CAMÕES, Luís de. - Portuguese poet, b. probably in 1524 in Lisbon and d. there on 10 June 1580. A student at the University of Coimbra and then at that of Lisbon (1537-42), later exiled to Ribatejo for supposed allusions to royal loves in the Auto de El-Rei Seleuco, wounded in combat in 1547 at Ceuta, he departed in 1553 for the Indies. A soldier and government official, he met with many adventures there and was even thrown into prison on grave and unjust accusations. Having finally returned to his homeland in 1570, he ended there ten years later his toilsome life.
His greatest work is the poem Os Lusíadas (1102 octaves distributed in 10 cantos), in which are exalted the deeds not of a single hero but of an entire people, celebrating, in fact, in it the glorious actions carried out by Portugal by sea and by land: thus the sole subject is not the first expedition to the Indies, as some believed, but to this are wedded all the noble enterprises that preceded and followed it. The historic voyage of Vasco da Gama from South Africa to Mombasa, to Melinde, to Calicut, and his return to Portugal, attracted, as an ideal center, memories and episodes of Lusitanian history: national and medieval elements are harmoniously interwoven there, and the medallions that reproduce the greatest moments of national life are inserted among the classical Renaissance elements and the exotic ones bestowed by the enchanted world just discovered. At the center of the work stands not Vasco da Gama, whose work only completed the history of navigation, but the Portuguese hero in general, the whole people who in him find their highest expression: to the petty and sad present is thus counterposed the past greatness of Portugal. The poem, warlike and seafaring, resplendent with love of country and fervent with lyricism, of heroic intonation and intimate religiosity, draws its motifs not only from national literature but from Spanish and, to a large extent, from Italian literature, especially from Petrarch, Boccaccio, Tasso and Ariosto; it brings together ancient and romantic, heroic and historical motifs, chronicle and science, tradition and legend, but it is above all faithful to the classical models both in form and style and in its procedures: the pagan marvelous assumes in that most sincere religious man a new intonation that is precisely the plastic expression of such a mental position. In defending the highest moral principles and the greatest virtues, C. utters invocations, reproaches and maxims of eternal value: a heroic conception of life, the sense of the vanity of every enterprise, the profound conviction of man's wretchedness, inspire in him melancholic reflections (one need only think of the «Velho do Restelo» of canto IV, str. 24-104) and the verse becomes opaque and sad in the bitter condemnation of the homeland's decadence: and yet the poem acutely defined by F. de Figueiredo as «Bible of Lusitanian patriotism» is a triumphant hymn of the Renaissance, in which nonetheless the epic accent is constantly wedded to a profoundly lyrical breath.
The Petrarchan lyricism that in Portugal had found fervent welcome as early as Sá de Miranda had in Camões's work its supreme realization with the perfect technical form reached by the sonnet, even among stupendous canzoni, elegies, odes, sestinas etc., compositions all in which every sentiment and passion is expressed with the most delicate elegance, clarity, precision and harmony: and the lyrics are organized into a canzoniere that is almost a single poem of sorrowful love. To this major production there is added, finally, what C. wrote for the theater, namely three autos, Amfirião, El-Rei Seleuco, Filodemo, in which, departing from classical inspiration, he comes closer to the school of Gil Vicente; nor should one forget the satirical and melancholic nove Cartas, among which the Sátira do torneio stands out, as well as the Disparates da India, pungent invectives against the misgovernment of the conquerors.
Bibliography16 works
Lisbon 1936; A. Rebêlo Gonçalves, Dissertações camonianas, São Paulo 1937; S. Leite, C., poeta de expansão da fé, Rio de Janeiro 1943.
Jole Scudieri Ruggieri