The Nymphs Who Heal the Wounds of Love
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Alguns exercitando a mão andavam Nos duros corações da plebe rude; Crebros suspiros pelo ar soavam Dos que feridos vão da seta aguda. Formosas Ninfas são as que curavam As chagas recebidas cuja ajuda Não somente dá vida aos mal feridos, Mas põe em vida os ainda não nascidos.
Some of the Loves went on plying their hand upon the hard hearts of the rough common crowd; frequent sighs sounded through the air from those who go wounded by the sharp arrow. Lovely Nymphs are the ones who healed the wounds received, whose aid not only gives life to the badly wounded, but sets into life those not yet born.
On the Isle of Love, Cupid's little Loves keep firing arrows into the hearts of the crowd. Then Camões turns to the Nymphs who tend the wounds those arrows leave.
The stanza breaks in two. First the little Loves keep at their archery, driving arrows into the hard hearts of the ordinary crowd, and the air fills with the sighs of the stricken. Then Camões turns to the Nymphs, who are not victims but nurses: they tend the wounds Cupid's arrows leave, and their care revives the lovestruck.
The wounds here are erotic. This is the Isle of Love, and the closing couplet is the real point: the Nymphs' aid does more than heal the wounded, it "sets into life those not yet born." Desire is recast as the engine of generation, the force that peoples the future with children. It is the Neoplatonic move that lets the whole pleasure-island stand as licit reward rather than idle lust, love as a cosmic power of birth, not merely a sting.
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Os Lusíadas 9.32 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/9.32/