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After presenting the Greek and Roman thinkers of Antiquity, Aristotle, Ovid, Homer, Petronius, Euripides, Virgil, and Sophocles, we return to Classicism, highlighting the most important writers of the movement, starting with Camões.
Luís Vaz de Camões (c. 1524/25 – 1580) was the first great Portuguese poet and writer. He lived during Portugal's Age of Discovery, author of the Portuguese national epic, The Lusiads (1572), which describes the discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, a text that is read by most Portuguese at school. He was also a playwright and prolific lyric poet. Luís de Camões' skill has already been compared to names like Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri.
Much of the information about his childhood is disputed. He was a noble gentleman, son of an adventurer, Simão Vaz de Camões, descended from a noble but impoverished family of Galician origin established in Portugal at the end of the 14th century, because of the civil wars that devastated Castile. He was also related to the explorer Vasco da Gama, whose heroic journey to India he would sing about in The Lusiads.
Canto I
The weapons and Barons marked
That of the Western Lusitania beach
Through seas never before sailed
They passed even beyond Taprobana,
In dangers and wars striven
More than human strength promised,
And among remote people they built
New Kingdom, which sublimated so much;
(…)
His father died during a trip to India shortly after his birth. Camões would be educated in monasteries and in Coimbra, Portugal's main university. In 1543, after completing his studies, he entered the royal court of Lisbon and was banished from it in 1548 for falling in love with a lady-in-waiting of the queen. He was also exiled for an insulting characterization of the king depicted in one of his plays.
The little information about Camões, in a strictly biographical sense, is divided into three categories:
Statements by his first biographers in the 17th century
Documents unearthed in the 19th century and little subsequent investigation
Very abstract allusions, in his works, about his life
Camões was an extremely sensitive man who had to overcome challenges due to his impulsive nature. He faced poverty on more than one occasion and these experiences served as inspiration for the creation of his work, between drama, history and comedy through poetry and theater. When, in 1527, the King of Portugal, D. João III, moved to Coimbra to escape an epidemic in Lisbon, the Camões followed suit by permanently changing their residence.
(...)
Canto II
Already at this time the lucid Planet
That the hours of the day are distinguishing,
It reached the desired and slow goal,
The heavenly light to the people hiding;
And from the secret sea house there was the God
Night the door opening,
When the unfaithful people arrived
The ships, which had little left, anchored.
(...)
Education
Historians cannot guarantee with certainty what type of education Camões received, as proven data about him is scarce. However, around the age of twelve, he was educated by his uncle Bento, who sent him to Coimbra to study. Most scholars agree that Coimbra was the place where he received his academic training. He also studied at the convent of Santa Maria.
Portuguese tradition says that, despite being quite undisciplined, he was particularly interested in history, geography, and literature. It is also estimated that he studied theology and philosophy at the University of Coimbra, based on the type of education that a young man in his class received at that time, the place where he lived, and the type of knowledge reflected in his work.
At the age of twenty he was already known as a very restless and enthusiastic young man who wrote poems to attract women. During this time, he had many affairs and frequented taverns. In his latest biographies, several women are mentioned as love affairs. One of them was Infanta Dona Maria, the King's sister, which led him to spend some time in prison.
After completing his studies, around 1543, he left for Lisbon and entered court circles as a protégé of the great nobility D. Francisco de Noronha, Count of Linhares. He became friends with Don Antonio, the count's son, and acted as his tutor. A thick web of legend obscures these years of Camões's life, but it is certain that he chose a military career (a vocation very suitable for an impoverished nobility).
(…)
Canto III
NOW you, Calliope, teach me
What the illustrious Gama told the King;
Inspires immortal singing and divine voice
In this mortal chest, which loves you so much.
Thus, the clear inventor of Medicine,
Whose Orpheus did you give birth to, O beautiful Lady,
Never by Daphne, Clície or Leucotoe,
Deny you the love due, however it sounds.
(…)
In 1546, Camões was banished from Lisbon, supposedly because of his forbidden love for Catarina de Ataíde, a court lady (celebrated in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning), presumably the Natercia of his poems, or, even less likely, because of an indiscreet allusion to the king in El-Rei Seleuco. Upon returning to Lisbon, he soon found himself in trouble because of a fight with a member of the king's household. He was arrested but released from prison on the promise that he would serve in the Portuguese colonies in Asia. For two years, from 1547, Camões did military service in Ceuta, the Moroccan scene of the first Portuguese overseas victory in 1415.
Military life
His father's death left the Camões family with a modest social condition and full of debts, which perhaps was the trigger for the young poet to enlist as a soldier in the king's service and thus earn merit for his military services. It can be deduced that he was for some time in North Africa, in the garrison of Ceuta, the most important Portuguese commercial center and military post and the Moroccan scene of the first Portuguese overseas victory in 1415. There, he probably lost his right eye in a skirmish with the Moors.
In 1549, at the age of twenty-five, he returned to Lisbon, but four years later he was arrested after a fight with Gonzalo Borges, an official at the Portuguese court. For this incident, he remained behind bars for a year. D. João III granted him a pardon in 1553. The pardon suggests that Camões would go to India in the king's service, but none of his adventures were documented. He was certainly there, judging by the references in his works that reveal an intimate knowledge of the region's social conditions.
In 1553, he left for India aboard the São Bento boat from Fernão Álvares Cabral's fleet. He stopped at places where Vasco da Gama sailed, including the Cape of Good Hope. He spent the next seventeen years in exile from Lisbon, serving in Goa (India) and Macau (China), where tradition has it that he began writing The Lusiads.
(…)
Canto IV
AFTER a raging storm,
Night shadow and whistling wind,
Bring the morning serene clarity,
Hope for port and rescue;
The sun separates the black darkness,
Removing fear of thought:
So, in the Strong Kingdom it happened
After King Ferdinand passed away.
(…)
The evidence gathered from his poetry seems to indicate that, during his time in the East, he participated in naval expeditions, fought battles, was arrested and survived shipwrecks. His survival of the shipwreck in the Mekong Delta (Vietnam) is reinforced by the legendary detail that he managed to swim to shore while holding aloft the manuscript of his still unfinished epic.
In September 1553, after a six-month journey aboard the São Bento, he arrived in Goa, the commercial and military capital of Portuguese India. But he did not stay there long; in November he joined Viceroy Menezes in a punitive expedition against the Pepper King in Malabar. The viceroy led his forces to success. Later, Camões wrote in his Elegy VI, "With death, with fires we punish them".
In February 1554 he began a new expedition, this time under the command of the viceroy's son, Dom Fernando de Menezes. The armada sailed to the gates of the Red Sea and then sailed up the Arabian coast. Camões commemorated the trip in his Song VIII. The expedition returned to Goa in November. When the new viceroy, Francisco Barreto, was invested in Goa in June 1555, Camões contributed to the festivities with his Auto de Filodemo and the Satire of the Tournament.
He certainly did not make a fortune there, as in his poetry he often complains about the bad luck and injustices he encountered. While in the East he took part in one or two military naval expeditions. It can be assumed that his years in the East were like those of thousands of Portuguese spread at that time from Africa to Japan, whose survival and fortune, as he says, were always hanging on the tenuous thread of divine.
(…)
Canto V
THESE sentences such the honorable old man
He was vociferating when we opened
The wings to the serene and peaceful
Wind, and from the beloved port we departed.
And, as is already customary at sea,
The sail unfurling, the sky we hurt,
Saying:- «Have a good trip!»; then the wind
On the trunks he made the used movement.
(…)
In 1558, he was in Macau, where he was responsible for the goods in China of his deceased or absent compatriots. There he began, or continued, to write The Lusiads (it is impossible to indicate the exact date of the beginning of the poem). Tradition says that he wrote in a cave that to this day bears his name. But he was soon accused of mismanagement and put on board a ship bound for Goa.
He was arrested upon returning to Goa in 1561. After many accidents he accompanied his friend Pedro Barreto, the new governor of Mozambique. His luck in Mozambique deteriorated and over the two years he was almost destitute. The historian Diogo de Couto, chief guard of the Tombo Tower of Goa, who visited him there, says that his friends had to give him food. With the help of Couto and others, however, he managed to board the Santa Clara in November 1569, finally heading home. He arrived in Portugal on April 7, 1570, after an absence of seventeen years. Two years later he published The Lusiads.
It is from this period that the first document related to the poet survives - the Letter of Pardon to Luís de Camões, issued by the king and dated Lisbon, March 7, 1553. According to this document, although extremely poor, Camões was a gentleman of the house real. The document also reports that in 1552, on the feast of Corpus Christi (June 16), Camões inflicted a sword wound on a royal servant and was arrested. The servant, however, ended up forgiving him, the letter represents the real ratification of forgiveness.
(…)
Canto VI
It did not know how to celebrate
The Pagan King the strong sailors,
So that friendships reach
From the Christian King, from such powerful people.
It weighs him down that he retired so far away
From Europe's abundant lands
The fortune that did not make us a neighbor
(…)
The letter also states that Camões was about to leave for India. In the last of four letters written from India, Camões reported that he left his homeland without regret; Once aboard the ship, he quoted the Roman general Scipio Africanus: "Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea" (Ingrateful homeland, you will not possess my bones). He described his life in Lisbon as "three thousand [days] of evil tongues, worst tensions, damned desires, born of pure envy".
In reward for his poem or perhaps for his services in Asia, King Sebastian (1557 to 1578) granted him a small royal pension. Tradition has it that, despite his pension, Camões died carelessly in a poorhouse in Lisbon – a fate that the American writer Herman Melville recalled in poetry three centuries later.
Camões did not accumulate any fortune; all he had was the manuscript of his epic poem, which he intended to publish. As Lisbon was still in the grip of the plague, circumstances in Portugal were not propitious. But he pressed on, and on September 24, 1571, he obtained royal license to print the poem.
Published in 1572, immediate success. Sebastian, the young king of Portugal, tacitly recognized it as the national epic. In 1580, two different Spanish translations of the poem were printed.
The poetry of Luís de Camões
It is not known where and how he acquired the encyclopedic knowledge that his work presents. It is also not known which of the two editions of The Luisiads from 1572 is the authentic one, or which could be the definitive version of his lyrical production, since the volume with his rhymes was stolen and published posthumously, which is why successive editors they were unable to agree on the number and authorship of some of his lyrical pieces.
(…)
Canto VII
They were already close to land
That already desired by so many outside,
That between the Indica currents ends
And the Ganges, which lives in the earthly Heaven.
Well sus, strong people, that in war
Do you want to take the winning palm:
You are already close; you are already in front of
The land of abundant riches!
(…)
But what is truly essential is his splendid poem in octaves in which echoes of Homer, Virgil, Dante and the Italian poet Ariosto are perceived, but which emerges with a surprising discovery: despite trying to praise the exploits of Vasco da Gama, his likely ancestor, the poet superimposes the collective hero on the individual and sings an authentic national love song in which history, politics, erudition, various axes of the plot wisely managed between the real and the fantastic, the mythical and the historical and space games /tempores of absolute novelty for the time with the use of a language that ranges from classic to modern and from cult to popular without losing conceptual solidity or stylistic grace.
Camões was also an intense lyrical poet who, inspired by the Renaissance searches arising from his readings of Petrarca and Garcilaso, a Spanish Renaissance poet, known for having introduced Italian poetic forms into Spanish literature, always aligned himself with the strong subjectivities of Horace and Ovid, which he reveals to have known very well, renews these classicist positions and moves towards Mannerism and sometimes even towards the announcement of the Baroque thanks to the constant use of paradoxes.
From a thematic point of view, his lyrics investigate the conflict between the Neoplatonic ideal of spiritual love and enthusiastic, sensual love, as well as the longing for losses of all kinds and their effects on human feelings.
(…)
Canto VIII
In the first figure there was
The Catual who had seen it painted,
That for currency a branch in his hand he had,
The white beard, long and combed.
Who was he and why did he suit him?
The currency in your hand?
Paulo responds, whose discreet voice
The wise Mauritanian interprets it:
(…)
From a formal point of view, their perfection and simplicity are remarkable, through which we enter a territory where life experience enriches literary influences and offers us a poetry that still disturbs today after so many centuries, how could these translations to demonstrate.
Creator of the classical Portuguese language, Camões gained increasingly greater recognition and prestige from the 16th century onwards. His verses are still alive in several films, songs, and scripts.
In his dramatic works he sought to combine national and classical trends. In the comedy Anfitriões (“The Two Hosts”), an adaptation of the Amphitrião, a comedy in five acts and a prologue, written by the Italian Plautus, he accentuated the comic aspect of the Amphitrião myth; in the comedy El-rei Seleuco, he reduced the situation found in Plutarch to pure farce and in Filodemus he developed the auto, a kind of morality play, which Gil Vicente had already popularized.
(…)
Canto IX
They spent a long time in the city,
Without selling itself, the farm is owned by the two overseers,
May the Infidels, through cunning and falsehood,
They make sure merchants do not buy it from them;
May all your purpose and will
It was to stop the discoverers there
From India so long ago they came
From Mecca the ships, may yours be broken up.
(…)
Camões seems to have considered comedy unimportant, as a mere curiosity and a recreation to which he could only give transient attention. However, by imposing classical restraint on the Vincentian auto, by increasing the importance of the plot, by transferring the comic element of the characters to the action, and by refining the farce, Camões indicated a possible means of rejuvenating 16th-century comedy in Portugal.
Later playwrights, unfortunately, were unable to follow the example he had set. Drama, however, is the least important aspect of Camões's poetry. It was his epic and his lyrics, among which are some of the most beautiful ever written, that made him one of the greatest poets of 16th-century Europe and gave him an enduring claim to fame.
Main characteristics of your literary style
His texts are marked by influences from classical writers (Greek and Roman) and Italian Humanism. The literary baggage left behind by the writer is of inestimable literary value. He wrote lyrical and epic poetry, plays and sonnets. Most of his texts and poems are true works of art, marked by great creativity and fall into what is called Travel Literature, with an appreciation of Portugal's maritime discoveries and conquests.
(…)
Canto X
But already the clear amateur from Larisseia
Adulteress bent the animals
There is the large lake that surrounds
Temistitão, in the western ends;
The great ardor of the Favónio Sun slows down
With the breath that in natural tanks
The calm water ripples and wakes up
Os lírios e jasmins, que a calma agrava,
(…)
In addition to the presence of heroic and jingoistic feelings (pride for the country), his poems are influenced by reading writers from Classical Antiquity such as Homer and Virgil.
The glorification of heroic achievements is present in his work, from his point of view and that of the Portuguese of the period, of the navigators of the kingdom of Portugal. Vasco da Gama to the Indies (1497-1498). The navigator is exalted as being the ideal representative of the Portuguese people. Camões also values the expansion of Catholicism in the context of maritime conquests.
A grandiose literary style (refined expressions and pompous words), great realism of descriptions, the presence of critical vision, especially in the final part of The Lusiads and the use of technical knowledge and geographical and historical information are present in his work.
The work of Luís de Camões
Camões lived at the end of the European Renaissance, the beginning of the Modern Age and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It was a time when intellectualism and scientific research began to emerge after the great navigations, with the growth of many branches of knowledge. His writing was strongly influenced by his travels through the Portuguese empire.
His work can be divided into three genres: lyrical, epic, and theatrical. The lyrical work was one of the most popular, with its chants being the main form of division in the long medieval and modern poetry. His work was filled with numerous sources from Greco-Roman mythology, ancient and modern European history, and classical literature, particularly Homer and Virgil.
In their efforts to discover who inspired most of Camões's lyrical poems, critics have made, on very scant grounds, several contradictory suggestions about women who may have figured in the poet's life. But the true muse, if the poet had one, remains an enigma. It should also not be forgotten that Camões himself said in one of his sonnets, “in various flames it burned in different ways.”
The first edition of Rimas de Camões (Camões rhymes) was published in 1595, fifteen years after his death. The editor, Fernão Rodrigues Lobo Soropita, exercised scrupulous care in choosing the manuscripts with poems from the songbooks, even so he could not avoid the inclusion of some apocryphal poems. The growing fame of Camões's epic during the early 17th century also brought fame to the letters, and in the 17th century many efforts, not all of them commendable, were made to unearth more poems.
Apocryphal poems
Camões exchanged the vanity and superficiality of court life for the difficulties of a soldier's life in Africa and India. The exchange immensely enriched his poetry, as he no longer had to conform to the standards of brevity required in court circles.
More importantly, so profound was the anguish he experienced because of his exile and the trials he went through in the East, that his restlessness became an integral part of his being, allowing him to surrender to “anxiety fraught with loneliness,” a new and convincing tone, unique in Portuguese literature. His best poems vibrate with the unmistakable note of genuine suffering and profound sincerity of feeling that places him far above the other poets of his time.
Although the songs and elegies show the poet's full power, the redondilhas should not be underestimated. In them Camões was inimitable. He rejuvenated the ancient art of glossing by the apparent spontaneity and simplicity, by the delicate irony and piquant phraseology of his verses, and thus raised courtly grace in poetry to its highest level. These poems also show a Camões who knew how to be happy and carefree.
The Lusiads
The Lusiads is considered Camões's masterpiece is a Portuguese epic poem. The title comes from the word lusíada, which means “Portuguese” and is in turn derived from the ancient Roman name of Portugal, Lusitania. The work exalts the glorious deeds of the Portuguese and their victories over the enemies of Christianity: victories not only over men, but also over the forces of nature motivated by the enemy gods of classical mythology.
The Lusiads was also considered the first notable poetic apology for global and Imperial European mercantilism. Camões built his poem celebrating the drama and glories of Portuguese history around the stages of Vasco da Gama's journey. One of the most effective characters in this historical poem is Adamastor, the monstrous Spirit of the Cape who awaits the Portuguese sailors. The figure of Adamastor underwent varied interpretations and adaptations. He was transformed, especially in Southern Africa, into the sinister symbol of Europe's own perfidy, treachery, and violence in Africa.
The courage and enterprise of Portuguese explorers inspired the idea of a national epic during the 15th century, but it was up to Camões, in the 16th century, to put it into practice. It is impossible to say with certainty when he decided to do so or when he began writing his epic.
The poem is divided into ten songs, totaling 1,102 stanzas (group of verses within a poem) with almost 9,000 verses. The poem was written in the decasyllabic ottava rhyme with the ABABABCC rhyme scheme.
The four main sections:
Introduction – also known as a proposition, which introduces the theme and heroes of the poem
Invocation – a prayer to the Tagides, the nymphs of the Tagus
Dedication – a dedication to Sebastião de Portugal, who disappeared in the Battle of Alcácer Quibir
Narration – is the epic itself that begins in stanza 19 of Canto I. The narration then ends with an apologue in stanza 145 of Canto X.
After an introduction, an invocation, and a dedication to D. Sebastião, the action begins, both historical and mythological. Vasco da Gama's ships are already on their way to the Indian Ocean, sailing along the coast of East Africa. The gods of Olympus meet to discuss the fate of the expedition, favored by Venus, and attacked by Bacch.
The travelers spend several days in Malindi, on the east coast of Africa, and at the king's request, Vasco da Gama recounts the entire history of Portugal from its origins to the beginning of his great journey (Cantos III, IV and V). These songs contain some of the poem's most beautiful passages: the murder of Inês de Castro, which becomes a symbol of death for love; the Battle of Aljubarrota; the vision of D. Manuel I; the description of Saint Elmo's fire and the waterspout; and the story of Adamastor, the giant of classical descent who, like the Cape of Good Hope, tells Vasco da Gama that he will lie in wait to destroy the fleets returning from India.
When they reembark, the poet takes advantage of his leisure time on board to narrate the story of the Twelve of England (Canto VI, 43–69). However, Bacchus, always willing to impede the progress of the Portuguese in the East, convenes a council of the sea gods and incites them to organize the sinking of the Portuguese fleet and is prevented by Venus (Canto VI, 85-91), and Vasco da Gama manages to reach Calicut (Kozhikode, now in the state of Kerala, southwest India) at the end of his journey.
There his brother, Paulo da Gama, receives the king's representative on board and explains the meaning of the characters portrayed on the standards that adorn the captain's ship (Cantos VII and VIII). On the return journey, the sailors find the island that Venus created for them and the nymphs rewarding them for their work. One of the nymphs sings of the future deeds of the Portuguese (Cantos IX and home). and the animation ends with a description of the universe made by Tethys and Vasco da Gama, after which the sailors embark again, and the nymphs accompany them on their journey home.
Camões achieved an exquisite harmony between classical learning and practical experience, delicate perception and superb artistic skill, expressing through them the gravity of thought and the finest human emotions.
The epic was his eulogy for the “dangerous life” and was a stern warning to Christian monarchs, who, wasting their time in petty fights, were unable to unite against the invading conquests of Islam in southeastern Europe.
The poem's realistic descriptions of sensual encounters, battles, storms, and other natural phenomena transcend the thrust of classical allusions that permeate the work and contribute to the poem's lofty yet flowing style. The Lusíads reveals a surprising mastery of language and variety of styles and provides a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary man and poet.
Beyond Portugal
Luís de Camões' success went beyond Portugal, even in non-Portuguese-speaking countries, but mainly after his death. Cervantes even stated that Camões was the “singer of Western civilization”. He influenced the work of John Milton, and Sir Richard Burton considered him a master.
His fame first spread to Spain, where two of his translations of The Lusiads appeared in 1580, the year of his death. The work was also translated into English in 1655 and into Italian in 1658. However, it became more famous in England about a century later, with the publication of William Julius Mickle's poetic version in 1776. Camões only arrived in France at the beginning of the 18th century, with a translation by Castera. The first of many English translations, Richard Fanshaw's The Lusiads, or Portugals Historical Poem, was published in 1655.
Death
Often misunderstood by society, Camões even complained, in his verses, about the little recognition he received during his lifetime. He died in Lisbon, on June 10, 1580, at the age of fifty-six years old and on the eve of the annexation of Portugal to Spain. The pension granted to him by his king did not prevent him from dying in extreme poverty, far from the luxuries of the Portuguese court or the environment corresponding to his military life.
Camões' remains were buried near the Santa Ana convent in Lisbon, but their exact location was lost after the 1755 earthquake. In 1988, Portugal and Brazil agreed to create a literary prize named after him. His work remains in the taste of specialized readers and critics five hundred years after its creation.
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