Homosexuals in History
by A. L. Rowse

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Book Reviews of Homosexuals in History

Book Review: "Light...calm and desirable..."
Summary: 5 Stars

sympathetic account of these lives and the contexts in which
they found themselves living and involved.
Rowse does not deal with ancient times, for he says that
his interests as an historian began with the Renaisssance,
"the transition from the medieval to the modern consciousness."
There are 16 chapters, titled: Medieval Prelude; Renaissance
Figures; Elizabethans and their Contemporaries; Francis
Bacon and the Court of James I; Courts and Coronets;
Federick the Great and Some Germans; Regency Connoisseurs;
Russia and Some Russians; Eminent Victorians; French Poets
and Novelists; From Ludwig II to Rohm; Edwardians and
Georgians; The Great War; Cambridge Apostles; A Handful of
Americaans; and Cosmopolitan.
Each of these chapters has the lives interwoven with
perceptive, intelligent, engaging comments about the
times, the values and hypocrisies, the acceptance --
or lack of it (both by the societies -- and sometimes
crushingly, by the individuals themselves... many sad
examples of the effects of repression, guilt, fear,
diastrous attempts to "normalize").
The sections of most interest to me, and in which Rowse
really shines, are his extensive knowledge of the ins-and-
outs of British cultural history. For he includes not
merely the eminent persons one might have encountered, but
also lesser known, but highly interesting and influential
people as well. Thus, in the excellent chapter on "Eminent
Victorians," we read: "In the [English] public schools the
classics were the be-all and end-all, the Alpha and Omega,
of education. They portrayed the relaxed and natural
attitude of the Greeks and Romans -- as of all Mediterranean
peoples -- towards sex." Within this context, Rowse continues
to discuss the scholars, thinkers, and writers who were
influenced by that education and by the writings produced
within Victorian times which examined and enlightened the
Victorians about that Classical era of art, philosophy,
and accepted male desire and love. In this chapter, Rowse
recounts the careers of John Addington Symonds, Horatio
Brown, Lord Ronald Gower, the Marquis of Lorne, Roden Noel,
Edward Carpenter (a modern activist for enlightenment,
humanitarianism, and acceptance -- a devotee of Whitman and
Thoreau), Walter Pater (incredibly interesting and absorbing
reading), and Oscar Wilde.
The other chapters which deal with the French, the Germans,
the Russians, and the Cosmopolitan figures like Constantine
Cavafy, the Greek poet of Alexandria in Egypt, in the early
1900's, are also excellent.
Each reader may take away his own assessments and "readings
of history" -- but the text seems to say, repression and
trying to tough it out, or change, or normalize through
marriage have only brought sadness and damage (not only to
the self, its sense of its own value and identity -- but
also to others). But profligate, decadent, hedonistic
pursuit of pleasure and self, using others as objects,
rather than relating to them as persons, is equally
horrendous. The message seems to be about the desire
for caring love, more than carnal pleasure.
* * * * * * * * *

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