Luis de Camoes Collected Poetical Works
Page 130
433 With shrill, faint voice, th’ untimely ghost complains. — It may not perhaps be unentertaining to cite Madame Dacier and Mr. Pope on the voices of the dead. It will, at least, afford a critical observation which appears to have escaped them both. “The shades of the suitors,” observes Dacier, “when they are summoned by Mercury out of the palace of Ulysses, emit a feeble, plaintive, inarticulate sound, τρίζουσι, strident: whereas Agamemnon, and the shades that have been long in the state of the dead, speak articulately. I doubt not but Homer intended to show, by the former description, that when the soul is separated from the organs of the body, it ceases to act after the same manner as while it was joined to it; but how the dead recover their voices afterwards is not easy to understand. In other respects Virgil paints after Homer: —
Pars tollere vocem
Exiguam: inceptus clamor frustratur hiantes.”
To this Mr. Pope replies, “But why should we suppose, with Dacier, that these shades of the suitors (of Penelope) have lost the faculty of speaking? I rather imagine that the sounds they uttered were signs of complaint and discontent, and proceeded not from an inability to speak. After Patroclus was slain he appears to Achilles, and speaks very articulately to him; yet, to express his sorrow at his departure, he acts like these suitors: for Achilles —
‘Like a thin smoke beholds the spirit fly,
And hears a feeble, lamentable cry.’
Dacier conjectures that the power of speech ceases in the dead, till they are admitted into a state of rest; but Patroclus is an instance to the contrary in the Iliad, and Elpenor in the Odyssey, for they both speak before their funereal rites are performed, and consequently before they enter into a state of repose amongst the shades of the happy.”
The critic, in his search for distant proofs, often omits the most material one immediately at hand. Had Madame Dacier attended to the episode of the souls of the suitors, the world had never seen her ingenuity in these mythological conjectures; nor had Mr. Pope any need to bring the case of Patroclus or Elpenor to overthrow her system. Amphimedon, one of the suitors, in the very episode which gave birth to Dacier’s conjecture, tells his story very articulately to the shade of Agamemnon, though he had not received the funereal rites: —
“Our mangled bodies, now deform’d with gore,
Cold and neglected spread the marble floor:
No friend to bathe our wounds! or tears to shed
O’er the pale corse! the honours of the dead.”
Odys. xxiv.
On the whole, the defence of Pope is almost as idle as the conjectures of Dacier. The plain truth is, poetry delights in personification; everything in it, as Aristotle says of the Iliad, has manners; poetry must therefore personify according to our ideas. Thus in Milton: —
“Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth.”
And thus in Homer, while the suitors are conducted to hell: —
“Trembling, the spectres glide, and plaintive vent
Thin, hollow screams, along the deep descent:”
and, unfettered with mythological distinctions, either shriek or articulately talk, according to the most poetical view of their supposed circumstances.
434 Exod. xiv. 29.
435 Noah.
436 Venus.
437 For the fable of Eolus see the tenth Odyssey.
438
And vow, that henceforth her Armada’s sails
Should gently swell with fair propitious gales.
In innumerable instances Camoëns discovers himself a judicious imitator of the ancients. In the two great masters of the epic are several prophecies oracular of the fate of different heroes, which give an air of solemn importance to the poem. The fate of the Armada thus obscurely anticipated, resembles in particular the prophecy of the safe return of Ulysses to Ithaca, foretold by the shade of Tiresias, which was afterwards fulfilled by the Phæacians. It remains now to make some observations on the machinery used by Camoëns in this book. The necessity of machinery in the epopea, and the, perhaps, insurmountable difficulty of finding one unexceptionably adapted to a poem where the heroes are Christians, or, in other words, to a poem whose subject is modern, have already been observed in the preface. The machinery of Camoëns has also been proved, in every respect, to be less exceptionable than that of Tasso in his Jerusalem, or that of Voltaire in his Henriade. The descent of Bacchus to the palace of Neptune, in the depths of the sea, and his address to the watery gods, are noble imitations of Virgil’s Juno in the first Æneid. The description of the storm is also masterly. In both instances the conduct of the Æneid is joined with the descriptive exuberance of the Odyssey. The appearance of the star of Venus through the storm is finely imagined; the influence of the nymphs of that goddess over the winds, and their subsequent nuptials, are in the spirit of the promise of Juno to Eolus: —
Sunt mihi bis septum præstanti corpore nymphæ:
Quarum, quæ forma pulcherrima; Deïopeiam
Connubio jungam stabili, propriamque dicabo:
Omnes ut tecum meritis pro talibus annos
Exigat, et pulchra faciat te prole párentem. — Virgil, Æn. bk. i.
And the fiction itself is an allegory, exactly in the manner of Homer. Orithia, the daughter of Erecteus, and queen of the Amazons, was ravished and carried away by Boreas.
439 Vasco de Gama.
440 This refers to the Catholic persecutions of Protestants whom they had previously condemned at the Diet of Spires. War was declared against the Protestants in 1546. It lasted for six years, when a treaty of peace was signed at Passau on the Danube, in 1552. — Ed.
441 Some blindly wand’ring, holy faith disclaim. — At the time when Camoëns wrote, the German empire was plunged into all the miseries of a religious war, the Catholics using every endeavour to rivet the chains of Popery, the adherents of Luther as strenuously endeavouring to shake them off.
442
High sound the titles of the English crown,
King of Jerusalem. —
The title of “King of Jerusalem” was never assumed by the kings of England. Robert, duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, was elected King of Jerusalem by the army in Syria, but declined it in hope of ascending the throne of England. Henry VIII. filled the throne of England when our author wrote: his luxury and conjugal brutality amply deserved the censure of the honest poet.
443 France.
444 What impious lust of empire steels thy breast. — The French translator very cordially agrees with the Portuguese poet in the strictures upon Germany, England, and Italy.
445 The Mohammedans.
446 Where Cynifio flows. — A river in Africa, near Tripoli. — Virgil, Georg. iii. 311. — Ed.
447 O Italy! how fall’n, how low, how lost! — However these severe reflections on modern Italy may displease the admirers of Italian manners, the picture on the whole is too just to admit of confutation. Never did the history of any court afford such instances of villainy and all the baseness of intrigue as that of the pope’s. That this view of the lower ranks in the pope’s dominions is just, we have the indubitable testimony of Addison. Our poet is justifiable in his censures, for he only follows the severe reflections of the greatest of the Italian poets. It were easy to give fifty instances; two or three, however, shall suffice. Dante, in his sixth canto, del Purg. —
Ahi, serva Italia, di dolore ostello,
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,
Non donna di provincie, bordello.
“Ah, slavish Italy, the inn of dolour, a ship without a pilot in a horrid tempest: — not the mistress of provinces, but a brothel!”
Ariosto, canto 17: —
O d’ ogni vitio fetida sentina
Dormi Italia imbríaco.
“O inebriated Italy, thou sleepest the sink of every filthy vice!”
And Petrarch: —
Del’empia Babilonia, ond’è fuggita
Ogni vergogna, ond’ogni bene è fuori,
Albergo di dolor
, madre d’errori
Son fuggit’io per allungar la vita.
“From the impious Babylon (the Papal Court) from whence all shame and all good are fled, the inn of dolour, the mother of errors, have I hastened away to prolong my life.”
448 The fables old of Cadmus. — Cadmus having slain the dragon which guarded the fountain of Dirce, in Bœotia, sowed the teeth of the monster. A number of armed men immediately sprang up, and surrounded Cadmus, in order to kill him. By the counsel of Minerva he threw a precious stone among them, in striving for which they slew one another. Only five survived, who afterwards assisted him to build the city of Thebes. — Vid. Ovid. Met. iv.
Terrigenæ pereunt per mutua vulnera fratres.
449
So fall the bravest of the Christian name,
While dogs unclean. —
Imitated from a fine passage in Lucan, beginning —
Quis furor, O Cives! quæ tanta licentia ferri,
Gentibus invisis Latium præbere cruorem?
450 The Mohammedans.
451 Constantinople.
452 Beyond the Wolgian Lake. — The Caspian Sea, so called from the large river Volga, or Wolga, which empties itself into it.
453
Their fairest offspring from their bosoms torn,
(A dreadful tribute !) —
By this barbarous policy the tyranny of the Ottomans was long sustained. The troops of the Turkish infantry and cavalry, known by the name of Janissaries and Spahis, were thus supported. “The sons of Christians — and those the most completely furnished by nature — were taken in their childhood from their parents by a levy made every five years, or oftener, as occasion required.” — Sandys.
454 Mohammedans.
455
O’er Afric’s shores
The sacred shrines the Lusian heroes rear’d. —
See the note on book v. .
456 Of deepest west. — Alludes to the discovery and conquest of the Brazils by the Portuguese.
457 The poet, having brought his heroes to the shore of India, indulges himself with a review of the state of the western and eastern worlds; the latter of which is now, by the labour of his heroes, rendered accessible to the former. The purpose of his poem is also strictly kept in view. The west and the east he considers as two great empires; the one of the true religion, the other of a false. The professors of the true, disunited and destroying one another; the professors of the false one, all combined to extirpate the other. He upbraids the professors of the true religion for their vices, particularly for their disunion, and for deserting the interests of holy faith. His countrymen, however, he boasts, have been its defenders and planters, and, without the assistance of their brother powers, will plant it in Asia.
“The Crusaders,” according to Voltaire, “were a band of vagabond thieves, who had agreed to ramble from the heart of Europe in order to desolate a country they had no right to, and massacre, in cold blood, a venerable prince, more than fourscore years old, and his whole people, against whom they had no pretence of complaint.”
To prove that the Crusades were neither so unjustifiable, so impolitic, nor so unhappy in their consequences as superficial readers of history are accustomed to regard them, would not be difficult.
Upon the whole, it will be found that the Portuguese poet talks of the political reasons of a Crusade with an accuracy in the philosophy of history as superior to that of Voltaire, as the poetical merit of the Lusiad surpasses that of the Henriade. And the critic in poetry must allow, that, to suppose the discovery of Gama the completion of all the endeavours to overthrow the great enemies of the true religion, gives a dignity to the poem, and an importance to the hero, similar to that which Voltaire, on the same supposition, allows to the subject of the Jerusalem of Tasso.
458 Calicut is the name of a famous sea-port town in the province of Malabar.
459
The herald hears
Castilia’s manly tongue salute his ears. —
This in according to the truth of history. While the messenger sent ashore by Gama was borne here and there, and carried off his feet by the throng, who understood not a word of his language, he was accosted in Spanish by a Moorish merchant, a native of Tunis, who, according to Osorius, had been the chief person with whom King Ferdinand had formerly contracted for military stores. He proved himself an honest agent, and of infinite service to Gama; he returned to Portugal, where, according to Faria, he died in the Christian communion. He was named Monzaida.
460 The sacred pledge of eastern faith. — To eat together was, and still is, in the east looked upon as the inviolable pledge of protection. As a Persian nobleman was one day walking in his garden, a wretch in the utmost terror prostrated himself before him, and implored to be protected from the rage of a multitude who were in pursuit of him, to take his life. The nobleman took a peach, eat part of it, and gave the rest to the fugitive, assuring him of safety. As they approached the house, they met a crowd who carried the murdered corpse of the nobleman’s beloved son. The incensed populace demanded the murderer, who stood beside him, to be delivered to their fury. The father, though overwhelmed with grief and anger, replied, “We have eaten together, and I will not betray him.” He protected the murderer of his son from the fury of his domestics and neighbours, and in the night facilitated his escape.
461 i.e. crescent-shaped. — Ed.
462 In Rhodope. — The beautiful fable of the descent of Orpheus to hell, for the recovery of his beloved wife, Eurydice, will be found in Virgil’s Georgics, bk. iv., lines 460-80. — Ed.
463
(For now the banquet on the tented plain,
And sylvan chase his careless hours employ). —
The great Mogul, and other eastern sovereigns, attended by their courtiers, spend annually some months of the finest season in encampments in the field, in hunting parties, and military amusements.
464 Th’ enormous mountain. — The Himalaya range, which is a continuation of an immense chain of mountains girdling the northern regions of the earth and known by various names, as Caucasus, Homodus, Paropamissus, Imaus, etc., and from Imaus extended through Tartary to the sea of Kamschatka. Not the range of mountains so called in Asia Minor. — Ed.
465 As wild traditions tell. — Pliny, imposed upon by some Greeks, who pretended to have been in India, relates this fable. — Vide Nat. Hist. lib. 12.
466 Is fondly plac’d in Ganges’ holy wave. — Almost all the Indian nations attribute to the Ganges the virtue of cleansing the soul from the stains of sin. They have such veneration for this river, that if any one in their presence were to throw any filth into the stream, an instant death would punish his audacity.
467 Cambaya, the ancient Camanes of Ptolemy, gives name to the gulf of that name at the head of which it is situated. It is the principal seaport of Guzerat. — Ed.
468 Porus was king of part of the Punjaub, and was conquered by Alexander the Great. — Ed.
469 Narsinga. — The laws of Narsing oblige the women to throw themselves into the funeral pile, to be burnt with their deceased husbands. An infallible secret to prevent the desire of widowhood. — Castera from Barros, Dec. 4.
470 The Canarese, who inhabit Canara, on the west coast of India. — Ed.
471 Medina, a city of Arabia, famous as being the burial-place of Mohammed, and hence esteemed sacred. — Ed.
472 According to tradition, Perimal, a sovereign of India, embraced Islamism about 800 years before Gama’s voyage, divided his dominions into different kingdoms, and ended his days as a hermit at Mecca. — Ed.
473 i.e. pariahs, outcasts.
474 Brahma their founder as a god they boast. — Antiquity has talked much, but knew little with certainty of the Brahmins, and their philosophy. Porphyry and others esteem them the same as the Gymnosophists of the Greeks, and divide them into several sects, the Samanæi, the Germanes, the Pramnæ, the Gymnetæ, etc. Brahma is the head of the Hindu triad which consists of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva.
— Ed.
475 Almost innumerable, and sometimes as whimsically absurd as the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,” are the holy legends of India. The accounts of the god Brahma, or Brimha, are more various than those of any fable in the Grecian mythology. According to Father Bohours, in his life of Xavier, the Brahmins hold, that the Great God having a desire to become visible, became man. In this state he produced three sons, Mayso, Visnu, and Brahma; the first, born of his mouth, the second, of his breast, the third, of his belly. Being about to return to his invisibility, he assigned various departments to his three sons. To Brahma he gave the third heaven, with the superintendence of the rites of religion. Brahma having a desire for children, begat the Brahmins, who are the priests of India, and who are believed by the other tribes to be a race of demi-gods, who have the blood of heaven running in their veins. Other accounts say, that Brahma produced the priests from his head, the more ignoble tribes from his breast, thighs, and feet.
According to the learned Kircher’s account of the theology of the Brahmins, the sole and supreme god Vishnu, formed the secondary god Brahma, out of a flower that floated on the surface of the great deep before the creation. And afterwards, in reward of the virtue, fidelity, and gratitude of Brahma, gave him power to create the universe.