Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/589

 do after perusing the Journal now before us as the master-key to Platen's poetry, do we understand that poetry. For Platen lived under the curse—at least it is seldom a blessing—which makes a man's warmest friendships into sexual loves; which makes its victim seek through the world for the sort of "friend" (so often not to be met however near at hand) who will surrender all to the seeker, just as the surrender of the seeker must needs be all; that subjection to the law of a mystic and intersexual psychos that means probably the profoundest joy or misery of which sexual human nature is capable. More than this, Platen himself, like so many thousands of Uranians, did not till comparatively late in life understand his own nature; did not succed [sic] in harmonizing its workings with his inner moral and religious convictions; did not, free himself from the specters of his mistaught conscience. This, even though he was relatively early convinced that in his sexual struggles lay nothing base or bestial. First and last, we have his fine idealizing—indeed too fine for his own peace—and his virile morality, in all the Diary. We may note here that he was never weakly pederastic in his instincts. He found himself drawn chiefly to the sexually mature, to the manly youth or young man. Moreover he had, all his life long many friendships that, fortunately for his tranquility and happiness, remained unaffected by his homosexual tendencies; as is the case with most intellectual Uranians. He was warmly esteemed and respected by men who were really friends—not more, and. whom he thoroughly appreciated and valued. But when the attraction to another man began with the note of sexual passion, it generally proved to be such ad finem; and often like the old phrase of "Parrhasius" it was indeed "a mounting devil" that tortured—and lingered to torture.

The homosexualism of Platen cannot be traced to heredity here. But it seems typically inborn. Even in