“Those who saw the paucity of their own imagination in the two-way mirror you held up to them attacked the mirror, tried to reduce it to fragments which they could then rank and grade, tried to dismiss the shards where your image and theirs remained––locked but ready to soar.”

––Toni Morrison, from “Life In His Language,” James Baldwin, The Legacy

Celebrated author, educator, and all around public intellectual Toni Morrison once said of James Baldwin that he possessed a combination of fierceness and tenderness that likely could not long survive in the world. Until his death on December 1, 1987, Baldwin, managed to channel that fury and tenderness into sublime literary art of the highest caliber, represented by groundbreaking novels, searing essays, provocative plays, and even more challenging public debates.   Born on August 2, 1924, this week would have marked his eighty-third birthday. I am obligated to acknowledge it for the simple fact that I count myself among those writers profoundly indebted to the legacy of James Baldwin.

Sociologically, politically, psychologically, spiritually, it was never enough for him to categorize himself as one thing or the other: not just black, not just sexual, not just American, nor even just as a world-class literary artist. He embraced the whole of life the way the sun’s gravitational passion embraces everything from the smallest wandering comet to the largest looming planet. He both confronted and cultivated creative vision with a drive, passion, and brilliance that few have matched, and simply being able to watch his genius sparkle from one sentence to the next could generate both awe and revelation.

There are societies now that bear his name, biographies too, and an official U.S. postage stamp that nobly frames his face. We did the right thing and learned to celebrate the hand-made gifts of masterful literature he worked so hard to construct and present with love to the world. In so many ways, however, he was his own living breathing shining very best celebration. Therefore, on this eighty-third anniversary of his birth, I invite readers to enjoy the magic of his voice in the quotes below from his various works. You may also check out my review of the Conversations with James Baldwin title.  

--“The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”

--“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”

--“There is a "sanctity" involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.”

--“Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck -- but, most of all, endurance.”

--“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”

--“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all. “
 

--“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. “

--“Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; Freedom is something that people take and people are as free as they want to be.”

--“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.”

--“The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

by Aberjhani

© 8/2/07