The large garden is connected to the villa by steps leading to an Ionic portico. Its style is described by some as "Liberty" but is not Liberty or Art Nouveau in the French manner but may perhaps be described as "Neoclassical decadent". His house, initially called Gloriette, was eventually christened Villa Lysis (later sometimes referred to as Villa Fersen) in reference to Plato's Socratic dialogue Lysis discussing friendship (or, according to modern notions, homosexual love). He bought land at the top of a hill in the northeast of the island, close to where the Roman emperor Tiberius had built his Villa Jovis two millennia earlier. Benson, Alfred Bruce Douglas, Robert Baldwin Ross, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Ada Negri, Friedrich Krupp, Norman Douglas, and Compton and Faith Mackenzie and attracted many others during Adelsward's stay. The island had already attracted other homosexual or bisexual visitors, such as Christian Wilhelm Allers, Somerset Maugham, E. His house, Villa Fersen, remains one of Capri's tourist attractions.Īfter his marriage plans were foiled, d'Adelswärd-Fersen remembered the island of Capri from his youth, and decided to build a house there. He became a "character" on the island in the inter-war years, featuring in novels by Compton MacKenzie and others. In 1903 a scandal involving school pupils made him persona non grata in the salons of Paris, and dashed his marriage plans after which he took up residence in Capri with his long-time lover, Nino Cesarini. His life forms the basis of a fictionalised biography by Roger Peyrefitte, L'Exilé de Capri. This edition is limited to 500 copies, bound in black silk with a tipped-in color image on the cover.īaron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen (20 February 1880 – 5 November 1923) was a French novelist and poet. (For allegedly holding Black Masses at his residence in Paris, Fersen was charged with indecent behavior with minors, served a six-month prison sentence, was fined 50 francs and lost his civil rights for five years.) The work is an audacious mix of fact and fiction, including four characters that are alter egos of Fersen himself. The public outcry about his supposed Black Masses is also caricatured. The hero, Lord Lyllian, departs on a wild odyssey of sexual debauchery, is seduced by a character that seems awfully similar to Oscar Wilde, falls in love with girls and boys, and is finally killed by a boy. It is filled with outrageous descriptions of fin de siècle excesses, including Fersen’s own addiction to opium and adolescent boys. Published originally in 1905, this is perhaps his most important work, satirizing the scandal around himself in Paris, with touches of the Oscar Wilde affair thrown in for good measure. This is the first English translation of the eccentric Baron Fersen’s decadent gay novel Lord Lillian.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |