Judite Teixeira

Judite dos Reis Ramos Teixeira , best known under the name Judith Teixeira , (born January 25, 1880 in Viseu , † May 17, 1959 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese poet and writer . Her best-known work, Decadência , was indexed and burned by the republican national government in 1923 due to its homoerotic content after a campaign by the right-wing extremist student association Liga de Acção dos Estudantes de Lisboa .

Life

Judith Teixeira was born as Judith do Carmo on January 25, 1880 in the northern Portuguese city of Viseu , her mother's name was Maria do Carmo. Her baptism took place on February 1, 1880 in the city's cathedral .

In 1907 she was adopted by the soldier Francisco dos Reis Ramos, whereupon she took his name. At the time she was living alone in Lisbon, at 70 Rua do Archo do Carvalhão. She later married the merchant Jaime Levy Azancot, although the marriage ended in divorce in 1913 after Teixeira was accused of adultery and leaving the house. On April 22, 1914, in the village of Buscão, she married the 26-year-old lawyer and industrialist Álvaro Virgílio de Franco Teixeira, the maternal grandson of the 1st Visconde of Falcarreira. She also took his last name.

Teixeira published her works exclusively between 1922 and 1927, historically in the time of the first Portuguese republic . Because of the lesbian theme of some of her poems, she was exposed to strong criticism from the national conservative press, her writings were labeled as "sexual disgrace" and "unworthy writing". In the pro-fascist magazine “Ordem Nova”, Marcelo Caetano , later president of the Portuguese dictatorship, described the author for her book Decadência in 1926 as “a shame” and congratulated herself on the indexing and burning of the work in 1923. Together with the book Decadência were the works Canções (by António Botto ) and Sodoma Divinizada (by Raul Leal ) were also burned.

In 1925 she founded the magazine Europa , of which three issues (April, May, June) appeared.

Little is known about the last thirty years of her life, except that she owned an antique shop. She died on May 17, 1959 at the age of 79. At the time she was living in Lisbon, at Praceta Padre Francisco 3, in the Campo de Ourique district . She died a widow, without descendants, goods and wills.

reception

Aquilino Ribeiro received Teixeira for the first time, in 1923 he called her a "valuable poet" ( poetisa de valor ) In 1927, José Régio wrote that all of Judith Teixeira's books were not even worth a song by António Bottos . In 1937, João Gaspar Simões paid tribute to the poet's bravery, even if she had "no talent". António Manuel Couto Viana called Judith Teixeira the “only modernist poet” in Portugal in 1977, he wrote: “Separating a lot of wheat from the chaff, I think that they [the works of Teixeira] deserve more luck than the silence and ignorance with which they have previously punished were."

Works

None of the works has been translated into German.

• Decadência. Poemas (1923)
• Castelo de Sombras. Poemas (1923)
• Well. Poemas de Bizâncio (1926)
• De Mim. Conferência (1926)
• Satânia. Novelas (1927)

literature

• Andreia Boia: Que o desejo me desça ao corpo. Judith Teixeira ea literatura sáfica , Master's thesis at the Faculdade de Letras of the University of Porto, Porto 2013.

Web links

• Poems by Judite Teixeira (Portuguese)
• Further biographical data (Portuguese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The biographical data come from the work: Judite Teixeira: Poemas (1923)
2. ↑ "A moral no teatro. O que diz o escritor Aquilino Ribeiro", Diário de Lisboa , July 20, 1923, p. 4
3. ↑ José Régio , "Literatura viva", Presença , nº 1, March 10, 1927, p. 2.
4. ↑ João Gaspar Simões , "Os livros da semana", em "Suplemento Literário" do Diário de Lisboa , January 29, 1937, p. 4
5. ↑ António Manuel Couto Viana, in Coração Arquivista , Lisboa, Verbo, 1977, pp. 198-208.