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Plot / Content: The story of a wealthy, married aristocrat who is attracted to teenage boys, in particular, Eugénio, a sixteen-year-old seller of lottery tickets, whom the Baron instals in an apartment. Trouble ensues as the Baron increasingly brings Eugénio into his own household, as Eugénio has affairs with young women, and as the Baron's acquaintances become increasingly aware of his predilections. (The cover of this edition is misleading in that it suggests the subject is paedophilia rather than ephebophilia.) O Barão de Lavos, which has little development of plot and long passages describing characters, places and states of mind, is remarkably explicit when compared to English-language fiction of the period. (See extract above; elsewhere the author refers to the "acid drops of lymphatic fluid which spurted over his lips [... which were] something pure, transcendental, sacred".) Like many other works of fiction and non-fiction that covered sexual matters in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, its prurient tone was fascinated by the sentiments and activities it described. At times oppressive in its lengthy descriptions, the novel provides a fascinating glimpse into Lisbon life towards the end of the nineteenth-century, depicting relations between and among the wealthy and impoverished, men and women and the cultured classes. It was also the first in a series of "Social Pathology" novels that Botelho wrote to describe the general ills that he considered were plaguing Portugal, particularly the capital. According to the short Wikipedia article (in Portuguese) on O Barão de Lavos, the story was inspired by a scandal in the 1880s involving the Marquis de Valada. (The article gives a more detailed description of the plot, including its ending.) Background / Biography:
There does not appear to be information online to confirm Botelho's sexuality. None of his other works covered sex between men. Reviews: Gay books in Portuguese from Brazil / livros gueis do Brasil here Arbery Books also sells secondhand and rare non-gay fiction and non-fiction. Click here for our full list. |
"A plenitude de vida, a arrogância genital, a evolução orgânica ao máximo, próprias dos 32 anos, mantinham no barão ainda fortes e dominantes as tendêncies naturais da virilidade. Ele tinha por enquanto junto do efebo os mesmos apetites de penetração e de posse que o homen sente de ordinário para com a mulher. Todavia, em raros momentos de vertigem, ao contacto da sua carne com aqueloutra virilidade impetuosa e fresca, percorria-lhe os músculos, fugidio, breve, um movimento efeminado; faiscava-lhe no espírito uma pregustação de prazer que tivesse por base a passividade, o abandono; entrava de supurar-lhe da vontade uma solicitação em escorço de se entregar, de ser possuído, gozado, de ser femeado em suma. O que era, a um tempo, corolário do seu temperamento, e sinal patognómico do finalizar duma raça inútil, do agonizar duma família que vinha assim desfazer-se, podre das últimas aberraçães e das últimas baixezas, na pessoa do seu representante derradeiro. The fullness of life, the arrogance of the genitals and the evolution of the organs to the highest degree, all appropriate to his 32 years, maintained the baron's natural tendency to a strong and dominant virility. He had the same desire to penetrate and possess the adolescent that men usually feel for women. Nonetheless, in rare moments of vertigo, when his flesh came into contact with that other, impetuous, young virility, a fleeting, rapid, effeminate movement ran through his muscles; his spirit was sparked by the anticipation of a pleasure which at base was passivity, abandonment; a sudden entreaty to be possessed, enjoyed, to be made a woman, would begin to fester within him. Which was, at one time, a consequence of his temperament and symptomatic of the end of a useless race, of the affliction of a family which came undone in this way, the rot of the last aberration and the last vileness, in the person of its final descendant." p 92 Secondhand booksellers |
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