Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/583



(From Platen's "Diary.")



August von Platen-Hallermund, by aristocratic rank a count, a member of one of the oldest of Ansbach family-lines, and certainly one of the most gifted of poets in the portrayal of what is distinctively psychologic in similisexual love, was born at Ansbach, October 24, 1796; and died suddenly at Siracusa, Sicily, in November 1835, in only the fortieth year of a prematurely-ended career. His outward life was in no case eventful, compared with many poetical existences. It was chiefly, a matter of a short military-service, a considerable University-life, and then of about a dozen years of residence or travel in Italy, during which time his literary repute in his native Germany was reaching a high measure of critical and popular recognition. As a life, however, it was in no sense monotonous or stationary. Its inner chapters are a deep psychologic drama. Born of affectionate and careful parents, in easy circumstances, the earliest outward data to be noted include Platen's severe training, for the military profession, as a mere lad in the Cadet-School in Munich, till the year 1810; when, still a youth, he was enrolled