Voltaire | Peter Gay | The New York Review of Books

Contents:

• WERE VOLTAIRE AND KG FRERICK THE GREAT, A SECRET UPLE? WERE THEY GAY?
• RIMBD AND VERLAE: FRANCE AGONIS OVER DIGGG UP GAY POETS

WERE VOLTAIRE AND KG FRERICK THE GREAT, A SECRET UPLE? WERE THEY GAY?

The three words, on page 545, were: “Villette, urbane homosexual. What he had not always done, however, was to live at the hoe of a known “urbane homosexual.

Still, his treatment of the “anti-physique” theme is everywhere his works, such as an article tled “Amour nommé Socratique” his Philosophil Dictnary; the scen Candi which Cunegon’s brother—an aristocrat, a prit, and a homosexual, that orr—appears. There is no unrlyg cricism, no judgment about the baron of Thunr-ten-Tronckh’s homosexualy.

RIMBD AND VERLAE: FRANCE AGONIS OVER DIGGG UP GAY POETS

” One n surmise why homosexuals were not targets of Voltaire’s reproach: they played no role curtailg the rights of others society or nyg the opprsed the possibily of bread and happs. Two of Voltaire’s bt iends were gay, and I have my spicns about a third, the Marquis d’Argenson, the creator of the Arsenal Library.

Wh his tramark tolerance and humany, Voltaire accepted his gay iends wh aplomb, created gay characters who were villao for other reasons, and lived his fal days sucred, and loved, by timate iends who were “anti-physiqu. [1] Bentham argued for full crimalizatn of homosexual acts on the basis of mon sense, as the ntemporary law was ‘as if a man ma no distctn between ncubage and rape’. A good example is Anton Vignali’s La Cazzaria, sometim anachronistilly referred to as ‘the first gay novel’.