‘The Power to Convey the Unuttered’

Abstract

The phrase ‘gay sensibility’ has hampered much discussion of work by homosexual artists. The problem with such a term is that, as with any unifying concept, it blurs finer distinctions and diminishes difference, as it seeks similarity in the work of artists as diverse as Michelangelo and John Rechy. As Susan Sontag has written: ‘To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful, one must be tentative and nimble.’¹ Unfortunately, most attempts to snare the ‘gay sensibility’ have been rather clumsy. Thus Michael Bronski in his full-length study of ‘the making of gay sensibility’ writes: ‘During the 19th and 20th centuries, homosexual writers and artists created a distinct political, artistic, and social identity. This sensibility has a history, an evolving set of definitions and a future.’² Here the separate notions of ‘identity’ and ‘sensibility’ are elided as Bronski seeks to place Ronald Firbank, Edward Carpenter, Walt Whitman and others within a single tradition, whereby the essential defining factor of their shared sexual orientation excludes the range of cultural, political and artistic differences that separate them. Bronski ignores the differing individual responses of artists to their homosexuality, seeing only a group identity: ‘Homosexuals have created a separate culture that reflects their attitudes, moods, and emotions as an oppressed group.’³