Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/345

 of the ideal, of dignified and virile qualities, than in any other society in Europe. France indeed is the land of an apotheosis of—vulvolatry. Of course one must remember that Paris is not France, and that Parisian story-writers should not be considered as wholly representative of French racial aspects. But even so admitting, there is an inherent racialism in the repellant materials and atmosphere of some of the worst 'sexualistic' French fiction.

Among what we may call classic French literary Uranians, sometimes expressers of its emotions in letters, have been, for example, Molière, Montaigne, Michelet, Diderot and Voltaire. The relations between Molière and the young actor Michel Baron, indicate the great dramatist as having developed into a dionian-uranian, as his maturity advanced. Many allusions to Molière's homosexualism were current in social literary and theatrical circles of Paris, during Moliere's lifetime. Boileau suppressed a series of ironical lines as to this delicate topic, and they are to be met only in certain rare editions of Boileau. Montaigne's closest intimacy of. sentimental sort, with his adored friend Etienne de la Boétie, was uranistic; the noble and richly-endowed Boétie seems to have been completely homosexual. The story of Michelet and his fidus Achates, Paul Poinsot (the eminent geometer) includes the relation of Poinsot as an outspoken homosexual. Voltaire, whether ever physically and sincerely uranian or not, was one of the early unprejudiced and tolerant recognizers of the homosexual instinct; an accepter of Greek love as a legitimate passion, however mysterious and contrary to modern moral concepts. When Voltaire was writing for the "Encyclopédie" he attested this attitude.

In the catalogue of nineteenth century and contemporary French novelists and poets, who have concerned themselves distinctly with uranianism in its various nuances—authours who have in many cases more or less