Luis Vaz de Camões, Lisbon - Portugal and 5160 Camoes Asteroid
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manchanegra
N 38° 41.845 W 009° 12.350
29S E 482101 N 4283219
Luís Vaz de Camões (sometimes rendered in English as Camoens) (c. 1524 – June 10, 1580) is considered Portugal's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Homer, Virgil, and Dante.
Waymark Code: WMCX38
Location: Lisboa, Portugal
Date Posted: 10/21/2011
Views: 18
Luís Vaz de Camões is considered Portugal's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Homer, Virgil, and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas. His philosophical work The Parnasum of Luís Vaz was lost.
Many details concerning the life of Camões remain unknown, but he is thought to have been born around 1524. He was the son of Simão Vaz de Camões and Anna de Sá e Macedo, a family from the northern Portuguese region of Chaves.
He probably studied humanities in Coimbra, where his uncle D. Bento de Camões was a priest at the renowned Monastery of Santa Cruz. Camões moved back to Lisbon in 1542, where he led a bohemian lifestyle.
As a young man he fought the Moors in Morocco and lost one eye. In 1552, he returned to Lisbon, where he is reported to have stabbed an officer of the court in the neck. He was jailed until March 1553, but he was released on the condition that he serve the king in India. In Goa, Camões was imprisoned for debt. He found Goa "a step-mother of all honest men" but he studied local customs and mastered the local geography and history. Camões took part in military expeditions to the Malabar Coast and the Red Sea. In 1556. he sailed to Macao, where he was given an officership. In 1558, he began his long voyage home. He was shipwrecked in the Mekong and was saved by floating on a board, saving his manuscript (his masterpiece "Os Lusiadas") but losing his Chinese lover. He was delayed at Mozambique and did not arrive in Lisbon until 1570. He published Os Lusíadas in 1572. The king gave him a pension, but when the king died, the pension ended. Thereafter, Camões lived in poverty, cared for by a servant called Jao who had followed him from Macao.
In 1578 he heard of the appalling defeat of the Battle of Alcazarquivir, where King Sebastião was killed and the Portuguese army destroyed. The Spanish troops were approaching Lisbon when Camões wrote to the Captain General of Lamego: "All will see that so dear to me was my country that I was content to die not only in it but with it". Camões died in Lisbon in 1580, at the age of 56.
Os Lusíadas
Os Lusíadas are named from the fabled hero Lusus, who is said to have come with Ulysses to what is now Portugal and called it Lusitania. Os Lusíadas tells the story of Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese heroes who sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and opened a new route to the Indies. It is a humanist epic in its association of pagan mythology with a Christian outlook, its conflicting feelings about war and empire, its love of home and desire of adventure, and its appreciation of pleasure and the demands of a heroic outlook.
Os Lusíadas is considered a major epic poem of modern times on account of its grandeur and universality. The poem adapts the classical spirit of Homer's and Virgil's epics. Camões' ambition was to create a national epic that would rival those of his two classical precursors. The poem tells the achievements of Portugal since its independence, in the 12th century, until the moment when the Portuguese kingdom is united to the one of Spain, keeping its formal independence, but being ruled by the same king, Filipe the first of Portugal and the second of Spain, in 1580. The poem, therefore, marks the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity.
Camões begun composing his Os Lusiadas in 1550; he completed his masterpiece by 1570. He finished most of it in the period between 1555 and 1558. He published the work in October 1571. More editions followed in 1572. The poem, for Camões, was a glorification of the Portuguese people. In the 15th century, Portugal had reached its Golden Age. The poem itself narrates the history of Portugal at its apex, focusing on Vasco da Gama's trip to establish a maritime contract with the Indies. Vasco da Gama represents the Portuguese nation, the hero of the poem.
Camões is buryed in the Monastery of the Hieronymites (Mosteiro dos Jerónimos ). The Tomb is inside the Church.
5160 Camoes is a main belt asteroid with a perihelion of 2.3273245 AU. It has an eccentricity of 0.0709157 and an orbital period of 1360.2378300 days (3.72 years).
Camoes has an average orbital speed of 19.2197431 km/s and an inclination of 8.28127°.
The asteroid was discovered on December 23, 1979 by Henri Debehogne and E.R. Netto at La Silla and "named after Luiz de Camões, the greatest of the Portuguese poets, whose epic "Os Lusiadas" displays an extraordinary knowleage of astronomy" (from the Dictionary of minor planet names, Volume 1 By Lutz D. Schmade).
Website of the Extraterrestrial Location: [Web Link]
Website of location on Earth: [Web Link]
Celestial Body: Asteroid
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