"Celebrating Camões need not be justified"

"To celebrate Camões in the 21st century is to do so with democratic humbleness when faced with the grandeur and oeuvre he has bequeathed us", said Prime Minister Luís Montenegro at the ceremony to present the programme to commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of Luís de Camões’s birth at the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon.

Luís Montenegro recalled that every regime since 1880 has done so yet underlined that "we do not wish to celebrate it as the past, or with longing, just as we don’t wish to modernise it in anachronic ways that falsify the historical truth of Luís de Camões".

"We intend to place him in the space and time he lived in, foster the study of his life and oeuvre according to the most modern scientific criteria", he added.

Openness and plurality

The Prime Minister claimed that the commemorations "intend to signal the five-hundredth anniversary of his birth in an open and plural way as should be the way for a democratic and inclusive regime to celebrate both a historical and a mythical Camões".

Noting that "his legacy is so rich and vast, so perennial in its Portugueseness" that "it trumps every attempt to manipulate and appropriate his cultural and literary heritage", he said that "Camões is Portugal", "Camões is the people, he is the free essence of the Portuguese soul, of being Portuguese". 

"He can thereby only be held captive of our memory, our admiration, our tribute as a nation#, he stressed.

Divulge and learn

The main purpose of the commemorations over the next two years are to "divulge the many messages his poetry contains to the Portuguese people, especially the younger generations".

"The best way to celebrate Camões is still to divulge and know his oeuvre and have his words resonate among the hearts of the youths and awake in them new meanings, new worlds, new interpretations", he also remarked.

The Prime Minister stated that "we want a Camões who is a vehicle of the language that unites us, and we love, a language that isn’t just ours – it belongs to the world, to everyone who speaks it, teach it or learn it. Here or in the Portuguese school in Dili", "a language that is even more beautiful and richer in its diversity".

Celebrate the human

But we should also commemorate "the human Camões, in his love affairs, in the changes in other feelings he described like few others did, high and noble feelings, yet also the fear, greed, avarice and envy that wound up "Os Lusíadas"".

"Celebrating Camões need not be justified. It would be odd not to", he added in his closing speech at the session where the Minister of Culture Dalila Rodrigues and the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs Paulo Rangel also spoke. The Ministers of the Presidency Leitão Amaro and Education, Science and Innovation Fernando Alexandre also attended the ceremony.