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Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) |
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The greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance, best remembered for his masterpiece La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1575). Milton ranked the work alongside The Iliad and The Aeneid. Tasso's hero was the leader of the first Crusade, Godfrey of Bouillon; the climax of the epic was the capture of the holy city. In the 1570s Tasso developed a persecution mania which led to legends about the restless, half-mad, and misunderstood author. He died a few days before he was due to be crowned as the king of poets by the Pope. Until the beginning of the 19th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe. The theme of Jerusalem Delivered has significance even today. Io, ch'altre volte fui nelle amorose Torquato Tasso was born in Sorrento. The family had branches all over Europe, notably the Taxis family in Germany. Tasso attended a Jesuit school in Naples, and was also educated at home by his father, Bernardo Tasso, himself a distinguished man of letters, a poet-courtier, who had been exiled from Naples and held posts here and there. Tasso continued his education in various Italian cities, notably in Urbino, where he studied at the court of Duke Guidobaldo II delle Rovere. His first major work, the narrative poem Rinaldo, came out when he was 18 years old. The work was dedicated to Cardinal d'Este. From 1560 to 1565 he studied law and philosophy at the universities of Padua and Bologna. Tasso was thrown out of Bologna. Supposedly he wrote satires against the professors and the students. One of Tasso's friends in Padua was Scipio Gorzaga, later a famous cardinal, whose help meant much to Tasso. For the Academy of the Ethereals Tasso wrote three essays on the heroic poem. In Ferrara he entered the service of Cardinal Luigi d'Este, and later his brother, Duke Alfonso II, as poet-in-residence. O heavenly Muse, that not with fading bays During this time Tasso wrote the pastoral drama Aminta (1573) for the d'Este sisters. It became extremely popular and was printed in 1581 without the permission of the author, who was at that time confined in a lunatic asylum. La Gerusalemme liberata was composed between the years 1559 and 1575. Tasso had left his first love in Padua, but he then fell in love with Lucrezia Bendidio, a singer, whose father was a Ferrarese nobleman. Tasso dedicated to her forty-two poems of Rime degli academici eterei (1567). Lucrezia later married a widower, Conte Paolo Macchiavelli. La Gerusalemme liberata depicts in 20 songs the First Crusade (1096-9) and the Crusaders siege of Jerusalem under the leadership of Godfrey of Boulogne. It portrayed both imaginary characters and real historical persons, among them the most interesting are heroes Rinaldo and Tancredi, and their Saracen ladies Armida and Clorinda. Models of the heroic epic were Homer and Virgil's Aeneid. Tasso's Aeneas was Godfrey, he is the "captain of a chosen band". The epic was constructed according to the theory of tragedy put forth by Aristotle in the Poetics. Its subject matter, a clash between cultures, had contemporary relevance – Pope Saint Pius V had called upon all Christians to join for a war against the Ottoman Empire. After finishing his masterwork, Tasso started to suffer from mental problems - his sensitive nature was racked by doubts about the critical and religious orthodoxy of his work and by suspicions of hostility toward him on the part of patrons and friends. Tasso had travelled with Cardinal d'Este to France, and when King Charles IX praised his work, he answered with an undiplomatic remark about toleration of Protestants at the court. According to stories, Tasso was so poor that he had to beg for money and he was dressed in the same clothes for a year. From this disastrous journey started Tasso's problems. He couldn't tolerate criticism, feared assassins, negotiated with the Medicis, who were the enemy of the house of Este, and attacked a servant with a knife. It has been also claimed that Tasso had an affair with Duke Alfonson's older sister, Leonora. For a period he lived with his sister Cornelia in Sorrento, leaving in Ferrara his books and papers and the manuscript of the Liberata. Tasso didn't stay long in one place. When Alfonso was getting married to Margherita Gonzaga, Tasso felt he had been ignored, and he shouted curses in public at the Este family. Finally he was declared insane. By order of the duke, whose patience was exhausted, beginning in 1579 Tasso spent seven years in the hospital of St. Anna, chained in solitary confinement, or according to some sources, he lived there like a country gentleman, having a bedroom and a study. Moreover, Tasso was granted furloughs, and he had all the books he needed. Though Tasso's physical health improved, his constant inner torment was his loss of honor. During this time he wrote a number of philosophical and moral dialogues, and was visited in the middle of his misery by Montaigne. Some of his sonnets Tasso addressed to his cats. Tasso never totally regained his sanity. It has been suggested that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
Tasso himself suspected that he was suffering from consumption and from
dropsy, but he also heard voices, had nightmares
and hallucinations, and he complained of the condition of his
urine. In 1586 Tasso was released into the care of the duke of Mantua,
on condition that he would leave Ferrara. At the same time he found
himself honored for his Jerusalem,
which had gained a huge popularity. Also a pirated edition of the poem appeared. In 1587 Tasso published, together with the Discorsi dell'arte poetica, which he had written between 1562 and 1565, a selection of his letters, written 1575-76. In this contribution to epic theory Tasso criticized Ariosto's Orlando furioso for its episodic narrative. A few years earlier Camillo Pellegrino had stated in his dialogue Il Carrafa o vero della epica poesia, that Gerusalemme liberata was in comparison to Ariosto's work a far superior epic poem. For the rest of his life, Tasso wandered in Italy from court to court, unhappy, paranoid, and poverty-stricken. To meet critical and ecclesiastical objections, he made numerous changes to Jerusalem Conquered. The d'Estes did not return his manuscript after he left Ferrara. Because of the numerous revisions and changes, there is no "definitive" version of the poem. Its sequel, Gerusalemme conquistata (1593), which expanded the poem's length by four books, was judged as a failure. In Apologia in difesa della Gerusalemme liberata Tasso defended his later version and attacked against accusations that there was too much magic and romance in Jerusalem Delivered. The public preferred the earlier version. Tasso's later writings include a tragedy, Il Re Torrismondo (1587), and a poem about creation, Le sette giornate del mondo creato
(1607), which was admired by John Milton. In a letter to Barezzo
Barrizi in May 1591 he hinted that his famous epic was only half of his
projected work. Perhaps collecting material for a new poem, he asked
friends to send copies of Dionysus of Hallicarnussus' History of Rome and Lucian's satirical novels. At Naples Tasso stayed for a period with the monks of Monte Oliveto, also the title of his unfinished religious poem. In 1594 he was invited to Rome by Pope Clement VIII to be crowned Italy's Poet Laureate. However, Tasso became seriously ill and died in Rome on April 25, 1595, before he could accept the honor. Among Tasso's other works are some 2 000 short poems, including sonnets and madrigals. He wrote letters, dialogues, and the theoretical restatement of ancient theories of poetry, Discorsi del poema eroico (1594). From the time of Edward Fairfax's translation into English of Jerusalem Delivered (1594, 1600), Tasso strongly influenced English poets. Spencer used Tasso's sonnets in many of his Amoretti, and Byron's The Lament of Tasso was based on the legend of Tasso's passion for Leonora d'Este. The French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) visualized scenes from the epic and Tasso's Discorsi inspired his theory of art. For further reading: Tasso and Milton: The Problem of Christian by Judith A. Kates (1984); Corneille, Tasso and Modern Poetics by A. Donald Sellstrom (1986); Gender and Genealogy in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata by Marilyn Migiel (1993); Three Renaissance Pastorals: Tasso, Guarini, Daniel, ed. by Elizabeth Story Donno, et al (1993); Torquato Tasso in Deutschland by Achim Aurnhammer (1995); The Romance Epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso: from Public Duty to Private Pleasure by Jo Ann Cavallo (2004) - Note: Goethe stated in his play Torquato Tasso (1790), that Tasso was imprisoned for daring to love Duke Alfonso's sister Leonora d'Este, but Angelo Solerti's biography of the poet (1895) corrected this myth. Donizzetti's opera (1833) was also based on the legend. Selected works:
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