Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/340

 curious last act of the piece, the German Parliament, in a debate on the Paragraph mentioned, is before us. Deputy Auer speaks in support of the suppression of the harsh law, and ends by saying that he takes such a view in the interest of personal and family life. A letter is brought to him; his fiancée has learned that he has been guilty of the offense of which he was legally acquitted. She has committed suicide. The champion of tolerance becomes all at once indeed a suppliant—with anguish and disgrace before him. In this piece, occurs the expression of opinion—or rather the non-expression—"I do not dare to say whether homosexuality be a crime, a madness, or the results of the maximum of intellectual culture "—a striking pose of the question.

The comedy "Die Reise nach Riva," August Wilbrandt's dramatization of his brilliant novel "Fridolin's Heimliche Ehe", has been mentioned here already. It will long hold its place as a sort of little classic in the homosexual theater of the finest literary class. But its production before the Viennese publicCorrected error: "pubblic" [sic] excited a lively hostility at once; and the play has not seen the footlights since its tumultuous first presentations, nor is likely to do so.

Another drama of superiour literary quality is the one act piece "Narkissos", by Elise Kupffer, the romancist and essayist mentioned above. It is of fine emotional currents, and occasionally rises to lyric elegance of diction, being at once a sort of ode to the beauty of the male and a deprecation of female loveliness.

To the poet and dramatist Mosenthal is due the libretto of at least one German opera which is often called "the homosexual opera"—"Die Königin von Saba"; that richly melodious and sumptuously instrumentated score, by the Hungarian-German Karl Goldmark. In the