Xavier Mayne

“ How easily a noble love can lead us to the edge of despair I know: but how fearfully a sensual fire must ruin the whole man, that I have not yet experienced, though I have a cruel portent of it. So much is there in the world that makes me wish that I had never been born! "The passages here italized are eloquent of Platen's obstinate, troublous fight to convince himself that he had loved and had not desired; could love and yet not desire; and that there were really great distinctions between the complexions of this or that ardent passion already "experienced." ”

“ And all this hyper-erotic state of mind was a matter of nearly complete idealism! Platen was in love, at sight, with the physique of another young man; on it he was building up a whole sentimental fabric of glowing sexual-psychic desire. But just so can be bred and nourished any sort of iove, heterosexual or homosexual; often purely such stuff as dreams are made of. As to the end of the "Federigo" affair, it never completely ended; as has been mentioned. The blessed image of the young cuirasssier of Munich remained in Platen's heart all through his career, especially in Munich. ”

“ It is superfluous to point here the evidence that what tormented Platen so fiercely was not merely the negatively "intellectual" relations with Hornstein, but the stress of sexual desire. He must have been deeply the victim of honest self-deceptions when he tried, later or at the time, to believe that no corporeal thrill, no concrete physical yearnings coloured his sentiments for Brandenstein and Hornstein. He was a robust young man; the physical passion constantly must have sought its outlet under the seethe of this sort of similisexual fire. It was not mere torturing "idealism". ”

“ During all the interim, the Diary is a daily witness to longings, dreams, doubts, hopes, fancies, rhapsodic outbursts, and so on; exactly as in the case of "Federigo." Moreover, this Hornstein affair was growing just in the time that "Federigo" was so potent in Platen's soul. Hence we find that Platen shows a good deal of the distress and surprise, natural to any fine and inexperienced nature, that a man can be in love with two human beings at once. This appeared to Platen a sort of mysterious monstrosity! He is ashamed to discover his "inconstancy," or—capacity. ”

“ For Platen remains forever the type of the born Uranian of literary genius, or at least of fine talent, who is drawn sexually only toward the male, but only toward the finer examples of the male, whether physically or intellectually; who idealizes in his loving, often to his own pain and disappointment; one who "loves where he must," a philarrene who is ever the victim of an inborn, sensual-sexual temperament. ”

“ Some of the retrospective passages in the Diary during this studious, solitary, summer (exactly such a summer as stimulates or depresses many and many a Uranian) have much interest, especially those in October. More striking are the memoranda, now quite positive, of Platen's realizing that he was out-and-out homosexual in his nature; incapable of loving any woman; destined to love only the male (see October entry, page 837, of the same First Volume) and his awakening knowledge that this sort of passion must needs be much a physical one, however clear its intellectual fire. ”

“ Through his letters, we read how thorough had been his similisexual surrender to Platen's passion. He observes that he feels that they have misunderstood each other, and are really not suited, after all, to be intimate friends. They must part! "It is best for us," writes Eduard, "our two hearts will never fully understand each other, and I am truly sorry that I have found you one with whom I cannot as a friend get into harmony, though you have my esteem and respect in the highest degree." ”

“ Thus on June 3-8 1819, he says of Eduard: "Coming into my room, he dazzled me, like the figure of a demigod ..."; and then we find an aspiration that has an almost comic effect, if we did not realize the moral terror underfying it ... "If only Heaven will deign to grant me an unvarying purity of soul!" Some months earlier, had occurred already a long retrospective entry; in which Platen reverted to his still "unextinguished" love for Count d'Argenteau, for Brandenstein, and even for Hornstein, as all so much "less sensual" than this passion for Schmidtlein. ”

“ He means, of course, the "road" with Schmidtlein. "Should I not do what I feel is right? I can truly do my part toward establishing a spiritual and chaste bond with Rotenhan; but certainly that does not seem to lie ahead. One thing is certain, that we are neither of us unsensual: though he likely has not yet experienced to what precipices such a situation leads one. Alas, I have found that out ... I must ward myself from any moment of self-forgetting." Platen tried this heroic attitude the more conscientiously, if only halfheartedly. ”

“ A few days later, (June 7, 1918) sitting in a retired corner of the beautiful old Hofgarten, in Würzburg, reading together a most appropriate drama, "... we held each other embraced. His head rested on my breast. Our cheeks often touched"... Platen may well exclaim, when in a sort of Rausch by the memory, "These aspects ... are joyful, but from one standpoint too dangerous. A hostile goddess can separate us, while wishing to unite us—the goddess Passion. We are young, and we love each other ardently. But I hope that God will aid us to leap over this abyss. ”

“ But in the relationship with Perglas (see the many entries in the Journal) we have more curious examples of how Platen could conduct himself when mixing up friendship and love. Perglas appears to have been rather well suited to be a friend to Platen, as Platen to Perglas; especially as we cannot help surmising that Perglas was psychically homosexual—at least bisexual. But somehow neither young man was able to be perfectly straightforward and frank with the other. Neither would trust the other with his heart and nature. ”

“ It is strange to think of the eminent scientist Liebig as once upon a time so ardent a young similisexual.
We now reach the last, except one, of what we may term the series of the grandes passions of Platten: that is to say of what we find recorded as such by himself, and distinctively. The first is his wild, short, unhappy love for another young student at Erlangen, whom he names in the Journal as only "Cardenio," mentions in the poems addressed to him as only "Cardenio"; but who is identified with probabilty as a youth named Hoffman. "Cardenio" was, like Eduard Schmidtlein, a law-student. ”

“ We may note that as "Cardenio" was a mere boy, this particular love-sentiment, acutely physical, on Platen's side was eminently pederastic, like the Persian's tendency. In fact this sort of sentiment, from now on, especially when Platen was in Italy, took a clear place in his nature, as not earlier. After a considerable term of suspense, of idealizing and so on, Platen met "Cardenio." He tried hard to achieve a friendship with the beautiful boy. We can see that it was,a foolish attempt, ab initio. Platen was twenty-six, highly intellectual, an aristocrat in social position, an idealist ”

“ By Platen's discreet avoidance of names, of prepositions that point out sex, by Oriental colourings and so on, there is no open offence given to the reader who either knows nothing of homosexual sentiment or has a prejudice against it, even in Vergil or Hafiz or Shakespeare. Only by reading between the lines, as one well may do after perusing the Journal now before us as the master-key to Platen's poetry, do we understand that poetry. For Platen lived under the curse—at least it is seldom a blessing—which makes a man's warmest friendships into sexual loves ”

“ The outcry "I am lost!" may well point out his terror at finding that his abnormal passion was a physical one, as well as a psychic condition; a tendency never to be "cured."
Fortunately the unconscious Captain Wilhelm von Hornstein was not to trouble Platen's heart, nor to beget thoughts of suicide, or anything else for long time. Already Schnitzlein had warned Platen that if he, Platen, once came to know Hornstein—even a little—all his queer illusions about that blunt, commonplace officer would vanish; that he would find Hornstein a dull, uninteresting, rather rude type of man ”

“ Though not a prolific comedy-writer nor a many-sided one, nor yet a versatile psychologic poet, still, Platen reached a high mark of popular and critical fame. The latter has not yet by any means lapsed. The Oriental poems known as the "Ghazels," the deep human feeling in the Sonnets, and the passion, rhythmic sense and melody of the Odes are always certain of admirers. ”

“ He likewise wonders whether should he marry, on a basis of friendship with some bride, sexual love for her would gradually come—another most frequent query in the mind of the similisexual of our date, and often such a dangerous illusion. Here too is a striking passage in the physical-sexualistic key: "I am at an age when love is demanded, which will not be satisfied with friendship.. Without any sensual feeling there can be no love. Federigo has never, in any way, awakened in me a base sexual-sensual impulse. ”

“ All his life long, occurred intimate friendships with women. Several women fell in love with the man and poet. But no woman's beauty of physique, no sexualism in a woman ever appealed to the mature Platen. What is more consistent, even when he was a lad only once is there to be traced anything like a sentimental intimacy and feeling for any female human being. There occurred during his relatively boyish officer-days, in Munich, a superficial attraction over him from a young French girl Mademoiselle Euphrasie de B—, visiting the Court with her mother. ”

“ Genial temperament, natural manners, spontaneity, lightness of touch and tact are so much of the secret of making and keeping one's friends! We must take pains to be lucid—or to seem lucid—or else we will be alone in the world. ”

“ It is the love for all that is Beautiful, True and Perfect ... I will rejoice when I see him, and be sorrowful when my eye finds him not. I will think and dream and speak of him. I will love him to a passionate enthusiasm, I will call out his name in a fiery ecstasy when I am alone ..." When the departure of young Count d'Argenteau from Munich was near, Platen's entries grow proportionately vehement: "—Is fate so inexorable? ”

“ For, psychologists of to-day know only too well that while such a history as Platen's is seldom given to the world, the sexual existences that could rival its disclosures are legion, in every land and race of civilized humanity. Several times, when Platen was reviewing his Journal, he reflects upon the increasing possibility of future readers, and even appeals to their sympathies, as in the citation heading this study. ”

“ Liebig's fineness of sexual morality charmed Platen, though "we have no shyness as to kisses." ... do not hold ourselves at all back, and Liebig himself was the first to say that we must not show to the false and evil-seeking eye of the world that inner feeling which we do not reserve when we are alone." But under Platen's unfortunate star of interruption the' time that these two had together was brief. They had not met till Liebig was about to leave Erlangen for good. ”

“ This "Karl Theodore German" matter came after several other passions had flitted over Platen's, beauty-susceptible soul; including a flame for Reichenberger, and for a theological student named Knobel. We may note that Knobel, after beginning a most promising acquaintance with Platen suddenly and insultingly—though privately—declined to continue it; on grounds that plainly shew that in Erlangen there had been gossip about Platen's sex-nature. ”

“ Then, too, after Rotenhan had left Erlangen, came the even more kindly and captivating Otto von Bülow liaison; then Liebig; then the ill-starred "Cardenio" passion; then Karl Theodore German—and so on. Schmidtlein's real spell ended in Würzburg. Again, Platen now ceased to struggle so conscientiously with his own natural, sexual-sensual nature. He ceased to expect that innermost loves were to be mere friendships; he ceased quite to wish the attainment of a simply spiritual "goal." He had learned his lesson—that "the body has its rights as well as the soul" in such loves ”

“ He would not admit the truth to himself till forced to do so; and some of his casuistry is naive; But such a vague state of mind ended when he was at the height of his passions for the beautiful Eduard Schmidtlein and for Herman von Rotenhan ("The last night we did not part, we slept together—") as with the chapters as to "Cardenio," Bülow, and German; and beyond doubt there were no more scruj pies of sexual conscience on Platen's part after Italy. Still, to the end, Platen veils the physical side of his feelings; as would any highly refined heterosexual or homosexual. ”