Antonio Botto
António Thomaz Botto (born August 17, 1897 in Casal de Concavada, Alvega , Abrantes district , Portugal ; † March 16, 1959 in Rio de Janeiro , Brazil ), also known as António Boto , was a Portuguese writer who was primarily a poet was active.
He became known as one of Fernando Pessoa's best friends and one of the few gay celebrities in Portugal alongside Raul Leal . With the volume of poetry " Canções " he triggered one of the greatest literary scandals in the history of Portugal.
Life
António Botto was born in Casal de Concavada, a hamlet that belongs to the municipality of Alvega, in the Abrantes district. His father was Francisco Thomaz Botto and his Maria Perez Aguada. Botto was baptized in the local church of São Pedro de Alvega. As a teenager he helped his father work as a river fisherman in the Tejo and was so inspired by the landscape that he wrote his first poems. His first volume of poetry was "Trovas", 1917. His most important, which made him known throughout Portugal and partly beyond the borders of the country, was "Canções" (1922).
In 1908 the family moved to Lisbon and lived in the Alfama district . As a young man, Botto initially hired himself as a bookseller in various Lisbon bookstores, from 1924 to 1942 he worked in the civil service , initially in Portuguese Africa, more precisely in Santo António de Zaire and today's capital of Angola , Luanda , between 1924 and 1925 and since Then in 1925 as a civil servant in Lisbon .
In 1942 he was finally discredited because of his homosexuality and dismissed from the civil service, after which he was more than badly afloat and in 1947 he moved to Brazil. From 1947 to 1951 he lived in São Paulo , then in Rio de Janeiro until his death in 1959. During this time he wrote articles in Portuguese and Brazilian newspapers and gave readings on the radio, which enabled an existence on the edge of poverty.
Botto was mainly active as a poet, but there is also a children's book and a play by him.
On March 16, 1959, he died on the Copacabana from the consequences of a car accident. In 1966 his bones were transferred to Portugal and have been on the Cemitério do Alto de São João in Lisbon ever since .
Botto's homosexuality and the Canções scandal
Only after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal did people begin to rediscover Botto's work and appreciate him accordingly. This culminated in the award of an António Botto Prize and the fact that the State Library of the City of Abrantes officially bears the name of the poet.
That was not always so. In order not to cause further anger and stir during the chaotic First Republic and the scandal with Canções , he lived as an alibi with Carminda Silva Rodrigues , but they only lived together and were not officially married. Botto suffered from syphilis , which often earned him hospital stays.
Before and after his scandal, Botto continued to write homosexual poetry, making him one of the most important gay poets on the Iberian Peninsula , along with Luis Cernuda . Canções ( songs or chants ), however, became his beacon: the work was confiscated from bookstores after publication and was banned and remained so until after the Carnation Revolution; the author was pursued by the state and in early 1923 various works by homosexual Portuguese authors such as Botto, Raul Leal, Judite Teixeira and Augusto Ferreira Gomes were burned in Lisbon . To support his good friend, the writer Fernando Pessoa wrote his famous polemic “Antonio Botto and the Aesthetic Principle in Portugal”, which was also published in a magazine. Numerous national and international authors became aware of the work and the persecution of his author and supported him, among them world-famous authors such as Virginia Woolf , Stefan Zweig , Rudyard Kipling , Luigi Pirandello , James Joyce and Federico García Lorca . Only because of the intervention of international authors, Botto was spared physical persecution, but not from observations by the PIDE , which ultimately culminated in his dismissal from civil service in 1942.
Content sings Botto in the Canções especially young men, the beauty of the male body, the male-male friendship and create a universe of homosexual dreams. Botto became one of the most important homosexual poets of the 20th century.
In 1933 the Canções were translated into English by Pessoa, but it was not until 1948 that a private print was published in the United Kingdom , and it was not until 1997 that the poems were also translated into German.
Work (selection)
Poetry
- Trovas , 1917.
- Cantiga de Saudade , 1918.
- Coracoes do Sul , 1920.
- Canções , 1922 (translated in 1948 into English and 1997 into German, published in 1997 as "Canções - Lieder" by Elfenbein Verlag , ISBN 978-3-932245-05-3 )
- Curiosidades de Estetica , 1924.
- Olimpiadas , 1927.
- Dandismo , 1928.
- Fatima-Poema do Mundo , 1955.
Play
- Alfama , 1933.
Children's book
- O livro das criancas , 1931.
Web links
- Literature by and about António Botto in the catalog of the German National Library
- biografia.inf.br. (Portuguese)
- elfenbeinverlag.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ kunst.freepage.de Retrieved on June 3, 2012.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Botto, Antonio |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Botto, António Thomaz (full name); Boto, Antonio |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Portuguese lyric poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 17th August 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Casal de Concavada, Alvega |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 16, 1959 |
| Place of death | Rio de Janeiro |