tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post6355273236385705929..comments2024-03-18T19:05:39.072-07:00Comments on Morphosis: William Johnson Cory, 'Nascitur cygnus' ('Cygnet is born'; 1877)Adam Robertshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-19999776309621025852014-03-09T15:08:19.581-07:002014-03-09T15:08:19.581-07:00'Cory'! Not 'Corey' ...'Cory'! Not 'Corey' ... Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-58084506882969656162014-03-09T14:44:43.448-07:002014-03-09T14:44:43.448-07:00To say a little more: Johnson, or Johnson-Corey, w...To say a little more: Johnson, or Johnson-Corey, won a reputation amongst the (as the phrase then was) Uranians of the fin de siècle through his verse and the life-story that lay behind it. Timothy d’Arch Smith provides an account of its publication: <br />His own two small books were issued in a strange way at the eccentric author’s whim and expense. <em>Ionica</em> “was made up in a fortnight spent in solitude at Pangbourne on the Thames, August 1850, and was published secretly at the cost of £40 paid in advance.” The second part, simply called <em>Ionica II</em> (1877) was privatively printed without capital letters or punctuation, at Cambridge University Press. The two volumes were reprinted in one, bound in the pale blue of the Eton colours, in 1890 and this is the edition which circulated among the Uranians and became well known.<br /><br />Symonds was introduced to the book by John Conington. ‘Conington was scrupulously moral and cautious. Yet he sympathized with romantic attachments for boys. In this winter he gave me Ionica, and I learned the story of its author William Johnso (now Cory) the Eton master and the pretty faced Charlie Wood (now Lord Halifax) who had been his pupil. That volume of verse, trifling as it may appear to casual readers, went straight to my heart and inflamed my imagination. … I went so far as to write a letter to William Johnson, exposing the state of my feelings and asking his advice. The letter, addressed to O.D.Y at the Union, duly came. It was a long epistle on paiderastia in modern times, defending it and laying down the principe that affection between people of the same sex is no less natural and rational than ordinary passionate relations. [This is all quoted from <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=K6EtGnZW6VAC&lpg=PA111&dq=Benson%20Ionica&pg=PA112#v=onepage&q=Benson%20Ionica&f=false" rel="nofollow"><br />Morris B. Kaplan, <em>Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times</em> (Cornell 2005), 111-12</a>]<br /><br />How does this inflect our reading of this poem? The cygnet is the beautiful object of desire; its parents, though, are violent and bitter in their protective instinct. The whole is a allegory for the sorts of boys who are schooled at Eton on the Thames, opposite Windsor, where the swans are numerous. The bridge mentioned is <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Eton+bridge&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=quAcU4PMJoyShQfjiIDIAQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1215&bih=595" rel="nofollow">this one</a>.<br />Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-41922705963175340912014-03-09T14:23:25.644-07:002014-03-09T14:23:25.644-07:00William Johnson Cory (1823-1892), born William Joh...William Johnson Cory (1823-1892), born William Johnson, was a much-praised tutor at Eton. Best known for the widely-anthologised 'Heraclitus' ("They told me Heraclitus, they told me you were dead") he wrote a great deal of Latin and English verse. 'Corey' was added after a scandal, homosexual in nature and concerning some of his boys ("He was forced to resign from Eton at Easter 1872 after an 'indiscreet letter' which Johnson had written to a pupil was intercepted by the parents and brought to the notice of the headmaster, who handled the matter poorly"). He moved away, changed his name by adding the 'Corey', lived in Madeira for a few years, married and had a son, finally settling in Hampstead in 1882. Adam Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.com