A Strange Love: A Novel of Abnormal Passion

By George Eekhoud

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Olympia Press
• Release date: Nov 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781608727247

Book preview

Love

George Eekhoud

     This page copyright © 2007 Olympia Press.

      http://www.olympiapress.com

INTRODUCTION

FIRST PART: THE RETURN OF THE COUNT

SECOND PART: THE SACRIFICES OF BLANDINE

THIRD PART: THE FAIR OF ST. OLFGAR

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     A Strange Love

     A Novel Of Abnormal Passion

     From The French Of

     George Eekhoud

INTRODUCTION

     George Eekhoud, the author of this novel, is one of the best known classical writers of modern Belgium. This is saying a great deal; for Belgium was never able to point to such a splendid galaxy of nearly perfect scribesmen as at the present time. By classical I mean writers whose names are pretty sure to go down with honor and acclamation to posterity; writers like Maurice Maeterlinck, Camille Lemonnier, Emile Verhaeren, Edmond Picard and Albert Giraud, to say nothing of many others, more or less well known, victorious toilers in the arduous paths of chastened expression, tireless sowers in the fields of thought.

     The intellectual peer of the famous men whose names we have just mentioned, George Eekhoud well deserves the celebrity he has won. He is the author of numerous works that are justly honored by the cultivated and the discerning in all French-speaking lands, for the simple and perfectly comprehensible reason that they are works of art, wrought with infinite patience and chiselled with admirable dexterity. That is equivalent to asserting that George Eekhoud is no penny-a-liner throwing off, with feverish haste, a conglomeration of ill-digested conceptions couched in rag-and-bobtail terms. On the contrary, his com-positions bear traces of exquisite artistry; every line he has written gives evidence of painstaking care; his books are the outcome of sleepless nights and toil-filled days. They abound with patient wisdom and a large experience of human life, human sorrows, and human failings, all of this being permeated with a sentiment of the infinite pathos of death and a profound commiseration therewith.

     We shall make no attempt in this preface to give an outline of the dolorous tale before us. Why should we do so? He who is too lazy to read the whole dramatic story for himself will also be too lazy to glance at anything we may write down. "Why seek to refine fine gold? Be it enough to shadow forth the saintly character of Blandine, the familiar rascality of Landrillon, the pusillanimous nature, mens foemina in corpore virile, of the Count of Kehlmark, prenatally damned to the possession of a fatalistic hankering after unnatural loves to the exclusion of the enjoyment of those beautiful creatures that Nature has destined for the lawful delectation of men.

     Why speak of that admirable character, the Dowager of Kehlmark, high-born lady and fearless disciple of Voltaire, dying in the saintly odor of her good deeds? Why name the sacrifices of Blandine, beautiful name covering a more beautiful soul, save to emphasize the martydom she endured? Blandine, true type of thousands of other brave girls and women living today in this strange God's world; Blandine, the loving heroine, who made a living sacrifice of her woman's body to save a man's name from shame.

     Ah! These things recall other memories, stir up other souvenirs, mind us of the besmirchment of a great name, when a brilliant light, that shone like a star in England's literary constellation, was hurled headlong down from his ethereal estate.

     "With hideous ruin and combustion

          Confounded though immortal."

     This is no place, we know, to offer a plea for the hapless author of Dorian Gray, nor for his literary congener, Henry of Kehlmark. On the other hand, let us refrain from throwing stones at them. We even beg leave to suggest that Wilde was too severely, because far too publicly, chastised for what he may have done, for what at the worst was no more than a private misdemeanor. We consider that far more harm than needful was wrought by the publicity given to these unwholesome pranks with grown-up wastrels in private rooms, these naughty fellows of a baser sort as St. Paul would have called them.

     Would it not have been better first mercifully to warn, aye, and if needs were, to have hurried them off, willy-nilly,—struggling and kicking it might be, —to some private asylum to be treated hydropathically, as was done by the French authorities in the case of a certain well-known Parisian litterateur caught flagrante delicto in a Boulevard vespasienne? The interests of Justice would have been amply served, had prevention alone, and not vengeance, been the object to be attained.

     Moreover, we are of those who believe that whilst there should be one law for the rich and for the poor alike, there should still be a further law for the neurotic, the brain sick, the mind shattered, the functionally deranged. To apply the same heavy whip to a sensitive, highly-strung Derby runner, as to a coarser grained, slow-going dray horse were amazing lack of gumption. But we treat our favorite dogs and horses better than our gifted man.

     He has sinned, has he? Then, by Christ he shall pay for it! He has been found out, has he? Then, by the God that lives, we'll proclaim his sins to the earth's four winds, blazon the nauseous thing in the newspapers, incarnadine the story of his shame on the fair skies themselves with the very blood wrung from the wretched man's soul. Hypocrites, whited sepulchres, pharisees, avaunt! Were your own secret misdeeds inscribed upon your every smooth forehead what edifying ornaments ye would all prove!

     A Strange Love, like many another virile book, was prosecuted at law. What an honor! One day (the novel had been out some time and was indeed practically unknown), some self-elected smut-hound was inspired to seize it, in some inconsiderable bookseller's shop hidden away in the gentle, little town of Bruges. The book had been published in Paris and was merely by hazard, on sale in this quiet, old-world city. The seizure was doubtless due to some private vengeance. Or, did the Prosecution imagine that a hostile verdict could be more easily cajoled out of a jury in this clerical stronghold of Western Flanders than elsewhere?

     The trial came on. The name of the Judge on the bench, the prosecuting Attorney at the bar, or of the twelve good Jurymen in the box, is not of the slightest consequence. The fighter of the day,—the great henchman, who, standing athwart the breach made by legal might in the rampart of thought, hewed down time-honored lies and miserable contortions of truth, as one after another they presented their rat-like heads to the valiant blade of his memorable oratory, pitiless logic and scathing scorn,—was the Flemisher, Edmond Picard, one of the most extraordinary figures in Belgium during the last century, advocate, juris-consult, traveller, dramatist, poet, swordsman, athlete, aye and—finer than a hundred other titles besides,—a man!

     The case of A Strange Love was fought to a finish. After hearing all the witnesses, listening to expert medical evidence on the subject of abnormality, and the impassioned orations, for and against, the Jury came unanimously to their decision. George Eekhoud was acquitted!

     This is no place to trace the story of the ebbing fortunes of that day's fight. Suffice to say that the enemies of George Eekhoud were routed—that the accused, whom it was sought to crush, emerged triumphant from the shock of arms more glorious than ever, looking, we opine, pretty much like Saint George after he had slain the Dragon, with this slight difference that Eekhoud's dragon was probably far more real than the mythological animal that fell beneath the strokes of England's patron Saint.

     A Strange Love is a romantic study, tragic and sombre enough, of a case of abnormal passion. Jouma Humantius in Germany, Krafft Ebing in Austria, Havelock Ellis in England, Lombroso in Italy, and Tarnowski in Russia, have sufficiently analysed all the grave problems resulting from this idiosyncrasy. It is not for us to discuss the subject here. The world's literature is crowded with examples of this passionate friendship between youths and men... such as existed between Alcibiades and Socrates, between Shakespeare and Lord Pembroke, between Michael Angelo and Cavalieri. Should Balzac be condemned because he describes the shameful love of Vautrin for Lucien de Rubempre? Or because, in his Fille aux Yeux d'Or, he has laid bare the heart of women who love each other? Horace, he of Rome, sang in flaming verse the praises of his young slave; Virgil chants the feeling of the shepherd Corydon for the handsome Alexis; Plutarch paints the heroic prowess of the Theban legion.

     Are all these famous authors to be regarded as Artists, faithful photographers of the scenes depicted, or as Apostles, seeking to propagate the practices of their characters? Must their works be therefore destroyed and themselves for ever held in reprobation, the mock of little men without a hundredth part of their lordly genius?

     Because Moliere described Harpagon, was he himself a miser? Because Cervantes portrayed mad Don Quixote, is he himself to be considered mad? Because the Bard of Avon created Othello, was he a jealous maniac? Or, for the sake of Falstaff, a merry Andrew? Or, because of the witches in Macbeth, a benighted sorcerer?

     The questions are absurd, we know: but Eekhoud was accused of preaching pederasty—(although the story is one of passional affection and is nowise physiological, i.e. uranism, a vastly different thing)— because of A Strange Love. His enemies, it is true, were unable to produce passages from the book in support of their thesis, but the saying stands: Throw mud and some of it is sure to stick.

     It so chanced that none stuck—that the mud, in defiance of all known laws of physical science, recoiled on the throwers. The enemy wrested, of course, from their proper and natural place in the book, every picturesque expression, the hardiest details, the most scabrous scenes for the dissecting table of the Courtroom and these things being deemed insufficient, they scrutinized the writer's intentions, tried to surprise the underlying thought, pursuing the idea behind its last entrenchments, across the folds of the author's brain, naively surmising what the heroes might have been doing when they were not on the stage!

     Ye Gods! They would have a Star-Chamber over again! Men came forward to say Eekhoud, the author of La Trouvelle Carthage, Mes Communions, Le Cycle Patibulaire, and half a score others, wherein may be read, ringing and vibrating, prose poems of pagan love, pages of tumultuous sorrow, pages consolatory of all pains, sounding depths of profoundest passion, confessing men of all creeds, out-soaring all faiths, eclipsing all religions and shibboleths, could not be the monster represented.

     Men of genius themselves, like Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Theo. Hannon, Sander-Perron, Julius Hoste, Octave Maus, Albert Giraud, Valere Gille, some of them Catholics like Iwan Gilkin, the author of Promethee, George Vines, Du Catillon! The elite of Flanders and Wallonie!

     Great penmen sent forth word from the neighboring land of France that they held Eekhoud and all his works in the highest esteem—Jose de Heredia, Maw rice Barres, Anatole France, Emile Zola, Edmond Haraucourt, Catulle Mendes, and a host more, attested that this fox-terrier like worrying of a classic, such as A Strange Love, was odious to their souls; that a work of art could not, and should not, bejudged save by a jury of competent literary men.

     Finally, George Eekhoud was acquitted. He left the Court without a stain upon his character. A Strange Love was exculpated from the accusation of intentional pornography and its gifted author came little short of apotheosis on the spot.

     Thus it ever is and must be!

     Eekhoud counts now among the great writers not of Belgium alone, but of the wide world.

     Like the river that flows irresistibly forward to the sea, like the light that breaks out of the darkness, so the man foreordained must come at last into his own. That day, in the Court-house, the lamps alight— for the sun had withdrawn its rays—ashamed maybe longer to illumine such a scene—

     "The heathen did mightily rage,

     And the people imagined a vain thing;

     The kings of the earth set themselves

     And the rulers took counsel together."

     But their wiles and ruses and arguments and serried strength

     "Were dashed in pieces

     Broken like a potter's vessel."

     Gauntlet.

FIRST PART: THE RETURN OF THE COUNT

     I.

     On the first of June, Henry de Kehlmark, the young Dykgrave or Count of the Dike, the lord of the castle Escal-Vigor, entertained a numerous company, as a sort of Joyous Entry, to celebrate his homecoming to the cradle of his forefathers, at Smaragdis. It was the largest and richest island in one of those enchanting and heroic northern seas, the coasts of which the bays and fiords hollow out and cut up capriciously into multiform archipelagoes and deltas.

     Smaragdis, or the Emerald Isle, was a dependency of the half-German, half-Celtic kingdom of Kerlingalande. At the very beginning of commercial enterprise in the west, a colony of Hanseatic merchants settled there. The Kehlmarks claimed descent from the Danish sea-kings, or Vikings. Bankers, who had in them a dash of pirates-blood, men both of knowledge and action, they followed Frederick Barbarossa in his Italian expeditions, and distinguished themselves by an inalterable devotion, the fidelity of thane to king, to the House of Hohenstaufen. A Kehlmark had even been the favorite of Frederick II., the Sultan of Luceria, that voluptuous emperor, the most artistic of the romantic house of Swabia, who, in that brilliant southern land, lived a life energised by the virile aspirations of the north.

     At the date of our story, a large panel in the billiard room of Escal-Vigor still represented Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, in the act of embracing Frederick of Baden before mounting with him on to the scaffold.

     An historic and even legendary abode, suggesting at once a German castle and an Italian palace, the castle of Escal-Vigor is situated at the western extremity of the island, at the intersection of two very lofty dikes, whence it commands a view of the whole country.

     From time immemorial the Kehlmarks had been considered as the masters and protectors of Smaragdis. The duty of guarding and keeping in repair the monumental dikes had been theirs for centuries. An ancestor of Henry was credited with the erection of those enormous ramparts, which had for ever pre served the country from those inundations and sometimes total submersions, that had overwhelmed several of the sister isles.

     Once only, about the year 1400, on a wild, tempestuous night, the sea had succeeded in breaking through a part of this chain of artificial hills, and had rolled its cataclysmal waves to the very heart of the island; when, so the tradition runs, the castle of Escal-Vigor proved sufficiently spacious and well-provisioned to serve as refuge and storehouse for the entire population.

     The Count sheltered his people as long as the waters covered the country, and when the flood had abated he not