THE EXPRESSION OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF FEELINGS IN CAMÕES’ POETRY: ANALYSIS OF TWO WORKS DEDICATED TO DINAMENE.
Sisney Darcy Vaz da Silva Júnior
Classicism is the continuity of the transformations initiated by Humanism: the decline of the Church and Feudalism and the rise of the Bourgeoisie and Capitalism. This school manifests the search for classical standards and the influence of the Greco-Latin model. This gives rise to the rationalist attitude, which saw reason as a good to be achieved and cultivated. The expression of feelings remained, but was subject to an attempt at rational explanation. (MOISÉS, 1994).
Among the most prominent authors within the Classicist School, we find Luiz Vaz de Camões, probably born in Lisbon in an uncertain year, who rescues classical standards and the search for formal balance in his works. Both in the sonnets and in the redondilhas, Camões is also a poet and thinker, since sensitivity and consciousness interact in an incomparable balance.
In this sense, the poet uses the neoplatonic and idealistic aspects, which merge the materiality of the Dionysian touch, where love “is in thought as an idea”, and is also “Fire that burns without being seen”, thus creating a mixture of loving idealism of Platonic origin and the search for fulfillment and a concretization of this.
Thus, in this article the relationship between the expression of feelings derived from Platonic love and its aspects will be worked on, whether they are manifested through classical traits, such as mythological, or even through the influence of the rational in two Camonian poems. These pieces belong to a phase of Camões’ life, known as Dynamic.
It is possible to analyze the poems “Alma minha gentil que te parteste” and “Ah! My Dinamene! So you left it”, the cry of the lyrical subject in search of a feminine being. It is assumed that this woman, poetically named in some of Dinamene’s works, is the Chinese woman whom Camões falls in love with on one of his expeditions, who as a result of fate ends up dying in a shipwreck off the coast of Cambodia.
Dinamene is the name of one of the nereids from Homer’s Iliad, this nereid is a nymph that presides over the oceans, that is, they are deities that, according to mythology, educate heroes. They represent the expression of the feminine aspects within the male unconscious, because they come from the sea, they disturb the spirit of the men who sail through it.
This woman idealized by the lyrical subject carries strong traits derived from Greco-Latin culture, a resource that enables the expression of idealization of the feminine being. This, which is idealized by him, is also blamed by him for his own death, his feeling of loss, causes a conflict between the lyrical self, seeking an attempt at regeneration through post-death love, with the intention that this overrides the events past, relieving the pain of loss.
In the first stanzas we notice the tone of lament and suffering of the lyrical self, for not accepting being far from Dinamene. He does not accept the fact that she abandoned him, that is, he has this feeling of pain, however, he blames her for his own death, we notice this when he says: “You despised this life so little!” and “So early in this life, discontented.” Saying that she despised life by not trying to fight to live.
Another evident factor in the works analyzed was the feeling of longing that the lyrical subject expresses as a result of the absence of his beloved. Longing is triggered by Dinamene’s “early” death. The feeling of loss, mentioned above, derives from non-compliance with the origin of the facts.
Resulting from longing, pain emerges in poetry. The lyrical self present in the works expands into tearful sentimentality, aiming only at his pain. At no point in the works is Dinamene’s suffering reported, as she is the one who drowns. However, this anthropocentric vision in which individualism prevails is demonstrated by the lyrical subject, enabling the hypothesis that he does not value the pain of his beloved, but rather, only the pain he feels.
The feelings of guilt, loss, pain and longing, one resulting from the other, are justifiable when talking about loving idealism. The love that the lyrical subject feels for Dinamene is the reason for all these problems. An imponderable feeling, a suffering that kills, and, at the same time, a hope that relieves. We notice that pain improves, rebuilding itself, through Love, and through the harmony sought, in the constant struggle for union with your loved one.
At the same time that he seeks to be together, he reveals some distances, we notice this when the author uses dualities such as “Oh sea! Oh Sky! Oh my dark luck” in one poem, and in another “Repose there in the Sky eternally / and long live me here Earth always sad.” Speaking precisely about separation. In the first one he talks about the separation of Dinamene’s body and soul, with her body remaining in the sea, a place where the physical body dies, however, her soul transcends to the heavens. In the second he says that the separation was between the lyrical self and the idealized woman, and in the rhymes, Heaven appears with a capital letter, intensifying the idea that heaven is better than earth.
Located between the confines of the human and the perennial, love and the hope of happiness, induce the lyrical self to love through the superhuman, because he believes that his beloved has reached the highest degree of purity, becoming the connection of the human with the divine. Dinamene, is no longer a simple woman, but the essence becomes, for the lyrical subject, the representation that the eternal is conceived, that the kingdom of God is created from the kingdom of man, and that this will happen through Through the beloved, this idea is complemented by the final stanzas and the desire to be with Dinamene once again.
In the final stanzas of the poems worked on, we notice that there is a hope, fueled by the desire to be with Dinamene again, returning to the idea of union, we see this in both poems, and in one the lyrical subject expresses this desire through a question: “What shame will I feel that it’s worth so much/ That it’s still so little to live sad?” and in another he does it through a plea: “May it take me from here so soon to see you, / How soon my eyes took you”. In this way it is understood that the lyrical self expresses dissatisfaction with living on earth, separated from his beloved, who prefers to die and remain eternally by her side.
Finally, it is worth noting that through the analysis of the poems, we perceive a great manifestation of the lyrical subject in relation to the feelings he expresses when he talks about his beloved Dinamene. Rodrigues Lapa, in his 1970 work, Líricas, argues that, for Camões, Dinamene “was one of the softest things in his life, a note of loving meekness in his turbulent existence”. In this way I conclude this work, speaking precisely of this relevance.
Within the poems we witness several stages of this love felt by the lyrical subject, towards his beloved, deriving countless feelings. An imponderable feeling, a suffering that kills, and, at the same time, a hope that relieves. In these poems, there is a strong emphasis on human pain, discontent and hope. As the pain improves, rebuilding the Love felt by both, feeding the hope of one day being together.
Bibliographic references
• AMARAL, Emília; FERREIRA, Mauro; LEITE, Ricardo; ANTÔNIO, Severino. New words (Literature, Grammar, Writing and Texts). 1st Ed. Rio de Janeiro: FTD, 1997.
• MOISES, Massaud (org). Portuguese Literature through texts. 23rd ed. São Paulo: Cultrix, 1994.
• POETRY STREET. Oh! my Dinamene! So you leftAvailable at: http://www.ruadapoesia.com/content/view/163/37/ – Accessed June 7, 2007.
• POETRY STREET. My gentle soul, who left youAvailable at: http://www.ruadapoesia.com/content/view/159/37/ – Accessed June 28, 2007.
• SARAIVA, Antônio José. Initiation to Portuguese literature. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1999.
• SUAPESQUISA.COM. Classicism, Portuguese literatureAvailable at: http://www.suapesquisa.com/artesliteratura/classicismo.htm – Accessed June 27, 2007.
• WIKIPEDIA. ClassicismAvailable at: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classicismo – Accessed June 27, 2007.
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Cambodia (also called Cambodia or Cambodia) is an Asian country in Indochina, bordered to the north by Laos, to the east and south by Vietnam, to the west by the Gulf of Thailand and to the west and north by Thailand. Capital: Phnom Penh
In Greek mythology, the Nereids (in Greek, ‘daughter of Nereus’) were the fifty daughters (or one hundred, according to other accounts) of Nereus and Doris. Nereus shared the waters of the Aegean Sea with them.
According to mythology, nymphs are spirits, generally winged, inhabitants of lakes and streams, woods, forests, meadows and mountains, they are normally daughters of Zeus, considered minor spirits, as they are Goddesses of Nature.
Text adapted from Linguagem em (Dis)curso Magazine, volume 2, number 1, Jul./Dec. 2001, article: LOVE: GREAT CERTAINTY, MANY UNCERTAINTY by Terezinha A. Marcon Constante and Viviane Borges Goulart.