Letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha
Written in 1500 and dated first of May, in a letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha (also known as a Letter to him- Rei Dom Manoel on the Brazilian achament) is a founding document of the historical past country.
Caminha, writing on board the caravels of Cabral, ended up being a chronicler of the new colônia and the arduous task of narrating or meeting different cultures. It gives him or her first olhar on the continent até então little (or nothing) known.
A letter written on board is considered an information literature.
Analysis of the Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha
Principle of the story
A Carta is considered a species of batismo da nossa terra document. This is the first time to explore a stranger about that there was no territory that would become Brazil.
On or addressed to the letter, it is the king Dom Manoel I that Caminha addresses, not originally written:
Senhor: Post that o Capitão-mor desta vossa rubs, and likewise other captains escrevam a Vossa Alteza a nova do achamento desta vossa terra nova, that ora nesta Navigation is achou, not also deixarei also give disso minha tell Vossa Alteza, also like eu melhor puder, ainda that - to or be to count and falar - or know pior that all fazer.
Caminha sublinha logo not the beginning of the text that will give um seem biased, subject to your limitations.
Num humble gesture, the question could be narrated as property what he saw, and finally concluded that it will tempt to determine the maximum possible years:
Take Vossa Alteza, porém, minha ignorance por boa vontade, and I thought it was true that, to make us look ugly, no more here than here that I saw and it seems to me.
Objective of the letter: a fome de ouro
A letter addressed to o rei é uma informational literature.
Caminha was or personagem chosen to raise the first description of Brazil. It is about a tough task that required detailed description absolutely everything or what or writing viu: fauna, flora, behavior of two natives, curiosities of the region.
Or writer sublinha at first to immense natural wealth of the nova colônia. Ao descrever a nature perfeita present no novo mundo, ele demonstra ter uma heavenly view of the terra that Portuguese hairs will be conquered.
In the writing of the letter it is also possible to quickly see that historians later chamaram de fome de ouroHere is a demonstration of interest in two Portuguese for profit that they will be able to subtract from the exploration of the future colônia.
We read long ago já das primeiras linhas or desire of conquest over all of precious materials (ouro e prata). Or write sublinha to departure in the absence of the desired materials:
Nela, até agora, we cannot know that it does ouro, nem prata, nem coisa some metal or iron; nem lho we saw.
Caminha, knowing that King's interest in discovering depressa or that he could render Nova Terra, adiants and redresses the logo that he imagines would be retired from Terra.
Or I found a native
Or he found as an Indian, completely different from the explorer, he occupies part of the letter. Caminha uses or comparison resource ao redirect or your story makes it clear that writing tries to read that you will be able to use these people with different two browsers to be able to be used as a king of Portugal.
Ao narrating, Caminha observes how you locais behave: what you dress, like têm or cut hair, in what way it feeds, like dormem, like lidam uns like outros and like strangers.
Or do you ask yourself indirectly: serão eles bons ou cruéis? But if I did not start the letter Caminha seems to keep a more generous vision on the uninformed, logo deixa escape um deeply western and eurocentric point of view to accuse the Indians of Selvageria.
Caminha tenta ler or outro From two indications that they are given, despite the fact that another is completely different from what you have previously seen.
Those who would later be called Indians are or opposed to two Portuguese in various aspects:
A feição deles é serem pardos, maneira de avermelhados, de bons rostos e bons noses, bem-feitos. Andam nus, sem nenhuma coverage. Nem estimate to charge or to show his shame; I have as much innocence as I show or face. Both traziam the beiços de baixo furados and inserted in the serious ossos white and true, of compression duma mão travessa, gives grossura dum fuso of cotton, sharp na ponta as a furador.
A non-native nudeness and excessiveness of roupa loaded with navigating hairs. Also their innocent behavior contrasts with an interest stance that they perpetrated or new territory in search of bens materiais.
Nudez
Caminha sublinha in various points gives letter to nudez do povo that he finds in the absence of shame on the part of two Indians, something unthinkable for a European city.
Barnacle-se nesses moments of writing or attack between a Catholic ideology of sinful numbness and or clash with Indians who do not carry any kind of guilt or modesty for terem or naked body:
They were brown, all of us, they look like somebody that they cobrisse suas shame. Nas mãos draw arches with their mushrooms.
A catechization of two Indians
Caminha, a native of a deeply catholic country, makes it evident in a letter to a moral and religious missão that Europeans supposedly want to catechize the Indians.
Caberia Portuguese years to conversation of people. As a Eurocentric olhar, the browsers certify that the Indian was like a white page, with any kind of belief:
It seems to me people of such innocence that, if we understand each other, they will be the Christ logo, because they, secondly, it seems, no têm, nem understood in nenhuma crença.
Convém to return to this conclusion that appears with the last paragraphs of the text highlighted.
The author of the story is clear to the catechize natives so that the project of conquest bem happened:
Porém o melhor fruit, that nela be able to fazer, it seems to me that it will be to save these people. And this should be the main thing that Vossa Alteza should launch.
In the presence of technical information in the Letter
But Vaz de Caminha is the chronicler of Pedro Álvares Cabral's expedition and his letter records all of adventure, since leaving Portugal I met or unexpectedly met between the Portuguese and the natives nas novas terras.
Or account with a series of technical information such as data and responsibilities of navigation that allow you to imagine more precisely or context of the excursion:
Leaving Belém, as Vossa Alteza knows, it was a second-fair, March 9. Saturday, the 14th of the month, between now and nine hours, we get down between the Canárias, the most part of the Grã- Canária, and there we walk all that day in calm, in view of them, a work of three to four languages.
Or disappearance of the letter
The writing of Pero Vaz de Caminha was lost during more than three centuries and was only found in 1839.
Despite being found, the text was not comprehensive in the first modernized version, as a legible written, it only saw the public around 1900 thanks to the Brazilian historian Capistrano de Abreu.
Where is currently a Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha?
The Manuscript of the Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha is currently not the National Archives of Torre do Tombo, located in Lisbon (Portugal).
I read a letter in its entirety
TO Letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha Find-it is available for reading in full in pdf format.
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Quem foi Pero Vaz de Caminha
Born in Porto (in Portugal), not in the year 1450, but Vaz de Caminha entered for the history or was nominated by Pedro Álvares Cabral's squad.
Coube ao Escrivão produzir uma retailer letter e year same universal tempo. His tarefa was compor of the daily reports on board recounting the journey of Cabral's caravels and those uncovered on no new continent.
Uma curiosidade: Caminha was not properly a creepy, but rather a kind of accountant. Cabral's caravels were found because he was in the process of accounting for a feitor that the Portuguese were riding in Calicute, in India.
Or gesture of writing a letter addressed to him or her, it was also permeated with a personal interest. O genro de Caminha had been imprisoned and exiled, sent to the islands of Cape Verde. A prison was executed because either a father had attacked a father within a church, or that he rendered a terrible conviction. Caminha intended to strengthen ties with Dom Manoel I in order to realize that the conviction of the genre had been unjust.
For this reason, Caminha ended up becoming a chronicler of the kingdom of the Cabral expedition, which left Portugal with about 13 ships and 1500 men on board.
At the edge of Cabral, he continued his trip to Brazil and ancorou in Calicute, as was supposed. As the relationship between friends and locals, however, the company will deteriorate under an attack by two men.
During or without understanding, about thirty Portuguese were assassinated, including Pero Vaz de Caminha.
Conheça also
- Livro Os Lusíadas, from Camões
- Livro Dom Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
- The fundamental poems of Fernando Pessoa
