Markýza Bella Patti – De Brioni (2020)

The erotic novella by Marquise Bella Patti surprises the modest reader with an adventurous story set in the charming coastal region of Italy, where on hot nights, the lovely marquise indulges in sinful pleasures with her friends. Especially with her companion Rita, she enjoys taking her yacht out to the turbulent sea, allowing her erotic fantasies to flow amidst the wild crashing of the waves. However, Patti becomes a victim of raw passion from an unexpected visitor – also a 'sailor' – in her villa, and she decides to mercilessly take revenge on him with her friend Rita... The feeling of humiliation and the desire for uncompromising retaliation become the main plot of the narrative, which retains to some extent the storyline of a traditional romantic tale with a happy ending, and which, due to its straightforwardness at the time of its publication, fulfilled the attributes of pornographic literature. The surprise of this story may not lie so much in its literary uniqueness, but rather in the fact that its publication – in such a bold form – was highly risky. International 'conventions on the dissemination of indecent publications' from 1910 and 1923 had already sought to intensively combat hard pornography, and this situation was further exacerbated during the protectorate, specifically in 1939, when this work saw the light of unconventional reading...