Imre: A Memorandum/Prefatory
PREFATORY.
My dear Mayne:
In these pages I give you a chapter out of my life . . . an episode that at first seemed impossible to write even to you. It has lengthened under my hand, as autobiography is likely to do. My apology is that in setting forth absolute truth in which we ourselves are concerned so deeply, the perspectives, and what painters call the values, are not easily maintained. But I hope not to be tedious to the reader for whom, especially, I have laid open as mysterious and profoundly personal an incident.
You know why it has been written at all for you. Now that it lies before me, finished, I do not feel so dubious of what may be thought of its utterly sincere course as I did when I began to put it on paper. And as you have more than once urged me to write something concerning just that topic which is the mainspring of my pages I have asked myself whether, instead of some impersonal essay, I would not do best to give over to your editorial hand all that is here?—as something for other men than for you and me only? Do with it, therefore, as you please. As speaking out out to any other human heart that is throbbing on in rebellion against the ignorances, the narrow psychologic conventions, the false social ethics of our epoch—too many men's hearts must do so!—as offered in a hope that some perplexed and solitary soul may grow a little calmer, may feel itself a little less alone in our world of mysteries—so do I give this record to you, to use it as you will. Take it as from Imre and from me.
As regards the actual narrative, I may say to you here that the dialogue is kept, word for word, faithfully as it passed, in all the more significant passages and that the correspondence is literally translated.
I do not know what may be the exact shade of even your sympathetic judgement, as you lay down the manuscript, read. But, for myself, I put by my pen after the last lines were written, with two lines of Platen in my mind that had often recurred to me during the progress of my record: as a hope, a trust, a conviction:
"Ist's möglich ein Geschöph in der Natur zu sein, Und stets und wiederum auf falsher Spur zu sein?
Or, as the question of the poet can be put into English:
"Can one created be—of Nature part— And ever, ever trace a track that's false?
No... I do not believe it!
Velencze,
19—
. . ."You have spoken of homosexualism, that profound problem in human nature of old or of to-day; noble or ignoble, outspoken or masked: never to be repressed by religions nor philosophies nor laws; which more and more is demanding the thought of all modern civilizations, however unwillingly accorded it..... Its diverse aspects bewilder me... Homosexualism is a symphony running through a marvellous range of psychic keys, with many high and heroic (one might say divine) harmonies; but constantly relapsing to base and fantastic discords!… Is there really now, as ages ago, a sexual aristocracy of the male? A mystic and hellenic Brotherhood, a sort of super-virile man? A race through which hearts never to be kindled by any woman; though, it once aglow, their strange fires can burn not less ardently and purely than ours? An elite in passion, conscions of a superior knowledge of Love, initiated into finer joys and pains than ours?—that looks down with pity and contempt on the millions of men wandering in the valleys of the sexual commonplace?"…