and sex passion is expressed in all directions and in every variety of combination. If reason enters it at all, there is no reason why woman should not love woman."

It

The entire bo ok is written with serious intention. ranks easily with the eight or ten sympathetic and literary treatments of Lesbian literature. The love affair botween the women is told with understanding and compassion. The entire lack of impossible or unusual happenings lends to the credulity of this strange story. I can only add that Random House is a publisher of the first rank and it speaks well for the future to have their imprint on this decidedly Lesbian novel.

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B.G.

The Romantic Romantic Agony

THE ROMANTIC AGONY by kario

Praz, Meridian Books, 1956

The name "romanticism" evokes many images: ghosts, cobwebs, nightmares; the 'faery lands forlorn' of Keats, and the horror-houses of Poe. A Romantic in the twentieth century would be an object of pathological interest with his obsession on "luxurious cruelties", "fatal women", and monstrosities. But who's to discern between psychosis and cult, knowing Romanticism to have been such a widespread movement. In a profound research on the nature of Romanticism, Mario Praz has come to the conclusion that the emphasis on "vice and cruelty" was part of ɛn atmosphere "favorable to the expression of individual feelings", and the creation of a milieu both exotic and strange.

Among the "Belle Dames sans Merci" loved of the Romantics was the figure of the Lesbian, appearing full-blown on the literary scene for the first time since Sappho. Yet, in full tradition of the times, she had to occur as a monstrosity, not a human. For monstrosities were favored characters in an age that cherished its Nero, Cleopatras and Frankensteins. Recall if you may "The Girl with the Golden Eyes" by Balzac, who was imprisoned in the seclud-

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