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Rating: 
Summary: Camoes: The Portuguese Shakespeare
Review: At some point in life we realize why "The Classics" ARE classic. At some point the great literature and words reach out and touch us to the very core of our being, that special spark that is real you. The Lusiads has done that to me.Being written in a minor tongue and focusing on a minor nation's history, this rhyming wall of words has not had much circulation out side of the lusophonic orbit, which is a shame. This work deserves its proper place behind the Iliad, The Odyssey, the Aeneid, and the Divine Comedy. This English translation enables anglophonics to understand Camoes, the Portuguese Shakespeare. Unlike the Aeneid, which focuses on one mans journey from Troy to Rome, this story focuses on the Portuguese in the plural as a collective people. It celebrates their special history, using Vasco Da Gama's 1497 voyage to India as the focus of drama. The only drawback to the book is that you need to read a survey of Portuguese history and geography to savor this book. I lived in Portugal for two years, therefor I understood the allusions and the story. It is not, however, as bad as the Divine Comedy where almost every paragraph is foot-noted, but a perusal of the encyclopedia would help before, during, and after the reading. Lastly, I have read the Lusiads in Portuguese. Since it is written in poetic form with cantos, and in a second tongue, it was grueling work. I can only compare it to reading Milton or Pope in another language. Poetry by nature is dense writing, and if the reader is also dense, trouble occurs. Therefore, I endorse this English translation to mono- and polyglots alike.
Rating:
Summary: A question of timing
Review: Had Camoens been "Englishened" shortly after his own lifetime, no doubt some English translator could have grasped the proper tone, meter and spirit for his work to be presented in English grab. However, since he died in 1580, just when Spain absorbed Portugal into the Iberian Union, his poem in praise of the Portuguese exploits in India was not to be Englishened when the English where busy trying to undone what he had praised. Therefore he lost his chance with the English language. As it is, all English translation of Camoens have been at best exercises in creative anachronism (such as Richard Francis Burton's Victorian one) or simply inadequate (such as the Penguin trans., which is _in prose_!). Also, there is the problem that a translation of the high degree required is best achieved between cognate languages (such as the German trans. of Shakespeare, or the Portuguese trans. of the D.Quixote). Be as it is,Camoens didn't fail to attract the attention even of Marx & Engels, who quote the opening section of the Lusiads (in Portuguese) in the _German Ideology_. Therefore I advise reading _any_ English trans., but only to get a foretaste before learning Portuguese and reading the original.Finally, for those who think the poem's "hero" Vasco da Gama to be unintersting: the hero of the poem is the Portuguese people in general, therefore the name of the poem - the _Lusiads_ (from Lusitania, i.e. Portugal) and not the "Gamaeid".
Rating:
Summary: A question of timing
Review: Had Camoens been "Englishened" shortly after his own lifetime, no doubt some English translator could have grasped the proper tone, meter and spirit for his work to be presented in English grab. However, since he died in 1580, just when Spain absorbed Portugal into the Iberian Union, his poem in praise of the Portuguese exploits in India was not to be Englishened when the English where busy trying to undone what he had praised. Therefore he lost his chance with the English language. As it is, all English translation of Camoens have been at best exercises in creative anachronism (such as Richard Francis Burton's Victorian one) or simply inadequate (such as the Penguin trans., which is _in prose_!). Also, there is the problem that a translation of the high degree required is best achieved between cognate languages (such as the German trans. of Shakespeare, or the Portuguese trans. of the D.Quixote). Be as it is,Camoens didn't fail to attract the attention even of Marx & Engels, who quote the opening section of the Lusiads (in Portuguese) in the _German Ideology_. Therefore I advise reading _any_ English trans., but only to get a foretaste before learning Portuguese and reading the original.Finally, for those who think the poem's "hero" Vasco da Gama to be unintersting: the hero of the poem is the Portuguese people in general, therefore the name of the poem - the _Lusiads_ (from Lusitania, i.e. Portugal) and not the "Gamaeid".
Rating: 
Summary: The Swan Song of the Renaissance Epic
Review: I give this book three stars not because it is a particularly brilliant work of poetry, but because it is a truly remarkable artifact. This book is a monument in Western culture, and, as such, it is worthy of a read. However, those who open this book expecting to find the fanciful, exuberant poetry so typical of the European Renaissance will be sorely disappointed. Though in form - rhyming octaves - de Camoes imitates the giants of vernacular epic poetry - Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto in particular - he lacks the poetic dexterity which allowed the aforementioned authors to push the limits of epic poetry, not only in terms of content, but also with regard to style. While one must admit that de Camoes' subject matter is truly revolutionary, his style is pedantic and uninspired. Though the invocation of the muses is a well established topos of epic poetry, rarely in the verses of Virgil or Dante does one get the feeling that the poet is genuinely in need of artistic assistance, for these poets were weaned on the slopes of Parnassus. De Camoes, instead, seems to be earnestly calling out for help. Despite the fact that succor never arrived, nevertheless de Camoes' poem is a quaint little work marking the beginnings of colonialism, the Portuguese penchant for daring navigation, and the subsequent attempt to construct the Portuguese national identity around nautical explorations.
Rating: 
Summary: Camoes: No More a Classic
Review: The Lusiads places the decadence of the epic genre in its end. The Lusiads bears no power, it is only the song of a feeble hero which is not even by far compared to great characters just like Odysseus. Vasco da Gama is uninteresting, he is in no profound context of living except that of praising Portugal's doings in navegation and conquest. Camoes doesn't matter how many peoples were killed and explored in name of this. The Lusiads is, so, a song of ideological doutrination with less masterpiece characteristics, that means it is not a classic, but a book imposed as part of a certain canon. It is not a good book because its aim is not to make art, but to USE art in order to praise the advancement of the portuguese project of conquering and exploring. The Lusiads placement as a classic is, so, ideologically played to a specific economical and religious aim.
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