[In this essay, Dixon offers a formalist explication of one of Camões' redondilhas. Examining the connections between poetic form and meaning, Dixon demonstrates the sense of uncertainty created in this poem by Camões' use of defamiliarization.]

                                                            MOTE
Descalça vai pera a fonte
Lianor pela verdura;
Vai fermosa, e não segura.
                                                            VOLTAS
Leva na cabeça o pote,
O testo nas mãos de prata,
Cinta de fina escarlata,
Sainho de chamalote;
Traz a vasquinha de cote,
Mais branca que a neve pura.
Vai fermosa, e não segura.
Descobre a touca a garganta,
Cabelos de ouro entrançado,
Fita de cor de encarnado,
Tão linda que o mundo espanta.
Chove nela graça tanta,
Que dá graça à fermosura.
Vai fermosa, e não segura.

A rule of thumb for recognizing the essential motifs of many artistic works is to look for those that are repeated. The important elements seem often to emerge from a background of less important elements by this very means.¹ In Luís de Camões' redondilha, “Descalça vai pera a fonte,”² the simple rule of repetition guides us to what seem to be the poem's essential motifs, found in the thrice-repeated line describing its subject, Lianor: “Vai fermosa, e não segura.” The predominant motifs would then seem to be three: movement (“Vai”), beauty (“fermosa”), and insecurity (“não segura”). Of these elements, the most striking is probably that of insecurity. This seems to be so in part because of another rule of thumb that applies to many works—the rule that the best is saved for last. The fact that the reader's final impression in each section of the poem involves the words “não segura,” gives this impression a certain preeminence.

This discussion will proceed on the the premise that the quality of insecurity is the essence of the poem's significance on all levels. In the abstract realm of ideas, in the concrete realm of imagery, and in the purely formalistic realm of structure and language, a kind of delicate insecurity is to be found as a unifying principle. Moving occasionally from the specific case of this Camonian redondilha to a more general consideration of poetics, we will attempt to show that the same is true of practically all poetic language. In effect, this discussion will at times use the entire poem as a mote alheio, or point of departure, so as to perform a volta or two in discussing some general aesthetic principles. The voltas in a good vilancete such as “Descalça vai pera a fonte” are not in opposition to, but rather in support of the mote. It is hoped that the same can be said of these observations on aesthetics—that they enlarge upon rather than detract from the experience of Camões' poem.

In this and other vilancetes, the theme is capsulized in a short mote, while the following seven-line voltas provide variation and elaboration. Here Camões' mote presents the essential image of Lianor as a barefoot beauty of her way to a fountain: “Descalça vai pera a fonte / Lianor pela verdura.” At once we have our justification, on a literal level, for Lianor's insecurity. She is barefoot. Far be it from us to impute calloused feet to this woman. She has tender feet, and must proceed ever so gingerly: “Vai fermosa, e não segura.”

With this line, we are subjected to an insecurity on a syntactic and semantic level. The modifiers “fermosa” and “não segura” obviously refer to Lianor. We notice, however, that because their antecedent within the clause is only implied, syntactically they seem to be placed more like adverbs than adjectives; they appear almost to be modifying the verb “vai.” We have here a case of what one grammar calls “o predicado verbo-nominal,”³ or a predication that seems to act either adverbially or adjectivally. The structure is best illustrated with masculine subjects. Example: “O trem chegou atrasado.” In this case, “atrasado” can be considered either as an adjective, modifying “trem” or as an adverb, modifying “chegou.” The construction is syntactically ambiguous. The use of a feminine subject destroys the ambiguity in the case of “fermosa” and “não segura.” But because of their being juxtaposed with the verb “vai,” and because of their identical structure with a syntactically ambiguous form, there seems to be a subtle residual ambivalence provoked in our response. The modifiers refer to Lianor, but we want to make them refer to “vai.” The response is one of hesitation and insecurity.

The stimuli producing this sort of response received a great deal of attention from some of the Russian formalists when they discussed the principles of “deautomatization”⁴ and “defamiliarization.”⁵ According to their theories, nonaesthetic experience is characterized by an automatic response in which phenomena pass by unnoticed. The goal of art is to “roughen” language, and “make strange” familiar patterns and images so that the texture of language and experience forces itself upon our perception. We can pick up on Camões' own image of walking for purposes of illustration. We do most of our walking without ever thinking about it. Our response to walking is usually completely automatic: we are more concerned about getting from point A to point B than about the physical processes that transport us. Non-artistic language is like walking; we use it automatically. In fact, we might say it is pedestrian in the sense of tending to be dull or uninteresting. Suppose we were to march instead of walk, subjecting our bodily movements to a regular, repetitive cadence. We would be obliged, at least at first, to pay attention to our movements. Even marching, however, quickly becomes mechanical and monotonous. Suppose, on the other hand, that we were to remove our shoes, and on tender feet walk through gravel. Or suppose we were to balance a fragile object upon our heads as we walked. We would then surely be forced to pay attention to each foot's placement and each shift of weight.

In this comparison we have drawn, marching is an analogue of verse, where conspicuous, patterned repetition is imposed upon a sequence of words.⁶ If repetition is all there is, however, we have an unexciting mechanical exercise—verse rather than poetry. Walking barefoot over gravel or walking with an object balanced on one's head might be called analogues of that quality which constitutes poetry—a principle of insecurity which makes formerly common experience seem new, and which makes us perceive each movement with intensity.

The redondilha “Descalça vai pera a fonte” features several types of deautomatized language. Its seven-syllable lines—“redondlihas maiores”—and its pattern of end rhymes imposes a set of mechanical constraints on language, which forces it into an underlying pattern and makes it to a degree conspicuous. Then artistic transformations in the language's concrete realization introduce ambiguity or insecurity, making even the conventional redondilha seem new and different. Lianor's barefoot walk through the greenery, “fermosa e não segura,” is suggestive of the experience of poetic language.

We return now to the mote, where we said an impression of hesititation is encouraged with modifiers that want to have two different referents. Considering “fermosa” and “não segura” to be modifiers of “Lianor” places emphasis on the subject of the sentence. When nouns or subjects are in the foreground of our attention, it is easy to communicate in a conceptualizing code where nouns are symbols of abstractions. An extension of predisposing ourselves to think in nominal terms is perceiving abstractions like “fermosura” and “inseguridade,” instead of “fermosa” and “não segura.” Finally, we begin to think in terms of “Fermosura” and “Inseguridade,” considering these concepts to be incarnated in the person of Lianor. Following this conceptualizing code, we are encouraged to read the poem as a set of abstractions involving an antithesis between Beauty on the one hand and Instability on the other.⁷ Such a reading ties the poem in with so many other meditations by Camões, and supports his being considered as a Platonic poet, where his language is ultimately directed toward the abstraction or Idea.⁸

Much of Camões' poetry easily supports this classification. However, with “Descalça vai pera a fonte,” such a characterization is still possible, but not nearly so easy. The difficulty of seeing the purely conceptual code becomes apparent when we notice that the poem's language is almost totally devoid of abstractions. The only abstract nouns are in lines 15 and 16—“graça” and “fermosura.” All the rest are concrete—“fonte,” “verdura,” “cabeça,” “pote,” “testo,” “mãos,” “prata,” “cinta,” “escarlata”—the list is too long to include in its entirety. This concrete language encourages the perception of a simple picture, rather than an idea. That picture is a moving picture, its movement being placed in the foreground by the thrice-repeated “vai.” If we gave way to the urge that seems to be encouraged to make “fermosa” and “não segura” modifiers of “vai,” the movement is further thrust into the foreground. The redondilha thus encourages a hesitation, or an insecurity between abstract ideas and concrete, sensual imagery of movement and form.

Considering that imagery in itself, there is a sort of instability created between fineness and coarseness, elegance and plainness. On the one hand Lianor has a peasant-like appearance. She goes barefoot. On her head she carries a pot. In her hands she holds a “testo,” the lid to her pot. She wears a “Sainho de chamalote,” a short skirt of coarse camel hair, and a “vasquinha de cote,” an everyday pleated dress. But on the other hand, she seems more like a princess. She has “mãos de prata,” “cabelos de ouro entrançado,” and is “Mais branca que a neve pura”—all images hardly characteristic of a peasant. She wears a “cinta de fina escarlata,” and a “Fita de cor de encarnado”—both expensive sorts of adornments. This imagery is uncertain. It encourages us to waver in our perception between elegance and non-elegance.

We are perhaps reminded of the rather ambiguous psychology of arcadianism, which would persuade aristocrats to masquerade as humble shepherds. The use of verse in redondilhas and the survival of medieval vilancetes in the time of Camões are probably manifestations of the same ambivalent frame of mind, where sophisticated, humanistic poets hearkened back to the more ingenuous poetic forms of the Middle Ages.

Another impression of instability exists in the interplay between the poem's meter and its cadence. Meter is a matter of numbers—the number of syllables per line—while cadence is a matter of placement of stress within the line. In the seven-syllable line in Portuguese, there is one obligatory point of stress—the last counted syllable. Because this point of stress occurs uniformly on the seventh metrical count in the line, there is a tendency to confuse metrical perception and rhythmic perception at the end of the line. Syllable seven occurs simultaneously with a constant stress; therefore, on syllable seven, number and intensity of volume are tightly fused. The seven-syllable line is, incidentally, the longest line in Portuguese versification with only one obligatory stress point.⁹ This leaves plenty of room for other stresses within the line to fall where they may. The non-correspondence of accents at the beginning and middle of the line combats the correspondence of accents at the end of the line. For example, in the mote, we have accents on syllables 2, 4, 5, and 7 in line one, on syllables 3, 4 and 7 in line two, and on syllables 1, 3, 5, and 7 in line three. The stress correspondence on syllable seven gives the impression of security and regularity; the lack of stress correspondence anywhere else—particularly, it seems, at the beginning of the line—creates the impression of insecurity. This phenomenon is of course not peculiar to “Descalça vai pera a fonte.”¹⁰ While it may be most flagrant in the redondilha maior, it can be seen in practically all poetry. What is peculiar to this poem is that the natural insecurity of the reader's response to meter versus cadence is in a way suggested by the image of Lianor's insecure walking.

A final point of insecurity to be mentioned is that of the poem's sound versus its sense. The principle of repetition was mentioned previously as a way of placing certain elements into the foreground of our perception. In poetry this very often happens on the level of sound through devices like rhyme, assonance, and alliteration. The repetition of these indivisible units of sound, or phonemes, calls our attention to them. Of course, phonemes have no meaning. Therefore, the perception of conspicuous phonemes, instead of the meaningful morphemes which are composed of these phonemes, is potentially quite challenging to our perception of the poem's words as symbolic transmitters of meaning. Phonemes tend to vie with morphemes. If referential meaning is to remain preeminent, we must therefore suppress phonemic repetition. Either we use prose, where phonemic as well as accentual repetition is not in the foreground, or we confine phonemic repetition to certain places in our poem—places like the end of the line. Repeated figures of sound are obviously a feature of the end-rhyming “Descalça vai pera a fonte.” The play of phonemes, however, goes far beyond the well-contained end rhymes. In the mote, for example, we notice an assonance of pretonic and posttonic vowels in the words “Descalça,” “verdura,” “fermosa,” and “segura.” This assonance is featured in the final line of each volta as well, with the words “fermosa” and “segura.” In the mote, we have an obvious alliteration of voiced labio-dental fricative in “vai,” “verdura,” and “vai.” Including unvoiced labiodental fricatives, we may add “fonte” and “fermosa” to a group of approximately alliterating elements. We have both assonance and alliteration in the elements “pera a” and “pela.”

In the first volta, there is an impure assonance between “Leva” and “cabeça.” The phonemes /es/ are repeated in “cabeça” and “testo.” We have a repeated stressed nasal vowel, /I/, in the words “Cinta,” “fina,” “Sainho,” and “vasquinha.”

In the second volta there is a repetition of approximately equivalent /o/ sounds in “touca,” “ouro,” and “cor,” and then /c/ sounds in “Descobre” and “Chove.” The rhyming words “entrançado” and “encarnado” take equivalence of sound far beyond the requirements of end rhyme, repeating at least approximately nearly every constituent sound: /ẽ;rã;adu/, /ẽ;arn;adu/. There is dense repetition of /a/ in “a touca a garganta,” “nela graça tanta,” and “dá graça à.” And finally, we observe that the repetition of “graça” in lines 15 and 16, and “fermosa” and “fermosura” in 16 and 17, involves thrusting pure sound into the foreground of our perception. In short, we can say that the sound play in “Descalça vai pera a fonte” goes far beyond the obvious end rhymes and weaves a rather dense fabric of interrelated sounds for the entire poem. When pure sound is thus highlighted, we are tempted to perceive a poem more as a non-referential piece of music than as a play of ideas or even images.¹¹ While this “hesitation between sound and sense,” as it was called by Valéry,¹² is endemic to some extent in the perception of most poetry, it is especially encouraged in this piece by Camões, since hesitation is the ruling principle on so many other levels as well.

The insecurity of sound versus sense, and of regular meter versus irregular cadence are features of much poetic language and can hardly be said to be properties of this poem alone. What is remarkable about Camões' poem is that it ties these near universal poetic insecurities with the particular insecurities mentioned—an ambiguity between conceptualization and concrete sensual experience, an ambiguity in the imagery between coarseness and elegance, and a syntactic ambiguity where modifiers seem to work in different directions. This is all masterfully embodied in the image of the barefoot Lianor in her tentative walk through the greenery. She seems, like the reader, to be divided in her attention. Does she concentrate on the pot on her head and risk striking a stone or sharp stick with her foot, or does she direct her attention downward and risk dropping the pot? The insecurity in itself is what is apt to make her walk an intense experience in which she must perceive normally unnoticed processes as if she were performing them for the first time. The fragility of Lianor's walk is representative of the insecurity that functions on various levels in the poem—ambivalence that forces in us a defamiliarized perception of language as an original experience. What is said of Lianor's walk can also be said of “Descalça vai pera a fonte” as a poetic experience: “Vai fermosa, e não segura.”

Notes

1. The general concept of using artistic devices to force certain components of language into the foreground of our attention (“foregrounding”) is borrowed from Mukařovský, but the specific devices mentioned in this paper do not necessarily come from his theory. See Jan Mukařovský, “Standard Language and Poetic Language,” in Paul L. Garvin, ed. and tr., A Praque School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1964), 19-22.

2. Luís de Camões, Obras completas, vol. 1 (Lisboa: Livraria Sá Costa, 1946), 154. We must assume Camões to be the author of this poem, though there is a lack of definitive proof that this is the case. See Jorge de Sena, A estrutura de Os Lusíadas e outros estudos camonianos e de poesia peninsular do século XVI (Lisboa: Portugália, n.d.), 271, 275-77.

3. Artur de Almeida Torres, Moderna gramática expositiva da língua portuguesa, rev. ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Fundo de Cultura, 1973), 218. For examples of some feminine and plural adjectival forms used as adverbs, see Augusto Epiphânio da Silva Dias, Syntaxe histórica portuguesa, 2nd ed. (Lisboa: Livraria Clássica, 1933), 65-66.

4. Mukařovský, 19.

5. Victor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique,” in Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, tr. and ed., Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1965), 11-24.

6. See Roman Jakobson's definition of poetic language as reiterative figures of sound in sequence, “Linguistics and Poetics,” in Thomas Sebeok, ed., Style and Language (n.p.: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Wiley and Sons, 1960), 358-59.

7. See, for example, Massaud Moisés' reading of the poem in A literatura portuguesa através dos textos (São Paulo: Editora Cultrix, 1968), 74-75.

8. Moisés, 79-80.

9. Napoleão Mendes de Almeida, Gramática metódica da língua portuguesa, 25th ed. (São Paulo: Edição Saraiva, 1975), 539-40.

10. A general discussion of poetry's approximate regularity is found in Jean Cohen, Estructura del lenguaje poético, tr. Martín Blanco Alvarez (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1974), 89-93.

11. Cohen, 87.

12. Paul Valéry, The Art of Poetry (New York: Bollingen Series 45, 1958), cited by Jakobson, 367.