SOURCE: “Luís de Camões: The Eventful Life and Times of Portugal's Great Epic Poet,” in UNESCO Courier, No. 4, April, 1989, pp. 17-25.

In the following essay, Moura characterizes Camões and his poem The Lusiads, highlighting contradictions and oppositions in the man, his age, and the epic.

The little that is known about the life of Luís de Camões can be summed up in a few lines. He was probably born in Lisbon in 1525, but even this is not known for certain. Nothing is known about what he studied or where (possibly in Coimbra) and next to nothing about his life until he set sail for the Orient, where he spent seventeen equally obscure years. A few biographical hints can be gleaned from his writings. It seems, for example, that he had a rather hectic love-life, and it was perhaps because of his way of...