“Prior to the reprint of 1862, l’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola [Alcibiades the Schoolboy] was one of the most difficult books even to see, let alone to obtain. We knew of only a very small number of the two original editions, both dated 1652.¹ Four were in public libraries – in Dresden, in Grenoble, in the Bibliothèque Imperiale and in the British Museum. We have no information from Grenoble or Dresden, but the British Museum’s copy has been lost, and the copy in the Bibliothèque Imperiale has been placed in ‘Hell’ – the most dreadful fate which can befall a book -, where it cannot be read, examined, or even touched. M. Micharda said once to enquirers: ‘We have only opened Hell to 2 people – to M. Michelet, for his Histoire de la Révolution, and Doctor ****, for his Études sur la folie.’”
¹ Livro até então apócrifo ou atribuído aos nomes errados.
“The reprint of 1862, of 102 copies, was able to make this extraordinary book better known to bibliophiles who understood Italian, but the magistracy did not show itself disposed to extend to this language the indulgence shown to Latin. The reprinted Alcibiade was the subject of a condemnation imposed in May 1963.
Undaunted by this precedent, we have published a new edition intended, by the number of copies and the price – like the earlier reprint –, for bibliophiles and scholars who, in our opinion and like philosophers and priests, are entitled to read everything. Omnia pura puris [Aos puros tudo é puro].
This, we repeat, is our opinion, and it is a conviction so well founded that all the magistracies in the world will not shake it. Apart from anything else, it is noteworthy that shortly before the condemnation of the book 2 scholars made it the object of – or used it as the pretext for – 2 extremely interesting dissertations on the vice against Nature – and one can read these, just as one can read Alicbiade, without in the slightest degree turning into a pederast – or even Tartuffe, or his sort.
The first of these dissertations, published under the title Un point curieux des moeurs de la Grèce, was by M. Octave Delepierre, Belgian author, literary scholar and secretary of the legation of the consul-general of Belgium in London. Curieux is the right word! In his work, Delepierre rebutted the strange opinion of the famous German archaeologist Welcker, who asserted ‘that pederasty in Greece served to strengthen the bonds of friendship, that this vice, indeed, was not the result of a deviant sensuality, but an elevated principle of the theory of beauty’. We do not advise M. Welcker, famous though he is, to cross the Rhine and publish a French translation of his dissertation, since he would risk presenting the spectacle of a worthy and learned man awaiting a fine or prison.
This same man also represented Sappho as a person of pure morals.¹ We are, we see, dealing with a capricious scholar, one with a romantic and mystic spirit – a type common enough even in this country, where we have seen the rehabilitation of Marie Stuart, the madam of Longueville, of Marie Antoinette, and of other pitiable creatures. But, in his German fashion, Welcker roots his beliefs in an even more ancient and recondite cult; while Cousin made the madam of Longueville into a ‘landlady’, he would never have made Sappho into an hotelier. To go back to Alcibiade – from the quotation included by the author in his dissertation, it was said that the author of this dialogue had treated the question of pederasty ‘according to the ideas of the most respected Greek philosophers’.”
¹ Sappho von einem herrschended Vorurtheil befreit (Safo liberta de um preconceito dominante), 1861, 2a ed. 1855.
“The other dissertation was translated from the Italian of Giamb. Baseggio by Gustave Brunet, librarian of the city of Bordeaux, and accompanied by notes and a detailed bibliography.” “Le Manuel de librarie wrongly attributed to M. Girol Adda the honour of having, in 1859, discovered that the author of Alcibiade was Ferrante Pallavicini. This honour reverted to M. Bassegio, (SIC) who in 1850 published his Disquisizone”¹
¹ E no entanto tudo isto está errado: hoje a historiografia atribui a autoria a Antonio Rocco!
“Ferrante was a member of l’Academia degl’Incogniti, and reputed author of Suzanna, Taliclea, Rete di Vulcano, Corriere svaligiato, Divorzio celeste and La Rettorica della Putane.
“For information on Pallavicini, we can consult Moreri, Bayle, Chauffepié and Prosper Marchand. This author, to some a libertarian and to others a libertine, was beheaded at Avignon in 1644, aged barely 26, a victim of the spite of the Barberini.¹ His tragic ends did not prevent friends who were admirers of his works and faithful to his beliefs – Ureporio Leti among others – arranging reprints, in Geneva, of his most liberal works, those most hostile to Rome, works such as the Corriere, Divorzio celeste, Rettorica della Putane. And the format, the paper and the typography of the 1st edition of Alciabede (SIC) pointed to the Libraire Stoer, of Geneva. Admittedly, the book carried the date of 1652, and Léti (SIC) did not go to Geneva until 1660, but dates are often altered in publications of this kind.”
¹ Não se trata de uma censura direta a suas obras de cunho erótico e tabuístico, mas ao próprio Papa Urbano VIII, a quem atacou em panfletos.
“Baseggio [wrongly] answered that (…) Pallavicini’s purpose was writing a satire directed at the educationalists who were then in public favour in Venice. (…) The warmth, the passion, the conviction that dominate the book from beginning to end seem to us quite foreign to a work of irony. A French erotic writer would write more coolly, more allusively – might indeed be shocked and repelled by such overt passion – but an Italian would show precisely this kind of warmth and enthusiasm. Pallavinci (SIC!!!), however, cannot be any more supposed a pederast than Pidanzat de Mairobert can be considered a lesbian for l’Apologie de la secte anandryne, published in l’Espoin anglais. It must me taken, then, that Alcibiade is the fantasy of a fine and free spirit immersed in classical study. (…) At the time of Pallavicini, let it be said, a work of this kind from the pen of an Italian writer was no more extraordinary than an erotic romance from a 13th century French writer. And if the author was also a pamphleteer, he would flaunt precisely those elements which today would be hidden with great care. According to Vincent Placcuis, the friends of Ferrante denied that he was the author of Diverzio celeste, (SIC!) but had no difficulty in acknowledging that he was the author of Rettorica della Putane, ‘because the morals of Italians accord well with one, and their superstition and their politics accord badly with the other’.
We have said that Gustave Brunet added an appendix to Baseggio’s dissertation. It dealt with several writings similar to Alcibiade, with works of Pallivicini (SIC!!!) and of his colleagues in the (sic) l’Academia des Ingognitie (DOUBLE SIC!!), with the legal status of the vice against Nature from antiquity to the present day, and ended with a list of more-or-less famous pederasts of more recent times. The list included both self-aknowledged and suspected pederasts. Among the first group were Théodore de Bèze and Louis XIII; among the second were Henry III, Lully, d’Assoucy [poeta], the Compte de Sintzendorff, the Marquis of Vilette, Peter the Great and Friedrich II.(*)(**)
(*) And in the XVI lived the most famous of all, Shakespeare.
(**) Les Matinées du Roi de Prusse”
“Pederasty is like cholera, in that it appears sporadically almost everywhere, and from time to time breaks out more violently, in an epidemic. The fears of Fréderic II about the Prussian army could also apply to the French army of today which, over the past few years, sadly appears also to have some of the ‘regiments of Uncle Henry’. In the last session of the Senate, the outspoken Marquis de Boissy, without beating about the bush, expressed fears about the invasion of our regiments by ‘Arab morals’, and indeed, a terrible outbreak of pederasty seems today to be the only trophy of the war of Africa, just like smallpox was that of the Italian wars of the XVI, at least if one believes Voltaire’s epigram about it”
“Escapees from Sodom: We know that the biblical fire did not destroy all the inhabitants of that vile city. Spread now over all the earth, they have made Paris into a ruin; here, in particular, they are repeatedly the cause of some filthy discovery or another. In the past 15 days we have seen too much of one affair of this kind, and the problem is now one of considerable proportions. M. Gàstagnary has tried to speak of it in his chronicle of Parisian events in the Progrès de Lyon. We copy the reserve he had to adopt in referring to the matter, but it is not as recent as he believes. It dates back for several months; if we talk about it today, it is because the affair has necessitated an enquiry among several corps of soldiers, and it has not been possible to cover the inquiry with silence, as the police manage to do in other similar cases.”
Petite Revue
(*) “We read in the personal correspondence of the Army in Egypt, ‘The Arabs and the Mamelouks have treated several of our prisoners in the way that Socrates, it is said, treated Alcibiades.’” Ensinaram-lhes filosofia?!
(*) “The pederastic epidemic inflicted itself on us in the XVII at the court of Louis XVI (See La France devenue italienne, a book that was reprinted following l’Histoire amoureuse des Gaules, by Bussy-Rabutin) (…) We know that this city (Paris is a police headquarters; in consequence, there are public places authorised for this purpose. [Paris, sempre a vanguard!] The young men who are destined for the profession are carefully classified, because the regulatory system extends even to that. They are examined; those who are beautiful, rosy, well made, chubby, are reserved for the great lords, bishops and financiers, who pay very dearly for them. Those who are deprived of their testicles, or those who are said (because our language is more chaste than our morals) not to have weavers’ weights, but who give and receive, form the 2nd class; they are still expensive, because woman can also use them while they serve men. Those who are not capable of erection because of overuse – whether or not they have all the organs necessary to please – make up the third class. But those who preside over these pleasures first confirm their impotence. In order to do so they are placed, naked, on a mattress whose lower half is open; two women caress them to the best of their ability, during which a third, with fresh nettles, knocks gently on the seat of their sexual desires. After a quarter of an hour of these attempts, a long unripe pear is introduced into the anus, causing a considerable irritation, and fine mustard of Caedebec is put on the rash induced by the nettles; the glans is also rubbed with camphor. Those who resist all these stimuli and give no sign of erection are engaged for 1/3 of pay only. (Erotika Biblion, chap. Kadhésch, p. 93-ss., Bruxelles, 1886, with notes by the Chevalier Pierrugues.) (N.E.: This is probably nonsense from beginning to end, but the public was as credulous then on such matters as they are now. But the curse has never had the extent and the expansion and intensity which we witness in modern society, and where one can say that it has been democratised. See the Études sur les attentats aux moeurs du Dr. Trdieu, 3ed., Paris, 1859). But let us cease to review these nauseating texts; let us go out and buy a bottle of disinfectant. [aaah, vai dizer que você não curte, monsieur? Conta outra!]”
“Several corps of soldiers! That is in all the documents”
Bruxelas, 1891
“AO LEITOR
Os filósofos da Antiguidade, quando ensinavam literatura, inculcavam seus conhecimentos nos alunos pelo buraco de seus traseiros [HAHAHA!]. Assumiam que, mediante este método, não teriam como não se tornar completamente eruditos; que por essa via, no devido tempo, absorveriam todo o conhecimento de seus mestres.
Ó, que esses vícios se tivessem consumido nos tempos gregos! Ao contrário: atingiram seu clímax nas escolas de nosso tempo.
Atingimos o ponto em que nossas escolas podem ser consideradas teatros da infâmia e da vergonha, um repositório de todos os vícios; nossos mestres-escola prosseguiram com o método antigo de ensinar. Se você é conhecedor desta matéria, é provável que já tenha ouvido como alguns desses professores, em seu ardor para infundir conhecimento ao alunado, chegaram a ferir seus ânuses!
Portanto, sua leitura de Alcibíades, o Estudante ensiná-lo-á que, para aperfeiçoar nossos escolares, temos de retirá-los das mãos desses mestres de Sodoma – e de seu feliz vício.”
Poxa, fiquei com vontade de ler esse livro-tabu, mas não consigo encontrá-lo!
“AOS PROFESSORES
Ah, professores maus, eu sei de suas tramas,
E de suas manhas, dos seus jogos com seus belos,
Fingindo que latim e gramática, soma e subtração
Chegam aos miolos partindo das nádegas!
É só nos cus que vocês põem os olhos,
Não têm prazer em bocetas, ou em seios e mamilos!
Nenhuma mulher pode seduzi-los nem dar-lhes prazer,
Mas vocês fodem garotinhos com todo seu poder!
Pederasta patife!, com lamentos miseráveis,
Já que agora todos seus pecados são por mim narrados,
Desistam de seus vícios, arrependam-se destas artes!
Encerrem de uma vez a vilania – cortem seus paus!
Até que, se um pirralho malcriado mostrar-lhes o bumbum,
Vocês só possam suspirar tristonhos, e seguir adiante.
M.V.”
“NOTA DO EDITOR
[ih, rapaz, tá se justificando muito já, esse trem tá suspeito!]
Esse fragmento caiu por acidente em minhas mãos, e eu julguei de suficiente interesse, caro leitor, a fim de imprimir e trazê-lo a público. Use esta obra para vigiar seus filhos pequenos e salvá-los da perniciosa influência de professores malvados, essa corja detestável tão comum no presente.
Prometo publicar em breve a segunda parte, que aparecerá intitulada O Triunfo de Alcibíades, um trabalho que despertará ainda maiores interesses, uma vez que deriva da pena de um dos homens mais sábios de nosso país. Sempre à vossa graça.”
Seclusão Anagógica 