of their form and diction. Though he was at first influenced by the school of Romanticism, and particularly by Spanish models, yet the plays written during his university life at Erlangen, Der gläserne Pantoffel, Der Schatz des Rhampsinit, Berengar, Treue um Treue, Der Turm mit sieben Pforten, show a clearness of plot and expression foreign to the Romantic style. His antagonism to the literature of his day became more and more pronounced, and he vented his indignation at the want of art shown by the later Romanticists, the inanity of the lyricists, and the bad taste of the so-called fate tragedies (Schicksalstragödien), in the witty “Aristophanic” comedies Die verhängnisvolle Gabel (1826) and Der romantische Oedipus (1828).
The want of interest, amounting even to hostility, with which Platen’s enthusiasm for the purity and dignity of poetry was received in many literary circles in Germany increased the poet’s indignation and disgust. In 1826 he visited Italy, which he henceforth made his home, living at Florence, Rome and Naples. His means were slender, but, though frequently necessitous, he felt happy in the life he had chosen, that of a “wandering rhapsodist.” Der romantische Oedipus earned for him the bitter enmity of Karl Immermann and Heinrich Heine, and in the literary feud which ensued Heine launched the most baseless calumnies at the poet, which had the effect of prejudicing public opinion against him. But he retained many stanch admirers, who delighted in the purity of the subject matter of his productions and their beauty of form and diction. In Naples, where he formed the friendship of August Kopisch, the poet and painter, were written his last drama Die Liga von Cambrai (1833) and the delightful epic fairy-tale Die Abbassiden (1830; 1834), besides numerous lyrical poems, odes and ballads. He also essayed historical work in a fragment, Geschichten des Königreichs Neapel (1838), without, however, achieving any marked success. In 1832 his father died, and after an absence of eight years Platen returned to Germany for a while, and in the winter of 1832–1833 lived at Munich, where he revised the first complete edition of his poems, Gedichte (1833). In the summer of 1834 he returned to Italy, and, after living in Florence and Naples, proceeded in 1835 to Sicily. Dread of the cholera, which was at that time very prevalent, induced him to move from place to place, and in November of that year he was taken ill at Syracuse, where he died on the 5th of December 1835. Like Heine himself, Platen failed in the drama, but his odes and sonnets, to which must be added his Polenlieder (1831), in which he gives vent to his warm sympathy for the Poles in their rising against the rule of the Tsar, are in language and metre so artistically finished as to rank among the best classical poems of modern times.
Platen’s Gesammelte Werke were first published in one volume in 1839 and have been frequently reprinted; a convenient edition is that edited by K. Goedeke in Cotta’s Bibliothek der Weltliteratur (4 vols., 1882). His Tagebuch (1796–1825), was published in its entirety by G. von Laubmann and L. von Scheffler (2 vols., 1896–1900). See J. Minckwitz, Graf Platen als Mensch und Dichter (1838); P Besson, Platen, étude biographique et littéraire (1894); O. Greulich, Platens Literaturkomödien (1901); A. Fries, Platen-Forschungen (1903); and R. Unger, Platen in seinem Verhältnis zu Goethe (1903).
PLATERSPIEL, Blaterpfeife, a medieval simplified bagpipe,
consisting of an insufflation tube, a bladder and a chaunter,
the double reed in its socket at the top of the chaunter
being concealed within the bladder. In the platerspiel we
recognise the early medieval chorus, a word which in medieval
Latin was frequently used also for the bagpipe. In the earlier
forms of platerspiels of which we possess illustrations, such as
the well known example of the 13th century reproduced by
Martin Gerbert from a MS. at St Blasius, the bladder is unusually
large, and the chaunter has, instead of a bell, the grotesque
head of an animal with gaping jaws. At first the chaunter
was a straight conical tube terminating in a bell, as in the
bagpipe The later instruments have a pipe of larger calibre
more or less curved and bent back as in the cromorne. One of
these appears in the 13th-century Spanish MS., known as the
Cantigas de Santa Maria[1] in the Escurial, together with a
platerspiel having two pipes, a chaunter and a drone side by
side. Another is figured by Virdung (1511).
There was practically no technical difference between the bent platerspiel and the cromorne, the only distinction being the form and size of the air-chamber in which the reed was set in vibration by the compressed air forced into it through the insufflation tube or the raised slit respectively of the two instruments. The earlier form of platerspiel is found at the end of the 15th century, in the magnificent Book of Hours, known as the Sforza Book[2] (Brit. Mus.). An interest in allusion to the platerspiel occurs in an old English ballad[3] Eight shepherds were playing on various instruments. "the fyrst hed ane drone bagpipe, the next hed ane pipe maid of ane bleddir and of ane reid, the thrid playit on ane trump, &c," from which it is evident that the platerspiel retained its individuality and did not become merged in the bagpipe. (K. S.)
PLATFORM (Fr. plateforme, i.e. ground plan), a word now generally confined to a raised flat structure or stage, temporary or permanent, erected in a building or in the open air, from which speeches, addresses, lectures, &c., can be delivered at a public or other meeting. Similar structures of wood, brick or stone, are used in railway stations at such a level above the rails as to enable passengers to have easy access to the carriages, and in fortification the word is used of the raised level surface on which guns are mounted. The earlier uses of the word, such as for a
plane geometrical figure, the ground plan of a building, and
figuratively, for a plan, design, scheme, &c., are now obsolete.
In a figurative sense the term is applied to a common basis on
which members of a political party may agree, and especially
in the United States to the declaration made by a party at a
national or state convention.
PLATINUM [symbol Pt, atomic weight 195·0 (O＝16)], a metallic chemical element. The name, derived from platina, the diminutive of Span. plata (silver), was first given to a mineral, platinum ore or native platinum, originally discovered in South America, from the resemblance to silver. Russia furnishes about 95% of the world’s annual supply of platinum.
Native platinum occurs usually in small metallic scales or flat grains, sometimes in the form of irregular nuggets, and occasionally, though rarely, in small crystals belonging to the cubic system. Grains of platinum have been found embedded, with chromite, in serpentine derived from an olivine-rock, the metal having probably separated out from an original basic magma. It is said to occur also in veins in syenitic and other rocks. Usually, however, platinum is found in detrital deposits, especially in auriferous sands, where it is associated with osmiridium (known also as iridosmine), chromite, magnetite, corundum, zircon, &c. The platinum has a steel grey or silver-white colour and a metallic lustre, is often magnetic, sometimes with polarity; has a hardness of about 4·5 and a specific gravity varying with its composition from 14 to 19. Native platinum usually contains more or less iron and copper, often gold, and invariably a small proportion of some of the allied metals—iridium, osmium, ruthenium, rhodium and palladium. From the associated metals it was named by J. F. L. Hausmann polyxene (Gr. πολύς, many, and ξένος, a guest), whilst from its occurrence as a white metal in auriferous alluvia it is sometimes known to miners as “white gold.”
Platina del Pinto was the name by which native platinum was first introduced into Europe from South America about the middle of the 18th century. Although it appears to have been known locally much earlier, the attention of scientific men in Europe was first directed to it by Antonio de Ulloa y Garcia de La Torre, a Spaniard who joined a French scientific expedition to Peru in 1735, and published in 1748 an account of his journey, in which he refers to platinum, though not under that name, as occurring with gold in New Granada (now Colombia). Sir William Watson, an English physicist, had, however, in 1741 received some grains of the mineral, probably from the
