The Poet: Antonio Botto
Born in Concavada, Portugal, in August of 1897, António Botto was one of Portugal’s first openly gay writers, a ‘poète maudit’, cursed poet, whose unapologetic and candid verses about homosexual life and passion were both praised and reviled.
Antonio Botto was born in a working class neighborhood, and lived by working a series of menial jobs. He was poorly educated, gaining most of his knowledge from the books in the bookshop where he clerked. In his mid-twenties, Botto entered civil service as a administrative clerk in the state’s offices. He worked briefly in Zaire and Angola, before returning to Lisbon in 1925, where he worked as a civil servant.
Botto’s first book of poems “Tovas” was published in 1917, followed by “Cantigas de Saudade” in 1918, “Cantares” in 1919 and “Cançōes do Sul” in 1920. Botta’s fourth book of poems, entitled “Cançōes (Songs)”. was first published in 1921 and was largely ignored until his friend, the poet Fernando Pessoa, published a second edition in 1922 under his own publishing company and publicly praised the work.
Conservatives reacted strongly against the poems and denounced them as ‘Sodom’s literature”, leading authorities to ban the book in 1923. This public scandal in the Lisbon society granted Botto a life-long notoriety. After the scandal subsided in 1924, the ban was lifted, enabling Botto to publish several revised editions of his “Cançōes “.
On November 9, 1942, Antonio Botto was expelled from the civil service for disobeying a superior’s orders; wooing a male co-worker, addressing him with ambiguous words with tendencies condemned by social morals; and for writing and reciting verses during working hours, thus disrupting workplace discipline. After this dismissal, Botto attempted to earn his livelihood by the royalties from his books, and writing articles and critiques in newspapers.
With little funds and deteriorating health from refusing treatment for syphilis, Antonio Botto raised funds through recitals for passage to Brazil in 1947. Well received upon arrival, he attended banquets and tributes throughout Brazil. He resided in Sāo Paulo until 1951, when he moved to Rio de Janeiro, surviving on royalties, writing articles and columns in Brazil’s newspapers, and doing radio shows; but gradually his situation deteriorated.
Rejected in his attempts for repatriation to his home country of Portugal, Botto fell seriously ill in 1956 and was hospitalized for a time. On March 4, 1959, he was run over by a motor vehicle, with the result of a broken skull, and went into a coma. Antonio Botto died on March 16, 1959. His remains were transferred to Lisbon and have been buried since 1966 in the Alto de Sāo João Cemetery.
In his writings, Botto’s poetic voice, personal and intimate, revels in eroticism while expressing the ache of longing, silence, and suffering. Gaining acclaim and notoriety, he was both hailed as one of the great Portuguese poets of his day and condemned for his frank depictions of male to male desire. Antonio Botto and his work fell into oblivion after his death in 1959. However, within the last ten years with the rising interest in gay history, his works, including biographies of his life, have been issued in new editions available both in Portuguese and English.