to bear witness, as long as breath is in him
May 26, 2022 9:07 AM Subscribe
"It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it - no time can be easy if one is living through it. I think it is simply that he walked his streets and saw them, and tried not to lie about what he saw: his public streets and his private streets, which are always so mysteriously and inexorably connected; but he trusted that connection." - Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare, by James Baldwin.
I've been through that phase, where I hated all the dead white male writers, where I hated all the racist writers, where I hated all the misogynist writers, where I felt disappointed even in James Baldwin himself when some sentence or some side character's plot arc didn't go far enough to temporarily douse the fire inside me. I don't know when I grew out of it, don't know if I have fully grown out of it tbh, but this essay of his was surely a huge part of my growth. Thank you for posting this. Baldwin is truly a hero for the ages.
posted by MiraK at 11:50 AM on May 26, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by MiraK at 11:50 AM on May 26, 2022 [8 favorites]
Baldwin is so good. His heart always speaks to my heart.
posted by Well I never at 3:36 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Well I never at 3:36 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've seen pieces of this essay quoted, but I've never read it in full before. It's really fantastic.
"Similarly, the language with which I had grown up had certainly not been the King's English. An immense experience had forged this language; it had been (and remains) one of the tools of a people's survival, and it revealed expectations which no white American could easily entertain. The authority of this language was in its candor, its irony, its density, and its beat: this was the authority of the language which produced me, and it was also the authority of Shakespeare."
posted by mixedmetaphors at 4:37 PM on May 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
"Similarly, the language with which I had grown up had certainly not been the King's English. An immense experience had forged this language; it had been (and remains) one of the tools of a people's survival, and it revealed expectations which no white American could easily entertain. The authority of this language was in its candor, its irony, its density, and its beat: this was the authority of the language which produced me, and it was also the authority of Shakespeare."
posted by mixedmetaphors at 4:37 PM on May 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
Read that beautiful essay and the linked bio which had a link to this poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/88885/staggerlee-wonders
I think you should read it.
posted by aquanaut at 6:00 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think you should read it.
posted by aquanaut at 6:00 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
His heart always speaks to my heart.
That is a lovely turn of phrase. That reminds me of a bit of Anis Mojgani verse:
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 6:31 PM on May 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
That is a lovely turn of phrase. That reminds me of a bit of Anis Mojgani verse:
Every corner of my heart loves you
In a field of fields you are the largest field
In a field of moons you are the most moons
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 6:31 PM on May 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
I am so glad you posted this. I need to spend more time with Baldwin - his words take more concentration than I usually am willing to give, but always worth it.
posted by janell at 9:58 PM on May 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by janell at 9:58 PM on May 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
wow. thanks, aquanaut, and seconding: read that "Staggerlee wonders" poem. so many potent pithy timely lines. thanks too, mhoye.
posted by 20 year lurk at 10:07 PM on May 26, 2022
posted by 20 year lurk at 10:07 PM on May 26, 2022
I almost feel like it’s impossible to write that well anymore.
posted by haptic_avenger at 4:44 AM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by haptic_avenger at 4:44 AM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Thanks for sharing this.
"The greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the
lives of the people. He could have done this only through love — by knowing, which is
not the same thing as understanding, that whatever was happening to anyone was
happening to him. It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it — no time
can be easy if one is living through it. I think it is simply that he walked his streets and
saw them, and tried not to lie about what he saw: his public streets and his private
streets, which are always so mysteriously and inexorably connected; but he trusted that
connection."
posted by mareli at 5:49 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
"The greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the
lives of the people. He could have done this only through love — by knowing, which is
not the same thing as understanding, that whatever was happening to anyone was
happening to him. It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it — no time
can be easy if one is living through it. I think it is simply that he walked his streets and
saw them, and tried not to lie about what he saw: his public streets and his private
streets, which are always so mysteriously and inexorably connected; but he trusted that
connection."
posted by mareli at 5:49 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
"That is why he is called a poet. And his responsibility, which is also his joy and his
strength and his life, is to defeat all labels and complicate all battles by insisting on the
human riddle, to bear witness, as long as breath is in him, to that mighty, unnameable,
transfiguring force which lives in the soul of man, and to aspire to do his work so well
that when the breath has left him, the people — all people! — who search in the rubble
for a sign or a witness will be able to find him there."
posted by mareli at 6:29 AM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
strength and his life, is to defeat all labels and complicate all battles by insisting on the
human riddle, to bear witness, as long as breath is in him, to that mighty, unnameable,
transfiguring force which lives in the soul of man, and to aspire to do his work so well
that when the breath has left him, the people — all people! — who search in the rubble
for a sign or a witness will be able to find him there."
posted by mareli at 6:29 AM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm going to have to read that a few more times, because I'm not sure at first read what the essay means. I'm not familiar with James Baldwin as a writer but I found the writing difficult to parse.
posted by averageamateur at 9:40 AM on May 27, 2022
posted by averageamateur at 9:40 AM on May 27, 2022
This is a fine essay, thanks for sharing mhoye.
To see an example of Baldwin on a searing personal level, there is Notes of a Native Son. He talks about his encounters with racism in the middle of the last century, his difficult father. The voice is sad, angry, revelatory.
For his fiction, his short story, Sonny's Blues is incomparable. Written in the late 1950s, it's a masterpiece that touches on so many matters of the heart and mind. It's is haunting, tragic, yet in the end also elevating.
"This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive. Just the same, this picture gets all mixed up in my mind with pictures I had other when she was younger. The way I always see her is the way she used to be on a Sunday afternoon, say, when the old folks were talking after the big Sunday dinner. I always see her wearing pale blue. She'd be sitting on the sofa. And my father would be sitting in the easy chair, not far from her. And the living room would be full of church folks and relatives. There they sit, in chairs all around the living room, and the night is creeping up outside, but nobody knows it yet. You can see the darkness growing against the windowpanes and you hear the street noises every now and again, or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine from one of the churches close by, but it's real quiet in the room. For a moment nobody's talking, but every face looks darkening, like the sky outside. And my mother rocks a little from the waist, and my father's eyes are closed. Everyone is looking at something a child can't see. For a minute they've forgotten the children. Maybe a kid is lying on the rug, half asleep. Maybe somebody's got a kid in his lap and is absent-mindedly stroking the lad's head. Maybe there's a kid, quiet and big-eyed, curled up in a big chair in the comer. The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frighten the child obscurely. He hopes that the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop-will never die. He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won't be sitting around the living room, talking about where they've come from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them and their kinfolk.
But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending. In a moment someone will get up and turn on the light. Then the old folks will remember the children and they won't talk any more that day. And when light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens he's moved just a little closer to that darkness outside. The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him."
posted by storybored at 6:16 PM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
To see an example of Baldwin on a searing personal level, there is Notes of a Native Son. He talks about his encounters with racism in the middle of the last century, his difficult father. The voice is sad, angry, revelatory.
For his fiction, his short story, Sonny's Blues is incomparable. Written in the late 1950s, it's a masterpiece that touches on so many matters of the heart and mind. It's is haunting, tragic, yet in the end also elevating.
"This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive. Just the same, this picture gets all mixed up in my mind with pictures I had other when she was younger. The way I always see her is the way she used to be on a Sunday afternoon, say, when the old folks were talking after the big Sunday dinner. I always see her wearing pale blue. She'd be sitting on the sofa. And my father would be sitting in the easy chair, not far from her. And the living room would be full of church folks and relatives. There they sit, in chairs all around the living room, and the night is creeping up outside, but nobody knows it yet. You can see the darkness growing against the windowpanes and you hear the street noises every now and again, or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine from one of the churches close by, but it's real quiet in the room. For a moment nobody's talking, but every face looks darkening, like the sky outside. And my mother rocks a little from the waist, and my father's eyes are closed. Everyone is looking at something a child can't see. For a minute they've forgotten the children. Maybe a kid is lying on the rug, half asleep. Maybe somebody's got a kid in his lap and is absent-mindedly stroking the lad's head. Maybe there's a kid, quiet and big-eyed, curled up in a big chair in the comer. The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frighten the child obscurely. He hopes that the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop-will never die. He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won't be sitting around the living room, talking about where they've come from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them and their kinfolk.
But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending. In a moment someone will get up and turn on the light. Then the old folks will remember the children and they won't talk any more that day. And when light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens he's moved just a little closer to that darkness outside. The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him."
posted by storybored at 6:16 PM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Per storybored's recommendation, I will save you the google (links both go to Native Son), but Sonny's Blues is available here.
posted by minedev at 12:35 PM on June 1, 2022
posted by minedev at 12:35 PM on June 1, 2022
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