Whom Fame Will Not Reward
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Nem creiais, Ninfas, não, que a fama desse A quem ao bem comum e do seu Rei Antepuser seu próprio interesse, Imigo da divina e humana Lei. Nenhum ambicioso, que quisesse Subir a grandes cargos, cantarei, Só por poder com torpes exercícios Usar mais largamente de seus vícios;
Nor believe, Nymphs, no, that fame would reward the man who put his own interest ahead of the common good and his King's — an enemy of divine and human law. No ambitious man will I sing who wanted to climb to high office only so that, by base dealings, he could indulge his vices more freely;
Near the close of Canto 7, Camões breaks off the story of Gama in India and speaks directly to the Nymphs about whose names he refuses to put in his poem. This stanza rules out the man who serves himself instead of his king and country.
This is one stanza of a long refusal. From roughly stanza 78 to the end of Canto 7 Camões stops the narrative of Gama in Calicut and tells the Nymphs — the muses of his own river — the terms on which he writes. Here he names the first man he will not put in the poem: whoever set his own advantage above the common good and the King's, and then climbed into office to enjoy his vices with more room.
What a first reader misses is that this is a job description, not a moral abstraction. Camões had come back from India with nothing, and the "grandes cargos" he refuses to sing were real posts held by real men he could have named. By making fame something he grants or withholds, he quietly claims the one power he actually had left: the epic is payment, and he decides who gets paid.
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