Luís de Camões
Luís Vaz de Camões, sometimes rendered in English as Camoens or Camoëns, is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Milton, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas. His collection of poetry The Parnasum of Luís de Camões was lost during his life. The influence of his masterpiece Os Lusíadas is so profound that Portuguese is sometimes called the "language of Camões".
The day of his death, 10 June O.S., is Portugal's national day.
Life
Origins and youth
Much of the information about Luís de Camões' biography raises doubts and, probably, much of what circulates about him is nothing more than the typical folklore that is formed around a famous figure. Only a few dates are documented that guide its trajectory. The ancestral home of the Camões family had its origins in the Kingdom of Galicia, not far from Cape Finisterre. On his paternal side, Luís de Camões was descended from Vasco Pires de Camões, Galician troubadour, warrior and fidalgo, who moved to Portugal in 1370 and received great benefits from the king in positions, honours and lands, and whose poetry, of a nationalist nature, contributed to ward off Breton and Italian influence and to shape a national troubadour style. His son Antão Vaz de Camões served in the Red Sea and married Dona Guiomar da Gama, related to Vasco da Gama. From this marriage were born Simão Vaz de Camões, who served in the Royal Navy and did trade in Guinea and India, and another brother, Bento, who followed the career of a man of letters and entered the priesthood, joining the Austin friars at the Monastery of Santa Cruz, which was a prestigious school for many young Portuguese gentlemen. Simão married Dona Ana de Sá e Macedo, also from a noble family, from Santarém. Her only son, Luís Vaz de Camões, according to Jayne, Fernandes and some other authors, was born in Lisbon in 1524. Three years later, the city was being threatened by the plague, the family moved, following the court, to Coimbra. However, other cities claim the honour of being his birthplace: Coimbra, Santarém and Alenquer. Although the first biographers of Camões, Severin de Faria and Manoel Correa, initially gave his year of birth as 1517, records of the Lists of the Casa da Índia, later consulted by Manuel de Faria e Sousa, seem to establish that Camões was actually born in Lisbon, in 1524. The arguments for placing his birth outside of Lisbon are weak; but neither is it completely beyond doubt, so the most recent scholarship considers his place and date of birth uncertain.About his childhood much remains unknown. At twelve or thirteen he would have been protected and educated by his uncle Bento, who sent him to Coimbra to study. Tradition says that he was an undisciplined student, but eager for knowledge, interested in history, cosmography and classic and modern literature. However, his name does not appear in the records of the University of Coimbra, but it is certain from his elaborate style and the profusion of erudite quotes that appear in his works that in some way he received a solid education. It is possible that his uncle himself, a chancellor of the university and the prior of the Monastery of Santa Cruz, instructed him or that he studied at the monastery college. At about twenty years of age he probably moved to Lisbon, before completing his studies. His family was poor, but being noble, he could be admitted to the court of John III where he established fruitful intellectual contacts and began his career as a poet.
It was suggested that he earned his living as a preceptor of Francisco, son of the Count of Linhares, D. António de Noronha, but this now seems hardly plausible. It is also said that he adopted a bohemian lifestyle, frequenting taverns and getting involved in tumultuous love affairs. Several ladies are cited by name in late biographies of the poet as having been the object of his affection, but those identifications are currently considered apocryphal additions to his legend. Among them, for example, there was talk of a passion for Infanta Dona Maria, sister of the king, but that audacity would have earned him time in prison. Another was Catarina de Ataíde, with whom he allegedly had a frustrated love affair that resulted in his self-exile, first in Ribatejo, and then by enlisting as a soldier in Ceuta. The reason for the latter trip is doubtful, but the trip itself is accepted fact; he remained there two years and lost his right eye in a naval battle in the Strait of Gibraltar. Back in Lisbon, he wasted no time in resuming his bohemian life.
A document dating from 1550 states that he had enlisted to travel to India: "Luís de Camões, son of Simão Vaz and Ana de Sá, living in Lisbon, at Mouraria; squire, 25 years old, ginger bearded, brought his father as guarantor; goes on the ship of S. Pedro dos Burgaleses... among the men-at-arms". As it turns out, he didn't board immediately. In a Corpus Christi procession, he got into an altercation with a certain Gonçalo Borges, employee of the Royal Palace, and wounded him with a sword. Sentenced to prison, he later received a letter of pardon and was released by royal order on 7 March 1553, which says: "he is a young man and poor and he is going to serve in India this year". Manuel de Faria e Sousa found in the registers of the Armada of India, for that year 1553, under the title "Gente de guerra", the following statement: "Fernando Casado, son of Manuel Casado and Branca Queimada, residents of Lisbon, squire; Luís de Camões, son of Simão Vaz and Ana de Sá, squire, took his place; and he received 2400 like the others".
Camões set sail on Palm Sunday, 24 March 1553. His last words, he says in a letter, were those of Scipio Africanus, "Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea".
Journey to the East
He traveled aboard the carrack São Bento, belonging to the fleet of Fernão Álvares Cabral, which left the Tagus on 24 March 1553. During the trip he passed through the regions where Vasco da Gama had sailed, faced a storm in the Cape of Good Hope where the three other ships in the fleet were lost, and landed in Goa in 1554. Soon he enlisted in the service of the viceroy D. Afonso de Noronha and fought in the expedition against the king of Chembé. In 1555, Noronha's successor D. Pedro Mascarenhas ordered Manuel de Vasconcelos to fight the Moors in the Red Sea. Camões accompanied him, but the squadron did not find the enemy and went to winter in Ormuz, in the Persian Gulf.Probably at this time he had already started writing Os Lusíadas. When he returned to Goa in 1556, he met D. Francisco Barreto in the government, and composed for him the "Auto de Filodemo", which suggests that Barreto looked upon Camões with favor. The early biographers, however, differ about Camões' relations with that ruler. At the same time, an anonymous satire criticizing the prevalence of immorality and corruption, which was attributed to Camões, also was published. Since satires were condemned by the Ordinances of King Manuel, Camões would have been arrested for that. But it has also been hypothesized that the arrest was actually for debts that Camões had incurred. It is possible that he remained in prison until 1561, and that he may have been convicted of additional offenses before then. At any rate, when D. Francisco Coutinho assumed the governorship of India, Camões was released and came under that man's employ and protection. He was appointed to the position of Superintendent for the Dead and Missing for Macau in 1562, serving de facto from 1563 until 1564 or 1565. At that time, Macau was a trading post still in formation and almost uninhabited. Tradition says that there he wrote part of Os Lusíadas in a cave, which later was named after him.
On the trip back to Goa, he was shipwrecked, as tradition says, near the mouth of the Mekong River, managing to save only himself and the manuscript of Os Lusíadas, an event that inspired the famous redondilha "Sôbolos rios que vão", considered by António Sérgio the "backbone" of the Camonian lyric, as is repeatedly cited in the critical literature. The trauma of the shipwreck, in the words of Leal de Matos, had the most profound impact on redefining the themes of Os Lusíadas, this being noticeable beginning with Canto VII, a fact already noted by Diogo do Couto, a friend of the poet who partly accompanied the work as it was being written.
His rescue took months to occur, and there is no record of how it happened, but he was taken to Malacca, where he received a new arrest warrant for misappropriating the assets of the dead that had been entrusted to him. The exact date of his return to Goa is not known, but he may have remained in prison there for some time. Couto says that in the shipwreck Dinamene, a Chinese maiden with whom Camões had fallen in love, died, but Ribeiro and others reject that story. The next viceroy, D. Antão de Noronha, was a longtime friend of Camões, having first met him during his Morocco adventure. Certain biographers claim that he was promised a position at the trading post at Chaul, but he did not take up the position. Severim de Faria said that the final years spent in Goa were occupied with poetry and military activities, where he always showed bravery, readiness and loyalty to the Crown.
It is difficult to determine what his daily life in the East would have been like, beyond what can be extrapolated from his military status. It seems certain that he always lived modestly and may have shared a house with friends, "in one of those collective dwellings where it was customary for people from the homeland to associate", as Ramalho notes. Some of these friends must have been in possession of a certain degree of culture and would have provided illustrious companionship. Ribeiro, Saraiva and Moura admit that he may have encountered, among other figures, Fernão Mendes Pinto, Fernão Vaz Dourado, Fernão Álvares do Oriente, Garcia de Orta and the aforementioned Diogo do Couto, creating opportunities for debating literary topics and the like. He may also have attended lectures at one of Goa's colleges or religious establishments. Ribeiro adds that
These fellows who lived in Goa, far from their homeland and family, between campaigns against the Turk and many of them having little to do, in addition to the aforementioned lectures and constant readings, enjoying the company of women and musical gatherings, living among themselves without regard to social distinctions, their main objective was to have fun as much as possible, even when writing poetry. Thus their predilection for satire, which had a strongly negative social impact and exposed them to imprisonment per the Manueline Ordinances, and therefore carried an edge of adventure and risk. An example of this is the "Tournament Satire", a mockery that is mentioned by Faria e Sousa and about which, unlike "Os Disbarates da Índia", there is no scholarly contestation of its Camonian authorship; it may in fact be the reason for one of Camões' arrests.
At such meetings the participants were both men-at-arms and men of letters, and were in search not only of military success and material fortune, but also of the fame and glory born of culture. This was one of the great aspirations of the Humanism of that era, and from it may have sprung the idea of creating an academy, reproducing within the limitations of the local context, the model of Renaissance academies such as the one founded in Florence by Marsilio Ficino and his circle, where Neoplatonic ideals were cultivated.