An Island Made Ready
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E para isso queria que, feridas As filhas de Nereu, no ponto fundo, De amor dos Lusitanos incendidas, Que vêm de descobrir o novo mundo, Todas numa ilha juntas e subidas, Ilha, que nas entranhas do profundo Oceano terei aparelhada, De dons de Flora e Zéfiro adornada
And to this end she wanted that the daughters of Nereus, in the deep gulf, once wounded and inflamed with love for the Lusitanians — who come from discovering the new world — should all be gathered together and drawn up onto an island: an island that, in the entrails of the deep Ocean, she will have made ready, adorned with the gifts of Flora and Zephyr.
Venus lays out her plan to reward Gama's sailors: the sea-nymphs, daughters of Nereus, are to be struck with love and gathered on an island she will prepare in the deep ocean.
Venus is still speaking, setting out how the voyage will be rewarded. She wants Cupid to strike the sea-nymphs, the daughters of Nereus, with love for Gama's sailors, and to gather them onto an island she herself will furnish on the ocean floor. This is the blueprint for the Ilha dos Amores, the Isle of Love, that closes the poem's action.
What a first reader can miss is how manufactured the reward is. The nymphs must first be feridas and incendidas — wounded and set alight — before they will love; the island is stocked in advance with the gifts of Flora, goddess of flowers, and Zephyr, the west wind. The famous erotic prize is stage-managed by a goddess, built on the old machinery of Venus arranging desire for her favorites, as she does for Aeneas in Virgil. Camões is assembling an allegory, and telling you plainly that it is one.
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