EDITOR’S PREFACE.
I felt that I had no light task before me when I undertook to edit
my Husband’s Translation of Camoens’ “Lusiads.” The nearer I come to
that work the more mountainous does it appear, instead of dispersing
as most work does when one sets one’s shoulder to the wheel.
Yet, I feel that no other than myself should do this office for him;
for I shared his travels in Portugal, his four years up country in
Brazil, learnt the language with him, and I have seen for nineteen
and a-half years the Camoens table duly set apart--the _bonne bouche_
of the day. I have been daily and hourly consulted as to this
expression, or this or that change of word, this or that peculiarity
of Camoens.
What, then, are those difficulties, you, the reader, will ask me? Let
me try to explain. So many enterprising poet-authors have translated
Camoens, and received their meed of praise and popularity. In old
times, Fanshawe, the best because so quaint; then, Messrs. Mickle,
Musgrave, and Mitchell; latterly, Mr. J. J. Aubertin, Mr. Duff, and
Mr. Hewitt.
But _this_ translation stands apart from all the rest--as far apart as
the Passionspiel of Ober-Ammergau stands apart as a grand dramatic
act of devotion from all the other Miracle-plays, now suppressed.
This translation is not a literary _tour de force_ done against time
or to earn a reputation; it is the result of a daily act of devotion
of twenty years from a man of _this_ age who has taken the hero of
a _former_ age for his model, his master, as Dante did Virgil; and
between whose two fates--Master and Disciple--exists a strange and
fatal similarity.
What I tremble for in its publication is, that it is too æsthetic
for the British Public, and will not meet with its due meed of
appreciation as the commoner translations have done. If a thousand
buy it, will a hundred read it, and will ten understand it? I say to
myself; but then I brighten at the thought that to those ten it will
be the gem of their library.
It stands in poetry where Boito’s “Mefistofele” stands in music. He
was not appalled by Gounod, nor Spohr, nor Wagner, nor Meyerbeer, and
in the opinion of many musicians has distanced them all. The first
hearing of his opera takes away your breath--that is, if you are a
musician--if not, it was a sin to occupy the place which would have
been a seventh heaven to a musician. You don’t understand it, nor
pretend to do so, but you long to go again, and you do go night after
night, each time unfolding new beauties in each separate passage,
until you know by heart and have dissected the whole, nor even then
do you tire, but enjoy it all the more.
In this translation, whenever my Husband has appeared to coin words,
or to use impossible words, they are the exact rendering of Camoens;
in every singularity or seeming eccentricity, the Disciple has
faithfully followed his Master, his object having been not simply to
write good verse, but to give a literal word-for-word rendering of
his favourite hero. And he has done it to the letter, not only in the
words, but in the _meaning_ and _intention_ of Camoens.
To the unæsthetic, to non-poets, non-linguists, non-musicians,
non-artists, Burton’s Lusiads will be an unknown land, an unknown
tongue. One might as well expect them to enjoy a dominant seventh or
an enharmonic change in harmony. To be a poet one must be a musician;
to be a musician or a painter one must have a poetic temperament, or
the poetry or the music will have a hard metallic sound, and become a
doggerel, a scherzo; the painting a sign-post!
With this little explanation, I commend this grand work to the study
of the public. The Commentaries will interest all alike.
ISABEL BURTON.
TRIESTE, _July 19th, 1880_.
PREFACE.
The most pleasing literary labour of my life has been to translate
“The Lusiads.” One of my highest aims has been to produce a
translation which shall associate my name, not unpleasantly, with
that of “my master, Camoens.”
Those who favour me by reading this version are spared the long
recital of why, how, and when Portugal’s Maro became to me the
perfection of a traveller’s study. The first and chiefest charm was,
doubtless, that of the Man. A wayfarer and voyager from his youth;
a soldier, somewhat turbulent withal, wounded and blamed for his
wounds; a moralist, a humourist, a satirist, and, consequently, no
favourite with King Demos; a reverent and religious spirit after
his own fashion (somewhat “Renaissance,” poetic, and Pagan), by no
means after the fashion of others; an outspoken, truth-telling,
lucre-despising writer; a public servant whose motto was,--strange to
say,--_Honour, not Honours_; a doughty Sword and yet doughtier Pen;
a type of the chivalrous age; a patriot of the purest water, so
jealous of his Country’s good fame that nothing would satisfy him but
to see the world bow before her perfections; a genius, the first and
foremost of his day, who died in the direst poverty and distress;
such in merest outline was the Man, and such was the Life which won
the fondest and liveliest sympathies of the translator.
_Poetas por poetas sejam lidos;
Sejam só por poetas explicadas
Suas obras divinas_;
(Still by the Poets be the Poets read
Only be render’d by the Poet’s tongue
Their works divine);
writes Manuel Corrêa. Mickle expresses the sentiment with more
brevity and equal point: None but a poet can translate a poet; and
Coleridge assigns to a poet the property of explaining a poet. Let
me add that none but a traveller can do justice to a traveller. And
it so happens that most of my wanderings have unconsciously formed a
running and realistic commentary upon “The Lusiads.” I have not only
visited almost every place named in the Epos of Commerce, in many I
have spent months and even years. The Arch-poet of Portugal paints
from the life, he has also the insight which we call introvision;
he sees with exact eyes where others are purblind or blind. Only
they who have personally studied the originals of his pictures can
appreciate their perfect combination of fidelity and realism with
Fancy and Idealism. Here it is that the traveller-translator may do
good service with his specialty.
Again, like Boccaccio, Camoens reflects the _Lux ex Oriente_. There
is a perfume of the East in everything he writes of the East: we find
in his song much of its havock and all its splendour. Oriental-like,
he delights in the Pathetic Fallacy; to lavish upon inanimates the
attributes of animate sensation. Here again, the student of things
Eastern, the “practical Orientalist,” may be useful by drawing
attention to points which escape the European, however learned.
There are many translators of Camoens yet to come. We are an
ephemeral race, each one struggling to trample down his elder
brother, like the Simoniacal Popes in the Malebolge-pit. My first
excuse for adding to the half-dozen translations in the field, must
be my long studies, geographical and anthropological: I can at least
spare future writers the pains and penalties of saddling the exactest
of poets with bad ethnology and worse topography. These may be small
matters, but in local colouring every touch tells.
My chief qualifications for the task, however, are a thorough
appreciation of the Poem and a hearty admiration for the Poet whom I
learned to love in proportion as I learned to know him. His Lusiads
has been described as _une lecture saine et fortifiante_. I would say
far more. The Singer’s gracious and noble thoughts are reviving as
the champagne-air of the mountain-top. His verse has the true heroic
ring of such old ballads as:--
_S’en assaut viens, devant ta lance,
En mine, en échelle, en tous lieux,
En prouesse les bons avance,
Ta dame t’en aimera mieux._
And with this love and sympathy of mine mingles not a little
gratitude. During how many hopeless days and sleepless nights Camoens
was my companion, my consoler, my friend;--on board raft and canoe;
sailer and steamer; on the camel and the mule; under the tent and the
jungle-tree; upon the fire-peak and the snow-peak; on the Prairie,
the Campo, the Steppe, the Desert!
Where no conversable being can be found within a march of months;
and when the hot blood of youth courses through the brain, Ennui and
Nostalgia are readily bred, while both are fatal to the Explorer’s
full success. And, preferring to all softer lines the hard life of
Discovery-travel:--
Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,
Where foot of mortal man hath never been;--
a career which combines cultivation and education with that
resistless charm, that poetry-passion of the Unknown; whose joy of
mere motion lightens all sorrows and disappointments; which aids,
by commune with Nature, the proper study of Mankind; which enlarges
the mental view as the hill-head broadens the horizon; which made
Julian a saint, Khizr a prophet, and Odin a god: this _Reiselust_,
I say, being my ruling passion, compelled me to seek a talisman
against homesickness and the nervous troubles which learned men call
Phrenalgia and Autophobia.
I found this talisman in Camoens.
And, if it be true that by virtue of his perfect affection and
veneration for Homer, whom he loved as a second self, Chapman was
enabled to reflect a something of the old Greek’s magic force and
fire, I also may be permitted to hope that complete sympathy with my
Poet will enable me to present the public with a copy not unworthy of
Camoens’ immortal work.
After all, to speak without undue modesty, my most cogent reason for
printing this translation of my Master is, simply because I prefer it
to all that have appeared. Others will think otherwise; and there is
a Judge from whose sentence lies no present appeal. I have spared no
labour on the work; I have satisfied myself if not _Malebouche_; and
I repeat my motto: _poco spero, nulla chiedo_. If a concurrence of
adverse trifles prevent my being appreciated now, the day will come,
haply somewhat late, when men will praise what they now pass by.
RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON.
CAIRO, _May 1, 1880_.
NOTE.
Contrary to custom, I begin with my translation of the Poem, and end
with what usually comes first, the Commentary. This Introduction, now
converted to a postscript, is necessary for the full comprehension
of an Epic upwards of three centuries old. But, believing in the
“liberty of foot-notes,” I have appended a few, which will save many
readers the mortification of consulting the conclusion.
The following synopsis of THE LUSIADS shows the _raison
d’être_ of my commentary:--