Imported Poems

I'm about to blow the whistle on the English Public School system in my next installation of "Online Literature Gossip: what the literary stars don't want you to know!" featuring Bad Byron and Wily Wilde as I have affectionately nicknamed (Byron was so much more naughty than Wilde: you've no idea)
but first...

Andave, I cannot argue with your suggestions. Aragon and Brohimir (mssp) are defensibly sexy, but I feel I must play raconteur and add a caveat and ancedote about the hyper-masculine Aragon:

My indelibly beautiful beloved - who is my last great love, by choice as well as destiny - having already bitten from *that* apple, suggested that I likewise bite the same, thinking that a cohabitation of sorts (though he'd wish marriage of that particular temptation upon no-one) would be extremely productive, considering we are so likeminded and "talented". I declined because from what my beloved described *that* temptation - both in form and in habitat - was likely to give rise to new and therefore undiscovered diseases, being of such poor hygene as to warrant decontamination.

I also told The Beautiful that he simply wanted a new mommy and daddy who would play with him (yes, "play" is a double-entendre); he denied it, but I have learned anything he denies is most certainly truth, and anything he asserts as truth is most deniably false.

Now,here is the next part of my paper. I'm on page 4 (Yay!)

Though family history and genetics certainly explain the origin of their madness, neither Byron nor Wilde would have developed into their respective cult-of-personalities had not their educational environments provided the fertile experiences necessary for their growth. Born in Dublin, Ireland, Wilde would attend Portora Royal School and then Trinity before departing for the formidable Magdalen College, Oxford while conversely Byron, born in London, would return to his native Scotland where he would attend Aberdeen Grammar School for 10 years, eventually transferring to Harrow before matriculating to Trinity College, Cambridge.

During their early school years, both endured ostracism due to physical limitations - Byron because of his lame leg, Wilde due to his athletic inadequacies - but more than compensated it with their edacious consumption of books. By the age of 19 Byron had read close to four thousand novels, especially Shakespeare, whom he absorbed into himself and re-created within his own personal context. Similarly, Wilde vaunted an inordinate mastery of the written word, telling a friend, “I was looked upon as a prodigy by my associates because, quite frequently, I would, for a wager, read a three-volume novel in half an hour so closely as to be able to give an accurate resume of the plot of the story; by one hour’s reading I was enabled to give a fair narrative of the incidental scenes and the most pertinent dialogue.”

In itself such rapacious digestion of literature is a most noble and sublime endeavor, but within the milieu of an isolated boys school, it proved dangerous by introducing both Byron and Wilde to illegal if not controversial ideas that would eventually cause both to leave England. The traditional educational concentration on the classics ensured early introduction to the ideas of Greek and Roman Pederasty: “The ethos of boy worship at Harrow was encouraged by the classical studies that underpinned the curriculum. Byron and his contemporaries would have been familiar with heroic concepts of Greek love through their reading of Horace, Catullus, Virgil, Petronius…they were attuned to the ideal of the eremenos, beautiful youths such as Ganymede or Hyacinth pursued by the Greek gods.” In classical literature, however, beautiful adolescent boys (customarily between ages 12-18) were not only pursued by gods, but also by the erastes, or older male lover, who as a customary mentor, would inculcate manhood to the youth through education, training and sex. Like Byron, Wilde was introduced at Portora to such texts and eventually became so proficient in their translation, he left his peers behind in the task.

Byron biographer MacCarthy suggests the influence of these texts was not merely constrained to the world of ideas: “The sex life of the English public school has been made mysterious not just by the silence of each new generation of boys, but by retrospective secrecy, protective codes of loyalty, extending beyond school days far into manhood.” Indeed, Byron seemed to have practiced the Greek ideals while at Harrow - perhaps initialized by his seduction at 15 by Lord Grey de Ruthyn - confessing to a friend he had deflowered three peers. While according to Wilde - if, indeed, he is a credible witness of his own experience - his first homosexual experience did not occur until the age of 33 when, oddly enough, he was seduced and conquered by the worldly 17 year old, Robert Ross, the roots of his interest can be traced back to the age of 17 when he studied under notable Greek scholar J.P. Mahaffy, who taught him “how to love Greek things” and who “characterized” Greek homosexuality “as an ideal attachment between a man and a handsome youth”. Wilde would later acknowledge, “The refinement of Greek culture comes through the romantic medium of impassioned friendship; the freedom and gladness of the palaestra.” Wilde was also a student of pederasty promoter Walter Pater who, at the age of 35,was denied a proctorship because of his ongoing affair with a 19 year old undergraduate student.

These perspectives and experiences, thrust upon such tractable young souls, helped produce a narcissistic self-love in Oscar Wilde and a nostalgic longing for boyhood in Byron, who would later idealize his years at Harrow as an ideal time, rife with passionate friendships, which were the natural consequent of Greek ideals in action. As a result, both literary figures entered manhood teeming with contradictory desires, mood dysphoria and an underlying insecurity, which with some self-awareness they used to construct the foundation of their public charismatic personas, ultimately the very creation which enslaved them and led to their disgrace.