The relationship between H.P Lovecraft and the author of The Hermaphrodite, Samuel Loveman, was a subtle display of H. P.’s ability to pick and choose which characteristics of an individual’s personhood to center, and which to discard. Samuel Loveman was a Jewish American poet, critic, dramatist, and a homosexual who was said to have cohabitated with men often cited as “friends”’ up until the time of his death. Lovecraft and Loveman’s friendship was largely centered around their creative works and the symbiotic benefits within the literary world the two shared with one another.
Among Samuel Loveman’s best-known works is the sprawling, epic poem The Hermaphrodite, in which Loveman writes from the perspective of an unknown narrator only addressed as “brother of mine” being visited by Hermaphrodite in what feels like a dream in the middle of the night. The narrator is largely sympathetic to the plights Hermaphrodite discloses he has suffered, often anticipating a shift toward more positive, grand things coming in the story that unfortunately never comes. The Hermaphrodite as written by Samuel Loveman is a beautiful and painfully accurate depiction of what it is to exist born as someone innately confusing and “other” than those around you, both the awe and the agony. What it is to be born as a marginalized person who is simultaneously coveted and rejected by society at large, which I am sure Samuel Loveman must have related to as a Jewish homosexual among peers that rejected both of these parts of his personhood in order to view him as more human.
H.P Lovecraft sung his praises for The Hermaphrodite, writing in a letter:
I’m glad you’ve sent for “The Hermaphrodite”, which is the most purely classical poem written in this generation. Loveman is an authentic genius, & has kept the Hellenic (or perhaps I should say Hellenistic) spirit more perfectly than anyone else I know of. He belongs vividly & definitely to the colourful civilisation of Alexandria & Antioch.
H. P. Lovecraft to Donald Wandrei, 11 Jan 1927, Letters with Donald and Howard Wandrei and to Emil Petaja 31
It doesn’t particularly shock me that Lovecraft saw this poem for what it was, a stunning work of art that rivaled Homer and Theocritus, as the poem does end with this abnormal specter of humanity deciding that its best for him to turn to stone and leave the others for good. What startles me about Lovecraft’s involvement with this work of Loveman’s is not his praise of it, but his willingness to spread this work to other authors who very well could have come to the opposite understanding and sought to immerse themselves in the history of Hermaphrodite even further. With how paranoid Lovecraft seemed to be for much of his life about the spread of agendas he saw as harmful, I’m shocked that this wouldn’t extend to what art he shares with his peers depending on what message it might include.
As a writer who is both Black, disabled, trans, intersex and a few other things that are considered marginalized identities, The Hermaphrodite is wildly impactful when it comes to describing the experience of simultaneous desire and devaluing and how confusing and impossible that is to navigate. When Hermaphrodite initially appears to the narrator in this dream, he is said to have winged eyeliner and red lips, the color of fire, with breasts and pale skin. There are many implications throughout the poem of paleness being directly associated with cleanliness, godliness, purity, which is a motif that so many white American and non-American authors and poets and scholars employed in their writing, that I find it unimportant to focus too deeply on. This association with paleness and purity and godliness is one that was enforced in us through the arts, our education, religion and much more, but it is not the central point in the tale, nor does it change the way that people receive Hermaphrodite in any significant way.
The tale that Hermaphrodite tells the narrator first is one where he is accepted into a township, not told to leave, but the energy among everyone shifts so coldly due to assumptions that nobody would even dare to address directly with him. Not only was Hermaphrodite viewed as a bad entity to have around, but also a symbol of further evils to come—Hermaphrodite could not bear this mockery in spite of being “accepted” so he left. This is directly relatable to me as a Black transmasculine intersex person who finds conditional acceptance in many places, the condition being that of accepting that others will speak of my existence as one of potential disorder and disruption. The agonizing choice of deciding to choose loneliness against conditional acceptance.
Hermaphrodite continues on, and a tale is told of famine except for in the vineyards where the grapes burst freely with wine and in this space everyone drunk with wine he allowed himself to let his guard down and be free and laugh and cry with the others as they did. Though, in the morning, as “beauty and lust were made visible” in the night, those who drank were considered to be defiled because of what they saw. Some continued to drink, but this time in silence so they did not attract the attention of those who had not imbibed, but this was not enough, and Hermaphrodite still witnessed the murder and crucifixion of many of his brothers. He recounts the experience of seeing the deaths, the bodies of his brothers slain, and discovering that many had escaped leaving him “to oblivion.”
When Hermaphrodite says this, the narrator rejects it vehemently, insisting that it was a mistake or perhaps that they saw someone like Hermaphrodite “fearless and good, They swept him recreant from their sight”—getting rid of what they saw in front of them that they could not understand, even though he loved them like a brother and they had drank and laughed and cried together. Loveman was close friends with another homosexual American poet, Hart Crane, who he supported and in the end was a primary influence in Crane deciding against suicide. From this knowledge coupled with the sympathetic and hopeful tone of the narrator, we can conclude that Loveman felt a kinship with those of us considered too different to function in this society. Hermaphrodite recounts the tale of his birth, being told “Thou shalt appear in many places, Love, shalt thou love, but not fair faces,” outlining the prophetic vision that Hermaphrodite is capable of love, but it will not be returned in equal measure, doomed to a life of half-acceptance.
Hermaphrodite recounts being brought back into the light and returning to a city again where people crowd him and swoon at his beauty, hailing him as a picture of youth. They declare him a new god that can grant others immortality, and from his heart gushed wine and everyone was happy. The narrator is gleeful at this tale, saying that they know in their gut that Hermaphrodite came forth to liberate them, as everyone yearned for his touch and for his drink. This is the illusion of desire as acceptance. Just because they see Hermaphrodite at this time he has brought riches and beauty to them, doesn’t mean that this condition will stay, that the desire will stay present as a positive force.
At night, Hermaphrodite’s slain friends came to him in a dream, declaring that Hermaphrodite will not find rest there, as immortality is a promise to being alone forever. This dream puts him into a state of shock, feeling frozen like stone, unable to stir when the people lift their hands up in thirst to him. Hermaphrodite is soon after declared evil, though, beautiful and tender, but must be destroyed. The narrator laments how painful it must be to suffer the same thing twice, and again, attempts to reassure Hermaphrodite that this won’t be his perpetual experience.
Hermaphrodite meets someone who tells him to “Be frozen,” and “be marble and be free, Save in thine antique agony”—as a plea to Hermaphrodite to end the pain by ending the cycle of devaluing and veneration that breaks and confuses him so deeply. In the end, he accepts this condition of life where he can fade into the spirit of the world, to be both alive and not, accepting this death as the ultimate choice of his own, instead of the choice of the world. Hermaphrodite experiences the shock of being allowed to indulge in both the horrors of manhood (i.e. war, loss) and the splendors of womanhood (veneration, protection, indulgence), but is not allowed to exist in either space more than transiently, and there is no direction toward what place he would be allowed to exist in more than temporarily. Loveman was drafted in World War I and was not happy about it, a poet of somewhat delicate sensibilities, this gives him insight into the things that are expected of men and echoes of this sentiment are heard throughout this work.
That is the painful purgatory that comes with being intersex, that differs from the matter of being trans. There is no clear transition space that exists when you were born existing in a nebulous state that nobody can clearly define to begin with. So we are just shuffled into the junk drawer of life, as that is easier than examining what it means to have a gender, to be a man, or a woman, or neither or both.
The culmination of Hermaphrodite’s lonely travels through Greece is that Hermaphrodite cannot exist in the world as it is, as he is, so the only way to exist is in dreams and in marble figures left to time, which will lose the colors they have been brightly painted becoming blank and pale, to become a symbol. I relate this condition of life to another phenomenon coined called “social death” which refers to the condition of people not accepted as fully human by wider society. As a Black, disabled intersex person, I feel I exist in a state of premature social death, where I have not yet found a way to fully integrate myself into society because I am not seen as fully human to others because I cannot be categorized and boxed into the neat and orderly boxes that we as humans have created for ourselves so that we can feel in control.
Intersex existence is seen as a deviation from nature, and thus a deviation from order—a sign of the destruction of the structures that have kept us thriving as people. In reality, the true sign of destruction and what holds us back as a society from further thriving is no longer pretending that intersex existence is an unknown that should spur fear.
Samuel Loveman learned after H. P. Lovecraft’s death, that he was a very avid antisemite, and claimed he burned his letters in a scathing essay titled “Of Gold and Sawdust” where he repudiated their friendship, though did make it clear that Lovecraft was “however, loyal in his appreciation of me as a poet.” This reaction to the confirmed understanding that Loveman was only conditionally accepted by his friend Lovecraft, along with the intensely sympathetic narration of The Hermaphrodite, tells me that Loveman didn’t agree with conditional acceptance, and would despise the way that intersex erasure is still propagated constantly to this very day.
The Hermaphrodite is an unfortunately beautiful and tragic show of how little our perception and treatment of intersex people has changed throughout time, and a passionate plea to allow individuals like Hermaphrodite to love, live, experience joy, sorrow and to be lost among the rest who are lost, too.
The Hermaphrodite: A Poem can be read for free online at the Brown Digital Repository.
Salem Void (He/Him) is a man-shaped biomechanical bear that can be “found” in the swamplands of Virginia writing speculative fiction, queer + trans nonfiction, weird dark horror, and more. He hopes his work can be both the salt and the salve on your wounds.
He can be found @thewarmvoid on all socials, as well as Patreon + Substack.
Copyright 2023 Salem Void.
Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 