CAMÕES, LUIS de. - Portuguese poet, b. probably in 1524 in Lisbon and d. there on 10 June 1580. A student at the University of Coimbra and later at that of Lisbon (1537-42), he was later exiled to the Ribatejo for supposed allusions to royal amours in the Autodemo del Reale, wounded in combat in 1547 at Ceuta, and in 1553 he set out for the Indies. As a soldier and government official he encountered many vicissitudes and, due to grave and unjust accusations, was also thrown into prison. Finally returning to his homeland in 1570, he ended his laborious life there ten years later.
His greatest work is the poem Os Lusíadas (1,102 stanzas distributed in 10 cantos), in which the deeds not of a single hero but of an entire people are exalted; indeed, the glorious actions accomplished by Portugal by sea and by land are celebrated in II. The subject is not, therefore, the first expedition to the Indies, as some have believed, but all the noble enterprises that preceded and followed II.
The historic voyage of Vasco da Gama from South Africa to Mombasa, to Melinde, to Calicut, and his return to Portugal, drew, as an ideal center, memories and episodes of Lusitanian history: national and medieval elements are harmoniously interwoven, and the episodes that reproduce the major moments of national life are inserted among the Renaissance classical elements and the exotic ones drawn from the enchanted world newly discovered. At the center of the work is not Vasco da Gama, whose deed merely completed the history of navigation, but the Portuguese hero in general, the entire people who find in him their highest expression. Thus, the wretched and sad present is contrasted with the past greatness of Portugal. The poem, martial and nautical, resplendent with patriotic love and fervent with lyricism, of heroic tone and intimate religiosity, draws its motifs not only from national literature but also from Spanish and, to a large extent, Italian literature, especially from Petrarch, Boccaccio, Tasso, and Ariosto. It blends ancient and romantic, heroic and historical motifs, chronicle and science, tradition and legend, but is above all faithful to classical models both in form and style and in its procedures: the pagan marvelous assumes in that religious disquiet a new tone that is precisely the plastic expression of such a mental attitude. In delineating the highest moral principles and the greatest virtues, C. pronounces invocations, reproaches, and maxims of eternal value: a heroic conception of life, the sense of the vanity of every enterprise, the profound conviction of human wretchedness inspire melancholy reflections (one need only think of the “Velho do Restelo” in canto IV, stanzas 94-104), and the verse becomes opaque and sad in the bitter condemnation of the decline of the fatherland. And yet the poem, which F. de Figueiredo aptly called the “Bible of Lusitanian patriotism,” is a triumphant hymn to the Renaissance, in which nonetheless the epic accent is constantly attuned to a profoundly lyrical inspiration.
The Petrarchan lyricism, which in Portugal had found fervent reception since Sá de Miranda, reached its supreme realization in Camões’ work with the perfect technical form achieved by the sonnet, even amid splendid canzoni, elegies, odes, sestinas, etc.—compositions in which every feeling 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 prologue is added, finally, what C. wrote for the theater, namely three autos, Amfitriões, 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 melancholy nine Cartas, among which the Sátira do tennoio stands out, as well as the Disparates da Índia, biting invectives against the misrule of the conquerors.
Studies: Within the broad current of Camonian criticism, at least the following works should be noted: T. Braga, Historia de C., Porto 1873-74; A. F. de Castilho, Círculo camoniano, 1889-92; W. Storck, L. de C. Leben, Paderborn 1890; J. P. Oliveira Martins, C., os Lusíadas e a Renascença em Portugal, Porto 1891; A. M. Rodrigues, Fontes dos Lusíadas, Coimbra 1905; T. Braga, C. Vida e obras, Porto 1907; A. F. G. Bell, L. de C., Oxford 1923 (and Porto 1936); J. Mendes dos Remédios, C. e o ideal da sua obra, Coimbra 1924; A. Rüegg, L. de C. und Portugals Glanzzeit im Spiegel seines Nationalepos, Basel 1925; A. Peixoto, C. e o Brasil, Lisboa 1927; A. Valbuena Prat, C. y Garcilaso, in Estudios críticos in memoriam de A. Bonilla y San Martín, II, Madrid 1930, pp. 469-78; A. Peixoto, Ensaios camonianos, Coimbra 1932; F. de Figueiredo, A ética portuguesa no século XVI, Lisboa 1932; V. de Castro e Almeida, Vie de C., Paris 1935; H. Cidade, L. de C., I. O lírico, Lisbon 1936; A. Rebelo Gonçalves, Dissertações camonianas, São Paulo 1937; S. Leite, C., poeta de expansão da fé, Rio de Janeiro 1943.