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Luís Vaz de Camões
Luís de Camões (lithograph after an imaginary portrait by François Gérard)
Born	circa 1524
Died	June 10, 1580 Lisbon
Occupation	Writer
Genres	Poetry
Notable work(s)	Os Lusíadas
Influences Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Ludovico Ariosto, Francisco Sá de Miranda
Influenced Bocage, Hermann Melville, Fernando Pessoa, Ezra Pound

Luís Vaz de Camões (Portuguese pronunciation: [luˈiʃ vaʃ dɨ kaˈmõĩʃ]; sometimes rendered in English as Camoens) (c. 1524–June 10, 1580) is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry (in Portuguese and in Spanish) and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas. His recollection of poetry The Parnasum of Luís de Camões was lost in his life.

Life

Many details concerning the life of Camões remain unknown, but he is thought to have been born around 1524. Luís Vaz de Camões, the only son and child of Simão Vaz de Camões and wife Ana de Sá de Macedo^[1]. His birthplace is unknown. Lisbon, Coimbra or Alenquer are frequently presented as his birthplace, although the latter is based on what may be a wrong interpretation of one of his poems.

Camões belongs to a family originating from the northern Portuguese region of Chaves near Galicia. At an early age, Simão Vaz left his son and wife to discover personal riches in India, only to die in Goa in the following years. His mother later re-married.

Monument to Luís de Camões, Lisbon

Camões lived a semi-privileged life and was educated by Dominicans and Jesuits. For a period, due to his familial relations he attended the University of Coimbra, although records do not show him registered (he participated in courses in the Humanities). His uncle, Bento de Camões, is credited with this education, owing to his position as Prior at the Monastery of Santa Cruz and Chancellor at the University of Coimbra. He frequently had access to exclusive literature, including classical Greek, Roman and Latin works, read Latin, Italian and wrote in Spanish.

Camões, as his love poetry can attest, was a romantic and idealist. It was rumored that he fell in love with Catherine of Ataíde, lady-in-waiting to the Queen, and also the Princess Maria, sister of John III of Portugal. It is also likely that an indiscreet allusion to the king in his play El-Rei Seleuco, as well as these other incidents may have played a part in his exile from Lisbon in 1548. He traveled to the Ribatejo where he stayed in the company of friends who sheltered and fed him. He stayed in the province for about six months.

He enlisted in the overseas militia, and traveled to Ceuta in the fall of 1549. During a battle with the Moors, he lost the sight in his right eye. He eventually returned to Lisbon in 1551, a changed man, living a bohemian lifestyle. In 1552, during the religious festival of Corpus Christi, in the Largo do Rossio, he injured Gonçalo Borges, a member of the Royal Stables. Camões was imprisoned. His mother pleaded for his release, visiting royal ministers and the Borges family for a pardon. Released, Camões was ordered to pay 4,000 réis and serve three-years in the militia in the Orient.

He departed in 1553 for Goa on board the São Bento, commanded by Fernão Alves Cabral. The ship arrived six months later. In Goa, Camões was imprisoned for debt. He found Goa "a step-mother to all honest men" but he studied local customs and mastered the local geography and history. On his first expedition, he joined a battle along the Malabar Coast. The battle was followed by skirmishes along the trading routes between Egypt and India. The fleet eventually returned to Goa by November 1554. During his time ashore, he continued his writing publicly, as well as writing correspondence for the uneducated men of the fleet.

At the end of his obligatory service, he was given the position of chief warrant officer in Macau. He was charged with managing the properties of missing and deceased soldiers in the Orient. During this time he worked on his epic poem Os Lusíadas ("The Lusiads") in a grotto. He was later accused of misappropriations and traveled to Goa to respond to the accusations of the tribunal. During his return journey, near the Mekong River along the Cambodian coast, he was shipwrecked, saving his manuscript but losing his Chinese lover. His shipwreck survival in the Mekong Delta was enhanced by the legendary detail that he succeeded in swimming ashore while holding aloft the manuscript of his still-unfinished epic.

In 1570 Camões finally made it back to Lisbon, where two years later he published Os Lusíadas. In recompense for his poem or perhaps for services in the Far East, he was granted a small royal pension by the young and ill-fated King Sebastian (ruled 1557–1578).

In 1578 he heard of the appalling defeat of the Battle of Alcazarquivir, where King Sebastian was killed and the Portuguese army destroyed. The Spanish troops were approaching Lisbon^{[citation needed]} when Camões wrote to the Captain General of Lamego: "All will see that so dear to me was my country that I was content to die not only in it but with it". Camões died in Lisbon in 1580, at the age of 56.

Bibliography

Trivia

• Camões is the subject of the first romantic painting from a Portuguese painter, A Morte de Camões (1825), by Domingos Sequeira, now lost.
• He is one of the characters in Donizetti's grand opera Dom Sébastien, Rei de Portugal
• Camões figures prominently in the book Het verboden rijk (The Forbidden Empire) by the Dutch writer J. Slauerhoff, who himself made several voyages to the Far East as a ship's doctor.
• Today, a museum dedicated to Camões can be found in Macau, the Museu Luís de Camões.

See also

• Portuguese poetry

References

External links

• Works by Luis de Camoes at Project Gutenberg
• Luis Vaz de Camões - Catholic Encyclopedia article
• Rimas by Luís de Camões. Editor: Álvaro Júlio da Costa Pimpão. Coimbra: Acta Universitatis Conimbrigensis, 1953, 460 p.
• The Presence of Camoes: Influences on the Literature of England, America, and Southern Africa by George Monteiro. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996, 189+10 pp.

From Wikiquote

Luís Vaz de Camões or de Camoens (c. 1524 – 1580-06-10) is considered the national poet of Portugal. He wrote lyric poems in both Portuguese and Spanish, but is best remembered for his Os Lusíadas, an epic about the voyages of Vasco de Gama.

Sourced

• Transforma-se o amador na cousa amada,
  Por virtude do muito imaginar;
  Não tenho, logo, mais que desejar,
  Pois em mim tenho a parte desejada.
  • The lover becomes the thing he loves
    By virtue of much imagining;
    Since what I long for is already in me,
    The act of longing should be enough.
  • Sonnet, "Transforma-se o amador na cousa amada", line 1; translation by Richard Zenith. [1]

• Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver,
  É ferida que dói, e não se sente;
  É um contentamento descontente,
  É dor que desatina sem doer.
  É um não querer mais que bem querer;
  É um andar solitário entre a gente;
  É nunca contentar-se de contente;
  É um cuidar que ganha em se perder.
  • Love is a fire that burns unseen,
    A wound that aches yet isn't felt,
    An always discontent contentment,
    A pain that rages without hurting,
    A longing for nothing but to long,
    A loneliness in the midst of people,
    A never feeling pleased when pleased,
    A passion that gains when lost in thought.
  • Sonnet, "Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver", line 1; translation by Richard Zenith. [2]

• Os bons vi sempre passar
  No mundo graves tormentos;
  E para mais me espantar,
  Os maus vi sempre nadar
  Em mar de contentamentos.
  • Ever in this world saw I
    Good men suffer grave torments,
    But even more –
    Enough to terrify –
    Men who live out evil lives
    Reveling in pleasure and in content.
  • "Esparsa ao desconcerto do mundo", line 1; translation from Henry Hersh Hart Luís de Camões and the Epic of the Lusiads (1962) p. 111.

Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads)

English quotations and page-numbers are taken from the 1826 translation by Thomas Moore Musgrave.

• E também as memórias gloriosas
  Daqueles Reis, que foram dilatando
  A Fé, o Império, e as terras viciosas
  De África e de Ásia andaram devastando;
  E aqueles, que por obras valerosas
  Se vão da lei da morte libertando;
  Cantando espalharei por toda parte,
  Se a tanto me ajudar o engenho e arte.
  • The great achievements of their martial kings,
    Who spread the Christian Faith where'er their arms
    Prevail'd, in Asia, and in Africa,
    Idolatrous and superstitious rites
    Extirpating; and those, too, whose exploits,
    From death's oblivion their names redeem'd:
    These let me sing, and wide extend their fame,
    If to such themes my Muse may dare aspire.
  • Canto 1, st. 2, p. 1.

• Ó grandes e gravíssimos perigos!
  Ó caminho de vida nunca certo:
  Que aonde a gente põe sua esperança,
  Tenha a vida tão pouca segurança!
  No mar tanta tormenta, e tanto dano,
  Tantas vezes a morte apercebida!
  Na terra tanta guerra, tanto engano,
  Tanta necessidade avorrecida!
  Onde pode acolher-se um fraco humano,
  Onde terá segura a curta vida,
  Que não se arme, e se indigne o Céu sereno
  Contra um bicho da terra tão pequeno?
  • What perils, numberless and imminent,
    Ceaseless assail Life's mutable career!
    Ev'n where we center all our fondest hopes,
    They vanish like an unsubstantial dream.
    At sea, what storms, what losses, man endures!
    What cruel deaths the waves for him prepare!
    On land, what sanguinary wars, what guile,
    What wretchedness, what misery, prevail!
    To what asylum shall frail man retreat?
    Where pass secure the narrow span of life,
    That placid Heaven, unruffled, may not launch
    Its thunderbolt against so poor a worm.
  • Canto 1, st. 105-106, pp. 37-38.

• Queimou o sagrado templo de Diana,
  Do subtil Tesifónio fabricado,
  Heróstrato, por ser da gente humana
  Conhecido no mundo e nomeado:
  Se também com tais obras nos engana
  O desejo de um nome avantajado,
  Mais razão há que queira eterna glória
  Quem faz obras tão dignas de memória.
  • If chaste Diana's consecrated Fane,
    Rais'd by the wondrous skill of Ctesiphon,
    To sacrilegious flames was sacrific'd
    By Eratostratus, to blazon forth
    His name; if such unholy deeds are wrought
    Vain-glory to perpetuate; how much
    More due is deathless fame to him, whose acts
    Are worthy of eternal memory!
  • Canto 2, stanza 113, p. 80.

• Ó Rei subido,
  Aventurar-me a ferro, a fogo, a neve
  É tão pouco por vós, que mais me pena
  Ser esta vida cousa tão pequena.
  • O Mighty King! The perils of the sword,
    Or fire, or frost, I nothing estimate;
    But much I grieve that life must circumscribe
    The limits of my zeal.
  • Canto 4, st. 79, p. 165.

• Pois vens ver os segredos escondidos
  Da natureza e do úmido elemento,
  A nenhum grande humano concedidos
  De nobre ou de imortal merecimento,
  Ouve os danos de mim, que apercebidos
  Estão a teu sobejo atrevimento,
  Por todo o largo mar e pela terra,
  Que ainda hás de sojugar com dura guerra.
  • Com'st thou to penetrate the mysteries
    Of nature, and this humid element,
    Which to no mortal yet have been reveal'd,
    Whate'er his merit, or his deathless fame?
    But listen! Thou shalt know what punishments
    For thy bold daring are by me prepar'd,
    Which on the spacious deep thou shalt endure,
    And 'midst the regions thou shalt yet subdue
    By force of arms.
  • Canto 5, stanza 42, pp. 191-192.

• Ó quanto deve o Rei que bem governa,
  De olhar que os conselheiros, ou privados,
  De consciência e de virtude interna
  E de sincero amor sejam dotados!
  Porque, como este posto na suprema
  Cadeira, pode mal dos apartados
  Negócios ter notícia mais inteira,
  Do que lhe der a língua conselheira.
  • With what solicitude the King who wields
    His scepter'd power with justice, should select,
    To aid his counsels, Sages most endow'd
    With skill and conscientious rectitude!
    He who is plac'd upon the Royal Throne,
    For knowledge of the high concerns of State,
    Must, on the wisdom and fidelity
    Of his chief Counsellors, mainly rely.
  • Canto 8, st. 54, p. 306.

• Quem faz injúria vil e sem razão,
  Com forças e poder em que está posto,
  Não vence; que a vitória verdadeira
  É saber ter justiça nua e inteira.
  • He who, solely to oppress,
    Employs or martial force, or pow'r, achieves
    No victory; but a true victory
    Is gain'd, when justice triumphs and prevails.
  • Canto 10, st. 58, p. 381.

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