The Relic

The Relic (Portuguese: A Relíquia) is a novel written by the Portuguese writer José Maria de Eça de Queirós (1845-1900) and published in 1887. The most recent English translation, by Margaret Jull Costa, was first published in 1994, together with an Introduction by the translator. Background Eça de Queirós began work on The Relic in 1880. The book, containing many sacrilegious passages, with wry, ironic humour, was first published in 1887 in serial form in the Gazeta de Notícias of Rio de Janeiro and in book form shortly thereafter. The epigraph to the novel reads “Sobre a nudez da Verdade o manto diáfano da Fantasia” (Over the sturdy nakedness of truth, the diaphanous cloak of fantasy). These were the words engraved on the author's statue erected in Lisbon in 1903. The statue shows the author embracing “Truth”, a naked woman partly covered by a diaphanous cloth. The novel The Relic is narrated in the first person by the central character, Teodorico Raposo, an orphan at the age of seven, who is entrusted to the care of his aunt, Dona Patrocínia das Neves, who is very wealthy but obsessively devout. She expects Teodorico to live up to her pious and conservative standards. Teodorico realises that it's a good idea to stay in his aunt's good books with the hope of eventually inheriting her fortune, which she has planned to leave to the Church. As he gets older he becomes adept at organizing a double life; appearing obsessively devout to his aunt while leading a debauched life of drinking and meeting with Lisbon's prostitutes when out of her sight. Having learnt of the libertinism of Paris from a friend he has a great urge to travel there, but his aunt does not approve. Instead she agrees to send him to the Holy Land. All she asks is that he brings back a relic and he believes that if he accomplishes this then he'll be made her heir. Early on in the trip he finds a German travelling companion, the pedantic and parsimonious German academic Dr. Topsius, and in Alexandria has an entanglement with a British prostitute, who gives him her nightgown as a keepsake.