Jacques d' ADELSWÄRD-FERSEN & Laurent TAILHADE & Emile VERHAEREN & Renée VIVIEN & COLETTE & Jean MOREAS & Henri BARBUSSE & Arthur SYMONS & Paterne BERRICHON & Jules BOIS & Tristan DEREME & Léon DEUBEL & André du FRESNOIS & René GHIL & Tristan KLINGSOR & Ernest LA JEUNESSE & LEGRAND-CHABRIER & Louis MANDIN & Filippo Tommaso MARINETTI & Francis de MIOMANDRE & John-Antoine NAU & Maurice de NOISAY & Julien OCHSE & Edmond PILON & Ernest RAYNAUD & André SALMON & Valentine de SAINT-POINT & Robert SCHEFFER & Tancrède de VISAN
Maxwell ARMFIELD & Henri Saulnier CIOLKOWSKI & Léonard SARLUIS & Bernardino LUINI & Giovanni Antonio BAZZI & Gustave MOREAU & Léonard de VINCI & RAPHAEL & José de RIBERA & Francisco de GOYA & Pierre Paul RUBENS & LE CORREGE
Akademos, Revue mensuelle d'art libre et de critique Collection complète des douze numéros en tirage de tête
Albert Messein, Paris 15 janvier 1909-15 décembre 1909, 22x25cm, 12 livraisons reliées en quatre volumes.
“Akademos will remain an ephemeral nonetheless high-quality creation, a groundbreaking gesture that will be an important milestone both in the history of the homosexual movement and the beginning of the 20th century”
Rare complete first edition one of the rare deluxe copies on papier japon with colored illustrations in four states of this luxurious literary and artistic journal. Founded by sybarite Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, with twelve monthly issues published in the year 1909.
Our copy includes the four states of each 23 engravings mixing different artistic movements: Arts & Crafts, Symbolism, Renaissance, Art Nouveau and Antique, after M. Armfield, H.S. Ciolkowski, L. Sarluis, B. Luini, G. A. Bazzi, G. Moreau, Raphaël, L. da Vinci, Pollaiolo, Il Correggio, P. de la Francesca, Rubens, J. de Ribera, F. Goya, M. Rodo, Cardet, as well as statues and stelae from Naples and Athens museums.
Elegant cover design by George Auriol, master of Art Nouveau typography.Half beige cloth, brown morocco title-pieces, marbled paper boards, original spine and wrappers preserved for each issue, a fine uncut copy.
Texts by L. Tailhade, É. Verhaeren, R. Vivien, Colette, J. Péladan, J. Moréas, H. Barbusse, A. Symons, J. d'Adelswärd-Fersen, J. Antoine-Orliac, P. Berrichon, J. Bois, J. Bouscatel, T. Derème, L. Deubel, A. du Fresnois, M. Gaucher, R. Ghil, H. Guilbeaux, J.-C. Holl, T. Klingsor, E. La Jeunesse, G. de Lautrec, A. Léger, Legrand-Chabrier, L. Mandin, F.T. Marinetti, F. de Miomandre, J.-A. Nau, M. de Noisay, J. Ochsé, E. Pilon, E. Raynaud, A. Salmon, V. de Saint-Point, R. Scheffer, T. de Visan...
Handsome and extremely rare copy of the first French homosexual journal.
It was not until 1869 that the term “homosexual” appeared, in epistolary exchanges between German journalists and lawyers Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Karl-Maria Kertbeny. Their writings document the first attempts to describe physical attraction to the same sex, not condemning the act, rather in the hopes of gaining social acceptance for another form of sexuality.
Although homosexual relations remain a constitutive element of human societies since the very beginning, they were viewed under the single perspective of carnal relations for a long time. Stigmatized, the “inverted” sexual act is in turn codified, tolerated or severely condemned throughout ages and cultures yet never interpreted under the angle of exclusive attraction. France was the first country to decriminalize homosexuality in removing the “crime of sodomy” from the
Code pénal in 1791, but it was not until the second half of the 19th century that emerged an awareness of a true homosexual identity as described by Michel Foucault in his
Histoire de la sexualité:
“The 19th homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, […]. Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him […] It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature. We must not forget that the psychological, psychiatric, medical category of homosexuality was constituted from the moment it was characterized […] less by a type of sexual relations than by a certain quality of sexual sensibility, a certain way of inverting the masculine and the feminine in oneself. Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species”.
Within this context, Balzac created characters fully embracing their “other” sexuality, notably Zambinella, Seraphita and especially Vautrin, considered as the first homosexual in French literature. In the meantime, Baudelaire who initially wanted to title his
Flowers of Evil “Lesbians” was condemned for his poems “Lesbos” and “Women Doomed” celebrating lesbian love.
By coming out of marginality and obtaining a form of recognition, members of the gay community found themselves confronted with critical looks and caricatured stigmatizations.
Some writers such as Georges Eekhoud or Renée Vivien proclaimed their homosexuality in their literature. Others like Oscar Wilde lived it freely but only discreetly allowed their orientation to show in their literary work. Many continued to conceal their true inclinations to ensure their reputation and literary recognition. Among them, Proust and Montesquiou became the target of the fierce and murderous writing of Jean Lorrain, a self-proclaimed “en-philanthrope” [naughty pun]. Lorrain wrote a rather tasteless play on words to Montesquiou in a press article upon the death of his lover, Gabriel Yturri: “Mort Yturi te Salut, tante” (
morituri te salutant 'those who are about to die salute you', using the slur 'tante' for homosexual). Similar – and true – insinuations about Lucien Daudet resulted in a famous duel between Lorrain and Proust.
D'Adelswärd-Fersen, born in 1880, grew up amid this moral revolution and experienced terrible inner conflicts between personal desire and institutional morality, social representation, and intimate freedom. Although France represented a space of freedom much more than its neighbors, society's judgment remained deeply heteronormative.
The famous paragraph 175 of the new 1871 German penal code condemning “sexual acts against nature” throughout the Empire, or Wilde's condemnation to forced labor in 1895 gradually raised the indignation of declared homosexuals and the silent concern of the others. The literary world was not spared. In 1900, G. Eekhoud was prosecuted for
Escal-Vigor, first novel openly and positively addressing male homosexual love. In 1902 F.A. Krupp committed suicide following the scandal of alleged “sexual orgies” in Capri. The following year, d'Adelswärd-Fersen who had just come of age was accused of practicing “black masses” with young adolescents, rallying prominent members of the aristocracy.
From medieval witch hunts to modern conspiracy theories, accusations of satanic rites remain a classical theme in the constructs of societies confronted with different expressions of “otherness”.Fersen had in fact offered his judges a literary model for their accusation. It is indeed his 1902 novel
L'Hymnaire d'Adonis à la façon de M. le marquis de Sade which first attracted the attention of the Prosecutor's Office. Fersen was only sentenced to six months in prison, on counts probably judged much more severely nowadays: he was condemned for the public and literary expression of his sexuality a lot more than for his odious erotic scenes of teenagers dressed in Antiquity-inspired clothing.
Deeply affected by media outburst and violent rejection of homosexuality, Fersen published in 1905 a novel:
Messes noires,
Lord Lyllian, autobiographical “roman à clefs” featuring prominent late 19th-century homosexuals: Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, John Gray, Lorrain, Peladan, Essebac, Montesquiou, Krupp and Fersen himself.
The intention of the 25-year-old poet was not only artistic, but also political. D'Adelswärd-Fersen thus became one of the precursors of the fight for recognition and acceptance of homosexuality in modern society. The
Akademos project was born. Although ostensibly inspired by Adolf Brand's German magazine
Der Eigene, Fersen was much more ambitious and wished with his magazine to bring about a change in mentalities. He was thereford interested in more politically active figures such as German scientist Magnus Hirschfeld, who created in 1897 the Wissenschaftlich Humanitäre Komitee, first organization defending the rights of homosexuals.
At the end of 1907, Fersen wrote to Georges Eekhoud from the Villa Lysis in Capri:
“The very kind permission you have given me to write to Hirschfeld under your aegis will be put to good use. After my visits to Germany I only knew Brand and his
Eigene. On the other hand, I was waiting, in order to correspond with the German leaders of the party, for the realization of a project of mine, which I would like to entrust to you:
I wish, having moreover as a sufficient title only the pride of our ideas and an unspeakable ardor to know them less misunderstood, to found in Paris next February, a review of art, philosophy, literature, in which little by little, not to make a scandal in advance, one rehabilitates
l'Autre Amour [the other Love]. I hope, dear Mr. Eekhoud, that you will honor us, one day, with your company and with this talent, universal today, placing you among the apostles of the 'movement'. In any case, I thank you for the sympathy so delicately expressed, for the hopes that we share, for the happiness described, that both of us have savored from the sidelines”.
Although Der Eigene published from 1896 is the first European homosexual magazine and inspiration of Akademos, it did not pursue the same goals, and was designed on a different artistic and political model. Presented as a source of documentation on nudism and art history, the magazine of the activist Adolf Brand did not advocate for a social upheaval and rather focused on historically reinterpreting male/female relations. Promoting a “new Hellenism”, it relied on ancient Greek pederasty to rally a community around a spirit of “virilism”. Throughout articles and visuals it attempted to establish the aesthetic and erotic superiority of the male body in art history and moral constructs.
“Didier Eribon underlines how Brand's masculinist ideas are based on a universalistic conception of sexuality [...] but also on a misogynistic vision that is not very inclined to social change. The study of homosexual masculinism also refers to the construction of an image of the man thought as a tool of social domination towards the minorities of gender, class and race [...] the male domination is translated [...] by the exaltation of the moral and physical virtues of the man-machine. Paradoxically, the first homosexual journal adopts the codes of an emergent ideology.”
In 1903, “Brand left Hirschfeld's WhK organization and founded the Community of Specials ('Gemeinschaft der Eigenen', GdE). Inspired by the context of
Lebensreform, he exalted adolescent virility and self-control in nature. He organized collective camps, walks and nudist sessions, similar to practices of the
Wandervogel, leagues of teenagers that would feed the ranks of the Hitler Youth at the end of the 1920s.” (Damien Delille, “Homoeroticism and visual culture in the magazines
Der Eigene and
Akademos”)
Akademos proceeds from a completely different approach. Fersen's philosophy was less about exalting Antique virility than exploring a literary vision of homosexuality inherited from decadent Symbolism. The editorial line of the Revue is perfectly expressed in a new letter to Eekhoud:
“Villa Lysis, 4 août 1908. Cher Monsieur Eekhoud, Last December or January, I believe, we talked about a project for a magazine that friends and I wanted to create with the help of publisher Messein. It was a matter – without giving the publication a bias, a label, an appearance of confrontation- of attempting to bring attention to the question of passionate freedom – different sensual theories.
In a few words, it was a matter of defending l'Autre Amour [The Other Love]
, through the memory of past times, through the hopes of present times. Akademos is now decided. A monthly magazine (which we hope to publish every two weeks), including a novel in each issue (to be continued in the following issues), two or three short stories, two poems, two pages of music, a letter from Paris, book reviews, theater reviews, an art review [...] and a letter from abroad. From time to time an article on philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence.
Akademos finally, will contain besides the cover, two hors texte, reproduction of an ancient or modern work (sculpture, architecture, painting or landscape)”
Akademos was founded as a humanist magazine and a space of tolerance, through which homosexuals, their sensibility, lifestyles and artistic expression of their difference could contribute to aesthetic and literary modernity.Fersen and his contributors sought historical legitimacy in ancient art as inspiration and aesthetic heritage to the new artistic figure promoted by Akademos: the androgyne.In opposition to sexual polarity in
Eigene, the androgyne is presented as a reconciliation between genders, advocating for sexual non-determination. Beyond representations mixing feminine and masculine, the androgyne acquires in Fersen's magazine a new, political and avant-gardist dimension.
Within the pages of Akademos one finds in Péladan's contributions, the first reflections on gender identity and the beginnings of a non-binary concept.“Love is thus not any more 'a feeling of affection of a sex for the other', but the feeling of affection of the human being for itself, which is commonly manifested, but not essentially, according to sexual polarization. Undoubtedly for the correspondence of the forms, love can be called the attraction of a sex for the other. But what part does the soul have in sexual division? We have seen Elohim, taking a side of Adam, by a vertical section [...] androgynous Adam had thus an androgynous soul and spirit: and the woman would be the animic half and the spiritual half of the man, as she is his physical half? The theologians, in Council, asked themselves this question. In isolating Aïsha from Aisch, did Iohah give her a personal soul, or did he split the soul, as he did the body?
Was this splitting radical, isolating the passive from the active? Or has the soul retained its androgyny? In this case the spirit alone would attest to the inner sex.” (J. Péladan, “Amorous theory of the androgynous. Of love”,
Akademos, # 6, June 1909)
As Brand advocated the war of the sexes, Fersen celebrated their consubstantiality. Refusing any conflict or division, he opens his magazine to lesbian writers from its very first issue. Colette, Vivien, Annie de Pene but also to writers of all sensibilities. Various authors, including Gorki, Salmon, Marinetti, J.-H. Rosny Aîné, Symons, Barbusse and Tolstoï were featured alongside writers explicitly committed to the homosexual cause. As Damien Delille writes: “Certainly Fersen addresses the members of
l'Autre Amour and conceives
Akademos as a place of rallying, even of resistance, but he does not want to confine them to marginality and aims in a utopian way to create an academy without exclusions, attracting a much wider readership in order to de-demonize, if not to trivialize, homosexuality.”
The magazine's iconography plays a fundamental role here. Freed from any illustrative purpose, it developed its own identity and defined new codes of homoeroticism creating images that “feed the creation of a homosexual subculture, able to support the exchange of sensibilities and to imagine alternatives to social norms of gender”.The careful creation of these full-page engravings on special paper
printed in four states for deluxe copies, testifies to the particular attention Fersen paid to this other expression of gay sensibility.
Future icons of gay culture are thus presented for the first time in a homoerotic perspective, such as the Antinous Farnese sculpture, Ribera's Saint Sebastian or Raphael's Young Violinist.In modern works of art, new homosexual imagery really takes shape: the broken wrist and dandy costumes in Moyano's caricature, gestures of Leonardo Sarluis's fascinating androgynous
Inquiétude whose original artwork has been lost, Armfield's
Iacchos, and especially compositions of Ciolkowski, whose “style or brush tapered to the fingers – the silks were surely torn from the wig of an irreproachable Asian doll – attacks, O conscientious one, the white tablet.” (A. Thévenin, “An adept of black and white: Ciolkowski”,
Akademos, # 9). At the same time in direct reaction to Fersen's Magazine, a violent caricatural imagery of
Akademos takes shape in traditionalist media. Especially in February 1909 appeared a special number of the Journal of the
Assiette au beurre entitled “Les p'tits jeun' hommes” with a caricature of Fersen on the cover: several of the visual stereotypes cementing the emerging rhetoric of homophobia.
However the most significant and moving of these engravings is a simple photograph illustrating the first issue of
Akademos: a portrait of Raymond Laurent, young poet and lover of Oscar Wilde's nephew Langhorn Whistler, who took his own life on September 24, 1908 in Venice. More than a tribute, the photograph of this modern Phoebus is offered as a tutelary figure of the Magazine, a pagan Christ bearing both the hope and the tragedy of the “third sex”:
“But don't make this suicide a crime to literature. Laurent killed himself. The gun was put in his fist by an era where the Maison Tellier [Maupassant famous brothel] is the only permitted expression of the soul. There are ways of 'syvetoning' elite souls: it is through prejudice.” (D'Adelswärd-Fersen, under the pseudonym of Sonyeuse,
Akademos, # 1)
From its first issue, Akademos was welcomed with respect and admiration within the literary world:
Akademos “is a sumptuous review, luxuriously printed in good taste. Fortunately, all beautiful things do not have a short destiny and one must wish prosperity to this new collection” (C.-H. Hirsch in
Mercure de France). Despite Fersen's confidence and will, his magazine only lasted a year, not because of censorship or a campaign of denigration, but because of the very interested parties in this courageous but although too early attempt at a moral revolution:
“Subscriptions are derisively rare, and for the simple reason that it is considered dangerous to subscribe... Instead of helping me, a whole category of not very indulgent and not at all intellectual adonisians turn their backs on me – is it out of habit? a joker would say. [...] there remains the will to continue the task, and the hope to form a party.” (Letter to Eekhoud, May 10 1909)
L'œil inverti. Homoérotisme et culture visuelle dans les revues Der Eigene et Akademos. Par Damien Delille in Images Re-vues
Les deux premières revues homosexuelles de langue française : Akademos (1909) et Inversions/L'Amitié (1924-1925) Par Mirande Lucien in La Revue des revues 2014/1 (N° 51)
Sommaire d'Akademos, sur le blog bibliographique Les Petites Revues
« Réédition d'Akademos : la renaissance d'une revue pionnière », Albert, Nicole G. in La Revue des revues
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