Portuguese literature
astonished to meet kings there, and (canto 6) relates the siege and
fall of Troy.
The life of BRAS GARCIA DE MASCARENHAS (1596-1656) was more interesting
than his verses. He was born at Avó, near the Serra da Estrella,
and his adventures began early, for he was arrested on account of
a love affair (1616) and made a daring escape from Coimbra prison
after wounding his jailer. His careful biographer, Dr. Antonio de
Vasconcellos, has shown that there is no record of his having studied
at Coimbra University. Subsequently he travelled and fought in Brazil
(1623-32), Italy, France, Flanders, and Spain, and in 1641, as captain,
raised and commanded a body of horse known as the Company of Lions. As
Governor of Alfaiates, the ‘key of Beira’, he was wrongfully accused
of having a treasonable understanding with Spain and imprisoned at
Sabugal, some ten miles from Alfaiates (1642). He obtained a book (the
_Flos Sanctorum_), flour, and scissors and cut out a letter in verse
to King João IV, who restored him to his governorship and gave him the
habit of Avis. His long epic _Viriato Tragico_ (1699) contains some
forcible descriptions and has a pleasantly patriotic and indigenous
atmosphere--one feels that he is singing _os patrios montes_ as much
as the hero--but in style it differs little from prose. Tedious
geographical descriptions, dry catalogues of names, a whole stanza
(vii. 39) composed exclusively of nouns, another (iv. 63) of proper
names, incline the reader less to praise than sleep, from which he is
only gently stirred when the sun is called _a solar embaixadora_. In
the prevailing fashion of the time the author works in lines of Camões,
Sá de Miranda, Garci Lasso, Ariosto, and other poets. While the work
was still in manuscript another poet, and perhaps a relation, Andre da
Silva Mascarenhas, helped himself liberally to its stanzas (they number
2,287) for his epic _A Destruição de Hespanha_ (1671). He could have
given no better proof of the poverty of his genius. FRANCISCO DE SÁ DE
MENESES (_c._ 1600-1664?), although less true a poet than his cousin
and namesake the Conde de Mattosinhos, won a far wider fame by his
epic poem _Malaca Conqvistada_ (1634), in which he recounts _a heroica
historia dos feitos de Albuquerque_. The reader who accompanies his
frail bark[613] through twelve cantos of _oitavas_ feels that he has
well earned the fall of Malacca at the end. For although the author is
not incapable of vigorous and succinct description he too often decks
out the pure gold of Camões’ style[614] with periphrases and Manueline
ornaments which delay the action. The sun is ‘the lover of Clytie’ or
‘the rubicund son of Latona’. He stops to tell us that a diamond won
by Albuquerque had been ‘cut by skilled hand in Milan’, and some of
his more elaborate similes are not without charm. Canto 7 tells of the
future deeds of the Portuguese in India. The gods interfere less than
in the _Lusiads_ (Asmodeus plays a part in canto 6), but the general
effect is that of a great theme badly handled. After the death of his
wife, the author spent the last twenty years of his life (from 1641) in
the Dominican convent of Bemfica as Frei Francisco de Jesus.
ANTONIO DE SOUSA DE MACEDO (1606-82), _moço fidalgo_ of Philip IV
and later Secretary of Embassy and Minister (_Residente_) in London
(1642-6) and Secretary of State to the weak and unlettered Afonso
VI, wrote at the age of twenty-two _Flores de España, Excelencias
de Portugal_ (1631). This historical work of considerable interest
and importance was written in Spanish por ser mais universal, but he
returned to Portuguese presently in a curious prose miscellany, _Eva
e Ave_ (1676), and in the epic poem _Vlyssippo_ (1640) in fourteen
cantos of _oitavas_. He seems to have felt that interest could not
easily be sustained by the subject, the foundation of Lisbon by
Ulysses. Accordingly, following the example of Camões, he inset
various episodes. Canto 6 summarizes the events of the _Iliad_ and
the _Odyssey_, canto 10 describes a tapestry adorned with future
Portuguese victories, in canto 11 the Delphic Sibyl foretells the deeds
of Portugal’s kings, down to Sebastian, in canto 12 the wise Chiron
prophesies of her _famosos varões_. The style is correct, but the poem
as a whole is commonplace. VASCO MOUSINHO DE QUEVEDO, of Setubal,
although no records of his life remain, won high fame by his epic poem
in _oitavas_ (twelve cantos) _Afonso Africano_ (1611), in which ‘the
marvellous prowess of King Afonso V in Africa’ is described. The poem,
admired by Almeida Garrett, is particularly wearisome because it is
largely allegorical. The king conquering Arzila represents the strong
man subduing the city of his own soul, the Moors are the spirits of the
damned, and seven of their knights representing the seven deadly sins
are defeated by seven Christian knights who stand for the virtues.
The poverty of profane prose, compared with its flourishing condition
in the preceding century, is also remarkable. A few historians of
the seventeenth century have already been mentioned. The literary
academies, of which the most famous were the _Academia dos Generosos_
(1649-68) and the _Academia dos Singulares_ (1663-5),[615] existed
rather for the interchange of wit and complimentary or satiric verses
than for the encouragement of historical and scientific research. The
Conde da Ericeira’s _Portugal Restaurado_ and Freire de Andrade’s Life
bear no comparison with works of the _Quinhentistas_. Yet it was the
second golden age of Portuguese prose, as the names of Manuel Bernardes
and Vieira prove. The latter’s letters, with those of Frei Antonio
das Chagas and Mello, are in three different kinds--the political,
religious, and familiar--the most notable written in the century.
GASPAR PIRES DE REBELLO in the preface to his _Infortvnios tragicos
da Constante Florinda_ (1625) excuses himself for its publication
on the ground that ‘not spiritual and divine books only benefit
our intelligence’. The book, which records the love of Arnaldo and
Florinda, of Zaragoza, shows the modern novel growing through _Don
Quixote_ out of the _Celestina_ plays and the romances of chivalry,
but has little other interest. A second part was published in 1633,
and _Novellas Exemplares_, six stories by the same author, in 1650.
Numerous other works appeared with more or less alluring or sensational
titles but contents disappointingly dull. MATTHEUS DE RIBEIRO (_c._
1620-95), in his _Alivio de Tristes e Consolação de Queixosos_ (1672,
4), shows greater skill than Pires de Rebello in the invention of
the story, but it is marred by the diffuse and pedantic style--April
becomes an ‘academy in which Flora was opening the doors for the study
of flowers’. The pastoral novel ended in sad contortions with the
_Desmayos de Mayo em sombras de Mondego_ (1635) by DIOGO FERREIRA DE
FIGUEIROA (1604-74). Its title and the three involved sentences which
cover the first three pages (ff. 10, 11) convey an adequate idea of its
character and contents.
Of several prose works written by MARTIM AFONSO DE MIRANDA, of Lisbon,
in the first third of the century, the most important is _Tempo de
Agora_ (2 pts., 1622, 4). It contains seven dialogues dealing with
truth and falsehood, the evils of idleness, temperance, friendship,
justice, the evils of dice and cards, and precepts for princes. Much of
their matter is interesting and the comments incisive, especially as
to the prevailing luxury in food and dress. They tell of the infinite
number of curiously bound books at Lisbon, of the soldiers unpaid,
‘eating at the doors of convents’, of the delight in foreign fashions,
and the craze for ‘diabolical’ books from Italy to the exclusion of
_livros de historias_ and books in Portuguese. The anonymous _Primor
e honra da vida soldadesca no Estado da India_ (1630), edited by the
Augustinian FREI ANTONIO FREIRE (_c._ 1570-1634), is a different
work from Geronimo Ximenez de Urrea’s _Diálogo de la verdadera honra
militar_ (1566), which it resembles slightly in title. It is divided
into four parts and contains various episodes of the Portuguese in the
East and some curious information. MIGUEL LEITÃO DE ANDRADE (1555-1632)
went straight from Coimbra University to Africa with King Sebastian.
After the battle of Alcacer Kebir he succeeded in escaping from
captivity, followed the cause of the Prior of Crato, and was imprisoned
under Philip II. In his book, in twenty dialogues, _Miscellanea do
Sitio de N. Sᵃ da Lvz do Pedrogão Grande_ (1629), he disclaims any
purpose of writing history. It reveals an inquiring and observant but
uncritical mind, interested in fossils, inscriptions, astrology, the
early history of Portugal, etymology, heraldry, and the ‘infinite
wonderful secrets of Nature daily being revealed’. It contains a
graphic account of his escape from Fez, but on the whole, in spite
of attractive passages and interesting details, scarcely merits its
great reputation. _Do Sitio de Lisboa_ (1608), which Mello praises as
_aquelle elegantissimo livro_, by the author of _Arte Militar_ (1612),
LUIS MENDES DE VASCONCELLOS, is written in the form of a dialogue
between a philosopher, a soldier, and a politician, and deserves its
place among the minor classics of Portuguese literature.
The famous love letters of the Portuguese nun MARIANNA ALCOFORADO
(1640-1723), which bring a breath of life and nature into the stilted
writing of that day, only belong to Portuguese literature in the
sense that Osorio’s history belongs to it--by translation. They
first appeared in indifferent French (_Lettres Portvgaises_, Paris,
1669) and were not retranslated, or, if we accept the theory that
the nun originally wrote them in French[616]--French _suranné et
dénué d’élégance_--translated into Portuguese for a century and a
half: _Cartas de uma Religiosa Portugueza_ (1819).[617] Meanwhile,
even before their obscure author died in the remote and beautiful
city of Beja, they had been translated into English and Italian and
had received over fifty French editions. Colonel (later Marshal)
Noël Bouton, Comte de Saint-Léger, afterwards Marquis de Chamilly
(1636-1715), accompanied the French troops sent to help Portugal
against Spain, and was in Portugal from 1665 to 1667. Marianna
Alcoforado, belonging to an old Alentejan family, was a nun in the
convent of Nossa Senhora da Conceição at Beja. Her five letters,
written between the end of 1667 and the middle of 1668 after her
desertion, in their artlessness, contradictions, and disorder, vibrate
with emotion. They are a succession of intense cries like the popular
quatrain:
Por te amar deixei a Deus:
Ve lá que gloria perdi!
E agora vejo-me só,
Sem Deus, sem gloria, sem ti.
Sometimes, it is true, a trace of French reason seems to mingle with
the ingenuous Portuguese sentiment, and it is almost incredible,
although of course not impossible, since _omnia vincit amor_, that the
nun should have written certain passages. From these and not on the
amazing assumption of Rousseau that a mere woman could not write so
passionately--he was ready to wager that the letters were the work of a
man[618]--one may suspect that the lover, who did not scruple to hand
over the letters to a publisher (unless he was merely guilty of showing
them to his friends), sank a little lower and edited them, adding a
phrase here and there more peculiarly pleasing to his vanity.[619] In
that case the nun actually wrote these letters, full of passion and
despair, and perhaps in French, to her French lover; but we only read
them as they were touched up for publication by another hand.
A work which has nothing in common with these fervent love letters
except an enigmatic origin is the _Arte de Furtar_, which in part at