António Patrício: a versão demoníaca de Eros

In the wake of Les fleurs du mal, the fin de siècle literature incorporates into the ethos of eroticism a demonic vision of divinity confrontation. The work of António Patrício is on the boundary between the presence of God and the confrontation with 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 for the divine. Paradoxically, if the desire to be like God is the desire to attain the absolute, on the human scale one can only secure this through death: «Nothing can we call our own but death».