Luis Vaz de Camões: The Lusiads

 I can say confidently that Camões accomplished that which he set out to do here, and also that what he set out to do was not what one would think.  On the surface, the poet saw a need for a National epic, something suitable to the glory and vigor of his tiny nation.  Of course he succeeded on this front, delivering something that is only slightly beneath Homer or Virgil in scope, skill, and sense.

    It is clear from certain moments, however, that Camões set out to glorify more than Portugal with this epic.  He wanted to make sure, of course, that the many heroes of her history got their due place in the world's memory.  But it is not only the warriors and explorers who he set out to memorialize.  Speaking of Homer and Virgil, those other, if I may be permitted, epic-ureans, he offers the comparison:

However they polish and decorate

With metaphor such empty fables,

My own tale in its naked purity

Outdoes all boasting and hyperbole (V.89)

Yes, it is the artists of the age, and himself in particular, that he gives a place beside the conquerors.  Nor does this come across as vanity, but rather as a simple statement of fact.  Those who do deserve their place, but so do those who sing of those deeds: 

Those rewards which encourage genius

My country ignores (X.145)

Consciousness of his own part in the history of his nation is never far from his lips, but this is only his secondary, not his final, goal.

    The task of creating a national epic in the style and scope of Homer without descending into heresy was no doubt a delicate task.  He signals his intent early to create parallels between the literary pagan gods and the contemporary Catholic ones: Aphrodite for Mary, Dionysos for Satan, and so on.  The analogy is superficial throughout, and its ultimate unsustainability is evident.  One admires the cleverness, rather than the truth of it.  It is not until the final canto that Camões reveals his own awareness of the artifice, and its purpose:

He who with his very essence

Hedges this polished and perfect globe

Is God; but who God is none comprehends

For human wit cannot attain such ends (X.80).

The allegory of the Greek deities is admittedly insufficient to capture the realities of the divine, but so is the Catholic understanding.   God is none of these things and all of them.  He is the epic deed, and the epic poem all in one, Da Gama and Camões, the hero and the artist.  Only the two together can even point at Him.