Katana VentraIP

John Addington Symonds

John Addington Symonds Jr. (/ˈsɪməndz/; 5 October 1840 – 19 April 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies of writers and artists. Although married with children, Symonds supported male love (homosexuality), which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, referring to it as l'amour de l'impossible (love of the impossible).[1] He also wrote much poetry inspired by his same-sex affairs.

For his father, see John Addington Symonds (physician).

Early life and education[edit]

Symonds was born in Bristol, England, in 1840. His father, the physician John Addington Symonds (1807–1871), was the author of Criminal Responsibility (1869), The Principles of Beauty (1857) and Sleep and Dreams. The younger Symonds, considered delicate, did not take part in games at Harrow School after the age of 14, and he showed no particular promise as a scholar.[2]


Symonds moved to Clifton Hill House at the age of ten, an event which he believed had a large and beneficial impact towards his health and spiritual development. Symonds's delicate condition continued, and as a child he suffered from nightmares in which corpses in and under his bed prompted sleepwalking; on one such occasion he was almost drowned when, sleepwalking in the attic of Clifton Hill House, he reached a cistern of rainwater. According to Symonds, an angel with "blue eyes and wavy, blonde hair" woke him and brought him to safety; this figure frequented Symonds's dreams and was potentially his first homosexual awakening.


In January 1858, Symonds received a letter from his friend Alfred Pretor (1840–1908), telling of Pretor's affair with their headmaster, Charles John Vaughan. Symonds was shocked and disgusted, feelings complicated by his growing awareness of his own homosexuality. He did not mention the incident for more than a year until in 1859, when a student at Oxford University, he told the story to John Conington, the Latin professor. Conington approved of romantic relationships between men and boys. Earlier, he had given Symonds a copy of Ionica, a collection of homoerotic verse by William Johnson Cory, the influential Eton College master and advocate of pederastic pedagogy. Conington encouraged Symonds to tell his father about his friend's affair, and the senior Symonds forced Vaughan to resign from Harrow. Pretor was angered by the younger man's part, and never spoke to Symonds again.[3]


In the autumn of 1858, Symonds went to Balliol College, Oxford, as a commoner but was elected to an exhibition in the following year. In spring of that same year, he fell in love with William Fear Dyer (1843–1905), a Bristol choirboy three years younger. They engaged in a chaste love affair that lasted a year, until broken up by Symonds. The friendship continued for several years afterwards, until at least 1864. Dyer became organist and choirmaster of St Nicholas' Church, Bristol.


At Oxford University, Symonds became engaged in his studies and began to demonstrate his academic ability. In 1860, he took a first in Mods and won the Newdigate prize with a poem on "The Escorial"; in 1862 he obtained a first in Literae Humaniores, and in 1863 won the Chancellor's English Essay.[2]


In 1862, Symonds was elected to an open fellowship at the conservative Magdalen. He made friends with a C. G. H. Shorting, whom he took as a private pupil. When Symonds refused to help Shorting gain admission to Magdalen, the younger man wrote to school officials alleging "that I [Symonds] had supported him in his pursuit of the chorister Walter Thomas Goolden (1848–1901), that I shared his habits and was bent on the same path."[4] Although Symonds was officially cleared of any wrongdoing, he suffered a breakdown from the stress and shortly thereafter left the university for Switzerland.[2]

The Renaissance. An Essay (1863)

Miscellanies by John Addington Symonds, M.D.,: Selected and Edited with an Introductory Memoir, by His Son (1871)

Introduction to the Study of Dante (1872); Symonds, John Addington (June 2002). . The Minerva Group. ISBN 0-89875-964-1.

2002 reprint of 1899 4th edition

Studies of the Greek Poets, 2 vol. (1873, 1876)

Renaissance in Italy, 7 vol. (1875–86)

Shelley (1878)

Sketches in Italy and Greece (London, Smith and Elder 1879)

Sketches and Studies in Italy (London, Smith and Elder 1879)

Animi Figura (1882)

Sketches in Italy (Selections prepared by Symonds, arranged, so as to, in his own words in a Prefatory Note, "adapt itself to the use of travellers rather than of students"; Leipzig, 1883)

Bernhard Tauchnitz

A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883)

Shakespere's Predecessors in the English Drama (1884)[23]

[22]

New Italian Sketches (Bernard Tauchnitz: Leipzig, 1884)

Wine, Women, and Song. Medieval Latin Students' Songs (1884) English translations/paraphrases.

[24]

Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1887) An English translation.

[25]

A Problem in Modern Ethics (1891)

Our Life in the Swiss Highlands (1892) (with his daughter Margaret Symonds as coauthor)[27]

[26]

Essays: Speculative and Suggestive (1893)

In the Key of Blue (1893)

The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1893)

Walt Whitman. A Study (1893)

Uranian poetry

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the : Waugh, Arthur (1911). "Symonds, John Addington". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

public domain

Urquhart, Alexander Reid (1898). . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 55. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

"Symonds, John Addington (1807-1871)" 

Norton, Rictor. "Symonds, John Addington (1840–1893)". (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26888. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

John Addington Symonds: A Biography (1964)

Phyllis Grosskurth

(ed.), The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds Hutchinson (1984)

Phyllis Grosskurth

Queer Beauty, chapter 4: "Double Mind: Hegel, Symonds, and Homoerotic Spirit in Renaissance Art". Columbia University Press, 2010.

Whitney Davis

David Amigoni and Amber K. Regis (eds.), . Special Issue of English Studies, 94:2 (2013).

"Introduction: (Re)Reading John Addington Symonds"

Amber K. Regis (ed.), The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds: A Critical Edition (2016)

Downing, Ben, "John Addington Symonds & Janet Ross: a friendship," The New Criterion, November 2011.

at Project Gutenberg

Works by John Addington Symonds

at Internet Archive

Works by or about John Addington Symonds

at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Works by John Addington Symonds

Archived 31 July 2009 at the Wayback Machine, University of Bristol Library Special Collections

John Addington Symonds papers

Posner Library, Carnegie Mellon University Vol. 2, Carnegie Mellon University

Symonds's translation of The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, Vol. 1

1863

John Addington Symonds, Waste: a lecture delivered at the Bristol institution for the advancement of science, literature...

1857

John Addington Symonds, The Principles of Beauty

1863

John Addington Symonds, The Renaissance, an essay

Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th edition, 1875–89, 1902encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 21 April 2017.

"Renaissance"

GLBTQ encyclopaedia

Biography

1998 Symonds International Symposium

2010 Symonds International Symposium

Michael Matthew Kaylor, Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde (2006)

Indiana University

Robert Peters' MSS

David Beres, , Psychoanalytic Quarterly 40 (1971)

Review of The Letters of John Addington Symonds, ed. Herbert M. Schueller and Robert L. Peters

Rictor Norton, "The Life and Writings of John Addington Symonds (1840—1893)"

Classics Research Lab at Johns Hopkins University

John Addington Symonds Project