John Addington Symonds

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John Addington Symonds
John Addington Symonds, picture for Walt Whitman , dated 1889

John Addington Symonds (born October 5, 1840 in Bristol , † April 19, 1893 in Rome ) was an English author, teacher, literary critic and art historian, known for work on the Renaissance . Symonds was an early advocate of homosexual love and advocated equal sex relationships ("l'amour de l'impossible").

Life

Symonds' father was John Addington Symonds (1807-1871), the author of Criminal Responsibility (1869), The Principles of Beauty (1857) and Sleep and Dreams (2nd edition 1857). After graduating from Harrow School , he studied at the University of Oxford . He won first prize in the university's Mods competition in 1860 . In the same year, Symonds received the Newdigate Prize for the poem The Escorial . In 1862 he got a 1 in Literae Humaniores and in 1863 he won the Chancellor's English Essay . The previous year he had already been elected a Fellow of the conservative Magdalen College . There Symonds made friends with C. G. H. Shorting, a student he also taught. However, when Symonds refused to campaign for Shorting's admission to Magdalen College, his student wrote a letter to the college administration claiming that Symonds had "assisted him in courting Goolden," sharing the "inclinations" of the college Student and go "on the same crooked path". Although Symonds was acquitted of any misstep, the argument proved so stressful for him that he fell ill and traveled to Switzerland .

Symond's tomb in Rome

After his return from Switzerland, Symonds married Janet Catherine North, the younger sister of the painter Marianne North, on November 10, 1864 in Hastings . He had met Catherine in Switzerland and got engaged to her in the mountains. After his wedding he lived with her in London . Symonds proposed law to study, but his health did not allow him and forced him to other treatment programs. So he returned to Clifton, where he lectured, both in college and in women's schools. The results of this work are the Introduction to the Study of Dante (1872) and the Studies of the Greek Poets (1873–1876). In 1868 in Clifton he met Norman Moor, a schoolboy who wanted to go to Oxford and became his pupil. The two fell in love. Symonds had a pederastic relationship with the student that lasted four years. He traveled with him to Italy and Switzerland. During this time Symonds wrote poems, which he published in his work New and Old: A Volume of Verse in 1880 .

In the meantime, Symonds was working on his major work, Renaissance in Italy , which appeared in seven editions between 1875 and 1886. The Renaissance became a major theme in Symonds' work. During his writing work he fell seriously ill. Since Davos-Platz in Switzerland was good for his health, he decided to live there. The painting Our Life in the Swiss Highlands from 1891 shows his life there. Symonds became a citizen of the city and made new friends. Most of his books were written in Davos : biographies of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1878), Philip Sidney (1886), Ben Jonson (1886) and Michelangelo (1893), various editions of poems and essays and a translation of the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1887 ). It was in Davos that Symonds completed his studies of the Renaissance, for which he is known. His interest in Italy was his passion, and during those years he stayed in the autumn at the house of his friend Horatio F. Brown on the Zattere in Venice . Symonds died in Rome and was buried near Shelley.

After Symonds' death

Symonds had left his papers, documents and autobiographical notes to the author Brown, who wrote an extensive biography of Symonds in 1895. Havelock Ellis printed two texts by Symonds in Sexual Inversion , which first appeared in the German translation by Hans Kurella in 1896 . Edmund Gosse published the autobiography after removing homoerotic content. In 1926, when Gosse came into possession of the Symonds documents, he destroyed them with the exception of the memoirs. Two of his works, the essay volume In the Key of Blue and a monograph on Walt Whitman , were published in the year Symonds died.

Robert Louis Stevenson described Symonds in his work opal stone of talks and talkers as

"The best of talkers, singing the praises of the earth and the arts, flowers and jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading manner, as to the light guitar."

Homosexuality in the works of Symonds

Due to the social taboos of the Victorian era in England, Symonds was not allowed to speak openly about his sexual orientation . In his literary works, however, it was possible for him to write about homosexuality . For example, in The Meeting of David and Jonathan (1878), Symonds writes when Jonathan meets David:

“In his arms of strength / [and] in that kiss / Soul into soul was knit and bliss to bliss”.

At the end of Symonds' life, sexual orientation was well known in Victorian literary and cultural circles. Symonds wrote one of the first essays in England in defense of homosexuality: A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883), followed by an essay A Problem in Modern Ethics (1891), which made proposals to remove the criminality of homosexuality.

Symonds' essays were read underground by many homosexual authors at the time and continued to be secretly published. Some of his personal works and letters were published in the late 20th century and are of great interest to historians delving into the sexual culture of Victorian England and individual fates. The letters from 1889 to 1893 are of particular interest.

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Symonds' daughter Madge Vaughn was at times a lover of author Virginia Woolf . Another daughter, Charlotte Symonds, married Walter Leaf .

The author Henry James took some details from Symond's life, particularly his relationship with his wife, as the starting point for his short story The Author of Beltraffio (1884).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Memoirs of Symonds, p. 131.
  2. ^ Howard J. Booth: Same-Sex Desire, Ethics and Double-Mindedness: the Correspondence of Henry Graham Dakyns, Henry Sidgwick and John Addington Symonds . In: Journal of European Studies , June 1, 2002.
  3. ↑ cf. rictornorton.co.uk
  4. ↑ See dictionaryofarthistorians.org
  5. ↑ Oliver S. Buckton: Secret Selves: Confession and Same-Sex Desire . In: Victorian Autobiography , p. 95.
  6. ↑ cf. rictornorton.co.uk
personal data
SURNAME Symonds, John Addington
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English author, teacher, literary critic and art historian
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH at Bristol
DATE OF DEATH April 19, 1893
Place of death Rome