Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/364

 been the direct consequence of an homosexual passion, inspired by a young anglo-saxon acquaintance.

The numerous fictions of Achille Essebac merit by their individuality in recent French literature of homosexualism, a longer notice than this volume can give. them. Of the series, "Dédé" is of special quality; being a sort of romantic elegy—retrospect describing the instinctively passional love between two schoolmates. Their sentiment is unequivocally intersexual, though rather subconsciously such, and free from the least tinge of physical grossness. Essebac's other tales, including "Partenza" and "Luc" are in much the same vein, though more elaborated in episodes. The Essebac group is distinctively pederastic, in relation to love for young boys—the very juvenile ephebus; which sentiment has been pointed out as rather particular to French homosexuals of aesthetic tempers and education. Essebac's stories suffer from their authour's style; a manneristic, recherchée diction, frequently so affected and self-conscious as to be tiresome reading, and his key of elegy soon grows monotonous. Never theless, he has pages when (as if forgetting to write "for a style") he shows real eloquence of emotion and of phrase.

The French stage now and then is directly concerned with uranian drama. (To the personal connections of, Parisian theaters with similisexualism will be made a later allusion in this study.) For example, at the Nouveau Théâtre de l'Art, in 1908, was produced Amory's "Le Monsieur aux Chrysanthèmès"; a symbolic little piece, to which a well-known group of actors gave a brief vitality—only brief, in spite of considerable elegance and skill in construction and literary aspects.

The well-known review "Le Mercure de France", though its range is wider than any merely special currents of belles-lettres, devotes much notice to similisexual