Everything about Camoens totally explained
Luís Vaz de Camões (; sometimes rendered in
English from old
Portuguese as
Camoens) (c.
1524–
June 10,
1580) is considered
Portugal's greatest
poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of
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 philosophical work
The Parnasum of Luís Vaz was lost, stolen with part of
Os Lusíadas by envious enemies while he was staying at
Mozambique.
As mentioned in the
Nobiliário das Famílias de Portugal, by Manuel José da Costa Felgueiras Gaio:
The famous Luís de Camões, celebrated poet whom with the sword gave shows of his value and illustrious blood and with the pen made even more known his surname making his celebrated and great work in verse which so known it's in the literary republic, the whom was little esteemed at his time and only after his death he got esteem: he's buried at Santa Anna of Lisbon in a grave that one of his friends ordered to be made for him, so rich of a good name as he lived poor of wealth. Was born in Lisbon by the years of 1517.
As mentioned in the
Pedatura Lusitana, by Cristóvão Alão de Morais:
Luís de Camões, who served in Africa and in India and was the greatest ingenious of Portugal. He composed "Os Lusíadas" and many rhimes, for what he deserved the title of "Prince of Poets". He died single and without issue. He is buried at the Church of Santa Ana of Lisbon, on a leveled grave, deserving an illustrious mausoleum, as thanks of the gold status his poem erected to the Heroes of his Motherland. In his praise, made a eulogy Manuel de Faria Severim, Chantre of Évora, which goes printed between his speeches, where the main actions of his life can be seen.
The portrait at right is a lithograph after an imaginary portrait by
François Gérard.
Life
Many details concerning the life of Camões remain unknown, but he's 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, was likely born in
Lisbon,
Coimbra or any other place.
Alenquer is also frequently presented as his birthplace, but this is based in a wrong interpretation of one of his poems. People think that it's Camões who is talking in this poem, but indeed Camões wrote the poem like someone else, that died with less than 25 years old, was talking about himself.
Camões belongs to a family 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.
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 don't 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 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.
Works
Biography
The definitive biography is
Life of Camões, by
John Adamson, published by
Longman in
1820.
Bibliography
English
Luis de Camões: Epic and Lyric, ed. Keith Bosley (1990)
Camoens: His Life and his Lusiads, 1881
The Place of Camoens in Literature / Nabuco, Joaquim., 1908
Luis de Camões / Bell, Aubrey F. G., 1923
Camoens, Central Figure of Portuguese Lit. / Goldberg, Isaac., 1924
From Virgil to Milton / Bowra, C. M., 1945
Camoens and the Epic of the Lusiads / Hart, Henry Hersch., 1962
The Lusiads of Luiz de Camões / Bacon, Leonard., 1966
The Presence of Camões / Monteiro, George., 1996
The Lusiads / White, Landeg., 2002
Ordering Empire: The Poetry of Camões, Pringle and Campbell / Meihuizen, Nicholas., 2007
Spanish
Camoens y Cervantes / Orico, Osvaldo., 1948
Camoens / Filgueira Valverde, Jose., 1958
Homenaje a Camoens: Estudios y Ensayos., 1980
Cuatro Lecciones Sobre Camoens / Alonso Zamora Vicente., 1981
Trivia
Camões is one of the roles 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.Further Information
Get more info on 'Camoens'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://lu__s_de_cam__es.totallyexplained.com">Luís de Camões Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
