António Patrício: The demonic version of Eros

Abstract

In the wake of Les Fleurs du mal, the fin de siècle literature incorporates into the ethos of eroticism a demonic vision of the divinity confrontation. The work of António Patrício situates itself in the boundary between the presence of God and the confrontation of God, which is the other possible side of seduction. In D. João e a máscara, this confrontation with divinity is revealed in the close relation that exists between death and eroticism. Aspiring to eternity is a way of craving the divinity. Paradoxically, if the desire to be like God is a desire to attain the absolute, in the human scale one can only secure it through death: “Nothing can we call our own but death”.