Luís de Camões
(c.1524-1580)
Contents
The Poetry Books
THE LUSIADS: 1880 BURTON TRANSLATION
THE LUSIADS: DUAL PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH TEXT
THE LUSIADS: 1776 MICKLE TRANSLATION
THE LYRICKS
The Biography
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: LUIS VAZ DE CAMOENS by Edgar Prestage
The Delphi Classics Catalogue
© Delphi Classics 2015
Version 1
Luís de Camões
By Delphi Classics, 2015
COPYRIGHT
Luis de Camoes - Delphi Poets Series
First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by Delphi Classics.
© Delphi Classics, 2015.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
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NOTE
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The Poetry Books
Monument to Luís de Camões, Lisbon — Camões’ birthplace remains unknown, as historians suggest Lisbon, Coimbra or Alenquer as likely locations.
THE LUSIADS: 1880 BURTON TRANSLATION
Translated by Richard Francis Burton
Portugal’s greatest achievement in epic verse, Os Lusíadas was composed in Homeric fashion and concerns a fantastical interpretation of the Portuguese voyages of discovery during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. First printed in 1572, three years after the author returned from the Indies, the poem consists of ten cantos, with a variable number of stanzas (1102 in total), written in the decasyllabic ottava rima, with the rhyme scheme ABABABCC, in a total of 8816 lines of verse.
The Lusiads is composed of four sections, beginning with an introduction — a proposition presenting the theme and heroes of the poem, followed by an Invocation – a prayer to the Tágides, the nymphs of the Tagus. The third section provides a dedication to Sebastian, King of Portugal, followed by the final and main section, the narration of the epic itself. The most important part of the epic, concerning the arrival in India, was placed at the point in the poem that divides the work according to the golden section (golden mean) at the beginning of Canto VII.
The heroes of the epic are the Lusiads, the sons of Lusus, the supposed son or companion of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and divine madness, to whom Portuguese national mythology attributed the foundation of ancient Lusitania and the fatherhood of its inhabitants. The Lusitanians are therefore identified as the ancestors of the modern Portuguese people. The initial strophes of Jupiter’s speech in the Concílio dos Deuses Olímpicos (Council of the Olympian Gods), which open the narrative section, highlight the laudatory orientation of the author.
In these strophes, Camões speaks of Viriatus and Quintus Sertorius, the people of Lusus, predestined by the Fates to accomplish great deeds. Jupiter declares that their history proves it as, having emerged victorious against the Moors and Castilians, the small nation has gone on to discover new worlds and impose its law in the concert of the nations. At the climax of the poem, on the Island of Love, the fictional finale to the glorious tour of Portuguese history, Camões explains that a concern once expressed by Bacchus has been confirmed: that the Portuguese would become ‘gods’.
Camões was inspired to compose the epic due to the extraordinary Portuguese discoveries of the new kingdom in the East, following the recent and extraordinary deeds of the “strong Castro” (“Castro forte”, the viceroy Dom João de Castro), who had died some years before the poet’s own visit to the Indian lands. The vast majority of the narration consists of grandiloquent speeches by various orators: the main narrator; Vasco da Gama, recognised as “eloquent captain”; Paulo da Gama; Thetis; and the Siren who tells the future in Canto X. There are also powerful descriptive passages, like the description of the palaces of Neptune and the Samorim of Calicute, the locus amoenus of the Island of Love (Canto IX), the dinner in the palace of Thetis (Canto X), and Gama’s cloth (at the end of Canto II). Examples of dynamic descriptions include the battle of the Island of Mozambique, the battles of Ourique and Aljubarrota and the storm. Camões is a master of description, celebrated for his use of verbs of movement, the abundance of visual and acoustic sensations and expressive use of alliteration. The episode, usually known as “of Inês de Castro” is one of the most famous events narrated in the work and is usually classified as a lyric, distinguishing it from the more common war episodes. The episode discusses destiny, and leads the action to its tragic end, even something close to the coir (apostrophes).
The original front page of the epic poem
Dom Sebastian I (1554-1578) was King of Portugal and the Algarves from 11 June 1557 to 4 August 1578 and the penultimate Portuguese monarch of the House of Aviz.
CONTENTS
Editor’s Preface
PREFACE.
NOTE.
CANTO I.
ARGUMENT OF THE FIRST CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO I.
CANTO II.
ARGUMENT OF THE SECOND CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO II.
CANTO III.
ARGUMENT OF THE THIRD CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO III.
CANTO IV.
ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO IV,
CANTO V.
ARGUMENT OF THE FIFTH CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO V.
CANTO VI.
ARGUMENT OF THE SIXTH CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO VI.
CANTO VII.
ARGUMENT OF THE SEVENTH CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO VII.
CANTO VIII.
ARGUMENT OF THE EIGHTH CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO VIII.
CANTO IX.
ARGUMENT OF THE NINTH CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO IX.
CANTO X.
ARGUMENT OF THE TENTH CANTO.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT.
CANTO X.
THE REJECTED STANZAS. (ESTANCIAS DESPREZADAS).
NOTE.
ESTANCIAS DESPREZADAS.
THE REJECTED STANZAS.
MANUSCRIPT NO. I.
MANUSCRIPT NO. II.
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira, (c. 1460-1524) was the first European to reach India by sea, linking Europe and Asia for the first time by ocean route, as well as the Atlantic and the Indian oceans entirely and definitively, and in this way, the West and the Orient. This was accomplished on his first voyage to India (1497–1499).
Malabar Coast, southern India — a key setting of the epic
Il far un libro é meno che niente,
Sc il libro fatto non rifa la gente.
GIUSTI.
Place, riches, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit.
SHAKSPEARE.
Ora toma a espada, agora a penna
(Now with the sword-hilt, then with pen in hand).
CAM., Sonn. 192.
Bram
o assai, — poco spero, — nulla chiedo.
TASSO.
Tout cela prouve enfin que l’ouvrage est plein de grandes beautes, puisque depuis deux cents ans il fait les delices d’une nation spirituelle qui doit en connoitre les fautes.
VOLTAIRE, Essai, etc.
TO MY MASTER
CAMOENS:
[Tu se’ lo mio maestro, e’ l mio autore).
GREAT Pilgrim-poet of the Sea and Land;
Thou life-long sport of Fortune’s ficklest will;
Doomed to all human and inhuman ill,
Despite thy lover-heart, thy hero-hand:
Enrolled by thy pen what marv’ellous band
Of god-like Forms thy golden pages fill;
Love, Honour, Justice, Valour, Glory thrill
The Soul, obedient to thy strong command:
Amid the Prophets highest sits the Bard,
At once Revealer of the Heav’en and Earth,
To Heav’en the guide, of Earth the noblest guard;
And, ‘mid the Poets thine the peerless worth,
Whose glorious song, thy Genius’ sole reward,
Bids all the Ages, Camoens! bless thy birth.
R. F. B.
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 bonche 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 aesthetic 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 unaesthetic, 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 so 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 Correa. 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 mens, devant ia lance,
En mine, en échelle, en tons lieux,
En prouesse les bons avance,
Ta dame fen 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 snowpeak; 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.
Luis de Camoes Collected Poetical Works Page 1