Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/379

 English classics, the authour has depicted his hero's hellenic relationships with two male friends. The first is pederastic in its colouring. It is the swift, passional intimacy between Anastasius and Anagnosti, a handsome effeminate youth—a male dancer. This boy induces Anastasius to seal their intimacy by going through a formal secret marriage, celebrated by a priest in a church; thus reviving a disused ancient custom—a plain relic of paganism. This intense friendship ends in a tragedy.- The young dancer bitterly rebukes Anastasius for faithlessness to their bond, when Anastasius, for selfish reasons, is afraid to acknowledge Anagnosti before some political enemies. Anagnosti falls against a dagger drawn in the angry Anastasius's hand; and dies. The second episode in the same novel is longer, and suggests the higher offices of Grecian homosexualism—through the ardent friendship of Anastasius with young Spiridion, his protégé and junior. Spiridion, saved from death in boyhood by Anastasius, acquires a supreme influence over the latter. He undertakes the moral reformation of Anastasius. Their mutual affection, for a time transcendent, is broken off in a foreign city, by a misunderstanding which Anastasius is too proud to set right. Spiridion quits him suddenly, when they are estranged, and returns to his home, and to months of unhappiness, before he dismisses Anastasius from his mind. Anastasius learns, in time, that Spiridion is married and has a family of lovely children. Anastasius, on his side, feels intense anguish and solitude at the separation; and bitterly reproaches himself for it always—as he may justly do. Lord Byron said this novel made him weep—for two reasons—first, 'the beauty of the story; second, that he 'had not written it'.

Both to Leigh Hunt and to Shelley attach episodes of their sentimental lives, earlier or mature, that have a similisexual accent.