ABSTRACT

224The writings of Al Berto (1948–1997), variously acclaimed and decried for their illumination of a sexually dissident or ‘queer’ identity in modern Portugal, are also significant for their contributions to both the literary re-conception of national identity and to renewed debate about aesthetics and the purposes of literature in the post-dictatorship era. They do not merely challenge Salazarism’s patriarchal, imperialist, and ‘heteronormative’ model of a national ethos through their sometimes candid, sometimes covert representation of homoerotism. They also emphasize how the formation of literary and cultural canons that serve to regulate national identities is a dynamic, cosmopolitan affair, involving translation across perceived boundaries between ethnic or linguistic traditions, and between ‘high art’ and popular culture. ‘Truque do pêssego’ illustrates several of Al Berto’s key preoccupations, using an account of how erotic desire spurs literary creativity to articulate an identity at once specifically homosexual and specifically Portuguese, while also affirming the importance both of the erotic in poetry, and of poetry itself in attempts to come to terms with existential anxiety.