A History of Water – Edward and The Sea of Stories
At the first moment of global encounters, there was a bifurcated path of possibilities for the Portuguese explorers. There was an opportunity to crisscross through seas never sailed before, marvelling at how, to paraphrase Pessoa, humanity is the same wherever it is, yet different everywhere. But instead of being enchanted by the different ways of perceiving the world, the encounter with the Other was primarily seen as a way of dilating faith and empire1, imposing a worldview, and disregarding the wisdom that could be gleaned from encountering diversity.
Edward Wilson-Lee picks two characters from 16th-century Portugal to illustrate these two disparate visions. And to spice up the narrative, he interweaves pieces of evidence of a possible crime with the backstory of an epic poem.
As an embodiment of an “omnivorous fascination with the world”, Damião de Góis is the humanist chosen to epitomize the openness to the world, the willingness to know and immerse oneself in the world’s cultural diversity. He is the protagonist of the book.
Despite his eagerness to describe as much of the world as possible, Damião writes a panegyric of Lisbon that does not contemplate the dissolute city inhabited by, among others, Luís de Camões. The vagabond, troublemaker and frequent jailbird Camões is the counterpoint to Damião selected by Edward.
Camões saw even more of the world than the well-travelled Damião. But while the latter travelled across Europe with an open mind and through the archives with immense curiosity, Camões devoted his poetic genius to glorifying those who managed to bend the Other beneath the yoke of an insular view (“A quantas gentes vês porás o freio”2).
Edward is a polymath, a book lover, and an enthusiast of archives. His identification with Damião transpires throughout the book. Perhaps because of this, he could have tried to counterbalance his natural tendency to align himself with Damião by elaborating more on Camões and his epic.
The imbalance is all too evident, making reading the chapters on Camões (good as they are) a mere antechamber, a gloomy prelude, before the chapters that further illuminate Damião’s life, work, and vision.
A foreign reader, unaware of the romanticisation of Luís Vaz de Camões during the 19th century and his elevation to bard of the Lusitanian people during Salazar’s dictatorship, will wonder why the Portuguese national day is celebrated each year on the date that supposedly marks the poet’s death. This reader will be surprised that the national day is designated as “Day of Portugal, Camões and the Portuguese Communities” and not, for instance, “Day of Portugal, Damião, Camões, Orta [I would add Vieira and Pessoa] and the Portuguese Communities”3 …
According to Edward Wilson-Lee, Damião’s perspective generated an undercurrent which (very) gradually surged as a solid counterpoint to Camões’ parochial inward-looking worldview. For example, he finds echoes of Damião in Michel de Montaigne’s cultural relativism. But Damião’s way of looking at the world only emerges more vividly after the Second World War. And yet Edward rightly asks how it is that 500 years after the first great encounters of civilisations, unawareness of the Other, “Camonian” cultural self-absorption, remains the prevailing current, one that remains more intense than Damião’s wonderment with the world.
The book is so well written, and the multiple streams of stories are so captivating that it merits being immediately considered a masterpiece. It’s a written monument to the merits of scholarly research, to the usefulness of unearthing archived mysteries and disclosing them beyond the ivory tower of purely academic research. Moreover, there is poetry, which begins right in the book’s title.
While reading the book, one may ponder why the title was “A History of Water”. Is it a reminder of how the seas created interconnections between different worlds throughout history? Is it because of the shipwrecks? Is it because of the mythical rescue of Camões major opus from the Mekong? Is it because of some supernatural hydraulic intervention in Damião’s death?…
In a sense, this is a title in search of an explanation.
There is a crescendo in the book that culminates in the penultimate paragraph of the chapter “The Land Behind the Wind”. The fluidity of history, with its tides of convergence and divergence and its turbulent surges of enlightenment and obscurantism, flows into a complete and poetic clarification of the book’s title. After reading this paragraph, one understands that the title could not be any other.
On the other hand, the matter-of-fact subtitle contrasts with the title’s poetic license. It is an excellent summary of the book’s central themes and entices curiosity – “Being an Account of a Murder, an Epic and Two Visions of Global History”. The book chapters’ titles are witty and spot-on (“Summertime, 7037” is a timeless gem!).
We have Edward to thank for his passion for pursuing a good story with fluid and light prose.
We have Edward to thank for delving into labyrinthine archives and weaving a polyphonic transoceanic plot with multiple tributary stories and minute outpouring tales that bubble with curiosity and fascination at all things human.
Soundtrack:
· Damião de Góis: Libro secondo de li motetti a tre voce: In die tribulationis. Interpretada por Capella Duriensis. Álbum: Portuguese Vocal Masterpieces of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Vol. 1. https://open.spotify.com/track/6vGFxjge5ZAEaNLGyJGDfl?si=66054cd23dc14793
· Damião de Góis: Dodecachordon: Ne laeteris inimica mea. Interpretada por Capella Duriensis. Álbum: Portuguese Vocal Masterpieces of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Vol. 1. https://open.spotify.com/track/4cmuZwUY23Wx8XTa3wGlV5?si=e90503cdfa964cd4
· Damião de Góis: Cantiones septem, sex et quinque vocum: Surge, propera amica mea. Interpretada por Capella Duriensis. Álbum: Portuguese Vocal Masterpieces of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Vol. 1. https://open.spotify.com/track/68LbeNNdJsS8aRI4LwLbxR?si=38285d5f945542c6
· Josquin Des Prez: Obsecro Te. Interpretada por Ariel Abramovich e Lee Santana (ECM New Series) . https://open.spotify.com/track/4Ty3xe0DxUYIq1vTog3sJr?si=afe9b979478047ea
· Baka Forest People Of Southeast Cameron: Eden Liquindi 2. Álbum: Voice Of The Rainforest. https://open.spotify.com/track/6jAUI0EjhUcFNk4K8hoJXF?si=2c2a9bceacff430e
Excursus – Drifting words devoid of life
de Edward Wilson-Lee
“Your literal translation can have no claim to the original felicities of expression; the energy, elegance, and fire of the original poetry. It may bear, indeed, a resemblance; but such a one as a corpse in the sepulchre bears to the former man when he moved in the bloom and vigour of life.”
in “The Lusiad; or, The Discovery of India. An Epic Poem. Translated from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoëns. With a life of the poet. By William Julius Mickle.”
“O Amor é Um Lugar Estranho”, “Perdidos en Tokio”, “Traduction Infidèle”, and “A Torre dos Segredos” – a note on the Portuguese title of the book.
A good measure of the penultimate paragraph of “the Land Behind the Wind” will be lost in translation. The strength of the mysterious book title will not come to light as the reader goes through those revealing lines. The inspiration Edward Wilson-Lee got from the Kathāsaritsāgara will not amaze the Portuguese reader in quite the same way as the original text will.
The editor probably preferred to highlight the intrinsically Portuguese attributes of the story – the Tower, Damião, and Camões. In so doing, some of the book’s eloquence will fade away in the Lusian bard’s language.
Feline criticism
“ão” does not rhyme with “meow”.
1 "E também as memórias gloriosas Daqueles Reis, que foram dilatando A Fé, o Império, e as terras viciosas De África e de Ásia andaram devastando" (Lusíadas, Canto I)
2 "Custar-te-emos, contudo, dura guerra; Mas, insistindo tu, por derradeiro, Com não vistas vitórias, sem receio A quantas gentes vês porás o freio." (Lusíadas, Canto IV)
3 – Damião de Góis for his cosmopolitism and his openness to the world;
– Luís de Camões because, after all, it is the “língua de Camões”;
– Garcia de Orta for his experience-based scientific sophistication;
– António Vieira for being the “imperador da língua portuguesa” (Pessoa);
– Fernando Pessoa for being a fantastic multiple-poet.
