Jacinto Freire de Andrade or Andrada, an ecclesiastic, who performed a part in the political history of his native country, and nearly fell a sacrifice to the patriotism with which he defended the claims of the house of Braganza against the Spanish occupation of the Portuguese throne, also endeavoured to enlarge the boundaries of comic poetry. Wit so highly cultivated had never before shewn itself in Portuguese verse. In the union of bold sportiveness, sustained humour and poignant satire, with perfect correctness and elegance of language, Andrada’s burlesque narratives of the fable of Narcissus, and the fable of Polyphemus and Galathæa,[291] excel all the earlier specimens of comic wit which the works of former Portuguese poets, including even the comedies, afford. The burlesque manner of Andrada is owing solely to a caricature style which he took no pains to avoid. From the introductory stanzas to his Polyphemus, it appears that he merely tried to divert himself by these plays of fancy, in the hope of forgetting the adversities of his life. He wished, he says, “to visit the region of folly, that he might thereby approach happiness.” He also observes, that “with three ounces of judgment he is more loaded than an elegy, and more solemnly sententious than a sonnet.”[292] In order to cheat his sorrow, he makes “joy play with false dice.”[293] Had Andrada thrown these dice more steadily, he would, without doubt, have been one of the first comic writers in narrative poetry. But his satire was chiefly directed against the affected poetry of the Gongorists. He attacked other follies merely incidentally as they happened to strike him, and while he was in the humour rather to jest than to castigate.
In his Narcissus, he begins with parodying the wild conceits and romantic imagery of the fantastic sonneteers. To explain whence the beauty of Narcissus originates, a minute detail is given of the charms of his mother, the nymph Liriope, to whom the river god Cephissus makes tender propositions. After describing how the nymph paints herself in the morning, it is said of her eyes “that for boldness and honour there are no fairer lights in heaven; that they are pirates rebelliously fallen from the sun, which now, like the Dutch, wage war against the stars.”[294] Of the lips of the beauteous nymph he says, that they make “the roses wither for envy.”[295] The declaration of love, put into the mouth of Cephissus in this parodying style, is still more whimsical. If, says he, the eyes of the nymph should summon him to battle, he must be immediately subdued, because he should “see the sun divided in two eyes.”[296] He conjures her not to destroy the paper on which he has written his declaration of love, as in that case she will destroy “the house in which she dwells; and the altar on which she is worshipped.”[297] He now begins to weep bitterly, upon which Liriope observes, that if he be a true lover, the fountain of his tears must never dry up; but that it would be better to begin by giving her a little present, and to let “the sin go first and the tears follow afterwards.”[298] Andrada’s conceits, though they sometimes consist of mere plays of words, are still not of a common kind; as when he makes the covetous nymph say, that, “the demon of the flesh, flies frightened from the cross, but clings to the crossed;”[299] and that of “all beautiful streams none murmur so sweetly as the Silver River (the Rio de la Plata in South America).” At length the nymph resigns herself to the river god, and he becomes the reputed father of Narcissus. The reader is next entertained with a comic biography of Narcissus, which is a satirical representation of the history of a fashionable beau. Before he quits the cradle he is destined to become a military officer, as it is discovered that he was born “in the sign of the lion, though it was really the sign of the bull.”[300] The officer when grown up is characterized as one who though choleric, is never sanguine (sanguinary); who has “sinned against the fifth commandment in word but not in deed;[301] and who has always displayed great gallantry in engagements with the wine flasks.[302]” Tired of the army, he applies himself to poetry, and writes a new Jerusalem Delivered, and some sonnets in which the sun is so frequently introduced, that the absurdity of the conceits or disparates is, as it is said, rendered quite transparent. Narcissus also becomes fond of tracing genealogies, but he considers it beneath his dignity to study law, or to endeavour to acquire any other kind of practical knowledge. Being convinced by the heralds of his distinguished extraction, he withdraws himself from the public eye; but at the same time takes a lively interest in all that occurs at court, and soon becomes a minister of state. The love of wealth being now his governing passion, he rapidly enriches himself at the expense of the nation, and at last dies of vanity.
What this satire occasionally wants in refinement, is compensated by its extraordinary features, in which Andrada’s wit shines with peculiar lustre: and though the comic effusions of the ingenious author can only rank as poetic trifles, they are nevertheless entitled to some attention in consequence of their being chiefly directed against the absurd style which then distinguished and disfigured Spanish and Portuguese literature.
Andrada’s Polyphemus is a direct ridicule of the monstrous production of Gongora which bears the same title. As an example of the kind of ridicule employed it may just be mentioned, that in this parody the Cyclops styles the conquering eyes of Galathæa, “Turks by land and Dutch by sea.” The poetic works of Andrada include some comic sonnets and romances. He is also the author of a still more remarkable prose work which will be hereafter noticed.
FURTHER DECLINE OF PORTUGUESE TASTE—RIBEIRO DE MACEDO—CORREA DE LA CERDA.
During the second half of the seventeenth century, until the period of the first imitation of the French style in Portuguese literature, the defenders and partizans of classic correctness in Portugal seem to have been constantly diminishing. After the kingdom was emancipated from Spanish dominion, the old patriotic spirit of the Portuguese again found its way into their poetry; but that poetry gained little thereby in interior cultivation; and its boundaries were not farther extended. A species of mythological tales in the romantic form, but very dull and frigid, obtained some favour. In this style did Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo, who was also a prose author, and who died in the year 1682, after filling several distinguished posts, relate the fable of Adonis in serious redondilhas. Undismayed by the ridicule with which Freire Andrada had overwhelmed poems formed of such materials, he says in his verses that “Adonis has obtained privileges from Cupid, and licences from Diana, for punishing wild beasts and enchanting the fair; that lightnings flash from his eyes, and arrows are shot from his hands; that the hills and valleys at once represent lamentation and horror, because in the former the beasts groan, and in the latter the goddesses sigh.”[303]
Fernaõ Correa de la Cerda, an ecclesiastic, who was Bishop of Oporto, may also be numbered among the versifiers of this class. In a sonnet on a lady who died a few days after an eclipse of the sun, he thought it pathetic to say, that “at the death of Phillis, the whole celestial sphere must be afflicted with deep sorrow, bitter anguish.” And then he asks “if an eclipsed sun excites so much regret, what is to be expected from a dead sun?”[304]
VIOLANTE DO CEO.
A poetess whose name and rank probably contributed to raise her reputation at this period, shone conspicuously among the writers whom Freire de Andrada ridiculed. She was called Violante do Ceo, that is, if a name may be translated, “Violante of Heaven.” As a nun of the order of Dominicans, she obtained the character of a pattern of piety. Portuguese writers, moreover mention, that she was an excellent performer on the harp, and a singer. Among her writings there are some spiritual meditations in prose. She was born in 1601, and died in 1693, having consequently attained the age of ninety-two. Her miscellaneous poems were for the first time collected after her death.[305] Violante do Ceo was certainly a woman of genius; but her genius had received a totally false cultivation. She delighted as much as any of the partizans of Faria e Sousa, in all the absurdities of Portuguese Gongorism and Marinism. With her no antithesis was too far-fetched, no play of words too trivial, if the idea she thereby expressed was, according to her opinion, extraordinary. When wanting a poetic image, she immediately has recourse to the sun, which constantly shines in her pages as in these of the other Portuguese Gongorists and Marinists, whose verses, on that account, were by the witty Andrada, pronounced transparent. The tenderness or warmth of feeling which in female poetry often gets the better of the judgment, is in the writings of Violante do Ceo unnaturally represented by a false overstrained wit, which, however, assumes the disguise of judgment. In a sonnet on a lady, named Marianna de Luna, Violante do Ceo apostrophizes the muses, as “the divinities, who, in the garden of the king of day, unloosing their sweet voices, arrest Zephyr;—who, admiring the thoughts, multiply the flowers which Apollo creates.” She implores the muses “to abandon the society of the sun, since a moon (that is to say, Marianna de Luna,) which is at once a sun and a prodigy, prepares for them a garden of harmony.” Whether Marianna de Luna was a musician, or whether she had really laid out a fine garden, is not clearly explained. After some unintelligible phrases, it is in conclusion declared, that “through the grace of the deity, this tuneful garden is secured by the immortal wall of eternity.”[306] In this spirit and style Violante do Ceo composed both sacred and profane poetry. One of her Spanish sonnets on the death of a lady, closes with the idea, that, “if for such a sun the world is the region of setting, heaven on the other hand is for such a sun (the words are expressly repeated) the region of rising.”[307] She addressed a similar sonnet to a physician, named Arraes, a word which in the Portuguese language signifies the master of a vessel; and she says, in allusion to his name, that he deserves to be captain of the ship of life, which navigates the ocean of tyrannic disease; that is to say, as the succeeding lines denote, that he ought to be the king’s physician.[308] By her writings, after the revolution in the year 1640, Violante do Ceo distinguished herself as a patriot, but never as a judicious poetess.[309]