I used to spend a lot of time in Italy. As an ex-pat in “the land where the lemon trees bloom,” I was naturally interested in literature written by notable ex-pats in history. I began with E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, and then a Penguin Classics edition of Goethe’s Italian Journey, translated by W.H. Auden, who also wrote the introduction. Other notable books included A Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann, Then and Now by Somerset Maugham, and The Memoirs of Hadrian, by Marguerite Yourcenar. All of these authors were drawn to Italy’s extraordinary beauty and high culture, and all (except for Goethe) were gay. My favorite place in Italy in the Island of Capri in the Bay of Naples. During the early 20th Century, it was home to wealthy ex-pats such as Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, who built the Villa Lysis, and Friedrich Alfred Krupp, who regularly spent about four months of the year at the Hotel Quisisana. Like me, they loved the extraordinary beauty of the place. Both men were hounded by scandal for their homosexuality, and both ultimately committed suicide.
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