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The Life and Writings of
John Addington Symonds
(1840—1893)
Copyright © 1997 by Rictor Norton. All
rights reserved. This edition may not be reproduced or
redistributed to third parties without permission of the
editor.
John Addington Symonds was in the forefront of the
"bourgeois radical" men and women with socialist ideals
who were destined to reform public opinion in the 1890s. He was
a dynamic member of that remarkable group of men concerned with
art who worked towards a revival of culture, often in conjunction
with politics: John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde. His specific
contribution to the regeneration of society was as a pioneer in
the field of gay rights; he was the first modern historian of
(male) homosexuality, and the first advocate of gay liberation in
Britain. When he read Plato's Phaedrus
and Symposium in 1858, he realized that
the ignoble behaviour of his fellow schoolboys at Harrow had an
illustrious past, and when he read Walt Whitman's
Leaves of Grass in 1865 he became
convinced that comradeship had the potential for a no less
illustrious future. Most of his writings became part of a great
magnum opus on the love of man for man, and much of what
he did was devoted to the cause of homosexual liberation. He
wrote the first, and still perhaps the best, history of Greek
paiderastia in 1873, which he published, albeit in only
ten copies, in 1883, and by the time he died in 1893, he had
written an important defense of homosexual love in modern
society, had instigated and contributed to the first sexological
study of the subject, had discovered and publicized the
suppression of the facts of Michelangelo's homosexuality (and was
the first person to translate his sonnets into English), had
popularized the works of numerous homosexual writers, especially
Walt Whitman, and had helped to organize a network of gay writers
and intellectuals who quietly worked behind the scenes to educate
society and to reform the laws against homosexuality in England.
In the 1960s the triumvirate of Walt Whitman, John Addington
Symonds, and Edward Carpenter was a major inspiration to the
intelligentsia of the Gay Liberation Movement in America and
Britain, Whitman providing the fervour of comradeship, Carpenter
providing the political idealism, and Symonds providing an
awareness of gay history and the realization that gay culture was
part of the mainstream of life. The central tenet of all three
men was the celebration of the true self which became the
foundation upon which gay pride developed. Symonds's enthusiastic
love of men was the absorbing preoccupation of his life, to the
extent that Swinburne was prompted to nickname him Soddington
Symonds.
The following anthology contains a representative selection of
five areas of Symonds's writings: his polemical studies of
homosexuality, which comprise his most important contribution to
modern ideas; his writings on the history of art, which
established his reputation among his contemporaries; his poetry,
which he personally valued most highly; his translations, which
establish his literary reputation most firmly; and his
autobiographical writings and letters which underline his
fundamental beliefs and motivations.
- Introduction
-
The Life of John
Addington Symonds
- Polemics
-
A Problem in Greek
Ethics 1873 & 1883
A Problem in Modern
Ethics 1891
- Criticism
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Renaissance Painting
1873
Correggio
1874
Politian
1885
The Model
1887
Ideals of Love
1890
Michelangelo
1892
Whitman's Democratic
Art 1893
- Translations
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Sappho: To a
Maiden 1885
Sappho: Hymn
to Aphrodite 1893
Poliziano: Song
of Orpheus 1879
Bion: Lament for
Adonis 1890
Benvenuto Cellini
1888
- Poetry
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Clifton and a
Lad's Love 1862
Eudiades
1868
What Might Have
Been 1878
From Friend To
Friend 1880
The Passing
Stranger 1880
L'amour de
l'impossible 1882
Stella Maris
1884
A Portrait
1884
The Sleeper
c. 1878
- Autobiography
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Davos in Winter
1878
Swiss Athletic Sports
1891
Case XVIII c.
1897
Memoirs c.
1897
Letters
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Bibliography
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