I thought of something else, something very difficult to convey. I remember a night in London, when Diana Sands was starring in The Owl and the Pussycat. There were about four or five of us, walking to some discotheque, and with us was a very angry, young, black cat. Across the street from us was Sidney’s name in lights in some movie I’ve not seen. Now, I understand the angry, young, black cat, and he was right to be angry. He was not angry at Sidney, but at the world. But I knew there was no point in saying that, at the time I was born, the success of a Sidney Poitier or a Diana Sands was not to be imagined. I don’t mean to congratulate the American people on what they like to call progress, because it certainly isn’t. The careers of all black artists in this country prove that. Time passes and phenomena occur in time. The presence of Sidney, the precedent set, is of tremendous importance for people coming afterward. And perhaps that’s what it’s really all about—just that.
Sidney, as a black artist, and a man, is also up against the infantile, furtive sexuality of this country. Both he and Harry Belafonte, for example, are sex symbols, though no one dares admit that, still less to use them as any of the Hollywood he-men are used. In spite of the fabulous myths proliferating in this country concerning the sexuality of black people, black men are still used, in the popular culture, as though they had no sexual equipment at all. This is what black men, and black women, too, deeply resent.
I think it’s important to remember, in spite of the fact we’ve been around so long, that Sidney is younger than I, and I’m not an old man yet. It takes a long time in this business, if you survive in it at all, to reach the eminence that will give you the power to change things. Sidney has that power now, to the limited extent that anyone in this business has. It will be very interesting to see what he does with it. In my mind, there’s no limit to what he might become.
But Sidney, like all of us, is caught in a storm. Let me tell you one thing about him, which has to do with how black artists particularly need each other. Sidney had read Another Country before it came out. He liked it, and he knew how frightened I was about the book’s reception. I’d been in Europe, and I came back for the publication because I didn’t want anyone to think I was afraid to be here. My publisher gave a party at Big Wilt’s Smalls Paradise in Harlem. Sidney came very early. I was ready to meet the mob, but I was scared to death, and Sidney knew it, and he walked me around the block and talked to me and helped me get myself together. And then he walked me back, and the party was starting. And when he realized that I was all right, he split. And I realized for the first time that he had only come for that. He hadn’t come for the party at all.
And the following may also make a small, malicious point. There’s speculation that the central figure of my new novel, who is a black actor, is based on Sidney. Nothing could be further from the truth, but people naturally think that, because when they look around them, Sidney’s the only black actor they see. Well, that fact says a great deal more about this country than it says about black actors, or Sidney, or me.
(1968)
LETTERS
Letters from a Journey
When this selection of letters was published in the May 1963 issue of Harper’s magazine, it was introduced by Baldwin’s agent, Robert P. Mills, to whom these letters were largely addressed. Baldwin had been working on Another Country for five years when the editor of The New Yorker enticed Baldwin to travel to Africa and write about it. (He was also completing the essay “Down at the Cross,” which would become a major part of The Fire Next Time.) Baldwin departed in September 1961, accompanied by his sister Paula, whom he would leave with friends in Paris. As a guest of the government, he first made a stop in Israel, a place which, according to Mills, Baldwin looked upon as a gateway to Africa. But due to time pressures he first made a detour to Turkey to finish his novel. He had also agreed to be a literary judge for the Prix International des Éditeurs sponsored by Grove Press, thus forcing him to be in Mallorca in late April of the following year.
· · ·
Paris, September 15, 1961
I feel very strange and naked, but I guess that’s good. Appetite seems to be returning, and I’m able to work. And Paris is still beautiful, in spite of its danger and sorrow and age.
Pray for me.
Israel, October 5
This is almost the only night I’ve had since I got here when it’s been possible to write letters. Being a guest of the government really involves becoming an extremely well-cared-for parcel post package. But the visit seems, so far, to have been a great success: Israel and I seem to like each other. I’ve been trying, as usual, to do too many things at once and I’ve been keeping a diary of sorts of things as they happen—places I’ve been, people I’ve talked to—every night, when I come home. But I come home late and I get up early (the phone rings, and it’s the hotel manager informing me that “my” car has arrived) and off I and the government go—tomorrow morning, for example, to the Negev and the Dead Sea. I am always worried about wearing out my welcome, and imagined I’d be gone by now: but no, they keep saying “Please don’t hurry.” Still, I’m leaving Monday morning.
I must say, it’s rather nice to be in a situation in which I haven’t got to count and juggle and sweat and be responsible for a million things that I’m absolutely unequipped to do. All I’m expected to do is observe, and, hopefully, to write about that which I’ve observed. This is not going to be easy; and yet, since this trip is clearly my prologue to Africa, it has become very important to me to assess what Israel makes me feel. In a curious way, since it really does function as a homeland, however beleaguered, you can’t walk five minutes without finding yourself at a border, can’t talk to anyone for five minutes without being reminded first of the mandate (British), then of the war—and of course the entire Arab situation, outside the country, and, above all, within, causes one to take a view of human life and right and wrong almost as stony as the land in which I presently find myself—well, to bring this thoroughly undisciplined sentence to a halt, the fact that Israel is a homeland for so many Jews (there are great faces here; in a way the whole world is here) causes me to feel my own homelessness more keenly than ever. (People say, “Where are you from?” And it causes me a tiny and resentful effort to say “New York”—what did I ever do to deserve so ghastly a birthplace?—and their faces fall.)
But just because my homelessness is so inescapably brought home to me, it begins, in some odd way, not only to be bearable, but to be a positive opportunity. It must be, must be made to be. My bones know, somehow, something of what waits for me in Africa. That is one of the reasons I have dawdled so long—I’m afraid. And, of course, I am playing it my own way, edging myself into it; it would be nice to be able to dream about Africa, but once I have been there, I will not be able to dream anymore. The truth is that there is something unutterably painful about the end of oppression—not that it has ended yet, on a black-white basis, I mean, but it is ending—and one flinches from the responsibility, which we all now face, of judging black people solely as people. Oh, well. I think of the poor Negroes of the U.S. who identify themselves with Africa, or imagine that they identify themselves with Africa—and on what basis? It would seem to be clear, but it is not: Africa has been black a long time, but American Negroes did not identify themselves with Africa until Africa became identified with power. This says something about poor human nature which indeed one would rather not be forced to see—enough of this. And at the same time, the continuing situation of the black people of this world, my awareness of the blandness with which white people commit and deny and defend their crimes, fill me with pain and rage. Well. This promises to be an extremely valuable journey.
Israel, October 8
Stood on a hill in Jerusalem today, looking over the border: the Arab-Israeli border. There is really something frightening about it. There is something insane about it, something which breaks the heart. I’ve been wandering up and down Israel for a couple of weeks now, have stayed in a kibbutz
near the Gaza Strip, have been in an art colony near Haifa, wandered through bazaars; and indeed all of this, all I have seen, is Jewish—if you like. But it is really the Middle East, it has that spice and stink and violence and beauty, and it is not Jewish so much as it is Semitic; and I am very struck by the realization that the Semites were nomads and this is still, somehow, the atmosphere of the entire country.
What is a Jew? An old question, I know, but it presents itself to one with great force once one is in this country. Jehovah, Christ, and Allah all came out of this rocky soil, this fragile handkerchief at the gate of the Middle East. And the people—the Jews—of this beleaguered little country are united, as far as I can tell, by two things only (and perhaps “united” is too strong a word). One is the experience of the last world war and the memory of the six million—which is to say that they are united by the evil that is in the world, that evil which has victimized them so savagely and so long. But is this enough to make a personality, to make an identity, to make a religion? (And what, precisely, is a religion? And how dreary, how disturbing, to find oneself asking, now, questions which one supposed had been answered forever!) But one is forced to ask these kindergarten questions because the only other thing which unites the Jews here is the resurrection of the Hebrew language.
The most religious—or, in any case, the most orthodox—people here are the Yemenites, who are also the most lively, and who seem to produce the only artists—well, that is not quite true; but it is almost true: they produce the only artists who can be said to be working out of the Jewish or Semitic or nomadic past. They are also at the bottom of the social ladder, coming from the most primitive conditions—having been, in fact, only yesterday transported from the twelfth century. Well. In spite of the fact that the nation of Israel cannot afford, and is far too intelligent, to encourage any form of social discrimination, the fact remains that there is a tremendous gap between a Jew from Russia or France or England or Australia and a Jew but lately arrived from the desert. Is the resurrection of the language enough to bridge this gap? And one cannot help asking—I cannot help asking—if it is really desirable to resurrect the Jewish religion. I mean, the Jews themselves do not believe in it anymore: it was simply one of the techniques of their survival—in the desert. Lord, I don’t know. One cannot but respect the energy and the courage of this handful of people: but one can’t but suspect that a vast amount of political cynicism, on the part of the English and the Americans, went into the creation of this state; and I personally cannot help being saddened by the creation, at this late date, of yet another nation—it seems to me that we need fewer nations, not more: the blood that has been spilled for various flags makes me ill.
Perhaps I would not feel this way if I were not on my way to Africa: what conundrums await one there! Or perhaps I would not feel this way if I were not helplessly and painfully—most painfully—ambivalent concerning the status of the Arabs here. I cannot blame them for feeling dispossessed; and in a literal way, they have been. Furthermore, the Jews, who are surrounded by forty million hostile Muslims, are forced to control the very movements of Arabs within the state of Israel. One cannot blame the Jews for this necessity; one cannot blame the Arabs for resenting it. I would—indeed, in my own situation in America, I do, and it has cost me—costs me—a great and continuing effort not to hate the people who are responsible for the societal effort to limit and diminish me.
Someone said to me the other day that the real trouble between Arabs and Jews has to do with the fact that their idea of a nation—the Arab idea, the Jewish idea—is essentially religious. For the word “religious,” I read “tribal.” Is it not possible to hope that we can begin, at long last, to transcend the tribe? But I will think about this more another day. Whether I want to or not.
Anyway—Jerusalem, God knows (!), is golden when the sun is shining on all that yellow stone. What a blue sky! What a beautiful city—you remember that song? “Oh, What a Beautiful City!” Well, that’s the way Jerusalem makes one feel. I stood today in the upper room, the room where Christ and his disciples had the Last Supper, and I thought of Mahalia and Marian Anderson and “Go Down, Moses” and of my father and of that other song my father loved to sing: “I want to be ready/To walk in Jerusalem/Just like John.” And here I am, far from ready, in one of the homelands which has given me my identity and on my way to another. To ask oneself “What is a Jew?” is also, for me, to ask myself “What is a black man?” And what, in the name of heaven, is an American Negro? I have a gloomy feeling that I won’t find any answers in Africa, only more questions.
Turkey, October 20
In great haste, far from my own desk. A virus, Mideastern, & trouble, account for my silence. News from Paris bad, Algerian situation unutterable; & Paula, especially as my sister, much too close to it, & frightened. (“Fear,” she says, “is an awful thing.”) Well. More of this in a real letter.
I have an awful feeling that I’ve only moved Paula from a ghetto to a developing plastique battleground.
But have been working, steadily, just the same, & will send a batch of stuff, finally, including contracts, before I finally leave here.
Hold on, hold on. Don’t be mad at me, if you are, this is a fearful passage.
Turkey, November 20
I am seeing Kenyatta’s daughter sometime this week—she is in town; and this encounter, along with the news of the famine in Kenya, may take me out of here at a moment’s notice. But I hope not, it would be extremely awkward for me now. I’m barreling ahead with the book, because I want the book in NY before I go to Africa. I dare not predict, again, the time that it will take; but I’m very close to the end.
I am also working on “Down at the Cross.” It’s my hope that God will be good and that it won’t take too long to hammer into its final shape. For I also want that in NY before I leave here—I particularly want it to be finished before I try to deal with Africa. The Israeli notes are still disorganized, and the Israeli story—for reasons which have nothing to do with the Israeli character, really—is fairly disheartening. But I must do it. And I am also preparing an essay on Turkey. With these last two, I can only hope to have everything down, and up-to-date, before I take off.
My actor friend’s military duties have taken him to the Turkish Siberia, and I’m staying with his sister and brother-in-law. I had meant to move to a hotel, but they all considered this to be an insult. They’re very nice people. There’s something very sweet, for me, and moving and rare in feeling their impulse to make life as easy as possible for me, so that I can work. I’ve gained a little weight here and this is taken, apparently, as an enormous justification for Turkey’s existence. Well, I exaggerate, of course—but life has been, after my prolonged storm, very restful here. The only trouble is that you do not know how you can possibly repay such people. Perhaps it is important to learn that there are some people who don’t think of payment—time, perhaps, for me to learn how to take. If you don’t learn how to take, you soon forget how to give.
Best to Anne, Alison, Freddie, you. I hope Freddie’s having some hard second thoughts about that business of being a writer. But he sounded pretty definite. Your trials with me, dear friend, may prove to be but a weak rehearsal for what’s coming.
Love. Write.
Turkey, December
I’ve just cabled you to send money to me here, so I can get out, and money to meet me in Paris. I thought I had explained to you—but perhaps I didn’t, I’ve been so goddamn swamped and upset—that I am going, now, Saturday, from Paris to Dakar and Brazzaville. I have temporarily eliminated Kenya mainly because I wanted to have my novel finished before I went to Africa (have you received it and have you read it? anxiety is eating me up); and then because Kenyatta seemed never to be in Kenya; and finally because Turkish currency regulations do not allow one to buy traveler’s checks or take any money out of Turkey; so that I would have had to arrange to stop somewhere else, anyway. I first thought Athens, and then decided on Paris—at first bec
ause I thought Paula was still there, and now because I’m indescribably weary and depressed and weary of new places. Mary will be in Paris, I’ll spend the holidays with her, and take off at the beginning of the year. I’ll be there a month, and be in NY in February. I’ll certainly turn in one, possibly two, of the NYorker articles, and return to Africa in the spring and finish up their assignment in the summer. Then, back to NY, and the play. (I’m in correspondence with Gadg [Elia Kazan], he’ll be in Athens next month, but I, alas, will not be.)
This is one of the reasons I jumped at the Grove Press invitation: it gives me a deadline to get out of NY. For I must say, my dear Bob—though I am perhaps excessively melancholy today—one thing which this strange and lonely journey has made me feel even more strongly is that it’s much better for me to try to stay out of the U.S. as much as possible. I really do find American life intolerable and, more than that, personally menacing. I know that I will never be able to expatriate myself again—but I also somehow know that the incessant strain and terror—for me—of continued living there will prove, finally, to be more than I can stand. This, like all such decisions, is wholly private and unanswerable, probably irrevocable and probably irrational—whatever that last word may mean. What it comes to is that I am already fearfully menaced—within—by my vision and am under the obligation to minimize my dangers. It is one thing to try to become articulate where you are, relatively speaking, left alone to do so and quite another to make this attempt in a setting where the terrors of other people so corroborate your own. I think that I must really reconcile myself to being a transatlantic commuter—and turn to my advantage, and not impossibly the advantage of others, the fact that I am a stranger everywhere. For the fact won’t change. In order for me to make peace with American life, as it is now lived, I would have to surrender any attempt to come to terms with my own. And this surrender would mean my death.