If we believe that “love is a fire that burns without being seen” or we say that we are “of flesh and blood”, we owe it to the greatest poet in the Portuguese language. When we dare to walk “through seas never before sailed” or affirm that “another higher value arises”, it is the words of Luís Vaz de Camões that we make our own. Porto celebrates the 500th anniversary of Camões’ birth with the exhibition, in the Town Hall, of the first edition of “Os Lusíadas”, but also with a project that will make the epic echo in the voices of different generations of Porto residents.
“This little book is the crown jewel of the Athenaeum [Comercial do Porto]”, assumes its president to share the story of what will be one of 34 copies believed to still exist of the 1572 edition of the epic poetry work.
Rogério Gomes says that the book was purchased “in an auction held at an auction house in Passos Manuel, for 170 thousand réis”. Restored in the 1970s and always “preserved by the Athenaeum”, the copy was the subject of a study “which classifies it as a ‘pure edition’”, as it was one of the first to come out of print.
Considering the existence of “a kind of torpor, of fear disguised as indifference that, today, defines the Portuguese relationship with the poet and his work”, the director of the Porto Museum and Libraries highlights how Invicta, “assuming its status and its responsibility as a literary city, puts a particularly symbolic spotlight on Camões and on this transformative, deeply modern work, which created a kind of orbit around which all Portuguese language literature began to revolve”.
On the day (January 23) that marks “500 years since the probable date and year of the birth of Luís Vaz de Camões”, “this enigmatic, contradictory, transformative, poetic, tragic, epic figure”, Jorge Sobrado states that the celebrations undertaken by Porto “contrast with some weakening of these celebrations” in the country, seeking to “reinscribe this work and this author in the interests, reading habits, curiosity and amazement of the people of Porto and the Portuguese”.
Camões in the city of Porto
And this epic will be covered through a project curated by Gonçalo M. Tavares. The writer proposes to “distribute ‘Os Lusíadas’, its 1102 stanzas, to 1102 citizens at random”, with the criterion of having a seven-year-old child read “As Armas e os barões signaladas”, the first stanza, and an 87-year-old person finishing reading, in “Without Aquiles having envy” so that “we can follow successive generations reading the same book”.
The recordings will then be spread across the city (accessible via QR codes). “The ten corners of Os Lusíadas will be in ten corners of Porto”, explains Gonçalo M. Tavares, highlighting the logic of “in addition to calling the community, the territory itself also appears”. Anyone who wants to be part of the collective reading can register via email at [email protected].
Poet of enchantment to whom one returns different
Recalling how he studied the work at school and gained “a great allergy”, the writer considered it “unbearable”, feeling the need to move away. But his return, ten years later, changed everything.
“The word ‘enchant’ has to do with going into a corner. And Camões is absolutely enchanting. It has to do with what is being said, but also with the musical issue. And that’s the enchantment. What Camões does is say strong things with an absolutely extraordinary rhythm. That’s why his song has this power that, 500 years later, we’re talking about him”, highlights the project’s curator.
Gonçalo M. Tavares believes that we will “realize that we are dealing with automatically seductive songs that place the Portuguese language on an absolutely unsurpassable level”.
The writer did not fail to mention the “incredible lack of attention towards the 500 years of Camões”. Therefore, “I am very happy that Porto is, unlike the inattentive people, very attentive”.
The outline for this “Camões in the city of Porto” came about in a conversation with the director of the Coliseu. Miguel Guedes recalls that “we study, we look at what he wrote, we even analyze, some for pleasure, others for pain, which gives us those times when he is included in the tests, but then does not pass the reality test, disappears ”.
The director confirms that the idea was “to bring Luís Vaz de Camões to the people, to the streets, to democratize, to make this experience less cryptic”. “Us [Coliseu] we will begin and end this democratization of the poet” in the city that “can best receive him”.
To places never visited before
In addition to this rare book, the Municipality displays two old editions of the same work, which are part of the collection of the Porto Municipal Public Library: one from 1817, printed and published in Paris in 200 copies, and another, from 1880, produced by a German photographer , based in Porto.
The doors of the Town Hall will be open to everyone between the 24th and 28th of January, from 9 am to 5 pm, also providing an opportunity to travel “through seas never before sailed”, that is, through the halls that make up the building, normally closed to the public.