Luís de Camões

Luís Vaz de Camões [ luiʃ vaʃ dɨ kamõi̯ʃ ] ( Luiz Vaz de Camões ) (* 1524 or 1525 probably in Coimbra or Lisbon, † June 10, 1579 or 1580 in Lisbon ) is considered the Portuguese national poet. He is considered the greatest Portuguese writer, playwright and poet of Portuguese language in general, one of the first authors of Portugal in world literature. Also, he is considered one of the most important dramatist of Portugal from the Renaissance and the 16th century, alongside António Ferreira, António Ribeiro and Gil Vicente. As epic poet considered to be epic " The Lusiads " as an important epic of the Renaissance. And as one of the greatest poets of Europe in the 16th century, Camões can certainly be described. Of his death, June 10, is a Portuguese national.

Life

Biographical details of Camões 's life are sparse and largely unsupported and therefore might be attributed to the legend. The Portuguese historian and writer Diogo de Couto, who was friends with Camões, leaving the first a kind of biography, however, is often not be secured facts. Documentary evidence is hard to find. The research of the 19th and early 20th century has therefore attempted to construct from the literary work and the few surviving sources, a biography:

Luís Vaz de Camões was born the only child of Simão Vaz de Camões and wife Ana de Sá de Macedo. In early years the father left his family to go to India to wealth, but died after a few years in Goa. The mother later remarried. Camões came from the lower nobility. As the birthplace of Coimbra or Lisbon is often called. A birth certificate does not exist.

The young Camões was educated by Dominicans and Jesuits. Later he studied probably at the University of Coimbra, where an uncle of his, Bento de Camões, Prior of the Monastery of Santa Cruz, was Chancellor, and received a classical ancient culture. He was at the court of King Dom João III. worked as an educator of courtiers and fell in love with Catarina de Ataíde, one of the ladies in waiting to the Queen. Because of this love story, however, he had to leave the royal court in 1546. From 1549 he served as a soldier in Ceuta and lost in a battle against the Moors his right eye. Back in Lisbon, he was injured during the Feast of the Ascension the royal officer Gonçalo Borges and was arrested then. On several intercessions out he was sentenced to a heavy fine and three years of military service abroad. In 1553 he traveled on a ship to Goa and was thrown into prison for debt immediately after his arrival. Discharged, he took part in a battle on the Malabar Coast. At the end of his penalty time he had made it in Macao to the commanding officer. Camões were also accused of embezzlement and he traveled to justify itself, to the court to Goa. In this phase of his life Camões began work on his masterpiece, Os Lusíadas. On the return trip from Goa to Macao, he suffered shipwreck on the Mekong, however, at which he was able to save the manuscript of his epic.

1570 Camões was back in Lisbon and two years later published his famous work. The Portuguese King Sebastian I granted him a small pension, but explicitly and exclusively for the military services rendered.

At the age of 55 or 56 years Camões died during a plague epidemic and was buried in a mass grave. His tomb is now in the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos ( Jeronimos Monastery ) in Lisbon suburb of Belem, where also rest the mortal remains of Vasco da Gama. However, the cenotaph is empty and can only be understood as a symbolic gesture in relation to the size of Camões.

Artistic creation

Camões wrote as a poet, inter alia, Eclogues, odes, canzoni, and sonnets Redondiljen. His main work is the epic Os Lusíadas (1572 ), which was built in 1806 for the first time completely translated into German. It portrays in the style of classical epics, with echoes of the Odyssey and the Aeneid and with recourse to the Greek and Roman mythology, the discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, his journey around the Cape of Good Hope and along the African east coast to Calicut. Camões connects this plotline with a representation of Portuguese history. In addition to the epic poems and three comedies of the author have been handed down, but not the meaning of his lyrical work were: Anfitriões ( 1587 ), El- Rei Seleuco (1645 ), Filodemo ( 1587 ), the latter probably already listed in 1555 in Goa.

Camões reception in Germany and abroad

The first translation of a poem Camões is from the year 1780 by Senckendorff. The wider reception of Camões ' work in Germany began with the first translation of the Lusiads in 1806 and was recorded by numerous important German-speaking authors. Major Translator of Camões into German of Wilhelm Storck, Karl Siegmund von Seckendorf, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Ludwig Hain, August von Platen, Johann Jakob Christian Donner, Louis von Arent Schildt, Emanuel Geibel, Karl Goedeke, Otto von Taube, Johann Heinrich Voss, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Processing, especially in poems were found in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Friedrich Schlegel and Reinhold Schneider. A German -language biography written each Wilhelm Storck and Reinhold Schneider. The philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder and Georg Friedrich Hegel dealt with Camões in her work. Alexander von Humboldt called Camões as " maritime painter ". Ludwig Tieck processed the poet's life in the work of the poet's death (1834 ).

Also, a number of important foreign authors dealt with the work of Camões, as Voltaire, Alexander Pope, Jorge Luis Borges and the anthropologist, traveler and writer Sir Richard Burton, who also translated into English Camões.

The life of Camões was also treated in the opera Indra (1852 ). The music came from Friedrich von Flotow, the libretto by Gustav Gans to Putlitzstrasse. The opera was several times around and worked out and listed under different names. He had the play of Frenchman Jules -Henri Vernoy de Saint -Georges, who wrote the one-act opera L' esclave de Camões The idea. Both opera and theater have experienced hardly any reception.

Aftermath

Camões presumptive death on June 10, 1580 was declared a National Day of Portugal, and was named Portugal Day.

The highest Portuguese literary prize Prémio Camões, bears the poet in honor of his name and is awarded annually by the Portuguese Fundação Biblioteca Nacional and the Brazilian Departamento Nacional do Livro since 1989. Even the Portuguese Cultural Institute Instituto Camões bears his name.

In Macau since 1770, there are a Camões Camões Museum and the gardens that are reminiscent of the presence of the author in the city. In the old town of Lisbon, Praça Luís de Camões was named after the national poet.

Works in German translation

• Luís de Camões: The Lusiads of Luis de Camoes. ( Germanized by JJC thunder. ) Löflund, Stuttgart 1833.
• Luís de Camões: Sämmtliche poems. ( For the first time German by Wilhelm Storck. ) Volumes 1-6. F. Schöningh, Paderborn from 1880 to 1885.
• Luís de Camões: Os Lusíadas - The Lusiads. (From the Portuguese by Hans -Joachim Schaeffer. Edited and with an afterword by Rafael Arnold. ) Ivory Verlag, Berlin 1999, ( 4th edition 2010) ISBN 978-3-932245-28-2.
• Luís de Camões: All poems. ( Portugiesisch-Deutsch. Translated by Hans -Joachim Schaeffer. Edited, edited and annotated by Rafael Arnold. ) Ivory Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-932245-87-9.
• Luís de Camões: Com que voz? Who is the voice? Translation from four centuries. ( Edited, annotated and with an introduction by Rafael Arnold. ) Ivory Verlag, Berlin, 2013, ISBN 978-3-941184-25-1.