Who Are You?
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Mais ia por diante o monstro horrendo Dizendo nossos fados, quando alçado Lhe disse eu: -- Quem és tu? que esse estupendo Corpo certo me tem maravilhado. -- A boca e os olhos negros retorcendo, E dando um espantoso e grande brado, Me respondeu, com voz pesada e amara, Como quem da pergunta lhe pesara:
The horrendous monster was going on further, telling our fates, when I raised my voice and said to him: "Who are you? That stupendous body of yours has certainly astonished me." Twisting his mouth and his black eyes, and letting out a frightful, enormous shout, he answered me in a voice heavy and bitter, like a man whom the question had wounded:
The giant Adamastor has been prophesying disaster over the fleet rounding the Cape. Gama interrupts him with a question, and the monster turns to answer.
The prophecy stops mid-flow because Gama interrupts it. Adamastor is still listing the disasters waiting for Portuguese ships at the Cape when the captain cuts across him with four words: who are you? The stanza is built on that break. Camões gives the giant the whole first half and then hands the second half to a single human question, and the meter never falters.
What a first reader misses is that the question hurts. Look at "pesada e amara" and then "lhe pesara" — the voice is heavy because the asking weighed on him. Gama means it as a challenge; Adamastor receives it as the one thing nobody has asked. Everything he says for the next thirty stanzas — the Titan, the love for Thetis, the body turned to rock — comes out because a man finally wanted his name rather than his forecast.
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