Prince of Taormina

"Dear Wilhelm,

It was on November 3d, 1899... I was sailing from Alexandria to Marseille. I stayed for a few days in Palermo, and I visited you in Taormina, in your alchemist's palace, Piazza San Domenico... You allowed me to look at your recent photographs, and I felt in love with a portrait, with a boy...

It was on November 3d, as your stamp testifies, "W. v. Gloeden Kunstverlag, Deponirt 3 Nov. 1899, Taormina Sicilia". 

He is the Prince of Taormina, he is the most beautiful and noble of its blossoming boys... He is the most splendid of Taormina's ephebes, it seems he just escaped from the Parthenon's frieze, where he was celebrating, with the Athenian youth, the festival of his homeland, of Athena, the Panathenaics... I recognized him on the marble frieze of the immortal young horsemen, at the British Museum...

Wilhelm, my friend, how could anyone fall in love with a marble boy, with a photograph ?

Philip, you should tell me, what is love ? Are we supposed to love the beauty of a body, the beauty of a soul ?

Wilhelm, my friend, your photographs display both, beauty of bodies leads the viewer to the beauty of souls... You are, I am a Platonician... I am in love with a photograph, a shade, a reflection, and I am lead toward the idea of beauty...

I love this boy, because everything in him is inspiring me, is talking to me... I love the melancholy of his gaze, the white strip crossing his black hairs, I love his closed lips, enclosing his breath and his voice, his beardless cheeks, his smooth and muscular chest...

I would love so much to tell him... I would love so much... I would love so much to tell him...

Will he ever know, this boy I never met, will he ever know that his beauty makes me dream, dreams of love and of tender words, dreams of confidence and silent gazes, where my eyes would dive into his eyes... 

Will he ever know, my Prince of Taormina, that I am talking with him in my dreams and that I am writing for him poems he will never read ?

Wilhelm, my friend, your photographs make me dream about boys I never met...

I love to look at the reverse side of my photograph, to look through the paper at the light of a lamp... I can see the face of my loved one, of my boy friend, of my Prince of Taormina... I look at him as a reflection fading away, among the shades of time... A photograph is useless when the face is engraved in my heart...

Your friend, comme toujours,

Philip

Von Gloeden Archive, Letter from Philip X to W. von Gloeden, call number 1899/11/20/15.