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Abstract
Faria e Sousa’s commentary to The Lusiads (Madrid, 1639) still remains an important work of critical exegesis on the epic poem by Luis de Camões (Lisbon, 1572). In this paper, Julian Weiss and Catarina Fouto re-examine the significance of this work in the tradition of the Renaissance commentary and explore its relation to previous Spanish commentaries and translations of the text. Our interest in this commentary lies in our previous research into the political uses of Iberian commentary, and in the relation between translation and diplomacy. Crucially, the liminary texts which precede the Spanish translations published in the year of the annexation of Portugal (1580) transform The Lusiads into a celebration of Philip III's imperial expansion and shape the reception of Camões’ epic by their European readers. Faria e Sousa responds to these attempts to colonize the text and to represent Portuguese as a language of inferior culture by engaging with the Iberian tradition of Renaissance commentary and the Spanish translations and commentaries to the epic of Camões.
Notes
1 See Eugenio Asensio, Estudios portugueses (Paris: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1974), 303–24; Fernando Bouza Álvarez, Portugal en la monarquía hispánica (1580–1640): Felipe II, las cortes de Tomar y la génesis del Portugal católico (Madrid: Univ. Complutense, 1987); also Fernando Bouza Álvarez, Felipe II y el Portugal ‘dos povos’: imágenes de esperanza y revuelta, pról. de Nuno Gonçalo Monteiro (Valladolid: Univ. de Valladolid, 2010).
2 Laura R. Bass, ‘Poética, imperio y la idea de España en época de Olivares: las Lusíadas comentadas de Manuel de Faria e Sousa’, in Poder y saber: bibliotecas y bibliofilia en la época del conde-duque de Olivares, ed. Oliver Noble Wood, Jeremy Roe & Jeremy Lawrance, con un ensayo de Sir John Elliott (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2011), 183–205. For concise introductions to Faria e Sousa, see Hélio Alves, ‘Faria e Sousa, Manuel de’, in Dicionário de Luis de Camões, ed. Vitor Aguiar e Silva (Lisboa: Caminho, 2011), 368–78; and Edward Glaser’s introduction to The ‘Fortuna’ of Manuel de Faria e Sousa: An Autobiography, intro., ed. & notes by Edward Glaser (Münster: Aschendorff, 1975), 6–122.
3 Bass, ‘Poética, imperio y la idea de España’, 184.
4 Miguel Martínez, ‘A Poet of Our Own: The Struggle for Os Lusíadas in the Afterlife of Camões’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 10:1 (2010), 71–94 (p. 87).
5 See Patrícia Marin Cepeda, Cervantes y la Corte de Felipe II: escritores en el entorno del cardenal Ascanio Colonna (1560–1608) (Madrid: Polifemo, 2015), 114–20.
6 La Lusiada [ … ] traduzida en verso Castellano de Portugues, por el Maestro Luys Gomez de Tapia (Salamanca: En casa de Ioan Perier, 1580). In quoting original editions we add accents, capitals and punctuation according to modern conventions, and lightly regularize orthographic variation (e.g. u/v).
7 Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas, ed., Las obras del famoso poeta Juan de Mena (Salamanca: Lucas de Junta, 1582), f. *5r–v. For the most recent study of the canonization of Juan de Mena, with ample bibliography, see the introductory monograph to Hernán Núñez de Toledo, Glosa a las ‘Trezientas’ del famoso poeta Juan de Mena, ed. Julian Weiss & Antonio Cortijo Ocaña (Madrid: Polifemo, 2015), 33–169. For El Brocense’s prologue to his annotated edition of Mena, see Glosa, pp. 1211–13. Mena’s sixteenth-century reception is also the subject of various studies in Juan de Mena: de letrado a poeta, ed. Cristina Moya García (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2015).
8 See Martínez, ‘A Poet of Our Own’, 87.
9 See Bass, ‘Poética, imperio y la idea de España’, 198–99; Jorge de Sena, ‘Introdução’, in Lusíadas [ … ] comentadas por Manuel de Faria e Sousa, facsimile ed. (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional/Casa da Moeda, 1972), 9–56 (p. 16). Sena’s hypothesis echoes the eulogy by Francisco Xavier Meneses, Count of Ericeira (1673–1743), who suggested that Faria e Sousa risked his life in Madrid between 1641 and 1649 in order to provide intelligence for John IV. The count’s claim refuted contemporary accusations of treason, a concern that continued to exercise scholars throughout the nineteenth century (see Glaser, ‘Introduction’, in The ‘Fortuna’ of Manuel de Faria e Sousa, ed. Glaser, 8–10 and 12–13). While Glaser does not commit himself on ‘the thorny problem of Faria e Sousa’s patriotism’ (10), he points out his ‘inconsistent’ attitudes towards the uprising of 1640 (23–24), noting that the Fortuna was, in part, an attempt to counter criticism that he did not openly support the Portuguese cause (24–26).
10 Glaser, ‘Introduction’, in The ‘Fortuna’ of Manuel de Faria e Sousa, ed. Glaser, 84–87.
11 See Vítor Aguiar e Silva, A lira dourada e a tuba canora: novos ensaios camonianos (Lisboa: Cotovia, 2008), 91–123.
12 Lusíadas [ … ] comentadas por Manuel de Faria i Sousa, etc., 4 vols [printed in 2] (Madrid: Juan Sánchez, a costa de Pedro Coello, 1639–1640); for the facsimile edition, see above n. 9. The poem and commentary are printed in two numbered columns, further divided by page sections (A–E), and distributed over four volumes printed as two. The columns in each volume are separately numbered. Except where otherwise noted, we cite by volume, column number, page section and, where relevant, by canto; for this reference see the ‘Dedicatoria al Rey Nuestro Señor’, ff. †3r–v.
13 Fernando Bouza Álvarez, ‘Semblanza y aficiones del monarca: música, astros, libros y bufones’, in Felipe IV: el hombre y el reinado, ed. José Alcalá-Zamora (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2005), 27–44 (pp. 39–40).
14 Los Lvsiadas de Lvys de Camões traduzidos en octaua rima castellana por Benito Caldera (Alcalá de Henares: Juan Gracián, 1580), f. A5r; emphasis added.
15 Martínez, ‘A Poet of Our Own’, 74–76.
16 On bilingualism, see: Luis Adão da Fonseca, ‘Política e cultura nas relações luso-castelhanas no séc. XV’, Península: Revista do Instituto de Estudos Ibéricos da Faculdade de Letras do Porto, 0 (2003), 53–61; Ana Isabel Buescu, ‘Aspectos do bilinguismo Português-Castelhano na época moderna’, Hispania (Spain), 64:216 (2004), 13–38; and Ana Maria Garcia Martin, ‘Bilinguismo literário Luso-Castelhano no tempo de Camões’, Dicionário de Luis de Camões, ed. Vitor Aguiar e Silva (Lisboa: Caminho, 2011), 75–80.
17 Fernando Bouza Álvarez, ‘1640 perante o Estatuto de Tomar: Memória e Juízo de Portugal dos Filipes’, Penélope, 9/10 (1993), 17–27. See also Pilar Vásquez Cuesta, who attributes the marginalization of Portuguese, even within Portuguese borders, to ‘diglossia’, whereby Castilian became the authoritative language of the courtly elites: A língua e a cultura portuguesas no tempo dos Filipes (Mem-Martins: Publicações Europa-América, 1988).
18 See José María Micó, ‘Góngora a los diecinueve años: modelo y significación de la “Canción Esdrújula” ’, Criticón, 49 (1990), 21–30, and his La fragua de las ‘Soledades’: ensayos sobre Góngora (Barcelona: Sirmio, 1990), 13–32.
19 For the figurative meaning of lustre, see Diccionario de Autoridades (s.v.): ‘metaphóricamente significa esplendor, aplauso y estimación’.
20 Herrera’s comparison between ‘la lengua toscana’ and ‘español’ is well known, and his use of the latter term is symptomatic of the consolidation of Castilian as an imperial language. See his Anotaciones a la poesía de Garcilaso, ed., con intro., de Inoria Pepe & José María Reyes (Madrid: Castalia, 2001), 60–63, 202–03, 275–78.
21 Martínez, ‘A Poet of Our Own’, 76.
22 Vanda Anastácio, ‘Leituras potencialmente perigosas: reflexões sobre as traduções castelhanas de Os Lusíadas no tempo da União Ibérica’, Revista Camoniana, 15 (2004), 159–78.
23 The print history of The Lusiads during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has yet to be comprehensively analysed. For specific (groups of) editions and the agents behind their publication, censorship and commentaries, see: Nelson Rolando Monteiro, As edições de ‘Os Lusíadas’: pesquisa e análise (Rio de Janeiro: OCD, 1979); Sheila Moura Hue, ‘Os Lusíadas comentados: leitores e leituras em 1584, 1591 e 1613’, Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies, 7 (2003), 117–32; Sheila Moura Hue, ‘Domingos Fernandes e as peripécias de um editor camoniano’, Floema, 7:7 (2010), 101–21; Cleonice Berardinelli, ‘De censores e censura’, in her Estudos camonianos: nova edição revista e ampliada (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2000), 109–22; Artur Anselmo, ‘Camões e a censura inquisitorial’, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português, 16 (1981), 513–68.
24 Luís de Camões, Os Lusíadas de Luís de Camões, principe da poesia heroyca (Lisboa: Vicente Álvares, 1612), f. 1r–v.
25 After 1580 a third Spanish translation was published in 1591, in Madrid, by the Portuguese Henrique Garcês, resident in Peru. Richard Fanshawe’s English version appeared in 1655 and 1664. The Genoese consul Carlo Antonio Paggi published his Italian one in Lisbon in 1658 and 1659. Four Latin versions survive, by: Tomé de Faria, Bishop of Targa (1622), Friar André Baião (1625), Santo Agostinho Macedo (completed in France around 1650 but unpublished) and Sir Richard Fanshawe (a manuscript fragment, 1663). See Martínez, ‘A Poet of Our Own’; Catarina Fouto, ‘The Politics of Translation: The Lusiads and European Diplomacy (1580–1664)’, in Cultures of Diplomacy and Literary Writing in the Early Modern World: New Approaches, ed. Joanna Craigwood & Tracey Sowerby (forthcoming); and two essays by Thomas Earle, ‘As traduções da obra camoniana para Inglês existentes na Biblioteca de D. Manuel II’, and ‘As traduções da poesia de Camões para Latim existentes na Biblioteca de D. Manuel II’, both in Camões nos prelos de Portugal e da Europa, ed. José Augusto Cardoso Bernardes, 2 vols (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 2015), I, 165–74 & I, 157–64.
26 Os Lusiadas do Grande Luis de Camoens (Lisboa: Pedro Crasbeeck, 1613). Critics agree that Mariz intervened in both Correia’s liminary material and in the text of the commentary, but disagree over the extent. On Correia, Mariz and this 1613 edition, see Isabel Almeida’s two entries in the Dicionário de Camões: ‘Correia, Manuel’, 294–98, and ‘Mariz, Pedro de’, 572–77; Moura Hue, ‘Domingos Fernandes’.
27 See Almeida, ‘Correia, Manuel’, 296.
28 Anthony Grafton, The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1991), 25–26, 48–54. In 1582, El Brocense’s brief notes on Mena rendered obsolete Núñez’s mammoth Glosa.
29 Bass, ‘Poética, imperio y la idea de España’, 187–91.
30 Glaser, ‘Introduction’, in The ‘Fortuna’ of Manuel de Faria e Sousa, ed. Glaser, 82.
31 Roland Greene, Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2013), 41–73.
32 Bass, ‘Poética, imperio y la idea de España’, 188. Bass also quotes Fernando Bouza’s suggestion that Faria e Sousa was attempting to ‘parangonarse gráficamente con el mismo Luis de Camões’. See his Corre manuscrito: una historia cultural del Siglo de Oro (Madrid: 2001), 29.
33 See El Brocense’s eulogy of Tapia’s annotated Castilian translation. He writes that Tapia was intellectually equipped to ‘hazer un comento mayor que el de Juan de Mena’ [a jibe at Núñez’s notoriously weighty tome]. ‘Mas porque ha venido a su noticia que ay un diccionario poético que trata quién fue Phaetón, y su padre y madre, no ha querido embutir aquí fábulas ni orígines de vocablos ni definiciones de amor [etc]’ (f. ¶6r).
34 On which see Iveta Nakládalová, La lectura docta en la primera edad moderna (1450–1650) (Madrid: Abada, 2013). For Ascham, see pp. 198–99; for Seneca, especially Epistle 45, pp. 37–39, with reference to Seneca’s influence on the pedagogical treatise of Johann Heinrich Alsted, Consiliarius academic et scholasticus (1610).
35 For Seneca’s itinerarium unicum, see Nakládalová, La lectura docta, 38–39; for the metaphor of immersion in the depths of a text, see pp. 61–64, 115–18. Idle curiosity and errant reading, a form of mental fornicatio, were common concerns among patristic and scholastic authors; see Mary J. Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1998), 82–83.
36 In his memoirs, he describes memorizing the entire Lusiads, then reading the classics in search of correspondences, which he then compiled in over 500 cuadernillos (Glaser, ‘Introduction’, in The ‘Fortuna’ of Manuel de Faria e Sousa, ed. Glaser, 83).
37 Examples abound in Hernán Núñez’s Mena commentary (see Glosa a las ‘Trezientas’, ed. Weiss & Cortijo Ocaña, 73, 554, 600). Critical judgment (iudicium) concluded the conventional enarratio poetarum, following lectio, enarratio, and emendatio; see Felipe González Vega, ‘Iudicium meum semper fuit: cuestiones de poética en el comentario gramatical de Antonio de Nebrija (1444–1522)’, in Elementos de retórica y poética en la gramática y el comentario filológico: de Isidoro al tiempo de Nebrija, ed. Juan Casas Rigall, Revista de Poética Medieval, 17 (2006), 299–334 (pp. 310, 333).
38 Other metaphors nuance the point: the best commentary adds ‘nuevas alas’ to a work, and together they become a bird that flies further than ever before (I: 5D); Camões has provided the music, Faria e Sousa the instrument (I: 4C).
39 For Herrera, see Ignacio Navarrete, ‘Decentering Garcilaso: Herrera’s Attack on the Canon’, PMLA, 106 (1991), 21–33; for Hernán Núñez, see Glosa a las ‘Trezientas’, ed. Weiss & Cortijo Ocaña, 112, 125, 129–30, 137–45.
40 See Luis Gil Fernández, Panorama social del humanismo español (Madrid: Alhambra, 1981), 266–72. For polemics embedded in Italian Dante commentaries, see Deborah Parker, Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance (Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 1993).
41 For his allegorical method, see Edward Glaser, ‘Manuel de Faria e Sousa and the Mythology of Os Lusíadas’, in his Portuguese Studies (Paris: FCG, 1976), 135–57.
42 This famous episode has sparked much critical interest, including: David Quint, ‘The Epic Curse and Camões’ Adamastor’, in his Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton U. P.), 99–130, for whom the giant is an African, rebellious voice who opposes imperialism and, yet, confirms its control over the savaged, colonized peoples; Thomas Earle, ‘The Two Adamastores: Diversity and Complexity in Camões’s Lusiads’, in Renaissance Now!: The Value of the Renaissance Past in Contemporary Culture, ed. Brendan Dooley (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014), 103–18, sees the episode as a complex literary utterance, as both an ‘adverse’ rewriting of the opening stanzas of the poem and a celebration of Portuguese expansion. Josiah Blackmore, Moorings: Portuguese Expansion and the Writing of Africa (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2009), 105–42 argues that Adamastor connotes European visions of African masculinity and melancholy. For Adamastor as a tragic figure, see: Cleonice Berardinelli, ‘Uma leitura do Adamastor’, in her Estudos camonianos (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Cultura, 1973), 33–40 and Aníbal Pinto de Castro, ‘O episódio do Adamastor: seu lugar e significação na estrutura d’Os Lusíadas’, in Páginas de um Honesto Estudo Camoniano (Coimbra: Centro Interuniversitário de Estudos Camonianos, 2007), 175–90.
43 See also Bass, quoting Herrera’s imperialist trope in his Anotaciones on Garcilaso: he encourages fellow poets to ‘navegar el anchíssimo Océano i descubrir los tesoros de que estuvieron agenos nuestros padres’ (‘Poética, imperio y la idea de España’, 197).
44 See Luis del Mármol Carvajal, Descripción general de África, sus guerras y vicisitudes, desde la fundación del mahometismo hasta el año 1571, 11 vols (Granada/Malaga, 1573–99); and Johannes Caspianus, De Turcorum origine, religione, ac immanissima eorum in Christianos tyrannide (Antwerp, 1541). On Luis del Mármol Carvajal, see Javier Castillo’s entry in Christian Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, VI: Western Europe (1500–1600), ed. David Thomas & John Chesworth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 282–93.
45 Roger Boase, ‘The Morisco Expulsion and Diaspora: An Example of Racial and Religious Intolerance’, in Cultures in Contact in Medieval Spain: Historical and Literary Essays Presented to L. P. Harvey, ed. David Hook & Barry Taylor (London: King’s College Medieval Studies, 1990), 9–28; for moriscos as alleged security risk, see p. 15. Boase’s synopsis of anti-morisco stereotypes deployed by the advocates of expulsion includes many of those found in Faria e Sousa’s caricature of Islam: e.g. Muslim lust, treachery, expansion, the Qur’an as anti-Gospel, the Prophet as filius terrae, the moriscos as ‘hijos de la tierra’ (for Muhammad as ‘hijo de la tierra’ = ‘ambición de tierra’, see cols. 544E–545B).
46 Pointing out the discrepancy between Mármol’s depiction of Muhammad’s ‘color encendido’ and Adamastor’s pallid complexion, Faria e Sousa explains that this does not undermine the equation Muhammad/Adamastor, since Camões ‘lo pinta difunto’ (I: v, 541C).
47 Glaser comments on Faria e Sousa’s own ‘transformative poetics’, which, putting metamorphosis into action, transforms everyday objects so as to highlight the gap between appearance and reality and ‘the instability of human endeavors’ (Glaser, ‘Introduction’, in The ‘Fortuna’ of Manuel de Faria e Sousa, 120).
48 Bass, ‘Poética, imperio y la idea de España’, 185–87.
49 See Bass, ‘Poética, imperio y la idea de España’, 198. Disease is a common metaphor in the polemics over Góngora, exemplified most explicitly in Juan de Jáuregui’s Antídoto contra la pestilente poesía de las ‘Soledades’, aplicado a su autor para defenderle de sí mismo (1614). See Antídoto sobre la pestilente poesía de las ‘Soledades’ por Juan de Jáuregui, ed., con intro., de José Manuel Rico García (Sevilla: Univ. de Sevilla, 2002). The bibliography is substantial; for the main documents, see Robert Jammes, ‘Apéndice II: la polémica de las Soledades de Luis de Góngora’, in his edition (Madrid: Castalia, 1994), 607–719. For recent approaches, with bibliographical orientation, see: Joaquín Roses Lozano, Góngora: ‘Soledades’ habitadas (Málaga: Univ. de Málaga, 2007), 133–243; Melchora Romanos, ‘Góngora atacado, defendido y comentado: manuscritos e impresos de la polémica gongorina y comentarios a su obra’, in Góngora, la estrella inextinguible: magnitud estética y universo contemporáneo: Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, del 30 de mayo al 19 de agosto de 2012, Sala Vimcorsa y Centro de Arte Pepe Espaliú, Córdoba, del 12 de septiembre al 11 de noviembre de 2012, dir. Joaquín Roses Lozano (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Acción Cultural, 2012), 159–69.
50 For Faria e Sousa’s own attempts at culturanismo and his attitudes towards Góngora, see Glaser, ‘Introduction’, in The ‘Fortuna’ of Manuel de Faria e Sousa, 88–90, and 105–06, where he makes the salutary observation: ‘Contrary to what is generally assumed, Faria e Sousa was drawn to the Cordoban as soon as he began to write with an eye on publication. [ … ] Invariably he drew a sharp line between the innovations of the inspired poet and the rhetorical tours de force on which less gifted followers pinned their hopes for success’. For the Portuguese poet’s satirical and ironic style, see pp. 106–22.
51 Faria e Sousa’s views stand in stark contrast to Góngora’s epic qualities identified by his first commentators and fully explored by Mercedes Blanco, Góngora heroico: ‘Las Soledades’ y la tradición épica (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2012).
52 To Muslims and Protestants one must also add the Jew as a Catholic trope for poetic incapacity. Faria e Sousa opens his Juizio by comparing the poetically ignorant and presumptious to a ‘sinagoga de sujetos que dizen de sí [ … ] que en los preceptos poéticos son peritíssimos’ (I: 59A). For Góngora as ‘Jew’, see the sonnet by that famous anti-semite Quevedo, ‘Yo te untaré mis versos con tocino, / porque no me los muerdas, Gongorilla’. The Jew (often sexualized) as trope for poetic chaos had a long history; for its fifteenth-century Spanish version, see David Nirenberg, ‘Figures of Thought and Figures of Flesh: “Jews” and “Judaism” in Late-Medieval Spanish Poetry and Politics’, Speculum, 81 (2006), 398–426; abbreviated version in his Anti-Judaism: The History of a Way of Thinking (London: Head of Zeus, 2013), 229–37.
53 See the articles by Marsha S. Collins & Isabel Torres and by Lindsay Kerr & Bill Richardson in this volume.
54 Romanos, ‘Góngora atacado, defendido y comentado’, 165–66.
55 See also I: 79AB, where Faria e Sousa returns to Spain’s failure to emulate Camões’ achievement.
56 See also his snide allusion to the ‘escoria de lenguas de Italia’ (I: 71A).
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