Literary Visions of Homosexuality by Stuart Kellogg

Author:Stuart Kellogg [Kellogg, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Criticism, Lgbtq
ISBN: 9780866562317
Google: OrY9RgAACAAJ
Publisher: Haworth Press
Published: 1983-01-15T04:31:03+00:00

In short, Edel wants to find the hidden truth, the face behind the mask. His is the approach of an artist and a Freudian psychologist, ferreting out unconscious motives, as long as the hypotheses offered can be based on data, to some extent.

And yet — and this is the key question — if this is indeed Edel’s intention, why did he not uncover the libidinal nature of the relationship between Henry and William James? Why was it only “implicit” in his biography, which is another way of saying not seen and not commented on? He has been steeped in the James family since the early 1930s, when he earned his doctorate at the Sorbonne with a dissertation on the plays of Henry James. He has edited the novels, tales, plays, letters, and assorted personal papers of the Master. He is co-compiler of the major bibliography. Given his interest in psychological speculation and his belief (unlike that of some critics) that biography can be used to illuminate texts and vice versa, one would expect that the central libidinal relationship between the brothers would have been apparent to him at an early date. It was not. Edel left the sexual dormancy at the center of Henry’s life largely unexplained, for which he was criticized by more than one reviewer. How to explain, then, this timidity in a biographer who stated to me, “I try to operate without any bias, I do not sit in judgment on my subject.… Other biographers, yes, they have sexual hang-ups and so on; I don’t think I have.”6

I believe this inability to see — and it must be considered unconscious, not conscious — has two roots, personal and social. On the personal level, Edel is (by his own admission) heterosexual. Thus he lacks the experience that would equip him to imagine a certain kind of eroticism, to believe in its possibility, and to seek the empirical evidence to support his belief. As a result of his historical, social, and personal background, he lacks what Heidegger called Vorverstandnis, preunderstanding. Once the evidence was presented to him — my summing-up based on his own researches — Edel seized it instantly, which is to his credit. But he was not empowered by his own life and experience to see an erotic component in the relationship between the two brothers. His psychic terrain was not coextensive with theirs, and his powers of insight or imagination did not permit him to take that last synoptic leap into the most daring conjecture.7

On a macro, or social, level inhibition also carried the day. While homosexuality might be discussed with greater freedom during the writing of the later biographical volumes (all were written between 1950 and 1971), homosexual incest was another matter. It incorporates a double taboo — sex between men and between brothers. Where there was a limited sanction for discussing homosexuality, there was none for homosexual incest. Certainly the institutional setting within which Edel worked was not conducive to such speculation. He taught

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