Talk:Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen

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This has little to do with the article, but there's a link that includes a short piece on Villa Fersen, including some pix and some news on what became of it after Fersen's death: http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/newpage.html Can be an external link? (added in 2005 by user:PiCo)

Some remarks.

  • The name is 'Adelswärd', not 'Adelsward'.
  • L'exilé de Capri by Peyrefitte is NOT a biography, but a tongue-in-cheek novel about an easy prey. Fersen figures in several novels by other authors (Compton Mackenzie's Vestal Fire for instance), but one should not take these novels as a source for Fersen's life. Same remark about La chandelle verte. You may extract illustrations from caricatures. But if you are interested in a man's true life, caricature can't give you a source.
  • I removed a link to a 'short biography' with simply appallingly faulty names and 'facts'. If you want a good short biography, naturally you should read the Wikipedia biography itself.
  • The link to the Foster article points to an advertisement page for Foster himself. Foster's article in the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (to be found through Google only, and loading very slowly) is not only very short but also tainted with a POV. As a source, the 'Article about the life of d'Adelswärd-Fersen' in the external links section is excellent. One doesn't need Foster's (much older) piece in addition of it.
  • Also, I wouldn't say 'Akademos was d'Adelsward-Fersen's short-lived attempt at publishing a monthly journal promoting pederastic love'. It was in the first place a literary monthly of a very luxurious kind. In each issue, very carefully a homosexual element was introduced: a poem, an article, a hint in the magazine's serial by Boulestin... only an estimated 10 % of Akademos may be counted as homosexual.
  • 'Black Masses' 'which he mockingly called Pink Masses, referring to their homosexual content'. Where is the exact source for this? Just curious.
  • Fersen is stated as a 'minor poet'. I'm sure he wasn't a major one, but what is the definition of a 'minor poet' as opposed to a 'poet'? Calling someone a minor poet, is that a POV?

Soczyczi 01:04, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Not having seen any response to the remarks above, I changed some elements of the text according to them. Also, I removed the mention that Fersen left out his name 'Adelswärd' when living on Capri: his last book, Hei Hsiang, was published in 1921 under his full name d'Adelswärd-Fersen. Also I removed the 'Pink Masses'. I suspect Peyrefitte was the source for this remark, attributed to Fersen; in any case I think it is anachronistic, because pink did not denote homosexuality in 1903. Soczyczi 00:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I know several researchers say Achille Essebac was a pseudonym for 'Achille Bécasse', but where is the proof for that? 'Essebac' is a name that still exists as a surname in France. Bécasse means woodcock, but it's also a synonym for 'stupid'. Soczyczi 00:37, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Soczyczi!
I mostly agree with your edits (I was the one who wrote the article in the first place).
Some remarks:
  • I think it is important to point out in a WP article if somebody is a very well-known poet or a relatively obscure one. Although there is a rekindling of interest in his works, I would say A.-F. definitely falls into the second category. Right now, he is more famous for what other people wrote about him (i.e., his life) than what he himself wrote. I felt that should be mentioned somehow.
  • Peyrefitte sometimes likes a good pun more than the facts (and the "Pink Masses" may be a case of that), but on the whole he was the one who "rediscovered" Fersen. If it weren't for him, A.-F. would probably be forgotten. So don't bash Peyrefitte too much! :-) His work was the only source about Fersen for a long time!
  • As for "Akademos", I would say that it did promote pederasty, even if that made up only a fraction of its content. That is not a contradiction in my view. You can promote something without talking about it all the time.
Morn 17:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)