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Available
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Publication
Porto: Lello & Irmão (1972), Leatherbound, 431 pages
Description
First published in 1572, The Lusiads is one of the greatest epic poems of the Renaissance, immortalizing Portugal's voyages of discovery with an unrivalled freshness of observation.At the centre of The Lusiads is Vasco da Gama's pioneer voyage via southern Africa to India in 1497-98. The first European artist to cross the equator, Camoes's narrative reflects the novelty and fascination of that original encounter with Africa, India and the Far East. The poem's twin symbolsare the Cross and the Astrolabe, and its celebration of a turning point in mankind's knowledge of the world unites the old map of the heavens with the newly discovered terrain on earth. Yet it speaks powerfully, too, of the precariousness of power, and of the rise and decline of nationhood,threatened not only from without by enemies, but from within by loss of integrity and vision.The first translation of The Lusiads for almost half a century, this new edition is complemented by an illuminating introduction and extensive notes.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member thorold
The Penguin Classics edition uses William Atkinson's 1952 English prose translation, which makes no attempt to convey anything of the poetical quality of the work. The gods' debates on Olympus have all the romance of a board meeting, and Vasco da Gama sounds more like a schoolteacher than a
Reading the poem in this translation, you are very conscious of its political agenda. On one level it's an adventure story: a brave band of men from a little European country boldly going to India round the Cape of Good Hope, a journey no-one has made before. But Camões goes to great lengths to tie the story in both with classical precedents and with Portuguese history. Allusions to the Aeneid in particular are very frequent. Da Gama is the Portuguese Aeneas, off to found a new Rome in the East for his country. Even though da Gama is also supposed to be a Christian emissary into the infidel world, Camões shows us how important his mision is by having the classical gods and goddesses fight about him, just as they did about Aeneas (Venus is rooting for him because she supports Portugal; Bacchus is trying to stop his journey because he feels that his monopoly is being infringed). The young king Sebastião is the ostensible addressee of the poem, and Camões doesn't hesitate to remind him that Augustus found Virgil very useful as a propagandist and gave him a nice pension. At one point a whole canto of the poem is taken up by Da Gama giving a lecture on Portuguese history as a form of Manifest Destiny; at another, a helpful nymph fills us in — in quite remarkable detail — about what is going to happen in the seventy years between da Gama's voyage and the publication of the poem.
Whenever he gets the chance, Camões has a go at Sebastião and his Christian fellow monarchs for not acting with a unified front against the Moslems. "We have the superior technology for the moment: if we all got together we could wipe out Islam and Christianise the world," is his message, which should go down well with today's loonier anti-Islamic politicians too. Unfortunately, Sebastião seems to have taken his advice to heart, going off a few years later on a disastrous crusade to Morocco with the entire army, and leaving the door open for Philip II of Spain.
It is interesting to observe how Camões takes it for granted that da Gama and his crew are able to communicate with the locals throughout most of their journey in Arabic: when they reach Calicut, they even encounter a Moroccan traveller who speaks Spanish. Calicut is already trading regularly with Europe through merchants based in the Arabian peninsula. It's easy to forget when we talk about "voyages of discovery" that this wasn't about going to new places: rather it was a matter of finding new, cheaper ways to get to the sources of the raw materials. All Camões's talk about spreading the Gospel is a bit of a smoke-screen: da Gama didn't bother to convert anybody (in fact, Camões never mentions whether they even had any priests or missionaries with them), but he did make jolly sure that he came back with samples of spices.
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seafaring adventurer. But it's a fast, breezy read, and gives a good idea of the subject-matter of the poem. If we want to know what Camões as like as a poet, I suppose the only answer is to learn Portuguese.Reading the poem in this translation, you are very conscious of its political agenda. On one level it's an adventure story: a brave band of men from a little European country boldly going to India round the Cape of Good Hope, a journey no-one has made before. But Camões goes to great lengths to tie the story in both with classical precedents and with Portuguese history. Allusions to the Aeneid in particular are very frequent. Da Gama is the Portuguese Aeneas, off to found a new Rome in the East for his country. Even though da Gama is also supposed to be a Christian emissary into the infidel world, Camões shows us how important his mision is by having the classical gods and goddesses fight about him, just as they did about Aeneas (Venus is rooting for him because she supports Portugal; Bacchus is trying to stop his journey because he feels that his monopoly is being infringed). The young king Sebastião is the ostensible addressee of the poem, and Camões doesn't hesitate to remind him that Augustus found Virgil very useful as a propagandist and gave him a nice pension. At one point a whole canto of the poem is taken up by Da Gama giving a lecture on Portuguese history as a form of Manifest Destiny; at another, a helpful nymph fills us in — in quite remarkable detail — about what is going to happen in the seventy years between da Gama's voyage and the publication of the poem.
Whenever he gets the chance, Camões has a go at Sebastião and his Christian fellow monarchs for not acting with a unified front against the Moslems. "We have the superior technology for the moment: if we all got together we could wipe out Islam and Christianise the world," is his message, which should go down well with today's loonier anti-Islamic politicians too. Unfortunately, Sebastião seems to have taken his advice to heart, going off a few years later on a disastrous crusade to Morocco with the entire army, and leaving the door open for Philip II of Spain.
It is interesting to observe how Camões takes it for granted that da Gama and his crew are able to communicate with the locals throughout most of their journey in Arabic: when they reach Calicut, they even encounter a Moroccan traveller who speaks Spanish. Calicut is already trading regularly with Europe through merchants based in the Arabian peninsula. It's easy to forget when we talk about "voyages of discovery" that this wasn't about going to new places: rather it was a matter of finding new, cheaper ways to get to the sources of the raw materials. All Camões's talk about spreading the Gospel is a bit of a smoke-screen: da Gama didn't bother to convert anybody (in fact, Camões never mentions whether they even had any priests or missionaries with them), but he did make jolly sure that he came back with samples of spices.
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LibraryThing member MyopicBookworm
This has been lurking on the shelf for a long time, uniquely orange among the other varicoloured Penguin Classics, so I thought I had better read it in case it was an undiscovered gem in the collection. No. Basically it is a comprehensive and jingoistic history of Portugal, framed loosely in a
Atkinson's translation is deeply unpoetic, and very much in the style of old English prose renderings of Virgil, which highlights Camoens' slavish imitation of his classical models, and often becomes faintly ridiculous (As she moved--Cupid waxing sportive unseen--the nipples on her breasts danced). Little of the poetic imagery was interesting or memorable in its own right, though I did like the image of the universe as a miniature globe in the tenth canto. The clash between the Christian-Moslem conflict and the machinations of classical gods are truly bizarre, and culminate in a magnificent speech in which, after giving a lengthy summary of the future history of the Portuguese Empire, the nymph Tethys expounds her own non-existence: We are but creatures of fable, figments of man's blindness and self-deception. Our only use is for the turning of agreeable verses. It is also odd to find the Roman pantheon so far outside their usual territory: I found a curious frisson in reading a line such as From there Mercury continued to Mombasa... The poet's contrivances are so artificial, and his obsessions so driven home, that it became a little wearisome: so many expostulations about how the Portuguese were the greatest nation that history had ever seen (with the sole fault that they paid insufficient attention to their poets!), their king the mightiest potentate of the West, and how each of their military heroes was greater than the last in crushing another thousand Moslem warriors (plus a few Spaniards) into the dust. The nymph resumed her long [sic] story, beginning to sing of Soares de Albergaria, who was to hoist his banner and strike terror all along the shores of the Red sea. "Loathsome Medina will come to fear him, and Mecca and Jidda no less, and the farthest strands of Abyssinia.".
My expectation was, in a way, fulfilled. It was a book worth reading once; but, I would add (like Samuel Johnson on the Giant's Causeway), not a book worth buying in order to read it. I would put it on the "Out" pile, but it is Mrs Bookworm's copy and I am not permitted to unburden the shelves.
MB 9-iv-2013
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narrative of the voyage of Vasco da Gama to East Africa and India, and cast as an epic poem in imitation of Virgil's Aeneid.Atkinson's translation is deeply unpoetic, and very much in the style of old English prose renderings of Virgil, which highlights Camoens' slavish imitation of his classical models, and often becomes faintly ridiculous (As she moved--Cupid waxing sportive unseen--the nipples on her breasts danced). Little of the poetic imagery was interesting or memorable in its own right, though I did like the image of the universe as a miniature globe in the tenth canto. The clash between the Christian-Moslem conflict and the machinations of classical gods are truly bizarre, and culminate in a magnificent speech in which, after giving a lengthy summary of the future history of the Portuguese Empire, the nymph Tethys expounds her own non-existence: We are but creatures of fable, figments of man's blindness and self-deception. Our only use is for the turning of agreeable verses. It is also odd to find the Roman pantheon so far outside their usual territory: I found a curious frisson in reading a line such as From there Mercury continued to Mombasa... The poet's contrivances are so artificial, and his obsessions so driven home, that it became a little wearisome: so many expostulations about how the Portuguese were the greatest nation that history had ever seen (with the sole fault that they paid insufficient attention to their poets!), their king the mightiest potentate of the West, and how each of their military heroes was greater than the last in crushing another thousand Moslem warriors (plus a few Spaniards) into the dust. The nymph resumed her long [sic] story, beginning to sing of Soares de Albergaria, who was to hoist his banner and strike terror all along the shores of the Red sea. "Loathsome Medina will come to fear him, and Mecca and Jidda no less, and the farthest strands of Abyssinia.".
My expectation was, in a way, fulfilled. It was a book worth reading once; but, I would add (like Samuel Johnson on the Giant's Causeway), not a book worth buying in order to read it. I would put it on the "Out" pile, but it is Mrs Bookworm's copy and I am not permitted to unburden the shelves.
MB 9-iv-2013
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LibraryThing member Rudolf
It is difficult to understand why anyone would want a text like this for one’s national epic: a pompous imitation of Virgil's Aeneid, itself a dubious piece of imperialist propaganda to begin with. I admittedly am unable to judge the quality of the original Portuguese, but this excellent Dutch
I read this because Slauerhoff romanticized and wrote beautifully about Luís de Camões. And because I have a professional interest in the history of empires. Os Lusíadas is indeed an interesting historical source for the study of early modern globalization, just as the Aeneid is an interesting source for the study of Roman imperial ideology -- but as a work of art it is no longer very enjoyable.
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verse translation gives enough of an impression of the epic's aggressive xenophobia and violent content, including the unprovoked destruction of African villages by cannon (I.88 ff.), the repeated slaughter of non-Christians, and the crew’s happy engagement in the mass rape of local "nymphs" (IX.219 ff.). The role of the Olympian gods is totally preposterous.I read this because Slauerhoff romanticized and wrote beautifully about Luís de Camões. And because I have a professional interest in the history of empires. Os Lusíadas is indeed an interesting historical source for the study of early modern globalization, just as the Aeneid is an interesting source for the study of Roman imperial ideology -- but as a work of art it is no longer very enjoyable.
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LibraryThing member Tonysbooks
The rating is for the translation and not for the original poem. I'm afraid that this translation – though accurate – is very flat. Anyone wanting to read this epic in English should go to the 17th-century translation by Sir Richard Fanshawe — available in Vol. 2 of Fanshawe's Collected Poems
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and translation (OUP, 1995), which version is full of brio AND poetry. Show Less
LibraryThing member jshullih
Wonderfully written story interweaving Greek gods into the lives of the voyagers. I am not sure if the tale is historically correct, but I enjoyed the adventure into the unknown lands.
LibraryThing member antiquary
I read this in another version, but my cvhief recollection is amusement at the adaptation of epic conventions to Vasco da Gama's exloits, notably when Venus and her nymphs appear to entertain Gama's crew.
LibraryThing member joamluiz
An uncontested masterpiece of Portuguese and European poetry. A definite must-read, especially in the original language.
LibraryThing member hbergander
Idealised history of Portugal from the beginning up to the Renaissance with special attention to the conquests in Asia. The stages of the author, Ceuta, Goa, and Macao, influenced his work. I read this book, when I was a boy, and still hold the copy, published in Reclam 1881. Portugal then became
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for me something great like America. In 1968, I visited Portugal the first time, a bit disappointed in my own imaginative overshoot of Camões’s promised land. Show Less
LibraryThing member HarryMacDonald
A brilliant and spirited translation!
LibraryThing member something_
Although I gave this book one star, it wasn't for being bad, far from it. I actually like the core of the story and the part that refers to the council of the gods. However, I just can't stand the style in which is written. I feel it's too rigid and exact rather than more free and flowing. A matter
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of tastes I suppose. Show Less
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
I confess to reading this book to round out my collection of national epics. This book is what the Portuguese seem to have. This edition is a prose translation and thus several features of its attraction are missing. Not being literate in either Spanish or Portuguese, I am judging this work with
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the stated strictures. Frankly, I'm not impressed. This is not Homer or delightfully quirky, as Malory's king Arthur is. If you are looking for an example of a poem that uses Classical tropes and allusions, this is....not bad. In truth however the original de Gama voyage was not, aside from some bad storms, filled with incidents likely to appeal to the literary audience's appetite for exotic detail, skullduggery or sex or violence. Read, it, but with the caveat that there is nothing here to offend anyone except those disliking steady bad-mouthing of Islam. It is shorter than the Iliad. Show Less
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Original publication date
1500