Portuguese literature
this respect vies with Camões: Camões excels them all in the vigour
and transparent clearness that accompany his music. But his principal
excellence is that, still without losing the music of his _versos
deleitosos_, he can think in verse[426]--the thought in some of his
elegies and _oitavas_ is remarkable--and describe with scientific
precision, as in the account of the _tromba_ (_Lus._ v. 19-22). Like
Milton, he could transform an atlas into a fair harmony of names. His
influence on the Portuguese language has been very great. Whether it
was wholly for good may be open to doubt--a doubt mentioned by one of
his earliest biographers, Severim de Faria, in 1624. The _Lusiads_,
he says, ‘greatly enriched the Portuguese language by ingeniously
introducing many new words and expressions which then came into
common use, although some severe critics have censured him for this,
considering the use of latinized forms a defect in his poem’.[427]
An inch farther than he went in this direction, or in that of _furia
grande e sonorosa_, and _estilo grandiloquo_, would have been an inch
too far, and subsequent writers did not always observe his restraint,
the sobriety due to his classical education. But his poem certainly
helped to fix the language, and he cannot be blamed for the excesses of
his followers, or for a change which had begun before his time.[428]
Couto records the theft of the _Parnaso_ in which Camões was collecting
his lyrics with a view to publishing them. He must have written many
more lyrics than we possess, but even so the number existing is not
small. Successive editors have added to them from time to time, and
often clumsily. Faria e Sousa, a century after Camões’ death, declared
that he had added 200, and, while upbraiding Diogo Bernardez for
his _robos_, was himself the thief. Camões might have been somewhat
surprised to find in the first edition of his lyrics (1595) two poems
which had been in print in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ eight years
before he was born. This 1595 edition contained but 65 sonnets, but
their number grew to 108 (1598), 140 (1616), 229 (1668), 296 (1685),
352 (1860), 354 (1873). D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos has
already contributed much towards a critical edition, and it is to
be hoped that before long it may be possible to read the genuine
lyrics of Camões in a complete edition by themselves.[429] That would
certainly cause him to be more widely read abroad. It is perhaps
inevitable that a comparison should arise between Camões and Petrarca
(although it must be remembered that they are separated by two
centuries), yet he would be an extremely bold or extremely ignorant
critic who should place the one of them above the other. In genius
they were equal, but a different atmosphere acted on their genius, the
artistic atmosphere of Italy and the natural atmosphere of Portugal.
Petrarca was the more scholarly writer, so that if he perhaps never
attains to the rapturous heights occasionally reached by Camões, he
also keeps himself from the blemishes which sometimes disfigure Camões’
work. Camões’ life was far more varied, many-coloured as an Alentejan
_manta_,[430] and this is reflected in his poems. Intensely human, he
is swayed by many moods, while Petrarca is merged in the narrower flame
of his love. Petrarca excels him in the sonnet, for although many of
those by Camões are beautiful, and nearly all contain some beautiful
passage, he was not really at his ease in this scanty plot of ground.
His genius required a larger canvas for its expression. The following
lines from his long and magnificent _canção Vinde cá_ are worth quoting
because they triumphantly display many of the noblest characteristics
of his poetry:
No mais, canção, no mais, que irei fallando,
Sem o sentir, mil annos; e se acaso
Te culparem de larga e de pesada,
Não pode ser, lhe dize, limitada
A agoa do mar em tão pequeno vaso.
Nem eu delicadezas vou cantando
Co’ gosto do louvor, mas explicando
Puras verdades ja por mi passadas:
Oxalá foram fabulas sonhadas!
Here we see the force and precision, the amazing ease and rapidity, the
crystalline transparency, the sad _saudade_, and above all the deep
sincerity that mark so much of his work. Both Petrarca and Camões are
representative of their country, the latter not only in his poems, in
which almost every Portuguese hero is included, but in his character
and his life. In his wit and melancholy, his love of Nature, his
passionate devotion, his persistency and endurance, his independence
and sensitive pride, in his lyrical gift and power of expression, in
his courage and ardent patriotism, he is the personification and ideal
of the Portuguese nation.
Many of Camões’ friends were also lyric poets, but their poems
have mostly vanished. One of them, Luis Franco Corrêa, compiled a
_cancioneiro_ of contemporary poems which still exists in manuscript.
A few later poets, chiefly pastoral, have already been mentioned, but
after Camões’ death the star of lyric poetry waned and set, and the
only compensation was a brilliant noonday in the realm of prose. Camões
was a learned poet, but he also plunged both hands in the songs and
traditions of the people. The later poets withdrew themselves more and
more from this perennial spring of poetical images and expression, till
at last in the ripeness of time Almeida Garrett turned to it again for
inspiration, even Bocage, devoted admirer of Camões though he was,
having neglected this side of his genius, as was inevitable in the
eighteenth century.
Epic poetry scarcely fared better than the lyric, despite a hundred
honest efforts to eclipse the _Lusiads_. A favourite legend of
Portuguese and other folk-lore tells how the step-daughter comes from
the fairies’ dwelling speaking flowers for words or with a star on her
forehead, but her envious half-sister, who then visits the fairies,
returns uttering mud and toads or with an ass’s head. If the epic poems
of those who emulated the fame of Camões are something better than mud
they nevertheless fail for the most part lamentably in that inspiration
which Portuguese history might have been expected to give.
Alguns (misera gente) inutilmente
Compõem grandes Iliadas,
wrote Diniz da Cruz (_O Hyssope_, canto 1). The epic-fever had not
abated even in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Madeira
poet Francisco de Paula Medina e Vasconcellos (_c._ 1770-1824) alone
wrote two: _Zargueida_ (1806), _Georgeida_ (1819); and José Agostinho
de Macedo in his _Motim Literario_ imagines himself at the mercy of a
poet with an epic in sixty cantos entitled _Napoleada_, and himself
became the mock-hero of one in nine: _Agostinheida_ (Londres, 1817),
written by his unfortunate opponent Nuno Alvares Pereira Pato Moniz
(1781-1827). The strange poet of Setubal, Thomaz Antonio de Santos e
Silva (1751-1816), published a _Braziliada_ in twelve cantos in 1815.
Of the earlier epics Camillo Castello Branco wrote sarcastically: ‘They
contain impenetrable mysteries of dullness and inspire a sacred awe,
but they are the conventional glory of our literary history, untouched
and intangible.’[431]
Of the two long epic poems of JERONIMO CORTE REAL (_c._ 1530-1590?):
_Svcesso do Segvndo Cerco de Div_ (1574) and _Naufragio, e Lastimoso
Svcesso da Perdiçam de Manoel de Sousa de Sepulveda_, &c. (1594), we
may perhaps say that they are excellent prose. He dwells more than once
upon the inconstancy of fortune, and this may be something more than a
platitude. Of his life little is known. He is by some believed to have
been born in the Azores in 1533. A document in the possession of the
Visconde de Esperança shows that he died before May 12, 1590. He may
have been a musician as well as a poet and a painter. It is probable,
but not certain, that he accompanied King Sebastian to Alcacer Kebir
and was taken prisoner. Faria e Sousa says that he was too old to go.
After varied service by land and sea he wrote these poems when living
in retirement on his estate near Evora, and his own experiences stood
him in good stead for his descriptions, which are often not without
life and vigour, as the account of the battle in canto 18 of the
_Segundo Cerco de Diu_, or of the storm in canto 7 of the _Naufragio_.
The former poem records the famous defence of Diu by D. João de
Mascarenhas and its relief by D. João de Castro (1546), in whose mouth
is placed a long and tedious speech. The last two cantos (21, 22) are
tacked on to the main theme and occupy more than a quarter of the
whole. They tell from paintings the deeds of past captains and prophesy
future events and the ‘golden reign’ of King Sebastian. The prophetic
vision, although it included a generation beyond the nominal date of
the poem (1546), did not extend to the battle of Alcacer Kebir (1578).
The hendecasyllables of the blank verse have an exceedingly monotonous
fall and the lines merge prosaically into one another.[432] The use
of adjectives is excessive, and generally there is an inclination
to multiply words without adding to the force of the picture.[433]
The same plethora of epithets, elaborate similes, and slow awkward
development of the story mark the seventeen cantos--some 10,000 lines
of blank verse, with some tercets and _oitavas_--which constitute the
_Naufragio_. In cantos 13 and 14 a learned man tells from sculptures
the history of the Portuguese kings, from Afonso I to Sebastian. The
remaining cantos have a more lively interest, ending with the death of
D. Lianor in canto 17, but the poet could not resist the temptation
to round off with an anticlimax, in which Phoebus, Proteus, and Pan
make lamentation. His short _Auto dos Quatro Novissimos do Homem_
(1768) in blank verse is written with some intensity, but the style is
the same.[434] His _Austriada_, composed to commemorate Don John of
Austria’s _felicissima victoria_[435] of Lepanto, consists of fifteen
cantos in Spanish blank verse.
LUIS PEREIRA BRANDÃO, born at Oporto about 1540, was present at Alcacer
Kebir, and after his release from captivity is said to have worn
mourning for the rest of his life. That later generations might also
suffer, his epic _Elegiada_ (1588)--in spite of his professed _temor
de ser prolixo_--was published in eighteen cantos. Beginning with
the early years of King Sebastian, it recounts the king’s dreams and
ambitions, his first expedition to Africa, and the later disastrous
adventure. Not even the story of D. Lianor de Sousa (canto 6) nor the
excessively detailed description of the battle of Alcacer Kebir (canto
17) rouses the poet from his implacable dullness. The defects of his
style have perhaps been exaggerated, but it is certainly inferior to
that of Andrade, with whom he shares the inability to distinguish a
poem from a history. The introduction of contemporary events in India
(cantos 6, 10, 14), however legitimate in a history, is singularly out
of place in an epic.
If the author of the history of King João III’s reign, FRANCISCO DE
ANDRADE (_c._ 1535-1614), brother of the great Frei Thomé de Jesus,
regarded his epic _O Primeiro Cerco ... de Diu_ (1589) merely as a
supplementary chapter of that history, we can only regret that he did
not write it in prose. It is a straightforward account, in excellent
Portuguese, of the first siege of Diu (1538), but _oitava_ follows
prosaic _oitava_ with a relentless wooden tread, maintaining the same
level of mediocrity throughout and rendering it unreadable as poetry.
The author begins by imploring divine favour that his song may be
adequate to his subject (i. 1-3). It is only when he has passed his
two-thousandth stanza that he expresses some diffidence as to whether
his ‘fragile bark’ was well equipped for so long a voyage, but he