The Portuguese epic, the Lusiad, so-called from Lusitania, the Latin name
for Portugal, was written by Luis de Camoens.
He was born in Lisbon in 1524, lost his father by shipwreck in infancy,
and was educated by his mother at the University of Coimbra. On leaving
the university he appeared at court, where his graces of person and mind
soon rendered him a favorite. Here a love affair with the Donna Catarina
de Atayde, whom the king also loved, caused his banishment to Santarem. At
this place he began the Lusiad, and continued it on the expedition against
the Moors in Africa sent out by John III., an expedition on which he
displayed much valor and lost an eye. He was recalled to court, but
jealousies soon drove him thence to India, whither he sailed in 1553,
exclaiming, "Ungrateful country, thou shall not possess my bones." In
India his bravery and accomplishments won him friends, but his imprudences
soon caused his exile to China, where he accumulated a small fortune and
finished his poem. Happier circumstances permitted him to return to Goa;
but on the way the ship laden with his fortune sank, and he escaped,
saving only his poem. After sixteen years of misfortune abroad, Camoens
returned to Lisbon in 1569. The pestilence that was then raging delayed
the publication of the Lusiad until 1572. The poem received little
attention; a small pension was bestowed on the poet, but was soon
withdrawn, and the unfortunate Camoens was left to die in an almshouse. On
his death-bed he deplored the impending fate of his country, which he
alone could see. "I have loved my country. I have returned not only to die
on her bosom, but to die with her."
The Lusiad tells the story of the voyage of Vasco da Gama. The sailors of
Prince Henry of Portugal, commander of the Portuguese forces in Africa,
had passed Cape Nam and discovered the Cape of Storms, which the prince
renamed the Cape of Good Hope. His successor Emmanuel, determined to carry
out the work of his predecessor by sending out da Gama to undertake the
discovery of the southern passage to India. The Portuguese were generally
hostile to the undertaking, but da Gama, his brother, and his friend
Coello gathered a company, part of which consisted of malefactors whose
sentence of death was reversed on condition that they undertake the
voyage, and reached India.
The Lusiad is divided into ten cantos, containing one thousand one hundred
and two stanzas. Its metre is the heroic iambic, in rhymed octave stanzas.
The Lusiad is marred by its mythological allusions in imitation of Homer
and Virgil, but these are forgotten when the poet sings in impassioned
strains of his country's past glory.
The Lusiad is simple in style; its subject is prosaic; it is a constant
wonder that out of such unpromising materials Camoens could construct a
poem of such interest. He could not have done so had he not been so great
a poet, so impassioned a patriot.
Camoens was in one sense of the word a practical man, like Ariosto; he had
governed a province, and governed it successfully. But he had also taken
up arms for his country, and after suffering all the slights that could be
put upon him by an ungrateful and forgetful monarch, still loved his
native land, loved it the more, perhaps, that he had suffered for it and
was by it neglected. He foresaw, also, as did no one else, the future ruin
of his country, and loved it the more intensely, as a parent lavishes the
fondest, most despairing affection on a child he knows doomed to early
death.
The Lusiad is sometimes called the epic of commerce; it could be called
far more appropriately the epic of patriotism.