Portuguese literature

Some of the poems of the early Cancioneiros, as we have seen, have an historical character, but they are all written from a personal point of view. Portuguese history, with its heroic achievements such as the conquest of Algarve, seems to have begun just too late to be the subject of great anonymous epics, or rather the temperament of the Portuguese people eschewed them. Of five poems, long believed to be the earliest examples of Portuguese verse but no longer accepted by any sane critic as genuine, only one belongs to epic poetry. This Poema da Cava or da Perda de Espanha was an infant prodigy indeed, since it was supposed to have been written (in oitavas) in the eighth century. With a discretion passing that of Horace it kept itself from the world not for nine but nine hundred years, and was first published in Leitão de Andrada’s Miscellanea (1629)[140]: O rouço da Cava imprio de tal sanha, &c.

Of the four other spurious poems, two[141] were alleged to be love letters of Egas Moniz Coelho, a cousin of the celebrated Egas Moniz Coelho of the twelfth century; another, published by Bernardo de Brito,[142] Tinherabos nam tinherabos, has a real charm as gibberish. Fascination, of a different kind, attaches also to the fifth:

for if this poem is not genuine, and the fact that it was first published by Brito[143] at once lays it open to grave suspicion, it is nevertheless undoubtedly based on popular tradition of a yearly tribute of maidens to the Moors such as the Greeks paid to the Minotaur, and must be the echo of some Algarvian song. Its simple repetitions have a haunting rhythm, but they are perhaps a little too emphatic. The impression is that its author had been struck by the repetitions in songs heard on the lips of the people, perhaps crooned to him in his infancy (cf. Miscellanea, p. 25: sendo eu muito menino), and worked them up in this poem. One early epic poem Portugal undoubtedly possessed, the Poema da Batalha do Salado, by Afonso Giraldez, who himself probably took part in the battle (1340). The subject of the poem is the same as that of the Spanish Poema de Alfonso Onceno, but whether its treatment was similar we cannot say, as only forty lines of the Galician-Portuguese poem survive. Since the authorship of the Spanish poem is doubtful and its rhymes run more naturally in Galician than in Spanish, the theory has arisen, among others, that Rodrigo Yannez, whose name perhaps denotes a connexion with Galicia, merely translated the poem of Afonso Giraldez. But against this it is argued that Yannez or Eanez was a Galician or wrote Galician lyrics (there are several poets of that name in the Cancioneiro da Vaticana), and when called upon to compose an epic—for Spain a late epic—chose Castilian, the traditional language of such poetry, and in executing his design found that his enthusiasm had outrun his knowledge of Castilian.[144] It is not strange if so brilliant a victory inspired two poets independently with its theme. It is perhaps more extraordinary that both should have chosen a metre (8 + 8) which has called for remark as showing the romance through the cantar de gesta.[145] Frei Antonio Brandão, indeed, called the Portuguese poem a romance, a type of poem which did not exist in the fourteenth century. Since the battle was fought in Spain it would be considered in Brandão’s day a proper subject for a romance, but would be noticeable as being written in Galician. Castilian was throughout the Peninsula regarded as the fitting medium for the romance, as for its father the epic, just as, a century earlier, Galician was the universal language of the lyric.[146] Portuguese poets, if they wrote a romance, would usually do so in Spanish. The best-known instance is Gil Vicente’s fine poem (muy sentido y galan as the 1720 editor says) of D. Duardos e Flerida, which only belongs to Portuguese literature through the excellent ‘translation of the Cavalheiro de Oliveira’, among whose papers Garrett professed to have found it. Portugal possessed no epic cantares de gesta of her own, had not therefore the stuff out of which the romances were formed, and the birth of the romance coincided with the predominance of Spanish influence in Spain. It is therefore surprising to find in Portugal a large number of romances unconnected with Spain, the explanation being that, having accepted with characteristic enthusiasm the new thing imported from abroad, the Portuguese turned to congenial themes, of love, religion, and adventure. Had the romances been elaborated in the same way as in Spain, we might have expected a large number of anonymous Portuguese romances dealing with the Breton cycle, and indeed with early Portuguese history, so rich in heroic incidents. The fact that this is not the case and the number of romances collected in Tras-os-Montes alike point to their Spanish origin, while their frequency in the Azores denotes how popular they became later in Portugal. In the sixteenth century their Spanish character was recognized. The poor escudeiro in Eufrosina is bidden go to Spain to gloss romances, and in the seventeenth century, as a passage in Mello’s Fidalgo Aprendiz well shows, they were better liked if written in Spanish. The partiality for Spanish applied to poetry of other kinds, and Manuel de Galhegos says (1635) that it is a bold venture to publish poetry in Portuguese.[147] But it did not as a rule extend to popular poetry. It is therefore noteworthy that the nurse in Gil Vicente sings romances in Spanish.[148] Dr. Theophilo Braga, who considers Spanish influence on the romances in Portugal to have been ‘late and insignificant’,[149] is obliged, in order to support his argument, to quote not Portuguese but Spanish romances.[150] Nor is it a happy contention that Portuguese romances were not printed owing to desleixo, since the publication of Spanish romances at Lisbon cannot be attributed merely to a craze for things foreign. More persuasive is the theory, developed by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos,[151] that many romances in Spanish were the work of Portuguese poets, especially those related to the Breton cycle, such as Ferido está Don Tristan, those concerned with the sea, and those of a soft lyrical character, as Fonte Frida and La Bella Malmaridada. However that may be, the fact that romances appear on the lips of the people in Gil Vicente, that is, before the publication of the romanceros, indicates how rapidly their popularity spread,[152] and accounts for their numerous progeny in Portugal, collected in the nineteenth century. True historical romances the Portuguese did not possess, unless we are to consider that certain lines which occur in Vicente’s parody of Yo me estaba allá en Coimbra, in Garcia de Resende’s Trovas, and elsewhere, are echoes of a Portuguese romance on the death of Inés de Castro.[153] But that is not to say that they did not possess romances, and many of these might be almost as old as their Spanish models, although not derived directly from cantares de gesta. These Portuguese romances or xacaras (in the Azores estorias and aravias) often differ from the Spanish in a certain vagueness of outline and sentimental tone. They are frequently of considerable length. Many of them are undoubtedly of popular origin and have a large number of variants in different parts of the country. If there are none to compare with Fonte Frida or Conde Arnaldos (which belong to Castilian literature, whatever the nationality of their authors), they nevertheless, with a total lack of concentration, present many natural scenes and incidents of affecting pathos and an attractive simplicity. One of the best and most characteristically Portuguese is A Nau Catharineta, and others almost equally famous are Santa Iria, Conde Nillo, and Brancaflor e Flores. The second edition of Dr. Theophilo Braga’s Romanceiro runs to nearly two thousand pages. The first two volumes contain over 150 romances (together with numerous variants). Of these 5 belong to the Carolingian, 8 to the Arthurian cycle, 63 are romances sacros or ao divino, 11 treat of the cruel husband or unfaithful wife. In the third volume are reprinted romances composed by well-known Portuguese authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It must be admitted that Spain generously repaid to Portugal the loan of the Galician language for lyrical composition—although in each case it was the lender’s literature that profited (especially if some of the most beautiful Spanish romances were the work of Galician or Portuguese poets). But even after the birth of the romance Spain continued to cultivate the Galician lyric, until the second half of the fifteenth century. The last instance is supposed to be a Galician poem by Gomez Manrique (1412-91), uncle of the author of Recuerde el alma dormida, No. 65 in the Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano. This collection, published by Professor Lang at the suggestion of D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, contains the meagre crop of Portuguese verse of the transition period from 1350 to 1450, meagre in quality and quantity. One name dominates the period. The love and tragic fate of Macias (second half 14th c.), o Namorado, idolo de los amantes, gave him a renown similar to but far exceeding that of D. Joan Soarez de Paiva in the preceding century. As the ideal lover he is met with at every turn in the Portuguese poetry of the fifteenth century,[154] and later became the subject of Lope de Vega’s Porfiar hasta morir (1638). Of his story we know definitely nothing, but some lines in one of his poems, En meu cor tenno ta lança and Aquesta lança. .. me ferio, would appear to have inspired the famous legend which dates from the end of the fifteenth century. Imprisoned at Arjonilla in Andalucía for paying court to his sennora, he continued to address her in song and was killed by the lance that her infuriated husband hurled through the prison window. In an older version, that of the Constable D. Pedro in his Satira de felice e infelice vida, he saved the lady of his heart from drowning, and afterwards, as he lingered where she had stood, was struck down by the jealous husband. According to Argote de Molina,[155] both he and the husband served in the household of D. Enrique de Villena (1385-1434), who was perhaps only six when Macias died. Most of the twenty poems ascribed to Macias that survive are written in Galician, and of many, as Loado sejas amor,[156] the authorship is doubtful. Clearly his fame would act as a strong magnet to poems of uncertain origin. The matter is of the less importance in that these poems, however love-sick, have but little literary merit. If the Galician Juan Rodriguez de la Cámara, a native, like Macias, of Padron, was the real author of the romance of Conde Arnaldos (which is improbable), he was a far greater poet than his friend. Both the lyrics and the prose of his El Sieruo libre de Amor are in Castilian. Of the other two fourteenth-century Galician poets mentioned by Santillana, Fernam Casquicio and Vasco Perez de Camões (†1386?),[157] no poems have survived. The latter, a knight well known at the Court of King Ferdinand and an ancestor of Luis de Camões, played a leading part in the troubles preceding the battle of Aljubarrota, He had come to Portugal from Galicia, and his name appears frequently in the pages of Fernam Lopez (where it is written Caamoões) till the year 1386. In the middle of the sixteenth century he is mentioned by Sá de Miranda’s brother-in-law as a Court poet corresponding to Juan de Mena in Spain. But there were other poets whose verse was probably not inferior to that of Perez de Camões and Casquicio. Besides Macias the Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano contains the names of sixteen writers whose poems may not attain high distinction but prove that the Galician lyric continued to be cultivated by poets in the fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth century in Castille and Leon, Aragon and Catalonia. The Archdeacon of Toro, Gonçalo Rodriguez (fl. 1385),[158] was one of a group of such poets; a man with a keen zest of living and capable of vigorous verse, in which he took a characteristic delight (a minna boa arte de lindo cantar). In his farewell poem A Deus Amor, a Deus el Rei, which Cervantes perhaps remembered, he bids good bye to the trobadores con quen trobei, and in a quaint humorous testament he mentions a number of friends and relatives, two of whom, at least, his cousin Pedro de Valcacer or Valcarcel and Lope de Porto Carreiro, also wrote verse. In the last of the sixteen stanzas (abbacca) of this testamento the Archdeacon appoints his namesake Gonçalo Rodriguez de Sousa and Fernan Rodriguez to be his executors. He may have been alive in 1402, for a Doctor Gonçalo Rodriguez, Archdeacon of Almazan, is mentioned as one of the witnesses to the oath taken by the city of Burgos to the Infante María in that year.[159] In that case he must have been transferred to Almazan, some 150 miles farther up the Duero. More chequered was the career of Garci Ferrandez de Gerena (c. 1340-c. 1400). Having married one of King Juan I’s dancing girls (una juglara) in the belief that she was rich, he repented when he found que non tenia nada. He next became a hermit near Gerena, and, this not proving more congenial than married poverty, he embarked ostensibly for the Holy Land, but in fact landed at Malaga with his wife and children. At Granada he turned Moor, satirized the Christian faith, and deserted his wife for her sister. After such proven inconstancy we may perhaps doubt the sincerity of his repentance when he returned to Christianity and Castille at the end of the fourteenth century. But for all his weakness and folly he seems not to have sunk utterly out of the reach of finer feelings; he sang various episodes of his life, e.g. when he went to his hermitage (puso se beato), in lyrics of some charm, and addressed the nightingale in a dialogue, as did his contemporary, Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino (c. 1345-c. 1428). This Castilian Court poet, born at Villasandino near Burgos and possessed of property at Illescas, was of a sleeker and more subservient mind than Garci Ferrandez and prospered accordingly, en onra e en ben e en alto estado. He wrote to order and was considered the ‘crown and king of all the poetas e trovadores who had ever existed in the whole of Spain’. This extravagant claim of his admirers need not prevent us from recognizing that there is often real feeling and music in his poems, of which the Cancionero de Baena has preserved over twenty. He writes in varying metres with unfailing ease and harmony, rarely sinks into mere verbal dexterity, and well deserves to be considered the best of these later Galician poets. Side by side with the lyric the cantiga d’escarnho continued to flourish. Alfonso Alvarez (C. G. C. 48) upbraids Garci Ferrandez for renouncing the Christian faith and leaguing himself with the Devil (gannaste privança do demo mayor); Pero Velez de Guevara (†1420), uncle of the Marqués de Santillana, addresses a satiric poem to an old maid, and an anonymous poet in a vigorous sirventes attacks degenerate Castille, cativa, mezela Castela, perhaps, as Professor Lang thinks, immediately after the Portuguese victories of Trancoso, Aljubarrota, and Valverde in 1385. Five fragmentary poems belong to the Infante D. Pedro (1429-66), Constable of Portugal. There are, besides his three short Portuguese poems in the Cancioneiro de Resende, only forty-one lines in all, for while Galician, already separated from her twin sister of Portugal, went to sleep—a sleep of nearly four centuries—in these last accents of her muse preserved in the Cancionero de Baena, the Infante Pedro turned definitely to the new forms of lyric appearing in Castille. As a transition poet he may be mentioned here before his father D. Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, since his prose works, which would naturally place him with his father and with D. Duarte, his uncle, belong, together with most of his poetry (prosas and metros) to Spanish literature. By stress of circumstance rather than any set purpose he inaugurated the fashion of writing in Castilian, a fashion so eagerly taken up by his fellow-countrymen during the next two centuries. After the tragic death of his father at Alfarrobeira (1449) he escaped from Portugal, of which his sister Isabel was queen,[160] spent the next seven years as an exile in Castille, and after returning to his native land died an exile, but now as King of Aragon (1464-6). His life of thirty-seven years was thus as full of wandering adventure as that of any troubadour of old. To him Santillana addressed his celebrated letter on the development of poetry, and his own influence on Portuguese literature was important, for he introduced not only a new style of poetry, including oitavas de arte maior, but the habit of classical allusion and allegory. His first work, Satira de felice e infelice vida, was written in Portuguese before he was twenty, but re-written by himself in Castilian, the only form in which it has survived. This firstfruit of his studies was dedicated to his sister, Queen Isabel, whose death (1455) he mourned in his Tragedia de la Insigne Reyna Doña Isabel (1457), a work of deep feeling and some literary merit, first published by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos 444 years after Queen Isabel’s death. His longest and most important poem, in 125 octaves, Coplas del menosprecio e contempto de las cosas fermosas del mundo (1455), reflects the misfortunes of his life and the high philosophy they had brought him. Under a false attribution to his father, the Duke of Coimbra[161] (his Portuguese poems were also wrongly ascribed to King Peter I of Portugal, through confusion with the later King Peter, of Aragon), it was incorporated in the Cancioneiro de Resende, which appeared half a century after the Constable’s death.