The Nature of Good
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" Mas não foi, da esperança grande e imensa Que nesta terra houvemos, limpa e pura A alegria; mas logo a recompensa A Ramnúsia com nova desventura. Assim no céu sereno se dispensa: Com esta condição pesada e dura Nascemos: o pesar terá firmeza, Mas o bem logo muda a natureza.
But the joy we drew from the great and immense hope we had in this land was not clean and pure; instead Nemesis at once paid us back with a fresh misfortune. This is how it is dealt out in the calm sky above: we are born under this heavy, hard condition — sorrow will stay put, while good soon changes its nature.
Gama, telling the story of the voyage to the King of Melinde, reports the landfall at the Cape of Good Hope region. Relief keeps turning into loss, and here he stops narrating to state the rule he has learned.
Gama breaks off the narrative to draw a conclusion. The land they reached was supposed to be relief after the Cape; instead the joy arrived already spoiled, and he names the agent: Ramnúsia, Nemesis of Rhamnus, the goddess who levels anyone whose fortune rises too far. She is not punishing a crime here. She is simply collecting on hope.
The part a first reader slides past is the asymmetry in the last two lines. Sorrow gets firmeza — it holds, it stays what it is. Good is the thing that cannot keep its own nature. Camões does not say fortune is fickle in general; he says the wobble runs one direction only. And he puts this in Gama's mouth, mid-voyage, told to a king who is being courted as an ally — the man selling the expedition is the one saying its best moments will not hold.
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