(…cont.)
Published by the Centre for Portuguese Studies and Culture, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (2009) Sonnets and Other Poems by Luís de Camões, translated by Richard Zenith, the first bilingual edition in English to offer a cross-section of the lyric poetry of Portugal’s foremost author, whose great Renaissance epic, The Lusiads (1572), memorialized Vasco da Gama’s inaugural voyage to India (1497-99).
Luís de Camões (1524?-1580) lived a life full of love and adventure on three continents. His experiences are vividly woven into his poetry,which drew its formal inspiration from Virgil, Ovid, Petrarch and other poets, both classical and modern. A conceptualizing artist, Camões’s extraordinary ability to forge his thought and experience into verses at once crystalline and compelling accounts for his status as one of theforemost poets in the European tradition. While The Lusiads (1572), his epic poem celebrating Portugal’s maritime exploits, brought him immediate and enduring renown (there are more than fifteen translations of the work into English), his equally splendorous lyric poetry may hold more appeal for today’s reader.
Translator
Richard Zenith, a long-time resident of Portugal, has won prizes from the PEN Club and the Academy of American Poets for his translations from the poetry of Portugal’s Fernando Pessoa and Brazil’s João Cabral de Melo Neto. He has published his own poetry in reviews, a book of short stories titled Terceiras Pessoas (2003), and numerous essays.
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Published by the Centre for Portuguese Studies and Culture, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (2009) The Sermon of Saint Anthony to the Fish and Other Texts by António Vieira, translated by Gregory Rabassa, is the first book by the most important Portuguese and Brazilian Baroque writer to be published in English, including -in addition to his most famous sermon- Vieira’s letter to the king of Portugal in defense of the indigenous population of Brazil and the first five chapters from History of the Future.
António Vieira (1608-1697), orator, missionary, statesman, and visionary, who was to Portuguese prose what Camões had been to poetry, was born in Lisbon and emigrated with his family to Bahia, in Brazil, at the age of six. There he was educated by the Jesuits, joined the Order in 1623 and was ordained in 1635. He began preaching at an early age and was professor of rhetoric at the College of Recife. His dream was to do missionary work among the Indians, but in 1641 he was sent to Portugal along with the Viceroy’s son to show the colony’s adherence to the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy in the person of John IV of Bragança. There Vieira gained the king’s favor and was sent as his emissary to France and Holland with an aim to convince the expelled Jews to return to Portugal to bolster the sagging economy. In 1649 he was denounced to the Inquisition for the first time, but he enjoyed the protection of the king. He returned to Brazil in 1652 to do missionary work in Moranhão and defend the natives against enslavement. In 1654 he went back to Portugal to petition the king in their favor. In Brazil once more in 1656, he set up missions and worked among the Indians, protecting and preaching in their own languages, but the colonists revolted and forcibly embarked Vieira and his Jesuits back to Lisbon. In the meantime he had been denounced by the Inquisition once again and, with the death of John IV, had lost favor in the court of his son Afonso. Vieira was sentenced to prison in Coimbra and to silence “both active and passive.” In prison he worked on his History of the Future, expounding the notion that had got him in trouble with the Holy Office in the first place. When the king’s brother Pedro declared himself regent, Vieira was freed and went to Rome, where Pope Clement X granted him perpetual freedom from the authority of the Inquisition. He also became friends with Queen Christina of Sweeden, who wanted him to be her preacher, but he chose to go back to Portugal. With no influence at court anymore, he left Lisbon for Bahia in 1681. There he died after overseeing the collection of his sermons for publication.
The Authors
Gregory Rabassa, Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY, has translated more than forty works from Portuguese and Spanish, including those of Machado de Assis, Jorge Amado, António Lobo Antunes, Julio Cortázar, and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. He is the recipient of the National Book Award, the Thorton Wilder Prize for Translation, and the National Medal of Arts. Support for the Vieira translation came from a Guggenheim Fellowship for research in Portugal and Brazil. He holds the Order of Rio Branco (Brazil), the Order of San Carlos (Colombia), and the Croce al Merito di Guerra (Italy). Rabassa is the author of O Negro na Ficção Brasileira (Tempo Brasileiro); his memoir on translation, If This Be Treason (New Directions), received the PEN Martha Albrand Award. He lives in New York with his wife, Camões scholar Clementine Rabassa.
Vincent Barletta is Associate Professor of Iberian Studies at Stanford University.