A Strange Love A Novel of Abnormal Passion edition by George Eekhoud Literature Fiction eBooks
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Eekhoud's legendary account of love between the Count and Guidon... following the latter's dalliance with servant gal Blandine. Tame by 19th century standards, it's still a foundational work of gay literature.
A Strange Love A Novel of Abnormal Passion edition by George Eekhoud Literature Fiction eBooks
I thought this was going to be another piece of gay erotica. Instead, I was pleased to find it is a serious novel without any of the typical hard-core sex scenes. (A man seems to fall on top of a fully-clothed girl and she is pregnant in the next paragraph.) It's a Belgian novel dating from 1899. Yes, we can tell there is a gay relationship between the Count and Guidon, but it is all obliquely referred to...often with barely-suggested euphemism. People talk about it, but they don't do it.The prose is very thick and complicated: long paragraphs with ultra-complex sentences. There was one long passage in particular about the Count's memories that made me wonder if Proust had read this novel before he started writing his. If you had told me that a certain page was really by Proust, I would have agreed.
At times, it seems as if it's going to be like Huysmans' A Rebours, because we have an aristocrat living in his castle with lots of rare objects around. But this Count goes out into the countryside to ogle the young hunky peasant boys at work in the fields. There are two women who are after him, but he has eyes only for the brother of one of them. There is a scheming servant, who thinks he can blackmail the Count. I was rather surprised at the ending, which I won't divulge.
There is no indication who wrote the introduction or translated the novel into its old-fashioned English. The vocabulary is full of what I guess are local Belgian slang words. And some of the prose is quite intriguing: "...the smell of bladderwrack...." had me guessing and ultimately sent me to the dictionary.
As with other novels in this New Traveller's Companion Series, the thing was apparently computer-scanned, and the computer does a poor job of guessing at what it just scanned. We get semicolons where we need commas. Words get arbitrarily broken into separate syllables. (The best one is "homogenic," which becomes "home genie." There are a few footnotes for some proper nouns, but they get capriciously moved around, sometimes as a separate paragraph buried in the middle of the next page (very confusing).
Someone expecting gay erotica will be very disappointed. But someone looking for a landmark novel dealing with gay characters will discover that this is an important one. (There was even an obscenity trial over it, according to the introduction.) Anyone trying to create a syllabus for The History and Development of the Gay Novel needs to include this one.
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A Strange Love A Novel of Abnormal Passion edition by George Eekhoud Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
I had to do a bit of research on this book, because it predates pretty much all of the gay fiction I know of, and I simply hadn't heard of it, so I'll talk about that before I do the review.
It was published in 1899. Eekhoud is the premier literary figure of the age in Belgium and very famous. He was well-known for his pieces describing peasant life, such as Campine. He wrote in French, and there is a free copy of the book-in French-on the Gutenburg website for those who might prefer to read it in the original. It was titled Escal-Vigor and I'm not sure how the title changed to A Strange Love. It-like many other books-was prosecuted in court but there was a literary swell of support, and Eekhoud was acquitted without a stain on his character. Shame more books didn't get the same support!
The story concerns the young Count Henry Kehlmark who comes into his inheritance at quite a young age, and who is more than a little spoiled. This doesn't make him a monster, but it does make him the kind of young man who wants to do what he likes. He lives quite a wild life and then suddenly he decides to retire to his country estate taking with him his housekeeper Blandine, a young woman with whom he had a brief affair in his youth, and Landrillon, his manservant. It is there, whilst being introduced to the neighbourhood, he meets and falls passionately in love with Guidon, the son of the local burgomaster.
You can see by the illustration on the cover how this ends, which is badly, but that's no real surprise, as far as I know Maurice was the first (and only for a long time) which dared to give gay men a happy ending. The story itself, while quite simple, has a lot of themes, such as the nature of loyalty, ambition, and what is true friendship. There's (possibly) the first faghag in Blandine-who loves Henry to distraction, so much so that she stays with him, despite knowing that she'll never have him, even before she finds out his true nature. She is, however, angry at the way Guidon has usurped her as his best friend, and is alarmed at the gossip in the village-which is inflamed by the disloyal Landrillon. But when Henry explains it all to her, (with a rather disturbing confession that he lusted at one point over pre-pubescent boys but got control of this problem) she accepts him for what he is, and vows to stand by him, and will be friends with Guidon.
What I liked about this book was the way that Henry was no longer ashamed of his predilictions. He'd spent years hiding his nature-trying to "pass." Making jokes about men like himself, pretending to leer at women with his friends and thinking he was truly alone in the world. But he came to terms with himself and his feelings and when he meets Guidon, he sees it as fate, something that was truly meant to be. Guidon was not an innocent that he had corrupted, but a man with similar desires. The ugliness is all perceived by the outside forces. The priest who wishes to destroy Henry, the dismissed servant, the woman (Guidon's sister, Claudie) who wants Henry for herself.
This ugliness reaches a head, with the final chapter of the book, and it's clear who the real monsters are.
The language is rather hard to take, and I wonder how faithful the translation is. It's a curious blend of slang and thees and thous. It's rather over flowery but not a difficult read because of that, just a little smirk inducing at times. Luckily there's little conversation between Guidon and Henry because I couldn't have taken much of the earnest declaiming. Even the huge argument that Blandine and Henry have is exquistely formal.
The edition I have is the plain green cover version, also found on , and the preface is most peculiar. It doesn't give any indication as to who wrote it, and it's almost as impassioned as the book itself, resorting to hyperbole and many many exclamation marks. It's worth a read, but isn't exactly instructive about the book, the time of its writing, or much about the author, prefering rather to bang on about how worthy the book is and how many other gay writers came before and since. The facts about the book I had to find elsewhere!
I can't give it a high mark, because to the modern eye, and certainly compared to Wilde or Forster the prose doesn't hold a candle to them (although the French itself might be beautiful, so if you do read it, let me know) but it's an important book in the genre and if you get a chance to get hold of a copy and are interested in the development of gay literature then it's worth seeking out.
I thought this was going to be another piece of gay erotica. Instead, I was pleased to find it is a serious novel without any of the typical hard-core sex scenes. (A man seems to fall on top of a fully-clothed girl and she is pregnant in the next paragraph.) It's a Belgian novel dating from 1899. Yes, we can tell there is a gay relationship between the Count and Guidon, but it is all obliquely referred to...often with barely-suggested euphemism. People talk about it, but they don't do it.
The prose is very thick and complicated long paragraphs with ultra-complex sentences. There was one long passage in particular about the Count's memories that made me wonder if Proust had read this novel before he started writing his. If you had told me that a certain page was really by Proust, I would have agreed.
At times, it seems as if it's going to be like Huysmans' A Rebours, because we have an aristocrat living in his castle with lots of rare objects around. But this Count goes out into the countryside to ogle the young hunky peasant boys at work in the fields. There are two women who are after him, but he has eyes only for the brother of one of them. There is a scheming servant, who thinks he can blackmail the Count. I was rather surprised at the ending, which I won't divulge.
There is no indication who wrote the introduction or translated the novel into its old-fashioned English. The vocabulary is full of what I guess are local Belgian slang words. And some of the prose is quite intriguing "...the smell of bladderwrack...." had me guessing and ultimately sent me to the dictionary.
As with other novels in this New Traveller's Companion Series, the thing was apparently computer-scanned, and the computer does a poor job of guessing at what it just scanned. We get semicolons where we need commas. Words get arbitrarily broken into separate syllables. (The best one is "homogenic," which becomes "home genie." There are a few footnotes for some proper nouns, but they get capriciously moved around, sometimes as a separate paragraph buried in the middle of the next page (very confusing).
Someone expecting gay erotica will be very disappointed. But someone looking for a landmark novel dealing with gay characters will discover that this is an important one. (There was even an obscenity trial over it, according to the introduction.) Anyone trying to create a syllabus for The History and Development of the Gay Novel needs to include this one.
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