Luís Maria de Carvalho Saavedra Donas Boto

Camilo C. Branco, who met him in Coimbra in 1846, «a fifth-year student and almost old», dedicates a chapter to him in Cancioneiro Alegre de Poetas Portugueses e Brasileiros, vol. II – from which we learn that in 1828 he was a liberal and emigrated, and that, having returned from France with a doctorate «in I don't know what», he completed his bachelor's degree in Medicine in Coimbra, after which he retired to his estate in Ervedosa do Douro. Also through Camilo, we know that in 1862 he published in Porto a long Poema Socialista e Outras Peças de Poesia, which would provoke «a confederation of general hatreds» in the city. This poor reception of the work was due, according to Camilo, to a misunderstanding generated by the word Socialista, which, at the time and in Porto, had the most negative connotations. Donas Boto's work «[...] did not attack the queen, nor Rua das Flores, nor the Cabrais. It told the life of his heart and was called Lísias in the epic». The qualities that distinguish the poem – the irony bordering on sarcasm and the satanic facet – place him, still in Camilo's opinion, among the precursors of Baudelaire and, on the other hand, as one of the first apostles of the realist school. Formally, it is also worth noting the great lexical richness and the «geometric and implacable rectitude of judgment» with which he classified society, customs, prevailing structures, and hierarchies.