Camões was a great comedian

Camões is a comedian who has a good disposition without seeing himself. AND punch (line) It hurts and you can’t feel it. It’s a happy discontent. It’s pain that laughing makes it hurt more.

Ricardo Araújo Pereira calls him “the greatest Portuguese comedian”.

As it is not up to ZAP to make assignments, much less assessments, we play it safe and call it, “just”, great comedian.

And ZAP doesn’t refer to RAP, because it wasn’t a joke; even refers to the poet (also comic) Luís Vaz de Camões.

Recently, on his podcast, Ricardo Araújo Pereira made known what many, perhaps, were unaware of, but which has always been visible to everyone. Or, at least, of those who had compulsory education: Camões was an “epic” burlesque.

This is because even in his epic the illustrious Portuguese poet wrote comedy.

“Perhaps the idea of ​​Camões as a comedian seems, at first glance, strange: be it because of the image we have of the poet, majestic, crowned with laurels; whether by the solemnity of epic poetry; or by the suffering tone of lyrical poetry”, introduced Ricardo Araújo Pereira.

“But I believe there are good reasons to claim that the ‘prince of poets’ had a humorous inclination“, he added. One of the examples that RAP gives the listener to support its thesis is, precisely, inThe Lusíadas.

Ricardo Araújo Pereira considers that the pinnacle of Camónian comedy is the “Fernão Veloso episode”, between stanzas 31 and 36, Canto V of the epicin which Vasco da Gama tells the King of Malindi about the exploits of the Portuguese.

Among the great feats and true acts of bravery of the Portuguese, on the sea route to India, Vasco da Gama also decides to tell the story of Fernão Veloso, who became brave and “went alone into unknown territory on the African coast”, in a solitary way.

³¹«It is Veloso in the trusted arm
And, being arrogant, he believes he will be safe;
But, being a large space already passed,
What good sign do I look for,
Standing, looking up, carefully
In the adventurer, behold by the hard mountain
Appears and, as the sea walks,
More hurriedly than before, he came.

Seeing that his adventure was ‘going wrong’ – A bold Ethiopian hurls himself / To him, why not escape him; / Another and another come out to him; see yourself in a hurry / Veloso, without anyone there helping him – turned back to run awayclaiming that he had to protect his companions:

³⁵«A companion then said to Veloso
(Everyone starts to smile):
– «Hey, Veloso friend! That hill
It’s better to go down than to go up!”
– «Yes, it is (replies the bold adventurer);
But when I waited here I saw so many come
From those dogs, I came a little quickly,
For reminding me that you were here without me.”

Ricardo Araújo Pereira, an active supporter of whom Camões was indeed a humorist, argues that “another poet might not intersperse glorious feats with a story like this, in which one of the heroes of the story runs away from a threat”. “But, for Camões, the episode has the right to appear side by side with the greatest feats“, he adds.

RAP insinuates that our Camões is ahead of William Shakespearewho just invented the braggart Falstaff 20 years later.

Even before Falstaff, Fernão Veloso had already invented “a capacity falstaffiana to transform cowardice into courage; fear into courage; a frightened escape in a noble and altruistic gesture of protecting one’s companions.”

But even in the painful lyric Camões played with the wordsas Ricardo Araújo Pereira exemplified: “That captive who has me captive; or the poem in which Perdigão (…) loses the penalty of flying, gains the penalty of torment“.

Furthermore, “it seems undeniable that Camões had a passion for antitheses. There is obviously something humorous about a wound that hurts and cannot be felt; or in It is a care that is gained by losing itself“, demonstrated RAP.

In the same podcast, the Camões specialist (and author of the book “Camões – Vida e Obra”) Carlos Maria Bobone admits that the Poet has the gift of confusing the reader, having written things that “We don’t know if they are for laughs or to make us proud”.

At the end of December, Ricardo Araújo Pereira was the guest on the RTP program, to present his “thesis” on the “Comedian Camões”.

But this idea that Camões was a great comic is not exclusive.

In 2008, for example, the then rector of the Autonomous University of Lisbon, Justino Mendes de Almeida (died in 2012) a work entitled: “Camonian Humor – Psychological aspects in Camões’ poetry”.

“Comedian Camões? Why not?”suggested the professor, going on to exemplify comic passages from the poet, over more than 20 pages.

“And if humor is a fundamental aspect of the human spirit, even leading to human behavior, wouldn’t it be worth studying it in depth, to better understand the “prince” of Portuguese poets?”, reflected Justino Mendes de Almeida, on Luís Vaz de Camões, in December 2007.