
DAVOS PLATZ,
SWITZERLAND.
Sept: 5. 1890 My dear Master
I am sincerely obliged to you for your letter of August 19. It is a great relief to me to know so clearly & precisely what you feel about the question I raised. Your phrases "gratuitous & quite at the time undreamed & unrecked possibility of morbid inferences—which are disavowed by me & seem damnable," set the matter as straight as can be, base this doctrine of Calamus upon a foundation of granite.
I am not surprised; for this indeed is what I understood to be your meaning, since I have studied Leaves of Grass in the right way—interpreting each part by reference to the whole & in the spirit of the whole. The result of this study was that the "adhesiveness" of comradeship had no interblending with the "amativemess" of sexual love.
Yet you must not think that the "morbid inferences," which to you "seem damnable,"
are quite "gratuitous" or outside of the range of possibility. Frankly speaking, the
emotional language of Calamus is such as hitherto has not been used in the modern
world about the relation between friends. For a student of ancient literature it
presents a singular analogue to the early Greek enthusiasm of comradeship in
arms—as that appeared among the Dorian tribes, & made a chivalry for
prehistoric Hellas. And you know what singluar anomalies were connected with this
lofty sentiment in the historic period of Greek development.
Again, you cannot be ignorant that a certain percentage (small but appreciable) of male beings are always born into the world, whose sexual instincts are what the Germans call "inverted". During the last 25 years much attention, in France, Germany, Austria & Italy, has been directed to the psychology & pathology of these abnormal persons. In 1889 the Penal Code of Italy was altered by the erasion of their eccentricities from the list of crimes.
Looking then to the lessons of the past in ancient Greece, where a heroic chivalry
of comradeship grew intertwined with moral abominations (I speak as a modern man),
& also to the Contemporary problem offered by the class of persons I have
mentioned—who will certainly have somehow to be dealt with in the light of
science, since the eyes of science have been drawn towards them: looking, I say, to
both these things, it became of the utmost importance to know for certain what you
thought about those "morbid inferences". For you have announced clearly that a great
spiritual factor lies latent in Comradeship, ready to leap forth & to take a
prominent part in the energy of the human race. It is, I repeat, essential that the
interpreters of your prophecy should be able to speak authoritatively &
decisively about their Master's Stimmung, his radical
instinct with regard to the emotional & moral quality of the comradeship he
announces.
I am sorry to have annoyed you with this discussion. But you will see, I hope now, that it was not wholly unnecessary or unprofitable.
With the explanation you have placed in my hands, in which you give me liberty to use, I can speak with no uncertain voice, & with no dread lest the enemy should blaspheme.
The conclusion reached is, to my mind, in every way satisfactory. I am so profoundly
convinced that you are right in all you say about the great good which is to be
expected from Comradeship as you conceive it, & as alone it can be a salutary human bond, that the
power of repudiating those "morbid inferences" authoritatively—should they
ever be made seriously or uttered openly, either by your detractors or by the
partizans of some vicious crankiness—sets me quite at ease as to my own
course.
I will tell my bookseller in London to send you a copy of the "Contemporary" in which there is an essay by me on the "Dantesque & Platonic Ideals of Love." You will see something there about the Dorian Chivalry of Comradeship to wh. I have alluded in this letter. It seems to me, I confess, still doubtful whether (human nature being what it is) we can expect wholly to eliminate some sensual alloy from any emotions which are raised to a very high pitch of passionate intensity. But the moralizing of the emotions must be left to social feeling & opinion in general, & ultimately to the individual conscience.
I am greatly interested in your "Rejoinder" (wh. by the way has been reprinted in the PMG). Anything you say about the inception & performance of your great life-work has value.—I have been ill; six days in bed with high fever, a lung-inflammation serious to me; only just up again for a few hours.
Ever yours with deep gratitude & true affection. John Addington Symonds.