Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/637

 the sexual privileges of Italy were a check on them. We have certain discreet allusions, to such love-affairs, with beautiful young Italians. He. met also down in Italy, many young Teutons and other visitors, who were homosexual, with whom Platen foregathered philarrenically. But the reticence of the Journal, generally speaking, is surprising. He seldom makes the acquaintance of a young man without mentioning that the "beauty" of the new friend had been the first attraction, a sine qua non. In fact, all sorts of adventures and psycho-sexual intimacies and adventures, of a greater or lesser passional sort, surely came when he was wandering and living in the land of free, humane, æsthetic man-to-man sexualism. Some of these adventures have had their memoranda in his poems. For instance, there was the unnamed young Venetian who inspired him so warmly, during his stay in the Sea-City; alluded to in the "Venetian Sonnets" numbered 48 and 51 and in the last allusion of number 43. When Platen was passing through Parma, in course of September, 1826, came the little affair with one "Luigi," a handsome soldier, who, beyond any doubt, brought to Platen a happy—and physical—love-adventure, of some days. In Florence, occurred a short, mysterious episode—a single night—of like bonne fortune. In Rome, he became intimate with Cochetti, a handsome member of the Papal Guard; also with a certain young German named Fries (a Berlin painter and "very good-looking") also a beautiful Roman named Ranieri; also with a Spanish artist named Lepri; and with the two Roberti brothers. These acquaintances in Italy, each in their several degrees, were tinged with sexual relationships or psychic ardours. On the occasion of two separate visits to the Church of St. Peter in Montorio, at a year's interval (see the entry for Dec. 30, 1827) we hear of his meeting and falling in love with two young Italian lads. One of them was named "Innocenzo;" the other is not named. One of them is the subject of the exquisite Ode beginning "Warm and hell, dämmert in Rom