Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/320

 in their courses, the poet has chronicled them in his verse, with a feverish courage such as has no parallel in European poetry. Some hundred sonnets of a personal and poetic eloquence; the imitations of Persian "ghazel" lyrics, penned with fantastic elegance, sprightliness and passion unsurpassed even from Orientals; his masterly Odes; the poets "Epistles", to "Cardenio" and others, besides a large number of poems under varied classifications: all record Platen's male-loving history with minute faithfulness. His personal "Diary", however voluminous, should be read by every Uranian that desires a mirror of the homosexual nature, as well as the "key" to those persons and circumstances that inspired Platen as a poet. There would be an embarrasment of uranistic literary riches in making extracts here from Platen's verse, The Ghazels and Sonnets of Platen constitute a sort of thesaurus, a Canon, of uranistic emotions; as well as the portrait of a noble-minded and brilliantly intellectual man of letters.

In the short Autobiography of the Austrian dramatist Franz Grillparzer, written late in the life of one of the most deeply human writers for the poetical stage since Shakespeare, Grillparzer says, at one point of his narrative: "—It seemed to me at this time as if I would never write anything more again. Into this burdened mood entered certain affairs of the heart. I concluded to bring this condition in me to an end, by a journey. [ This the poet made—to England, etc.] Of what these affairs of the heart were, I shall not give any account, either now or at any future date, although such have played a great—alas, not useful!—rôle in my development. I am master of my part of the secret: but not free as to what part belongs to others." This reference became better understood upon the publication of the fragmentary pages of the dramatist's Diary and Correspondence, with other documents. Intensely had Grillparzer suffered from love. But the warm affection for this or that female