[353] The disapproval of the popular drama is frequent in religious
writers. In the seventeenth century Antonio Vieira declared that
_uma das felicidades que se contava entre as do tempo presente era
acabarem-se as comedias em Portugal_. Feo earlier, in common with many
others, had similarly denounced the romances of chivalry _pelos quaes o
Demonio comvosco fala; livraria do diabo_ (_Tratt. Qvad._ (1619), ff.
156, 157).
[354] One of them, João, _lavrador_, says: _Vimos ver se he assi ou nam
De hũa arremedaçam Que s’a ca d’arremedar.... Ora nos dizei se he assi
Que fazem ho ayto cá._
[355] e. g. Branca Janes says of her husband:
He hum grão comedor,
Destruidor da fazenda, &c.
[356] Cf. _este leo ja Celestina_ (_Primeira Parte dos Avtos_, &c.
(1587), f. 44).
[357] The student’s song on f. 44 v. and f. 46, _Polifema mi postema
Grande mal he querer bem_, parodies Lobeira’s _Leonoreta fin roseta_.
[358] Ibid., f. 49.
[359] _Primeira Parte dos Avtos_, f. 57:
_Ro._ Senhor, se me dá licença,
Ja eu aquela trova li.
_Os._ Qual trova leste? _Ro._ Essa sua,
Como a disse nua e crua.
_Os._ E onde a leste, vilão?
_Ro._ Cuido, señor, que em Boscão,
E canta-se pela rua.
[360] The Devil speaks both Portuguese and Spanish. All the other
characters in Prestes’ plays, with the exception of an enchanted Moor,
speak Portuguese. On the other hand, there are frequent Spanish words
and quotations. The word _algorrem_ occurs twice in these plays, but
the attempt to retain the old style of peasant conversation is but
half-hearted.
[361] Duarte in the _Auto dos Cantarinhos_ sleeps on an _arca_
(chest) like the _moço_ in _O Juiz da Beira_. There are other echoes
of Vicente, as the words _quem tem farelos?_ (1871 ed., p. 65), the
reference to _Flerida e Dom Duardos_ (p. 485), the line _Que má cousa
são vilãos_ (p. 420), the peasant who, like Mofina Mendes, builds up
his future on the strength of an apple of gold, which proves to be a
coal (pp. 407-8).
[362] _Auto do Mouro Encantado_ (p. 347). Unless there was an earlier
edition of _Lazarillo de Tormes_, this play must therefore have been
written after 1554. Prestes’ _Auto do Procurador_ was written before
1557.
[363] p. 262. For a corresponding knowledge of _Amadis de Gaula_, &c.,
among English servants see Dr. Henry Thomas, _The Palmerin Romances_,
London, 1916, pp. 38-40.
[364] _Alfea_ (ed. 1631), p. 59. The wonderful spelling is due to
the printer (e.g. _sesse_ = cease) as well as to the peasants (e.g.
_monteplica_ = multiply, _pialdrade_ = piety).
[365] _Composto por A. D. S. R._ There is an earlier _Acto Sacramental
da Jornada do Menino Deus para o Egypto_ (1746).
[366] It contains a dispute between Maize and Rye, after the very
popular fashion of the contention between Winter and Spring in
Vicente’s _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_, and the poetical contrasts common
in the Middle Ages and in the East, and still in vogue among the
_improvisatori_ of Basque villages, between wine and water, boots and
sandals, &c.
[367] i.e. No. 3: _De hvm almotacel borracho_; No. 5: _Dos conselhos
de hvm letrado_ (a _ratinho_ figures in this, as a _ratiño_ figures in
No. 17); No. 6: _Do negro mais bem mandado_ (the _escudeiro’s moço_
is here a negro who speaks in broken Portuguese, e.g. Zesu); No. 11:
_Dous cegos enganados_; No. 13: _Das padeiras de Lisboa_ (besides the
bakeresses there is a _meleiro_ (honey-seller), an _alheiro_ with his
_braços_ of leeks, an _azeiteiro_, &c.), and No. 25. The titles of
these plays sufficiently show their homely character.
[368] Of its author we only know that he was _Ulysbonense_. The play
had many editions: 1747, 1758, 1789, 1853.
[369] A priest of the same name wrote political and religious pamphlets
in the middle of the nineteenth century.
[370] The _affronta de Dio_ is mentioned. It may have been written in
the same year as Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_.
[371] In a letter sent with _Os Vilhalpandos_ to the Infante Duarte he
says that _ninguem que eu saiba_ had so written in Portuguese.
[372] _A comedia qual he tal va, aldeaã e mal atauiada._
[373] A passage in _Aulegrafia_ (1555?) describes the dramatic death of
Antony as a new thing: _parece-me que o estou vendo_ (f. 129).
[374] _Tragedia mvy sentida e elegante de Dona Inés de Castro ... Agora
nouamente acrescentada_ (31 ff. unnumbered). The one who published
_first_ was the most likely to be the thief. _Saudade_ is translated
_soledad_.
[375] _Nesta Universidade ... onde pouco antes se viram outras que
a todas as dos antigas ou levam ou não dam ventagem._ _Bristo_ was
written _por só seu desenfadamento em certos dias de ferias e ainda
esses furtados ao estudo_. It is a _comedia mixta, a mor parte della
motoria_.
[376] In _El Rei Seleuco_ the doctor and in _Filodemo_ the shepherd and
_bobo_ speak Spanish.
[377] _Homem fidalgo mᵗᵒ cortezão & discretto_ (Rangel Macedo,
manuscript _Nobiliario_, in Lisbon _Bib. Nac._); _aquelle galante e
elegante cortesão Portugues_ (_licença_ of 1618 ed. of _Ulysippo_).
[378] _As primicias do meu rustico engenho, que he a Comedia Eufrosina,
e foi ho primeiro fruito que delle colhi, inda bem tenrro._
[379] _Eufrosina_, ii. 5.
[380] Discovered by General Brito Rebello in the Torre do Tombo and
printed in his _Gil Vicente_ (1902), p. 114.
[381] _Orígenes de la Novela_, vol. iii, p. ccxxx.
[382] Sousa de Macedo, in _Eva e Ave_ (1676 ed., p. 131), says that he
lived in the reign of King João and in the beginning of that of King
Sebastian, which confirms the date 1563 as that of his death.
[383] Some of its heroes have geographical names, as King Tenarife of
the Canary Islands and the Spanish Moor Juzquibel, who now survives in
the name of the mountain that falls to the sea above Fuenterrabía. The
author shows considerable knowledge of the Basque country, and we may
perhaps infer that he was at the French Court and studied the Basque
provinces on the way.
[384] 1867 ed., p. 21: _como se vee ao diante no triumpho del rey
Sagramor_.
[385] _Nesta trasladação do triumpho del Rey Sagramor_, ibid., p. viii.
[386] A vague tradition placed the 1554 edition in the Lisbon Torre do
Tombo, but inquiries in 1916 proved that nothing is known of it there.
[387] _Ao esclarecido Principe ja apresentada_, ibid., p. vii.
[388] _A primeira parte da Tabola redonda que pera a terceira impressão
emendou o Autor em sua vida_ (_Aduertencia ao leitor_).
[389] Nicolás Antonio, whose information as to Portuguese books was
often far from accurate, says that there were several editions before
that of 1616, probably an erroneous deduction from the 1561 title-page.
The late Menéndez y Pelayo, who also made many slips in dealing with
Portuguese literature, declared that the 1560 edition was in the
British Museum, which, however, only possesses a (mutilated) copy of
the edition of Evora, 1561 (lacking the colophon with the date). Of the
1561 edition several copies exist, that of the Torre do Tombo, that in
the library of the late Snr. Francisco Van Zeller at Lisbon, and that
of the British Museum.
[390] João de Barros, _Dialogo em lovvor da nossa lingvagem_ (1540),
wrote that the Portuguese language _parece nam consintir em si hũa tal
obra como Celestina_ (1785 ed., p. 222).
[391] _La Filomena_, 1621 ed., p. 188. The quotation, if direct, was
from the 1561 edition, not that of 1616, in which part of the sentence
quoted is omitted, as in the Spanish translation first published ten
years later, in 1631.
[392] They were considered out of place in a comedy. The Catalogue of
1581 condemns _todos os mais tratados onde se aplicam, vsurpam & torcem
as autoridades & sentenças da sancta escriptura a sentidos profanos,
graças, escarnios, fabulas, vaidades, lisonjarias, detracções,
superstições, encantações & semelhantes cousas_. The rules were carried
out most mechanically.
[393] Green eyes are beloved by Portuguese writers for their rarity or
from an early mistaken rendering of the French _vair_ (e.g. Sylvia in
the sixteenth, Joaninha in the nineteenth century). The _glosadores_
inclined to them on account of the second person of the infinitive ‘to
see’: _verdes_.
[394] In Arraez, _Dialogos_ (1604), f. 311 v. fashionable women
_parecem ... velas de nao inchadas_.
[395] In the first edition she had been called a _beata_. In that of
1618 she became merely a widow woman, _dona viuva_, but the editor
defeated the censor’s intentions by noting the change in the preface
and declaring that but for this she remained exactly the same as before.
[396] Here the doctors, not the lawyers, are _conjurados contra o
mundo_.
[397] Cf. the brief but eloquent praises of wine and of love.
[398] One might be inclined to place it later were not the Infante Luis
(†November 27, 1555) still alive.
[399] _Um largo discurso da cortesania vulgar_, f. 178 v. Cf. f. 5:
_pretende mostraruos ao olho o rascunho da vida cortesaã_. On f. 5 v.
it is called _esta selada_ _Portuguesa_. The courtiers spend all the
time they can spare from the pursuit of love in discussing the rival
merits of the _romance velho_ and new-fangled sonnet, of Boscán and
Garci Lasso, of Spanish and Portuguese, a line of a Latin poet, &c.
[400] _O amor é portugues_ (_Aulegrafia_, f. 38 v.).
§ 4
_Luis de Camões_
The plays of LUIS DE CAMÕES (1524?-80) are in a sense typical of his
genius, for they show him combining two great currents of poetry,
the old indigenous and the classic new. A generation had sprung
up accustomed to wide horizons and heroic deeds, and poets and
historians regretted that there was no Homer or Virgil to describe them
adequately. Camões was not a Homer nor a Virgil, but he was a more
universal poet than Portugal had yet produced, and by reason of his
marvellous power of expression he triumphantly completed the revolution
which Sá de Miranda had tentatively begun. In a sense he was not a
great original poet, but in his style he was excelled by no Latin
poet of the Renaissance. The eager researches of modern scholars have
succeeded in piercing the obscurity that enveloped his life, although
many gaps and doubtful points remain. Four or five generations had
gone by since his ancestor Vasco Perez had passed out of the pages of
history,[401] and some of the intervening members of the family had
also won distinction, but Camões’ father, Simão Vaz de Camões, was a
poor captain of good position (_cavaleiro fidalgo_) who was shipwrecked
near Goa and died there soon after the poet was born in 1524. Through
his grandmother, Guiomar Vaz da Gama, he was distantly related to the
celebrated Gamas of Algarve. His mother, Anna de Sá e Macedo, belonged
to a well-known family of Santarem.[402] Whether he was born at Lisbon
or Coimbra is still uncertain. His great-grandfather had settled at
Coimbra. That Camões studied there scarcely admits of doubt. He alludes
to it in his poems, and nowhere else in Portugal could he have received
his thorough classical education. In the year 1542 or 1543 he went to
Lisbon. The exact dates of events in his life during the next ten years
are difficult to determine, but the events themselves are clear enough.
His birth and talents assured him a ready welcome in the capital.
Whether he became tutor to D. Antonio de Noronha, son of the Conde de
Linhares (the Portuguese ambassador whom Moraes accompanied to Paris),
or not, he soon had many friends and was probably received at Court.
Referring later to this time he is said to have spoken of himself as
_cheo de muitos favores_, and in this popularity he wrote a large
number of his exquisite _redondilhas_ and also sonnets, odes, eclogues,
and the three _autos_. But Camões had fallen passionately in love with
a lady-in-waiting of the queen, Catherina de Athaide.[403] Tradition
has it that he first saw her in church on a Good Friday (1544?). We may
surmise that Natercia’s parents objected to the suit of the penniless
_cavaleiro fidalgo_, and that Camões pressed his suit on them with more
vehemence than discretion. He was banished from Court, and spent six
months in the Ribatejo (Santarem) and two years in military service in
North Africa (Ceuta). He admits that he had been in the wrong, but not
seriously so, and hints that envy had played its part in his downfall.
It is probable that his play _El Rei Seleuco_ had given a handle to
the enemies that his growing reputation as a poet had made. It must
be confessed that its subject was tactless, for in the play the king
gives up his bride to his son, which could easily be interpreted as
a reflection on the conduct of the late King Manuel, who had married
his son’s bride. The two years in Africa passed slowly. In a letter
(_Esta vae com a candea na mão_) he describes sadness eating away his
heart as a moth a garment, and it was with his thoughts in Lisbon that
he took part from time to time in skirmishes against the Moors, in
one of which he lost his right eye. Hard blows, scanty provisions,
and no chance of enriching oneself as in India were the features of
military service in North Africa, and when Camões returned to Lisbon
his prospects contrasted sharply with those which had been his when he
first came from the University a few years before. He was now nearly
thirty,[404] disfigured by the loss of an eye and embittered by the
turn his fortunes had taken. He no longer looked on life from the
inside, gazing contentedly at the show from the windows of privilege,
but was himself in the arena. For the school of Sá de Miranda he had
probably never felt much sympathy, considering it too severe and
artificial. He wished to live and enjoy, and although the patronage of
literary Prince João may have encouraged him to hope for better times,
he meanwhile set himself to sample life as best he might, associating
with rowdy companions (_valentões_), who brought out the Cariofilo
side of his character at the expense of the contemplative Zelotipo.
Whether he had intended to embark for India in 1550, or this be a pure
invention on the part of Faria e Sousa, it is certain that he was still
in Lisbon on June 16, 1552. On that day the Corpus Christi procession
passed through the principal streets. In the crowded Rocio Camões was
drawn into a quarrel with a Court official, Gonçalo Borges, and wounded
him with a sword-cut on the head. For nearly nine months Camões lay
in prison, and then, Borges having recovered and bearing no malice,
he was pardoned[405] (March 7, 1553) and released, but only on the
understanding that he would leave Portugal to serve the king in India.
Before the end of the month he had embarked in the ship _S. Bento_.
Hitherto he had hoped against hope for an improvement in his lot; now
he went, he says, as one who leaves this world for the next, and with
the words _Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea_,[406] turned his
back on the calumnies and intrigues of Lisbon. In one of his finest
elegies[407] he described the voyage, a storm off the Cape of Good
Hope, and the arrival at Goa in September 1553. The voyage was full of
interest to him, and he made good use of it, becoming what Humboldt
called him--a great painter of the sea[408]--but so far as comfort
was concerned he fared probably much as would a modern emigrant. His
disillusion at Goa is poignantly described in a letter[409] written
soon after his arrival. He found it ‘the stepmother of all honest men’,
money the only god and passport, and he sends a note of warning to
_aventureiros_ in Portugal eager to make their fortune in India. We
know from the bitter pages of Couto and Corrêa how difficult it was
for a private soldier to thrive there, and the position of a _reinol_
newly arrived from Portugal was precarious. Camões joined a few weeks
later (November 1553) in a punitive expedition along the coast of
Malabar against the King of Chembe, and in 1554 probably accompanied D.
Fernando de Meneses in a second expedition to Monte Felix or Guardafui
(Ras ef Fil), the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. After his three years’
service (1553-6) he continued to live at Goa. He had found time to
write poetry, and sent home a sonnet and an eclogue on the death of
his friend D. Antonio de Noronha. His play _Filodemo_ was acted,
probably in the winter of 1555, before the popular Governor Francisco
Barreto, who provided him with the post of _Provedor Môr dos Defuntos e
Ausentes_ (i. e. trustee for the property of dead or absent Portuguese)
at Macao. Whether his satiric verses had anything to do with the
appointment we do not know--some have maintained that the Portuguese
of Goa appreciated his poetical powers best at a distance--but it is
more probable that his appointment was a favour, since every post in
India was eagerly coveted, and it was a kinder action to give him a
comparatively humble one at once than the reversion to a more lucrative
office, filled thrice or even ten times over by the deplorable system
of ‘successions’.[410] He set sail in the spring of 1556, and after
touching at Malacca, arrived at the Molucca Islands, the most lawless
region in India. Camões himself, according to Storck, was wounded
about this time, but in a fight at sea, not in one of the chronic
broils at Ternate or Tidore. In 1557 or 1558 he reached Macao, but
two years later he was relieved of his post owing to a quarrel with
the settlers, whose part was taken by the captain of the silver and
silk ship passing from Goa to China. On his authority Camões was sent
to Goa, protesting against _o injusto mando_, which was a common fate
of officials in India. He was shipwrecked off the coast of Tongking,
lost all his possessions, and arrived penniless and perhaps in
debt at Goa in 1560 or 1561. To these four or five chequered years
are ascribed the wonderful _quintilhas_, the most beautiful in the
language, _Sobolos rios que vam_, which may owe something to Vicente’s
admirable paraphrase of Psalm l, the _canção Com força desusada_, the
_oitavas Como nos vossos_, and the completion of the first six books
of the _Lusiads_. Soon after his return he was probably imprisoned
for debt, but was released, probably at the instance of the Viceroy,
D. Francisco Coutinho, Conde de Redondo, to whom Camões addressed his
first printed poem, the ode in Orta’s _Coloquios_ (1563). Camões’
thoughts must have now more than ever turned homeward. Fortune had
danced tantalizingly before him, holding out hopes which broke as
glass in his hands whenever he attempted to seize them.[411] Of his
life between 1564 and 1567 we know nothing. He did not occupy the
post of factor of Chaul, the reversion to which indeed he may perhaps
only have received after his return to Portugal. He was eager to get
home. In 1567 he accompanied Pedro Barreto to Mozambique, glad to get
even so far on the return voyage. There poverty and illness delayed
him till 1569, when through the generosity and in the company of some
friends, among whom was the historian Couto, he was able to embark for
Portugal. They reached Lisbon in April, 1570.[412] Sixteen years had
passed. The popular, impulsive, talented youth returned middle-aged,
poverty-stricken, and unknown. Antonio de Noronha and many others of
his friends were dead. Catherina de Athaide had died in 1556 (although
she may have continued to receive Camões’ rapt devotion as the dead
Beatrice that of Dante), Prince João, hope and patron of poets, two
years earlier. The plague, to which nearly half the city’s population
had succumbed, had only recently abated, and Camões may have witnessed
the thanksgiving procession in Lisbon on April 20, 1570. Modern critics
have even denied him the only consolation which probably remained to
him in the _patria esquiva a quem se mal aproveitou_[413], but there
seems no reason to reject the tradition that his mother was alive; in
fact she survived him and continued to receive the pension of 15,000
_réis_[414] granted him from 1572 till his death on Friday, June 10,
1580. It was a sum barely sufficient to support life, and it was not
always regularly paid, so that he is reported to have been in the
habit of saying that he would prefer to his pension a whip for the
responsible officials (_almoxarifes_). Tradition, to the indignation of
reasonable historians, loves to represent a faithful Javanese slave,
who had accompanied Camões to Europe, begging for his master in the
streets of Lisbon. Camões did not go with King Sebastian to Africa.
He may have been already ill when the expedition set out in June
1578--the plague soon began again to ravage Lisbon, and long years
of suffering and disappointment must have sapped his strength. Two
years later his life of heroic endurance, in patience of the _juizos
incognitos de Deos_,[415] ended. He was perhaps buried in a common
grave with other victims of the plague.[416] Long absence had served
to strengthen his love for his _patria ditosa amada_, and the news
from Africa left him no heart to battle against disease, content, as
he wrote to the Captain-General of Lamego, to die with his country,
with which his name has ever since been intimately linked. Couto and
Mariz agree that he brought _Os Lusiadas_ with him virtually complete
on his return to Portugal. It was published through the influence of
the poet D. Manuel de Portugal in 1572. Camões has often been called
the prince of heroic poets, but it is noteworthy that Faria e Sousa
in 1685 says that ‘all have hitherto, especially in Spain, considered
him greater as a lyric than as an heroic poet’.[417] _Os Lusiadas_
rather than an epic is a great lyrical hymn in praise of Portugal,
with splendid episodes such as the descriptions of the death of
Inés, the battle of Aljubarrota, the storm, Adamastor, the Island of
Venus. Apart from the style, its originality consists in the skill
with which in a poem but half the length of Tasso’s _Gerusalemme
Liberata_ and a fifth of Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_ the poet works
in the entire history of his country. It is this which gives unity
to his ten cantos of _oitavas_, this and the wonderfully transparent
flow of the verse, which carries the reader over many weaknesses and
inequalities of detail. It is a nobler poem than the crowded garden
of flowers in a high wind that is the _Orlando Furioso_, and at once
more human and intense than the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. Camões, with a
wonderful memory and intimate knowledge of the legends of Greece and
Rome, read everything, and we find him gathering his material from
all sides[418] like a bird in spring, from a Latin treatise of the
antiquarian Resende, from the historians Duarte Galvão, Pina, Lopez,
Barros, or Castanheda, or literally translating lines of Virgil, as
in his shorter poems he imitated Petrarca, Garci Lasso, and Boscán.
Tasso used the _mot juste_ when in a sonnet addressed to Camões he
called him _dotto e buon Luigi_.[419] If, as seems probable, he had
early wished to sing the deeds of the Portuguese, the first volumes of
Castanheda and Barros must have been an incentive as powerful as the
destiny which made him personally acquainted with the scenes of Gama’s
voyage and of the Portuguese victories in the East. It seems probable
that cantos iii and iv, containing the early history of Portugal,
were already written, and that around them he wove the epic grandeur
revealed in the histories of the discovery of India. The poem opens
with an invocation to the nymphs of the Tagus and to King Sebastian,
and then, in a wonderful stanza of the sea (_Já no largo oceano
navegavam_, i. 19), Gama’s ships are shown in mid-voyage. The gods of
Olympus take sides, and Venus protects the daring adventurers in seas
never crossed before, while Mars stirs up the natives of Mozambique
and of Mombaça to treachery (i-ii). In contrast to the natives farther
south, the King of Melinde receives them with loyal friendship, and
Gama rewards him by relating the history of Portugal (iii-iv). He then
continues his voyage, and after weathering a terrible storm brewed by
Bacchus, arrives at Calicut (v-vi). After a visit to the Samori (the
King of Calicut), the Catual (the Governor) accompanies Gama on board,
and Paulo da Gama explains to him the warlike deeds of the Portuguese
embroidered on the silken banners of the ships (vii-viii). On the
return voyage they are entertained by Tethys and her nymphs in the
island of Venus, supposed to be one of the Azores (ix-x), and the poem
ends with a second invocation to King Sebastian (x. 145-56). Thus the
time of the poem occupies a little over two years (July 1497-September
1499). Into this the previous four centuries had been ingeniously
worked, but in order to include the sixteenth century fresh devices
were adopted, by which Jupiter (canto ii), Adamastor (v), and Tethys
(x) foretell the future. Almost every land and city connected with
Portuguese history finds a place in the poem. Small wonder that it was
well received by the Portuguese, combining as it did intense patriotism
with hundreds of exotic names. The extraordinary number of 12,000
copies is said to have been printed within a quarter of a century of
Camões’ death,[420] and by 1624 the sale had increased to 20,000 and
his fame had spread throughout the world. It would have been still
stranger if the _murmuradores maldizentes_ had been silent. As early as
1641 we find a critic, João Soares de Brito (1611-64), defending Camões
against the charges of plagiarizing Virgil and of improbabilities of
time and place.[421] Not every one apparently was of the opinion of the
Conde de Idanha, who considered that the only fault of the _Lusiads_
was that it was too long to learn by heart and too short to be able to
go on reading it for ever. Montesquieu found in it something of ‘the
fascination of the Odyssey and the magnificence of the Aeneid’, and
Voltaire, while objecting to its _merveilleux absurde_, adds: ‘Mais la
poésie du style et l’imagination dans l’expression l’ont soutenu, de
même que les beautés de l’exécution ont placé Paul Véronèse parmi les
grands peintres.’
In 1820 appeared José Agostinho de Macedo’s _Censura dos Lusiadas_, in
which he noted with some asperity Camões’ _erros crassissimos_. Prosaic
lines, hyperbole, the use of the supernatural, lack of proportion,[422]
absence of unity, and historical improbabilities are the main heads
of his indictment, and he quotes Racine as to Camões’ ‘icy style’.
He also has much petty detailed criticism, for he finds in Camões a
_notavel falta de grammatica_. And Macedo was certainly right. Most of
the faults he attributes to Camões do exist in the _Lusiads_. Macedo
himself could write more correctly. When he says that the line _Somos
hum dos da ilha, lhe tornou_ (i. 53) is unpoetical (_não tem tintura
de poesia_), we agree; it is sheer prose. We can add other instances:
the line _as que elle para si na cruz tomou_ (i. 7) is as unmusical as
the rhyming of _Heliogabalo_, _Sardanapalo_ (iii. 92), or _impossibil_,
_terribil_ (iv. 54). Only Macedo forgot that genius is justified of its
children, and that these details are all merged in the incomparable
style, imaginative power, and lofty theme of the poem. If a man is
unable to feel the heat of the sun for its spots, we will vainly try
to warm or enlighten him, but it is not pedantic grammarians such as
Macedo[423] who could obscure the fame of Camões. That could only
be done by those whom Macedo calls _os idolatras camoneanos_. Lope
de Vega[424] effusively professed to place the _Lusiads_ above the
_Aeneid_ and the _Iliad_, and Camões’ fellow-countrymen have eagerly
followed suit. He has also suffered much at the hands of translators.
Since the _Lusiads_ is clearly not the equal of the _Iliad_ or the
_Odyssey_, it may be worth while to consider by what reasons Camões
really is one of the world’s greatest poets. There is celestial music
in much that he wrote, in incidents of the _Lusiads_ such as the death
of Inés de Castro,[425] in his eclogues and _canções_ and elegies, in
many of the sonnets, and in the _redondilhas_, most of all perhaps in
the seventy-three heavenly _quintilhas_ beginning _Sobolos rios que
vam_. But other Portuguese poets have been musical; Diogo Bernardez in
this respect vies with Camões: Camões excels them all in the vigour
and transparent clearness that accompany his music. But his principal
excellence is that, still without losing the music of his _versos
deleitosos_, he can think in verse[426]--the thought in some of his
elegies and _oitavas_ is remarkable--and describe with scientific
precision, as in the account of the _tromba_ (_Lus._ v. 19-22). Like
Milton, he could transform an atlas into a fair harmony of names. His
influence on the Portuguese language has been very great. Whether it
was wholly for good may be open to doubt--a doubt mentioned by one of
his earliest biographers, Severim de Faria, in 1624. The _Lusiads_,
he says, ‘greatly enriched the Portuguese language by ingeniously
introducing many new words and expressions which then came into
common use, although some severe critics have censured him for this,
considering the use of latinized forms a defect in his poem’.[427]
An inch farther than he went in this direction, or in that of _furia
grande e sonorosa_, and _estilo grandiloquo_, would have been an inch
too far, and subsequent writers did not always observe his restraint,
the sobriety due to his classical education. But his poem certainly
helped to fix the language, and he cannot be blamed for the excesses of
his followers, or for a change which had begun before his time.[428]
Couto records the theft of the _Parnaso_ in which Camões was collecting
his lyrics with a view to publishing them. He must have written many
more lyrics than we possess, but even so the number existing is not
small. Successive editors have added to them from time to time, and
often clumsily. Faria e Sousa, a century after Camões’ death, declared
that he had added 200, and, while upbraiding Diogo Bernardez for
his _robos_, was himself the thief. Camões might have been somewhat
surprised to find in the first edition of his lyrics (1595) two poems
which had been in print in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ eight years
before he was born. This 1595 edition contained but 65 sonnets, but
their number grew to 108 (1598), 140 (1616), 229 (1668), 296 (1685),
352 (1860), 354 (1873). D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos has
already contributed much towards a critical edition, and it is to
be hoped that before long it may be possible to read the genuine
lyrics of Camões in a complete edition by themselves.[429] That would
certainly cause him to be more widely read abroad. It is perhaps
inevitable that a comparison should arise between Camões and Petrarca
(although it must be remembered that they are separated by two
centuries), yet he would be an extremely bold or extremely ignorant
critic who should place the one of them above the other. In genius
they were equal, but a different atmosphere acted on their genius, the
artistic atmosphere of Italy and the natural atmosphere of Portugal.
Petrarca was the more scholarly writer, so that if he perhaps never
attains to the rapturous heights occasionally reached by Camões, he
also keeps himself from the blemishes which sometimes disfigure Camões’
work. Camões’ life was far more varied, many-coloured as an Alentejan
_manta_,[430] and this is reflected in his poems. Intensely human, he
is swayed by many moods, while Petrarca is merged in the narrower flame
of his love. Petrarca excels him in the sonnet, for although many of
those by Camões are beautiful, and nearly all contain some beautiful
passage, he was not really at his ease in this scanty plot of ground.
His genius required a larger canvas for its expression. The following
lines from his long and magnificent _canção Vinde cá_ are worth quoting
because they triumphantly display many of the noblest characteristics
of his poetry:
No mais, canção, no mais, que irei fallando,
Sem o sentir, mil annos; e se acaso
Te culparem de larga e de pesada,
Não pode ser, lhe dize, limitada
A agoa do mar em tão pequeno vaso.
Nem eu delicadezas vou cantando
Co’ gosto do louvor, mas explicando
Puras verdades ja por mi passadas:
Oxalá foram fabulas sonhadas!
Here we see the force and precision, the amazing ease and rapidity, the
crystalline transparency, the sad _saudade_, and above all the deep
sincerity that mark so much of his work. Both Petrarca and Camões are
representative of their country, the latter not only in his poems, in
which almost every Portuguese hero is included, but in his character
and his life. In his wit and melancholy, his love of Nature, his
passionate devotion, his persistency and endurance, his independence
and sensitive pride, in his lyrical gift and power of expression, in
his courage and ardent patriotism, he is the personification and ideal
of the Portuguese nation.
Many of Camões’ friends were also lyric poets, but their poems
have mostly vanished. One of them, Luis Franco Corrêa, compiled a
_cancioneiro_ of contemporary poems which still exists in manuscript.
A few later poets, chiefly pastoral, have already been mentioned, but
after Camões’ death the star of lyric poetry waned and set, and the
only compensation was a brilliant noonday in the realm of prose. Camões
was a learned poet, but he also plunged both hands in the songs and
traditions of the people. The later poets withdrew themselves more and
more from this perennial spring of poetical images and expression, till
at last in the ripeness of time Almeida Garrett turned to it again for
inspiration, even Bocage, devoted admirer of Camões though he was,
having neglected this side of his genius, as was inevitable in the
eighteenth century.
Epic poetry scarcely fared better than the lyric, despite a hundred
honest efforts to eclipse the _Lusiads_. A favourite legend of
Portuguese and other folk-lore tells how the step-daughter comes from
the fairies’ dwelling speaking flowers for words or with a star on her
forehead, but her envious half-sister, who then visits the fairies,
returns uttering mud and toads or with an ass’s head. If the epic poems
of those who emulated the fame of Camões are something better than mud
they nevertheless fail for the most part lamentably in that inspiration
which Portuguese history might have been expected to give.
Alguns (misera gente) inutilmente
Compõem grandes Iliadas,
wrote Diniz da Cruz (_O Hyssope_, canto 1). The epic-fever had not
abated even in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Madeira
poet Francisco de Paula Medina e Vasconcellos (_c._ 1770-1824) alone
wrote two: _Zargueida_ (1806), _Georgeida_ (1819); and José Agostinho
de Macedo in his _Motim Literario_ imagines himself at the mercy of a
poet with an epic in sixty cantos entitled _Napoleada_, and himself
became the mock-hero of one in nine: _Agostinheida_ (Londres, 1817),
written by his unfortunate opponent Nuno Alvares Pereira Pato Moniz
(1781-1827). The strange poet of Setubal, Thomaz Antonio de Santos e
Silva (1751-1816), published a _Braziliada_ in twelve cantos in 1815.
Of the earlier epics Camillo Castello Branco wrote sarcastically: ‘They
contain impenetrable mysteries of dullness and inspire a sacred awe,
but they are the conventional glory of our literary history, untouched
and intangible.’[431]
Of the two long epic poems of JERONIMO CORTE REAL (_c._ 1530-1590?):
_Svcesso do Segvndo Cerco de Div_ (1574) and _Naufragio, e Lastimoso
Svcesso da Perdiçam de Manoel de Sousa de Sepulveda_, &c. (1594), we
may perhaps say that they are excellent prose. He dwells more than once
upon the inconstancy of fortune, and this may be something more than a
platitude. Of his life little is known. He is by some believed to have
been born in the Azores in 1533. A document in the possession of the
Visconde de Esperança shows that he died before May 12, 1590. He may
have been a musician as well as a poet and a painter. It is probable,
but not certain, that he accompanied King Sebastian to Alcacer Kebir
and was taken prisoner. Faria e Sousa says that he was too old to go.
After varied service by land and sea he wrote these poems when living
in retirement on his estate near Evora, and his own experiences stood
him in good stead for his descriptions, which are often not without
life and vigour, as the account of the battle in canto 18 of the
_Segundo Cerco de Diu_, or of the storm in canto 7 of the _Naufragio_.
The former poem records the famous defence of Diu by D. João de
Mascarenhas and its relief by D. João de Castro (1546), in whose mouth
is placed a long and tedious speech. The last two cantos (21, 22) are
tacked on to the main theme and occupy more than a quarter of the
whole. They tell from paintings the deeds of past captains and prophesy
future events and the ‘golden reign’ of King Sebastian. The prophetic
vision, although it included a generation beyond the nominal date of
the poem (1546), did not extend to the battle of Alcacer Kebir (1578).
The hendecasyllables of the blank verse have an exceedingly monotonous
fall and the lines merge prosaically into one another.[432] The use
of adjectives is excessive, and generally there is an inclination
to multiply words without adding to the force of the picture.[433]
The same plethora of epithets, elaborate similes, and slow awkward
development of the story mark the seventeen cantos--some 10,000 lines
of blank verse, with some tercets and _oitavas_--which constitute the
_Naufragio_. In cantos 13 and 14 a learned man tells from sculptures
the history of the Portuguese kings, from Afonso I to Sebastian. The
remaining cantos have a more lively interest, ending with the death of
D. Lianor in canto 17, but the poet could not resist the temptation
to round off with an anticlimax, in which Phoebus, Proteus, and Pan
make lamentation. His short _Auto dos Quatro Novissimos do Homem_
(1768) in blank verse is written with some intensity, but the style is
the same.[434] His _Austriada_, composed to commemorate Don John of
Austria’s _felicissima victoria_[435] of Lepanto, consists of fifteen
cantos in Spanish blank verse.
LUIS PEREIRA BRANDÃO, born at Oporto about 1540, was present at Alcacer
Kebir, and after his release from captivity is said to have worn
mourning for the rest of his life. That later generations might also
suffer, his epic _Elegiada_ (1588)--in spite of his professed _temor
de ser prolixo_--was published in eighteen cantos. Beginning with
the early years of King Sebastian, it recounts the king’s dreams and
ambitions, his first expedition to Africa, and the later disastrous
adventure. Not even the story of D. Lianor de Sousa (canto 6) nor the
excessively detailed description of the battle of Alcacer Kebir (canto
17) rouses the poet from his implacable dullness. The defects of his
style have perhaps been exaggerated, but it is certainly inferior to
that of Andrade, with whom he shares the inability to distinguish a
poem from a history. The introduction of contemporary events in India
(cantos 6, 10, 14), however legitimate in a history, is singularly out
of place in an epic.
If the author of the history of King João III’s reign, FRANCISCO DE
ANDRADE (_c._ 1535-1614), brother of the great Frei Thomé de Jesus,
regarded his epic _O Primeiro Cerco ... de Diu_ (1589) merely as a
supplementary chapter of that history, we can only regret that he did
not write it in prose. It is a straightforward account, in excellent
Portuguese, of the first siege of Diu (1538), but _oitava_ follows
prosaic _oitava_ with a relentless wooden tread, maintaining the same
level of mediocrity throughout and rendering it unreadable as poetry.
The author begins by imploring divine favour that his song may be
adequate to his subject (i. 1-3). It is only when he has passed his
two-thousandth stanza that he expresses some diffidence as to whether
his ‘fragile bark’ was well equipped for so long a voyage, but he
consoles himself, if not his reader, with the sincere conviction that
his rude verse cannot detract from the greatness of the deeds which he
describes (xx. 1-6).