men even while running his “ex-gay” operation. Indeedconfessionis very much a part of his personal MO, and he’s gotten it down to a science. In his post, McCall presents himself as a sympathetic guy who was only trying to help a troubled young man but found himself drawn to him physically, which led to a sexual affair. When it ended, “I felt wounded and lonely. This led to multiple falls with men over time.” But never fear: God to the rescue! “Every time I fell I would truly repent and turn away again. I would feel God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness sometimes before I could even finish the prayer.” So, if you’ve ever wondered how these guys can jump from ex-gay session to gay sex session, there’s your answer. You don’t have to flagellate yourself or pray the rosary to repent your sins. Just feel kind of bad about it and say a little prayer to youknow-who, and you’re pretty much good to go. Blame Satan This could be just another in a string of televangelists who railed against Covid vaccination, contracted the virus, and perished in a flurry of prayers and ventilators. But the case of Marcus Lamb, host of the Ministry Nowshow and a strong advocate of “conversion therapy,” is different in at least one troubling respect. Past victims have typically expressed regrets about their vaxx decision and instructed their followers not to make the same mistake. But Lamb’s son Jonathan and other survivors have refused to acknowledge that he died of Covid at all, coroner’s report be damned, claiming that the cause of death was “a spiritual attack from the enemy.” Indeed Jonathan Lamb often refers to “the enemy” when defending his father through various scandals, by which of course he means the Christian devil or some variant thereof. Now denying evolution is one thing, but this rejection of science even when it has real-world consequences is something new: a return to magical thinking and medieval notions of spells and evil spirits. Can calls for people to be burned at the stake be far behind? March–April 2022 9 +88'6 $!)'/ 288 5& ,/ #54' -#2- %' *263 65- 568" 5)'1*57' -#' 42/-3 0,- 28/5 -#1!)' !6 -#' &,-,1' !& %' %5,8( 568" 4,- 5,1 %5,6(/ 26( /,&&'1!6$/ 5& ,/' -5 4'548' !6 -#' 41'/'6-. &&&"(%'#$)!+"*#(
ANEW BIOGRAPHY of Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) runs over a thousand pages, which sounds extreme. However, explains the author, it is really the biography of multiple figures. Readers of Pessoa’s poetry already know in what sense this is true, but others may not be familiar with the poet who was called “the writer of a hundred selves.” In the opening pages of Richard Zenith’s life of Pessoa, we’re shown an uncaptioned and undated photograph of its subject, whom I would guess to be nine or ten years old. The picture, carefully staged and showing a sweet-faced boy wearing a smart midshipman-style outfit, was taken in 1897, a few years after the boy and his widowed mother had gone to Durban, Natal (the British colony that’s now part of South Africa), where her second husband, formerly a sea captain, had been appointed Portuguese Consul. Nothing in the boy’s appearance suggests that he would grow up to be Portugal’s most acclaimed 20th-century poet. Nor would anyone have predicted that as an adult he would live a life of both whimsy and dejection as an insolvent alcoholic, a man psychologically but not in practice gay, a passionate person who never fell in love, a martyr to art constantly writing but seldom publishing what he wrote under his own name. The boy’s midshipman’s costume was no doubt a smallscale allusion to Portugal’s history, both glorious and infamous, in maritime exploration and colonization. Figures like Prince Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama began sailing to Africa in the 15th century. The story of da Gama’s voyages is the celebratory substance of Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads), the Portuguese national epic, which was written in the 16th century by Luís Vaz de Camões. This astonishing work is regarded as the fountainhead for all subsequent Portuguese literature and can still be sincerely admired so long as we ignore the negative outcomes of those expeditions—colonialism and the ESSAY A Writer Who Invented Selves ALFREDCORN Alfred Corn is the author of eleven books of poems, two novels, and three collections of essays. His new version of Rilke’s Duino Elegies will be published by Norton in 2021. slave trade. Given Africa’s prominence in Portuguese history, Pessoa may have felt it was fully plausible for him to live there. But administration and education in Durban were conducted in English, so the geographical displacement was followed by a linguistic one. Still, the boy became fluent in English and even began composing texts in it; and, because French was part of the curriculum, he soon gained proficiency in that language as well. It was in this period that he began inventing alternate selves: fictional beings who peopled his imaginary universe and manifested their identities by producing letters, stories, and poems. They were forerunners of the fictive authors whose works Pessoa would go on to write and publish under their names rather than his own. He began designating these characters as “heteronyms.” The word was his own coinage, but possibly it was suggested to him by the new adjectives “homosexual” and “heterosexual,” which had only recently come into circulation. § IF WE ASK WHYPESSOAbegan to invent nonexistent people, several hypotheses come to mind. His father’s death was a shock, made more intense when his younger brother died a few months later. His mother then remarried, bringing a new person into the family, a nucleus soon expanded by five half-siblings. Living in Durban, Pessoa was immersed in English language and culture but was also aware of the city’s large immigrant Indian community and the indigenous Zulu population. How could an intelligent, creative boy not come to see that human possibility was manifold, and to embody that insight in his writings? Expatriation ended in 1905 when he sailed to Lisbon, after which he hardly left the city again. But the seagoing theme reappeared later in the guise of his poems and his only play, The Mariner. Judging by what he wrote and his bachelor status, Pessoa was most likely a gay man who lived his entire life without having any sexual experience with another person, male or female. “To possess a body is to be banal in the extreme,” he claimed. Meanwhile, his literary self-multiplication can be understood within the framework of queer studies. Some theorists have commented on the mutability of identity in gay people, who grow up without a strong grounding in the “gender binary” and are forced into secrecy and play-acting to conceal their orientation. To suit this intermediate psychology, gay men often attempt to reproduce women’s self-presentation, even if the result is sometimes humorously exaggerated. But then, to avoid exposure (or to attract other men who are excited by masculinity), gay men often fashion a “masculine” persona—again, exaggerated—by adopting macho drag and a tough-guy manner. Many of us will identify with Pessoa’s loneliness as a queer child who 10 The G&LR
was bookish and uninterested in sports. Like most nerds, he ended up without close friends. The solution was to invent his own social circle, an array of articulate personalities always available and interested. One way to do this was to begin an active exchange of letters with many imaginary friends—writing both sides of the correspondence himself. And then there’s his family name, “Pessoa,” which in Portuguese means “person.” The word is from the Latin persona. Its earliest meaning was “a mask, a false face,” like those covering the heads of actors in Greek and Roman theater. Some dictionaries propose that persona can be traced to Latin personare, which means ”to sound through,” just as actors’ voices had to carry through their masks. Even if this derivation were false, Pessoa might have thought it was accurate. And there were precedents closer to hand. Pessoa knew English poetry very well and would have been aware of Robert Browning’s monologues, which include the famously grim “My Last Duchess.” In “Pauline, the Fragment of a Confession,” the very first poem Browning published, he wrote: “I will tell/ My state as though ‘twere none of mine—despair/ Cannot come near us—this it is, my state.” The implication is that the poet can create fictional people and stage a version of his life through them. Zenith’s biography does not mention Browning, but it does bring in Wilde’s famous statement fromThe Critic as Artist: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.” Pessoa discovered the works of Wilde in 1907. He endorsed Wilde’s view of the mask, but in reverse. About his characters, he said: “They are beings with a sort-of-life-of-their-own, with feelings I do not have, and opinions I do not accept. While their writings are not mine, they do also happen to be mine.” It’s probable, too, that Pessoa was aware of his slightly older Spanish contemporary Antonio Machado, who developed two poetic alter egos, Juan de Mairena and Abel Martín. Several other poets are noted for their dramatic monologues, preeminently Richard Howard, who once acknowledged his debt to Browning with the quote from “Pauline” given above. What’s different about Pessoa is howmanyalter egos he invented, and the fact that he published the poems of his personæ under their names rather than his own. He seems almost to have believed that they existed independently. To back up this belief, he invented brief biographies for them, detailed accounts confirming that these invented personages knew about each other—knew each other as actual, not fictional, people. In a 1935 letter discussing their status, Pessoa offers a typical equivocation: “It has been my tendency to create around me a fictitious world, to surround myself with friends and acquaintances who never existed. (I cannot be sure, of course, if they really never existed, or if it is me who does not exist. In this matter, as in any other, we should not be dogmatic.)” In short, Pessoa promoted his heteronymic creations, but did so with a disclaimer. They helped him feel (if only temporarily) that he existed—because they existed. Even if they produced works that he couldn’t fully endorse, they provided him with a tenuous hold on what Germans call Dasein (existence). Scholars have catalogued over a hundred Pessoan heteronyms, but the bulk of his published poems are attributed to only three. To the first one, who assumed control of his writing consciousness in 1914, he gave the name Alberto Caeiro. In addition to writing poetry, we’re told that Caeiro was a shepherd, a role that connects him to the pasMarch–April 2022 11 PESSOA: A Biography by Richard Zenith Liveright. 1,055 pages, $40.
toral tradition in poetry. This persona quickly produced a spate of poems introducing their author as an anti-metaphysical writer, concerned only with concrete reality and not at all with philosophy. His program leads us to expect a poetry relieved of abstractions, content to record sensory data, perhaps in the manner of the “Imagistes” or Objectivists in English. In fact, only the sketchiest descriptions of things appear in Caeiro’s poems. Instead, he constantly and thoughtfully reiterates his philosophy of not being a thinker or having a philosophy, someone concerned only with the things of this world. Caeiro doesn’t seem to be aware of the paradox, but Pessoa later points it out in the criticism he devised to promote the work of Caeiro. Yes, criticism: pretending to be an outside commenter on his heteronym was one more way to firm up the existence of Caeiro and, for that matter, himself. Pessoa’s second prominent heteronym is Ricardo Reis, a teacher of Latin somewhere in South America. His concise and chastened output is modeled on the classical poets, especially Horace. Reading them, you get the impression that they are good Portuguese translations of some unknown Latin or Greek author. Many are hortatory, urging the author and his dutiful readers to adopt something like the philosophy of the Stoics when confronting life’s difficulties and disappointments. Reis professes great admiration for Alberto Caeiro, a confirmation of that heteronym’s material existence and artistic value, but one that seems improbable given the incompatibility of their views. Reis’ work is finely composed but seems soberly removed from modern experience and, to that degree, rather bloodless. The third and most exuberant of the heteronyms is Álvaro de Campos, a cheerful dandy and stroller of the Lisbon streets, volubly celebrating what he sees and knows. His encomiums are directed not just to people and their occupations, but also glorify (as did Marinetti’s Italian Futurism) machines, trains, dynamos, suspension bridges—industrial modernity at large. In his “Triumphal Ode,” he lists all the phenomena, material and otherwise, that he finds wonderful, for example: “the falsely feminine grace of sauntering homosexuals” and “the dazzling beauty of graft and corruption,” as well as “Fraudulent reports in the newspapers.” Whatever exists, all that can be done or thought, inspires his ecstatic approval. This is a turbocharged Whitman who doesn’t care if anyone titters at his trumpeted rhapsodies. The heteronymic Caeiro and Reis were presented as unmarried, as was the case for Campos, but he at least fantasizes about sexual encounters, some of them not at all heterosexual. In his “Salutation to Walt Whitman” he characterizes his precursor as “Great homosexual who rubs against the diversity of things.” Fair enough, and then, in his “Maritime Ode,” Campos carries Whitman’s “barbaric yawp” much farther than the Kosmos ever did. After an exhaustive catalog of all things nautical and a delirious pæan to the hardy breed of seamen, he turns to pirates, rejoicing in their savagery and carnage. He imagines becoming their “woman” or, more accurately, their masochist slave: “Make me kneel down before you!/ Beat and humiliate me!/ Make me your slave and your plaything!/ And don’t ever deprive me of your contempt!/ O my masters! O my lords!” I wonder how many modern readers find the work of Pessoa’s heteronyms to be fully achieved and persuasive. Portuguese is a mellifluous language, so the poems offer pleasure for the ear, but the content is often didactic in a plodding way, or pumped-up, or even absurd. § PESSOA’S HETERONYMIC ENTERPRISE is best appreciated as conceptual art—clever, ingenious, even satiric, but not altogether sincere. It’s possible to applaud the multiple-identity brilliance even as we withdraw full assent from its products. The personæ’s bridged distance from the author permits him to evoke them with empathy but also with satirical touches based on exaggeration. When authors record extremes of their thoughts and feelings, they risk being silly or even ludicrous. Attributing one’s personal outliers to a fictional character enables the expression of bizarre psychological states and faulty thinking that are normally concealed to avoid ridicule. Without authorial masks, many ideas that it’s possible for the human mind to entertain would never be recorded. Pessoa’s masks, made of papier mâché or (sometimes) gold, have a few features in common with his own psychological physiognomy. Through the eyeholes, we can observe his naked gaze, a remarkably attentive gaze, and, for just that reason, wounded. There is no way to understand Pessoa except as a consciousness in torment, if we take seriously statePessoa began inventing alternate selves: fictional beings who manifested their identities by producing letters, stories, and poems. 12 The G&LR
ments such as: “I want what I don’t want and renounce what I don’t have. I can’t be nothing nor be everything; I’m the bridge between what I don’t have and what I don’t want.” These negations recall the apophatic method of theology, which arrives at the essence of divinity by listing all the things God is not. Tying himself in these medusan knots, Pessoa manages to convey his own self-contradictory being and its readiness to become nonbeing. Pessoa did of course publish some works under his own name: poems that are well-wrought and moving. (I’m not referring to those written in English, which, though sincere, are awkwardly expressed in an archaic, often Shakespearean, diction.) For me, his best work is not his poetry but a prose fiction he titled The Book of Disquiet. It was begun as a heteronymic work ostensibly written by a rather colorless figure named Alberto Guedes, but eventually Guedes is replaced by an accountant named Bernardo Soares, who, apart from Pessoan concerns like dreams, illusion, and nonexistence, records his impressions of daily life in Lisbon. The work was written (haphazardly, over a period of many years) by dashing off passages of uncanny observations and reflections. Pessoa never bothered to assemble these passages into any coherent order or to get them into print. The work reaches today’s public as partly the work of various editors. It doesn’t matter which version is read, because the strength of the book resides more in its individual pages than in plot sequence or character development. We might even apply to it this recommendation from Pessoa himself: “Never read a book to the end, nor even in sequence and without skipping.” The randomness of its composition is an analogue for the author’s many struggles with the concept of authentic existence. The philosophical perspectives outlined by Pessoa are so divergent, so multiple, that as we try to understand his work we find ourselves confronted with a ship built entirely of gangplanks. There are so many ways to clamber aboard that we are stopped short, stymied, no matter how eager we are to accompany its enigmatic captain in his exploration of human nature’s uncharted seas. March–April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ent to the Whitney de Koonings a Pollack some Warhols but it was the Mapplethorpe polaroids that got me cock and balls laid out flat on a wooden slab JOANCOFRANCESCO Went to the Whitney
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE, in the age of Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, and HBO, that when the playwright Noël Coward (1899–1973) was growing up, the London stage was the center of the English-speaking world of entertainment—and such a pot of gold for writers that it even tempted Henry James to write plays. James was never able to figure out the art form that made playwrights like J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan) and Oscar Wilde rich and famous. He was, to his horror, booed during curtain calls at the premiere of his playGuy Domville—in the same theater that would host, not long thereafter, and to great applause, The ESSAY Mad About the Boy ANDREWHOLLERAN Andrew Holleran is the author of the novels Dancer from the Dance, Nights in Aruba, The Beauty of Men, and Grief. Importance of Being Earnest. But in Barry Day’s splendid compendium of interviews, letters, speeches, and table talk by Noël Coward (along with 138 illustrations), we travel back to a world in which Coward was the epitome of style, glamour, and theatrical success, particularly between the two world wars—a Renaissance man who wrote songs and plays, acted, and directed in a career that stretched from the heyday of George Bernard Shaw to that of the Angry Young Men like John Osborne (Look Back in Anger). Coward went from singing in church to performing in Las Vegas after his plays were no longer hits. What makes this book so interesting is the historical sweep—the fact that Coward’s mentors were George Bernard Shaw (who had to tell Coward to stop imitating his work and be himself) and Somerset Maugham (who, unlike Henry James, got rich writing plays for the London stage), whereas in his later years he was appraising the work of Harold Pinter and Edward Albee. Nothing is more interesting in Day’s book than the chapter in which Coward assesses the work of other playwrights, like Barrie, Maugham, T. S. Eliot, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and finally Osborne, Terrence Rattigan, Albee, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and Peter Shaffer. Writing, Coward believed, was superior to acting because writing lasts and performances happen only once. And that single occasion was not always magical: “I have been having a terrible time with After the Ball,” he wrote about one of his plays, “mainly on account of Mary Ellis’s singing voice which, to coin a phrase, sounds like someone fucking the cat.” Alas: “She couldn’t get a laugh if she were to pull a kipper from her twat.” Coward wrote dozens of plays, but the four comedies for which he’s best remembered are probably Hay Fever (1924), Private Lives (1930), Design for Living(1933), andBlithe Spirit (1941). He began performing as a choir boy, “but I hated doing this because the lack of applause depressed me.” Years after being cast at the age of ten in a children’s play calledThe Goldfish, he admitted: “I was a brazen, odious little prodigy, overpleased with myself and precocious to a degree. ... I was, I believe, one of the worst boy actors ever inflicted on the paying public.” By the time he was in his twenties, however, he’d learned a lot, though most of his early plays were forgettable at best, until The Vortex (1924), a play about a young man addicted to drugs and a mother addicted to serial love affairs. The Vortexshocked the critics and made him a star. “Success,” he said, “took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor.” After that, he was for many years the public face of a parNoël Coward 14 The G&LR
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