Olá, caros leitores. Today is o Dia de Portugal, de Camões e das Comunidades Portuguesas, or Portugal Day. 2024 is the 500th anniversary of the birth of Luís Vaz de Camões, Portugal's national poet, who died on June 10, 1580. To commemorate the occasion, I've translated a couple poems by Jorge de Sena, a well-known Portuguese scholar of Camões and Portuguese literature.
Both poems are about Camões and his legacy. The first, which I encountered on Helena Melo's excellent blog Moçambique e Por Aí, deals with the time he spent in Mozambique—Camões was, like many Portuguese of his epoch, famously peripatetic—while the second speaks quite directly for itself. The Portuguese originals are included in both cases.
My translations are, as always, a work in progress, but I hope everyone enjoys them nonetheless. Obrigado pela sua leitura, amigos.
Abraço,
DAS
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"Camões na Ilha de Moçambique"
Jorge de Sena
É pobre e já foi rica. Era mais pobre
quando Camões aqui passou primeiro,
cheia de livros a cabeça e lendas
e muita estúrdia de Lisboa reles.
Quando passados nele os Orientes
e o amargor dos vis sempre tão ricos,
aqui ficou, isto crescera, mas
a fortaleza ainda estava em obras,
as casas eram poucas, e o terreno
passeio descampado ao vento e ao sol
desta alavanca mínima, em coral,
de onde saltavam para Goa as naus,
que dela vinham cheias de pecados
e de bagagens ricas e pimentas podres.
Como nau nos baixios que aos Sepúlvedas
deram no amor corte primeiro à vida,
aqui ficou sem nada senão versos.
Mas antes dele, como depois dele,
aqui passaram todos: almirantes,
ladrões e vice-reis, poetas e cobardes,
os santos e os heróis, mais a canalha
sem nome e sem memória, que serviu
de lastro, marujagem, e de carne
para os canhões e os peixes, como os outros.
Tudo passou aqui ─ Almeidas e Gonzagas,
Bocages e Albuquerques, desde o Gama.
Naqueles tempos se fazia o espanto
desta pequena aldeia citadina
de brancos, negros, indianos e cristãos,
e muçulmanos, brâmanes, e ateus.
Europa e África, o Brasil e as Índias,
cruzou-se tudo aqui neste calor tão branco
como do forte a cal no pátio, e tão cruzado
como a elegância das nervuras simples
da capela pequena do baluarte.
Jazem aqui em lápides perdidas
os nomes todos dessa gente que,
como hoje os negros, se chegava às rochas,
baixava as calças e largava ao mar
a mal-cheirosa escória de estar vivo.
Não é de bronze, louros na cabeça,
nem no escrever parnasos, que te vejo aqui.
Mas num recanto em cócoras marinhas,
soltando às ninfas que lambiam rochas
o quanto a fome e a glória da epopeia
em ti se digeriam. Pendendo para as pedras
teu membro se lembrava e estremecia
de recordar na brisa as cróias mais as damas,
e versos de soneto perpassavam
junto de um cheiro a merda lá na sombra,
de onde n’alma fervia quanto nem pensavas.
Depois, aliviado, tu subias
aos baluartes e fitando as águas
sonhavas de outra Ilha, a Ilha única,
enquanto a mão se te pousava lusa,
em franca distracção, no que te era a pátria
por ser a ponta da semente dela.
E de zarolho não podias ver
distâncias separadas: tudo te era uma
e nada mais: o Paraíso e as Ilhas,
heróis, mulheres, o amor que mais se inventa,
e uma grandeza que não há em nada.
Pousavas n’água o olhar e te sorrias
─ mas não amargamente, só de alívio,
como se te limparas de miséria,
e de desgraça e de injustiça e dor
de ver que eram tão poucos os melhores,
enquanto a caca ia-se na brisa esbelta,
igual ao que se esquece e se lançou de nós.
-----
"Camões on the Island of Mozambique"
Jorge de Sena
It is poor and once was rich. It was poorer
when Camões first passed through here,
his head full of books and legends
and the dissipation of seedy Lisbon.
When Easterners and bitter,
always wealthy lowlives were gone,
here he stayed; this place grew, but
the fortress was still being built,
houses were few, and the terrain
a vacant promenade, windswept and sunny,
a tiny lever made of coral
that launched the naus to Goa,
from which they returned full of sins
and rich cargo and rotten pepper.
Like the ship on the shoals to which the Sepúlvedas
gave their lives out of courtly love,
here he remained, with nothing but poems.
But before him, as after him,
everyone passed through here: admirals,
thieves and viceroys, poets and cowards,
saints and heroes, plus the nameless
scoundrels who served as ballast, crew, and
cannon fodder and fish food, like the rest of them.
Since da Gama, everyone passed through here —
Almeidas and Gonzagas, Bocages and Albuquerques.
In those days this small urban village
of whites, blacks, Indians and Christians,
and Muslims, Brahmins, and atheists
was astonishing.
Europe and Africa, Brazil and the Indias,
all met here in this heat as white
as the whitewashed fort, and as
criss-crossed as the elegant, simple ribs
of the fort's small chapel.
Lying here under forgotten headstones
are the names of all these people who,
like the blacks today, went to the rocks,
dropped their pants, and dumped into the sea
the foul-smelling filth of being alive.
I don't see you here now cast in bronze, laurels
on your head, or writing poems,
But in a corner, squatting like a sailor,
letting loose hunger and the glory of the epic
you've digested upon the nymphs who lick the rocks.
Your member hanging over the stones, you shuddered
in the breeze remembering the whores and ladies,
and verses of sonnets brushed up against
the smell of shit there in the shadows,
not thinking about from where deep inside you it came.
Relieved, you then climbed up
to the bulwarks and, staring at the water,
dreamed of another Island, the only Island,
while your hand rested, Lusitanian and
distracted, upon what had become your homeland
because it was the seed of it.
And being one-eyed, you couldn't see
separate distances: to you all things were one
and nothing else: Paradise and the Islands,
heroes, women, love that reinvents itself,
and a greatness not found in anything.
Your gaze settled on the water and you smiled
— but not bitterly, only with relief,
as if you'd been cleansed of your misery,
and of disgrace and injustice and the pain
of seeing that the best were so few,
while on the soft breeze wafted the smell of shit,
just like that which we forget and release from ourselves.
