He describes an adventure he had with Oscar Wilde: That such loves can spring up, that such relationships can be formed, it is not enough for me to say that this is natural I maintain that it is good each of the two finds exaltation, protection, a challenge in them and I wonder whether it is for the youth or the elder man that they are more profitable. The pederasts, of whom I am one (why cannot I say this quite simply, without your immediately claiming to see a brag in my confession?), are much rarer, and the sodomites much more numerous, than I first thought. I call a sodomite ("The word is sodomite, sir," said Verlaine to the judge who asked him if it were true that he was a sodomist) the man whose desire is addressed to mature men. I call a pederast the man who, as the word indicates, falls in love with young boys. he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1917. A brilliant writer, and a major influence in the 20th century, subtle, especially in describing relationship, and sophisticated. Mostly it’s about the original, the real as opposed to the copy or the false. One is constantly having to look up who such & such a person is. Published in 1925, it’s a complex novel with, all told, 29 characters in interlaced relationships. Am reading André Gide’s, The Counterfeiters, or as he would have it, Les Faux Monnayeurs.
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