Efebos

"Efebos" (See also Ephebos) is a lost novel written by Karol Szymanowski, who is best known as a composer. During the difficult period of time around World War I and the Russian Revolution, Szymanowski's childhood home in what is now Ukraine was destroyed, and he found himself unable to compose. Instead, he explored religious and homosexual themes in this novel.

While the entirety of "Efebos" has been lost, its central argument has been preserved in a 150-page Russian translation made by the author as a gift to Boris Kochno in 1919. It was discovered among Kochno's papers in 1981 and has been published in a German translation as "Das Gastmahl: Ein Kapitel aus dem Roman Ephebos," Berlin, Verlag rosa Winkel, 1993.

The book explores ideas which Szymanowski expressed in his music, as well. The clearest affinities are to his opera "King Roger", which shares a setting in Sicily and similarly explores the "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" facets of faith.

Although Szymanowski expressed interest in seeing "Efebos" published, he wanted to wait until his mother died, presumably to spare her any potential feelings of embarrassment from the contents of the book. As it turned out, he predeceased her, dying in 1937. Iwaszkiewicz kept the manuscript, but it was destroyed in a fire in Warsaw, during the siege of that city in 1939.