Un año en la Arcadia

This book is a small treasure of European gay literature that was forgotten for almost two centuries. It has been said that it is an unusual book written by an even more unusual character. Published anonymously as early as 1805, its author was Duke Augustus of Saxe-Gotha, who ruled one of the petty dukedoms that turned the territory that is now Germany into an intricate multicolored puzzle of tiny independent states. Duke Augustus loved to shock the prudish society of the early 19th century by showing up at receptions dressed as a woman and wearing makeup. This is the only published work of his. Set in the mythical happy Arcadia of classical Greece, "A Year in Arcadia" is a pastoral fable that recounts the amorous vicissitudes of several shepherd couples who fall in love and live happily ever after after overcoming the obstacles they face to consummate his love. In that utopian society, between flocks of sheep and songs, heterosexual and homosexual relationships are equally possible and accepted, so that among these couples, the most important, the one that serves as a link between the different stories, is the one formed by two boys: the beautiful Julanthiscos, who burns with love for the even more beautiful and haughty Alexis, another young man who seems to ignore him. Will he be able to conquer it? Will he manage to overcome the arrogance of his beloved and be rewarded for his constancy and fidelity? Both nature and the gods seem to align themselves to help the beautiful lover conquer the haughty object of his desire. Considered one of the first homoerotic works published in Europe, this book was able to see the light because in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, utopias of male love were socially and morally acceptable if they were masked in settings of ancient Greece. classical, although some of his contemporaries considered that, even so, the work exceeded the acceptable limits. Until now it had never been translated into Spanish.