The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

REVIEWS 433
adventure of epic proportions in the Portuguese story of their empire,
but Sa De Meneses misses it, one feels, in his ambition to propagandize.
The book gives us no real taste of any age or place. The characters
nowhere approacb the status of real personalities. Albuquerque himself
is so much of a cardboard archetype that he has no character whatsoever.
His emotions are god-like and fluctuate between universal beneficence
and righteous wrath. His words are all formulas, in fact the whole epic
strikes one as a kind of fill-in-the-blanks contrivance.
Knowlton tells us that the poem bas been faulted by literary
critics for its "historicity". Never having been to Southeast Asia
himself, Sa De Meneses relied on the accounts of Albuquerque and de
Barros. Disregarding one or two minor episodes, he followed his sources
with some fidelity, at least so far as the sequence of events was concerned.
However, one feels that the actors themselves have already recounted
their story more eloquently in ordinary prose than has Sa De Meneses in
this patchwork epic.
The Portuguese sea ventures of the sixteenth century were phenomenal
undertakings.
For one who bas been fascinated by Albuquerque's
Commentaries and other contemporary works, Sa De Meneses' account
is rather a bore. In the epic, the Portuguese actors speak only of
"honor", "religion" and ••fortune", and never of trade, spices and pillage.
The adventures of this small band of forceful men sailing (what were for
them) uncharted seas and conquering cities almost sight-unseen, is
impressive by itself and needs no romanticizing. All of the smoke
generated by Sa De Menesess' battle scenes is only steam. We never
smell tbe gun-powder, mucb less get a taste of the grape.
It is indeed unfortunate that Mr. Knowlton cbose this particular
work of Portuguese orientalia. The actual translation reads well and the
background chapters which introduce it are more fascinating than the
epic itself. The work is well turned out and it is really everything that
a good translation ought to be. One only wishes that Prof. Knowlton
had been attracted by a work more worthy of his manifest talents.
Chulalongkorn University
Carl A. Troclci