If there's such a thing as an "America Day", then it's the 4th of July. The Declaration of Independence was signed, and we told England to shove it because we were all grown up and we were going to do what we wanted. It's just the sort of thing a young country would celebrate.
Portugal, on the other hand, is old. 875, by my count. She has the oldest unchanged borders in Europe and she's had several "independence days":
June 24, 1128: The Battle of São Mamede: Dom Alfonso Henriques beats him mother and her lover in battle, takes over the County of Portugal
July 26, 1139: Dom Alfonso Henriques acclaimed King of Portugal
October 5, 1143: Kingdom of Castile and Leon recognizes Portugal
May 13, 1179: Pope Alexander III recognizes Dom Alfonso Henriques as King of Portugal
December 1, 1640: Portugal, which had become part of the Spanish Hapsburg empire after the death of King Sebastian I, declares independence from Spain
April 25, 1974: Carnation Revolution, Estado Novo dictatorship overthrown
So, instead of an independence day, Portugal's national day is celebrated on the anniversary of the death of their greatest poet, Luis de Camões. How is that not awesome? In 1572 he published Os Lusiadas, (The Lusiads, in English) an heroic epic poem in the style of Homer and especially Virgil. Check out the opening stanza and see what I mean:
As armas e os Barões assinalados
Que da Ocidental praia Lusitana
Por mares nunca de antes navegados
Passaram ainda além da Taprobana,
Em perigos e guerras esforçados
Mais do que prometia a força humana,
E entre gente remota edificaram
Novo Reino, que tanto sublimaram.
Translation by me, more literal than lyrical:
The arms and Heroes marked
That the western Lusitanian shore
By seas never before navigated
Yet passed beyond Taprobana,
Through dangers and grueling wars
More that what was promised by human strength,
And amongst remote peoples they built
A New Kingdom, a sublimation of both.
If that doesn't sound familiar, check out the opening lines of Virgil's Aeneid, translated from Latin by A.S. Kline:
I sing of arms and the man, he who, exiled by fate,
first came from the coast of Troy to Italy, and to
Lavinian shores – hurled about endlessly by land and sea,
by the will of the gods, by cruel Juno’s remorseless anger,
long suffering also in war, until he founded a city
and brought his gods to Latium: from that the Latin people
came, the lords of Alba Longa, the walls of noble Rome.
Muse, tell me the cause: how was she offended in her divinity,
how was she grieved, the Queen of Heaven, to drive a man,
noted for virtue, to endure such dangers, to face so many
trials? Can there be such anger in the minds of the gods?
The key difference between Os Lusiadas and the Aeneid is in the opening line. Aeneas writes of "arms and the man" (emphasis mine). Os Lusiadas, on the other hand, speaks of "arms and heroes". While the great Greek epics are about singular men, Os Lusiadas is the story of the Portuguese people as a whole. Their epic journey is the conquest of the seas and the founding of the Portuguese Empire, just as the Aeneid is the chronicle of Aeneas's journey and his founding of the Roman Empire.
While Juno is Aeneas's enemy and Venus is his patroness in the Aeneid, in Os Lusiadas the divine clash is between Neptune and Venus. She advocates for the Portuguese to Jupiter, while Neptune tries to defend his dominion over the seas. Considering that the Age of Discoveries is the only thing American school children learn about the Portuguese in school, I think we all know which side Jupiter chose.
The two epics are further paralleled by their structure. They both start in medias res. Aeneas arrives in Carthage and then tells Dido about how he got there. In Os Lusiadas, Vasco da Gama arrives on the east coast of Africa after roundig the Cape of Good Hope. There, the King of Mombas welcomes him and asks how da Gama and his crew arrived. Instead of telling his story, da Gama recounts Portugal's history, and how it led to him and his historic voyage.
The name Os Lusiadas comes from Lusitania. It was the Roman province that more or less matches Portugal's borders today, and so poetically the Portuguese still refer to themselves as Lusitanians. Luso- is the prefix used to denote a thing as being Portuguese, in the same way that Sino- is used for Chinese. For example (incoming shameless plug!) the Luso-American Education Foundation
Camões himself wasn't some poet scribbling down his musings from his ivory tower. He was a certified badass:
No, he's not winking at at you; he lost his eye fighting the Moors in Ceuta! His military service also took him to Goa, and later he was offered a position in Macau. On his way back home to Portugal, he was shipwrecked near Cambodia. According to legend, Camões let his lover drown because he was using both hands to hold the only manuscript of Os Lusiadas out of the water!
Portugal was reaching it's peak as a world power when Camões finished Os Lusiadas, which ends with a warning to King Sebastian to maintain Portugal's glory. Instead, the young, heirless, and allegedly mad king died fighting the Moors in Africa at the Battle of Alcacer Quibir, and Portugal fell into the hands of Sebastian's closest relative, Phillip of Spain. Elizabethan scholars might know him as Bloody Mary's husband. Portugal would remain a Spanish possession for eighty years, but would never return to her former glory.
The full name of today's holiday is O Dia de Portugal, Camões, e as Comunidades Portuguesas, or The Day of Portugal, Camões, and the Portuguese Communities. Ties to Portuguese diaspora are felt strongly in Portugal and vice versa. I am, after all, studying abroad this summer for a reason. This weekend there'll be a Dia de Portugal celebration at History Park in San Jose that you should check out. (http://www.diadeportugalca.org/) The SF Giants also had their first annual Portuguese Heritage Night, which I was bummed out to miss. Oh darn, this is what I get for following my heritage to its source this summer, I guess.
I'll close with some of my favorite lines from Os Lusiadas, translated this time by William Julius Mickle.
Ó grandes e gravíssimos perigos!
Ó caminho de vida nunca certo:
Que aonde a gente põe sua esperança,
Tenha a vida tão pouca segurança!
No mar tanta tormenta, e tanto dano,
Tantas vezes a morte apercebida!
Na terra tanta guerra, tanto engano,
Tanta necessidade aborrecida!
Onde pode acolher-se um fraco humano,
Onde terá segura a curta vida,
Que não se arme, e se indigne o Céu sereno
Contra um bicho da terra tão pequeno?
O piteous lot of man's uncertain state!
What woes on Life's unhappy journey wait!
When joyful Hope would grasp its fond desire,
The long-sought transports in the grasp expire.
By sea what treacherous calms, what rushing storms,
And death attendant in a thousand forms!
By land what strife, what plots of secret guile,
How many a wound from many a treacherous smile!
O where shall man escape his numerous foes,
And rest his weary head in safe repose!
