E. M. Vacano
("Mario Valma-
riaco").
When speaking of the professional acrobat as uranian, the name of Emil Mario Vacano (1841-1892) was mentioned. In the extraordinary career of Yacano, who in course of a life not very long,, and even if we allow for uncertainty of this or that episode in so complex a chronicle, was certainly acrobat, circus-rider, actor, nun, monk, ecclesiastic (to some degree of initiation) journalist, camp-follower, and successful littérateur, his avatar as a novelist is almost a mere detail. But it is a detail of importance. Of Yacano himself one can only wish, in vain, that he did not leave behind him the sort of autobiography which he planned. Such facts toward it as are available bewilder one by their fantastic, kaleidescopic incoherence. But as the career so was the man. In Otto de Joux's "Enterbten des Liebesglücks" occurs a considerable reference to Yacano. In Peter Rosegger's kindly and discreet volume of literary reminiscences "Gute Kamarade" is an interesting sketch of Vacano, if more particularly of Vacano's later and quasi literary personality, when the mysteries of his wild and wonderful youth were quite past, and he was ending his days in philosophic obscurity and poverty, in Vienna, or at St. Pölten. A more recent newspaper reference to him appeared in the "Wiener Journal" of March 27, 1894—some reminiscences signed "S. S." But the almost phantasmagoric Yacano is not yet clearly of record. Undoubtedly some of his books have much of autobiographic colour. He was ever the sport of his own incorrigible vagabondage, his brilliant but undisciplined gifts, his mixture of temperaments which wavered between deep religious sentiment, pagan philosophy and the impulses of a rococo voluptuary. Of splendid physique, which in early life was so bi-sexual in beauty that he could readily passed for a woman or a man (during his later and soberer years he wore a full blond beard and an aureole of hair) his stature not to great to be womanish. One of Yacano's long escapades was being celebrated (during
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