Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Saudade in Literature
One of the first great Portuguese works of literature that explores the theme of
saudade
is
Os Lusiadas
(
The Lusiads
, aka
The Portuguese
). Luiz Vaz de Camões mixes mythology
with historical events in his great verse epic about the Age of Discoveries of the 15th and
16th centuries. The heroic adventurer Vasco da Gama and other explorers strive for glory
but many never return, facing hardship (sea monsters, treacherous kings) along the way.
First-hand experience informed Camões' work. He served in the overseas militia, lost an
eye in Ceuta in a battle with the Moors, served prison time in Portugal and survived a ship-
wreck in the Mekong (swimming ashore with his unfinished manuscript held aloft, accord-
ing to legend).
The film
Fados
(2007) is Spanish director Carlos Saura's love letter to the great Portuguese music. The film
features the singing of fado legends like Camané and Mariza as well as genre-defying singers not often as-
sociated with the art - Brazilian signers Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque, among others.
The great 19th-century Portuguese writer Almeida Garrett wrote an even more compel-
ling take on the Age of Discoveries. In his book
Camões
, a biography of the poet, he de-
scribes the longings Camões felt toward Portugal while in exile. He also captured the great-
er sense of
saudade
that so many felt as Portugal's empire crumbled in the century follow-
ing the great explorations.
More recent writers also explore the notion of
saudade
, though take radically different
approaches from their predecessors. Contemporary writer António Lobo Antunes decon-
structs
saudade
in cynical tales that expose the nostalgic longing for something as being a
form of neurotic self-delusion. In
The Return of the Caravels
(1988), he turns the discovery
myth on its head when, four centuries after da Gama's voyage, the great explorers, through
some strange time warp, become entangled with the
retornados
(who returned to Portugal
in the 1970s, after the loss of the country's African empire) as the Renaissance-era achieve-
ments collapse in the poor, grubby, lower-class neighbourhoods of Lisbon.
