Gaya Scienza

The Warren Cup

G.W. Bowersock's review, at least, reacquainted me with the Warren Cup.

The small Roman silver cup is an extraordinary object from the early first century AD. It became known to the public in 1999 when the British Museum made its acquisition for 1.8 million pounds. In 2006 the Warren Cup was the object of a special exhibition.

The outer surface of the Cup is decorated with two figured scenes in low relief showing each two males in a sexual act. In one, a senior bearded man is copulating with a beardless youth. In the other, the older figure is a beardless youth, his companion a boy. Both scenes exhibit a great degree of shared intimacy.

The British Museum exhibition was associated with the publication of a small monograph, The Warren Cup (Dyfri Williams, the British Museum Press, 2006, 64p), which, as stated on the cover flap,

examines the iconography of the Warren Cup, and sets it in it's social context. It also discusses the cup's modern history, especially the life of the eccentric collector, Edward Perry Warren, from which it takes its name.

It's a lovely little book.

***

By the way, the TLS last week mentions 'en passant' the Gay Icons exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It runs until October 18th.

2009.09.27

Greek Love: Unfair Criticism

G.W. Bowersock is not kind. The New York Review of Books has published recently his very negative review of The Greeks and Greek Love - A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World (James Davidson, Random House, 2009, 789p). After praising Kenneth Dover's Greek Homosexuality (1978) he links Davidson's book to "the longer books that have been published on Greek homosexuality in the thirty years after Dover", none of which "comes close to his lucid, concise, and scholarly exposition."

But Bowersock's criticism goes too far. Davidson's emphasis on a "broader picture of affective relationships", instead of "what he considers an excessive emphasis on sexual penetration" is not an attempt to "diminish Dover's work" or to "undermine Dover's immense authority." At least that's not how I remember it. Bowersock also seems to imply that The Greeks and Greek Love is a "timely" apology of "pederasty under the guise of Greek love (...) at a moment when Western nations have been profoundly shaken by revelations of child abuse." This is unfair and inaccurate. I must say I have a much nicer recollection of Davidson's book which I mentioned last year in this blog.

At Galignani, the best (and oldest?) English bookstore in Paris, I came upon The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins, edited by William Innes Homer (Princeton University Press, 2009, 392p), hot from the press, which seems to be worth reading.

2009.09.20

Shame

I am still fuming. I should have known better. I had read comments, gossips... Still, after starting to look for a book on the Pink Triangle and the deportation of homosexuals by the Nazis, I ended up buying Les oubliés de la mémoire (Hachette Littératures, ouvrage publié sous la direction de Jean-Claude Lescure, 2002, 294p), the most recent title on the topic, by... Jean Le Bitoux. A terrible choice.

Le Bitoux is a well known figure within the French gay movements. A journalist, he was one of the founders of Gai Pied, an influential gay magazine during the 80s. In 2002 he was appointed to head the creation of a Center for Homosexual Archives funded by the city of Paris. The project led nowhere and Le Bitoux was soon dismissed... It does not surprise me. I found in the first pages of Les oubliés de la mémoire so many errors(*) that I had to put the book away... How is it possible for a serious publisher like Hachette to market such a document? I am still fuming... and still looking for a good book on the topic.

While checking some of the facts in Le Bitoux's book, I came upon the mention of a play by Roger Martin du Gard, Un taciturne (Gallimard, 1932, 236p). Written in 1931 while Martin du Gard was finishing Les Thibault, it is a lovely miniature, a short play: the story of a mature businessman who discovers love when he hires a young man full of joy, light and energy. When confronted with his homosexual feelings, he cannot stand it and prefers to commit suicide... Un taciturne was performed under the direction of Louis Jouvet in 1931. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, it has not been translated into English.

2009.09.13

(*) A few examples: "Le médecin (sic) et journaliste hongrois Karoly Maria Kertberry (sic)", "Solidement ancré dans le Code pénal britannique depuis 1895 (sic), l'amendement dit 'La Bouchère' (sic)", etc.

A Wedding in Normandy

The splendid wedding I attended last weekend in Normandy provided the perfect excuse for not writing my column... Well, not so perfect. I confess. A beautiful weather, delicious food, lots of excellent champagne and very effective music...

The book I started on my flight from New York was very disappointing. I bought it at the airport before boarding, looking forward to an exciting night of reading... It was the paperback edition of a thriller, the review of which, in the New York Times, I had a vague, but overall positive, recollection... Child 44 (Tom Rob Smith, Grand Central Publishing, 2008, 448p) has a crisp rhythm but lacks depth, especially regarding its main characters, and by moments credibility... Youthful sin? Tom Rob Smith published a sequel to Child 44 last May (The Secret Speech). Publishers Weekly commented:

Shifting from Moscow to Siberia and to a Hungary convulsed by revolution, this fast-paced novel is packed with too many incidents for Smith to dwell on any in great depth. Though its drama often lacks emotional resonance, this story paints a memorable portrait of post-Stalinist Russia at its dawn.

Beside the story, I was intrigued by the scant biographical details on the back cover, under the picture of a handsome young man: "Tom Rob Smith graduated from Cambridge in 2001 and lives in London," and the enigmatic last paragraph of the author's acknowledgments: "Many people assisted the completion of this book but none more so than Ben Stephenson. I've never been as happy as I have been during these past few years." I found more about him in an interview published in March 2008 in Pinknews (From soaps to Soviet murder mystery).

Since then, back in Paris, I have been catching up with several good books published in the past few months.

La Pléiade has issued a new edition of André Gide's fictions, two volumes coordinated by Pierre Masson (Romans et récits, Gallimard, 2009 1,584p and 1,456p). A great opportunity to read, together, Corydon and Les Faux-monnayeurs.

Champion has published a small volume dedicated to Armance (Armance, ou la liberté de Stendhal, Jean-Jacques Hamm, Honoré Champion éditeur, 2009, 272p), "an in-depth reading of a novel that his own author considered too erudito," a fascinating analysis of an enigmatic work.

I very much enjoyed L'art d'être pauvre, François Baudot's memoir, promoted by its publisher (Grasset, 2009, 410p) with the slogan "Proust au Palace." With a sharp style, Baudot remembers his lost youth in Paris where he was born in 1950. He takes us on a journey, haunted by characters reminiscent of Proust's world, through a stay in New York in 1968 when Pop Art was at its height and where he has sex, for the first time, with a man, "a blond angel whose twin brother was Warhol's lover," to the Paris of the seventies where gay night life blossoms, leading to the "explosive" Palace years. Baudot was now thirty and "il n'avait certes pas fait d'étincelles." The last, nostalgic, pages of the book are dedicated to his 20-years long love affair with Philippe:

Au cours de ce long pas de deux entamé par hasard, nous nous serons épargné toi et moi les grands sentiments et les grands mots. Nous aurons ignoré les souffrances romantiques du jeune Werther, tout autant que l'honorabilité bourgeoise des ménages de garçons. Nous n'aurons pas connu les fades couleurs du bonheur qui fane comme un bouquet sous sa cloche de verre. Chaque matin nous aura surpris. Tout étonnés de nous trouver ensemble dans le même lit. Et puis, petit à petit, sans que rien ne soit dit, se sont tissées des écharpes de soie contre la solitude. Finalement, naturellement, passionnément, nous avons concrétisé la définition que je préfère de l'amour: 'Le contact de deux épidermes'.

2009.09.06