Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/615

 these. First, of all, not for many months did Platen get to a speaking acquaintance with his new idol. He did not began to exchange visits with Schmidtlein till within about a year. This delay was partly because of the normal slowness of conducting such acquaintances at Würzburg at the time; partly because Platen and Schmidtlein were both hard students, in totally different courses; partly because there was a difference in their social classes (the aristocratic Platen being quite superior to a "Bürgersohn" like Schmidtlein); and last, because Platen's nervous shyness kept him aloof. The hundred entries prior to May 1, 1819, call Schmidtlein only "Adrastus." But the reader will easily surmise that Platen could make his passion white-hot by his sheer idealizings as to "Adrastus," without one word of speech between them. This dangerous faculty blew the hidden fire into a perfect conflagration, within some two weeks of merely looking at the handsome young Münchener! Love, despair, jealousy, hope, melancholy speculation as to what Schmidtlein suspected of the affair or thought of him; moral, social, psychical questions—these entries surge along in a stream of homosexual sentiment for months. Above all, grew Platen's worship of Schmidtlein's "dazzling beauty," his "divine eyes" and harmonious voice. The dulcet voice of Adrastus inspired the lines "Lass tief in Dir mich lesen," and in many other poems printed in Platen's series, The person meant is Schmidtlein, though so many readers might well fancy that a girl was the object. Much of the Journal in 1818 and 1819 is written in French, Portuguese, and occasionally in English. Platen wellknew now that his ardent emotion was no vague intellectual one, but a downright sexual longing. He recognized that the mystic "goal" of which he had such fear, was what he must attain, some day,—however with agony of conscience. He cries out: "O pain without end and measure! O inexhaustible anguish! Never, never did I love thee [Adrastus] as in this moment!" … "He would laugh