The derivation of ‘gay’ goes back to the sixteenth 1600 hundreds with Chaucer saying, ’ in our bed he was so…and gay. This derivation was sustained in the late 1800’s, where Nietzche was well aware of this usage, as something showy, promiscuous, (referring to brothels and baths). gay science was published around the 1890’s.
Kissing a phallic gun does, though, however.
Not necessarily. It may just be an idealizing of manhood.
Not necessarily. It may just be an idealizing of manhood. The worm of youth could be seen as effects of syphilis or as a product of the deification of manhood. Neither Nietzsche nor Hemingway was gay in our modern sense of the word. Guns are phallic symbols. To kiss one may be merely to embrace its power. Rockets are also phallic symbols.
Irr, both Nietzche and Hemmingway have been studied post humeously ex post facto. The consensus is that they were latent homosexuals.
Which was a pretty bad thing back then. The guy who broke the Nazi code back in WW2, was gay, and committed suicide on account. Back then, it was a matter of life and death, if such things were revealed.
Even today, post 'don’t ask don’t tell, there are reservations. Of course, it is a mistake to read into poetry to ascertain meaning, such attempt would defeat the figurative intent of that genre. It would seem to defeat it’s purpose.
Jesus, can someone seriously take N to be gay? That is really silly.
Overt masculinity does not mean gay ness. In these times it may seem to you like that because you are being told.
But try to talk to real gays. Try to have experience and thoughts.
not a bad poem by the way.
Gays do not typically love violence. They do not typically get crazy when a woman rejects them. They never SOUND masculine. They do not understand the masculine heart well enough to seduce man to his true love; war. Women do understand in their way. Hetero Man - Hetero Woman - Gay Man - Lesbian. That is how identification powers seem to be separated.
(Yes , this is based on social experience with each group. And yes it is profiling and pointless. It is just that to think N was gay one must have either not read N or never talked to a gay person. Hemingway gay??? That sounds absurd but Ill have to look into it.)
Jakob,
Thanks for your insights into this poem. I’ve read much N. & H. The poem was not intended to show that either was gay. But I can see how it was interpreted in that way from my using “worm of youth” and “phallic gun” to symbolize a certain type of masculinity. Unfortunately for us poets who read their ideas into things, Freud once said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” That N and H were “latent homosexuals” is a Freudian interpretation of the poem.
N.'s worm of youth was penis thinking. He attended a brothel. He caught syphilis (SIC). H’s phallic gun was his final surrender to the violence of his masculinity. Only a cursory reading of the poem and of writings of N. and H. would suggest that they were latent homosexuals.
See Will Durant’s “The Story of Philosophy” for a good view of Nietzsche’s last days.
duplicate
the aversion to violence is directly related to how sensitive one is. it has not much to do with ones sexual orientation, for example, you could be some effiminate peace love hippie who is sexually attracted to women because of how fairy-like they are.
He did once say something along the lines of reabsorbtion of semen into the blood was the best form of nourishment. Do you think he meant we should go easy on the whackin’ or…or, oh god it’s to horrible to think about.
It was to Orbie that I responded defiantly. Your poem hadn’t evoked these ideas.
Penis-thinking… its rather that erect objects follow similar purposes as the penis; penetration.
Not every long thing is a reference to a penis. A penis is simply the most sensitive long thing to us.
Z - sperm is the most concentrated protein gel available. That I know this does not make me attracted to consuming it. Cleopatra is told to use sperm as an ointment for her face. I suspect Beyonce of the same.
Nietzsche has no effeminate qualities. I am more gay than he is and I am not at all sexually or attracted to men. Even Caesar is more gay than Nietzsche.
I see. So do you think he was hittin’ Lou from underneath while Ree hit it from behind, or vice versa?
I know you’re joking but FTR: Freddie was referring to the Brahmin and abstinent hermits like himself. The Brahmin/priests believed semen was absorbs into the blood when it wasn’t expelled. The nutritious and psychological power that comes from overcoming the sexual urge and refocusing one’s energy is what Nietzsche was on about. Nothing to do with gayness.
There is a world of difference between gay and latent homosexual. The straightest people, including those of historical notice, have had latency in this regard. Back then it was shameful, a disease, like whacking.
Things change, viewpoints change, and the story
does not quite end there. Usually the first ines to protest, the line can be applied, ’ he who protest the most’. This was also mentioned of
Hitler, and given as the reason for his vehement
eradication efforts of Roehm.
Now, there are absolutely no eyebrows raised in this regard. Lawrence Olivier was bi and I remember
seeing his late wife, Vivian Leigh on the then popular
David Susskind show,saying that this gay baiting
thing is getting to be a bore. And this was way back in the seventies.
The only ones of true knowledge re their orientation are long gone and buried. Of Ceasar was said, that
he was a man for all women and a woman for all men.
Talking about changing attitudes!
Being dominated by a woman isn’t effeminate, behaving like a woman is. All strong men want strong women, There is no joy in life being up against nothing.
Methinks Nietzsche was trying to express the Tragic, in the utterly unsophisticated 19th century ways of photography.
HItler could have fucked anything. He ended up fucking the whole world in the ass and hard. He was definitely homosexual, heterosexual, animal-sexual, alien-sexual, plant-sexual - so desperate for penetration that he even tried to fuck Russia.
I just know a lot of gay people, more than half latent, and I know Nietzsche very well.
Oscar Wilde, that’s what Nietzsche would be if he was homosexual, latent or not.
Essential to the homosexual - seems -that he is narcissist, which Nietzsche, unlike Socrates, was not; He desired the Übermensch precisely because he was not very much in love with himself at all. His proud dissatisfaction with himself is rooted in a deep heterosexuality. In fact the Superman can be said to be an ultimate Heteros; a distance.
Caesar must have been a bit of a shapeshifter. His stories are so darned inerstin - have you read rex Warners Young Caesar and Imperial Caesar.