The work of Barbosa du Bocage is enveloped in an aura of ephemeral yet persistent brilliance created by his conversation and dazzling powers of improvisation. This appears in the flood of songs, epigrams, satires, and brutal insults which flowed from his pen; it is further shown in a cycle of pornographic anecdotes, both authentic and apocryphal, which cluster around his half-legendary figure.
Background
Portuguese poet was born in Setúbal, Setubal on 17 September in 1766. In his fifteenth year he left school for military service, and within the next ten years he had served in both the army and navy, had dallied in Lisbon, done service in the Asiatic colonies, deserted, and roamed half across China and back to Lisbon, where he plunged into a bohemian life. Although he tragically squandered his brilliant talents, he became a literary figure of some note. As Elmano Sadino, he participated in the activities of the literary circle known as the Nova Arcádia, Arcadia, and here displayed his talents chiefly in improvisation and satire. In 1796, after the publication of his A pavorosa illusãoillusao du eternidade ("The Fearful Illusion of Eternity"), he was imprisoned by the police on charges of expressing impious and revolutionary views, but he was soon transferred from civil to religious custody. After his release, he made a dreary living doing translations. He died from a lingering illness on Dec. 21, 1805.
Career
Much of his poetry was a mere froth of verbal virtuosity; he can be charged with accepting uncritically the outworn conventional poetic symbols of which his epoch inherited, and beyond question a number of his love poems are nothing but amorous anecdotes. But, although he was profoundly conscious, without vanity, of emulating Camões,Camoes, he was a poet of undoubted excellence in his own right. Despite his disillusionment and melancholy over the impending dissolution of the world which the members of the ArcádiaArcadia foresaw, nevertheless his unquenchable poetic power could break through and fuse intense subjective emotion with gemlike perfection of form to create sonnets that rank among the finest in the Portuguese tongue.
