Thomas Eakins and his boxers

"Pugilism, Goodrich notes, was not yet a fashionable sport proper for gentleman and ladies to attend." In fact, the world of boxing was entirely male, and this no doubt was one of the things about the sport that strongly appealed to Thomas Eakins (1844-1916). Like Swimming, Eakins' boxing and wrestling pictures are about a world from which women are excluded. In [the 1890's], however, even the male world was not hospitable to Eakins, since he had no following and no critical support, and he was increasingly shut out of art organizations and exhibitions. Not surprisingly, therefore, in his pictures of this period, even the male world seems more violent and less friendly - a place not of harmonious male fellowship but of conflict. Eakins strongly empathized with boxers and saw their brutal profession as parallel to his own as a painter. Curiously, however, Eakins never pictured actual fighting. all the paintings portray a pause in the action, and the figures never make eye contact, as they would if they were mutual engaged. As Carl Smith has noted, "Eakins' boxers are lonely and even reflective figures, [as] he recasts them as introspective artists like himself." Many of his protagonists are not so much heroes as antiheroes.



In casting Billy Smith (1871-1937) as the victorious protagonist of Salutat, Eakins brought attention to a relatively little known featherweight fighter. "It was 1898", wrote later Smith, "when Mr. Eakins came to a Boxing Club, to get a modle [sic] for his first fight picture, titled Between Rounds. He choose [sic] me... Mr. Eakins, to me was a gentleman and an artist, and a realist of realists. In his work he would not add or subtract. I recall... I noticed a dark smear across my upper lip, I asked Mr. Eakins what it was, he said it was my mustache, I wanted it of [sic], he said it was there, and there it stayed. You can see that he was a realist." In Between Rounds, he recorded a documented fight at the Arena on April 22, 1898, that Smith went on to lose. The second fanning him with a towel is Billy McCarney. Bending over the ropes is Elwood McCloskey, known as "The Old War Horse." They were regulars in the old Arena at Broad and Cherry streets in Philadelphia where Eakins and his friends were faithful attendants. Clarence W. Cranmer, who is sitting at the table as timer, was a local newspaperman and a close friend of the artist.



[...] Eakins was clearly fascinated by the [...] rough, low-class world of the Arena [...], and through various details he emphasized its class distinctions. For example, in Salutat the contrast between the red of Billy Smith's head and neck and the pallor of the rest of his body indicates that he makes his living from weekday labor, and has picked up a sunburn from working outdoors. After posing for Between Rounds and Salutat, Billy Smith became a companion and a comfort to Eakins until the artist’s death. When the elderly Eakins could no longer move around his house in the months before his death, Smith relieved his pain with therapeutic massages and moved the artist from room to room when his legs failed him.



[...] Perhaps the most disturbing of these paintings is Taking the Count, an awkwardly resolved composition, which shows two boxers at the climax of a fight. Kneeling at the right is Jack Daly of Wilmington, looking younger (both were born in 1873), whose square jaw, callow good looks, and blank expression provide a kind of parody of the vacuous poster boys pictured by illustrators like Joseph Leyendecker and James Montgomery Flagg. Daly has clearly been brought down by a blow to the jaw. He rests on one knee, looking up at the crotch of his adversary, evidently deciding to rise and take more punishment. At the left, his triumphant antagonist, Charlie McKeever, whose face is older, more irregular, and more brutal, stands ready to sock Mack again if he attempts to get up. Between the two figures is the tuxedo-wearing referee, Henry Walter Schlichter, who is counting off seconds. His eyes do not engage either of the fighters, and his pose is stiff and awkward - one writer has compared him to a sleepwalker. Perhaps the most beautifully rendered passage is the boxing shorts of the older, victorious boxer, Charlie MacKeever. Eakins lavished care on every stretch and seam, particularly in the groin area, which seems to bulge with triumph.



McKeever's short also draw attention to the oddest feature of the painting. Eakins included a self-portrait, as witness and voyeur, within the narrow wedge created by the boxer's legs, just below his crotch. The placement is sly - a kind of furtive joke that might easily pass undetected. Yet, once one notices it, the painting never looks quite the same. For surely it is no accident that Eakins juxtaposed himself with the male genitals. [...] The implication of McKeever's genitals become even more disturbing in the oil study for his painting, in which Eakins sketched the figures completely nude. Thus, it is clear that the glance of the downed boxer is directed toward the victor's penis. In addition, the gesture of the referee's hand seems like a continuation of the penis, shoving it toward the kneeling figure's face and mouth. The other fight pictures also seem devote inordinate attention to crotches and buttocks. In Betweens Rounds, for example, Billy Smith's bulging crotch is almost at the center of the painting, and is certainly the most brightly lit area of the composition. In The Wrestlers, the figures are locked in a quasi erotic embrace, and the victorious figure has achieved "a crotch hold", in wrestling parlance. Eakins also showed two figures at the upper right hand corner - one clothed, the other in his boxing shorts - who are cut off at the waist so that our eyes focus on the groin area. Salutat differs from the other painting in the series in that the boxer's crotch is turned away from us, and turned toward the audience, which is staring at this area and applauding. Our view focuses on the buttocks of the victorious figure, which the water boy behind him is also staring at intently.



(from Henry Adams, Eakins revealed : the secret life of an American artist)

Marcel Proust and the boys from the Ritz

By the middle of 1918, the last summer of World War I, Proust had a compelling reason for wanting to remain in Paris [...]. He met at the Ritz Hotel a young waiter named Henri Rochat, who had captivated him. We know about his attraction to young waiters, and how he recruited them to serve him, from an interview given many years after Proust's death by Camille Wixler, who had been a waiter at the Ritz during the War.
Swiss, like Rochat, Wixler who was only nineteen when he met Proust, had learned at the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne and come to Paris as an apprentice under Olivier Dabescat. One day Dabescat told Wixler that Proust had noticed him and wondered whether he woud willing to wait his table. The young man gladly accepted, having heard about the enormous tips that the writer gave.
The personnel at the Ritz were expected, of course, to cater to the whims of tardy diners. [...] That first evening with Wixler as his waiter, the novelist had an unusually hearty appetite.[...] During the meal, and afterward in the small salon, where he consumed a dozen or so demitasses of coffee and then asked for more, Proust chatted and asked questions about the personnel. He was especially curious about Wixler's compatriot Henri Rochat. Could Wixler ask whether Rochat would be willing to serve his table? Wixler "agreed to this, naturally, and instructed Rochat" on what Proust liked. Not long afterward, when Wixler asked whether Rochat was proving satisfactory, Proust answered in the affirmative, adding that he had offered the young man an occupation better suited to his abilities, an apparent reference to the position of secretary.
Sometime in late 1918 or early 1919, Rochat accepted the position as Proust's secretary, although he [...] had no qualifications for such work. Rochat was taciturn and uneducated, at least in writing and speaking french ; his pronunciation and spelling of his adopted language were poor, although he wrote in a fine hand. Perhaps his ability to trace beautiful letters convinced him that he had a talent for painting.
We have no photographs and only vague physical descriptions of Rochat. Wixler said that he was handsome, and he certainly must have been, at least according to the writer's standards. We know that he had a fair complexion and brown hair because, as we shall see, Proust contrasted Rochat's darker mane with Ernest Forsgren's blond good looks in a gossipy letter to the duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre about sexual practices generally considered perverse.

After Proust's death, an unsent note to Dabescat was found among his papers. It reads like the kind of excuse a parent writes for a child who has to miss school. Proust began by telling "cher Olivier" that he was "embarrassed" to ask him yet again for a favor on Rochat's behalf : the young man was not well and needed to see a doctor and therefore asked "permission not to come to work today". Proust enclosed two hundred francs for all the trouble he was causing the maître d'hôtel. "I believe that this will be the last time I torment you in this regard. Your devoted and grateful Marcel Proust".
Wixler had recently noticed that when he and Rochat changed from street clothes into their uniforms at the Ritz, Rochat now wore handsome suits and underclothes of the finest quality. Aware that his colleague's Salary at the Ritz did not permit such indulgences, Wixler asked how he could afford such expensive garments. Rochat "answered frankly and even with pride that he did so with the aid of M. Proust."
When Proust began catering to Rochat's wishes, [...] Rochat attached himself to Proust with all the tenacity of a barnacle on a rock. He stayed in the writer's service for approximately to and a half years, during which time he cost his protector a lot of money - money that Proust was forced to borrow or raise by selling off his few remaining investments. Céleste agrees that Proust recruited Rochat at the Ritz but, being naïve or perhaps overly protective, insists that her employer took the young man as an act of charity and because he was touched by Rochat’s ambition to become a painter. Proust used to say to her, somewhat disdainfully, whenever the young man was busy at his easel: "He thinks he’s painting." Her description of Rochat as "surly and silent" is close, as we shall see, to Proust’s own characterization of him.

It finally dawned on Wixler that Proust was using him to procure young waiters, apparently for sexual Trusts at boulevard Haussmann. The moment of illumination occurred on the first evening that Wixler delivered a takeout dinner from the Ritz to Proust's apartment. Proust asked him whether he thought that a new, very young waiter by the name of Vanelli would come to see him. Suddenly suspicious of the writer's motives, Wixler replied that Vanelli was not the type to accept such a proposition, no matter how large the tips. Proust had a different opinion, however, and instructed Wixler to put it to the young man bluntly. Wixler was astounded when Vanelli asked to be introduced to Proust, even before he had the chance to broach the subject. He reported Vanelli's eagerness to Proust, who said that he would come to the Ritz that night. While Wixler served the novelist diner, he left the important task of serving the coffee to Vanelli. Vanelli went home with Proust and in no time became his favorite. According to Wixler, this was shortly before Rochat sailed for South America in June 1921.

Wixler's information about Rochat seems accurate : Proust did hire him as his secretary, rapidly grew weary of him as a companion, and eventually found him a post in faraway Buenos Aires. Regarding Vanelli, the situation is less clear. If the waiter of such tender years did succeed Rochat as Proust's "favorite", he did so without leaving any traces in the documents and memoires that we have.

Around the time that Proust met Rochat, he described for Lucien Daudet an evening at the Ritz when the openly gay Count Antoine Sala and his friends, who usually occupied a table in the dining room were absent ; this made the service exceptionally good, "since the waiters did not have to flee towards the kitchen except to serve the dishes" or "run outside to the Place Vendôme". Proust apparently excluded himself from those who interfered with the smooth service at the Ritz, since his own courting of the waiters usually took place at such a late hour that the other customers were not inconvenienced by his interrogations and discreet flirtations.
[...] Henri Bardac [...] told Morand about Proust's favorite stratagem for enticing bellhops. Proust would ring for the bellboy and then begin washing his hands. When the boy entered the room, Proust who was leaning over the sink, would say to him, "My friend, I have a tip for you, but I can't give it to you because my hands are wet ; please get it out of my pants pockets."



Maurice Duplay once caught Proust in a compromising position with a handsome young actor when he arrived in the novelist's apartment unannounced. "I had visibly disturbed them. The young stranger jumped up awkwardly, causing some papers to slide off the desk, his face crimson." Duplay noted the youth's regular features and thick black hair parted in the middle. "Marcel, who had made a quick recovery" from Duplay's surprise entrance, "made the introductions". Unfortunatly, this is all the informations that Duplay gives ; there is no hint of the approximate date of his intrusion.

(from William C. Carter, Proust in love, 2007)

Jaque Catelain

Né Jacques Maxime Guérin le 9 février 1897, le beau ténébreux du cinéma français balbutiant a de lointaines origines russes et du sang suédois par sa mère. Sa première jeunesse se déroule dans un grand château en Flandres, c’est un petit garçon très sensible, artiste dans l’âme, qui pleure devant les tableaux de Memling au musée de Bruges. Il n’a que neuf ans! C'est un rêveur solitaire à l'imagination débordante, qui brûle d'envie d'exprimer tout ce qu'il ressent. Son père le laisse libre de se consacrer au dessin, à la peinture (il entre en 1913 à l'Académie Julian), à la musique - celle de Wagner le transporte. Puis c’est Nijinski qui le subjugue, au point que ses parents doivent s'opposer à une vocation subite de danseur. Lorsque la guerre éclate en 1914, "l'art semble mort pour chacun [...], toute ambition personnelle apparaît sacrilège, tout effort superflu." Les événements tragiques l’inquiètent et le déstabilisent… En 1915, il tâte de l’art dramatique au Conservatoire dans la classe de Paul Mounet, avant de s'engager en 1916 et de partir pour le front dans l’artillerie lourde. Réformé temporairement, il fait en 1917 la rencontre de sa vie : celle du cinéaste-esthète Marcel L'Herbier, qui lui communique sa passion et noue avec lui de profonds liens d'affection... pour ne pas dire davantage.




Le public découvre Jaque-Catelain. Il incarne le prince charmant dont rêve, entre autres, les demoiselles et les dames. "Veston noir, faux col jaune, chemise ocre, visage entièrement badigeonné de fond de teint rosé… Il est tellement joli malgré tout ce maquillage… Séduire? Catelain n’a vraiment aucun mérite à cela : la nature lui a donné en cadeau de grands yeux marrons, un nez idéalement fin …une grâce de mouvement incomparable… Il n’a qu’à paraître, sourire et ramasser les cœurs foudroyés…" peut-on lire dans Ciné-miroir. En 1918, ce jeune homme de vingt ans entend ne pas se contenter d’être beau et de paraître, il veut prouver qu'il a surtout du talent : "devant l’appareil qui vous imprime tout vif, il ne s’agit pas de devenir, il s’agit d’être… Le charme d’un artiste, son action sur le public ne dépendent pas de la joliesse physique, mais du rayonnement de sa personnalité."

"Les initiés, seuls, savent ce qu'il faut vaincre lorsque, dans la chaleur de l'été ou du studio, l'émotion du site ou le bruit infernal des machines, la peur de se trahir soi-même... On se retrouve finalement aux prises avec la réalité brutale de la réalisation, face à face avec cet ennemi perspicace et exigeant : l'objectif ! Vous voici devant l'appareil, vous commencez à jouer et ce qu'il vous faut vaincre alors, c'est votre désir de jouer [...]. Quand on a dévêtu ce goût gênant de remplacer, par certaines conventions arrêtées d’avance par la réflexion, la manifestion mobile de soi-même, une nouvelle épreuve vient chaque fois effrayer l'interprète cinématographique : celle de savoir proposer à l’impressionnabilité de la pellicule une vie profonde, une vie essentielle : la vie de toute son âme."

Las d'être confiné aux rôles de séducteur mièvres, il passe à la réalisation pour deux films au titre évocateur, Le Marchand de plaisirs (en 1923) et La Galerie des monstres (1924), où, se réservant le premier rôle masculin, il s'emploie à casser son image trop lisse, s’affublant de haillons ou en enfilant un déguisement de clown… "Suis-je Don Juan ? Je ne le sais pas… mais il m’arrive de me suggestionner au point de vivre passionnément la vie de celui que j’incarne et cela non seulement sur le studio mais aussi au dehors." Officiellement marié en 1932 à une jeune femme gravitant dans l'entourage de... L'Herbier mais fréquentant un cercle d'amis ne faisant guère mystère de leur goûts homosexuels, il cultivera jusqu'à sa mort, en 1965, une grande discrétion quant à sa vie privée, aimant à dire, très élégamment, que "sa propre vie est un film que l'on doit être seul à regarder."

En 1933, il s'installe au États-Unis en tant qu'envoyé spécial du quotidien Le Journal, pour lequel il rédige une série de reportages sur les grandes vedettes disparues de l'écran. L'année suivante, Marcel L’Herbier lui demande de jouer dans Le Bonheur (1935). Il s'éloigne des écrans, où son "personnage mélancolique, romantique", son physique d'éphèbe, aux traits fins" n'est plus de mise face aux jeunes loups qui ont pris la relève. Il se tourne vers le théâtre, le doublage (notamment pendant la seconde guerre mondiale, où il vit sur le continent américain), tout en faisant quelques apparitions, à l'écran puis à la télévision, dans des rôles souvent très modestes, notamment chez Renoir (French Cancan, Elena et les hommes, Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier) ou le fidèle L'Herbier (Les derniers jours de Pompéi), auquel il consacre un livre honoré du Prix Canudo, Jaque-Catelain présente Marcel L'Herbier (1950).



source : http://www.encinematheque.net/muet/M11/index.htm

Henry Tuke and the boys

Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929) was educated at the Slade School of Art in London, traveled to Italy in 1880, and lived in Paris from 1881 until 1883. In Paris, he studied with the French history painter Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921) and met the American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). Tuke also met Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) in the 1880s and developed connections with the Uranian poets and writers who celebrated the adolescent male. He wrote a sonnet to youth that was published anonymously in the journal The Artist and also contributed an essay to The Studio, another journal that published Uranian verse and essays.





Tuke settled in a Cornish town near Falmouth Bay in 1885. He converted his boat into a floating studio and living quarters where he could pose his models and entertain his friends. Although he was also an accomplished portraitist, most of his works depict young men who swim, dive, and lounge on a boat or on the beach.






August Blue (1893-1894), one of the most famous paintings from this period, is a study of four nude youths bathing from a boat in crystal clear water under bright blue skies. The work conveys a sense of enjoyment, of the simple innocence of sunlight on flesh, sea, and sky. With August Blue, Tuke established a genre that celebrates male beauty and the seeming timelessness of youth. Tuke's paintings of nude youths illustrate sensual, rather than sexual, feelings. They are not explicit either in the relationships they describe or in the details of the body.






The oil painting Noonday Heat (1903), for example, presents two youths who, relaxing on the beach, are completely engrossed in their own private world. They look at one another, perhaps engaged in conversation. Since neither of them addresses the viewer, their relationship seems intimate, exclusive, and ambiguous. Similarly, the watercolor Two Boys on a Beach (1909) captures a close, intense relationship. In this work, the absence of a horizon heightens the feeling of intimacy. Tuke only rarely painted the genitals of his models, thereby de-emphasizing a sexual reading of his works. The artist generally arranged his models so that anatomical details are concealed. In frontal views, shadows or draped pieces of clothing obscure the genitals. Tuke's de-emphasis of the sexual may explain why his work, and his close friendships with many of his models, created no scandals. [...] He died after a long illness at Falmouth in 1929.





sources :
http://www.geocities.com/tuke_site/page0002.html
http://www.glbtq.com/arts/tuke_hs.html

Did a gay affair provide a catalyst for Kristallnacht?

"[...] On November 7 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jew, walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat, five times. Vom Rath died two days later. Nazi propagandists condemned the shooting as a terrorist attack to further the cause of the Jewish "world revolution", and the pogrom was launched. The attacks - called Kristallnacht [...] - led to the murder of 91 Jews, the arrests of 26,000 others and the destruction of 177 synagogues.

Until now, it was widely believed that Grynszpan had intended to shoot the ambassador, Count Johannes Welczek, in protest at the SS's expulsion of his parents to Poland. But according to Professor Döscher, who teaches modern history at Osnabrück University, Grynszpan's actions were a spontaneous expression of anger over the broken promises of his lover, Vom Rath, not a political gesture. [...] Prof Döscher claims that Vom Rath was nicknamed Mrs Ambassador and Notre Dame de Paris as a result of his homosexual antics. He and Grynszpan - a "boy with a beautiful penetrative gaze" - met in Le Boeuf sur le Toit bar, a popular haunt for gay men in the autumn of 1938 and became intimate. Grynszpan, who was in his late teens [he was born March 28, 1921], had been living illegally in Paris, and Prof Döscher states that 29-year-old Vom Rath agreed to use his influential position to secure official papers for his friend.

When Vom Rath went back on his word, Grynszpan reacted by storming into the German embassy on rue de Lille 78, demanding to see him, and opening fire on him with a revolver. Grynszpan was arrested and languished in jail in France until 1940, when he was handed over to the Nazis, who planned a show trial which would be used to justify the outbreak of the second world war. A combined report from the German foreign, justice and propaganda ministries in January 1942 declared : "The purpose of the trial should be to clarify to the German people and the world that the international community of Jews is to blame for the outbreak of this war."

According to Prof Döscher, when Grynszpan learned of this motivation for the trial in the early 40s, he revealed the real truth to his Nazi captors. Fearing embarrassment and humiliation, they then stripped Vom Rath of his martyrdom and scrapped their plans. Grynszpan was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then disappeared. [...] Prof Döscher gleaned his previously unpublished evidence from court archives, reports from the propaganda ministry, letters, diary extracts, and interviews with diplomats of the time. Most startling are the diaries of Gide, in which the writer expresses his amazement that the scandal failed to gain public attention.

Vom Rath, Gide wrote (a), "had an exceptionally intimate relationship with the little Jew, his murderer". Referring to the fact that Vom Rath was both gay and had an affair with a Jew, Gide later said: "The thought that a such highly-thought of representative of the Third Reich sinned twice according to the laws of his country is rather amusing." But that was not what amazed him most. "How is it that the press failed to bring this scandal into the open?" he asked."

(a) « On saurait de source certaine que l'attaché d'ambassade [Vom] Rath qui vient d'être assassiné avait les relations les plus intimes avec son petit Juif d'assassin. De quelle nature fut l'assassinat? Il n'importe. L'idée qu'un représentant du Reich, qui vient d'être glorifié, péchait doublement au regard des lois de son pays, est assez drôle, et les représailles atroces n'en paraissent que plus monstrueuses, plus simplement intéressées, utilitaires. Comment ce scandale n'est-il pas exploité par la presse ? »

source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4288453,00.html

Karol Szymanowski et Aleksander Szymielewicz

Boris Kochno n'a pas été l'unique amour de Karol Szymanowski...
Plusieurs autres (jeunes) hommes sont passés par la petite chambre de l'Hôtel Bristol où il avait ses habitudes et ont été des invités de choix dans son chalet de Zakopane : le comédien Witold Conti (1908-1944), jeune premier par excellence du cinéma polonais des années 1930, le compositeur Zygmunt Mycielski (1907-1987) ou le musicographe Tadeusz Żakiej (1915-1994), etc.
Parmi les liaisons qu'on lui connaît (ou du moins qu'on lui prête), il en est une qui dure plusieurs années et revêt pour lui une importance certaine : Aleksander Szymielewicz apparaît en effet sur plusieurs clichés en compagnie de son amant et mentor. Devenu médecin, Szymielewicz disparaîtra tragiquement lors du soulèvement de Varsovie en août 1944.












sources :
http://www.innastrona.pl/kult_ludzie_szymanowski2.phtml
http://members.lycos.co.uk/szymanowski/ (pour les photographies)

Georges Eekhoud

"Georges Eekhoud est né à Anvers le 27 mai 1854. Il est orphelin très jeune et un oncle fortuné se charge de son éducation. Il est envoyé dans un pensionnat suisse où il découvre les littératures anglaise, allemande et italienne. De retour en Belgique il participe dans les années 1880 à l'aventure de La Jeune Belgique, une prestigieuse revue belge à laquelle collaborent les principaux écrivains du pays, mais aussi un grand nombre de Français découragés par les revues françaises très conservatrices.
Il fonde la revue Le Coq rouge avec notamment Emile Verhaeren et Maurice Maeterlinck. Dans les années 1890, quand le mouvement s'inverse, Eelkhoud devient le correspondant belge du Mercure de France. Il y publie en outre des nouvelles et y fait paraître en feuilleton, le plus connu de ses romans, Escal-Vigor.
Pendant ces années-là, le mouvement anarchiste, bien implanté en Belgique, recueille toute sa sympathie. Ses nouvelles comme ses romans sont marqués par ses prises de position politico-sociales, mais aussi par ce que Jean Lorrain appellera son "anarchisme érotique".
Georges Eekhoud est homosexuel, les rudes Campinois, aux culottes de velours qui animent les rues de Bruxelles en chantier, suscitent chez lui des désirs que la société réprouve. Mais que lui importe : sa fin de siècle est éclairée par un amour violent et tendre pour un jeune ouvrier typographe. "Nous sommes des dieux", lui écrit-il, et les dieux se croient invulnérables !
Escal-Vigor [raconte les amours d'un aristocrate esthète et d'un jeune pâtre sur une île du nord, en but à la haine des villageois qui assassinent les deux hommes, scellant ainsi leur destin et leur union dans la mort]. A cause de ce roman, Eekhoud comparaît en 1900 devant la Cour d'Assise de Bruges pour atteinte aux bonnes moeurs. Il échappe de justesse à la condamnation. Le procès accroît la notoriété de l'auteur en France, où un assez grand nombre d'écrivains le soutiennent au nom de la liberté de l'art, mais surtout en Allemagne, où viennent de naître les premiers mouvements homosexuels de l'histoire.
A partir de ce moment-là, Eekhoud est clairement boudé par les bourgeois puissants dont dépendant les subventions qui permettent de vivre et d'écrire quand on n'a pas de fortune personnelle.
Et pourtant Eekhoud ne plie pas l'échine : en 1904, il publie Voyous de velours, le plus explicite et le plus jubilant de ses romans. L'homosexuel de Bruxelles, dans ces années-là, doit obligatoirement être triste : tout sera fait pour qu'Eekhoud le devienne. La première guerre mondiale et les années qui la suivront seront pour lui un long calvaire. Eekhoud, qui n'a pas caché ses sympathies pour les premières revendications flamandes et qui est atterré par les horreurs commises pendant cette guerre par les "nôtres" et les autres, devient la cible des bourgeois francophones triomphants de 1918. Malgré un tardif retour en grâce, il meurt en 1927, aigri et triste." (Lucien Mirande, dans son introduction à Hugo Claus : Escal-Vigor, scénario d’après le roman éponyme de Georges Eekhoud).

"Pour saisir en leur vie profonde les protagonistes de [ses romans ou nouvelles], il faut bien se pénétrer de l'histoire des provinces belges et spécialement du passé de la Campine. Terre pauvre et tragique, [...] loque rêche et grise des landes stériles, le sablon morne et pâle où poussent des plantes en paquet de ficelle et des arbres en bois de cercueil. Les villages rares, les indigènes violents et naïfs, les mœurs lointaines et touchantes et par dessus tout un vent de fanatisme.
[...] C'est au fond de ce pays que se retranchent les résistances les plus âpres aux illusions modernes de faux progrès et à l'embrigadement universel vers l'idéal bourgeois. Là bas, se lèvent encore des rustres massifs, des types de volonté immesurable, des ardents incompressibles, des soucieux de haine profonde, des marcheurs hors de tout rang, des endurcis de liberté fauve, des farouches d'eux-mêmes et des autres, des taciturnes couvant la révolte, sortes d'anarchistes des campagnes, hors la loi depuis des années et qui rôdent [...]. Aucun de leurs vices n'est tu. Une vie fourmillante, criante de réalité, crue d'audace se manifeste ; elle empêche l'étude de s'empanacher d'exagération feuilletonesque ; elle se burine sur un fond d'eau-forte, violemment, encre et craie.
[...] Si Georges Eekhoud est parvenu à réaliser ces durables poèmes de violence et de sang, c'est qu'il a fait route vers eux entre sa pitié et sa tendresse. Il a aimé dans les gars d'abord la rusticité et l'intransigeance, la primitivité et la foi, le silence et le courage, l'âpreté et la colère. Puis leurs passions naïves et sincères, leurs misères tragiques, leur bonté souterraine, leur honneur spécial. Enfin la conquête s'est faite tout entière. Il les a trouvés aussi beaux, plus beaux, peut-être, criminels qu'innocents, exaltés que calmes, vaguant que sédentaires, traqués que paisibles. Et jamais il ne les a mieux honorés de sa force et de son prestige de poète. Peut-être aussi les évidentes fraternités qui lient les écrivains d'aujourd'hui aux irréguliers l'ont-elles soutenu au point que, vengeant ceux-ci des mépris, les dressant haut devant l'admiration et l'inquiétude, il a d'un même coup magnifié ceux-là." (Emile Verhaeren, in L'Art Moderne, 18 septembre 1892)

pour lire l'intégralité d'Escal-Vigor : http://www.inlibroveritas.net/lire/oeuvre9645.html
une excellente étude sur Escal-Vigor : http://raforum.info/these/spip.php?article76
une autre excellente étude du spécialiste de Georges Eekhoud : http://semgai.free.fr/contenu/textes/mL_Eekhoud_regional.html