An interview with Hubert Kennedy

Interview by: Asa Ralubat

It is late afternoon. Hubert Kennedy is comfortably seated on the living room couch in his home in Providence, Rhode Island. We have been acquainted for some time, but this is my first opportunity to talk with him about his translation of The Hustler.

Hubert, the author of The Hustler was John Henry Mackay, but wasn't it originally published under a pseudonym?
That's right. He used the name Sagitta for his man/boy writings, but in his will he asked that his true name be given on any future publication. By the way, please pronounce "Mackay" to rhyme with "cry." That's the normal Scottish pronunciation, and Mackay also insisted on it.

Was Mackay Scottish?
His father was, but he died when Mackay was two years old and Mackay's mother returned with him to Germany where Mackay grew up.

The Hustler is set in Berlin. Did Mackay grow up there?
No. He grew up in a small town and later traveled a good deal, but he settled in Berlin in 1894 and lived there until his death in 1933, shortly after Hitler came to power. So by 1926, when The Hustler was first published, Mackay knew Berlin well.

How did you become interested in Mackay?
I first heard of Mackay when Egmont Fassbinder reprinted the Sagitta writings of Mackay in 1979 as one of the first publications of his newly founded gay press in Berlin. This is a -2volume edition, of which the second is the novel Der Puppenjunge, which I have translated as The Hustler.

Is this Fassbinder related to the Rainer Fassbinder, the film director?
He is a cousin.

Was The Hustler Mackay's first novel?
No, he wrote several novels. His first was The Swimmer, which was published in 1901, making it one of the first sports novels. It depicts the rise and fall of a world champion swimmer from Berlin. Mackay himself was an enthusiastic swimmer into his old age, and he was frequently in the public swimming pools of Berlin. Of course so were the boys he was attracted to, particularly the ages 14 to 17.

Is The Swimmer also a man/boy love story?
It is not a love story at all. Rather, it shows the conflict of an individual with the society in which he lives. This theme was very important to Mackay, who, just before writing The Swimmer, had spent several years researching the life of Max Stirner, the philosopher of individualism. The Swimmer illustrates many of Stirner's ideas.

Are they also in The Hustler?
To a lesser degree. But yes, they are there. Mackay's individualist anarchist philosophy shows through, even in his literary works. After all, when the New York Times reported his death in 1933 they said he was called in Germany an "anarchist lyricist."

Was Mackay primarily a poet then?
Mackay wrote in a variety of forms, but his literary recognition was a lyricist. One of his poems, "Morgen," was given a lovely musical setting by Richard Strauss. This song, which was first sung at Mackay's house in Berlin, is loved the world over, but it is not generally known that the words were inspired by a boy.

You mentioned Mackay's "purely literary" works. What are you contrasting that with?
His propaganda for individualist anarchism. Mackay gained instant fame in 1891 with the publication of The Anarchists, a non-novel that had an American edition that same year and was quickly translated into six other foreign languages. In it Mackay discusses the relative merits of individualist versus communist anarchism, more of less the varieties supported in America by Benjamin Tucker and Emma Goldman, respectively.

Did Mackay know those two personally?
Yes. It was Tucker who published The Anarchists in America. He and Mackay became good friends, and Mackay's other non-novel, The Freedomseeker, was dedicated to him. Mackay also met Emma Goldman on a 3-month visit to the U.S. in 1893; in fact, he lunched with her in New York on the first day of her trial for "inciting to riot."

What is individualist anarchism?
For Mackay an anarchist is someone who refuses to rule or be ruled. He summed it up in his slogan "Equal freedom for all."

Was there a "gay rights" movement in Berlin in the 1920s?
A very strong one, but it was only directed at revising the most oppressive laws. The first such organization was founded in Berlin in 1897 by sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who was in part prompted by the cruel treatment of Oscar Wilde in England. This group, the German Scientific Humanitarian Committee, circulated a petition asking the legislators to change the law. By the 1920s many leading German intellectuals - Albert Einstein, for example - had signed the petition, but in the end nothing came of it. Of course, when the Nazis came to power in 1933 all such organizations simply dissolved. Hirschfeld himself died in exile; his Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin was one of the Nazis' first targets for destruction.

But what was life like for the gay man-in-the-street in the 1920s? Was there a gay sub-culture?
By the end of the decade there were at least 80 predominantly gay bars, more or less tolerated by the police. It is probably significant, however, that the book that mentions this is titled Guide to the vices of Berlin. Mackay has a good description of the hustler-bar scene in his novel. In addition, I've another bar description in the notes to the novel, taken from the 19-year-old Klaus Mann's first novel of the same period. On special occasions, such as New Year's, there were also private balls, with a good deal of cross-dressing. But we should not forget that the social stigma of being 'so' was even stronger than now, and since (male) homosexual acts were illegal, the danger of blackmail was also great. By the way, the movie Cabaret suggests that homoerotic themes were common, but in fact this was quite rare in the cabaret shows of the period, whose themes were primarily political.

Let's come back to The Hustler. What is the plot?
It is the story of Gunther, a 15-year-boy who runs away from his small hometown to the big city Berlin, where he falls into a life of prostitution, and of Hermann Graff, a young man who has come to Berlin to work, and who falls in love with the boy. Gunther, however, sees only a customer in Hermann. During the course of the year in which the novel takes place, Hermann gradually comes to terms with his sexual orientation. But the novel is not just a plea for understanding; it is a genuine love story - the classic novel of man/boy love. At the same time The Hustler gives a picture of the sexual underworld of Berlin that Christopher Isherwood, who arrived in Berlin only three years after the publication of the novel, assures us is "authentic." It is, in fact, one of the novels Isherwood read during his stay in that city. Mackay sometimes treats his central characters sentimentally, but he describes the various homosexual scenes of Berlin with unsparing realism. He is also geographically exact. For this reason I have included a map of central Berlin, showing the principal streets and places mentioned in the novel, so that the reader may trace some of the action. By the way, it is no longer possible to actually do this. Friedrich Street, for example, is partly in East Berlin and partly in West Berlin; the famous Checkpoint Charlie is on Friedrich Street, and the Berlin Wall also separates Unter den Linden from the Tiergarten, whereas in the story the characters simply walk from one into the other.

You mention that several homosexual scenes are described. Was there much social activity among lesbians there in the 1920s?
Indeed there was. One lesbian club, "Monbijou," founded in the early 1920s. had 600 members. The "Violetta-Klub," which was active from 1926 to 1933, had 400 members. These are not describes in The Hustler, however. Nor is there any mention of the very active homosexual emancipation movement led by Hirschfeld.

Are there any women in The Hustler?
Near the end of the novel a wise older woman presents Mackay's own views of man/boy love.

Why did you decide to translate The Hustler?
Friends urged me to do it, and besides, it fit into several of my interests. I have been interested in the origins of the modern gay movement, especially in Germany, as well as being interested in the literary depiction of homosexuals. Then too, Mackay's anarchist philosophy is very sympathetic. Finally, I think the literary treatment of man/boy love has been neglected. Thus, when the opportunity came to spend a year in Germany, I made this translation my major project and spent the winter and spring of 1983 in Munich working on it.

I suppose being in Germany helped.
Of course, especially since a very dear friend in Munich had lived a number of years in Berlin, knew the city well, and took an interest in its history and my project. He was an invaluable help.

But you have also spent some time in Berlin, haven't you?
Oh yes, and on my visit I had the pleasure of meeting Heinz Birken, who has written many charming poems and stories of man/boy love, Jede Liebe ist Liebe, on the subject.

Do you plan to translate any other works of Mackay?
I have no plans, but there are several things that deserve translation. The shorter, and very autobiographical, novel Fenny Skaller, for example, which was first published in 1913, also under the pseudonym Sagitta.

Have you read all of Mackay's writings?
Not the poetry, but I think I have all his prose, including several unpublished manuscripts that are now in the possession of Kurt Zube, who very kindly let me read them when I visited him in Frieburg, Germany. By the way, Zube knew Mackay personally. He is also one of the people who urged me to translate The Hustler.

One final question, Hubert. Are you a boy-lover?
Isn't everyone?

source: 'An interview with Hubert Kennedy' by Asa Ralubat; NAMBLA Bulletin, Vol. 6, n. 3; April 1985