Novel
Pasión y muerte del cura Deusto
Not translated into English
Augusto d'Halmar · 1924
Opening lines
Cuando los dos sacerdotes asomaron a la plaza, los monaguillos que jugaban levantaron la cabeza para mirarlos, y, reconociendo al Provisor del Arzobispado, se preguntaron quién podía ser el personaje eclesiástico que éste se habia dignado conducir hasta el pórtico del palacio.
When the two priests came out into the square, the altar boys who were playing raised their heads to look at them and, recognising the Provisor of the Archbishopric, wondered who the churchman might be whom he had deigned to escort as far as the portico of the palace.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
The novel, in three parts, Albus, Rubrus and Violaceus, follows Deusto, a Basque priest appointed to the Sevillian parish of San Juan de la Palma. There he meets Pedro Miguel, known as the Aceitunita, a young Gypsy attached to his service as an altar boy. A spiritual friendship grows between them, slipping from Christian sublimation towards a restrained eroticism; according to Gonzalo Drago, cited by Memoria Chilena, the affection is suggested through conversations, remarks and attitudes rather than declared.
Context
According to Memoria Chilena, the author wrote the novel in Seville from January to September 1920; the book appeared in 1924 and is said to be the first novel from Hispanic America to deal with homosexuality, something critics long refused to see. In 1937, D'Halmar wrote to his publisher, Carlos George Nascimento, that the book, well received in Spain, had hardly reached Chile. Rarely reissued, according to El Desconcierto, it received a critical edition by Daniel Balderston and Daniela Buksdorf, published in Santiago in 2023.
Who it is for
A novel in a highly wrought prose, in which the essential is said by allusion; no translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
For the critic Jorge Marchant, in 1985, a work that covers ground rarely explored by Chilean literature.
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