The Lusiads
By Luís de Camões.
Translated by Richard F. Burton.
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To
H.I.M.
Dom Pedro de Alcântara,
(D. Pedro II)
Constitutional Emperor, and Perpetual Defender
of
The Brazil;
to
the Man rather than the Monarch
this Version of a Poem,
so dear to the heart of every Brazilian,
is offered
by
His Emperial Majesty’s
most obedient
humble Servant,
Il far un libro è meno che niente,
Giusti
Se il libro fatto non rifà la gente.
Place, riches, favour,
Shakespeare
Prizes of accident as oft as merit.
Ora toma a espada, agora a penna
Camões, “Sonnet 192”
(Now with the sword-hilt, then with pen in hand).
Bramo assai—poco spero—nulla chiedo.
Tasso
Tout cela prouve enfin que l’ouvrage est plein de grandes beautés, puisque depuis deux cents ans il fait les délices d’une nation spirituelle qui doit en connôitre les fautes.
Voltaire, Essai, etc.
To My Master Camões
(Tu se’ lo mio maestro, e ’l mio autore).
Great Pilgrim-poet of the Sea and Land;
Thou life-long sport of Fortune’s ficklest will;
Doomed to all human and inhuman ill,
Despite thy lover-heart, thy hero-hand:
Enrollèd by thy pen what marv’ellous band
Of god-like Forms thy golden pages fill;
Love, Honour, Justice, Valour, Glory thrill
The Soul, obedient to thy strong command:
Amid the Prophets highest sits the Bard,
At once Revealer of the Heav’en and Earth,
To Heav’en the guide, of Earth the noblest guard;
And, ’mid the Poets thine the peerless worth,
Whose glorious song, thy Genius’ sole reward,
Bids all the Ages, Camões! bless thy birth.
Preface
The most pleasing literary labour of my life has been to translate “The Lusiads.” One of my highest aims has been to produce a translation which shall associate my name, not unpleasantly, with that of “my master, Camões.”
Those who favour me by reading this version are spared the long recital of why, how, and when Portugal’s Maro became to me the perfection of a traveller’s study. The first and chiefest charm was, doubtless, that of the Man. A wayfarer and voyager from his youth; a soldier, somewhat turbulent withal, wounded and blamed for his wounds; a moralist, a humourist, a satirist, and, consequently, no favourite with King Demos; a reverent and religious spirit after his own fashion (somewhat “Renaissance,” poetic, and Pagan), by no means after the fashion of others; an outspoken, truth-telling, lucre-despising writer; a public servant whose motto was—strange to say—Honour, not Honours; a doughty Sword and yet doughtier Pen; a type of the chivalrous age; a patriot of the purest water, so jealous of his Country’s good fame that nothing would satisfy him but to see the world bow before her perfections; a genius, the first and foremost of his day, who died in the direst poverty and distress; such in merest outline was the Man, and such was the Life which won the fondest and liveliest sympathies of the translator.
Poetas por poetas sejam lidos;
Sejam só por poetas explicadas
Suas obras divinas;(Still by the Poets be the Poets read
Only be render’d by the Poet’s tongue
Their works divine);
writes Manuel Corrêa. Mickle expresses the sentiment with more brevity and equal point: None but a poet can translate a poet; and Coleridge assigns to a poet the property of explaining a poet. Let me add that none but a traveller can do justice to a traveller. And it so happens that most of my wanderings have unconsciously formed a running and realistic commentary upon The Lusiads. I have not only visited almost every place named in the Epos of Commerce, in many I have spent months and even years. The Arch-poet of Portugal paints from the life, he has also the insight which we call introvision; he sees with exact eyes where others are purblind or blind. Only they who have personally studied the originals of his pictures can appreciate their perfect combination of fidelity and realism with Fancy and Idealism. Here it is that the traveller-translator may do good service with his specialty.
Again, like Boccaccio, Camões reflects the Lux ex Oriente. There is a perfume of the East in everything he writes of the East: we find in his song much of its havock and all its splendour. Oriental-like, he delights in the Pathetic Fallacy; to lavish upon inanimates the attributes of animate sensation. Here again, the
