SÁNDOR MÁRAI AND GAY EMANCIPATION IN AMERICA

Abstract

This paper uses Sándor Márai’s diaries to examine the writer’s relationship to the emancipatory efforts of the American gay movements to explore the Freudian-based psychosexual aspects of the émigré writer’s vision of America. It is a fairly wide-ranging discourse, from the assessment of Walt Whitman’s poetry to gay crime, art, and political manipulation (e.g. the Chambers-Hiss case), the description of San Diego pride, and the demonization of the intellectual elitism associated with homosexuality. Márai’s tribal, psychosexual conception of homosexuality is essentially embedded in a metaphorical characterization of “young” American culture and society. He uncritically joined the discourses of hatred that presented sexual difference as a natural corollary of other stigmas (communist bias, unreliability factor, social subversion). He considered the possibility of creating a legitimate, socially accepted gay identity impossible or ridiculous, he was alarmed by the gay mass movement and self-organisation, he could not appreciate the achievements and accomplishments of the movement, its socio-cultural and religious emancipation, and he even started to fabricate conspiracy theories that seemed parodic. He also observed certain figures in his environment (the case of Z. was an example of this), and drew alternative, satirical or downright negative portraits of many gay personalities (as we can see in the case of Daniel Cory or Navratilova).