Francisco Manoel de Nascimento - Poetry

Poetry

Garrett declared that Nascimento was worth an academy in himself by his knowledge of the language, adding that no poet since Camoens had rendered it such valuable services; but his truest title to fame is that he brought literature once more into touch with the life of the nation. By his life, as by his works, Nascimento links the 18th and 19th centuries, the Neo-Classical period with Romanticism. Wieland's Oberon and Chateaubriand's Martyrs opened a new world to him, and his contos, or scenes of Portuguese life, have a real romantic flavour; they are the most natural of his compositions, though his noble patriotic odes - those To Neptune speaking to the Portuguese and To the liberty and independence of the United States are the most quoted and admired.

On leaving Portugal, he abandoned the use of rhyme as cramping freedom of thought and expression; nevertheless his highly polished verses are generally robust to hardness and overdone with archaisms. His translations from Latin, French and Italian, are accurate though harsh, and his renderings of Racine and the Fables of Lafontaine entirely lack the simplicity and grace of the originals. But Nascimento's blank verse translation of the Martyrs is in many ways superior to Chateaubriand's prose.