Today In Gay History THURSDAY, JUNE 6

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Today In Gay History

THURSDAY, JUNE 6, 2013

1894 – VIOLET TREFUSIS,  an English writer and socialite, born (d: 1972); Violet was "the other woman" in the life of Harold Nicolson and his wife Vita Sackville-West, the relationship which was featured under disguise in Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography. As the daughter of Alice Keppel, themistress of Edward VII, Violet enjoyed a childhood of mystery and romance in a house where "Kingy" was a regular, if undiscussed, visitor. She and Vita met when they were girls. During WWI their friendship developed into a passion. Though they both made conventional marriages, Violet could finally bear her love no longer and instigated the "elopement" that has since become a special chapter in the history of love. When Vita returned to her family and her writing at Sissinghurst, Violet imposed exile upon herself, turning to art and writing and the fantasy world of international society. But the feelings that she and Vita shared never abated. "You are the unexploded bomb to me," Vita wrote Violet in 1940. "I don't want you to disrupt my life." Even after twenty years of separation, she could still write of the love that "always burns in my heart whenever I think of you."

1875 – THOMAS MANN, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955); a German novelist, short story writer, social critic philanthropist, essayist and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the  psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. Mann's diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his sexuality, which found reflection in his works, most prominently through the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the 14-year-old Polish boy Tadzio in the novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1912). Anthony Heilbut's biography Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997) was widely acclaimed for uncovering the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre. Gilbert Adair's work The Real Tadzio describes how, in the summer of 1911, Mann had been staying at the Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice with his wife and brother when he became enraptured by the angelic figure of  a Polish boy.

Considered a classic of homoerotic passion (if unconsummated) Death in Venice has been made into a film and an opera. Blamed sarcastically by Mann's old enemy, Alfred Kerr, to have `made pederasty acceptable to the cultivated middle classes', it has been pivotal to introducing the discourse of same-sex desire to the common culture. Mann himself described his feelings for young violinist and painter Paul Ehrenberg as the "central experience of my heart." Despite the homoerotic overtones in his writing, Mann chose to marry and have children. His works also present other sexual themes, such as incest in "The Blood of the Walsungs" (Wälsungenblut) and "The Holy Sinner" (Der Erwählte).


1952 – HARVEY FIERSTEIN, American actor, born; An American Tony Award-winning and Emmy Award-winning actor, playwright and screenwriter is perhaps known best for the play and film Torch Song Trilogy, which he wrote and starred in and originating the role of Edna Turnblad in the Broadway musical Hairspray. The 1982 Broadway production won him two Tony Awards, for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play, two Drama Desk Awards, for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Actor in a Play, and the Theater World Award, and the film earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination as Best Male Lead.

Fierstein also wrote the book for La Cage aux Folles (1983), winning another Tony Award, this time for Best Book of a Musical, and a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Book. Legs Diamond, his 1988 collaboration with Peter Allen, was a critical and commercial failure, closing after 72 previews and 64 performances. His other playwriting credits include Safe Sex, Spookhouse, and Forget Him. Fierstein developed a new musical titled A Catered Affair in which he starred with Faith Prince, Leslie Kritzer and Tom Wopat. Fierstein is an occasional columnist writing about Gay issues and appears regularly on the PBS series In The Life. He was out at a time when very few celebrities were. 

1954 - Arcadie, the first homosexual group in France, is formed.

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