Read only a bit more of James's Aspern and am struck by how deftly he sets up the protagonist and his mission - he will do anything or so he says to gain access to Aspern's love letters , which will present him w a moral or ethical dilemma. He says he will if he has to "make love to the young lady" in his quaint and outmoded way of speaking and his friend who told him of the two women living in Venice and perhaps in possession of these valuable papers says to him something like wait till you see her. This is James's odd sense of romance and sexual dread at work. J cannot imagine a normal romance between these 2. For him as for his protagonist love is something to be endured to achieve another perhaps greater end in this case literary coup But for J maybe to achieve literary greatness It's obvious to contemp readers as it was perhaps not to earlier readers that J was a homosexual probably repressed - toiban's the master examined this very well - and we can think about J in relationship to Freudian theories abt repression but really I thin J gave up a parr of his emotionL life in order to devote himself fully to his art - and that is one part of what he explores in Aspern - the other part being how the devotion to art at all costs can be harmful or even ruinous to others.
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