Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/311

 translations", must be reminded that in the largest body of such amatory poetry as the "Ghazels" etc., the personal pronouns invariably are masculine—"he", "him" and "his"; and refer us directly to a youth, not to any maiden, as the object of the poet's flame. A large proportion of English, French, German and other translators invariably changed to the feminine, line by line, the masculine pronominal and other references. Only lately has this misleading squeamishness been abandoned. The same sexual falsification has been the practice in translations of Michel Angelo's intensely personal sonnets, including those addressed to Cavalieri and to others of Buonarroti's homosexual loves. Prudish editors and commentators also have solicitously obscured the homosexual tenor of many of Shakespeare's sonnets.

To return to the East—we must not forget how openly (often grossly) uranistic are many episodes in "The Book of the Thousand Nights and A Night"; nor pass by suggestions in that other nobler and more virile work, "Antar." In "The Thousand and One Nights," the homosexual sentiment is occasionally not wholly pederastic. But it is so in the majority of examples; sometimes with the coarsest sexual accents. Examples are "The Tale of the Third Saluk" (Kalendar); "The Story of Bedreddin-Hassan" (which occasionally is a sheer rhapsody of oriental admiration for a beautiful young man; "The Story of Kemmerezzaman," to which a climax and explanation of mysteries comes by way of a scene of homosexual passion; the narrative of the host who wished to prove another man's sexual morals by the advances of of an homosexual boy, on a terrace at night; and in several other tales, formal discussions and many lyrics. The complete English translations of the "Nights,", by Burton or Payne exhibit this matter faithfully: earlier English translations do not. The French version by Mardrus is even more illustrative, passim. In the "Thousand and One Nights" we are given liberal extracts from Eastern