Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/624

 The years at Erlangen University were most important ones in the intellectual life of Platen: and in much besides. He studied almost to excess in his daily courses. He was particularly under the instruction of the celebrated Johann Wagner and also under Schelling. He read enormously in many distinct and large literatures, occidental and oriental, classic and modern. At twenty-two, his literary and linguistic knowledge was prodigious. Better still, the life at Erlangen little by little worked a kindly change on his nature. From being shy, self-conscious, opinionated in type, he expanded now into a much more genial, companionable Sort of young man. Introspective and moody he ever was; but he brightened and clarified at Erlangen. His first general notice, as a promising poet and dramatist began here; and it decided him on literature as his real profession, not diplomacy or what else.

Nevertheless here at Erlangen, with the vibrant homosexualism of his nature as a recognized and deeply-lamented fact in his mind, ever dreading the sensual side of it but wholly unable to dismiss it, came to Platen the four or five experiences that shook him to the very center of his being, either in joy or pain. Two of these episodes, as we are glad to discover, were happy; although on the contrary, two of them were anything but that. They are none of them written-out by him at such length and detail as the Brandenstein, the Hornstein, or the Eduard Schmidtlein affairs. He grew now much more self-contained. He was not so unaccustomed to regard himself in such a light. He had less time for his Diary. But the lovedata fill many pages, and they should be read in extenso by any one at all interested in the study. In what remains of our summary, they must however be much condensed; I shall give only relative outlines.

The first subject of Platen's Erlangen susceptibilities was a certain remarkably handsome young student, an