Roman d’un Inverti
1889
Anonymous
Paris : Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle
Italian
Memoir
75pp (2008)
Gay Men, Queer Experience, Queer Theory
Open Access
Isn’t pleasure everything here below? And doesn’t it justify everything? What do we demand of life if not pleasure? And when we have it, what do we want more of? Ah! How foolish I was to have despaired! But now, how I’ve made up for lost time. [...] As for me, such as I was born, I will live, and as such I will die.
Summary
aka Novel of an Invert. After sending an epistolary summary of his life to Émile Zola to be made into a character, a gay man discovers that Zola has instead given his 1889 confessions to a sexologist to publish in 1896. Emboldened, the anonymous man then writes a joyous, flippant update to describe his loves and affirm his right to love other men.
More Info
Also see:
"A propor du Roman d'un Inverti et de quelques travaux récents sur l'Inversion Sexuelle" (1895) by Marc-André Raffalovich. The Italian Invert's update responds to Raffalovich's criticism and other sexual theories, particularly jibing at Raffalovich's belief that homosexuals who attempt bisexuality are more "corrupted" than a heterosexual who attempts the same. See quotes here with my inane screaming.
"The Novel of an Invert - unique testimony of gay life in late nineteenth century Italy" (2016) by Michael D. Rosenfeld.
Additonal essays by Rosenfeld in French at Academia.
Content & Trigger Warnings
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Editions
Paris: Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle (1896)
University of Nebraska Press (2008) in Queer Lives: Men’s Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France as Novel of an Invert. Translated by William A. Peniston and Nancy Erber. (ISBN: 978-0803260368)
Paris : Les Nouvelles Éditions Jean-Michel Place (2017) as Confessions d’un homosexuel à Émile Zola. Première édition non censurée du « roman d’un inverti ». Edited by Michael D. Rosenfeld. Unexpurgated. (ISBN: 9782376280033)
Columbia University Press (2022) as The Italian Invert. A Gay Man’s Intimate Confessions to Émile Zola. Edited by Michael D. Rosenfeld and William A. Peniston, translated by Nancy Erber. Unexpurgated. (ISBN: 978-0231204897)