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BOOK REVIEW
ROBESON, MARTIN B. DUBERMAN, Adoph Knopf, New York, 1988
The great black singer, actor and political figure Paul Robeson as presented in Mr. Duberman’s comprehensive biography is a prime example of what the black scholar W.E.B. Dubois called the "talented tenth", that is, those who would lead the black race out of bondage. That essentially elitist concept has since Dubois’ time thankfully fallen out of favor. Despite my severe political disagreements with Robeson's later Stalinist politics, his life deserves careful study. Moreover, Robeson’s life can and should be viewed as a struggle against that earlier personalist concept outlined by Dubois in favor of a latter more communal class- based effort to use his great authority for social change. Under either standard he has earned his proper place as an important figure in the black liberation struggle. A previous generation of Trotskyists could certainly have used his talents to advantage.
Without seeming to do Robeson an injustice it is fair to roughly compartmentalize his life into the two categories described above, although one can find traces of both throughout his career. I would argue that one cannot understand his life without this compartmentalization for that approximates his own conception of how he changed from the view that his personal success would act as a catalyst for black advancement to his latter view that he needed to use the authority won by his stellar career as a wedge to fight for his political positions in the black liberation struggle. This internal struggle both informs the book and divides it into it proper components.
Obviously this reviewer seeks to highlight the lessons of Robeson’s latter political career as a spokesperson for many causes associated with the Communist Party, the Soviet Union and with the black liberation struggle. However, it is also necessary to acknowledge that other cultural component as a professional entertainer made Paul Robeson undoubtedly the most well-known American black figure of the first half of the 20th century.
Apparently Mr. Duberman attempted in his research for the book to compile every bit of known data about Robeson and to interview every source possible. These sources are cited and footnoted at the back of the book and almost form a book in themselves. This is one of the most comprehensive biographies I have read lately that, at the same time, does not suffer excessively from the author’s heavy-handed take on the quirks of his subject’s life. In a sense it is also a general social history of the American and English theater in the period from about 1920 to 1960, for its seems that Robeson acted or sang with most of the important figures of the time from Eugene O’Neill at the beginning to Tony Richardson at the end of his career. There is more than enough material on his career, including the usual gossip, to fill the many pages of this book.
And what of the personal Robeson that emerged with a splash in the early 1920’s? That he was an outstanding athlete and student only begins to tell the story. After that there are the attempts at law school, the struggle to become a stage actor under O’Neill’s tutelage and the development of his talents as a singer. But not just any kind of singer. Robeson's was an attempt to sing the songs of his people, black people, as they came out of slavery and out of the black church in America. Interestingly, latter when he tried to move beyond that material to other forms of musical expression he was not nearly so successful.
Of course no biography of a man as a charismatic and physically attractive as Robeson is complete without a little romance. The life-long, if trying (on both sides), up and down romance with his wife Essie- the proverbial ‘brains’ of the operation gets more than its fair share of space here. As does the more ambivalent one of Robeson’s ‘womanizing’- among others, seemingly every important female actress or hanger-on in the cultural field who crossed his path, white or black, was at his call. That in the end, his own intensely private personality pushed them away symbolized the lesser place these conquests held in his life’s scheme.
Nagging at Robeson, a very proud man, throughout his career were the petty (and some not so petty) discriminations he faced both professionally and socially despite his acclaim. Understanding that he could not run away from his blackness and that personal self-fulfillment had its limits he turned, I would say, naturally to politics. Characteristically, he charged full speed ahead and began in the 1930’s a life-long association with the American Communist Party and Soviet-style socialism.
By far the more interesting aspect of Paul Robeson’s career is the part where he, beginning in the mid-1930’s, became a left-wing political advocate very closely associated with the American Communist Party. Mr. Duberman makes an extremely well-formed analysis of the events in Mr. Robeson’s career that made him eager to break out of the cultural straight jacket of the entertainment industry and use his authority derived there as a ‘bully’ pulpit in order to express his political beliefs. As a result Robeson faced the same kind of questioning then, as politicized entertainers do today, when the combination of politics and cultural expression attack the main stream. Bruce Springsteen today could have been speaking for Robeson when asked why he mixed politics and music. Springsteen replied -Do you want to leave politics to the likes of Anne Coulter, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove? I would add that politics is far too important to be left to the hacks. Enough said
Although Mr. Robeson was never a disciplined member of the American Communist Party (as much as the FBI and others doggedly tried to portray him as one) he nevertheless toed the party line, at least publicly, through thick and thin from Spain to the Hitler-Stalin Pact through the World War II Western Alliance and its no strike pledge to the post-war Cold War. Know this then, Mr. Robeson was a stalwart in defense of Soviet Stalinism, socialism as he saw, and thus a direct opponent of my political forbears. A river of blood stands between us, not the least the murder of Leon Trotsky by a Stalinist agent in 1940.
Yes, anyone who defended Republican Spain in the 1930’s is a kindred spirit. Yes, the defense of the Soviet Union was a central concern, not the least for Trostsky himself. However, Mr. Robeson, an intelligent man by any measure and no simple toady, never critically assessed his general defense of the Soviet Union as it was under Stalin and his epigones. Apparently Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin’s murderous policies were not a reason for a serious reevaluation of his political position. Robeson’s 1956 defense of the Soviet actions in Hungary says volumes about his politics, as does his attitude during the ‘red scare’ of period in denying political defense help to the American Trotskyists.
That said, it is nevertheless true, despite great personal harm to his professional career epitomized by his passport troubles making him literally a prisoner in his own country, that he stood by the Communist Party as it was taking a beating from the American government. That at a time when many fellow travellers were slinking away from the party or turning governmental informer. This dual quality I believe catches the central contradiction in Robeson's life. The manic desire for black liberation in America and elsewhere and his desire to commit his powerful personality to it along with a rather studied lack of attention to political theory. And political program. Nevertheless read this book for more insights into one of the most important men of the first half of the 20th century.
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