Luís Vaz de Camões (1524–1580)

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 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 was like as a poet, I suppose the only answer is to learn show more 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. show less

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 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 show more 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. show less

The Lusiads was a book I dreaded reading. It's old. And an epic poem. And written by some unheard-of (by me) Portuguese poet. With the right translation, it is a surprisingly quick, delightful read. This translation, by Landeg White, kept the structure of the original poem intact by sacrificing the rhyme scheme. The translator also chose to structure the English translation using the sentence structures of the English Language, rather than the Portuguese. The result is a fluid poem that show more doesn't feel "old" or "difficult". Camões' tale of Vasco da Gama's 1498 voyage around Africa to India in is a fascinating combination of mythology, history, and literature. The detailed history of Portugal was not boring (and I always find straight-up history books boring). The passages about the Greek gods, including their oblique and overt references to The Aeneid and Metamorphoses are beautiful. I was intrigued by the coincidence of the world of the Greek gods and the Catholicism of the sailors; the gods are portrayed as personally involved in the fate of this voyage while the Portuguese are completely unaware of their involvement. And it ends with a huge love-fest, what can be better? show less

There’s no doubt that this deserves its place on the 1001 books list. There’s no doubt that this is one of history’s greatest works, an epic poem of both literary and historical proportions rightly famed. And there’s no doubt that this is one of the most laborious books I’ve read in a long time.

This is a hagiography of early Portuguese explorers who not only did no wrong, but quite rightly stamped out any wrong they found, installing in its place enlightenment where there was show more before only darkness. The baddies are very definitely the conquered (although not referred to as such of course), the goodies, are, quite deservedly, the Portuguese.

No mention of genocide or syphilis here. No mention of forced abductions or looting of local resources. This depicts the first tantalising groundswell of world colonisation. Not only was there a divine mandate, the people themselves were in fact divine!

It must be a confusing text for the modern-day Portuguese to read. Much of what was their former empire is still riven with poverty and internal strife (think Madagascar and Mozambique). As my mother lives in the land of Lusitania, I’ve visited it many times. Lovely though much of it is, there is very little there to support the belief these days that they were descended from gods. It displays a far humbler countenance.

I certainly found this work confusing as much of the narrative consists of lengthy speeches by both dwellers of earth and heaven. As with much classical literature, the gods can’t help getting involved. Their speeches are even harder to fathom. Through this, in patches, you get glimpses of the voyages that da Gama undertook. But that’s certainly not easy to follow or the main thrust of the work.

A difficult text and one very much a product of the 16th century when the white man, it seemed, could do no wrong. show less