Antínoo – o último mito/realidade do paganismo – e Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa’s narrative English poem Antinous has been usually understood as an attempt at a homoerotic exorcism, built around that boy from Bithynia, but a deeper analysis reveals the overwhelming and commanding presence of Hadrian’s powerful personality. This influence, also felt by the poet in his own life – so his diaries appear to suggest – is justifiable by the Emperor’s role in the amazing process of the divinization of such unpretentious boy, and his immortalization in the western culture; but there seems to be more
to it. In fact, several features of the Emperor’s personality might have attracted Pessoa, namely his immense curiosity towards astrology and mysteric cults, his filohelenism, his grasp of all areas of knowledge, including Art and Literature, and even, if not above all, his complexity, his certainty of being superior to his contemporaries, and the desire of controlling the image of himself he would leave to posterity, and, of course, his homosexuality, which Pessoa turns into an absolute and exclusive choice.