Luis de Camões

Biografie
1524 - 1580

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Luís de Camões, in full Luís Vaz de Camões, English Luis Vaz de Camoëns or Camoens (born c. 1524/25, Lisbon, Port.—died June 10, 1580, Lisbon) is Portugal’s great national poet. He is the author of the epic poem Os Lusíadas (1572; The Lusiads), describing Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India.
Camões was probably born in Lisbon around 1524 or 1525, when Portuguese expansion in the East was at its peak. Although he was a member of the impoverished old aristocracy, Camões was well-related to the grandees of Portugal and Spain. He was known to have a vast knowledge of both classical and contemporary culture and philosophy. He is supposed to have been, in his youth, in territories held by the Portuguese in Morocco, but it is uncertain whether he had been exiled or was there to begin a military career. It is also assumed that his youth in Lisbon was rather turbulent. King John III pardoned him in 1553, when he was arrested for taking part in a street fight in which a royal officer was assaulted. The pardon hints that Camões would go to India in the king’s service, but none of his wanderings for nearly 17 years there has been documented. He was certainly there, judging from references in his works that reveal an intimate knowledge of the area’s social conditions. When he was in the East, he participated in some nautical expeditions. His survival and fortunes were, as he writes, always hanging from divine providence’s very thin dread. Camões returned to Portugal in 1570, and his Os Lusíadas was published in Lisbon in early 1572. In July of that year he was granted a royal pension, presumably in recompense for both his service in India and his poem Os Lusíadas. When he died in 1580, his mother survived him.

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