Wieszczowie i grabarze. Camões jako bohater transnarodowy
The bards and the gravediggers. Camões as a transnational Romantic hero

Author(s): Ewa Łukaszyk
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, 19th Century, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Camões; historical funeral; national identity; Norwid; Almeida Garrett
Summary/Abstract: The article presents a transnational pattern of imagination created in European Romanticism: that of a poet’s “historical funeral”. Both the repatriation of Mickiewicz’s remains to Poland and the efforts to find Camões’ first grave culminating in the burial in the Hieronymites monastery in Belém became complex rituals of national identity; they also served to exorcise collective defeat. The legend of Camões was situated on the border between Classicism and Romanticism. Its emphasis shifted from the perfect realization of the ancient epic model to a restless, wandering life of the bard. The Romantic imagination that produced both Norwid’s poem mentioning the figure of Camões and Almeida Garrett’s groundbreaking Camões further emphasized the bard’s misery, developing the myth of his alleged starvation. The figure of the Portuguese poet became a pan-European literary and artistic motif, present in France and Poland. Garrett’s 'Camões' also contributed to the construction and popularization of the concept of saudade, considered one of the keywords of Portuguese culture. Finally, the “historical funeral” in 1880 was inscribed in the process of constituting the imagined foundations of Portuguese colonial ideology.

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