Bocage, Manuel Maria Barbosa du

▪ Portuguese poet

born Sept. 15, 1765, Setúbal, Port.

died Dec. 21, 1805, Lisbon

      Neoclassical Portuguese lyric poet who aspired to be a second Camões but who dissipated his energies in a stormy life.

      The son of a lawyer, Bocage left school at the age of 14 to join the army, then transferred to the navy at 16. At the Royal Navy Academy in Lisbon, he devoted his time to love affairs, poetry, and bohemianism. In 1786 he was sent, like his hero Camões, to India and also like him was disillusioned by the Orient. He deserted to Macau, returning to Lisbon in 1790. He then joined the New Arcadia, a literary society with vaguely egalitarian and libertarian sympathies, but his satires on his fellow members resulted in his expulsion, and a long verse war ensued, engaging most of the poets of Lisbon.

      In 1797 he was accused of propagating republicanism and atheism and was imprisoned. During his imprisonment he undertook translations of Virgil and Ovid. Translations provided him with a livelihood during the few years that he lived after his release. He also translated Torquato Tasso, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean Racine, and Voltaire.

      Bocage employed various verse forms, but he is at his best in the sonnet. Despite the Neoclassical framework of his poetry, his intensely personal accent, frequent violence of expression, and self-dramatizing obsession with fate and death anticipate Romanticism. His collected poems were published as Rimas, 3 vol. (1791, 1799, 1804).

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