The Brazilian epic poem O Uraguai, first published in Lisbon in 1769, caught the imagination of Sir Richard F. Burton during his service as Her Majesty’s consul in Santos between 1865 and 1868. The great translator of the Arabian Nights and of Camoens’s Lusiads saw in the poem a tragic depiction of the theme of cultural conflict so prominent in his own work. Burton’s verse translation, both a faithful rendering of the original and a worthy achievement of its own right, is still the sole English version. This edition finally brings the translation to light.The subject of Gama’s and “romance in verse and ” is the brutal campaign fought in 1756 by the combined forces of Spain and Portugal against the poorly armed Tupi-Guarani Indians. The Indians and their Jesuit allies had refused to relinquish seven missions along the eastern bank of the Uruguay River in compliance with a treaty between the two colonial powers. In Burton’s words, Gama and “sings… the gross triumphs of Portuguese and Spanish arms, but he… bases the principal interest upon the unhappy Red Man by the sketches of customs and character, by touching episodes, and by noble descriptions. Evidently not against his will he betrays sympathy for the ‘noble savage.’ and ” Burton saw the Guarani protagonists, the doomed Cacambo and Lindoia, as the poem’s true hero and heroine. For him, and for Brazil’s Romantic poets, Gama’s vivid imagery of human simplicity surrounded by natural beauty, and of their destruction in an arbitrary war decreed from afar, created a revolutionary vision of the New World. Successive editions in Portuguese testify to the poem’s continuing evocative power.Though the translation managed to escape the editing by flame to which Burton’s widow subjected his unpublished manuscripts, The Uruguay had been consigned to oblivion. This edition is based on the manuscript now in the Huntington Library. It includes the translator’s preface, his biography of Gama, and his critical analysis of the poem, along with the original Portuguese text. An introduction by the editors discusses the historical and literary context of the poem and relates the curious history of the manuscript, revealing new aspects of the life and thought of the most famous translator in modern British letters.

The Uruguay: A Historical Romance of South America PDF

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