New at IWP Articles: Leonard Bacon, 1951, Camões and the Glory of Portugal.

“But before launching into what to me is a tremendous theme, I must make two admissions, first, that I am pretty much of a tyro with respect to the magnificent language of Portugal, and, second, that I am in the words of a Portuguese friend, ‘a co-religionist of the Camonian cult’ — a besotted enthusiast, who had his small episode on the Road to Damascus some thirty years ago. It was then that the scales fell from my eyes, as I wandered idly through a footnote in Fiske’s Discovery of America, where the fiftieth stanza of the Fifth Book of the Lusiads burned as bright as a ruby in a beam of sun. This happens to be a stanza so easy that a little French and less Latin would enable anyone to perceive without difficulty its clear transplendence. And my demon told me there and then that some day, if only because of those eight blazing and sonorous lines, I would translate the Epic, which has, in fact, come to pass. Accordingly, bear with me if I seem a little mad about my great man, and if I speak of his poetry in terms which, whatever they may appear to you, are certainly not hyperbolic to me. However, what troubles me most is ignorance, sheer ignorance, of which, in spite of seven years’ toil, magnificent residues remain. But all my life circumstance has compelled me to speak or write about subjects concerning which I was insufficiently informed, and I do not see why I should stop now, particularly as I am burning to infect others with an interest in Camões, because of the pleasure he can give them, and because such pleasure increases human understanding between the nations of men.”