Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/592

 to the gradual awakening in Platen of the physical side of his homosexualism; the long resistance on his part to physical attractions, to bodily desires toward his own sex. Only late and involuntarily in his experiences did he realize that there was no use in denying them or struggling against them—that love, love, it was that "devoured" him, not any merely ardent friendships; that in the phrase of "Phèdre" what burned him to the vitals was:

In the Journal's consecutive "affairs," we trace clearly his change. He passed from a merely romantic longing for an "intellectual" relation with some young man to whom he was suddenly attracted, to the throbs of a glowing physical-sexual disturbance. Or, we may more correctly say, that we can follow the course of Platen's confessing to himself that his love for X or Y or Z was sexual. Not till the fifth or sixth affaire de cœur (that with the handsome Würzburg law-student, Schmidtlein) do we find Platen crying out that "the body has its rights as well as the soul;" and querying if "the former are more shameful than the latter?". The confession however is tardy. There are plenty of signs that he had ever struggled with the promptings of homosexual desire, in a sub-conscious way or almost so, ab initio. His misgivings, his very arguments with himself that are dropped out here and there, imply this. He would not admit the truth to himself till forced to do so; and some of his casuistry is naive; But such a vague state of mind ended when he was at the height of his passions for the beautiful Eduard Schmidtlein and for Herman von Rotenhan ("The last night we did not part, we slept together—") as with the chapters as to "Cardenio," Bülow, and German; and beyond doubt there were no more scruj pies of sexual conscience on Platen's part after Italy. Still, to the end, Platen veils the physical side of his feelings; as would any highly refined heterosexual or