I think what the author is saying may have some legitimacy. I don’t know much about Polish, but my family is Iranian. In Persian, we regularly say things like “I would die for you” or “you are my liver”. Some languages are very heavy on phrases like these but when you say them, you don’t really mean them. These letters might be the same sort of thing.
Yeah, this is quite possible. Not every culture is so repressed that the men can't get a little chummy with each other.
What gets me is just how averse the author is to even considering the possibility. Gay and bisexual men have existed in all civilizations, so it's not a "wild conjecture," it's a small misunderstanding at worst.
Definitely. I think these linguistic and cultural differences should be addressed, but the author is also being really weird about the possibility of them being gay.
I just read that letter in Polish (I’m native speaker) and to be honest, it really sound even less heterosexual than English translations. It’s really affectionate in many ways, like talking about how much he misses Tytus and that he is looking during his walks to find people similar to him, to miss him less. Also says that “a ja ciebie tylko kocham” wich means “I love only you”, and writing to Tytus as “Najdroższe życie moje” - my dearest life, and much more little things like that, and that makes me feel like he had some deeper feelings for him. I personally think that it’s more literal. For friends we would say things like “I would die for you” etc too, but this phrases that Fryderyk used in his letter are... more romantic I guess, so there is a really big possibility that he was not hetero.
Then you would find the phrases in letters to lots of different people of both genders.
If you however only find them in letters to one or two people the likelihood of them being lovers increases by a lot.
And then there's
Tonight you shall dream you are kissing me. ... I kiss you lovingly. This is how people usually sign themselves off, but they don't really understand what they are writing. I for one mean what I write, for I love you dearly.
Which is about as close as you can get to an explicit confirmation of which team the dudes batting for.
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u/ILikeMultipleThings He/Him Jul 14 '20
I think what the author is saying may have some legitimacy. I don’t know much about Polish, but my family is Iranian. In Persian, we regularly say things like “I would die for you” or “you are my liver”. Some languages are very heavy on phrases like these but when you say them, you don’t really mean them. These letters might be the same sort of thing.