December 1975

By Leon Stevens

While it is still debated whether or not gays have made a disproportionately large contribution to the arts, we can be sure that a significant segment of the world's art history may be ascribed to homosexual artists. Due to the repression of gay self-revelation in past centuries, we can only speculate as to which artists were homosexual or which works reflect the gay human experience.

Many gay literati successfully concealed their true inspiration in heterosexual contexts. They disguised or even sublimated their native expression leaving few clues as to their sexual orientation. Many creative gays, however, perhaps anticipating more understanding publics in the future, left clear messages and inventive signals communicating their preference. One such artist is the German novelist Franz Kafka.

Although German aesthetes have been fighting or ignoring it for decades, Kafka revealed homosexual tendencies rather generously in his works. The bad dream is probably the most typical and apparent device used by Kafka to camouflage his thoughts. He gives every indication that his works should be viewed as dreams.

The atmosphere in his novels is always foggy, hazy, smokey, dim or dark. His characters are often sleepy, falling asleep, or just awaking. It is possible that Kafka, a contemporary of Freud, used dreams as a sort of personal psychotherapy, but more likely, dreams afforded him a degree of free expression. They

HIGH GEAR

Franz Kafka

permitted him to be vague, spontaneous, and disconnected.

Since one cannot be held accountable for what he dreams, no matter how outrageous the dream, the novelist could deflect guilt through dream sequences. Dreams disrupt inhibitions and reveal subconscious desires, a phenomenon which the late nineteenth century novelist fully exploits.

Naive sensuality pervades Kafka's writing. Many of his male characters are dressed in

On The Road Homosexuals in Literature

By Don Avery

Many have called The Front Runner a breakthrough novel on the subject of male homosexuality. It's a best seller written in the journalistic best seller tradition. Ms. Warren is certainly well informed on the language and mannerism of both gay and sports with the usual dramatic high and optimistic conclusion, it is well researched and required a great deal of historical awareness on Ms. Warren's part. I enjoyed reading it. It was moving sentimentally, but it isn't a breakthrough novel. It's a best seller, fortunate and well calculated to be written while the problems of gay individuals have reached national consciousness.

Probably the first breakthrough novel artistically and nationally was John Rechy's City of Night written in the early sixties. I was recently talking with a fellow writer in a bar about both novels. He said that Rechy's novel was depressing while The Front Runner gave him hope. At the time I didn't understand how he could have come to that conclusion, being as the central character in The

Front Runner is killed at the Olympics by a sniper's bullet while the City of Night character endures. Being slightly drunk at the time, overlooked the key elements of best sellers; dramatics and sentiment..

The John Rechy character roams from place to place finding an endless city of night where people enact modes of sexual gratification with little difference from what they enacted the night before, or for that matter, the week, month, or year before.

There is little drama in their lives other than the drama of daily survival. The book is written (beautifully) with a down beat. The main character, a hustler who wants to be a writer, isn't a hero figure and moves in and out of situations driven by some internal restlessness that he doesn't come to terms with. There is sentiment in this book, but because the character restlessly moves from city to city, he isn't attached to anything for long. Even when he is offered a lasting love relationship by someone he's attracted to, he leaves it, preferring to freely and aimlessly.

roam

The great achievement John

tight-fitting, revealing clothing. This is true especially of the novels America and The Castle. In The Castle, such a snugly clad character strips to display his attractive muscular figure to the teased and admiring protagonist, "Mr. K."

Kafka may portray a homosexual love act through symbolic interactions as he does through this one from America: "And Karl drew his fingers back and forth between the fingers of the stoker, whose glistening

Rechy has made with this novel, is that the characters are people I see and know. It's a reflective novel that mirrors the motivations of such people, their loneliness, and their strength.

City of Night is a reality, and introspection of ourselves (straight or gay) and our situation is often painful and depressing. But by introspecting, we become aware, and one can only make a real change for the better by becoming aware.

Ms. Warren is wise in choosing the sports world as a foundation for her novel. It's every teenagers erotic fantasy of homosexuals to have massive athletic men confess their homosexual desires and then prove their virility by winning major sports events. It's erotic; it makes good reading, but the chances of those fantasies ever becoming reality are slim.

I think it's important to read what gay writers are writing about us.

Tennesse Williams has often used homosexual themes in his plays, but people are usually unaware that he has two books. One Arm, and Hard Candy, which contain his early short stories. Recently Mr. Williams admitted his homosexuality on T.V. and his newly published

eyes made him look as if he were in a trance,... And Karl wept as he kissed the stoker's hand, and took the sweaty almost lifeless hand and pressed

it to his cheeks, like a treasure which he must abandon." Many events in Kafka's novels resemble excerpts from the wet dreams of young closeted gays who strive to suppress their homosexuality. In one such episode, a man called Delmarche, clothed only in his undershorts, pursues and captures the hero Karl, then: "Karl lay fast in his arms and pressed his face almost senselessly into his chest

Delmarche placed him carefully on the ground, kneeled over him, stroked him... and admired him."

Kafka always (and understandably) stops short of orgasm in his erotic depictions. Instead he employs the earth as a symbol of sexual climax. Most of Kafka's sexual pairs ultimately find themselves on the ground as in this incident from America in which a character named Robinson: "laid his arms around Karl's neck, and hung on him with all his might. He wrapped both his legs around Karl's and in an instant brought him down to the earth."

Kafka indicates a strong aversion to femininity. His women are generally portrayed as butch, masculine types. In fact, we can never be sure that his women are not actually men. One of these "Amazons" is described in a wrestling duel with Karl: "And she actually took him in her grip and carried him with her body forged of steel from sports almost as far as the window." And commenting on another woman he notes, "And she begins to scream dreadfully, like a man,

...

memoirs. His early short stories are often depressing but they're significant because they're superbly crafted artistically, and they're the only real history we have of gay life in the fifties.

In his memoirs Mr. Williams tells of a life full of pain with little happiness. Yet Mr. Williams

Page 9

and screams like this for hours." Kafka was engaged to marry several times but never actually married. Conservative scholars blame his unhappy sex life on his late physical maturation, in an effort to rescue him from the stigma of homosexuality. On the contrary, his, writing plainly shows that it is not sexual immaturity but sexual ambiguity which factors heavily in his view of the world. Even homosexual incest does not escape Kafka's fantasies as his literary deputy, Karl, at one point expresses a wish to climb into bed with his favorite uncle.

Unfortunately for Kafka at the turn of the century there was no "gay scene" to speak of in the Austrian imperial capital of Vienna. He lead a life of hopeless and immeasurable frustration. He had few friends, a scanty social life, and was virtually unknown to his contemporaries as an artist. The search for justice comes forward as the leading theme in most of his works. His protagonists, who are obvious projections of himself, are ever searching for a way out of an etheral maze of incomprehensible situations. They all search for an ultimate personal truth which they also avoid with. equal passion.

no

The psychology of a closeted gay has few parallels, and it is wonder that heterosexual critics find many monumental literary achievements largely inscrutable. Although puritanical scholars choose to avert attention from certain vital motifs in Kafka's accomplishments and those of other artists, no gay reader, could bypass or mistake lines such as: "He laid his arm around Karl and pulled him to himself between his legs. Karl endured this with pleasure...."

has survived with a staggering amount of talent and an enormous amount of strength.

In the seventies we have more of a chance to be happy, whole, productive people. But we must be aware of ourselves and our history. Fantasies are nice, but they still are a flight from reality.

2785 euclid heights blvd. cleveland heights, ohio 44106 (216) 321-6466

WALD'S

FACES

by appointment on,

Skin Care and Make-Up Artistry

New World Baircuts

1846 Coventry 371-1627 17124 Detroit 521-2611

BY APPOINTMENT