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-In Memory of Philip Brett
THERE ARE VERY FEW WAYS to describe male-male intimacy, even in an age of increased openness about questions of sexuality. Friend- ships are often misunderstood, not because they harbor an erotic va- lence but because that valence is often used to explain homoeroticism, as if that were enough to give meaning to those friendships. In 1580, Montaigne articulated the concept of loving-friendship between men as a "perfect union and congruity": "In the friendship which I am talking about, souls are mingled and confounded in so universal a blending that they efface the seam which joins them together so that it cannot be found. If you press me to say why I loved him, I feel that it cannot be expressed except by replying: 'Because it was him: because it was me.'" Although Montaigne distinguishes this model of loving-friendship from pederasty, he connects it to something closer to what we would think of as marriage: "For the perfect friendship I am talking about is indivisible: each gives himself so entirely to his friend that he has noth- ing left to share with another". [I]n this friendship love takes posses- sion of the soul and reigns there with full sovereign sway." This intense intimacy, which might suggest something less erotic than conjugal, signals a kind of friendship that shares features with other forms of intimacy but distinguishes itself, at the same time, from those forms with a distinctiveness that this article will try to describe.1
E. M. Forster's interest in this topic is clear from the many novels in which he addresses the question of male friendship. Early in The Longest Journey, Forster's second novel, Rickie Elliot is discussing with his Cambridge friend Stewart Ansell the nature of male friendship. It is a familiar and much-discussed passage, but it is nonetheless rich and suggestive. Here is that passage once again:
[Rickie] was thinking of the irony of friendship-so strong it is, and so fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part in the open stream. Nature has no use for us: she has cut her stuff differently. Dutiful sons, loving husbands, responsible fathers-these are what she wants, and if we are friends it must be in our spare time....