Summary
The title of this essay comes from the famous River Seine in Paris, the capital of France, to which Baldwin moved in 1948 to work on his first novel and get distance from the US. “Encounter on the Seine” first describes the lives of African-American expatriates in the city, then discusses their interactions with white Americans, the French, as well as Africans from the French colonies. Baldwin finishes by saying that the experience often leads the African American in Paris to feel even more American in a way that is hard for others to understand.
Baldwin begins by comparing the Paris of the 1940s to that of the 1920s, when the famous “Lost Generation” came to enjoy a good exchange rate, a bohemian atmosphere, and much champagne. In the earlier period, many African-American performers made it big in the city. In the time of Baldwin’s essay, however, it is no longer so easy to become famous, though some establishments specializing in African-American music do exist.
Baldwin then explores how African Americans get along there. They are mostly isolated from each other. Of the roughly 500 living there, most are WWII veterans who came to study on the G.I. Bill. After being crammed together in America’s ghettos, many of the ex-pats prefer to remain on their own. Seeing someone from home can be joyful, but also embarrassing or a source of rage. African-American ex-pats judge each other on a case-by-case basis.
As for white Americans, they interact with their African-American counterparts differently than at home. Outward racism of the Jim Crow type is not acceptable in French society. Yet even friendly encounters remain awkward and strained, Baldwin notes. "The white American regards his darker brother through the distorting screen created by a lifetime of conditioning." Then conditioning causes the white American to see him as a needy martyr or as a source of fun, “the soul of rhythm.” And he sees himself as generous for striking up a friendship and asking questions. This conditioning also affects the African American, who has learned from white Americans to predict ahead of time what they want to hear and avoid talking about the past.
As for the French, they assume all African Americans have experienced a lifetime of impossible suffering and feel happy that they are now safe in France. They know lots of details of American life but miss the big picture. "His past, he now realizes, has not been simply a series of ropes and bonfires and humiliations, but something vastly more complex." Yet in trying to explain his experience, he stumbles. He does not want to be seen as merely a victim but wants to assert his identity as an American with unique experiences.
Finally, Baldwin discusses the relationship of African Americans with the Africans from France’s colonies. The situation of the colonies is very different than the US. For colonials, the main issue is winning independence for their countries. They have no trouble interacting with Africans from other French colonies, for they share a language and goal. They often live and socialize together.
Yet the gap between the African and African American is vast. "They face each other, the Negro and the African, over a gulf of three hundred years—an alienation too vast to be conquered in an evening's goodwill." Out of the experience, African Americans realize that “they are not simply African but a hybrid.” His experiences, too, are hybrid: "in every aspect of his living he betrays the memory of the auction block and the impact of the happy ending” of American prosperity. This prosperity and happiness are different from the white American, but Baldwin suggests that they share more than can be denied. The African American in Paris is an American.
Analysis
This essay analyzes the difficulties and unexpected contradictions of living abroad as an African American. For different reasons, Baldwin describes feeling alienated from other African Americans, from white Americans, from French people, and from Africans from the French colonies. Yet in this essay ostensibly about life in Paris, we see that what Baldwin finds there allows him to reflect on the particularities of being an American.
According to Baldwin, in trying to explain his unique experiences to the French, the African American “finds himself involved, in another language, in the same old battle: the battle for his own identity.” To accept this reality means accepting his own integrity. Being able to articulate this experience is central to freeing something that has been trapped within. Similarly, though Baldwin describes the interactions between African Americans and white Americans in Paris as stilted and shaped by conditioning, he realizes that they are bound together: "Now he is bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh; they have loved and hated and obsessed and feared each other and his blood is in their soil. Therefore he cannot deny them, nor can they ever be divorced." In trying to solve what it is they share, the African American is shaped by where he grew up. The essay ends with a biting observation on what it means to be an American always trying to understand one’s own past: "this depthless alienation from oneself and one's people is, in sum, the American experience."
