Carina Ulrika Gröner

The novella "Die Liebe des Plato" (1869) by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is a short narration about male freindship and the difficulties of intellectual relationships between men and women. However, this reading only covers the surface of this text. By taking into account the paratexts of the novella, such as the motto and the dedication, and the intertextual relation to Platon`s Symposion we discover a hidden reading, that decodes the text as a story about homosexuality. Around 1900 homosexuality was a taboo; it was seen as a sexual perversion and considered to be some kind of illness of the body, that could eventually be cured by hot and cold contrast baths or other therapies. So this topic could only be raised in an encoded layer of the text, that was hidden for all but those who knew about the necessary intertextual relations to reconnect the hidden layer of the text to the male body.