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Greek Love v.1 n.1, publisher/distribution information: ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE Published quarterly by the Oliver Layton Press, Box 150, Cooper Station, New York, N.Y. 10003, to which all correspondence should be addressed. Subscription rate is $6.00 for four issues. Distributed by: THE COLTSFOOT PRESS INC. 507 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10017 ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.1 ------------------------------------ <advertisement:> GREEK LOVE TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Theory and Practice 1. Objectives 2. Some Common Objections Answered 3. Greek Love as a Social Problem 4. Greek Love as a Solution to a Social Problem 5. The Theory and Practice of Love 6. Sexual Aspects of Greek Love 7: Some Uncomplicated Greek Love Affairs 8. Some Difficult Greek Love Affairs II. History and Literature 9. Historical Synopsis 10. Boy-love in Ancient Greece 11. Boy-love in Ancient Rome 12. Boy love in the Middle Ages 13. Boy-love in the Renaissance 14. Boy-love in the Restoration, Enlightenment, Romantic Period 15. Boy-love in the 19th Century 16. The 20th Century -- Divergent Traditions Postscript by Dr. Albert Ellis Rebuttal by J.Z. Eglinton Greek Love is 504 pp. long and will make an impressive addition to your library. Order now at $12.95 per copy. Use order blank on page 68. OLIVER LAYTON PRESS Box 150, Cooper Station New York, N.Y. 10003 ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.2 ------------------------------------ I am over 21. Please send me ........ copies of Greek Love @ 12.95. Please enter my subscription to the International Journal of Greek Love @ 6.00 for four issues Name .......................................... Address ......................................... City ........................................... Remittance should accompany order. OLIVER LAYTON PRESS P.O. Box 150, Cooper Station New York, N.Y. 10003 ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.3 ------------------------------------ INTRODUCING A NEW JOURNAL THE EDITOR This periodical is intended for students not primarily of homosexuality per se, but of the peculiar ethical/educational love relationship between men and adolescent boys, institutionalized in ancient Greece and various other societies, and found more or less quietly in our own culture even to the present day: "the love that dare not speak its name," Greek love, given its first attempted analysis in my book of that name (New York, Oliver Layton Press, 1964). In this and subsequent issues this journal proposes to present: * cross-cultural studies of patterns analogous to Greek love * articles dealing with instances of Greek love or related patterns, including case history studies * translations of hitherto unavailable literary or scholarly material on the theme * reviews of books, films, dramatic presentations, etc., relevant to the theme * other literature of relevance, both original and reprinted; fiction and nonfiction, prose and verse. Despite the perhaps spectacular subject matter, this journal retains a basically scholarly approach and does not propose to appeal to prurient interest. Appropriate contributions and serious inquiries are invited. We hope that this series of studies will bring public and scholarly attention to a hitherto nearly unexplored field of interdisciplinary inquiry. For it to do so, your cooperation is needed. Competent translations of literary works on the subject, old and new, are needed. We can furnish translations from most European ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.4 ------------------------------------ 4 INTRODUCING A NEW JOURNAL languages, but we need the texts, and we will appreciate notice of any coming to the attention of readers here and overseas. Biographical or autobiographical material of relevance, in case history form or otherwise, or even fictionalized, can be of use if it makes some particular point. Studies of relevant laws will be particularly desirable, whether limited to changing laws in a given area or nation, or cross-cultural in approach. We are especially interested in applications to modern society of conclusions drawn from such studies; Greek love is not merely a quixotic feature of a dead culture of interest solely to archaeologists, but a matter of contemporary cultural patterns as well. Poetry, especially by authors not treated in Greek Love, is welcome. Bibliographic studies, whether thematically oriented or centering around a particular author or period, are welcome. Reviews of relevant fiction and nonfiction, drama, films, etc., are needed, even if the items reviewed are not recent. World travelers: what comparable patterns to Greek love have you observed yourselves? On-the-spot observations by participants or accounts by native informants are wanted. Anonymity of contributors will be rigidly preserved if desired. Subsequent issues of this journal are scheduled to include, among other things, (1) a study of changing patterns in age-of-consent laws; (2) a study of the boy actors of the Elizabethan stage, in greater depth and detail than that sketched in my book; (3) translations of hitherto unavailable Greek poetry; (4) analyses of some recent and outspoken films; (5) evidence that Sodom and Gomorrah never existed; (6) a more detailed bibliography of Greek love in modem fiction than I was able to provide in my book. We hope to have contributions to this journal abstracted in Psychological Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, and similar publications. For this purpose, authors' abstracts of their submissions would be appreciated. J.z.E. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.5 ------------------------------------ RALPH NICHOLAS CHUBB: PROPHET AND PAIDERAST OLIVER DRUMMOND London ABSTRACT: Biographical sketch of Ralph Chubb, 1892-1960, British mystic and counterpart of Walt Whitman, but preoccupied with the love of boys (representing the Boy God or Divine Androgyne) rather than with Whitman's "manly love of comrades." During Chubb's last thirty-odd years he wrote, designed and printed books promulgating his mystical philosophy, working in the tradition of William Blake. Examples of Chubb's ideas and graphic work are included together with a bibliography of his published books. The twentieth century is not one to cradle a prophet. The speed with which it moves, the fleshly things it covets and for which it works, the menace of annihilation with which it is constantly threatened -- all deny a hearing to the idealist, the philosopher and the mystic. Great publishing houses pour forth more and more books of less and less literary importance, and the mystic remains unpublished and unheard. But if the twentieth century ignores a prophet, it shuns a paiderast. We may have become more broad-minded, think little of the importance of marriage -- little, even, of the once-whispered love of man for man -- but we still treat the lover of boys with scandalized whispers, out-of-hand condemnation, and an unwillingness to comprehend what often is to the lover and beloved the most natural thing in the whole unnatural world. The adolescent boy, one of the most beautiful of God's creatures, in whom love on all planes burns brightly in his young heart, must perforce be shunned as an object of love, and his lover must hang his head in shame and fear as the bright-eyed, long-legged creatures of his adoration flit across his day in street and park, and across his dreaming mind in the hours of night. Silent he must stand for fear that he may one day be harshly judged and hounded from his already lonely world. <the above text continues on p.7> ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.6 ------------------------------------ 6 CHUBB: PROPHET AND PAIDERAST <illustration> Drawing of Ralph Chubb by Stanley Spencer. BOOKS BY RALPH CHUBB From a brochure by Ralph Chubb. "In the tradition of William Blake" (Times Lit. Supplement) <illustration> Address: Fair Oak, Ashford Hill Nr. Newbury, Berks. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.7 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 7 <the following text is continued from p.5> Ralph Nicholas Chubb (1892-1960) was both a prophet and a paiderast. His insistence on a hearing and his intense belief in the truth of his writings forced him to devote almost his entire life not only to writing down his philosophies but to printing, publishing and distributing them himself. From 1924 until his death in 1960 he worked on his books alone and unaided, and never once faltered or tried to hide what he had to say. Fearlessly, one thinks perhaps recklessly, he distributed the handsome prospectuses of his volumes, each of which blared forth his philosophy, a philosophy he knew in his heart was condemned by the world he was trying to convert. Slowly and laboriously, when each page had reached the peak of technical perfection, the tall folios and the thick quartos would be published, each a clarion-call to the boy-lover. The world still knows little of Chubb and his work. The necessary limitation in size of his editions and the luxury of the great volumes keep his work known to but few. However, he had the good sense to deposit a copy of each of his books in the great libraries of England, where they will remain accessible for all time. Ralph Chubb was born at Harpenden, Hertfordshire, in 1892. His family moved soon after his birth to St. Albans whence he won a scholarship to Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1910. At the university he won a Blue for chess and thence he proceeded B.A. in 1913. A year later he enlisted in the army, and was mentioned in dispatches at Loos in 1915. He achieved the rank of captain but was invalided out in 1918. After the war, he studied for a time at the Slade School of Art and throughout the 1920's he exhibited many oils and water-colors at the leading London galleries. In 1921 he left London, where he had lived while studying at the Slade, and moved with his family to Curridge, Berkshire. There he and his brother built from an old carpenter's bench and some odd pieces of timber his first printing-press which was to print his first three books: Manhood (1924), The Sacrifice of Youth (1924) and A Fable of Love and War (1925). Only the last need concern us here. It is the tale in verse of a handsome warrior who, the night before a great battle is to be fought, meets a 16-year-old boy who is instantly smitten with admiration for the warrior. The latter tells the boy that tomorrow's battle will be his last, whereupon the lad demands to be possessed by the soldier. He refuses, in spite of the ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.8 ------------------------------------ 8 CHUBB: PROPHET AND PAIDERAST boy's argument that not all man's seed is meant for woman. On the warriors departure a girl comes on the scene and seduces the boy, who is at first unwilling but eventually consents to sleep with her. The boy then goes off to the battle, and the girl stands listening to the sounds of war until she deems it safe to return home, hearing the sounds of victory from afar off. She discovers her house in ruins and spies an unrecognizably mangled corpse which, while she suspects it to be the boy's, she prays is not so. She sees also the prone body of the warrior. She departs, and the warrior, regaining consciousness for a second, sees the corpse which is indeed the boy's, and crawls over to die next to him. Mary, we are told, eventually despairs of the boy's return, but is comforted by the birth of his child. The poem cannot by any standards be called well-written, but it is important as the first glimpse we have of Chubb's paiderastic writing and the last of his heterosexual interest. Woman, in the rest of Chubb's work, exists only as mother of the man-child. In 1927 Chubb abandoned his little hand-press and moved to a cottage just outside Aldermaston, where he was to remain the rest of his life. It is ironic to think of such a peace-lover living only a few miles from the huge atomic weapons research establishment, but this can only have been in Chubb's very last years. Between 1927 and 1930 he published three further booklets, all printed for him by a commercial firm. The Book of God's Madness (1928) is one of these, a long poem in blank verse. In it Chubb declares his love of boys: Delicious form of youth I love your view Your feel, your sound, your scent, your taste, your all -- . . . I speak to women. -- Here behold your king! The love of man and youth is as two fires Of mother and son two strong and gentle streams. The love of man and maid a sluggish rill. The book contains a charming full-page woodcut of two naked boys on the seashore. Songs of Mankind (1930), a far more powerful collection of poems illustrated with woodcuts, some erotic, continues to expound ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.9 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 9 Chubb's philosophy. In a wild, prophetic poem 'Song of My Soul' he howls his evocation to the boys of today: O burning tongue and hot lips of me explore my love! Lave his throat with the bubbling fountain of my verse! Drench him! Slake his loins with it, most eloquent! Leave no part, no crevice unexplored; delve deep, my minstrel tongue! He is charged, he proclaims, to state that all boys are lovers of men. For a long time Chubb had been contemplating the production of a perfect book. 'I always visualized,' he said, 'a method which would combine poetical idea, script and design, in free and harmonious rhythm -- all unified together -- so as to be mutually dependent and significant.' In 1929 he produced a short work, An Appendix, on a duplicating machine which may have given him the idea of lithographic work. In June 1931 his dream was realized and his first lithographic book, The Sun Spirit, was published. Like the three that succeed it, it is a tall folio volume, measuring 15-1/4" x 11". No metal types are used, and the whole is a lithographic reproduction of Chubb's own script and illustrations. It is not really possible to give an idea of the intense complexity of the eight books which Chubb produced in this medium. In some cases it took him five or six years to complete one volume. He would pull masses of proofs until the inking and the pressure were exactly as he wanted, noting in pencil on these trial sheets faults to be corrected in the next pull. He used only the finest handmade paper for the books which the expense of production forced him to produce only in a very limited number. Even further to enhance the technical perfection, in a tiny number of copies of each book, he would illuminate certain pages in water-color. The British Museum copy of Water-Cherubs (1937) has every leaf hand-colored and the pages flash with the bright tints. The eight lithographic books fall neatly into three groups. The first is a group of four: The Sun Spirit (1931), The Heavenly Cupid (1934), Water-Cherubs (1937), and The Secret Country (1939). The Sun Spirit is a visionary drama of which the plot is briefly this: an ancient Sage puts his youthful disciple through a series of <the above text continues on p.11> ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.10 ------------------------------------ 10 CHUBB: PROPHET AND PAIDERAST THREE REPRODUCTIONS (much reduced size) <illustration> 1. A Glimpse of the Open Book <illustrations> 2. A Single Page 3. A Full-page Illustration From Chubb's order form for The Heavenly Cupid. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.11 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 11 <the following text is continued from p.9> psychic ordeals, each more terrible than the last, until at length Lucifer himself appears. He is routed by a young seer, who -- like the Apostle John -- has seen a Vision of Light. This divine vision is manifested from the beginning as a beautiful Boyish Figure, identifiable as the Boy Jesus or as the Grecian Eros: the divine consummated humanity embracing both male and female elements in spiritual perfection, 'the Divine Androgyne.' The book is dedicated 'to you true visionary lovers of the Boyhood Divine.' It contains an extremely interesting and important account of the author's boyhood. We read of his early sexual longings and of his passionate friendship at 18 with a boy three years his younger. The Heavenly Cupid is a uniform folio about four times the length of the preceding book. It was naturally compared with the Prophetic Books of William Blake, but, as the reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement of December 4, 1934, said: 'No one could suspect this book of being a mere literary imitation; it is obviously an instance of the parallel working of a similar mind.' The bulk of the work is a long prophetic essay on the arrival on earth of a third sex or 'Third Dispensation.' In it is a passage throwing some light on Chubb's reconciliation of spiritual and physical love of boys. Then follows a long poem with decorative borders of boys and youths, entitled 'Midway through Life,' in which Chubb evokes the memory of boys long dead and gone, slaughtered by war or repressed by society's narrow-mindedness. It is reminiscent of much of Whitman, especially of the verse in Drum- Taps, 'Vigil strange I kept on the field one night.' Further poems and short discourses complete the book, including one extremely erotic poem 'Boys on the Quay.' Water-Cherubs is a poem in rhyming couplets about boys bathing, with an introduction and postscript on boy-love and a little erotic prose fable, 'Alfie's Tale. Especially noteworthy in the book is a full-page plate of two boys, head and shoulders, very much in the manner of Picasso and quite unlike Chubb's usual work. The Secret Country, the final volume of the first group, limited drastically to 37 copies and published just after the outbreak of World War II, consists of a collection of allegorical fables rather in the style of the medieval romances of knights in armor and hand- <the above text continues on p.13> ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.12 ------------------------------------ <illustration:> A SIBYLLINE BOOK "Blake's Mantle" (John O'London's Weekly). THE HEAVENLY CUPID/or The True Paradise of Loves by RALPH N. CHUBB: A Book of Prophecy & Poetry hand-printed (in his own Script throughout) and illustrated (with nearly 100 Drawings) by the AUTHOR: with a Musical Prelude. QUARTO (15 by 11 inches). There are about 200 pages. The Volume is richly bound by hand in Corduroy with wide green Niger backs and corners. The Edition comprises 43 copies all told: 30 are for sale. Each Copy is signed & numbered. Price: Printed on excellent hand-made paper (Hayle Mill) £5 5s. Seven Special Copies, painted in Water Colour £7 7s. There are a few copies only, on good machine-paper, at Four Guineas Order direct from R.N. Chubb, Fair Oak, Ashford Hill, near Newbury, Berkshire. N.B. The above design for "The Bird & The Sunflower", one of the poems, is a wood-cut and does not belong to the book. See Reproductions on Companion sheet. Flyer letterpressed by Ralph Chubb on handmade paper, 1934. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.13 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 13 <the following text is continued from p.11> some yellow-haired princes, and of descriptions of Chubb's visionary experiences. The second group of lithographed volumes consists of two titles: The Child of Dawn (1948) and Flames of Sunrise (1954). These are far less easy to analyze and discuss; the symbolisms are thickly scattered and the chapters subdivided time and again to express and re-express in various ways the same philosophy. World War II had clearly influenced Chubb in his retirement as greatly as had the first war, though in a different manner. The boys in the illustrations of this second group differ from those of the fast. Formerly slim, dark, cat-eyed and seductive, now they become blond, hard, masculine, often akin to the better drawings of male-model magazines though far more youthful. And Chubb here considered himself the herald of the Third Dispensation, sent by God to proclaim the coming of the androgynous Man-Child who would govern the world. Let us hear his own words: Raf, who is the angel Rafi grown to maturity, is the herald angel of the Third Dispensation, the angel of dawn; and it is through Anglia, his mother country, that he shall redeem the earth. For she is that Lapis Angularis, the headstone in the corner, that in the last age shall crown the universal pyramid of world-evolution. Anglia is the land of the rose and the crown. And her golden-hair'd rose-lipped blue-eyed striplings shall be call'd no longer Angles but Angels. And generation shall cease; for the golden crown of the universe shall be set upon the head, and the golden sceptre in the hand, of the eternal Manchild. (Flames of Sunrise) The third group of lithograph books comprises two titles: Treasure Trove (1958) and The Golden City (1961, posthumous). These are quartos, bound in green cloth, and reflect the tranquillity of Chubb's mind at the end of his life. They contain few prophecies and consist mostly of pastoral tales written by Chubb when he was a child. Boy-love is hardly mentioned. Had Chubb lived, he would not (so he told his sister) have published any further books. His work was finished; and it was for mankind to read and understand. <the above text continues on p.15> ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.14 ------------------------------------ <illustration:> FLAMES of SUNRISE or The Redemption of Albion by RALPH N. CHUBB Designed, lettered, illustrated & hand-printed by the AUTHOR. QUARTO (10 by 13 inches. On hand-made paper. Beautifully bound by hand in black cloth with wide vellum backs and corners. Edition of 7.5 copies only; eighteen of which are for sale. In six of the eighteen copies, the title-page and certain illustrations are painted in watercolour. Price: £15 15s. for a plain copy £18 18s. for a painted copy Orders should be sent do R.N. Chubb, Fair Oak Cottage, Ashford Hill, near Newbury, Berkshire. The dark night of Materiality is passing away. The SON of MORNING, who incarnated 2000 years ago as the Body of humanity, is now returning (in an interior sense) as its Soul. England is called to her high destiny. The Day which was foreseen in vision by Blake is at hand. Prospectus by Ralph Chubb, on Millbourne laid paper, 1954. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.15 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 15 <the following text is continued from p.13> It can be easily said that the work of Ralph Chubb is the product of a sick and perverted mind, but a more peaceful, kind and gentle man could not be imagined by the small circle of his friends who still remember him and to whom I have spoken about him. In the silence of Chubb's studio, the boy was his constant vision and delight. Perhaps the drive behind his mind was a desire to recapture his own lost boyhood and to relive his idyllic days with his 15-year-old lover. Often, in his visions, Chubb tells us that he magically regained his boyhood, or was transformed into an adolescent by a boy's touch and accepted into the naked groups he was watching. He predicts that the time will come when all mankind will have the form of a boy who never grows old. The key to the alchemy of rejuvenation has yet, alas, to be found. BOOKS BY RALPH NICHOLAS CHUBB 1. MANHOOD: A POEM. Curridge 1924. 8vo. 200 copies. Printed by Chubb in metal types. 2. THE SACRIFICE OF YOUTH: A POEM. Curridge 1924. 8vo. 45 copies. Printed by Chubb in metal types. 3. A FABLE OF LOVE AND WAR: A ROMANTIC POEM. Curridge 1925. 8vo. 200 copies. Printed by Chubb in metal types. 4. THE CLOUD AND THE VOICE (A FRAGMENT). Newbury 1927. 8vo. 100 copies. Printed commercially for Chubb. 5. WOODCUTS. London, Andrew Block, 1928. 4to. 235 copies. Chubb's only commercially published book. 6. THE BOOK OF GOD'S MADNESS. [Newbury 1929.] <ARCHIVIST'S NOTE: the above date should read "1928"; see p.8> 100 copies. Printed commercially for Chubb. 7. AN APPENDIX. Newbury 1929. 4to. 50 copies. Mimeographed by Chubb. Not for sale. 8. SONGS OF MANKIND. Newbury 1930. 4to. 100 copies. Printed commercially for Chubb. 9. THE SUN SPIRIT: A VISIONARY PHANTASY. [Newbury 1931.] Folio. 30 copies. Lithographed by Chubb. 10. THE HEAVENLY CUPID: OR, THE TRUE PARADISE OF LOVES. [Newbury 1934.] Folio. 43 copies. Lithographed by Chubb. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.16 ------------------------------------ 16 CHUBB: PROPHET AND PAIDERAST 11. SONGS PASTORAL AND PARADISAL. Brockweir: the Tintern Press, 1935. The first book printed on a private press owned by Vincent Stuart. 12. WATER-CHERUBS: A BOOK OF ORIGINAL DRAWINGS AND POETRY. [Newbury 1937.] Folio. 30 copies. Lithographed by Chubb. 13. THE SECRET COUNTRY: OR, TALES OF VISION. [Newbury 1939.] Folio. 37 copies. Lithographed by Chubb. 14. THE CHILD OF DAWN: OR, THE BOOK OF THE MANCHILD. Newbury [1948]. 4to. 30 copies. Lithographed by Chubb. 15. FLAMES OF SUNRISE: A BOOK OF THE MAN-CHILD CONCERNING THE REDEMPTION OF ALBION. Newbury [1954]. 4to. 25 copies. Lithographed by Chubb. 16. TREASURE TROVE: EARLY TALES AND ROMANCES WITH POEMS. Newbury [1957]. 4to. 21 copies. Lithographed by Chubb. 17. THE GOLDEN CITY WITH IDYLLS AND ALLEGORIES. Newbury [1961]. 4to. 18 copies. Lithographed by Chubb and posthumously published by his sister, Miss Muriel L. Chubb. [For a somewhat different interpretation of Chubb's work, see Greek Love, chapter XV ad fin. It seems to me that the parallel with Walt Whitman deserves more emphasis than it has received either there or here. Whitman until 1853 was a journalist of no great merit; and in 1853 he had a mystical experience of the kind analyzed by Richard Maurice Bucke in Cosmic Consciousness. Afterwards his writings took a markedly mystical and prophetic turn, and he preached what amounted to a religion of universal love centering around a masculine (though often androgynous) ideal of mankind. Chubb until 1927 or 1928 produced nothing of any great consequence; but suddenly he too seems to have taken an enormous leap and thereafter his works are mystical and prophetic, not imitating Blake or Whitman, but in their own original language proclaiming much the same kind of religious insight, centering around the archetypal androgynous Child God. To quote The Heavenly Cupid: "I prophesy the melting-away of the male and female shades, and the ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.17 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 17 visible emergence of the spiritual boyhood, ambisexual unisexual." Compare the esoteric meaning of Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female (sc. in the kingdom of God, the new dispensation), for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (R.S.V.) The same theme occurs again and again in the recently-translated Gospel of Thomas, a collection of sayings ascribed to Jesus and of apparently earlier date than the canonical gospels. It also recurs in Indian and Far Eastern mystical writings both ancient and recent. Its appearance in Chubb's work may again be ascribed to parallel working of a similar mind -- a mind kindled in 1928 or 1929 by some kind of mystical experience amounting to "cosmic consciousness" and thereafter using the Boy God as a prime symbol much as Whitman used the manly love of comrades. J.Z.E.] ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.18 ------------------------------------ THE BOY ACTOR AND THE "DOUBLE DISGUISE" IN SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS DR. CONRAD VAN EMDE BOAS Amsterdam ABSTRACT: The Elizabethan convention of "double-disguise" in plays, where a boy (normally playing a female role) plays a girl masquerading as a boy, unrecognized by the other characters in the plays, has been much mis understood and should be reinstated for authenticity's salve and dramatic effect. Some psychoanalytic interpretation of this phenomenon, relating to the popularity of boy actors in Shakespeare's day, and of somewhat androgynous women taking such roles in modern productions, is attempted. The claim is made that the boy actor was accepted as a woman when in female attire, and that Elizabethan dramatic conventions forbade tasteless excess in love scenes lest homosexual anxiety in the audience result. A little while ago in Holland we saw As You Like It, produced, contrary to tradition, in such a way that the "travesty" [transvestite] scenes between Ganymede-Rosalind and Orlando in the Forest of Arden were played as if the young lover saw at once through his beloved's disguise and simply joined merrily in the game. This idea, which, by the way, is not so original as some Dutch critics seem to believe, contradicts, in my opinion, not only every tradition of the Elizabethan theatre, but likewise the evident intention of the author. In this connection I wish the word "evident" to be understood in all literalness. As for the first point, it is well known that the boy actor was a customary institution of Shakespeare's time. Only in the last four decades of the 17th century, after Cromwell's death and the reopening of the theatres under the Restoration, did women appear upon the English stage. A consequence of this situation was that authors could make ample use of the possibility of re-disguising a boy actor playing ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.19 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 19 a girl as a boy, introducing this plot element into their comedies of errors and rendering it still more complicated and appealing to the public. Shakespeare and his contemporaries used this sort of "travesty," this change of sex, which is in fact a double disguise (I would stress once more that the boy playing a girl appears on stage again as a boy) for all kinds of motives. The disguised boy who pulls an old rake's leg (Jonson: The Silent Woman, 1609) ; the girl escaping grave danger in a male outfit (Imogen in Cymbeline) or protecting herself against possible molestation (Rosalind) ; the young woman, disguised as a page, entering the service of her indifferent or unfaithful lover (Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Viola in Twelfth Night, Bellario in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, 1609) are but a few examples of the way in which this rewarding theme was developed and varied. There is no doubt, however, that this process, simple but most effective as it is, was accepted by the audience as a matter of course, so much so that no author of this period was troubled by or so much as entertained the thought that anyone would see through the situation before the denouement: neither the lover (Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It), nor the husband (The Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline), nor the father (As You Like It, again) nor the brother (Twelfth Night) or any other friend or relative. I have already mentioned that the Dutch producer's interpretation runs contrary to Shakespeare's "evident" intention. Apparently the producer, like his predecessors, thought himself justified by Orlando's words to the Duke (V iv 30) : "Methought he was a brother to your daughter." But this argument is belied not only by the whole course of the play, but also by the words preceding and following that passage: "The first time 1 ever saw him" and "But, my good lord, this boy is forest-born." Words like these absolutely prove that even in the fifth act, Orlando is still unaware of Ganymede's real identity, just as in Twelfth Night Orsino, despite the outspoken manner in which Viola-Cesario shows her affection for him, or better her womanly passion, continues to see the boy in Cesario to the very last moment. A producer really desirous of introducing a new element into ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.20 ------------------------------------ 20 THE BOY ACTOR AND THE DOUBLE DISGUISE As You Like It or its twin play Twelfth Night could attempt a far more interesting experiment, namely casting as Rosalind or Cesario, who move on the stage practically the whole time in boy's clothes, a young, preferably adolescent actor. Only then could one form an idea of the effect these plays had on the audience in Shakespeare's time, and only then could one truly understand the amount of playfully acted-out homoeroticism to be found in these dramas just below the surface, as it were. It makes a great difference in dramatic effect if Viola or Rosalind are being interpreted by a young woman or by a boy actor. The word "great" does not even do justice to the real situation. In fact, there is a qualitative difference involved, so that in our century, when in many performances Rosalind is played by a woman, justice is not done to Shakespeare's intentions. To corroborate this thesis, we must take as our starting point the real circumstances of a performance of any of these plays on the Elizabethan stage. Since Lawrence Olivier's excellent motion picture version of Henry V, we have been in a better position than ever before to visualize a performance of Twelfth Night or As You Like It, though we can scarcely understand the dramatic effect on a contemporary audience. Let us imagine ourselves in one of the half-open theatres on the south shore of the Thames. The performance is being given in broad daylight; there are no footlights and no curtain. The groundlings are in the pit, standing, exposed to "the rain and the wind," but we take our seats among the distinguished visitors in the roofed-in galleries, or preferably on the stools on the stage. It is advisable to interrupt our flight of fancy at this point to appreciate the consequences of such intimate contact between actor and audience, a contact that existed not only during public performances, but equally -- and frequently to a greater extent -- during performances in the halls of castles and manors, where the high-born theatre-protectors and their suites had the play, so to speak, right under their noses, which made the situation far from pleasant for the poor comedians. just think of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, by Beaumont and Fletcher, or of the opening scene of Cyrano de Bergerac, to get some idea of the sort of "secondary" performance that would be enacted between the cast and the more or less noble Maecenas-type protectors on the stage! ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.21 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 21 One must realize the consequences of this lack of distance, this physical proximity of the actors to the most influential segment of the audience, to appreciate that the simple disguise in our own century has an entirely different emotional effect from that of the double disguise in Shakespeare's time. The young woman in disguise on the modern stage has, as proven by the tremendous success of these plays, a highly erotic effect, especially if the actress playing Viola or Rosalind combines the characteristic female charms with more or less boyish features, such as slightly developed breasts, buttocks and hips. Elisabeth Bergner, the most renowned Rosalind of this century, and still unsurpassed in the judgment of many connoisseurs of the theatre, owed her success in part to this psycho-physical hermaphroditism. To put it more succinctly, Elisabeth Bergner, disguised as Ganymede, becomes a "master-mistress," to quote an expression from Shakespeare's famous Sonnet XX. Shakespeare's boy actor, however, became a "mistress-master." That is to say, on the twentieth-century stage the simple "travesty" touches us emotionally through our bisexual disposition: it stirs our age-old dream of the hermaphrodite. In Shakespeare's age it had a far more direct homoerotic effect. Patently we should not think of conscious experiences. We are dealing here with vague emotions, with all kinds of affective elements in the dramatic atmosphere that play outside the sphere of consciousness. It is, unfortunately, impossible to go into this matter more thoroughly here. I may refer the reader to my 1951 study of Shakespeare, in which I endeavored to elaborate at length on this problem; I hope that it will before long become accessible to the English-reading public under the title Shakespeare's Sonnets and their Relationship with his Double-Disguise Plays. There is, however, one question that I should like to raise. If in 1600 in London, in front of the audience, overt homoerotic scenes were enacted between Cesario and Orsino, or between Ganymede and Orlando, how could Shakespeare's contemporaries have stomached them without the violent symptoms of revulsion that in modern times, until quite recently -- and if the protagonists of ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.22 ------------------------------------ 22 THE BOY ACTOR AND THE DOUBLE DISGUISE Moral Rearmament had their way, even now -- would have rendered such a performance impossible? This question is partially answered by the fact that the boy actor was a socially accepted figure, regarded as a woman so long as he stood upon the stage, and consciously received as such by the Elizabethan audience, even when he was appareled in men's clothes. But of equal importance is a further circumstance, namely that Shakespeare -- indeed, like another Prospero from The Tempest -- knew how to "charm" his audience in the original sense of the word: He is always careful that no scene between man and boy should become physically repulsive. To the contrary, the playwright never allows his boy actor to perform an action or make a gesture that, could expose him to ridicule or offend or repel his audience, just I as he never allows anything of the sort in his great love tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra. In neither of the two double-disguise plays do we ever find any intimate contact. No kissing, no embraces; despite the intensely homoerotic mood there is never any homoerotic action. Shakespeare successfully avoided the revulsion that existed in his time, just as in ours, against homosexuality when acted-out too overtly. Moreover, the playwright continually stressed, in a masterful way, the playfulness of the comedies, the unreality of the events. Twelfth Night is -- as the title indicates -- a continuation of an old Epiphany play, and the Forest of Arden, with its hunting, singing, and philosophizing noblemen, shepherds in love, and roguish jesters, charms us quite as much as Oberon's forest in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Thus we are constantly reminded, whenever the tension threatens to become unbearable, that it is all but a dream that will be ended in two hours' time. In conclusion, may I mention the interesting secondary psychological function of the farcical side-intrigues and jester scenes in both Twelfth Night and As You Like It? Whenever the homoerotic undertow threatens to rise to the surface, Shakespeare succeeds by these intermezzi in neutralizing the tension that a straining to excess of the homoerotic atmosphere might produce in the audience. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.23 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 23 Humor as a remedy against the aversion to homosexuality. What a lesson Shakespeare teaches our present-day Moral Rearmers! Stadionweg 80 Amsterdam -- Z., Nederland [Despite Dr. van Emde Boas's researches, I must respectfully disagree with at least one of his conclusions. There are love scenes in Shakespeare which require a great deal of passionate embracing to go with the passionate language, boy or no boy. W. Robertson Davies, Shakespeare's Boy Actors, London, J. M. Dent, 1939, has gone into this very point in detail, and I have cited some of his conclusions in Greek Love, 317-328. A more detailed and profound study of the boy actors of Shakespeare's day is in preparation and will appear in an early issue of this Journal. J.Z.E.] ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.24 ------------------------------------ SHAKESPEARE'S BOYFRIEND AND SONNET XX J.Z. EGLINTON New York AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT: From the Sonnets and related literature, conclusions are drawn as to the identity of the dedicatee "Mr. W.H." as William Hostler, boy actor in Shakespeare's company. The context of the Sonnets demands an intimacy of relationship comparable to Greek love, even though Sonnet XX denies an overt sexual aspect. The hypothesis is advanced and supported that W.H. was for some time Shakespeare's special protege or apprentice, much as Nat Field was Ben Jonson's, learning the acting profession from him and very likely for some time sharing his living quarters. Psychological conclusions as to the nature of the relationship are arrived at through a detailed examination of the crucial Sonnet XX. In Greek Love I drew a number of conclusions about the mysterious "Mr. W.H." to whom the pirate publisher Thomas Thorpe dedicated the first (1609) edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Among these conclusions were the following: (1) W.H. was still in public life in 1609, hence both the dedication itself and its placatory tone. (2) He was in all probability intimately connected with the theatre, most likely as an actor rather than a noble patron. (3) He had been at the outset a boy acting female roles. (4) Though in his teens in the 1590's when Shakespeare began writing sonnets to him, young W.H. was at least ripe for marriage and beginning to lose his adolescent bloom before the end of the affair -- at least three years later and possibly more. (5) He could nevertheless have continued to act female roles in 1600-09, as many actors in their twenties did; specialized training made such prolongation useful and possible until they became too tall, too broad-shouldered or too fleshed out in the wrong places, or too heavily beardstubbled. Vocal training (Midsummer Night's Dream I ii 36-45, etc.) en- ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.25 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 25 abled actors to remain convincing in female roles long after the chest voice had begun to make its appearance. (6) The language of the Sonnets unequivocally indicates that Shakespeare loved young W.H., speaking intimately to him as man to boy rather than as commoner to nobleman; and that for a considerable time the two were in daily or hourly contact. (7) Some references in the Sonnets indicate that Shakespeare and young W.H. had begun to live apart without loss of love, indicating that they had probably lived together previously. (8) Love and intimacy aside, this relationship did not reach the point of overt sex. (9) Sometime during the affair there was a breakup and a reconciliation, perhaps more than one. (10) The affair was not entirely devoid of capriciousness and jealousy, as indicated by their rivalry for the Dark Lady, and by the effect on Shakespeare (Sonnet LXXXVI) of the rival poet's horning in on this affair. (11) There actually is one (and so far as I know only one) W.H. in the roster of actors of the period, who fits the chronology indicated: William Hostler. He played boys' and females' parts side by side with the more famous Nat Field and Dicky Robinson in the King's Company (to which Shakespeare belonged), and in the Fast Folio he is mentioned in the roster of "Principal Actors in all these Plays." His name is sometimes given as Hostler, sometimes as Ostler, the dropped H originally representing a silent letter not picked up by scriveners. (12) His finally dropping the H for good may conceivably have been a coverup to his connection with the Sonnets, after their publication in 1609. A closer examination of the crucial Sonnet XX, with attention both to meanings of words used therein as those meanings were understood in Shakespeare's day, and to psychological conclusions deducible from the phraseology, allows further conclusions to be drawn about the relationship between Shakespeare and young W.H. We may take as a point of departure the circumstances under which Shakespeare, then an actor, would have had occasion to share his hours (or even his living quarters) with any teen-age boy actor. Ben Jonson from about 1600 on had young Nat Field, one of the most celebrated of all the boy actors, as his own special protege; and this fact provides the clue. In all likelihood young Willie Hostler was Shakespeare's protege, learning the acting profession at first hand, by experience and example, over a period of several years. There ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.26 ------------------------------------ 26 SHAKESPEARE'S BOYFRIEND AND SONNET XX was no other convenient way for a member of any skilled trade or profession to learn the necessary skills; the apprenticeship system was at work here too, formally and informally. And so we see the teen-aged W.H. sticking close by Shakespeare, perhaps flattered into doing so by the pair of courting sonnets now numbered CXXXV and CXXXVI. We see him sooner or later sharing the master actor's rude quarters, very likely also his bed in those unheated winters, for sheer warmth even if not sex. We see between master and apprentice actor a loyalty and affection developing much more closely than would be possible in later epochs when apprenticeship was to become a matter of pure economics. We see him getting pointers from Shakespeare on delivery of lines, on timing, on gestures, on makeup and costuming, on traditional bits of stage business, on the accepted ways in which certain types of role were done -- at first page-boys or children generally, later on ladies-in-waiting, still later queens and heroines. We see the boy growing in skill as an actor in these walk-on parts, and later on in more demanding roles. Not necessarily was he the boy for whom Shakespeare created the characters of Juliet, Rosalind, Ophelia, Cordelia, Cleopatra, etc., but very likely indeed he was one of the small group of boys for whom all the playwrights then active in this circle were writing female parts. We see him growing proud as his skill -- and his reputation -- developed; proud, and quite possibly jealous or demanding. Nor could Shakespeare have been the easiest person in the world to live with. Actors and artists of all kinds have long been notorious for volatility, demandingness, temper and intensity. And the creator of Lear, Hamlet, The Tempest, Othello, or even of the earlier Romeo and Juliet, must have been a person of volcanic, even of Michelangelesque, intensity indeed. Small wonder, then, that Shakespeare, long womanless, found feelings developing in himself for his young protege which he dared not commit to prose or in any way allow to become matter for local gossip. The spiteful rumors about Marlowe's fate, whatever their degree of truth, had to be kept in mind. Small wonder, for that matter, that the Sonnets indicate a breakup and reconciliation (XXXIII-XXXIV, LXXXVI-XC; the reconciliation is indicated in XXXV). Small wonder, too, at Shakespeare's upset state when a rival poet -- most probably George ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.27 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 27 Chapman -- addressed enough flattery to W.H. to turn his head and cause the boy to pay more attention to him than to Shakespeare; or when W.H. began neglecting Shakespeare (and his own acting job?) for the Dark Lady. But here probable reconstruction gives way to speculation. With the intensity of Shakespeare's feelings for his young protege, given his utter rejection of overt homosexual acts, the only safe outlet was a playful one. With a young imp in the ambiguous position of playing female roles on stage -- and likely posing as this and that and the other even offstage -- recognition on both Shakespeare's and W.H.'s part of the playful element was a necessity.. This aspect, then, must be considered in the Sonnets. One may conjecture to have comprised Nos. I-XXV, with LIII-LV, LXIII or birthday gift from master actor to apprentice, a gift possible and appropriate only after the relationship had already deepened to such a degree that in it were private jokes, confidences shared and exchanged, and the freedom to express deeper feelings without fear or threat. This sheaf of sonnets (which we may reasonably conjecture to have comprised Nos. I-XXV with LIII-LV, LXIII and CVI interpolated, and XXVI as an envoy) was the most personal gift imaginable, especially written for the youngster, celebrating in the most personal manner possible something W.H. was then most proud of, one of his most valuable -- albeit transient -- professional tools, in a way unthreatening to his own (or his master's) masculine image. Under cover of the playful references to the boy's girlish good looks, and to the way in which the master actor doted on him, and under cover of the almost fatherly admonitions by Shakespeare to this boy, a strained eroticism could be and was harmlessly expressed. In this light, let us look more closely at Sonnet XX, long the stumbling-block to amateur and professional interpreters of the Sonnets. A woman's face, with Nature's own hand painted, Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion. The first line evokes the androgynous beauty which made such boys of value to the stage in those days. "With Nature's own hand painted" we may take in context as contrasted alike with heavily ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.28 ------------------------------------ 28 SHAKESPEARE'S BOYFRIEND AND SONNET XX made-up women and heavily made-up older male actors of female roles, whose natural bloom had long since disappeared. The phrase "master-mistress of my passion" bears much more scrutiny. "Master," though also used to mean a schoolteacher, was in Shakespeare's day a common form of address to a boy or young man (Merchant of Venice, II ii 50, etc.). "Mistress" was commonly used for women (it was the common form of address used for the protagonists in Merry Wives of Windsor, etc.), but it was apparently never used for those of high rank. (Which makes employment of the phrase "master-mistress" unintelligible to those who insist that Shakespeare's tone in the Sonnets was sycophantic, and that their recipient was some nobleman with whom the actor-playwright wished to curry favor!) Even in Shakespeare's day the word "mistress" had sometimes sexual connotations: Merry Wives I i 187-97, Loves Labours Lost V ii 286, Sonnets 127.9 and 130.1, etc. On the other hand, though a "mistress" might be and often was a man's sexual playmate, "master" seems not to have been in use to designate a lover. The OED gives the term "master-miss" as an 18th century and later term for an effeminate youth, but this seems to derive from Sonnet XX rather than accounting for the epithet in that poem, and very likely was a short-lived nonce-word comparable to "nancy-boy" in our own day. "Passion" did not carry exclusively sexual meanings (1 Henry IV II iv 340; Midsummer Night's Dream III ii 75, etc.), though it sometimes did have sexual connotations (Lobes Labours Lost I i 246, Romeo and Juliet II Prologue and II i 146, Much Ado About Nothing I i 177, II iii 94-96, etc.). Curiously, the "master-mistress" image seems not to have been carried over into any of the known translations of this sonnet (according to Dr. Warren Johansson). A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women's fashion. . . . Shakespeare was no woman-hater; but a person of his degree of penetration and psychological acumen necessarily had to recognize the frequently inexplicable shifts of mood and attitude common to women, and ascribed to women in poetry, prose and drama of his period as of every other. Here again the transiently androgynous nature of the adolescent is thrown into contrast, even as in the lines following; but one may justly wonder how many adolescent boys ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.29 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 29 Shakespeare had known at that time, as adolescents are as changeable as women, and sometimes even more unpredictable. This by itself is good psychological evidence for an early dating of the Sonnets and in particular for an early dating of this one among the one hundred fifty-odd. In As You Like It III ii 377-82 Shakespeare is far more realistic, probably through having benefited by his experience with young W.H. He has Rosalind (alias "Ganymede," of all imaginable names for her to choose!) say: "At which time would I -- being but a moonish youth -- grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking; proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles: for every passion something and for no passion truly anything; as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour. . . " We may even speculate that. these qualities were culturally conditioned, or tacitly encouraged, as characteristic of adolescents and women in Shakespeare's day. On the middle lines of this Sonnet I have already commented at length in Greek Love, and can add nothing here. But towards the end we have And for a woman wert thou first created, Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing, to my purpose nothing. A paraphrase in modern language would run about like this: "Honey, you should have been born a girl. God intended to make you into one, and gave you a girl's beauty -- appropriately for the roles you play -- but below the waist He slipped up. And am I sorry." A sentiment like this could only have been possible in the most intimate circumstances, and even then it most likely brought a blush and a giggle from young W.H., whether or not it also brought an embrace. "Thing" as referring to a penis is slang found as far back as Chaucer's time and into the present day: Wife of Bath's Prologue, 121, is perhaps one of its earlier uses. The word "nothing" in the same line is to be pronounced "no-thing," to rhyme with "doting" and to go along with the use of balance and antithesis so ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.30 ------------------------------------ 30 SHAKESPEARE'S BOYFRIEND AND SONNET XX strongly marking this poem. In which case we may read in the repeated word a pun on another meaning of "thing" common in Shakespeare's day, i.e., vulva. But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure, Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure. G. Legman, in The Horn Book, has pointed out that Shakespeare was in his own day primarily known as an erotic poet -- i.e. from the appearance of Venus and Adonis, Rape of Lucrece, etc., until the mss. of the plays (or their prompt-books, or actors' pirated copies, etc.) began to be printed. It is hardly surprising, then, to find in Shakespeare -- as in other poets of his period, in all fairness -- bawdy puns almost everywhere, even in basically serious contexts. Here it is straightforward enough. In modern paraphrase again: "Since Nature furnished you instead with the kind of tool suitable for giving women (sc. rather than me) pleasure, then love me, and make love to women the way you were built to do." Despite Shakespeare's explicit denial of sexual intentions in Sonnet XX, it is abundantly clear that this poem could only have been written and transmitted in a context of an affair having at least some of the characteristics of Greek love. And the development of this kind of affection between master actor and apprentice in a womanless society where learning of a skilled trade or profession connoted sharing of lives, appears in context as a natural thing, especially in someone of as intense feelings as Shakespeare. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.31 ------------------------------------ EVIDENCE FOR HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT EGYPT TERENCE J. DEAKIN Exeter College Oxford ABSTRACT: The paucity of references to homosexual acts in papyri or epigraphy surviving from Pharaonic Egypt suggests that sexual matters in general were taken for granted among Egyptians. But most references to such acts are pejorative, either identifying the passive role with defeated enemies, or ascribing the active role to Seth in the Contendings of Horus and Seth, which describes Seth's magical punishment for this act. Either type of act was considered taboo. Nevertheless, a recently discovered tale treats such action on the part of a king casually, and evidence is accumulating that the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhnaten took his son-in-law Smenkhkare' as his boyfriend, causing Queen Nefertiti to fall into disfavour as a result. A glandular anomaly may have complicated matters on Akhnaten's part, even as on that of Queen Hatshepsut, who used masculine pronouns of herself and was represented as a man even to wearing a false beard, but we are not in possession of sufficient evidence to assume anomalous sexual behavior in either instance. Our knowledge of homosexuality among the ancient Egyptians<note 1> is derived almost entirely from a few chance references in religious texts, none of which gives us an accurate picture of the prevailing attitude. There are no letters and no poems in which homophilic relations figure, and no definite representation of homosexual intercourse has survived from Pharaonic times. The paucity of sources is mystifying unless, as seems to have been the case, the Egyptians took sexual matters in general very much for granted. The tone of most of the references cited here is one of disapproval, though perhaps not of severe condemnation. Certainly, we can form no impression of the homosexual's role in Egyptian society, nor of how widespread was the practice. Any hypotheses, which will necessarily ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.32 ------------------------------------ 32 EVIDENCE FOR HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT EGYPT be of the most tentative kind, can be based only on the evidence marshalled below. Typical of the obscure literary references to the subject is a text from the Ptolemaic temple of Edfu: '(You let forth) your semen into the belly of the enemy, so that he becomes pregnant and your son comes forth from his brow.<note 2> The context of this quotation is a myth, in which the ithyphallic god Min sodomizes*<see note> an enemy. The result of the act is the birth of the god Thoth from the enemy's forehead.<note 3> Erman inferred from this text that the concept of homosexual intercourse was connected with warfare, and that sodomy constituted the symbolic degradation of a fallen enemy.<note 4> The Egyptians believed that even a god magically became powerless if subjected to this treatment, as is shown by an early hymn in which the following lines occur: Re' has no power over me, since I am he who takes away his breath. Atum has no power over me, since I copulate between his buttocks.<note 5> Another Old Kingdom hymn has: It is an abomination to them if the god's arm falls upon them and the god's shadow abuses them sexually. His semen shall not enter you<note 6> The necessity of avoiding anal intercourse by an enemy is shown by a passage from the collection of Old Egyptian spells known as the Pyramid Texts. Here the deceased Pharaoh is urged to 'go forth, plant yourself on him (the enemy), lest he copulate with you.<note 7> There is no evidence that it actually was the practice in Egypt to violate an enemy, and the apotropaic spells quoted above indicate only the belief that the deceased might be so treated in the nether world and would thus be tainted with evil, and conversely that he would be able to obtain power over his enemies in this way.<note 8> The use of homosexual violation has, however, been attested in modern Egypt. A ceremonial act of violent sodomy was performed annually, in public, outside the mosque of a celebrated sheikh, until the custom was outlawed by the government.<note 9> ------- *The term "sodomy" or "sodomize" in this article refers solely to anal intercourse. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.33 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 33 The connexion in the Egyptian mind between sodomy and the foe is again shown by the word hm, which frequently occurs in historical texts with reference to enemies and is usually translated 'poltroon' or 'coward.' The hieroglyphic writing of this word, <hieroglyphic illustration> indicates a greater depth of meaning. The first sign, depicting a well full of water, often stands for the vulva, the Egyptians finding the latter difficult to represent pictorially, and is used in the word for 'woman.'<note 10> The third sign, the determinative, an erect phallus, makes a curious juxtaposition, and of course suggests to us that the word hm really refers to an individual possessing female as well as male characteristics, i.e. an effeminate. In various contexts hm is clearly employed in a homosexual sense.<note 11> With only one exception, which we shall consider, all the texts treating of homosexuality are pejorative. Among lists of forbidden actions, supplied by inscriptions in the temple at Edfu and by a papyrus from Tanis, we find that it was taboo 'to unite oneself with an effeminate (hm) or with a homosexual (nkk).'<note 12> The terms hm and nkk are evidently not synonymous: perhaps nkk refers to an 'active,' hm to a 'passive,' homosexual.<note 13> The Book of the Dead contains a celebrated spell in which the deceased is required to pronounce before Osiris a long list of sins which he claims not to have committed. Among these is homosexual intercourse: 'I have not committed acts of impurity, neither have I lain with men.'<note 14> A fragment from a newly discovered Egyptian story, that of King Neferkare' and General Sisene, has recently been published. Although the context is unclear, there is no doubt that in one place a homosexual encounter is referred to: 'When his Majesty had taken his (sexual) pleasure of him (the general), he turned towards his palace. . .'<note 15> What is most surprising about this passage is the apparently casual way with which the matter is dealt in the midst of narrative. If homosexuality as such were considered to be thoroughly ignominious, then the above text would be inexplicable; but here we have the unique reference in Egyptian literature to a proper homophilic relationship, in which there exists no element of violence or degradation. Unfortunately we do not know whether any punishment ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.34 ------------------------------------ 34 EVIDENCE FOR HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT EGYPT was subsequently inflicted on the King or on the general and must not draw too many inferences from the passage quoted. Certainly the best known literary reference to homosexuality occurs in the mythological tale called 'The Contendings of Horus and Seth.' The conflict between these two gods, one representing good and the other evil, occupies an important place in Egyptian religion. Various versions of the myth tell how Horus and Seth fight each other and how the former finally triumphs.<note 16> 'The Contendings,' the ms. of which dates from about 1160 B.C., contains a scene relevant to our subject: Then Seth said to Horus, 'Come, let us spend a pleasant day in my house.' Horus replied to him, 'Certainly, most certainly.' When the time of evening came, a bed was prepared for them and the two lay down. Now during the night Seth caused his penis to become erect and inserted it between the buttocks of Horus. And then Horus placed his two hands between his buttocks and took forth the semen of Seth."<note 17> Seth is, as recorded later on in 'The Contendings,' magically punished for his action by the goddess Isis, who succeeds in making him pregnant with his own semen which Horus has preserved.<note 18> An earlier, fragmentary version of the homosexual act between Horus and Seth is found in a Middle Kingdom papyrus from Illahun (ca. 2000 B.C.): The majesty of Seth said to the majesty of Horus: 'How beautiful are your buttocks! Stretch out your legs (? )' . . . The majesty of Horus said: 'Wait until I tell [my mother Isis. When they had arrived] at their palace, the majesty of Horus said to his mother Isis: ['What shall I do?] Seth wishes (?) to sodomize me.' She said to him: 'Take care, do not approach him for that. When he suggests it to you again, say to him: 'It is difficult for me because of my nature (?) . . .'<note 19> According to Griffiths it is incorrect to limit the significance of this act of sodomy to the idea of symbolic power over the enemy; he considers that the practice was thought sufficiently shameful in it self, without the connotations of victory, noting that no ignominy was attached to the god Thoth, although he had been born as a result of a homosexual liaison between Min and some enemy.<note 20> The few extracts quoted above are all that survive from Egyptian ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.35 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 35 literature referring to homoerotic relations. And the evidence of representational material is even more scanty. There are, in fact, no erotic pieces dating from the Pharaonic period which are definitely homosexual.<note 21> Two faience fragments from Hermopolis have been thought to represent sodomy, but there is no reason why these should not represent ordinary coitus.<note 22> A painted ostracon of the New Kingdom, believed to show a wrestling scene, may actually be of one man fondling another's genitalia, though since the sherd is of rough execution one cannot be sure.<note 23> From the Graeco-Roman period there is a figurine from Thebes showing 'a boy (with the Egyptian lock of hair) sitting on a cushion, terminating at both ends in a phallus.<note 24> Of the unpublished Egyptian erotic material known to me, no homosexual pieces exist, although a few may be found in private collections. Two bas-reliefs from el-Amarna are, however, of much greater importance. One of these shows King Akhnaten and Smenkhkare' sitting together; the King is fondling the lad.<note 25> On the other, which is unfinished, Smenkhkare' pours wine for Akhnaten.<note 26> In both reliefs the sun-disk is figured above the pair. The second relief is inconclusive, but the first has led scholars to speculate about a possible homosexual relationship between the heretic Pharaoh and the boy. Akhnaten (reigned ca. 1372-54 B.C.) is famous for having been the first monotheist in history and is assuredly one of the most fascinating characters of ancient Egypt.<note 27> Within a few years of coming to the throne he overthrew all the established gods, supplanting them with his new deity Aten, whose symbol was the sun's disk. It is unnecessary to provide here the details of Akhnaten's life and reign, as these are very easily accessible elsewhere. Suffice it to remark that Smenkhkare' was his son-in-law, that he likely occupied the throne for a year or two after Akhnaten's death, dying in turn probably in his early 20's, and that he had been co-regent for some time previously. There is sufficient evidence that Smenkhkare' became the favorite of Akhnaten, and that as a result of this the beautiful Queen Nefertiti fell into disrepute!<note 28> Although some authorities<note 29> would deny that the first bas-relief is evidence of a homosexual partnership, other material points in this direction. For example, Smenkhkare' possessed two remarkable epithets, 'beloved of Uaenre'' and 'beloved of Neferkheperure'' (both being names of Akhnaten), which surely indicate such a state of af- ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.36 ------------------------------------ 36 EVIDENCE FOR HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT EGYPT fairs. Even more conclusive is Smenkhkare''s use of the name Nefernefruaten, which had formerly been borne by Nefertiti<note 30> and which shows that in some sense he filled her role. Whether Akhnaten's physical disorders had any effect on his psychosexual development is not clear from our present knowledge of the aetiology of homosexuality. He may have suffered from an endocrine abnormality, probably resulting in hyperpituitary eunuchoidism,<note 31> as witness the wide thighs, curiously shaped head, slim arms and lower legs, and apparent gynaecomastia as represented on his monuments.<note 32> Akhnaten was, of course, an obvious historical target for the psychoanalysts, and both Abraham<note 33> and Strachey<note 34> wrote articles claiming that the King had a negative Oedipus complex, which was connected with his known homosexual orientation. Strachey, indeed, goes so far as to suggest paranoia on the part of Akhnaten; but the actual evidence is too slender for even a sketchy psychoanalysis to seem plausible.<note 35> There is no shred of evidence for female homosexuality in Pharaonic Egypt, although it has been suggested<note 36> that Hatshepsut (reigned ca. 1520-1484 B.C.), who was Egypt's greatest queen, may have been lesbian. Hatshepsut, it is true, used masculine pronouns of herself -- an unprecedented action -- , was represented as a man (even to the false beard), and had difficulty with her marriage partners. In general she seems to have possessed an unusually dominant personality.<note 37> Nevertheless, no conclusions about sexual disposition should be drawn from the apparent masculinity or femininity of an individual -- it is well known, for example, that by no means all effeminate men are homosexual -- and we are not justified in assuming a maladjustment in Hatshepsut's sexuality on these grounds. On the basis of the material presented above we are in no position to generalize about homosexuality in Egypt. In the case of Akhnaten, our only identified homosexual, we do not even know whether he had sexual intercourse with Smenkhkare', and actually this is unlikely. It is clear only that such relations were viewed with disapproval, but that they figured in Egyptian mythology does not allow us to assume anything about their actual frequency. Generally speaking, the ancient Egyptians were liberal-minded in matters of sex, and so it may be that the lot of the homosexual under the Pharaohs was not particularly unhappy. With the advent of Hellenic ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.37 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 37 culture during the third century B.C., disapprobation was doubtless replaced by tolerant acceptance. NOTES 1. The only general account, to date, is that found in Magnus Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitat des Mannes und des Weibes, Berlin, Louis Marcus Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1914, 737-39. This is very incomplete. I am greatly indebted to Dr. John R. Harris of Christ Church, Oxford, not only for much of the material cited in this article but also for his friendly encouragement. 2. Marquis de Rochemonteix, Le Temple d'Edfou I, Paris, 1892, 82. 3. Cf. the birth of Athene from the head of Zeus in classical mythology. 4. A. Erman, 'Beitrage zur Egyptischen Religion,' Sitzungsberichte der kgl. preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 45:1142 ff (Berlin, 1916). Cf. H. Kees, 'Zu den agyptischen Mondsagen,' Ztschr. f. agypt. Sprache 60:1 ff (Berlin, 1925), and G.D. Hornblower, 'Further notes on phallism in ancient Egypt,' Man 27:151 ff (London, 1927). 5. A. de Buck, The Egyptian Coffin Texts VI, 258, Chicago, 1956; Kees, loc.cit. 6. H. Kees, 'Ein alter Gotterhymnus als Begleittext sur Opfertafel,' Ztschr. J. agypt. Sprache 57:110 ff (1922). 7. A. Wiedemann, 'Varia,' Sphinx 14:39 ff (Uppsala, 1910). 8. An odd line in a hieratic papyrus (Brit. Museum 10683; 'Dream-Book' 8,2) may be relevant here. In a list of dreams which a man might have and of their consequences, we read: '[If a man see himself in a dream] seeing his penis erect, (it is) bad: victory (will come) to his enemies.' A.H. Gardiner, Hieratic papyri in the British Museum, 3rd series, London, 1935, I, 17. 9. Hornblower, loc.cit. J.G. Griffiths, The Contendings of Horus and Seth, Liverpool, 1960, 44, notes that during an excavation in Nubia before the war there was a case of sodomy on the part of a local workman to avenge a personal insult. 10. The second sign is simply a phonetic complement to the first. 11. E. Lefebure, Oeuvres diverses II, Paris, 1912, 192-95. Lefebure thought that hm meant 'eunuch,' but there is no reason for limiting its significance to this extent. Cf. Hornblower and Griffiths, locc.citt. 12. P. Montet, 'Le fruit defendu,' Kemi 11:104 ff (Paris, 1950). 13. The vernacular expressions are, I believe, 'butch' and 'bitch.' 14. E.A.W. Budge, The Book of the Dead (transl.), London, 1928, 369 ff (spell 125); Ch. Maystre, Los declarations d'innocence (Livre des morts, ch. 125), 40:88 (Cairo, 1937). Cf. Wiedemann, loc.cit. A possible translation is 'I have not had intercourse with a nkk'; there is some confusion between the words nkk and nk (to copulate). 15. G. Posener, Le conte de Neferkare et du general Sisene,' Revue d'Egyptologie 11:130, 136 (Paris, 1957). A homosexual meaning for this episode is beyond question. 16. See Griffiths, op.cit., 41-46; cf. J. Vandier, La Religion egyptienne, Paris, 1949, 4-9. 17. A.H. Gardiner, The Chester Beatty papyri, no.1, Oxford, 1931, 21; cf. Griffiths, op.cit., 42 ff. For the background to the story see Gardiner (work just cited), 8-13, and G. Lefebvre, Romans et contes egyptiens, Paris, 1949, 178-82. 18. Seth's anal tendencies may be shown by the way in which he treats the goddess Anat in a magical spell: see Gardiner, Hieratic papyri. . . , I, 62 (P. Chester Beatty VII, 1, 5); cf. W.R. Dawson, J. of Egypt. Archaeol., 22:107 (London, 1936), and J.G. Griffiths & A.A. Barb, 'Seth or Anubis?, J. of the ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.38 ------------------------------------ 38 EVIDENCE FOR HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT EGYPT Warburg and Courtauld Insts., 22:367-71 (London, 1959). It is possible that coitus a tergo, and not anal intercourse, is referred to here. 19. F. Ll. Griffith, Hieratic papyri from Kahun and Gurob, London, 1908, plate 3; [R.F.K.] von Oefele, 'Zum kontraren Geschlechtsverkehr in Altagypten,' Monatshefte fur praktische Dermatologie 29 (Berlin, 1899), 409-11; Griffiths, op.cit., 42. Griffiths quotes a further brief reference from a Saqqara magical papyrus: 'The semen of Seth is in the belly of Horus, since Seth has emitted it against him.' 20. Griffiths, op.cit., 43 ff. See the present article ad init. and note 4. 21. The paucity of Egyptian erotic material is remarkable, the only Pharaonic item of any length being a paprus <ARCHIVIST'S NOTE: probably "papyrus"> at Turin depicting coital positions, shortly to be edited for the first time by the present writer. 22. G. Roeder, Hermopolis 1929-39, Hildesheim, 1959 261, § 56 ff, and plates 46 h, i and 47 b, c. 23. E. Brunner-Traut, Die altagyptischen Scherbenbilder (Bildostraka), Wiesbaden, 1956, 59 ff, no. 52 and plate 20. 24. [J. Bonomi], Catalogue of the Egyptian antiquities in the museum of Hartwell House, London, 1858, 47, no. 379. 25. H. Schifer, Amarna in Religion u. Kunst, Berlin, 1931, plate 30 (Berlin 17813) = K. Lange, Konig Echnaton u. die Amarna-Zeit, Munich [1951], plate 42. 26. Schifer, op.cit., pl. 31 (Berlin 20716) = Lange, op.cit., pl. 40. Cf. a statuette in which Akhnaten is kissing a child, possibly Smenkhkare' (Schafer, op.cit., pl. 49), though Lange, op.cit., pl. 37, thinks the second figure to be a daughter. 27. See in general Lange, op.cit.; A.E.P. Weigall, Life and Times of Akhnaton, London, 1922; and for his religious reforms D. Rops, Le Roi ivre de Dieu, Strasbourg/Paris, 1951. Cf. also A.H. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford, 1961, 212-45. 28. P.E. Newberry, 'Akhnaten's eldest son-in-law Ankhkheperure',' J. of Egypt. Archaeol., 14:7 ff (1928). 29. Cf. G. Roeder, 'Thronfolger and Konig Smench-ka-Re (Dynastie XVIII), Ztschr. f. agypt. Sprache 83:47 ff (1958). 30. Newberry, loc.cit. 31. Despite the fact that he begot six daughters; but during the earlier stages of eunuchoidism the individual is not always completely impotent. 32. See, for example, P. Ghalioungui, 'A medical study of Akhnaten,' Annales du service des antiquites de l'Egypte 47:29-46 (Cairo, 1947); M. Pillet, 'A propos d'Akhenaton,' Cahier complementaire a le Revue d'Egyptologie, 63-82 (Cairo, 1950); C. Aldred, 'The tomb of Akhenaten at Thebes,' J. of Egypt. Archaeol., 47:49-52 (1961) with appendix, 60-65, by A.T. Sandison. 33. K. Abraham, 'Amenhotep IV (Echnaton),' Imago 1:334-60 (Vienna, 1912); Eng. tr. in Psychoanal. Qtrly. 4:537-69 (N.Y., 1935). 34. J. Strachey, 'Preliminary notes upon the problem of Akhenaten,' Intl. J. of Psychoanal., 20:33-42 (London, 1939). 35. The most recent attempt to analyze Akhnaten's sexuality is in I. Velikovsky, Oedipus and Akhnaton, London, 1960. This is a fanciful book which should not be taken seriously, as it is marred by the author's lack of technical competence in Egyptology. 36. E.L. Margetts, 'The masculine character of Hatshepsut, Queen of Egypt,' Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 25:559-62 (Baltimore, 1951). This idea was first expressed in print by Magnus Hirschfeld, op.cit., 739. 37. Cf. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs, 183 ff. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.39 ------------------------------------ ON HOMOSEXUALITY IN ALBANIA PAUL NACKE Hubertusburg (Saxony) ABSTRACT: Boy-love is quite common in Albania, among both Moslems and Christians. It usually takes the form of a pact of brotherhood, sealed by blood, where the two parties pledge to defend one another to the death. The most frequent sexual technique is probably interfemoral coitus, although anal and oral intercourse also occur. The participants are usually not exclusive homosexuals, but rather heterosexuals who adopt boy-love through suggestion and tradition. In the Archiv fur Kriminal-Anthropologie und Kriminalistik<note 1> I have published two letters from Constantinople that cast rather interesting sidelights on homosexual love in the Turkish metropolis. The second letter in particular was noteworthy, coming as it did from a gentleman who has lived there for several years and become quite familiar with the circumstances of the matter, insofar as a European can fathom them at all. That, however, Constantinople is not without further ado to be identified with the Orient as a whole may be assumed, as in other things, so too in regard to sexual inversion. Today I am in a position to prove this in regard to a remote province, namely Albania. An esteemed correspondent has furnished me with a letter from a distinguished German scholar who has made many trips and even, for the sake of the linguistic monuments, visited the country of the Albanians, which is relatively close to our own and yet strikes us as a book with seven seals; in so doing he uncovered, among other things, curious circumstances relative to homosexuality. As the letter possesses great value from the standpoint of cultural history in other respects as well, I am reprinting it here word for word, with the omission ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.40 ------------------------------------ 40 ON HOMOSEXUALITY IN ALBANIA of only a few words and sentences. Unfortunately it does not say when the trip occurred; I suppose it to have been in the eighties of the last century. The letter itself is likewise undated. The letter itself reads as follows: ". . . As in the course of my trip I did not just collect inscriptions and copy manuscripts, I also turned my attention to questions of ethnography. I should very much like to have your opinion as an expert on a subject that is relevant hereto. For several weeks I was among the South Albanians (Tasks) ; among them, just as among the North Albanians, male love is deeply inracinated, as everyone knows from Hahn.<note 2> I have made inquiries among persons familiar with the country, Germans, Russians, and likewise natives, and all confirmed Hahn's statements point for point. For handsome boys and youths these Shqipetars cherish a truly enthusiastic love. The passion and mutual jealousy are so intense that even today they kill one another for the sake of a boy. Many instances of this kind were reported to me. In particular this love is supposed to flourish among the Moslems; the Orthodox Tasks contested my assertion that it existed among them -- I do not know the Catholic Mirdites from personal observation -- but Europeans living in the country and intimately acquainted with the circumstances assured me most definitely that even the Christians pay homage to this amor masculus. "It is further true that pacts of brotherhood, when they occur between Christians, are blessed by the papas in church, both partners receiving the eucharist. Otherwise with the Turks. My innkeeper in Ohrid had concluded a pact of blood brotherhood with an Albanian Moslem (Geg). Each pricked the other in the finger and sucked out a drop of blood. Now each has to protect the other to the death, and that for the Christian, host is an important guarantee. "One thing that Hahn also reports is that this love is a purely idealized one, quite devoid of sensuality, as Greek love is depicted by Socrates in Plato's Symposium. That struck me as somewhat amazing. The natives, naturally, would not speak out. But a very well informed European smiled somewhat skeptically at my question: 'Ah! je n'en peux rien affirmer. C'est quelque chose qui est difficile a approfondir.' Hahn, of course, relates that when he asked his Albanian teacher, who himself had composed enthusiastic poems to his boys -- even today they are alleged to compose such pieces of great poetic beauty -- ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.41 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 41 when he asked him whether this love is likewise connected with a sexual act, the Albanian became enraged as if he had taken him for a Turk. Only among the latter are such proceedings in vogue. "I believe that here misunderstanding has slipped in on one side or poetic hyperbole on the other. That Greek love was not at all of that rose-colored innocence with which Otfried Muller paints it among the Dorians<note 3> we now know from the inscriptions on Thera. "My quite lay hypothesis . . . is as follows: As experts informed me, among the Turks especially coitus analis et oralis, the latter in a really very repulsive form, is in vogue. It was against this that the teacher's anger was directed. It may well be that these forms are rarer among the Albanians. On the contrary they will with their amasii practice coitus inter femora, as they regard this, compared with the other forms, as something relatively respectable. As said before, this is only a hypothesis, since one can get to the bottom of such things only after many years of intimate contact with the people. A few weeks' superficial acquaintance is insufficient. The Oriental shyly avoids questions. "Also worthy of notice is the saying of a high Turkish official. He was naturally an Albanian (Tosk), still amazingly handsome at 55; I possess a photograph from his youth in the national costume, in which he has a decidedly girlish appearance. He is very clever and enlightened, a mevlevi like almost all Albanians.<note 4> Mystical Sufism destroys the rigid dogmas of religion. He expressed himself quite frankly; he believed or sought to believe in metempsychosis. Mais je voudrais revenir en terre non comme un homme, mais comme une femme. That is -- unknown to him -- a sure trait of feminism. "My host in Kastoria, where there are no hotels, a distinguished, highly educated Turk, on his father's side Tosk, on his mother's Geg (the grandfather was from Shkoder), is childless despite 6 wives. Would that not point to exhaustion through earlier intercourse with males? He is a well-built, robust man of only 38: but has two strikingly handsome young Albanians in his service. . . ." We therefore see immediately that in Albania homosexuality as a whole is enveloped in profound silence, so that even the foregoing account by a European with greater insight into these circumstances than most other travelers tells us nothing with certainty. And yet male love is firmly inracinated there, so it says, and the ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.42 ------------------------------------ 42 ON HOMOSEXUALITY IN ALBANIA author of the letter asserts, probably not incorrectly, that it is not practiced in a purely Platonic. manner. Here I would instantly add in parentheses that I absolutely disbelieve in pure Platonism, whether in hetero- or in homosexual relations. Whoever really has hetero- or homosexual feelings will, at least at certain times and under particular circumstances, feel the urge for physical proximity with the love object, be it only a kiss or an embrace that is sought. He need go no farther and yet feels satisfied and blissful. This is still nothing else than an attenuated coitus or the onset of one, if one prefers. How non-existent Platonic love is is shown quite clearly by dreams, which always -- I thus far know of no exception -- parallel the character and strength of the libido, at least if one has a series of dreams at different times. Now I should like to see the so-called Platonic lover who sees his beloved -- but being of a polygamous disposition, like most men, he will probably also see other girls -- in a dream and just contemplates her adoringly, without physical contact and so forth that reveals his innermost wish, even if in his waking life he shrinks from admitting it to himself. However, let us return to the Albanians, whom Ratzel calls one of the most gifted peoples of the Balkan peninsula, yet most corrupted through the Turkish influence.<note 5> I do not know to just what he is referring, but what I have read of them, to the contrary, fills me, on the whole, with respect, and circumstances are certainly responsible, for the most part, for their bad qualities. Among them, to be sure, Christians and Mohammedans, women play only a subordinate role, but this happens throughout the Orient. Adultery and so on occurs probably no more often than among their neighbors, and just in respect to homosexuality they compare quite favorably with the Osmanlis proper. Many years ago a young German who had undertaken trips for research told me that among the Turks every more or less beardless male (like him, for example) is exposed to sexual assaults. Nothing of the kind is known among the Arnauts, nor do the bath houses with their juvenile prostitutes exist in their country, which we see flourishing especially in Constantinople. Liaisons of older Albanians with handsome boys and youths are very frequent, even among the Christians, but the relationship is manifestly a much purer and nobler one than the exclusive sensuality of the Osmanlis. Of coitus analis or even oralis ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.43 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 43 they seem to have a horror. But the "pacts of brotherhood" for mutual defense and offense still appear, even obtaining a religious consecration among the Greek Orthodox Tosks. And even these pacts, concluded as they are between partners who are much older and approximately of the same age, are probably not always ones of pure friendship, but at times likely also to have a homosexual tinge. Our author therefore confirms what Hahn had observed in the country approximately 30 years before him. Given the absolutely stable conditions there -- very little of civilization has penetrated -- it may be further assumed that even now the relationships between men will be identical or similar to those in the eighties of the last century, when our correspondent visited the mountainous country. We see that male love exists not only among the Moslems in the Albanian population (Legs), but also among the Christians: Greek Orthodox (Tosks) and very probably also among the Roman Catholics (Mirdites). This is explained above all by the fact that all of them, different as they are in religion, which continually incites them to fratricidal campaigns of war and plunder, are of one stock, namely descendants of the ancient Illyrians, who inhabited the peninsula even before the Thracians and Hellenes. They are Indo-Europeans, Aryans, like the latter, but evidently belong to the first wave of invaders. However, they have likewise been in contact with the Ottoman Turks for several centuries and have willingly entered their military service, as they have always been regarded as the elite of the Turkish army; even today the Padisah has an Albanian bodyguard. The Mamelukes in Egypt likewise consisted in great part of Arnauts, as did also in part the Janissaries. They hence had a thousand opportunities to become familiar with the amor masculus, and from the ugliest side. That they did not, however, adopt it in this form speaks strongly in favor of the existence of homosexual love among them even earlier, that is, before their contact with the Turks. They therefore probably brought it with them to their later homeland, and from the north of Europe, from where they very probably migrated. We know that all the Hellenic tribes, who are certainly closely related to the Thracians, paid homage to male or boy love, but above all the Dorian tribe, whence it is also called Dorian love. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.44 ------------------------------------ 44 ON HOMOSEXUALITY IN ALBANIA On the island of Thera, which was colonized by an ancient Dorian tribe, like the neighboring Crete, old inscriptions carved in the rock have been found that tell us of relationships between men and youths "as a hallowed institution, recognized by the state," that were consecrated in the temple of Apollo.<note 6> This reminds us of the pact of brotherhood consecrated by the pope among the Tosks. Here, however, the pact is rather a protective alliance, whereas among the Dorians the institution pursued an eminently educational aim. This is proved by the "sacred band" of the Thebans, who fought so valiantly in repeated battles and consisted of lovers and their beloveds, men and youths. Among the Dorians, however, this relationship seems to have been not such a pure one, but strongly permeated with sexuality, as we are informed by the inscriptions from Thera. Now it is highly interesting, as the philologist Erich Bethe explains it, that grass carnal intercourse likewise occurred, coitus inter crura or even analis, and so forth, but and this is the salient point, which casts such a remarkable light on the ethnological significance of homosexuality -- originally, in all likelihood, less for libidinous than for religious reasons. The semen was regarded as the receptaculum animae. If one loved a boy, pais -- in Greek that always signifies a youth, never a boy in our sense of the word, one sought to educate him and to infuse into him one's own qualities, hence a part of oneself, one's soul; and that could happen only through transmission of the semen, which was regarded as the bearer of those qualities, so that a coitus-like procedure had to be chosen. Later this animalistic idea -- which according to Bethe's brilliant intuition very likely also underlay the custom of the couvade, which until now had defied all explanation -- was forgotten and the practice alone remained. I regard the consecration of the brotherhood alliances among the Amauts, and also, formerly, among the South Slavs, as a simple continuation of the sacred male unions among the Dorians. Only that there youths were probably only rarely involved. But even there the relationship is, in any case, not always wholly asexual.<note 7> That the valor of the Albanians has suffered no impairment through boy love is well established. We see the like also among the Japanese of olden and even modern times. Among both peoples the educational motive between the partners evidently stands of ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.45 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 45 stood in the foreground; the sexual one is more accessory and in Albania, as we already saw, emerges only with great moderation. If, as it seems, homosexuality in Albania is not only of great antiquity, but also widespread, as it was in Greece -- and there, as is well known, not just during the period of decadence, the question arises whether all those involved were true homosexuals, that is, ones who, had homosexual feelings ab ovo. If the answer be affirmative, then one must admit that there were far more inverts at . that time than there are today in Europe. It is always a possibility. Probably, however, the racial difference does not play such a great role here. We shall rather have to assume that 1) just among the youths many were heterosexual, and that 2) many certainly were also among the older and active partners. If both were satisfied with mutual masturbation, then both could have been heterosexuals and the stimulus afforded by the partner could merely have accelerated and intensified the orgasm, but without that -- and this is the salient point -- the male sex of the partner as such furnished the stimulus. Then only a mechanical. stimulus intensified by fantasy is at work here. But if coitus-like acts really occurred -- oral, anal, intercrural -- then a depraved heterosexual libido, eventually sanctified by tradition, is well conceivable, but a homosexual one was certainly often present. Given a heterosexual response, erection and ejaculation could occur only if during the act fantasy supplied the illusion of a female partner, or if the action was intended only to provide a purely mechanical stimulus, as in solitary or mutual masturbation, or even pederasty. To this extent it would be quite conceivable that sexually oversatiated roues, who in reality are but masked heterosexuals, should also resort to homosexual practices. All this can likewise occur on ships, in barracks, and elsewhere in the absence of women. But here one need not only presuppose an especially strong libido, but also a certain latent homosexual tendency, that probably erupts only temporarily, as under the same conditions there are relatively few who do it. The others remain abstinent or engage in masturbation. The same homosexual acts can therefore be performed by homo- and heterosexuals. The action is the same, as is on the whole the motive: emptying of the semen and thereby relaxation of the libido. But the one -- the true invert -- thereby obtains psychic satis- ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.46 ------------------------------------ 46 ON HOMOSEXUALITY IN ALBANIA faction, the heterosexual on the contrary does not. Hence the latter gladly returns to the norm when he is able. A rout can therefore engage in homosexual acts and still be a heterosexual; at that time he is simply vicious. Or: he will probably become at a future time a "late" homosexual, that is to say that the homosexual components that are in all likelihood slumbering in everyone will in him break through for unknown reasons, so that he will then have real homosexual responses. He will then no longer be vicious, but the bearer of a sexual anomaly. But this probably occurs only exceptionally, if at all. No one, certainly, will acquire homosexual responses as a result of oversatiation and need for variety in sexual activity in themselves. It is quite conceivable that alongside of normal sexual intercourse the abnormal can also be cultivated through imitation, suggestion, tradition, and so forth, as is very likely the case in the majority of the ancient Greeks and of the present-day Orientals. These are only homosexual acts of heterosexuals, which are, under certain conditions, craved for the sake of the special stimulus. Complete satisfaction, however, is definitely lacking here, so that they continue their search for normal intercourse and probably also prefer it. But whoever remains with a homosexual preference and always is averse to intercourse with women and is even impotent toward them, is definitely a true homosexual, whose libido orientation, if only somewhat strongly pronounced, cannot by any therapy be altered into a heterosexual one. NOTES 1. Paul Nacke, "Die Homosexualitat im Oriente," Archiv fur Kriminal-Anthropologie und Kriminalistik, 16:353-55 (1904); "Die Homosexualitat in Konstantinopel," Archiv fur Kriminal-Anthropologie und Kriminalistik, 26:106-08 (1906). 2. Johann Georg von Hahn, Albanesische Studien (Vienna: Kaiserlich-konigliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1853), 1. Heft, pp.166-68; 2. Heft, pp.147-50. 3. Karl Otfried Muller, Geschichten hellenischer Stamme und Stadte, ed. F.W. Schneidewin, vol.3 (Breslau: Josef Max, 1844), pp.285-93. 4. Mevlevi: a dervish of the Mevlana sect, a whirling dervish. 5. Friedrich Ratzel, Volkerkunde, vol.3 (Leipzig and Vienna: Bibliographisches Institut, 1890), p.746. 6. Hermann Michaelis, § 175! Die Homosexualitat in Sitte und Recht (Berlin: Verlag Hermann Dames, 1907), p.28. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.47 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 47 7. Erich Bethe, "Die dorische Knabenliebe. Ihre Ethik und ihre Idee," Rheinisches Museum fur Philologie, 62:438-75 (1907), summarized under the heading "Ueber die dorische Knabenliebe." Politisch-anthropologische Revue, 6:663 (1907). This article was originally published under the title "Uber Homosexualitat in Albanien," Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen. 9:325-37 (1908). The present translation is by Dr. Warren Johansson. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.48 ------------------------------------ FEMININE EQUIVALENTS OF GREEK LOVE IN MODERN FICTION MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY San Francisco ABSTRACT: Exact counterparts to male Greek love relationships are more frequently encountered in lesbian literature than in male homosexual literature, from the Victorian epoch to date. They are more clear-cut than the male versions because they stress relatively uncensured emotional ties rather than overt sexual expression. Tragic denouements in such fiction, when found at all, arise either when the older woman fears and rejects such attachments or when outsiders misunderstand them and forcibly break up the affairs, even as in actual case histories in both genders. The psychosexual patterns of Greek love -- defined as the love between a man and an adolescent boy -- have definite equivalents between women and girls and have been, perhaps, mom often treat ed in fiction. The novel of feminine Greek love differs both from the novel of adult lesbianism and from the novel of boy-man love. First of all, the typical theme is that of love, or intense emotional attraction, between a woman and an adolescent -- rarely, a pre-adolescent -- girl. Secondly, these novels are less likely to deal with overt sex than their male equivalents. There are exceptions, but in general the pattern of Greek love between woman and girl is one of emotion rather than sensuality, involving heroine-worship, admiration, emulation. Frequently there is a strong maternal element in these attachments. Because the sexual element in these feminine attractions is so often deeply sublimated, the pattern appears in books written for adolescents themselves, even in the most staid and stuffy Victorian period of the nineteenth century. Because emotional relationships ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.49 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 49 between girls are looked on as less censurable than comparable relationships between males, and because physical expressions of affection are less interdicted, the pattern of the feminine Greek love story emerges more clearly in the 19th century girl's book than in that written for her brothers. A recurrent pattern in such books is the adoration of a schoolgirl, either for an older girl or for a school-mistress. Possibly the best known example is a Sunday-school tearjerker of the 1870's, by "Susan Warner" (Elizabeth Wetherell), entitled The Wide, Wide World. This book was mentioned by Louisa May Alcott in Little Women -- Jo finds Beth "reading and crying over The Wide, Wide World" -- and that it has a continuing appeal for generations of adolescent girls is evidenced by the fact that it was still in print as late as 1930. The Wide, Wide World tells the story of little Ellen, who, at the age of 8 or 9, loses her mother -- her father is travelling abroad -- and is sent to live with an aunt, a somewhat coarse farm woman. Ellen is not abused or actually ill-treated, but she is not understood, and her well-bred manners and schooling are laughed at and ridiculed. Into her lonely life comes "Miss Alice," the ladylike daughter of the local minister, who first lends Ellen books and continues her education; afterwards she repeatedly has Ellen to stay at her house, fondles and makes much of her, and in general supplies the need in Ellen's life for an older woman of her own kind as a focus for emotion and tenderness. Much of the first half of the book is concerned with the growing warmth and closeness between Ellen and Miss Alice, and the death of Alice marks the end of the first part of Ellen's tribulations. Obviously, no overt sexuality is indicated or implied in this book, but kisses and embraces are frequent, and the affectionate endearments between Ellen and Alice are more like those of loves than those of mother and daughter. The relationship is definitely one of the Greek love sort. Somewhat less explicit, but identical in pattern, are the relationships in the first of the well-known Sunday-school series of girls' books by Martha Finley, Elsie Dinsmore. Elsie -- ten years old when the book begins, and probably in her early teens at the close of the story -- is an orphan with no mother and a domineering, stern father. The only tenderness in her life comes from her be- ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.50 ------------------------------------ 50 FEMININE EQUIVALENTS OF GREEK LOVE loved "Miss Rose," a girl of twenty or thereabouts, who fondles Elsie, defends her against harsh punishments from her stern governess and cruel relatives, and is in turn admired and imitated by Elsie. The worth of such an older girl as a model and friend for a little girl was evidently a known psychological fact to writers and readers of that day, no matter how the relationship was overlaid with sentimentality and religious feeling. In virtually every girls' book of that era, some such pattern reappears. As the Sunday-school religiosity began to appear old-fashioned, and the discovery of Freud and modern psychology made novelists aware of the meaning behind this recurrent pattern of love and adulation between little girls and older women, the novels written on the subject became less explicit, but, when they occurred, more knowledgeable about the quality of the attachment between the woman and the girl. In 1900, Ellen T. Fowler's novel The Farringdons, deals with a series of no less than three "passionate attachments experienced by the motherless heroine,"<note 1> and the author refers to "that passionate and thrilling friendship . . . so satisfying to the immature female soul."<note 2> Each of these intense attachments is for an older girl or woman, and each partakes of the nature of romantic love, though all are free of physical intimacy. That the author was well aware of the kind of emotion she portrayed is perfectly clear from the following: "People sometimes smile at the adoration of a young girl for a woman. . . But there is no doubt that the girl who has once felt it has learned what real love is."<note 3> The French writer Colette achieved her early succes de scandale with the four Claudine novels, all of which dealt in one way or another with lesbian relationships, and all of which were so explicit that at the time of their publication (1900-03) they could not be translated into English. (To the modern reader they now appear extremely circumspect and innocuous.) The first of these, Claudine a l'ecole (Claudine at School), presents in the opening pages a picture of the 15-year-old Claudine falling passionately in love with Mademoiselle Aimee, an under-teacher at her country school. Curiously -- for fiction of this type -- the child is in this case the aggressor; she arranges for Aimee to give her English lessons privately, ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.51 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 51 which are spent mostly in kisses and embraces. Aimee, however, prefers to be the petted favorite of the headmistress, and Claudine is disconsolate for many days, after which she plunges into a round of mischievous tricks on the "faithless" Aimee, as well as becoming the domineering lover of Aimee's 13-year-old sister Luce. In the first two decades of this century, two writers portrayed Greek love attachments in historical novels, shifting the period to historical antiquity or the Middle Ages. The Russian novelist Dmitri Merezhkovskii -- best known as the author of a novel about Leonardo da Vinci said to have inspired Freud's monograph on Leonardo's homosexuality -- portrayed, just such a passionate attachment in The Birth of the Gods, a novel of the bull-dancers in Crete. Diotima, a priestess of the Mount Dikte cult of the Great Mother, is loved by a little girl named Eoia, who stows away on a ship to follow Dio to Crete. Dio "knew that the little girl had fallen in love with her in the way that children often do, which seems so ridiculous to grown-up people" When she discovers Eoia aboard the ship, she intends to send her immediately home to her parents, but she "never did; she came to love Eoia as passionately as Eoia loved her." Eoia becomes Dio's novice in the cult; when the two perform together in the bull-ring, they are taken occasionally for "boy, and girl" and a casual spectator is certain that they are lovers. The relationship, presumably at first innocent and maternal, becomes sensual in nature following a religious ritual, when priestess and novice were required to bathe together, naked, in the sea; Eoia weeps heartbrokenly, saying, "You don't love me," and Dio responds with tenderness. One of Dio's lovers sees the "boy and girl" lying in each other's arms on the beach, and in a fit of insane jealousy, arranges for Eoia to be killed in the ring, hoping Dio will turn to him; instead, the child's death nearly destroys Dio as well. In John Clayton's Dew in April, a central figure in the story is Mother Leonor, prioress of the convent of St. Lazarus of the Butterflies. Described as a woman "beautiful yet terrible," wasted by unbelievable asceticism, "some ineradicable tinge of warmth had saved Leonor from the common fate of mystics." Her whole emotional life is wrapped up in her novices, those young creatures "entrusted to her," and it is clear that this emotion is more than maternal. Much of the story revolves around the upheaval produced ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.52 ------------------------------------ 52 FEMININE EQUIVALENTS OF GREEK LOVE in the convent by the admission of Dolores, a homeless gypsy waif, with whom Leonor falls immediately in love. A deeply repressed woman, Leonor is unaware of the underlying sexuality of her interest in Dolores, but it is evident throughout. When Dolores is received formally as a novice, Leonor summons her to her cell; chronic invalidism has kept Leonor from the ceremony, but she wished to give Dolores the ritual kiss of peace. "Later, in her own agony, Dolores understood the emotion that surged over Leonor's face . . . it was as if a mummy should be torn and twisted by the passions of adolescence." Later, Leonor shelters Dolores even from the Inquisition when the iconoclastic girl, too realistic for convent life, innocently commits heresy after heresy and later takes a knightly lover. The popular writer of women's books, Helen R. Hull, in a magazine novelette The Fire, shows how the friendship of an older woman helps a teen-age girl in a stuffy small town to become alive to books, music and art. This theme appears in several minor novels of the day, but perhaps the most explicit novel of the first half of the century is Christa Winsloe's The Child Manuela, the novel of the German film Madchen in Uniform. Both in the film and the novel, a classic Greek love attachment leads to terror and tragedy. Manuela, motherless at 14, and the daughter of a father who does not care to be bothered with children, is accused of misconduct with a boy neighbor. Actually, the orphan girl has merely been glamored by the boy's mother, a warm, gentle and kindly woman who has treated the forlorn Manuela with real motherly tenderness. Manuela's attempts to explain this are derided as mere excuses, and she is packed off to a restrictive military-style boarding school for the daughters of officers. Here she finds that all the children are fascinated by Fraulein von Bernberg, a situation which Manuela finds, at first, incomprehensible: "In love with a governess? How could that be? I don't understand." Fraulein von Bernberg, though strictly correct in behavior, is a warm and outgoing woman who responds to the adoration of the children; Manuela, too, soon falls under her spell, and the woman realizes that for once a child has touched a string in her nature which is deeper than the maternal gentleness she feels for all. Her nature, however, ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.53 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 53 sees "nothing ahead but renunciation" and she sternly rebuffs any touch of favoritism. Sheer coincidence brings on the tragedy. Manuela, sent to school hurriedly and without proper preparation, has not the proper supply of underclothing, and Fraulein von Bernberg, scolding her for the state of her clothes, takes pity on her and gives her one of her own shifts, which Manuela may make over for herself. This trivial occurrence, in the bleak round of the repressive school, is exaggerated by Manuela to hysterical proportions. At a school party where the children are served a punch spiked with crude alcohol, Manuela -- overexcited and somewhat drunk -- babbles innocently of the delight of wearing something which her adored Fraulein has worn next to her body. The repressive headmistress, hearing this, is shocked, and Fraulein von Bernberg, questioned about the incident, attempts to protect Manuela by repudiating all interest in the child. Manuela is punished by isolation from the school life, which weighs so heavily on her that she throws herself from a fourth-story window. In this case, a Greek love affair is regarded as unhealthy and abnormal, but the tragedy clearly arises, not from the love itself, but from the failure of narrow-minded parents and teachers to understand the need for love and tenderness in a girl cut off from normal associations and relationships. A similar theme is the center of another German novel of roughly this period, Elizabet Weiraugh's Der Scorpion (The Scorpion). The heroine, Melitta Rudloff, known as Metta, also loses her mother very young. The persistence of this pattern indicates that novelists -- usually well versed, even if only unconsciously, in psychology -- are aware of the particular susceptibility of the motherless girl to fall romantically in love with an older woman. Metta, as a small girl, falls in love with her governess, who ruthlessly exploits the child's devotion, even requiring her to pawn the family silver in order that the governess may have money to give her lover. When the complicity is discovered, Metta protects the governess by silence, the woman is sent away, and Metta -- since they had deprived her of her idol -- revenges herself by refusing to do lessons or learn anything. In her middle teens, Metta, bored, daydreaming and idle, makes the acquaintance of Olga, a woman in her late twenties; sophisticated, worldly, and something of an adventuress. Metta's ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.54 ------------------------------------ 54 FEMININE EQUIVALENTS OF GREEK LOVE immediate love for Olga gives, at first, new purpose to her life; she "wakes up," begins to take an interest in reading good books and in cultivating her mind again. Olga introduces her to the world of an and music, and generally, helps Metta to break the mould of stuffy bourgeois householdry. Olga is, however, an unstable and somewhat unbalanced woman, blowing hot and cold; she accepts presents of money from Metta, and allows the girl to deceive her family. Eventually the girl's father and Aunt Emily become suspicious of this friendship, set detectives on Olga, discover that she is a notorious lesbian, and send Metta away to stay with relatives. Metta takes money from her uncle's desk to run away to Olga; Olga receives her tenderly, and the two spend a few ecstatic days together in the country. The relationship has previously been innocent, without physical contact except for kisses; now, touched by Metta's evident longing and need for her, Olga accepts the girl's sexual overtures as well. A heart attack suffered by Metta's father breaks into their happiness; Metta returns home, but after the shock of her father's death, slips away to Olga again. In the middle of the night, the two are discovered together by Metta's aunt and uncle; Olga, unable to face them, harshly repudiates the girl, and Metta, completely broken, leaves Olga. As she recovers her spirits, she tries again to contact Olga, but her letters go unanswered. Eventually she discovers that Olga, her debts bought up by Metta's family, has been hounded remorselessly by detectives and harassed to suicide. This gives Metta the strength to break permanently with her family, and set out on her own life. In this book, a Greek love affair, although tragic and regarded as abnormal by the girl's guardians, has served as a vivifying force to awaken a young girl to the "dullness of her surroundings and provide her with intellectual interests. The same theme -- Greek love as a constructive force -- appears in a recent novel by the young French writer, Francoise Mallet-Joris: Le Rempart des Beguines, translated under the title The Illusionist. Indolent, daydreaming Helene, 16 years old, makes the acquaintance of her father's Russian mistress Tamara, a worldly, sophisticated and somewhat corrupt woman who promptly seduces the girl into sexual contact. Helene is amazed to realize that this relationship, which she knows is regarded as a vice, ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.55 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 55 changes her for the better to such a degree that her father and her schoolteachers all notice that she has begun to "wake up" and take more interest in her schoolwork, her clothes and her daily life. However, the relationship has its destructive element as well. Like Olga in The Scorpion, Tamara blows hot and cold; now fondling and caressing the girl, now terrorizing and even beating her. The relationship is approved by Helene's father on the ostensible grounds that Helene needs someone to teach her about clothes, and give her feminine companionship in general. When Helene falls ill with scarlet fever, and in delirium keeps calling for Tamara, Tamara becomes frightened at the openness of this relationship. Helene's father decides to marry Tamara, thinking Helene will be happy at actually having her loved Tamara for a stepmother; instead, Helene turns viciously on Tamara and after the marriage refuses to have anything more to do with her. A virtual enslavement between a girl of 16 and a crippled, emotionally starved stepmother is portrayed in Margaret Ferguson's Sign of the Ram. Leah, paralyzed after an accident endured in saving her stepdaughter and stepson from drowning, has used their gratitude to bind the entire family to her whims, and to gratify her sense of power. This passionate devotion to Leah is most noticeable in young Christine, in whom it approaches such proportions that her older sister suggests, "Tell her she'll have to go away to school . if she keeps on acting like a fourth-former with a crush on the games-mistress." When Sherida, Leah's young, secretary, comes to the house, Leah subtly works on Christine's devotion, first making Christine believe that Sherida is the mistress of Christine's father (Leah's husband). She excites the girl to such a pitch that Christine attempts to poison Sherida with sleeping pills. When she realizes what she has done, however, Christine repudiates Leah in disgust and shock: "She just wanted to see if she could get me to do that for her. . . I don't ever want to see Leah again" And Leah, rejected by her formerly adoring family, commits suicide. If such an attachment can bring "disaster on a young girl, tragedy can also result, psychologically, from an older woman's rejection of a Greek love attachment. In Thalia, by Frances Faviell, a young woman goes to Cornwall as a summer companion for a family of young children, and adolescent Thalia, starved for love, seeks ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.56 ------------------------------------ 56 FEMININE EQUIVALENTS OF GREEK LOVE hungrily for affection and confidence from Rachel; when Rachel rebuffs her, Thalia drowns herself. Less melodramatic, but perhaps more realistic and telling, is a brief portrait in a novel written by a girl herself barely out of her teens: Pamela Moore's Chocolates for Breakfast. Courtney, child of a neurotic and narcissistic movie-star mother, is sent away to boarding school, and for a short time is taken up by a friendly, kindly teacher; but just as Courtney is coming out of her shell, the teacher realizes the nature of this attachment and rebuffs her, and Courtney withdraws again into loneliness. It is hinted at that this rejection of her overwhelming need for love touches off the sexual promiscuity and dissipation which characterize Courtney's later adolescent years. This handful of examples of Greek love in fiction will serve to show some of the general characteristics of these relationships. They usually occur between a maturing girl -- somewhere between nine and sixteen -- and a woman of mature years. Motherless girls, or those with inadequate maternal attention and support, appear to feel the greatest need for these attachments, usually from a lack of understanding or tenderness in their lives. The relationship is usually as good -- or as bad -- as the woman with whom the girl is lucky or unlucky enough to fall in love. At best, such a relationship enriches and broadens the girl's entire life; at worst, it can lead to such tragedies as Christine's in Sign of the Ram. The relationship is often innocent and romantic rather than openly sexual, and at least in fiction this appears to be the least punished and the best tolerated. Tragedy, however, seems not to be inherent in such a relationship (unless, like Tamara in The Illusionist, or Leah in Sign of the Ram, the woman is herself corrupt), but occurs only when (1) the relationship is misunderstood and interrupted by outsiders, or (2) the older woman fears or rejects such an attachment.' But, the reader may comment, these are not real case histories; they are novels, and one should hesitate to draw conclusions from them. I venture to disagree. Not a single one of these novels can be classed as a "commercial novel"; all are serious works of honest purpose, and they therefore reflect how intelligent women of maturity, psychological insight, and intellectual honesty, view the Greek love relationship in social context. It is, after all, from the imagina- ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.57 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 57 tion of novelists rather than from the dry research of sociologists that we derive our knowledge of an era's interpersonal relationships, of how people in that era actually think and feel. Therefore, this handful of novels can be taken as a valid, though partial, picture of Greek love relationships as these occur between women and young girls. NOTES 1. The Farringdons, 56-7, cited in Jeannette Howard Foster, Sex Variant Women in Literature, N.Y., Vantage, 1956, 243. 2. Foster, 244. 3. The Farringdons, 14, cited in Foster, 244. Other citations in this article are from novels seen by MZB; page references would differ depending on edition. BIBLIOGRAPHY Clayton, John (pseud). Dew in April. London, Kendall & Sharpe, 1935. Colette, Sidonie-Gabrielle. Claudine a l'Ecole. Paris, Ollendorff, 1903. First English translation, Claudine at School, N.Y., Farrar, 1930, 1957; pbr tct Diary of a 16-Year-Old French Girl, N.Y., Avon, 1957. Faviell, Frances. Thalia. N.Y., Farrar & Straus, 1957. Ferguson, Margaret. Sign of the Ram. London and Philadelphia, Blakiston, ca. 1945. British film of the same title, ca. 1949, starred Susan Peters as Leah. Finley, Martha. Elsie Dinsmore. Many editions in 1890's and later; hcr Grosset & Dunlap ca. 1927 or later. Fowler, Ellen T. The Farringdons. N.Y., Appleton, 1900. Hull, Helen R. The Fire. ss in Century Magazine, Nov. 1917. Mallet-Joris, Francoise. Le Rempart des Beguines. Original French ed. not seen. Eng. tr. by Herma Briffault, The Illusionist, N.Y., Farrar, 1952; pbr tct The Loving and the Daring, N.Y., Popular Library, 1953. Merezhkovskii, Dmitri. The Birth of the Gods. Eng. tr. by Natalia A. Duddington, London, J. M. Dent, 1926. Moore, Pamela. Chocolates for Breakfast. N.Y., Rinehart, 1956; pbr N.Y., Bantam, 1957, 1960. Warner, Susan (pseud. of Wetherell, Elizabeth). The Wide Wide World. Many editions in 1880's and later. Weirauch, <ARCHIVIST'S CORRECTION: Weiraugh (see p.53 above)> Anna Elisabet. Der Scorpion. Berlin, Askanischer Verlag, 1930, 3 vols. Eng. tr. by Whittaker Chambers, The Scorpion, N.Y., Greenberg 1932; hcr Willey Books, 1948; pbr tct Of Love Forbidden, abridged, N.Y., Avon, n.d., ca. 1951; pbr tct Scorpion, Avon, ca. 1953 (?); pbr as The Scorpion, N.Y., Fawcett, Crest Books, 1958, 1964. Winsloe, Christa. The Child Manuela. German title not seen; said by Dr. Foster to have appeared in 1933, just prior to Hitler's accession, and to have been the basis of the film Madchen in Uniform (1932 <ARCHIVIST'S NOTE: film was released in 1931>). Eng. tr. by Agnes N. Scott, N.Y., Farrar, 1933. SUPPLEMENT Other titles are known which may or may not touch lightly on the theme of female counterparts to Greek love. They have not been recently enough ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.58 ------------------------------------ 58 FEMININE EQUIVALENTS OF GREEK LOVE rechecked for this article, but presumably would not affect its conclusions. A partial list follows: Bennett, Arnold. Elsie and the Child. N.Y., Doran, 1924. Garrett, Zena. House in the Mulberry Tree. N.Y., Random, 1959. Hull, Helen R. The Quest. N.Y., Macmillan, 1922. Lofts, Norah. Jassy. N.Y., Knopf, 1945, pbr Signet, 1948, etc. O'Higgins, Harvey. The Story of Julie Cane. N.Y., Harper, 1924. Pattison, Jane Gale. The First Sip of Wine. N.Y., Crowell, 1960. Rehder, Jessie. Remembrance Way. N.Y., Putnam, 1956. Torres, Tereska. Not Yet. N.Y., Crown, 1957, pbr N.Y., Crest, 1958. The abbreviations used in the bibliography are uniform with those in the Checklists of Lesbian Literature. For those unfamiliar with them, they are here repeated: hcr = hard-cover reprint pbr = paperback reprint ss = short story tct = Title changed to tr = translation Other abbreviations are obvious in context. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.59 ------------------------------------ RECENT BOOKS Robert Flaceliere: L'AMOUR EN GRECE. Paris, Librairie Hachette, 1960. Anonymous English translation, LOVE IN ANCIENT GREECE, New York, Crown Publishers, 1962. Paperback reprint, New York, Macfadden-Bartell, 1964. A somewhat confused and insufficiently researched popularization attempting to cover the same ground that Dr. Paul Brandt ("Hans Licht") had so thoroughly researched almost forty years earlier at over six times the length of this book. Flaceliere appears to have taken Plato as representing a kind of archetype of the whole Greek outlook, an error sufficiently rebutted in the present reviewer's Greek Love, and an error serious enough to invalidate almost his entire conception. Beginning with this approach, it is unsurprising indeed that Flaceliere misses altogether the religious significance of boy-love, the distinction between the austere Dorian concept and the sensual Oriental view of boy-love, and the distinction between boy-love and homosexual relations among adults -- a far different affair even in antiquity. More extensive familiarity with Greek literature of the whole period between Homer and the late Roman Empire might have enabled him to escape at least some of his confusions. Although the book attempts to cover Greek marriage customs, hetairai and prostitutes (which two classes the author confuses as usual), in addition to the homosexual side, the publisher's blurbs on the paperback reprint emphasize almost exclusively the last-mentioned, presumably for sensationalism. Students of homosexuality and Greek love will find the book useful primarily for its references to classical authors, a few of whom were relatively unfamiliar; but the book is neither substitute nor introduction for Licht's work or my own. -J.Z.E. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.60 ------------------------------------ 60 RECENT BOOKS Ernst Gunther Welter: BIBLIOGRAPHIE FREUNDSCHAFTSEROS. Dipa Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1964. Wrappers. 145 pp., 8 plates (!). One of a number of recent attempts at bibliographies of homosexuality. This one covers principally works in German together with German translations of other authors. Its scope may be briefly described as everything, including the kitchen sink, for which its compiler could obtain data. Unlike the Legman card-file bibliography in the New York Academy of Medicine, this does not run heavily, to scholarly journal articles nor yet to medico-legal references debating the origins of uranism in urging repeal of the notorious Section 175 of the German legal code. It favors instead recent fiction, classics (very incompletely), biographies, drama, poetry, etc. Fortunately, a small-letter code following many entries enables one to get some idea of thematic content. The value of any bibliography lies in its thoroughness of coverage of the specific fields attempted, in its accuracy of description of items enabling scholars to locate and use them, and in what a biologist might call taxonomic elegance. On all three counts the present bibliography fails, though not to complete uselessness. Omissions even in the field of modern literature are very numerous. Variant editions of even well-known works are not described. Publishers, dates and other essential location data are omitted for a great many items. And its categories themselves are a bibliographic curiosity. There is literature in general (including all the classes cited above, and others); periodicals, divided into pre- and post-Hitler, but regrettably without indication of location of the rarer earlier ones, sculpture -- omitting all but a few of the best-known classical statues -- though listed in such a way that it is often difficult to tell artist, location, or reason for listing; paintings and other graphics including, as God is my witness, several Boy Scout calendars of the Hitler epoch, and the book of film clips from "The Red Balloon"; films, chosen by God alone knows what selection principle, and including "The Old Man and the Sea," "Men of Boys Town," "Lassie Come Home," and others whose relevance seems confined at most to their having some small child as a character. There is also a list of homo- ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.61 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 61 sexual organizations, some with the notation "apparently does not now exist." The eight plates at the end consist of a couple of Jean Boullet drawings and one apparently by Cocteau, a reproduction of Michelangelo's. "David," a photograph of two little boys playing, and several commonplace physique-magazine poses. This bibliography, obviously not professionally done, may serve some small purpose to scholars in turning their attention to various less-known German works, a few of which may be of literary or sociological importance. But it is emphatically detrimental if allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Individuals or groups hostile to the homosexual world, or to those crusading for repeal of antisexual laws, can all too easily take this book as typical (which it is not) and claim that they were right all along in contending that homosexuals' "real" interest is in molesting little children. -X. Jean Marcade: EROS KALOS. Geneva, Nagel Publishers, 1962. Distributed in the U.S.A. by Lyle Stuart, New York. Subtitled "Essay on Erotic Elements in Greek Art," this superbly illustrated volume deserves a place in every library or collection of material relevant to Greek culture, Greek art, or Greek love. In its illustrations and its text, it goes far towards demolishing the common mistaken view of Greek culture (due ultimately to Winckelmann) which finds calm detachment from things earthly or fleshly as its essential characteristic. This book has been unjustly attacked as pornographic because many of the illustrations of ancient vases, lamps, and reliefs show scenes of sexual pursuit or intercourse. If the test of pornography is a primary appeal to prurient interest without redeeming social value, then this book is not in the slightest degree pornographic. Its text is a moderately popularized essay by a professor of archaeology at the University of Bordeaux, and the illustrations are closely tied in with textual themes, as evidence for or examples of unexpected claims made by the author. Even what seem at first sight to be mere charming or grotesque genre pieces show up, in Prof. Marcade's analysis, as relating invariably to Greek religion, in earlier or later forms. For the Greeks, every thing had religious significance; and the erotic content of Greek art often relates to erotic rituals deriving from older agrarian ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.62 ------------------------------------ 62 VARIA: GREEK LOVE IN A SCHOOL CONTEXT <ARCHIVIST'S NOTE: the page heading above was a page early; it should read RECENT BOOKS> fertility cults, assimilated to the worship of Dionysos. The somewhat unconventional view of Dionysos taken in Greek Love is partly confirmed here. Greek love, as between man and boy, is analyzed as largely parallel in practice to heterosexual love, and surprisingly enough its sexual aspects are -- contra Plato -- taken as more pleasing to the goddess of erotic love (Aphrodite) than their denial, advocated by Sokrates, would have been. I take this as independent confirmation of the views advanced in Greek Love, even though Prof. Marcade refrains from going into any detailed comparison of the changing Greek views of the subject, or into its religious aspects. When I wrote my own book I had not been fortunate enough to read a copy of Prof. Marcade's contribution. In addition, this book illustrates in detail many themes only touched on in Greek Love, and provides a much needed correction to one error of omission. I had claimed that the sexual position called "sixty-nine" was unknown in antiquity. Marcade, page 59, provides contrary evidence by illustrating a lamp from the museum of Herakleion, illustrating a man and woman in this practice, a lamp not known to me at the time of my own writing, and apparently not known to Licht or other authors. That only this depiction of the practice has turned up, and that neither Greek nor Latin is known to have contained a word for it, indicates that the technique must have been very rare. Cavils that can be justly made against this book are few. Proofreading has not been too careful, nor are spellings of the Greek names too consistent. Technical terms are used undefined not the best practice in a popularization. There are neither index nor footnotes nor bibliography: but the illustrations themselves (identified as to source) provide proofs of some of Prof. Marcade's claims, as the texts he translates provide others. Owing to layout problems, one has to read carefully or one may miss parts of the text. If -- as I suspect -- the publishers assembled the photographs first and commissioned the text as an afterthought, then Prof. Marcade's achievement becomes even more of a tour-de-force in unifying such a diverse group. Highly recommended. -J.Z.E. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.63 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 63 VARIA GREEK LOVE IN A SCHOOL CONTEXT: TESTIMONY BY AN EXACT CONTEMPORARY OF SHAKESPEARE. The following account is about as explicit as one could find outside of ancient Greece; and the use of the term "bedfellow" is particularly striking in this context. "It was not my happiness to be bred up at the university, but all the learning I had was in the free grammar school, called Christ's school in the city of Gloucester; yet even there it pleased God to give me an extraordinary help by a new schoolmaster brought thither, one Master Gregory Downhale of Pembroke Hall in Cambridge, after I lost some time under his predecessor. This Master Downhale having very convenient lodgings over the school, took such liking to me, as he made me his bedfellow (my father's house being next of all to the school). This bedfellowship begat in him familiarity and gentleness towards me; and in me towards him reverence and love; which made me also love my book, love being the most prevalent affection in my nature to further our studies and endeavours in any profession. He came thither but bachelor of arts, a good scholar, and who wrote both the secretary and the Italian hands exquisitely well. But after a few years that he had proceeded master of arts, finding the school's entertainment not worthy of him, he left it, and betook himself to another course of being secretary to some nobleman, and at last became secretary to the late Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, and in that service (as I think) died. . . . And this I note, that though I were no graduate of the university yet (by God's blessing) I had so much learning as fitted me for the places whereunto the Lord advanced me, and (which I think to be very rare) had one that was after a Lord Chancellors secretary to be my schoolmaster, whom (by God's blessing) I followed so dose, that I became a successor to his successors in the like place of eminent service and employment." R. Willis, Mount Tabor (1639) [Master: here, title for teacher. bedfellow: bed-sharer, with or without sexual intimacies. secretary: elaborate engrossing hand, common style of Elizabethan calligraphy. Italian hand: presumably the so-called Arrighi Cancelleresca or Chancery Italic, a much ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.64 ------------------------------------ 64 VARIA: GREEK LOVE AFFAIR BRINGS BEQUEST? more cursive style. successor to his successors: Willis followed in the same occupational line as his sometime lover and schoolmaster, becoming successively secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the Lord High Treasurer of England, and to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.] The above passage was found in John Dover Wilson's Life in Shakespeare's England, Cambridge, 1911, reprinted by Pelican Books, Ltd., Harmondsworth (Middx.) and New York, 1944, pp.63-64. Willis was born in 1564, being therefore Shakespeare's exact contemporary. It is remarkable that in the very days during which the Puritans were so vigorously attacking boy actors for alleged immoralities with their older counterparts, Willis wrote at once so matter-of-factly and so intensely about his schoolmaster, with whom bedfellowship ripened into love and eventually determined Willis's choice of life-work. The term "bedfellow" is used both in boy-man and heterosexual contexts elsewhere in the period. Under the circumstances, it is unwise to conclude either that sex did occur between young Willis and Master Gregory Downhale, or that it did not; in either event the important thing was not whether it occurred at all, but the very Greek-like effects of the love relationship on the boy. From the matter-of-fact discussion of this relationship, we may tentatively conclude that nobody thought it particularly odd in those days for . schoolmaster and pupil to share a bed, or for such love as developed that way to flourish and enrich someone's life. GREEK LOVE AFFAIR BRINGS $250,000 BEQUEST? A clipping from the New York Daily News, Friday, Sept. 4, 1964, page 3, headed 'We Find 'Lost' Heir To A Quarter Million," by-lined Nathan Kanter and Thomas Toolen, tells of a fireman, one Richard Gregory Shaw, 34, father of two, bequeathed some $250,000 by a writer, one Asa Bushnell Diamond (or Dimond -- both spellings recur in the article). The sole connection ascertained between the fireman and the writer was that ca. 1947-50, during Shaw's late teens, he and Diamond had become close friends -- Diamond was then in his late fifties -- and during those three years they held "dozens of conversations about art, literature, the world of culture in general." The talks sometimes took place in the ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.65 ------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREEK LOVE 65 writer's apartment, sometimes in bars, sometimes during long walks in the streets. Shaw last saw Diamond in 1951, being then 20 or 21. Marrying the following year, he sent the writer an invitation to the wedding, but Diamond could not attend. They did not meet again, and Shaw was stunned to find himself Diamond's principal heir. Reading between the lines, one can trace clear evidence that this friendship bore at least some of the earmarks of Greek love, whether or not a sexual component had ever been allowed to come to consciousness in either party. Nor need one speculate on the success, or lack of it, of the affair in Shaw's life. Albeit a fireman, he was probably that much richer mentally for the prolonged exposure to a cultured mind than he would have been without the contact. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.66 ------------------------------------ <advertisement:> now available from Oliver Layton Press: GREEK LOVE by J.Z. EGLINTON Greek Love is the first literary, historical, psychological and sociological study of boy-love ever to appear. Up to now, specialists in sexology have been either too confused to say anything of relevance, or too scared to commit it to print! Such authorities as Stekel, Krafft-Ebing, Bergler, George W. Henry, Ulrichs, Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, and Freud managed to write volumes about other sexual practices, but they betrayed no real understanding of what makes a man love a boy. The author of Greek Love believes that boy-love is a potential social force for good. In Ancient Greece, it was closely bound up with the highest ethical and philosophical ideals. Therefore, we must seriously consider the possibility that boy-love can be a force for good right now, in our own country. Greek Love is refreshing to read. The author does not affect <sic> the modern pseudo-objectivity that is so often a coverup for moral vacillation. Though he treats the subject fairly, he makes no attempt to conceal his pro-sexual orientation. Following is the table of contents: ADVERTISEMENT ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.67 ------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 J.Z.E. New York City INTRODUCING A NEW JOURNAL 5 Oliver DRUMMOND London RALPH NICHOLAS CHUBB: PROPHET AND PAIDERAST Bio-bibliographical study of a modern British counterpart to Walt Whitman, to whom Greek love had a mystical and religious significance. 18 Conrad van EMDE BOAS Amsterdam THE BOY ACTOR AND THE "DOUBLE DISGUISE" IN SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS How British audiences really saw plays such as As you Like It and Twelfth Night, in which boys played girls masquerading as boys. 24 J.Z. EGLINTON New York City SHAKESPEARE'S BOYFRIEND AND SONNET XX We learn from the Sonnets that their recipient was most likely a boy actor informally apprenticed to Shakespeare, much as was Nat Field to Ben Jonson. Their tone indicates unequivocally a Greek love affair, even though one not overtly sexual. ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.68 ------------------------------------ 31 Terence J. DEAKIN Oxford EVIDENCE FOR HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT EGYPT Of the scanty references to homosexual acts in Pharaonic Egypt, most are ascribed to gods; but perhaps the most famous boy-lover in Egypt was the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhnaten, for whose boyfriend even Queen Nefertiti was discredited! 39 Paul NACKE Hubertusburg (Saxony) ON HOMOSEXUALITY IN ALBANIA From Jahrbuch f. sex. Zwischenstufen; tr. by Dr. Warren Johansson. A study of modern survivals of classic Greek love patterns in Albania. 48 Marion Z. BRADLEY San Francisco FEMININE EQUIVALENTS OF GREEK LOVE IN MODERN FICTION Patterns exactly analogous to classic Greek love are rather frequently encountered in the more serious Lesbian novels, more often indeed than boy love in modern homosexual fiction. 59 RECENT BOOKS 63 VARIA ==================================== Int.J. Greek Love v.1 n.1, p.69 ------------------------------------ <advertisement:> Now available from Oliver Layton Press: The Asbestos Diary, by Casimir Dukahz This astonishing work is the first fiction since the Satyricon to explicitly describe what goes on, amatorily speaking, between a man and his boyfriends. "But why do you call it an asbestos diary?" asks 13-year-old Luc. "Because in it I have written about you and me, among others, and it hasn't gone up in smoke and flames," replies the author, whose polarity in the sexual alphabet is the "I" of boys rather than the "O" of females. Luc is the Number One Boy, but among the other young, handsome males Casimir meets (and takes to bed) are: the youngster who would permit himself to be loved only when he was "asleep"; the lad who wanted to become a mother; the youth who was betrayed by a condom; the kid with the foam-rubber crotch; the circumcised lad who grew a second foreskin; the prostitute boy constructed of plasticene and latex. In the pursuit of these not-too-elusive loves, Casimir suffers blackmail, mayhem, rejection, overcharging, cuckolding, competition, police brutality, and violent opposition from animals, Moms and constituted authority. But he endures all because the reward is great; we leave the hero-villain immersed deep in the love affair of his career. In style, this extraordinary book has been compared by delighted readers and critics to Rabelais, Joyce, Miller, Celine and Durrell. Don't deny yourself the delight of sharing Casimir's adventures. Use the coupon below. Limited edition. 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