On the Transgressiveness of Ambiguity: Richard Bruce Nugent and the Flow of Sexuality and Race

Abstract

The study focuses on the slender corpus of literary work by Harlem Renaissance poet, author and visual artist Richard Bruce Nugent (1906–1987), arguably America’s foremost Black aesthete. As an individualist in the footsteps of post-Hegelian and pre-Nietzschean philosopher Max Stirner (1806–1856), Nugent sought to re-think sexuality and race beyond fixed schemes of categorial distribution. To this end, Nugent deployed a strategy of sexual and racial ambiguity that aimed at situating the uniquely sexed and raced individual within the continuities of ever-diversifying Nature. Nugent’s deconstructive approach of sexuality and race proves to be convergent with (but not genealogically dependent on) the universalization of sexual intermediariness and racial miscegenation postulated by German-Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld during the first third of the twentieth century. Nugent’s non-identitarian conception of sex acts anticipated by more than a decade comparable insights propounded by Alfred Kinsey.

KEYWORDS:

• Blacks and homosexuality
• Harlem Renaissance
• “New Negro”
• sexual/racial ambiguity
• sexual/racial binaries
• sexual/racial fluidity
• sexual/racial uniqueness
• “the third”

Notes

1. In order to assess the intellectual and emancipatory import of Nugent’s dissolution of racial segmentation, it is well to take into account that one of the primary targets of his critique was W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963)—“the preeminent African-American intellectual of his age—or perhaps any age” (Rampersad, 1992, p. xiv)—who wrote in the “Forethought” introducing his influential The Soul of Black Folk: “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line” (Du Bois, 1986, p. 359). As regards sexuality, Nugent’s stance and life experience were at odds with the views held by Du Bois. In his Autobiography, he tellingly acknowledged that at 17 he “actually did not know the physical difference between men and women” (Du Bois, 1988, p. 280). Following this admission, Du Bois went on to point out: “In the midst of my career there burst on me a new and undreamed of aspect of sex. A young man, long my disciple and student, then my co-helper and successor to part of my work, was suddenly arrested for molesting men in public places. I had before that time no conception of homosexuality. I had never understood the tragedy of an Oscar Wilde. I dismissed my co-worker forthwith, and spent heavy days regretting my act” (Du Bois, 1988, p. 282). Considering the lack of intellectual curiosity about the core facts of sexual life that these pronouncements reflect, it is not surprising that Du Bois had no sympathy for the form of sexual dissidence Nugent embodied, and more importantly, that he possibly was not even in a position to grasp the scope and relevancy of Nugent’s deconstructive approach of the presumed hiatus between male and female.

2. In her elaborations on Nugent’s Drawings for Mulattoes that appeared in the 1927 collectanea Ebony and Topaz, Caroline Goeser arrives at conclusions regarding his depiction of racial and sexual outsiders that converge, to a certain extent, with the results obtained in the present study. This is especially the case when she asserts: “Nugent satirized presumptions about mixed race identity in order to dismantle the fixity of racial identity, and to complicate assignations of gender and sexuality. Rather than carrying their identities as evolutionary burdens, his interstitial figures performed their racial, gendered, and sexual identities, wearing them as costumes that they might just as easily throw off” (Goeser, 2005, p. 109).

3. Thus, Nugent’s literary portrayals of same-sex relationships between individuals appertaining to different “races” or “inter-races” constitute particularly telling instantiations of his overarching premise regarding the sexual and racial fluidity of all human individuals. Despite the pertinence of the art historical and literary analyses by Goeser (2005) and Schmidt (2006), they disregard the universal dimension implied in Nugent’s depictions of racial and sexual ambivalence and hybridity.

4. Indicatively, A. B. Christa Schwarz closes her book on the Harlem Renaissance with a chapter on Nugent that begins with the ascertainment: “his creative work and role as an artist and writer in his own right have to date been largely neglected” (Schwarz, 2003, p. 120). Despite the subsequent publication of Nugent’s semiautobiographical novel Gentleman Jigger in 2008 and of new studies and essays on his work since 2003, Schwarz’s general estimate, by and large, still holds true.

5. Since Bruno’s treatise was written in volgare, the term he uses reads “natura naturante.” Concerning Nugent’s mention of Bruno and Spinoza, see the list referenced in note 11.

6. Possibly reflecting the pervasive unease toward Nugent’s oeuvre, three widely consulted African American compendia published before the turn of the century make no reference to Nugent: Asante and Abarry (1996), Gates and West (2000), and Low (1981). Although The Oxford Companion to African American Literature does include a brief lemma on Nugent, it refers to him as a “popular”—not as a critical—writer, concluding with the rather patronizing remark: “Nugent, as a fund of information and as an aid to other writers and artists, […] had an important impact on art in Harlem” (Grant, 1997, p. 550).

7. Concurrently, Thomas H. Wirth has underlined the universal scope of Nugent’s critical claims, contending that the principle implicit in FIRE!!—the “Younger Negro” quarterly Nugent helped edit—was “that despite all obstacles, the artist must express the truth within himself. That the artist must do so, not for art’s sake, but for his own sake, his people’s sake, and for the sake of humankind. And that neither self, nor truth, nor art can be divided into boxes labeled ‘Black’ and ‘White,’ or ‘High’ and ‘Low’” (Wirth, 1982, p. 4).

8. For a brief historical overview of the “New Negro” concept in connection with Locke and the Harlem Renaissance, see Harris and Molesworth, 2008, pp. 183–185. Significantly, Locke included Nugent’s fictional piece Sahdji in his anthology (1925, pp. 113–114). As regards Nugent’s critical relationship to Alain Locke and the Harlem Renaissance as a whole, Seth Clark Silberman has pointed out: “Because of the importance of fiction to the sociopolitical goals of the Harlem Renaissance—outlined by Locke in his movement-defining 1925 anthology The New Negro—‘Smoke, Lilies, and Jade’ [Nugent’s literary contribution to FIRE!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists] was more than merely a story. It was an outright attack on the goals of the Renaissance itself” (Silberman, 2001, p. 258).

9. The paucity of Nugent’s published work is arguably one of the reasons why cultural historian David Levering Lewis considered him “one of the more interesting minor characters of the Renaissance” (Lewis, 1981, p. 196). Despite this estimate, Lewis went on to stress that “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” “was like nothing done before by an Afro-American writer. It more than fulfilled [W. E. B.] Du Bois’s worried prediction that [Alain Leroy] Locke’s ‘Beauty rather than Propaganda’ could, if taken too far, ‘turn the Negro renaissance into decadence’” (Lewis, 1981, p. 196).

10. In 2002, Thomas H. Wirth issued a carefully edited volume titled Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance. Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent. With the publication of this anthology and, a few years later, the unfinished novel Gentleman Jigger (2008), Wirth effectively boosted a new reception of Nugent’s work.

11. With thanks to Dr. Thomas H. Wirth for providing the list of authors mentioned in the still unpublished initial chapter of Geisha Man. Excerpts from the novella are included in Nugent, 2002b, pp. 163–210.

12. For an English translation, see Stirner (1995). A close reading of Stirner’s ontological arguments can be found in Bauer (1996).

13. James Huneker’s Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1908) played a decisive role in the American reception of Stirner’s philosophy. Thurman acknowledged the considerable impact Huneker’s study made on him (Thurman, 2003, p. 235), so that it seems safe to assume that Nugent was well acquainted with it as well. Furthermore, it should be kept in mind that cultural critic, essayist, and satirist H. L. Mencken made explicit references to Stirner in “Nietzsche’s Origins,” one of the closing chapters in his influential The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Mencken, 1908, pp. 262–263). Nugent refers to Mencken in the already cited list of authors included in the unpublished, first chapter of Geisha Man. Mencken is also mentioned in Gentleman Jigger (Nugent, 2008, pp. 18, 25) and in the vignette “On Alexander Gumby” (Nugent, 2002e, p. 225).

14. Moreover, after stressing his gratefulness to his Italian American acquaintances for allowing him “to be an individual with [his] various individual methods of expression” (Nugent, 2008, p. 294), Stuartt goes on to assert: “My manner of speech about anything is individual and my own” (Nugent, 2008, p. 296).

15. Nugent corroborated the autobiographical backdrop of Stuartt’s assertion when he explained in reference to his life in Washington, DC: “You didn’t trust yourself enough to innovate, and if you did, you got called outrageous. That’s the name that’s been applied to me all my life. I’ve always been sort of an exception to the rule. I have always said, ‘Well, I’m a Bruce. I can do whatever I please. I have the divine right of kings.’ It was always tongue-in-cheek, but I always meant it” (Kisseloff, 1989, p. 283).

16. Referring to himself in the third person, Thurman clearly states in an autobiographical essay his double philosophical lineage: “Through Huneker he learned of Max Stirner and became an egoist, worshiping at the shrine of the superman (Mencken had caused him to become a confirmed Nietzschean)” (Thurman, 2003, p. 235).

17. In an interview, Nugent nuanced his acknowledgment of Thurman’s brilliance by pointing out: “I have a great difficulty in thinking of anybody who had a personality as malleable and as insertive as his” (Nugent, 1982a, p. 101). Nugent’s actual meaning becomes apparent when shortly after he adds: “I used to call him a prostitute” (Nugent, 1982a, p. 102). Contrasting with these disparaging remarks, Nugent portrays himself as one who, artistically, had never compromised: “No. I’ve never done that. But I’ve never put art on a pedestal, either. It’s been a mode of expression like talking now is. You do it because that’s the thing at this moment to do. Or you do it because that’s the thing that somebody needs done. Or you do it because there’s no other way to say something. No, I don’t think that I’ve ever compromised, really” (Nugent, 1982a, p. 104).

18. Tellingly, the assertion Thurman assigns to Paul Arbian when responding, among others, to “Dr. Parkes” resonates with the views propounded by anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits in his essay “The Negro’s Americanism,” published by Locke in his 1925 anthology. Herskovits, who would eventually become one of the foremost advocates of cultural relativism and founder of the first African studies program at an American academic institution, asserts in reference to the racial miscegenation of Blacks: “in New York City, less than two percent of the group from whom I obtained genealogical material claimed pure Negro ancestry, and while this percentage is undoubtedly low, the fact remains that the vast majority of Negroes in America are of mixed ancestry” (Herskovits, 1925, p. 358).

19. See also Nugent’s recollections of Hemsley Winfield, an avant-garde Black dancer, who despite being a “female impersonator,” avoided “the stigma that might easily be attached to that”—“there was nothing camp about it” (Nugent, 1982a, pp. 98–99). In general, Nugent is primarily interested in discussing the sexuality of individuals not as a given fact but as a debatable or falsifiable assumption. This authorial approach resonates with a line in his poem “You Think to Shame Me,” where Nugent alludes to the criterion for discerning true “happenings” of love: “And each is the real thing until done or proved not” (Nugent, 2002n, p. 263).

20. While Nugent does not imply in his late autobiographical recollections that he slept in the same bed with Wallace Thurman at “Niggeratti Castle,” he does point out against the backdrop of his precarious financial situation at the time: “I would go upstairs and lay down under Wallie’s bed and go to sleep. It was one of the many places I dropped in. I got to know a lot of Wallie’s secrets that way. You really get to know a person when you sleep under his bed” (Kisseloff, 1989, p. 286).

21. Given that Gentleman Jigger was “written for the most part between 1928 and 1933” (Wirth, 2008, p. xi), it seems apposite to note that some of the sexological issues it raises are touched on in articles included in the magazine Sexology. Devoted to the Science of Sex Hygiene, whose first issue was published in summer 1933 under the editorship of Maxwell Vidaver in New York. Among the contributions relevant in this connection are “Pregnant Men” (Vidaver, October 1933); “Both Man and Woman in One Body” (Benton, July 1934); “Similarity of Male and Female Organs” (Vidaver, February 1935); “Sex Individuality” (Keller, January 1937); and “Are We All Double-Sexed?” (Downey, August 1937; Downey, September 1937). Interestingly, the first issue also includes an article dealing with race: “White Man Turns Negro” (M.V./Maxwell Vidaver, October 1933).

22. In a personal communication of April 13, 2011 to the author, Dr. Thomas Wirth, Nugent’s literary heir and editor, wrote: “I have very little direct information about Nugent’s reading. His father’s books were dispersed soon after he died in 1920, when Nugent was 13. I inherited Nugent’s books. But I don’t recall any sexological material, and I think I would remember if any was there. Nugent had moved many times over the years and lost many things. He did mention to me that he had once had some Beardsley first editions.”

23. Treatises that may have contributed to Nugent’s sexological formation include Leland (1904); Carpenter (1908); and Mayne (1975).

24. Friedlaender’s main work was also one of the most influential sources of the German homosexual emancipation movement: Friedlaender (1904/1975). An outline of his positions can be found in Bauer, 2011, pp. 7–10.

25. More often than not, Nugent seems to harbor an idealized view of the tolerance for non-normative sexualities within the Harlem Renaissance circles he frequented (see, for example, Nugent, 2002m, p. 268). Such a view, however, is hardly compatible with Thurman’s clearly denunciatory reference to the “fanciful aggregation of Greenwich Village uranians” congregated by Paul Arbian (Thurman, 1998, p. 118). In this connection, it is also well to keep in mind that Stuartt overcomes his eristics of sexual evasiveness only after leaving behind Harlem’s Niggeratti bohemia.

26. While the first edition of the treatise was published under a pseudonym (Ramien, 1896), the second edition mentions Hirschfeld as author (Hirschfeld, 1902).

27. Nugent’s views on the individual’s unique sexuality clearly converge with Magnus Hirschfeld’s theses that all human beings are sexual intermediaries (see Hirschfeld, 1903, pp. 126–127), and that “im Grunde genommen [bildet] jeder Fall in der Unsumme der Zwischenstufen einen Fall für sich, eine Klasse für sich, ein Geschlecht für sich” (Hirschfeld, 1903, p. 127; “basically, each case in the enormous number of sexual intermediaries constitutes a case in itself, a class in itself, a sexuality in itself”).

28. Alfred Kinsey’s non-identitarian views on sexual diversity follow from his overall premise that the endless recombinations of biologic characters in different individuals “swell the possibilities to something which is, for all essential purposes, infinity” (Kinsey, 1971, p. 5; emphasis added). In 1948, Kinsey wrote in his classic report on male sexuality: “It would encourage clearer thinking on these matters if persons were not characterized as heterosexual or homosexual, but as individuals who have had certain amounts of heterosexual experience and certain amounts of homosexual experience. Instead of using these terms as substantives which stand for persons, or even as adjectives to describe persons, they may better be used to describe the nature of the overt sexual relations, or of the stimuli to which an individual erotically responds” (Kinsey, 1948, p. 617). Correspondingly, in his 1953 volume on female sexuality, Kinsey pointed out that terms such as masturbatory, heterosexual, or homosexual “are of value only because they describe the source of the sexual stimulation, and they should not be taken as descriptions of the individuals who respond to the various stimuli” (Kinsey, 1998, p. 447). Thus the term homosexual, for instance, is used throughout the volume “primarily to describe relationships, and […] not […] to describe individuals who were involved in those relationships” (Kinsey, 1998, p. 447). By restricting the use of the term the homosexual (or, alternatively, the heterosexual) to designate either a specific component in the sexual history of human beings or a determinate factor in their erotic constitution (see Kinsey, 1948, pp. 261, 396, 397, 617, 657), Kinsey detached the individual from the constrictions of categorizations, therewith paving the way for his key contention regarding the “omniphile” (Condon, 2004, p. 88), polymorphous sexuality of all humans (see Bauer 2007). Hinting at his overarching critique of sexual repression through culture, Kinsey wittily remarked: “Considering the physiology of sexual response and the mammalian backgrounds of human behaviour, it is not so difficult to explain why a human animal does a particular thing sexually. It is more difficult to explain why each and every individual is not involved in every type of sexual activity” (Kinsey, 1998, p. 451).

29. In another autobiographical testimony, Nugent reasserts the same basic contention: “People [in Harlem] did what they wanted to do with whom they wanted to do it. You didn’t get to the rooftops and shout, ‘I fucked my wife last night.’ So why should you get on the roof and say, ‘I loved prick.’ You didn’t. You just did what you wanted to do. Nobody was in the closet. There wasn’t any closet” (Kisseloff, 1989, pp. 288–289). In a similar line of argument, Nugent insisted that “one did not pry into the private lives of people, nor did the private lives of people retreat into what we now call ‘closets’ and things. There was no need to. There was no op[p]ro[b]rium attached to personal relationships” (Nugent, 1983, p. 3). Despite the liberal atmosphere, the social distinction to be observed in Harlem as regards homosexuality was, according to Nugent, that between designation and practice. While “homosexuality has always been a dirty word,” “the practice of it, was not a dirty thing” (Nugent, 1983, p. 4). Nugent also points out: “The dirtiness about any of it was the flaunting of it. And I use ‘flaunting’ advisedly. Because there’s a difference between flaunting it and just not trying to keep it hidden” (Nugent, 1983, p. 4). Since the absence of the “closet” depended on keeping the separation between the tabooed expression (i.e., the flaunting of homosexuality) and the accepted code of mutual recognition (i.e., the non-hiddenness of homosexuality), the Harlemite form of sexual tolerance fostered the dissimulation of sexual dissidence as a non-dit that could readily morph into paying the expected lip service to regnant heterosexuality. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that Fire!! was severely criticized upon its publication for thematizing the “unspeakable” subject matter of same-sex love (see Kisseloff, 1989, p. 288). As Langston Hughes, one of the coeditors of the quarterly, pointed out in his autobiography, “None of the older Negro intellectuals would have anything to do with Fire. DuBois in the Crisis roasted it. The Negro press called it all sorts of bad names, largely because of a green and purple story by Bruce Nugent, in the Oscar Wilde tradition, which we had included. Rean Graves, the critic for the Baltimore Afro-American, began his review by saying: ‘I have just tossed the first issue of Fire into the fire’” (Hughes, 1993, p. 237). Smoke, Lilies and Jade, the story by Nugent to which Hughes refers, apparently infuriated W. E. B. Du Bois, who reportedly reproached the young author: “Did you have to write about homosexuality? Couldn’t you write about colored people? Who cares about homosexuality?” Nugent’s retort was certainly not meant to appease the much older scholar: “You’d be surprised how good homosexuality is. I love it” (Kisseloff, 1989, p. 288). While generally taking advantage of the sexual etiquette of “polite society,” Nugent showed no signs of having internalized the prevalent societal condemnation of same-sex relationships. Thus, his response to a question about “male clubs or gay clubs” in Harlem reflects his negative views on such venues as well as a healthy acceptance of his own sexual orientation: “I think one of the reasons I hadn’t known those kind of places was it always seemed to me as though they were congregating together out of despair. And what the hell were they being despairing about? Being themselves? I didn’t have sympathy” (Nugent, 1983, p. 8). For a brief overview of Nugent’s attitude to his own sexual dissidence, see Smith, 1986.

30. Gandhian nonviolence proponent, gay rights advocate, and Quaker Bayard Rustin (1912–1987), who was an almost contemporary of Nugent, did not belong to the Harlem bohemia, but had a chance to observe some aspects of Harlem’s gay life when he moved to New York in 1937. His recollections partially confirm Nugent’s contention that Black tolerance of gay people was dependent on a peculiar form of non-visibility (see the foregoing note). In an interview Rustin gave shortly before his passing, he declared: “Well, Harlem was a totally different world than I had known. When I came to New York, I lived with a sister (really my aunt) who lived on St. Nicholas Avenue, which was at that time the main thoroughfare of black New York aristocracy—it was called Sugar Hill. […] In the black upper class there were a great number of gay people. So long as they did not publicize their gayness, there was little or no discussion of it. A number of the poets, artists, musicians were gay or lesbian. And the clubs paid little attention. In that early period there were few gay clubs because there didn’t need to be. The gay clubs came later, with World War II and after. I think that the black community has been largely willing to accept its gay elements so long as they were not openly gay. It was later when the gay clubs came, and gay men and lesbians wanted the right to come out of the closet, that I think the black community became quite as intolerant as the white community” (Rustin, 2003, p. 283; emphasis added).

31. Nugent was certainly aware that visionaries and mystics often recurred in their writings to tropes of emanation to explain the emergence of reality from a theological or ontological ur-principle. Indicatively, in the unpublished passage of Geisha Man already quoted, mention is made of authors such as Thomas à Kempis, William Blake, and Annie Besant. In this connection, it should also be taken into account that Nugent was exposed to the teachings of two of the foremost masters of alternative spirituality in the 20th century, since he “participated in Gurdjieff classes in Harlem and was personally acquainted with Krishnamurti” (T. Wirth, personal communication, April 13, 2011). On these assumptions, it is not surprising that in a brief narrative by Nugent titled “Tunic with a Thousand Pleats,” Shela, one of the protagonists, rememorates a dialogue with Simon, her Black lover, in which both express their love using metaphors of emanative origination. Thus Simon declares: “Even as the river runneth always to the sea and never tireth of pouring, yet is never empty—even so am I.” While Simon self-depicts his loving subjectivity as the source of an inexhaustible flow, Shela points to the reciprocal origination of her love and subjectivity within an interminable recurrence: “Even as the acorn cometh from the oak and the oak tree from the acorn in a cycle never ending, so doth my love for thee spring from me and me from it—endlessly” (Nugent, 2005b).

32. Thus, as regards Nugent’s novel Geisha Man, Tyler T. Schmidt ascertains: “the body is more often linked to sexual desire than racial codes, one might say more ‘queered’ than ‘raced’” (Schmidt, 2006, p. 168).

33. Stuartt’s and Rusty’s preoccupation with the various degrees of Blackness and their hierarchization was not just a matter of personal idiosyncrasy. As Steven Watson underscores, “Black slang during the Harlem Renaissance is an extremely inventive oral art form” (Watson, 1995, p. 4), and “the Harlem vocabulary for shades of pigmentation was highly nuanced” (Watson, 1995, p. 88). Accordantly, he presents an extensive list of the Harlemese designations for the nuances in the color scale: “Light-skinned: high yaller / yaller / pink / pink-toes / mustard seed / punkin seed / honey / lemon-colored / copper-hued /olive. Middle ranges of skin color: high brown / cocoa brown / chestnut / coffee-colored / nut brown / maroon / vaseline brown / seal brown / sealskin / low brown. Dark-skinned: blue / charcoal / ebony black / eight-rock / eight-ball / inky dink / dark black / low black / lam black / damn black” (Watson, 1995, 88).

34. Without envisaging the principled consequences Nugent draws from his analysis of race, Carl Van Vechten limns in his 1926 Harlem novel Nigger Heaven a societal cosmos in which “New Negroes” question the value of traditional views of Black racial purity. The American Negro being the result of (conveniently silenced) racial mixtures, there is at times no certainty as to whether an individual is White or colored (Van Vechten, 2000, pp. 94, 152). Against this backdrop, Byron, one of the novel’s protagonists, assures himself, “we should be known as the rainbow nation” (Van Vechten, 2000, p. 189). As a matter of course, he then inquires of a friend he just met: “Are you white or coloured tonight?” (Van Vechten, 2000, p. 208).

35. Thus the approximate dating of the poem mentioned in the brief introductory note on “Bastard Song” by editor Thomas H. Wirth in Nugent, 2002a, p. 89.

36. Hirschfeld returned to Europe, but not to Germany, where in 1933 the Nazis had closed his Institute for Sexual Science and destroyed its extensive library and sexual-ethnological collections (see Herzer, 2001, pp. 230–243; Wolff, 1986, pp. 365–415).

37. Hirschfeld’s travel report has been published three times in English under titles that diverge in various degrees from the original edition: Curious Sex Customs in the Far East (Hirschfeld, 1935a); Men and Women: The World Journey of a Sexologist (Hirschfeld, 1935b); and Women East and West: Impressions of a Sex Expert (Hirschfeld, 1935e). The title of the French translation comes closer to” the German: Le Tour du monde d’un sexologue (Hirschfeld, 1938a).

38. In the installments, Hirschfeld also countered the fascist and fascistoid self-misapprehension of culture as a product of “racial purity,” underscoring: “Die Kultur ist ein Ergebnis der rassischen Vermischungen, und nur diese Vermischung rettet vor der Barbarei” (Hirschfeld, 1935d, p. 8; caption of the paragraph: “Zoologischer Rasseglauben” [sic]—“Culture is the result of racial mixings, and only this mixing saves from barbarity.”)

39. See in this connection Nugent’s assertion in a late interview that he and Thurman had dealt with the issues of homosexuality and prostitution in FIRE!! because they decided they “needed something to get the magazine banned in Boston” (Nugent, 1982a, p. 95).

40. Discussing the differences between Black and White dandyism against the backdrop of Nugent’s early piece “Smoke, Lilies and Jade,” Elisa Glick has pointed out that the Black dandy “does not seek to dispense with the body altogether, nor does he entirely empty out the category of nature, as did his white counterpart” (Glick, 2003, p. 428). Since Oscar Wilde was, for Nugent, doubtless the dandiacal figure par excellence, it seems apposite to note that Wilde’s approach of corporeality and nature hardly corresponds to what Glick’s suggests about the White dandy. Furthermore, the part of Glick’s statement concerning Black dandyism does not take into account Nugent’s core contentions. While it is doubtless true that Nugent consistently rebutted “the biological essentialism that undergirds racial and sexual polarities” (Glick, 2003, p. 428), this rejection was only a first move toward his own specific take on the body and nature. Nugent advocated the dissolution of the essentialisms that sustain the Cartesian conception of nature and corporeality, but only to re-site both of these within the ontological framework of Heraclitean Becoming.

41. Considering Nugent’s outstanding talent as a visual artist (see Glick, 2009, pp. 94–99), it is significant that Stuartt was not interested in becoming a great Negro painter, adducing as reasons: “Too much bother. Too much responsibility. And not decorative enough. I just want to live and have a good time and perhaps bubble over a little with paint or words” (Nugent, 2008, p. 65). Accordant with Stuartt’s self-characterization as “too unambitious,” “too lazy to be a, quote, superior, unquote, Nordic” (Nugent, 2008, p. 63), as well as with his admission that he would want to be famous “only if it’s fun” (Nugent, 2008, p. 125), the narrator of Gentleman Jigger depicts him as “a parasite,” “an attractive oddity,” “an exhibitionist [who] had found his most perfect stage” (Nugent, 2008, p. 73).

42. Given the “sweet shades of Wilde” (Nugent, 2008, p. 115; for further references, see Nugent, 2008, p. 299; Nugent, 2002k, pp. 77, 78, 83; and Nugent, 2002b, p. 95) present in Nugent’s oeuvre, it is not surprising that his core aesthetic convictions echo Oscar Wilde’s views on the relationship between life and art (see Bauer, 2000). In this connection, the Wildean dictum reported by André Gide in 1902 seems particularly significant: “J’ai mis tout mon génie dans ma vie; je n’ai mis que mon talent dans mes œuvres” (Gide, 1989, p. 12; see also p. 32). By asserting the aesthetic primacy of his own life in comparison to the works of art he produced, Wilde was following Charles Baudelaire’s dandiacal understanding of the artist’s life as the supreme work of art. In correspondence to this conception, Wilde maintained that the art of living is “the only really Fine Art we have produced in modern times” (Wilde, 1981a, p. 517). Consequently, “Life” evinces itself as “the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seem to be but a preparation” (Wilde, 1981b, p. 103).