Editing Luís de Camões (section)

===Os Lusíadas===
{{Main|Os Lusíadas}}
[[File:Os Lusíadas.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Cover of the 1572 edition of Os Lusíadas]]
Os Lusíadas, or The Lusiads is considered the Portuguese epic par excellence. The title itself already suggests its nationalist intentions, being derived from the ancient Roman denomination of Portugal, [[Lusitania]]. It is one of the most important epics of the modern age due to its greatness and universality. The epic tells the story of [[Vasco da Gama]] and the Portuguese heroes who sailed around the [[Cape of Good Hope]] and opened a [[Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India|new route to India]]. It is a humanist epic, even in its contradictions, in the association of pagan mythology with the Christian view, in the opposite feelings about war and empire, in the taste of rest and in the desire for adventure, in the appreciation of sensual pleasure and in the demands of an ethical life, in the perception of greatness and in the presentiment of decline, in the heroism paid for with suffering and struggle.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pires |first1=António Machado |title=Os Lusíadas de Camões e a Mensagem de Fernando Pessoa |date=1985 |publisher=UC Biblioteca Geral 1 |pages=419–422 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x3PoA8j6wT0C&q=%22camoes%22+lusiadas&pg=PP10 |language=pt-BR}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=White |first1=Landeg |title="Introduction". In: Camoes, Luis Vaz de. The Lusíads |date=2002 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-280151-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wba1CdOTRgQC&q=%22camoes%22+lusiadas&pg=PR9 |language=en}}</ref> The poem opens with the famous verses:

{{Verse translation|
{{lang|pt|"As armas e os barões assinalados
Que, da Ocidental praia Lusitana,
Por mares nunca de antes navegados
Passaram ainda além da [[Sri Lanka|Taprobana]],
Em perigos e guerras esforçados,
Mais do que prometia a força humana,
E entre gente remota edificaram
Novo Reino, que tanto sublimaram;
.....
Cantando espalharei por toda a parte,
Se a tanto me ajudar o engenho e arte."}}
|attr1=Camões: ''[[Os Lusíadas]]'', Canto I|
"The feats of Arms, and famed heroick Host,⁠
⁠from occidental Lusitanian strand,
⁠who o'er the waters ne'er by seaman crost,
⁠farèd beyond the [[Sri Lanka|Taprobáne-land]],
⁠forceful in perils and in battle-post,
⁠with more than promised force of mortal hand;
and in the regions of a distant race
rear'd a new throne so haught in Pride of Place.
.....
My song would sound o'er Earth's extremest part
were mine the genius, mine the Poet's art."
|attr2=Translated by [[Sir Richard Francis Burton]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Burton |first1=Richard F. |title=The Lusiads |date=1880 |publisher=Burtoniana |page=35 |url=https://burtoniana.org/books/1880-Os%20lusiadas/Os%20lusiadas%20Vol%201.pdf |access-date=24 February 2021}}</ref>
}}

The ten [[canto]]s of the poem add up to 1,102 [[stanzas]] in a total of 8,816 decyllable verses, using the [[ottava rima]] (abababcc).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Júnior |first1=Benjamin Abdala |title=Literaturas de língua portuguesa: marcos e marcas. Portugal |date=2007 |publisher=Arte & Ciência |isbn=978-85-7473-336-4 |page=79 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MbosJ8IeUcUC&pg=PA79 |language=pt-BR}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=de Carvalho |first1=C. |title=Camões e as fórmulas lapidares em Os Lusíadas |url=http://www.institutodeletras.uerj.br/idioma/numeros/24/Idioma24_a03.pdf |pages=39–46 |publisher=Revista Idioma |access-date=24 February 2021 |archive-date=7 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210507133846/http://www.institutodeletras.uerj.br/idioma/numeros/24/Idioma24_a03.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> After an introduction, an invocation and a dedication to King Sebastian, the action begins, which merges myths and historical facts. Vasco da Gama, sailing along the coast of Africa, is observed by the assembly of classical gods, who discuss the fate of the expedition, which is protected by [[Venus (mythology)|Venus]] and attacked by [[Bacchus]]. Resting for a few days in [[Malindi]], at the request of the local king Vasco da Gama narrates all Portuguese history, from its origins to the journey they undertake. The cantos III, IV and V contain some of the best passages of the entire epic: the episode of [[Inês de Castro]], which becomes a symbol of love and death, the [[Battle of Aljubarrota]], the vision of [[Manuel I of Portugal|D. Manuel I]], the description of [[St. Elmo's fire]], the story of the giant [[Adamastor]]. Back on the ship, the poet takes advantage of his free time to tell the story of [[the Twelve of England]], while Bacchus summons the sea gods to destroy the Portuguese fleet. Venus intervenes and ships reach [[Calicut]], India. There, [[Paulo da Gama]] receives the king's representatives and explains the meaning of the banners that adorn the flagship. On the return trip the sailors enjoy the island created for them by Venus, rewarding the nymphs with their favors. One of them sings the glorious future of Portugal and the scene ends with a description of the universe by [[Tethys (mythology)|Tethys]] and Vasco da Gama. Then the journey continues home.<ref name="Encyclopædia" />

[[File:Lusíadas - descrição do mundo.jpg|thumb|220px|Tethys describes the World Machine to Gama, illustration from the 1639 edition of Faria e Sousa]]
In Os Lusíadas, Camões achieves a remarkable harmony between classical scholarship and practical experience, developed with consummate technical skill, describing Portuguese adventures with moments of serious thought mixed with others of delicate sensitivity and humanism. The great descriptions of the battles, the manifestation of the natural forces, the sensual encounters, transcend the allegory and the classicist allusion that permeate all the work and present themselves as a fluent speech and always of a high aesthetic level, not only for its narrative character especially well achieved, but also by the superior mastery of all the resources of the language and the art of versification, with a knowledge of a wide range of styles, used in efficient combination. The work is also a serious warning for Christian kings to abandon small rivalries and unite against Muslim expansion.<ref name="Encyclopædia" />

The structure of the work is in itself worthy of interest, as, according to [[Jorge de Sena]], nothing is arbitrary in Os Lusíadas. Among the arguments he presented was the use of the golden section, a defined relationship between the parts and the whole, organizing the set in ideal proportions that emphasize especially significant passages. Sena demonstrated that when applying the golden section to the whole work, it falls precisely on the verse that describes the arrival of the Portuguese in India. Applying the separate section to the two resulting parts, in the first part comes the episode that reports the death of Inês de Castro and, in the second, the stanza that narrates [[Cupid]]'s efforts to unite the Portuguese and the nymphs, which for Sena reinforces the importance of love throughout the composition.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lamas |first1=Maria Paula |title=Recursos Narrativos n'Os Lusíadas |date=July 2004 |publisher=Simpósio Internacional de Narratologia. Buenos Aires |url=http://www.filologia.org.br/revista/34/13.htm |access-date=2021-02-24 |archive-date=2010-02-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100221200059/http://www.filologia.org.br/revista/34/13.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> Two other elements give Os Lusíadas its modernity and distance it from classicism: the introduction of doubt, contradiction and questioning, in disagreement with the affirmative certainty that characterizes the classic epic, and the primacy of [[rhetoric]] over action, replacing the world of facts with that of words, which do not fully recover reality and evolve into [[metalanguage]], with the same disruptive effect on the traditional epic.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pereira |first1=Terezinha Maria Scher |title="História e Linguagem em Os Lusíadas". |journal= Via Atlântica — Estudos Comparados de Literaturas de Língua Portuguesa |date=2000 |volume=1 |issue=4 |pages=196–211 |doi=10.11606/va.v0i4.49613|doi-access=free }}</ref>

According to Costa Pimpão, there is no evidence that Camões intended to write his epic before he traveled to India, although heroic themes were already present in his previous production. It is possible that he drew some inspiration from fragments of the ''Decades of Asia'', by [[João de Barros]], and the ''History of the Discovery and Conquest of India by the Portuguese'', by [[Fernão Lopes de Castanheda]]. He was certainly well-informed on classical mythology before that, as well as on ancient epic literature. Apparently, the poem started to take shape as early as 1554, with Storck considering that his determination to write it was born during the sea voyage itself. He was seen working on it in Mozambique by his friend historian [[Diogo do Couto]] between 1568 and 1569.<ref name="Pimpão" />

The success of the publication of Os Lusíadas supposedly required a second edition in the same year as the ''[[princeps]]'' edition. The two differ in countless details and it was debated at length which one would in fact be the original. Nor is it clear to whom the amendments to the second text are due. Currently, the edition that shows the publisher's brand, a [[pelican]], with its neck turned to the left, which is called edition A, carried out under the supervision of the author, is recognized as original. However, edition B was for a long time taken as ''princeps'', with disastrous consequences for the later critical analysis of the work. Apparently, edition B was produced later, around 1584 or 1585, in a clandestine manner, taking the fictitious date of 1572 to bypass the delays of censorship of the time if it were published as a new edition and to correct the serious defects of another 1584 edition, the so-called ''piscos'' edition.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Pimpão |url=http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/bdc/literatura/lusiadas/ |pages=xx-xxv |title=Archived copy |access-date=2021-02-24 |archive-date=2021-04-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210424152549/http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/bdc/literatura/lusiadas/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> However, Maria Helena Paiva raised the hypothesis that editions A and B are only variants of the same edition, which was corrected after the typographic composition, but while printing was already in progress. According to the researcher, "the need to make the most of the press led to the conclusion that, after printing a shape, which consisted of several folios, a first test was taken, which was corrected while the press continued, now with the corrected text. There were, therefore, uncorrected printed folios and corrected printed folios, which were grouped indistinctly in the same copy", so that there were no two copies exactly the same in the press system of that time.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Paiva |first1=Maria Helena |title=Os Lusíadas nas encruzilhadas do tempo. In: Colóquio "O Fascínio da Linguagem" em homenagem a Fernanda Irene Fonseca |date=23–25 May 2007 |publisher=[[Porto University]] |pages=316–317 |url=https://repositorio-aberto.up.pt/handle/10216/13886}}</ref>