Os Lusiadas by Luis de Camões; J. D. M. FordReview by: Frank PierceThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Oct., 1947), pp. 525-527Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3716827 .

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for more than one motive and those to which an alternative motivation can be assigned.

On pp. 213-14 it is difficult to see how 'Toda agudeza que participa de razona- miento y de discurso-es mas ingeniosa porque es assunto de las mas noble accion del animo' can support the idea that agudeza is necessarily 'deeper and more solid' than mere cleverness. Agudeza is a form of art which can be produced at varying levels of intellectual and spiritual depth. It would not appear that in the quotations on p. 214, concepto and agudeza mean 'penetracion intelectual, sentido y forma, verdadero ingenio' all at once. They are, in Gracian's aesthetic, the result of intellectual penetration, the fruit of real understanding, they constitute meaning, though the two words are not interchangeable; they make the 'form', in the scholastic sense, of the work of art (this at least is Gracian's doctrine; it is debateable). But agudeza is not, any the more for all this, excluded from sometimes being trivial. For Gracian, agudeza is objective, and given in varying degrees of perfection and in various modes. It presupposes a penetrating mind whose conceptos, clothed in words, can inform the agudeza, the correspondent in literary art of the conceptos, whose sutileza is a participation in that particular quality of human ingenio which is expressed in all manifestations of the Spanish Baroque. That art can be deep; it need not be; its canons are not of universal validity. Like every other art style, they express the state of mind of a certain human group at a given moment in time.

It is worth adding that the MS. cannot, from its condition, have been the one sent to press or even an 'intermediate finished' version, but, as the author here suggests (p. 16), a working copy from which as Gracian progressed in his composition, he copied into a more finished version, possibly the definitive MS.

E. SARMTENTO NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

Os Lusiadas. By LuIs DE CAMOES. Edited by J. D. M. FORD. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: G. Cumberlege. 1946. x + 452 pp. 22s. 6d.

This work complements the edition by Professor Ford, in 1940, of Fanshawe's translation of this great poem. With the present edition he adds yet another link to the chain of Camoenian scholarship in English. While it is not the first English edition of the original, it does, of necessity, take the place of the now rare and outmoded work of Aubertin (1878), which also contained his translation. Professor Ford reproduces, with modernized orthography, the princeps of 1572, as originally published by Dona Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos. The American scholar has set out his edition with preface, linguistic note, introduction, 290 pages of text (with a brief synopsis of each canto in the corresponding place), and 139 pages of notes. The result is a rather massive work tastefully produced as vol. xxu of the Harvard Studies in Romance Languages.

In his preface the learned editor claims that this edition will remedy a want felt by English-speaking students of Portuguese. This claim is, indeed, justified, but one cannot find the same justification for his assertion that 'As a matter of fact, the language of Camoes, who wrote in the Sixteenth Century, is the language of to-day; there is little or nothing in the vocabulary and the style of the Lusiads [sic] to daunt one acquainted with modern Portuguese.' It is highly doubtful if one should recommend thus a work essentially belonging to a period of prevalent Latinism and of a poetic syntax far removed from present-day usage, to those acquainted only with contemporary texts. The copious notes, which contain abundant linguistic clarification and also the frequent translation of recurring difficulties of syntax, show only too clearly how subtle a study is offered by this greatest piece of quinhen- tista verse. As such it should be studied. The same belief is manifest in the linguistic

for more than one motive and those to which an alternative motivation can be assigned.

On pp. 213-14 it is difficult to see how 'Toda agudeza que participa de razona- miento y de discurso-es mas ingeniosa porque es assunto de las mas noble accion del animo' can support the idea that agudeza is necessarily 'deeper and more solid' than mere cleverness. Agudeza is a form of art which can be produced at varying levels of intellectual and spiritual depth. It would not appear that in the quotations on p. 214, concepto and agudeza mean 'penetracion intelectual, sentido y forma, verdadero ingenio' all at once. They are, in Gracian's aesthetic, the result of intellectual penetration, the fruit of real understanding, they constitute meaning, though the two words are not interchangeable; they make the 'form', in the scholastic sense, of the work of art (this at least is Gracian's doctrine; it is debateable). But agudeza is not, any the more for all this, excluded from sometimes being trivial. For Gracian, agudeza is objective, and given in varying degrees of perfection and in various modes. It presupposes a penetrating mind whose conceptos, clothed in words, can inform the agudeza, the correspondent in literary art of the conceptos, whose sutileza is a participation in that particular quality of human ingenio which is expressed in all manifestations of the Spanish Baroque. That art can be deep; it need not be; its canons are not of universal validity. Like every other art style, they express the state of mind of a certain human group at a given moment in time.

It is worth adding that the MS. cannot, from its condition, have been the one sent to press or even an 'intermediate finished' version, but, as the author here suggests (p. 16), a working copy from which as Gracian progressed in his composition, he copied into a more finished version, possibly the definitive MS.

E. SARMTENTO NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

Os Lusiadas. By LuIs DE CAMOES. Edited by J. D. M. FORD. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: G. Cumberlege. 1946. x + 452 pp. 22s. 6d.

This work complements the edition by Professor Ford, in 1940, of Fanshawe's translation of this great poem. With the present edition he adds yet another link to the chain of Camoenian scholarship in English. While it is not the first English edition of the original, it does, of necessity, take the place of the now rare and outmoded work of Aubertin (1878), which also contained his translation. Professor Ford reproduces, with modernized orthography, the princeps of 1572, as originally published by Dona Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos. The American scholar has set out his edition with preface, linguistic note, introduction, 290 pages of text (with a brief synopsis of each canto in the corresponding place), and 139 pages of notes. The result is a rather massive work tastefully produced as vol. xxu of the Harvard Studies in Romance Languages.

In his preface the learned editor claims that this edition will remedy a want felt by English-speaking students of Portuguese. This claim is, indeed, justified, but one cannot find the same justification for his assertion that 'As a matter of fact, the language of Camoes, who wrote in the Sixteenth Century, is the language of to-day; there is little or nothing in the vocabulary and the style of the Lusiads [sic] to daunt one acquainted with modern Portuguese.' It is highly doubtful if one should recommend thus a work essentially belonging to a period of prevalent Latinism and of a poetic syntax far removed from present-day usage, to those acquainted only with contemporary texts. The copious notes, which contain abundant linguistic clarification and also the frequent translation of recurring difficulties of syntax, show only too clearly how subtle a study is offered by this greatest piece of quinhen- tista verse. As such it should be studied. The same belief is manifest in the linguistic

Reviews Reviews 525 525

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526 Reviews

note, which glosses forms which are either self-explanatory or should be known from previous training in the elements of Portuguese philology or Renaissance usage.

The introduction outlines briefly but usefully the main contributions to Camoenian studies, places of honour being given to Storck and Dona Carolina, and, among British scholars, Burton, Prestage and Bell. The English translations of Fanshawe and Burton receive special mention, with a certain emphasis on the latter's vagaries (his commentary serves to round off certain of the notes to the text). The rest of the introduction is devoted to an up-to-date biographical sketch of the poet and his literary activities; a similar account of Vasco da Gama and his place in the age of the discoveries (one feels that much of this material might have been better illustrated with an appropriate map); and an attempt is made to give some appraisal of the poem: it is set against its ancient models and related, in the use of the ottava rima and of certain episodes, to the models of the robust European tradition of narrative verse, exemplified in Boiardo and Ariosto; the introduction is completed with some reference to the much debated blending of the Pagan and the Christian, with a few remarks on the poet's 'overindulgence in the sensuous in just a few passagee of the poem'. While the problems facing an editor of Os Lusiada in an attempt to summarize the many aspects presented by its study and to give a r6sum6 and a selection of the wealth of scholarship on the subject are obvious, still it seems to the present reviewer that the introduction might well have contained a really full schematic picture of the shape and the originality of the poem and some account of its influence on later generations of Portuguese epic poets. Also, a review of the historical writings on which the poet drew would have spplied another essential preparation for a balanced understanding of Camoes's achievement, as in his skilful and inspired fusing of his personal experience of the route to India and of the Far East with his reading of Barros and Castanheda. Seldom has a poet succeeded with such striking independence in integrating his formal education with his later growth, and to such brilliant effect.

Phrhaps there are few scholarly undertakings as open to criticism and disagree- ment as the compiling of notes to a text: one has a long memory of the sins of com- mission and omission in this respect of many commentators of classical texts. In this instance, one should aim at supplying a commentary designed to aid the defective memory of the average reader in such matters as rare or recondite classical 'allusions and similar references to geography and history, ancient, European and oriental, and, much more important, one should surely endeavour to provide parallels with classical models and sources, as well as the relevant passages from Portuguese historiography, both medieval and contemporary. The editor should have striven to emphasize not the poet's inevitable indebtness to the classics (it is taken as axiomatic that Camoes and his fellows were steeped in the minutiae of classical mythology, geography and history), but rather the manner in which he used them, as also the way in which he availed himself of the mass of particular facts (culled from Fernao Lopes and many succeeding sources), which he universalized in such an inimitable fashion, by reshaping the prosaic happenings and the dramatic adventures along the coast of Africa and in India, by means of supernatural machinery and other accepted heroic conventions. Moreover, surely such literary parallels should take precedence over the elucidation of common mythological material and its etymologies, and should not take the form of bare quotations but should be interpreted. Thus it would be possible for the notes to dovetail into the suggested scheme for the introduction. Also, it is open to question whether linguistic notes in general should be more than translations or the construing of Latinisms of vocabulary and syntax. Certainly such notes should not be used to explain gram- matical points available in any moder primer of the language, the elements of which at the very least should be at the command of any student of Camoes. Many

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.79 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 07:22:21 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Latinisms, archaisms, and words of oriental origin are, however, clearly and usefully explained, but it is hardly necessary, for example, to add the Greek to the Latin forms, as occurs in several cases. This display of irrelevant erudition is all the more to be deprecated when one realizes how much valuable space has been allotted to what must be regarded as the pointless reproduction of long passages from a dictionary of classical mythology. As for general geographical and historical references, the reviewer also feels that space could have been economized for more pertinent comment: what student needs to be reminded of the connexion of Ulysses and Aeneas with the Iliad and the Aeneid (p. 313), of the location of Mozambique and Mombasa (p. 321), of the general facts about the Cid (p. 361), of the position of Badajoz (p. 346), or of Zeeland (p. 407), to mention but a few of many such cases? Such comments are, however, interspersed with valuable information on similar topics. Other references are of doubtful usefulness: that Tarragona is in Aragon (p. 340); that 'Portuguese, as a Romance language, is one of the natural develop- ments of popular Latin and not a corruption of it' (p. 319), as a gloss on the famous hyperbole in Canto 1, xxxiii; that Alc&gar-Quebir was 'an unfortunate campaign in northern Africa in 1578' (p. 314); that the battle of Aljubarrota simply took place in 1385 (p. 363). Nor can one accept such eccentricities as 'Alphonsus' (with several cases of Afonso), 'Emanuel' or 'Lusiads', which reflect an uncalled-for rationaliza- tion of the caprices of English usage in foreign proper names. Certain literary themes and devices are given adequate prominence, as with the story of Ines de Castro and its currency in Hispanic letters (pp. 355-6), the tale of the Old Man of Bel6m and its archetypes (p. 375), the inclusion of the Twelve of England (although it is largely a rEsume of what Mendes dos Rem6dios says) (p. 396), and the Isle of Love (with a good summary of the varied criticism levelled at this last great lyrical flight of the poem) (p. 423). But no mention has been made of the very original adaptation of the device of Achilles' Shield and its other classical versions (in Canto vn), a device which became one of the most fruitful in the sixteenth and seven- teenth century epic; nor was it thought necessary to recall the use of recapitulation which permits Camoes in Cantos m and iv to make the past history of Portugal an integral part of what thus becomes in a very real sense a national epic.

One regrets that full advantage has not been taken of this opportunity of pro- viding a definitive annotated edition, which while using the very readable text reproduced here, would have attempted to give more than elementary and scattered information to guide the student in his reading and understanding of this the greatest piece of narrative verse in Peninsular Romance, in which Camoes has followed and, with a genius's daring, has adapted the precepts of Aristotle and Horace in a manner that makes it, as the editor states, in re-echoing the sentiments of generations of admirers, the national poem of Portugal and the only true epic of modern times.

FRANK PIERCE SHiJfFIElLD

Kleine deutsche Versschule. By WOLFGANG KAYSER. Bern: A. Francke. 1946. 118 pp. S.Fr. 4.60.

Unlike the writer on counterpoint or harmony, the prosodist commonly adopts a defensive attitude; 'die niedere Rechenkunst' has an unfortunate past to live down. Dr Wolfgang Kayser is no exception, yet he has less reason for modesty than more ambitious workers in this field. His Kleine deutsche Versschule, as an intro- duction to the principles of German versification, and to the craft of German verse, has substantial merits. No extravagant claims are made for this small treatise, which is based on lectures given at the University of Lisbon and intended as a vade- mecum for the amateur and apprentice of German poetry. But the author contrives

Latinisms, archaisms, and words of oriental origin are, however, clearly and usefully explained, but it is hardly necessary, for example, to add the Greek to the Latin forms, as occurs in several cases. This display of irrelevant erudition is all the more to be deprecated when one realizes how much valuable space has been allotted to what must be regarded as the pointless reproduction of long passages from a dictionary of classical mythology. As for general geographical and historical references, the reviewer also feels that space could have been economized for more pertinent comment: what student needs to be reminded of the connexion of Ulysses and Aeneas with the Iliad and the Aeneid (p. 313), of the location of Mozambique and Mombasa (p. 321), of the general facts about the Cid (p. 361), of the position of Badajoz (p. 346), or of Zeeland (p. 407), to mention but a few of many such cases? Such comments are, however, interspersed with valuable information on similar topics. Other references are of doubtful usefulness: that Tarragona is in Aragon (p. 340); that 'Portuguese, as a Romance language, is one of the natural develop- ments of popular Latin and not a corruption of it' (p. 319), as a gloss on the famous hyperbole in Canto 1, xxxiii; that Alc&gar-Quebir was 'an unfortunate campaign in northern Africa in 1578' (p. 314); that the battle of Aljubarrota simply took place in 1385 (p. 363). Nor can one accept such eccentricities as 'Alphonsus' (with several cases of Afonso), 'Emanuel' or 'Lusiads', which reflect an uncalled-for rationaliza- tion of the caprices of English usage in foreign proper names. Certain literary themes and devices are given adequate prominence, as with the story of Ines de Castro and its currency in Hispanic letters (pp. 355-6), the tale of the Old Man of Bel6m and its archetypes (p. 375), the inclusion of the Twelve of England (although it is largely a rEsume of what Mendes dos Rem6dios says) (p. 396), and the Isle of Love (with a good summary of the varied criticism levelled at this last great lyrical flight of the poem) (p. 423). But no mention has been made of the very original adaptation of the device of Achilles' Shield and its other classical versions (in Canto vn), a device which became one of the most fruitful in the sixteenth and seven- teenth century epic; nor was it thought necessary to recall the use of recapitulation which permits Camoes in Cantos m and iv to make the past history of Portugal an integral part of what thus becomes in a very real sense a national epic.

One regrets that full advantage has not been taken of this opportunity of pro- viding a definitive annotated edition, which while using the very readable text reproduced here, would have attempted to give more than elementary and scattered information to guide the student in his reading and understanding of this the greatest piece of narrative verse in Peninsular Romance, in which Camoes has followed and, with a genius's daring, has adapted the precepts of Aristotle and Horace in a manner that makes it, as the editor states, in re-echoing the sentiments of generations of admirers, the national poem of Portugal and the only true epic of modern times.

FRANK PIERCE SHiJfFIElLD

Kleine deutsche Versschule. By WOLFGANG KAYSER. Bern: A. Francke. 1946. 118 pp. S.Fr. 4.60.

Unlike the writer on counterpoint or harmony, the prosodist commonly adopts a defensive attitude; 'die niedere Rechenkunst' has an unfortunate past to live down. Dr Wolfgang Kayser is no exception, yet he has less reason for modesty than more ambitious workers in this field. His Kleine deutsche Versschule, as an intro- duction to the principles of German versification, and to the craft of German verse, has substantial merits. No extravagant claims are made for this small treatise, which is based on lectures given at the University of Lisbon and intended as a vade- mecum for the amateur and apprentice of German poetry. But the author contrives

Reviews Reviews 527 527

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.79 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 07:22:21 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions