The Harlem Renaissance and the Lost Generation:
Celia Nijdam
MA Thesis American Studies Faculty of Humanities
University of Amsterdam Advisor: Dr. J.G.L.A Riesthuis Second Reader: Dr. G.H. Blaustein 30-06-2014
Contents
1. Introduction...2
2. The Lost Generation...11
2.1 Writing About Society and the Self...14
2.2 Creating a New Identity...21
2.3 Gender...23
2.3 Apostasy in Lost Generation works...25
2.4 Time as Subject...26
3. The Harlem Renaissance...28
3.1 Writing About Society and the Self...30
3.2 Creating a New Identity...35
3.3 Gender...39
3.4 Apostasy in Harlem Renaissance Works...43
3.5 Writing About Race...46
4. Common Ground...49
5. Conclusion...55
Bibliography...57
1. Introduction
The 1920s in the United States were a time of innovation and development. Not only
industrially and economically, but also artistically. Modernism in art and literature was on the rise, offering new ways of expression. However, people living in this era had to deal with the devastating aftermath of World War I and the sense of feeling lost that occurred after the war. Many intellectuals and artists tried to find new ways of dealing with the changes in society at the time. This search for a new way of expression and the attempt to deal with feelings of loss and alienation led to new literary expressions. Within this artistic development two groups are of great importance. The first group is the writers that are now known, thanks to Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, as the "Lost Generation". The second group were the artists, authors and intellectuals who contributed to the Harlem Renaissance. In this thesis the statement will be examined that the members of the Lost Generation and of the Harlem Renaissance represented the changing society and sense of alienation present in the 1920s in a similar way.
Comprised of men and women who came of age during WWI, the Lost Generation is known for its disappointment in the older generation. Whereas, as Malcolm Cowley argues in his anthology A Second Flowering, their British contemporaries suffered more losses during World War I,
The Americans still had that accumulated nervous energy, and their disillusionment was chiefly an attitude to be proclaimed in a style full of bounce. In truth they were not so much disillusioned as disaffiliated, and not so much by the war itself as by the events that followed it. Their capacity for illusion had not been destroyed, but merely displaced.1
Many of them spent time in Europe, looking for a cultural satisfaction they could not find in America. Frederick Hoffman writes, and quotes Gertrude Stein's Paris France:
Writers came from America to write, and they could not do that at home. They could be dentists at home, because that was practical, and America was above all practical. For the Americans had invented and perfected "the characteristic thing of the
1 Malcolm Cowley, A Second Flowering. Works and Days of the Lost Generation (New York: The Viking Press, 1973), 15.
twentieth century," which was "the idea of production in a series, that one thing should be like every other thing, and that it should all be made alike and quantities of them.2
What the Lost Generation writers who went to Paris tried to find was a uniqueness in their lives and work. Their nervous energy and feeling of dissatisfaction with America could be better expressed in Europe where new artistic movements were on the rise.
The criticism this young generation expressed through their work was based on three failures of society.3 Firstly there was a failure of communication between the older and the
younger generation. The younger generation felt the need for a new style in literature and poetry, however they experienced "a loss of precision in the communication of basic ideasin the university and in education in general; in the morality of public life; in the arts
themselves."4 Secondly a failure of social meanings and values occurred, the younger
generation became aware of a hypocritical attitude towards social values from the elder generation and attempted to point this out in their works. And thirdly the younger group was critical of the failure of morality they felt. This meant they became aware of "a failure to achieve and to permit other to achieve a normal, healthy life" in the lives of the older generation.5 These failures were revealed by the atrocities of war and the outcome of the
conflict.6 However, instead of becoming socially or politically active they felt that the
individual was more important than the whole. They started to imagine ways of making money quickly without thinking about the common good. The idea that the world would function properly without their help was ingrained in the thinking of these young people, excusing them from contributing to the functioning of that same world.7 Living intensely
became an important feature of life. Making money and making art where the ultimate
2 Frederick J. Hoffman, The Twenties. American Writing in the Postwar Decade (New York: The Viking Press, 1995), 25. 3 Ibid., 5 4 Ibid., 7 5 Ibid., 11 6 Ibid., 5 7
expression of individual freedom.8 The image we now have of the 1920s as the Jazz Age
embodied in, for example, the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald was also shaped by these authors. The Harlem Renaissance consisted of African American authors, artists and
intellectuals who came together in the early 1920s. Here, renaissance does not mean an actual rebirth of Harlem, but a flowering of the evolution of African American art and intellectual culture. There was also a rise in interest in African American art and culture, which helped to make the Harlem Renaissance so successful. This renaissance developed in Harlem in New York where African American artists would gather and develop a new aesthetic which could either help develop an African American culture or help in the integration of African Americans in society. There was a certain amount of interaction and contact between the authors of the Lost Generation and the Harlem Renaissance. Whether this was because of a growing interest in the primitive from the white artists or because these also felt racial issues to be a worthy cause differs from individual to individual. These two groups have several obvious differences, the most important one being that they are separated by race. However, arguments can also be made that they have more traits in common than is apparent after a cursory glance. This argument is primarily offered by cultural historians Ann Douglas and David Levering Lewis.
To be able to research in what way the Harlem Renaissance and the Lost Generation are linked, and what characteristics they share, it is important to first discuss which
characteristics make the Lost Generation actually lost. This will be done by discussing the theories Malcolm Cowley developed in his autobiographical novel Exiles Return and in his work on his contemporaries; A Second Flowering.9 Cowley's letters also provide a source for
his ideas on the Lost Generation.10 Furthermore, the works of several Lost Generation writers
will be discussed, firstly F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited" and "Echoes of the Jazz Age" both of these works give insights into the 1920s and its literary traditions.11 Ernest
Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is not only an example of a Lost Generation work, but also the book that coined the term.12 It is an example of a work written and set during the 1920s
8 Ibid., 15
9 Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return (London: Bodley Head, 1961) Cowley Second Flowering
10
Hans Bak, The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1987 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2014)
11
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Babylon Revisited", (1931) —."Echoes of the Jazz Age", (1931)
12
which reflects on the lives of the Lost Generation. Djuna Barnes was an author who, although a part of the Lost Generation, wrote poetry influenced by a Gothic style. Her novel
Nightwood, set in inter-war Paris, deals with may themes including alienation, estrangement
and the search for an (gender) identity.13 Kay Boyle is a second female Lost Generation
author. Although she herself claims to never have been part of that particular group but scholars place her within that tradition. Her addendum to Robert McAlmon's Being Geniuses
Together shows how the search for a place in which to belong went on even when the authors
left America. The discussion of these works will show what elements made the Lost Generation lost and how they dealt with these feelings in their works.
Secondly this thesis will discuss Douglas' argument about the Harlem Renaissance and the Lost Generation. In addition several other sources will be discussed to support her claim. Consequently it will be made clear what aspects of feeling lost are shared by the Harlem Renaissance. In her work on the 1920s in New York Ann Douglas states that the members of the Harlem Renaissance were just as much a lost generation, or even more so, as the actual Lost Generation:
This, too, was a Lost Generation in several senses. If the white moderns thought of themselves as orphans, the black moderns, whose ancestors were kidnapped from their nave land and sold into slavery in an alien country. were, in fact, America's only true orphaned group.14
However, the sense of being lost was a more temporary state after WW I for the specific white authors. Whereas the white writers felt that they lost their promised future, this future was never promised to the African American authors who therefore found ways to express themselves with more hope.15
Yet, the claim Douglas makes about the Harlem Renaissance writers being lost as well is based on several similarities between the two groups. According to Douglas both groups suffered from the results of the apostasy, or loss of faith, that was present in this time. This
13 Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1937)
14 Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995): 83.
loss of faith meant that both groups needed to find new ways to provide the guidance that religion provided the generations before them. She points out that "the lives and work of Gilpin, McKay, Toomer, Larsen, Thurman and Cullen are studies in the mixed moods of elation and melancholia, of anguish laced with stylistic innovation, commercial know-how and (in the cases of Gilpin, Toomer and Thurman) booze, that we think of as trademark lost-generation material."16 Secondly, Douglas claims that this generation was a theatrical
generation. And that both Caucasian and African American artists and authors focused on theatre, spectacle, irony and self-reflection. This focus on theatre and the arts was also a way for a part of the African American community to find themselves. They discovered a cultural and social appreciation of blues, jazz and poetry. Jazz, blues and poetry offered both a way for self-expression but also for inclusions in the American mainstream. The excitement of the new forms of expression led to, as David Levering Lewis called it, "a white invasion".17 This
led to the two groups interacting more and exchanging ideas, knowingly or not. As Douglas puts it "Cross-race analogies fostered by cultural proximity and creative rivalry
proliferated."18 What is meant here is that cultural cross-pollination and rivalry resulted in
works that seem alike in tone and subject matter. Douglas uses Nella Larsen's Quicksand and Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring as examples of Harlem Renaissance novels that depict a similar sense of alienation as Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Fitzgerald's The
Great Gatsby. She does not want to imply that the two groups of authors knew each other or
knowingly shared ideas, she calls it "both patterns, of unmistakable influence and looser analogy, speak volumes about the degree to which, aware or otherwise, Black and white metropolitans stood on shared ground."19 There were some shared commonalities, but a
limited intellectual exchange. A third common factor was the rebellion against the previous generation. The Lost Generation, realizing promises would be broken, tried to rebel against their Gilded Age ancestors. The Harlem Renaissance in their turn also defied their elders by going against their "well-spoken Negritude". Their elders were notable figures such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois, however, they also went against the white Gilded Age.20
16 Douglas 83
17 David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Penguin Books, 1997): 162. 18 Douglas 82 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 83
In addition to Douglas' shared characteristics David Levering Lewis offers a fourth mutual aspect. Both the Lost Generation and the artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance believed that they should alter society through art and culture. Lewis claims that the two groups share a symbiotic link, because they both wanted to create a different society through art. However, there are also some differences: being lost was a way for the Lost Generation to escape what Lewis described as an in their eyes, "materialistic, mammon-mad, homogenizing America".21 On the other hand, for the members of the Harlem Renaissance
the attempt to change society was a way to create a place they could belong in. They used bohemia and artistic expression as a strategy to claim a place in society. Whereas the Lost Generation saw a bohemian lifestyle and artistic expression as intrinsic values, the white artists felt that African Americans embodied something that they and the rest of white society lacked.22 Their African American contemporaries were not allowed to participate in the
society that the Lost Generation artist tried to escape. Therefore many Lost Generation artists embraced the culture of the African American bohemians and celebrated their virility.23
Although this was more a celebration of the exoticism the white intellectuals saw in their African American contemporaries, the Harlem Renaissance intellectuals saw this as an opportunity for racial progress.
Consequently there are two different ways to describe feeling loss, one connected to the idea that feeling lost stems from alienation and distance from society. The second way feeling lost can be seen is as a way of actively distancing oneself from society and embracing belonging to a fringe group. Both groups felt that artistic expression would create places in society where they could belong.
The works and lives of several authors will be discussed to exemplify elements of being lost in the Harlem Renaissance, namely: Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Countee Cullen, Clause McKay, Jean Toomer and Zora Neal Hurston. Jessie Fauset's work
Plum Bun represents the way middle-class African American women dealt with the struggles
of the time. She does not only describe the everyday life of an aspiring artist, she weaves in politics, social struggles and racism. Fauset's essays "Tracing Shadows", "Some Notes on Color" and "Nostalgia" will be used to show what aspects of feeling lost she embodies. In "Tracing Shadows " Fauset describes the personal impact of World War I from the
21 Lewis XVI 22
Ibid. 23
perspective of an outsider.24 Fauset explains the position of African Americans and the
relationship between African American and white artists in "Some Notes on
Color".25"Nostalgia" is an essay that explores different types of nostalgia for the homeland
immigrants or displaced people can feel. She pays particular attention to the way African Americans feel towards Africa and America.26 A second author who will be used as an
example is Langston Hughes. In Hughes' poetry his social activism shows especially in poems such as "America", "Goodbye, Christ" and "Negro."27 These poems show the difficult
position of African American's in early 20th century American, and how Hughes' dealt with this position. "Goodbye. Christ" also reflects the apostasy Douglas claimed both groups suffered from. For Hughes the 1920s were a time of hope and rediscovery of the African American culture. This can be seen in Hughes own essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain". In this essay he expresses concern with African American artists who do not embrace their heritage but instead only express themselves in more socially acceptable ways.28 All of these aspects of Hughes work make that he is sometimes considered to be a
advocate of the primitivism so prevalent in the 1920s, and especially in the works Lost Generation writers. But the combination of Hughes heritage and this form of artistic expression leads to a difficult situation. As David Chinitz explains in his essay "
Rejuvenation through Joy: Langston Hughes, Primitivism, and Jazz" several discourses exist about Hughes position in primitivism.29
Hughes and Fauset are not the only Harlem Renaissance authors who exhibit elements that are also present in the Lost Generation . As mentioned before Nella Larsen's Quicksand and Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring are also examples of Harlem Renaissance
24
Jessie Fauset, "Tracing Shadows," The Crisis, September 1915, 247.
25 Jessie Fauset, "Some Notes on Color," The World Tomorrow, March 1922, 365. <http://www.gale.cengage.com/pdf/samples/sp666181.pdf>
26
Jessie Fauset, "Nostalgia," The Crisis, August 1921, 154.
27 Langston Hughes, "America," in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 258. See also: Appendix 1; Hughes, "Goodbye, Christ," in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 266. See also: Appendix 2; Hughes, "Negro", in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 262 See also: Appendix 3.
28
Langston Hughes, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," The Nation, June 1926
29 David Chinitz, "Rejuvenation Through Joy: Langston Hughes, Primitivism and Jazz," American Literary History 9, no. 1 (1997)
authors feeling lost.30 Countee Cullen's poems "Heritage" and "To France" and Claude
McKay's "The Tropics in New York" and "On a Primitive Canoe" are all expressions of the nostalgia Fauset describes in her essay.31 Jean Toomer's novel Cane is an example of a work
that is rooted in both the traditions of the Harlem Renaissance and the Lost Generation.32
Zora Neale Hurston's "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" is an essay written by her in 1928 and reflects on her life as a colored woman.33 It deals with feelings of alienation en trying to
find an identity. These works will be used to explain how the sense of feeling lost is expressed in the works and lives of Harlem Renaissance authors.
Lastly this thesis will look into people and moments in the history of the Harlem Renaissance and the Lost Generation that are part of both groups. White patronage was a common
occurrence during the Harlem Renaissance.34 The magazine Broom was such a moment in
history, both Malcolm Cowley and Jean Toomer wrote for the magazine. Waldo Frank mentored Jean Toomer while he wrote Cane. Not all Harlemites embraced the white presence in Harlem. In "When the Negro was in Vogue" Hughes describes the lives of himself and his contemporaries in Harlem in the 1920's. This descriptive essay shows the way the Harlem Renaissance dealt with the interest of white intellectuals in the bohemian lifestyle in Harlem. Others, Jessie Redmon Fauset included, refused to been seen as a "fad".35
Hughes interaction with and musings about his white contemporaries show how the two groups interacted and that there was an overlap in their interests and attitudes. However, it also shows that there were several considerable differences and inequalities between the two
30
Nella Larsen, "Quicksand," in Harlem Renaissance: Five Novels of the 1920s, ed. Rafia Zafar (New York: Library of America, 2011)
31Cullen, "Heritage," in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 244. See also: Appendix 4; Cullen, "To France," in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 250. See also: Appendix 5; McKay, "The Tropics in New York," in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 292. See also: Appendix 6; McKay, "On a Primitive Canoe," in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Penguin Books, 1994) , 292. See also: Appendix 7.
32
Jean Toomer, Cane: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism, ed. Darwin T. Turner (New York: Norton, 1988)
33
Zora Neale Hurston, "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" (1928) 34
Lewis 98
35 Langston Hughes, "When the Negro Was in Vogue," in The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, Ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 76-91.
groups. Another place of interaction, next to Harlem, is Paris. Many Lost Generation writers left for Paris for different reasons. Some went to look for inspiration, others to escape
America for a while. They grouped together forming an expatriate America in Paris. Some of the authors of the Harlem Renaissance also went to Paris. Fauset went and wrote letters back home, Hughes went to Paris to write.36 Something else that happened in Paris was the
opening of spiritual leader George Gurdijeff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.37 This spiritual movement attracted both Harlemites such as Jean Toomer and Paris
based Lost Generation publisher Margaret Anderson. Kay Boyle was introduced to this movement, but went in a different direction and joined Raymond Duncan’s Platonic Akademia.38
These three parts will show that the Harlem Renaissance and the Lost Generation shared a definition of what it meant to be lost. And with that, it will be argued that the Harlem Renaissance was also a lost generation. To do this the works and lives of several authors will be discussed.
36 Lewis 86 37
Ibid., 71 38 Boyle 349
2. The Lost Generation
The Lost Generation was a group of writers and artist who felt and were considered to be metaphorically lost. They were mostly writers who came of age during World War I and whose lives were impacted as a resulted. Some of them emigrated to Paris to write there. As with many generations the boundaries are not clearly visible. However, most members of the Lost Generation group of authors were white men, and in some instances women.39 On
occasion works of authors from different groups are considered to be Lost Generation works, especially if they were more immersed in that culture.40 Malcolm Cowley, who chronicled
this generation both in his books and his letters, gave the following definition:
They had grown up and gone to college during a period of rapid change when time in itself seemed more important than the influence of class or locality. Now at last they had a slogan that proclaimed their feeling of separation from the older writers and of kinship with one and other.41
For Cowley the term lost generation is best used as a slogan to describe a certain group of writers who share a certain attitude. A group who is different than their predecessors who feel different but who also feel connected through time, which was a connection earlier authors never experienced.
The name Lost Generation was made famous by Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Hemingway used the term in the epigraph of his novel The Sun Also Rises. He quoted Stein as having said: "You are all a lost generation." He also quoted a biblical verse from Ecclesiastes: "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever... [...]."42 Other authors of the 1920s, however, did not call themselves a lost
39 Cowley Second Flowering 240 40
Lewis 50 41
Cowley Exile's Return 4 42 Hemingway Sun epigraph
generation.43 There are several theories and stories that surround the creation of the name.
What they have in common is that all explain that young people of the 1920s could be considered a lost generation. This is because they missed the part of their lives in which they were supposed to be civilized due to the war.44 Later more characteristics were applied to the
group, and theories started to emerge that tried to explain the works and lives of this generation. As mentioned before Frederick Hoffman, in his book The Twenties. American
Writing in the Postwar Decade. gave three reasons why the generation who came of age
during World War I were suddenly a lost generation. These reasons were lack of
communication between the older and younger generation, a failure of meaning and values in society and a failure of morality within the younger generation.45 The First World War made
all these failures come to light and eventually shaped a generation by providing common emotions.46 Especially the rebellion against the older generation was an important aspect of
the younger generation. The older generation adhered to, at least according to themselves, a more moral way of life. Their works would express the negative aspects of society from a clear moral perspectives while condemning immorality. The younger generation however tried to find a way to confront their audience with a realistic view on life.47 They felt they had
to break with the morality and values of their elders. Cowley mentions that this is reflected in the names of the magazines they wrote for: transition, Broom, 1923, This Quarter, S 4 N and
Secession.48 This seceding from the older generation led to a generation that had broken off from society and had nothing to turn to. They expressed this in their works through a kind of nostalgic longing for a childhood or a place they had never known.49
For many of the Lost Generation writers America represented everything they were against. As David Levering Lewis argued; they felt it was "materialistic, homogenizing and mammon-mad".50 Being lost was a way to distance themselves from this. They created spaces
for themselves through art and literature in which they could express themselves freely. Peter
43 Cowley Exile's Return 3
44James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle. Gertrude Stein & Company, (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), 274. 45
Hoffman 5 46
Cowley Second Flowering 3 47
Douglas 33 48
Cowley Exile's Return 9 49
Ibid. 50
Neagoe created with his Americans Abroad: an Anthology a collection containing many authors who moved to Paris during the 1920s, and in the introduction he writes "And certainly no other form of restriction can be more pernicious to artistic freedom than standardised opinion, standardised moral conceptions, standardised views on life."51 To
escape the homogenizing these authors created new styles, embraced primitivism or
discovered new spiritual directions. For some writers of the Lost Generation art was a way to change their society and create a better one instead. Some authors took their alienation from America literally and left the country. Many of them went to Paris and created a community of exiled writers. As Cowley writes: "the notion began to spread among writers that they were an oppressed minority, orphans and strangers in their own country, and that they better leave it as soon as possible."52 The feeling that they belonged to a fringe group that had no
place in normal American society grew. Their alienation from their home-country became so strong that they felt that leaving for another country was the only solution.
At the time some of the authors were aware of being part of an overarching group of writers who felt a certain amount of alienation. As mentioned before Malcolm Cowley wrote extensively about the 1920s. Moreover, in 1934 he published an autobiographical novel which told the story of a group of young writers during the 1920s, Exile's Return. It was not received well. Lewis Gannett criticized Cowley and his work: "He ridiculed Cowley's assertion that “a little group of serious thinking drunkards” amounted to “a generation, and probably the first real one in the history of American letters."53 Today however his book has
become more popular especially for its description of the lives of young people in the inter-war period.54 Cowley himself has written about his ideas of a unified generation of writers. In
a letter to Katherine Anne Porter he wrote: "the general pattern of the age was one of departure and return (or even, to use fancier words, alienation and reintegration)."55 This
pattern of departure and return was expressed through a new American style the writers created based on other styles.56 According to Cowley this era knew an interest in new forms
51 Peter Neagoe, Americans Abroad: An Anthology (The Hague: The Servire Press, 1930), X. 52
Cowley Second Flowering 14
53 Nancy F Cott, "Revisiting the Transatlantic 1920s: Vincent Sheean vs. Malcolm Cowley," American Historical Review 118, no 1 (2013): 47.
54 Ibid.
55 Bak 582 56
and ways of writing. And an increased interest in art being used not as a tool to improve society, but being used for personal use as a sort of religion.57 Cowley himself has been seen
as an example of a Lost Generation author. 2.1 Writing About Society and the Self
The Lost Generation writers wrote in great detail about their personal lives and troubles. For Cowley the Lost Generation exhibited great recklessness and selfishness in their work and personal lives. They were confident about their financial situation and about their lives as a whole.58 Their selfishness was expressed by a disinterest in society. The only thing that
mattered was having a "grand time" and making money. This was a time in which more people became artists and celebrities.59 Cowley views, and so will Ann Douglas, the 1920s as
a time in which theatrics played a big role. According to Cowley even the First World War felt like it was advertised like a spectacle. The young people of that time turned World War I into a "melodrama with sound effects and a musical setting."60 In their works irony,
self-reflection and truth were important forms of expression.61 These characteristics show a lack
of interest in the rest of the world. This disinterest was also noticeable in the way the younger generation "still clung to their childhood notion that the world would improve without their help; that was one of the reasons why most of them felt excused from seeking the common good." 62 They focused more on their own lives then on the state of the society around them.
Because this generation missed the part of their upbringing which was supposed to civilize them and prepare them for certain aspects of adulthood, they clung to these childish ideas.
Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises (1926) and his memoir A Movable
Feast (1964) both deal with 1920s Paris. The latter is an account of Hemingway's own time
in Paris, and deals with him meeting other notable authors and artists of the time. The first is a novel set in Paris and Pamplona and tells the story of several American expatriates living in Paris. This novel is fiction, but it shares many similarities with Hemingway's own life and
57 Bak 50 58
Cowley Second Flowering 26 59 Ibid., 15 60 Ibid., 8 61 Douglas 55 62
friends. The novel is drenched in alcohol and littered with lunch breaks, but manages to convey a picture of the American expatriate enclave in Paris. The self-reflectiveness of the novel can be found for example in this exchange between the French prostitute Georgette (self-identified by her "yellow card") and the protagonist Jake Barnes: "''Who are your friends?'' Georgette asked. ''Writers and artists." "There are lots of those on this side of the river." "Too many." "I think so, still some of them make money." "Oh yes.""63 Jake feels that
there are too many writers and artists on the Left Bank but they can still produce work that will earn them money, an important virtue to for the Lost Generation. Jake offers another moment of self-reflexivity when he ponders why his friend Robert Cohn cannot enjoy Paris. Jake wonders if this is because of the influence of H.L. Mencken. Jake believes that "So many young men get their likes and dislikes from Mencken."64 Mencken's distaste for the
complacency in American society dominated by prohibitionists, puritans and provincialism appealed to the Lost Generation writers. He expressed his dislikes honestly and with humor, not shying away from being offensive.65 Jake sees Mencken as being an influence on his
generation, but he also admits that he cannot read his work. To which his friend Harvey replies: "Oh, nobody reads him now."66 This shows that, although they were indebted to
them, the older generation was on its way out. And not only Hemingway's version of Mencken was becoming obsolete, in reality his inability to adapt to a changing society distanced him from his contemporaries.67 Some self-reflection also appears in the form of
Mike, Lady Brett Ashley's fiancé. He is bankrupt and enjoys being drunk to forget his
problems. At one point during one of his fights with Robert Cohn, whom he dislikes because Cohn and Brett lived together once, he yells: "I'm not one of you literary chaps. [...] I'm not clever. But I do know when I'm not wanted. Why don't you see when you're not wanted, Cohn." Cohn, is a writer who is obsessed with Brett and follows her everywhere, even though she does not always want him to. He is one of the literary types Mike mentions, he might be an intellectual but he cannot take other people's feelings into account, in contrast to Mike
63 Hemingway Sun 17 64
Ibid., 42
65 T.J. Jackson Lears, "Ambivalent Victorian: H.L. Mencken" The Wilson Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1989): 113 66
Hemingway Sun 43 67 Lears 116
who can. Hemingway criticized his fellow writers this way, pointing out that despite their intellect they lacked the ability to grasp certain social clues.
Hemingway's novel was written during the 1920s F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited" however was a look back on the 1920s written in 1931. It deals with a man called Charlie Wales who, after living in Paris in the 1920s, has returned to get his daughter back and create a new life for himself. During his stay in Paris Charlie Wales spent most of his money on alcohol and parties and quarreled with his wife. After her death their daughter Honoria went to live with Charlie's sister-in-law and her husband. They are now the legal guardians of his daughter and, especially the sister-in-law, believe that Charlie is an irresponsible drunk. "Babylon Revisited" has autobiographical tones, during the time
Fitzgerald wrote the story his wife Zelda was in a sanatorium and their daughter Scottie went to school in Paris.68 When Charlie returns to Paris he immediately notices that the city has
changed. He makes a remark about the "provincialism of the Left Bank", whereas only a few years earlier Americans came to Paris to flee the narrow-mindedness of the United States.69
The bar of the Ritz hotel where Charlie and his fellow expats used to spend so much time is now "warm and comfortably American."70 Charlie himself reflects the Lost Generation in
several ways, first of all he exhibits a certain amount of selfishness. He believes he has bettered his ways but his attempt to get Honoria back has a selfish purpose. He wants to feel better about his life and make amends and he need his daughter for that purpose. Moreover, he is overly self-confident, having created his own way of staying sober and being confident his business will do well. His previous reckless behavior is also an example of the way Charlie represents the Lost Generation. During his first stay in Paris this was expressed by his drinking and lack of responsible behavior towards his wife and daughter. During his second stay this behavior returns when Charlie is tempted to visit his old friends, and when he almost breaks his vow to have one drink a day.
Another work by Fitzgerald looking back on the 1920s is "Echoes of the Jazz Age" written in 1931. Fitzgerald is not positive about the Jazz Age, he claims it was a shallow and squandered time. He writes, about the May Day Riots of 1919: "But, because we were tired of Great Causes, there was no more than a short outbreak of moral indignation."71 These
68 Roy R. Male ""Babylon Revisited": A Story of the Exile's Return," in Studies in Short Fiction 2, no. 3 (1965): 275. 69 Fitzgerald "Babylon" 212 70 Ibid. 71 Fitzgerald "Echoes" 1
events left his generation "cynical rather than revolutionary" and "It was characteristic of the Jazz Age that it had no interest in politics at all."72 Malcolm Cowley has made the same
argument, addressing the lack of interest in a greater goal the Lost Generation showed.73
Besides a lack in interest in politics another characteristic of the Lost Generation was a decline in (sexual) morals. This led to the older and younger generation both "going
hedonistic, deciding on pleasure."74 Fitzgerald's retrospective is a negative one, realizing that
the lack of morality did not solve the alienation his generation felt. In this essay he addresses the same issues Cowley and Hemingway found in society in the 1920s. Cowley felt that his generation has lost its interest in a greater and common goal. Only focusing on the present and on pleasure.75 In Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises the protagonists also show a
lack of interest in the world beyond themselves. Moreover, they see the world as a cynical place. Even love is seen as something that is not to be taken seriously. Brett easily discards her husbands to move onto the next. The final scene of the novel: "Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together." [...] "Yes," I said. "Isn’t it pretty to think so?" shows how cynical Jake has become in his relationship with Brett.76 Their potential
relationship now only exists in a "pretty" thought.
One of the themes Djuna Barnes' Nightwood deals with is the longing for a place to belong or a home. The protagonists question their own ability to fit in with society, or life in general. When Robin Vote is married to Felix Volkbein in the beginning of the novel he feels that she is not truly with him. "He felt that her attention somehow in spite of him, had already been taken by something not yet in history."77 Again, time plays an important part. Robin is
not in the present, she is between time. When she gets pregnant this feeling gets stronger: "Robin prepared herself for her child with her only power: a stubborn cataleptic calm,
conceiving herself pregnant before she was; and, strangely aware of a lost land in herself, she took to going out; wandering the countryside; to train travel, to other cities, alone and
72 Fitzgerald "Echoes" 1 73 Cowley Flowering 26 74 Fitzgerald "Echoes" 3 75 Cowley Flowering 26 76 Hemingway 247 77 Barnes 56
engrossed."78 This chapter is called "La Somnambule", or sleepwalker, which is exactly what
Robin is. She sleepwalks through her marriage to Felix, not having found her own place. She starts traveling, looking for that place but does not find it. Barnes uses again uses time here to show us Robin's situation. She "conceiv[ed] herself pregnant before she was" much like "something not yet in history", this is a contradiction in time. A person cannot be pregnant before they are pregnant, nor can they be taken by something not yet in history. Later in the novel it is made clear that "in Robin there was this tragic longing to be kept, knowing herself astray." When Robin meets Nora she hopes that this is the end of her feeling lost. However, "she kept repeating in one way or another her wish for a home, as if she were afraid she would be lost again, as if she were aware without conscious knowledge, that she belonged to Nora, and that if Nora did not make it permanent by her own strength, she would forget."79
However, Nora and Robin do lose each other, they separate and Robin goes back to America. When Felix asks doctor O'Connor about her he tells him: "She says, [...] 'remember me.' Probably because she has difficulty in remembering herself."80 Robin still has not found
herself, she has trouble remembering who she is. Nora is also looking for answers, but she is mostly trying to understand why Robin is wandering and lost, much like Felix was. This theme is also present in Boyle's Being Geniuses Together: she spends most of the 1920s looking for a place to belong, and like the characters in Nightwood that place is not reality. The writers of the Lost Generation felt like they were not in the right place and time. They were in the wrong time because there youth and developmental years were taken away from them. Their mental sense of feeling lost expressed itself by a physical need to wander and find their peace in different places. When Boyle's husband explains to her what romanticism is, they realize that they have been living their lives in a romanticized way. Not saving, but squandering money for example, not wanting to be faced with reality.81 When Kay has left
her husband and started living with Michael (Ernest) Walsh, who was dying, this ignoring of reality happens again. About this time she writes: "Logic, reason disease and the menace of death, these things meant nothing at all to us."82 She prefers to live the life of a poet detached
78 Ibid., 57
79 Barnes 70
80 Ibid., 152
81 Ibid., 157
from reality and logic thinking. What Boyle is looking for is a form of independence, she wants to be able to write and live her life the way she wants to. But when she realizes that her sister has "accomplished the miracle of independence" and she has not she is ashamed.83
Boyle led a very diverse life, she divorced her first husband eventually, had a child with Ernest Walsh, married Laurence Vail and eventually settled with a German baron. She also lived in several places in France and England during the 1920s. Reading her
autobiography leaves the impression that she was always searching for the next thing and could never settle. When Lucia Joyce (James Joyce's daughter) came to visit her Boyle expresses this feeling:
[H]er tragically reaching, seeking for what could probably never be found, and for a fearful moment I believed I was looking at my own reflection in a glass. She was like the high, perishable tendril of a vine moving blindly up a wall, and the vine from which she sought escape was rooted in territory that had for her no recognizable name.84
Boyle realized she too was searching for something that she could not find, or had a longing she could not solve. Moreover, her heritage, the place she had come from was also unclear to her.
Both F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited" and "Echoes of the Jazz Age" are reflections on the 1920s, therefore they deal with change. It has already been mentioned that in "Babylon Revisited" Paris has changed. But not only Paris has changed, Charlie previously
unconcerned with consequences and responsibility now feels like has to take responsibility for his daughter. During the 1920s Charlie changed, embracing the bohemian lifestyle he found in Paris. However, now that both he and Paris have changed, he needs to create a new identity for himself. One in which he can be a responsible father. Previously he solved his problems with money: "If you didn't want it to snow, you just paid some money."85 And was
only focused on the present: "The present was the thingwork to do and someone to love."86
83 Ibid., 237
84 Boyle 353
85 Fitzgerald "Babylon" 229 86
Charlie's friends, still living their life like it is the 1920s, haven't changed. "They liked him because he was functioning, because he was serious; they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than they were now, because the wanted to draw a certain sustenance from his strength."87 The story does not only reflect on a time in which money was the main value, it
also reflects on the time before the Lost Generation. "He believed in character; he wanted to jump back a whole generation and trust in character again as the eternally valuable
element."88 Fitzgerald felt that his generation had lost character as a value. However, Charlie
does not get his daughter back, remaining trapped in a world between his old and new world. In Roy R. Male's essay "Babylon Revisited: a Story of the Exile's Return" it is argued that Charlie being trapped between worlds is his own responsibility. He went back to the Ritz and he tried to meet up with old friends, who later stood in the way of him getting his daughter back. In a way Charlie is still lost. First he attempted to fill that void with money and parties, now with his daughter, but neither offer a solution.
Like "Babylon Revisited" "Echoes of the Jazz Age" deals with Paris changing, it had become "suffocating", no longer exclusive.89 But so had the literary world; "Writers were
geniuses on the strength of one respectable book or play; just as during the War officers of four months’ experience commanded hundreds of men, so there were now many little fish lording it over great big bowls."90 Both "Echoes of the Jazz Age" and "Babylon Revisited"
deal with the values of the Lost Generation, money, the self and hedonism, and the aftermath. Fitzgerald is not positive about the legacy of his generation, partially because it all ended with the crash in 1929 but mostly because the moral decline, decadence and irresponsibility was not what the Lost Generation was looking for. It might have been temporary solutions for their problems, but not a long term resolution. Both stories are examples of the self-reflective nature of Lost Generation literature, "Babylon Revisited" focusing more on the individual experience than "Echoes of the Jazz age". The latter really pinpoints the collectiveness of the Lost Generation. In the last paragraph Fitzgerald writes: "Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth."91 A
87 Babylon 217 88 Ibid., 214 89 Fitzgerald "Echoes" 7 90 Ibid., 9 91 Ibid.
generation has wasted their youth, but still their "expression of horror" needs to be summoned, they need to perform their emotion.
2.2 Creating a New Identity
According to Malcolm Cowley another characteristic of the Lost Generation is that it
possessed a nervous energy which they could not get rid of. They acquired this during World War I because they could not fulfill their need for heroic action.92 After the war all of this
energy created a "style full of bounce", through which the generation could express their disillusionment and dissatisfaction.93 This lead to a generation of writers and artists who
distrusted language that tried to evoke emotions, but preferred a more colloquial and cynical tone.94 They attempted to create a prose that would not use flowery prose to describe war,
for them war death were common subjects that should not be covered up.95 This coincides
with their desire to be more truthful about negativity, they felt that being honest was the best way to deal with life. The creation of a new style and language of writing was important for the Lost Generation because it was a way for them to distance themselves from the previous generation, and create a new literary style. Ernest Hemingway's novel is written in short bursts of conversation between the characters. The short sentences not only convey the emotions of the characters sparingly, they do not really talk about what they feel or want. This was a deliberate choice by Hemingway. He attempted to write in a new style as Linda Wagner-Martin argues:
No "sentiment," no didacticism, no leading the reader: The modernist work would stand on its own words, would reflect unflinchingly its own world, and would smash through the facade of "polite literature" that had dominated the Victorian era and turn-of-the-century American literature.96
92 Cowley Second Flowering 13
93Ibid., 15 94
Ibid., 17
95 Ibid., 16
96 Linda Wagner-Martin, Introduction to New Essays on The Sun Also Rises, ed. Linda Wagner-Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 2.
However, when Jake and Bill go fishing the sentences are longer, they talk more because they have escaped the stress of urban life and have arrived in the freedom of nature. Finally they are free to tell each other what is on their mind and what they feel. They tell each other how much their friendship means to them. This is not only a celebration of the freedom in nature, but also a break with traditional gender roles.97 The characters use colloquial terms, for
example when one of them describes someone as being a "garter snapper."98 Brett, who in
general defies gender roles, smokes, drinks and curses, especially the word "hell" is used a lot. The invention of a new writing style can also be found in the references that are made about the differences between American English and British English. At one point Jake en Bill meet a Spanish man who had lived in America, he speaks English with them but Hemingway writes: "But the effort of talking American seemed to have tired him."99
Explicitly pointing out that the man spoke American and not English. In 1919 H.L.
Mencken's The American Language was published, arguing for an American language. Jake also makes it clear that there is a difference between the two languages. Brett and Mike use the words "rot" and "chaps", and when Jake finds himself doing the same he comes to the conclusion that the English language has "inflected phrases" and has "fewer words than the Eskimo".100
Djuna Barnes Nightwood has a different style and narrative than The Sun Also Rises, the novel does not tell a linear story in which the actions of the characters are described in great detail. However, as Victoria L. Smith argues in her essay " A Story beside(s) Itself: The Language of Loss in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood", Barnes uses rhetoric to express loss. This loss is experienced by the characters on several levels. They lose their lovers, but they also lose their history and the acceptance of society.101 Smith uses the phrase "beside oneself" as
an example. It is not only used in its original meaning of being emotional or upset, but also to convey notions of difference and loss. Doctor O'Connor is lying beside himself, which in this context implies that there is a duality between who he is and who he pretends to be to the
97 Wendy Martin, "Brett Ashley as New Woman in The Sun Also Rises" in New Essays on the Sun Also Rises, ed. Linda Wagner-Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 78.
98
Hemingway Sun 43
99 Ibid., 108 100
Ibid. 150
101 Victoria L. Smith, "A Story Beside(s) Itself: The Language of Loss in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood," PMLA 114, no. 2 (1999): 195.
outside world. Nora is beside herself in the conventional sense, she is mad and upset because Robin goes out at night by herself. But Smith also claims that in this context Nora is literally besides Robin because she secretly follows her.102 Barnes used more metaphors to describe
people and their desires and whishes. Robin is described as having an "odour of memory", being "newly ancient" and "the past were a web around her, as there is a web of time about a very old building."103 She implies that Robin inhibits an idea of history that other people pick
up on. Hemingway's short but honest sentences and Barnes "rhetorical extravagance" both show an honesty in topics and choice of words. Both authors attempted write in ways that could develop their own rhetoric and narratives and no longer write in ways that the older generation would find acceptable.
2.3 Gender
Not only language was a way of creating a new American identity. Women attempted to change the ideas about standard gender roles, by defying them. The role of women changed during the 1920s, giving the women writers and characters of that time room for exploration. The women who were are part of the Lost Generation attempted to create a space for
themselves in which they could represent themselves. Djuna Barnes wrote about homosexuality, Kay Boyle attempted to be a wife and mother as well as an artist.
Hemingway's Lady Brett Ashley is an example of the New Woman that appeared during the 1920s. Her style is modern, she swears, she drinks and is takes action. This is a representation of a general change in gender roles during the 1920s.104 She is described as having the hair of
a boy, her bull-fighter lover tries to make her grow it longer but she refuses.105 Moreover, she
calls herself and everybody else "chaps", a masculine word. Her first name has a masculine connotation. Brett has been married two times and is engaged to Mike, but she has to learn to take responsibility for her own actions. She does not realize that her action influence others. Whereas Jake, who is impotent due to a war wound, has to "learn to accept the discomfort and uncertainty that come with his loss of authority."106
102 Ibid., 196-7 103 Barnes 54
104 Martin 75
105 Hemingway Sun 22
Kay Boyle was an author who herself claimed to not belong to the Lost Generation, other authors and historians however, have claimed otherwise.107 Craig Monk for example
claims that Boyle's re-writing of Robert McAlmon's autobiography, Being Geniuses
Together, can be seen as a way to show how the lives of the expatriates living in Paris were
all interconnected and created a communal narrative.108 As she herself writes:
It did not seem strange to us then, in those years (and perhaps there was nothing strange about it), how the scattered bits and pieces of the lives and hopes of writers kept falling into place, finally making a mural, a frieze, of such continuity that people would look on it for a long time to come as literary history.109
Boyle added chapters to McAlmon's autobiography, thus creating her own autobiography within his. She omitted a lot of McAlmon's original work, and changed the order to a chronological one, ending in 1930. Turning what was originally an un-chronological
autobiography which described an author's stay in Paris into a work that took place within the time frame of the Lost Generation.110 By recreating McAlmon's work Boyle also recreates the
narrative of his life that he created in his autobiography. She changes the intention of the original author by omitting details of his life, and moreover changes the way he wanted to represent his life. She turns McAlmon's life into something she wishes it had been, changing his sexuality, grouping in him with other authors and sometimes changing what happened.111
Boyle's experiment changes the way an autobiography or biography normally works. She not only describes the generation she is a part of, her work is also an expression of that time. As Craig Monk argues in "Textual Authority and Modern American Autobiography: Robert McAlmon, Kay Boyle, and the Writing of a Lost Generation":
107 Boyle 11
108 Craig Monk, "Textual Authority and Modern American Autobiography: Robert McAlmon, Kay Boyle, and the Writing of a Lost Generation," Journal of American Studies 35, no. 3 (2001)
109 Boyle 196 110 Monk 489 111 Ibid., 492
"[...] it is her bold experimentation with the autobiographical genre, ironically, that ties the narrative most closely to the spirit of the time of which she writes. [...] Boyle questions the very nature of writing about the self and shows the same boldness in an examination of literary form that gave life to the artistic experimentation rooted along Paris's Left Bank throughout the 1920s."112
Her rewriting of an autobiography is an experiment that ties in with the self-reflective literature that was prevalent and popular in among Lost Generation writers. It is not only a way of writing her own biography is also a way of creating a new history and narrative.
This work furthermore shows how women in the 1920s sometimes had to deal with a double role. Being a writer brought along certain expectancies but so did being a mother and wife. This double role can be seen in Boyle's own life, in which she had to balance the choice between a fulfilling artistic career and a satisfying home-life.113 Boyle's sense of being lost
comes mostly from not knowing who she is as an author and wife. When she and her husband have no money she tells him: "We will go away and be ourselves again." He answers her: "Ourselves? Who are we? Who in the name of God are we? Answer me that!"114 This
conversation between husband and wife shows a certain lack of adherence to social rules and a selfishness. Instead of seeking better employment their instinct is to go away, to flee from their social responsibilities. Their goal is to be themselves again, which is what they focus on, but to do that they have to leave their home. They are reckless when it comes to their
responsibilities. They have been alienated by society, they left his parents to go back to Paris, but they do not belong in Paris. Her husband has lost his money and job, losing his identity, Boyle struggles with her identity as an author. As she at one point remarks: "Perhaps I was afraid to question where myor anywriting was coming from and where it was going in the end. I just wanted it to be."115
2.3 Apostasy in Lost Generation works
Another characteristic, the "failure of morality" within the younger generation, did not mean that they lacked morals or ethics completely. It meant that they were trying to create new and different moral standards. 116 The distrust of Victorian morality was paired with a change in
112 Ibid., 496
113
114 Boyle 92
attitude towards religion. The religious standards of the older generation were not accessible for the younger generation.117 "Sin, damnation, redemption: these were unyielding realities to
the 1920s generation. To deny them was to forfeit one's art."118 Again, here we can see that
the reality of life is what is important to the young generation. Sin, damnation and redemption were only part of religious life for the older generation, but their younger counterparts felt that these were everyday realities. For them ignoring these aspects and not incorporating them in their art would mean that they were not being truthful, and not representing life as it really was. Another important theme in Hemingway's The Sun Also
Rises is religion, Jake is a lapsed Catholic. When he goes to church to pray for his friends, the
bull fighters and money his mind wanders. He realizes he is a bad Catholic, wishes that maybe the next time he would feel more religious because it is such a "grand religion."119
Brett is also interested in the idea of religion, but gets nervous in church and claims that she is "damned bad for a religious atmosphere," [...] "I've the wrong type of face."120 Later in the
book Brett decides she no longer wants to be a "bitch", claiming that "It is sort of what we have instead of God." And that God "never worked really well with me."121 Whereas Jake has
doubts about his religion, wanting to return but not feeling how he can do that, Brett has made the conscious decision that she is not right for religion. Instead of God she has found other vices that appeal to her.
2.4 Time as Subject
Djuna Barnes' Nightwood deals with several Lost Generation topics. It is a novel that at its core deals with loss and human relationships in a poetic and modernist way, yet it has a distinctly different style than the other works discussed. The book tells the fragmented story of the relationship between Nora Flood and Robin Vote, and the relationships they have with the other people in their lives. One of the subjects is time. Time became a commodity
because the tempo of the era changed. It became easier to tell time, changes in technology changed the size and precision of clocks. Synchronizing image and sounds became the
117 Ibid. 118 Ibid., 34 119 Hemingway Sun 97 120 Ibid., 208 121 Ibid., 245
standard in movies. As Douglas writes: "[...] people now needed to know the time all the timeand the various terms still in use today for commodifying time gained wide circulation. People "buy time," "pass the time," "spend time," "borrow time," "steal time," "mark time," "waste time," even "kill time," people are "on time," "in time," "doing time.""122 Time became
an important topic. Barnes has her character Dr Matthew O' Connor give several
philosophical monologues throughout the book, one of the concerning time, the night and death. The night and sleep do something with a person, it changes their identity.123 O'Conner
asks Nora: "Do things look in the ten and twelve of noon as they look in the dark? Is the hand, the face, the foot, the same face and hand and foot seen by the sun?" For Nora this means she will never understand Robin because she does not understand what she does in the nighttime. For Hemingway, there was also a difference between night and day: "It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime but at night is another thing."124 Again
there is a difference between people in the day- and nighttime. For O'Connor this is because the night in not "premeditated" while during the day is "calculated", during the day time is linear, but in the night everything changes.125 As with Jake Barnes, O'Connor believes that the
night and sleep is when people cultivate their misery. Jake felt that it was not possible to be "hard-boiled" during the night, O'Connor tells Nora: "Life, the pastures in which the night feeds and prunes the cud that nourishes us to despair. Life, the permission to know death."126
Time makes people behave differently and influences their identity.
122 Douglas 39
123 Barnes 103
124 Hemingway Sun 34
125 Barnes 102
3. The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance had begun long before the movement had an official name. David Levering Lewis calls 1925 "Year I of the Harlem Renaissance". This was the year
Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life awarded its first literary prizes, the Survey Graphic had
a special edition about Harlem and the movement got its name. The naming of the movement was done by the Herald Tribune, in 1925 they wrote (as quoted by Lewis): "The Negro was finding his artistic voice, the article stated, and America was "on the edge if not already in the midst, of what might not improperly be called a Negro Renaissance.""127 The Renaissance
was a renaissance of the arts, which should eventually lead to a better social position for the African American population. Lewis, who has written on the subject in his work When
Harlem Was in Vogue, has states that:
the Renaissance began as a somewhat forced phenomenona cultural nationalism of the parlorinstitutionally encouraged and constrained by the leaders of the Civil Rights Establishment for the paramount purpose of improving race relations in a time of extreme national reaction to, and annulment of, economic gains won by African Americans during the First World War.128
During World War I some African American soldiers felt that they had gained respect or that the race relations had improved. However, this was not always the case, others felt that they would go back to the same situation as before the war. Some of the African-American leaders saw the war as a way to bring attention to the racial issues and improve social equality.129
However, for the African American people concerned with the war, a sense of disillusion grew when racial and social injustice only increased.130 Moreover, in 1917 a race riot that left
127 Lewis 116
128 Ibid., XXII
129 Ibid., 9
many African Americans dead or homeless erupted, the situation had not improved. Others, like Major Charles Douglas, felt that it was the patriotic duty of African Americans to focus on the war first, and on racial issues after the war was won.131 As Douglas argues: "[...] the
strategy of black Manhattan, as of most of black urban America in the 1920s, was to emphasize Negro achievement rather than detail Negro losses."132
Jessie Fauset was a notable figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She was also known as one of the mid-wives of the movement, offering publication, promotion and encouragement for new writers. In 1912 she started working for W.E.B. Du Bois' magazine The Crisis which was an important outlet for the NAACP. Fauset was not only an editor for The Crisis she was also a occasional contributor. Ranging from book reviews to a report on the Pan-African conference, Fauset used her articles to inform her readers about important social and cultural events in society. In 1915 Fauset wrote an article about Paris on the advent of World War I. In the essay, titled Tracing Shadows, Fauset tells the story of several Americans who travel to Paris and plan on living there for a while, but their plans get interrupted by the developments that led to World War I. Throughout the story there is no mention of race. As Claire Oberon Garcia argues the characters in the essay have been "de-raced". In earlier travelogues, writers usually lost their racial signifiers on the boat to Europe. This de-racing is important because it offers the author a way of comparing Europe with America, but from a different perspective. But in this essay, race is not mentioned once, the narrator is treated as an equal from the beginning. Furthermore, the other characters are only known by their profession or one of their characteristics.133 They are called: "the Musician, Our Lady of leisure, the Artist, the
other Student and myself."134 Not only do the personal lives of the young protagonists
traveling to Paris change because of the war, they also experience what the war means for the people in Europe. They do not have to fight themselves, nor do they experience any combat or actual fighting. However, they do have friends who are going to war or know people who lose loved ones to the war. For Fauset the war casts a shadow on the people of France and on
131 Lewis 9
132Douglas 89
133 Claire Oberon Garcia, ""No One, I Am Sure, Is Ever Homesick in Paris." Jessie Fauset's French
Imaginary." in Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic: Literature, Modernity, and Diaspora. Ed. Jeremy Braddock and Jonathan P. Burne (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2013):
anyone who loves France. Looking back they can trace the shadows that existed before the war, and are still present during and after the war. "And just as we have looked backwards from the war and traced out the shadows which presaged it, just so we may follow up these new indications, [...] to the next event which is surely cominga new and evermore
wonderful France."135 But Fauset also offers hope, the French do not give up, they suffer but
live must go on despite the hardship and loss.136
The period after the First World War was one of displacement and alienation for many Harlem Renaissance writers. They suffered from apostasy and attempted to find a new identity. This was a similar development as can be seen in the works of the Lost Generation. Several works will be discussed that show this development.
3.1Writing About Society and the Self
The irony and self-reflection that was present in the works of the Lost Generation was a less prominent feature in the Harlem Renaissance works. Self-reflection did happen, many of the novels and poems written by these authors are semi-autobiographical and deal with the way individuals dealt with society. However, Douglas claims that this irony comes from a mood of despair for the Lost Generation. The Harlem Renaissance writers, however, also expressed hope and "tangible jubilance". She writes: "The central aesthetic of black Manhattan was not one of diagnostic analysis, confrontation and irony but a complex and often ambivalent form of celebration."137 Douglas emphasizes the "mixed moods of elation and melancholia" that
were prominent in Harlem Renaissance works. The element of alienation was very much present in many of the works, but is was often combined with a celebration of African American culture.138
Longing and alienation are the main topics of Jessie Fauset's 1921 "Nostalgia" which appeared in "The Crisis". In this essay she reflects on different forms of nostalgia that immigrants in America can experience. She describes the bodily nostalgia of Greek and Italian immigrants who long to go back to the land they left. Their nostalgia is based on a material longing, they were born in that land and wish to one day return to it. The reason they
135 Fauset "Shadows" 251
136 Ibid., 247
137 Douglas 94
