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TASSO, TORQUATO (1544-1595)
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See also:TASSO, TORQUATO (1544-1595) , See also:Italian poet, was the son of Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569), a nobleman of See also:Bergamo, and his wife Porzia de' See also:Rossi. He was See also:born at See also:Sorrento on the irth of See also: Her See also:husband was firmly convinced that she had been poisoned by her See also:brother with the See also:object of getting See also:control over her See also:property. As it subsequently happened, Porzia's See also:estate never descended to her son; and the daughter Cornelia married below her See also:birth, at the instigation of her maternal relatives. Tasso's father was a poet by predilectionand a professional courtier. When, therefore, an opening at the See also:court of See also:Urbino offered in 1557, Bernardo Tasso gladly accepted it. The See also:young Torquato, a handsome and brilliant lad, became the See also:companion in See also:sports and studies of See also:Francesco Maria della Rovere, See also:heir to the dukedom of Urbino. At Urbino a society of cultivated men pursued the aesthetical and See also:literary studies which were then in See also:vogue. Bernardo Tasso read cantos of his Amadigi to the duchess and her ladies, or discussed the merits of See also:Homer and See also:Virgil, Trissino and See also:Ariosto, with the See also:duke's librarians and secretaries. Torquato See also:grew up in an See also:atmosphere of refined luxury and somewhat pedantic See also:criticism, both of which gave a permanent See also:tone to his See also:character. At See also:Venice, whither his father went to superintend the See also:printing of the Amadigi (1560), these influences continued. He found himself the pet and See also:prodigy of a distinguished literary circle. But Bernardo had suffered in his own career so seriously from addiction to the See also:Muses and a prince that he now determined on a lucrative profession for his son. Torquato was sent to study See also:law at See also:Padua. Instead of applying himself to law, the young See also:man bestowed all his See also:attention upon See also:philosophy and See also:poetry. Before the end of 1562 he had produced a narrative poem called Rinaldo, which was meant to combine the regularity of the Virgilian with the attractions of the romantic epic. In the attainment of this object, and in all the See also:minor qualities of See also:style and handling, Rinaldo showed such marked originality that its author was proclaimed the most promising poet of his See also:time. The flattered father allowed it to be printed; and, after a See also:short See also:period of study at See also:Bologna, he consented to his son's entering the service of See also:Cardinal See also:Luigi d'See also:Este. In 1565, then, Torquato for the first time set See also:foot in that See also:castle at See also:Ferrara which was destined for him to be the See also:scene of so many glories, and such cruel sufferings. After the publication of Rinaldo he had expressed his views upon the epic in some Discourses on the See also:Art of Poetry, which committed him to a distinct theory and gained for him the additional celebrity of a philosophical critic. The age was nothing if not See also:critical; but it may be esteemed a misfortune for the future author of the Gerusalemme that he should have started with pronounced opinions upon art. Essentially a poet of impulse and See also:instinct, he was hampered in See also:production by his own rules. The five years between 1565 and 1570 seem to have been the happiest of Tasso's See also:life, although his father's See also:death in 1569 caused his affectionate nature profound See also:pain. Young, See also:hand-some, accomplished in all the exercises of a well-bred See also:gentleman, accustomed to the society of the great and learned, illustrious by his published See also:works in See also:verse and See also:prose, he became the idol of the most brilliant court in See also:Italy. The princesses Lucrezia and Leonora d'Este, both unmarried, both his seniors by about ten years, took him under their See also:protection. He was admitted to their familiarity, and there is some See also:reason to think that neither of them was indifferent to him personally. Of the celebrated See also:story of his love for Leonora this is not the See also:place to speak. It is enough at See also:present to observe that he owed much to the See also:constant kindness of both sisters. In 1570 he travelled to See also:Paris with the cardinal. Frankness of speech and a certain habitual want of tact caused a disagreement with his worldly patron. He See also:left See also:France next See also:year, and took service under Duke Alfonso II. of Ferrara. The most important events in Tasso's See also:biography during the following four years are the publication of the Aminta in 1573 and the completion of the Gerusalemme Liberata in 1574. The Aminta is a See also:pastoral See also:drama of very See also:simple See also:plot, but of exquisite lyrical See also:charm. It appeared at the critical moment when See also:modern See also:music, under See also:Palestrina's impulse, was becoming the See also:main art of Italy. The honeyed melodies and sensuous See also:melancholy of Aminta exactly suited and interpreted the spirit of its age. We may regard it as the most decisively important of Tasso's compositions, for its See also:influence, in See also:opera and See also:cantata, was See also:felt through two successive centuries. The Gerusalemme Liberata occupies a larger space in the See also:history of See also:European literature, and is a more considerable See also:work. Yet the commanding qualities of this epic poem, those which revealed Tasso's individuality, and which made it immediately pass into the See also:rank of See also:classics, beloved by the See also:people no less than by persons of culture, are akin to the lyrical See also:graces of Aminta. It was finished in Tasso's See also:thirty-first year; and when the MS. See also:lay before him the best See also:part of his life was over, his best work had been already accomplished. Troubles immediately began to gather See also:round him. Instead of having the courage to obey his own instinct, and to publish the Gerusalemme as he had conceived it, he yielded to the critical scrupulosity which formed a secondary feature of his character. The poem was sent in See also:manuscript to several literary men of See also:eminence, Tasso expressing his willingness to hear their strictures and to adopt their suggestions unless he could convert them to his own views. The result was that each of these candid See also:friends, while expressing in general high admiration for the epic, took some exception to its plot, its See also:title, its moral tone, its episodes or its diction, in detail. One wished it to be more regularly classical; another wanted more See also:romance. One hinted that the See also:Inquisition would not tolerate its supernatural machinery; another demanded the excision of its most charming passages—the loves of Armida, Clorinda and Erminia. Tasso had to defend himself against all these ineptitudes and pedantries, and to accommodate his practice to the theories he had rashly expressed. As in the Rinaldo, so also in the See also:Jerusalem Delivered, he aimed at ennobling the Italian epic style by pre-serving strict unity of plot and heightening poetic diction. He See also:chose Virgil for his See also:model, took the first crusade for subject, infused the fervour of See also:religion into his conception of the See also:hero See also:Godfrey. But his own natural See also:bias was for romance. In spite of the poet's ingenuity and See also:industry the stately main theme evinced less spontaneity of See also:genius than the romantic episodes with which, as also in Rinaldo, he adorned it. Godfrey, a mixture of pious See also:Aeneas and Tridentine Catholicism, is not the real hero of the Gerusalemme. Fiery and passionate Rinaldo, Ruggiero, melancholy impulsive Tancredi, and the chivalrous See also:Saracens with whom they clash in love and See also:war, See also:divide our See also:interest and divert it from Goffredo. On Armida, beautiful See also:witch, sent forth by the infernal See also:senate to sow discord in the See also:Christian See also:camp, turns the See also:action of the epic. She is converted to the true faith by her See also:adoration for a crusading See also:knight, and quits the scene with a phrase of the Virgin See also:Mary on her lips. Brave Clorinda, donning See also:armour like Marfisa, fighting in See also:duel with her devoted See also:lover, and receiving See also:baptism from his hands in her pathetic death; Erminia seeking See also:refuge in the shepherd's hut—these lovely See also:pagan See also:women, so touching in their sorrows, so romantic in their adventures, so See also:tender in their emotions, See also:rivet our attention, while we skip the battles, religious ceremonies, conclaves and stratagems of the See also:campaign. The truth is that Tasso's great invention as an artist was the poetry of sentiment. Sentiment, not sentimentality, gives value to what is immortal in the Gerusalemme. It was a new thing in the 16th See also:century, something concordant with a growing feeling for woman and with the ascendant art of music. This sentiment, refined, See also:noble, natural, steeped in melancholy, exquisitely graceful, pathetically touching, breathes throughout the episodes of the Gerusalemme, finds metrical expression in the languishing See also:cadence of its mellifluous verse, and sustains the ideal life of those seductive heroines whose names were See also:familiar as See also:house-hold words to all See also:Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. i;. Tasso's self-chosen critics were not men to admit what the public has since accepted as incontrovertible. They vaguely felt that a great and beautiful romantic poem was imbedded in a dull and not very correct epic. In their uneasiness they suggested every course but the right one, which was to publish the Gerusalemme without further dispute. Tasso, already over-worked by his precocious studies, by exciting court-life and exhausting literary industry, now grew almost mad with worry. His See also:health began to fail him. He complained of headache, suffered from malarious fevers, and wished to leave Ferrara. The Gerusalemme was laid in manuscript upon a shelf. He opened negotiations with the court of See also:Florence for an See also:exchange of service. This irritated the duke of Ferrara. Alfonso hated nothing more than his courtiers leaving him for a See also:rival duchy. He thought, moreover, that, if Tasso were allowed to go, the See also:Medici would get the coveted See also:dedication of that already famous epic. Therefore he See also:bore with the poet's humours, and so contrived that the latter should have no excuse for quitting Ferrara. Meanwhile, through the years 1575, 1576, 1577, Tasso's health grew worse. See also:Jealousy inspired the courtiers to calumniate and insult him. His irritable and suspicious See also:temper, vain and sensitive to slights, rendered him only too easy a See also:prey to their malevolence. He became the subject of delusions,—thought that his servants betrayed his confidence, fancied he had been denounced to the Inquisition, expected daily to be poisoned. In the autumn of 1576 he quarrelled with a Ferrarese gentleman, Maddalo, who had talked too freely about some love affair; in the summer of 1577 he See also:drew his See also:knife upon a servant in the presence of Lucrezia d'Este, duchess of Urbino. For this excess he was arrested; but the duke released him, and took him for See also:change of See also:air to his See also:country seat of Belriguardo. What happened there is not known. Some biographers have surmised that a compromising liaison with Leonora d'Este came to See also:light, and that Tasso agreed to feign madness in See also:order to See also:cover her See also:honour. But of this there is no See also:proof. It is only certain that from Belriguardo he returned to a Franciscan See also:convent at Ferrara, for the See also:express purpose of attending to his health. There the dread of being murdered by the duke took See also:firm hold on his mind. He escaped at the end of See also:July, disguised himself as a See also:peasant, and went on foot to his sister at Sorrento. The truth seems to be that Tasso, after the beginning of 1575, became the victim of a See also:mental malady, which, without amounting to actual See also:insanity, rendered him fantastical and insupportable, a misery to himself and a cause of anxiety to his patrons. There is no See also:evidence whatsoever that this state of things was due to an overwhelming See also:passion for Leonora. The duke, instead of acting like a See also:tyrant, showed considerable forbearance. He was a rigid and not sympathetic man, as egotistical as a princeling of that age was wont to be. But to Tasso he was never cruel—hard and unintelligent perhaps, but far from being that See also:monster of ferocity which has been painted. The subsequent history of his connexion with the poet, over which we may pass rapidly, will corroborate this view. While at Sorrento, Tasso hankered after Ferrara. The court-made man could not breathe freely outside its charmed circle. He wrote humbly requesting to be taken back. Alfonso consented, provided Tasso would agree to undergo a medical course of treatment for his melancholy. When he returned, which he did with alacrity under those conditions, he was well received by the ducal See also:family. All might have gone well if his old maladies had not revived. Scene followed scene of irritability, moodiness, suspicion, wounded vanity and violent outbursts. In the summer of 1578 he ran away again; travelled through See also:Mantua, Padua, Venice, Urbino, See also:Lombardy. In See also:September he reached the See also:gates of See also:Turin on foot, and was courteously entertained by the duke of See also:Savoy. Wherever he went, " wandering like the See also:world's rejected See also:guest," he met with the honour due to his illustrious name. Great folk opened their houses to him gladly, partly in compassion, partly in admiration of his genius. But he soon wearied of their society, and wore their kindness out by his querulous peevishness. It seemed, moreover, that life was intolerable to him outside Ferrara. Accordingly he once more opened negotiations with the duke; and in See also:February 1579 he again set foot in the castle. Alfonso was about to See also:contract his third See also:marriage, this time with a princess of the house of Mantua. He had no See also:children; and, unless he got an heir, there was a See also:probability that his state would fall, as it did subsequently, to the See also:Holy See. The nuptial festivals, on the See also:eve of which Tasso arrived, were not therefore the occasion of great rejoicing to the elderly bridegroom. As a forlorn See also:hope he had to wed a third wife; but his See also:heart was not engaged and his expectations were far from sanguine. Tasso, preoccupied as always with his own sorrows and his own sense of dignity, made no See also:allowance for the troubles of his See also:master. Rooms below his rank, he thought, had been assigned him. The princesses did not want to see him. The duke was engaged. Without exercising See also:common See also:patience, or giving his old friends the benefit of a doubt, he See also:broke into terms of open abuse, behaved like a lunatic, and was sent off without ceremony to the madhouse of St See also:Anna. This happened in March 1579; and there he remained until July 1586. Duke Alfonso's See also:long-sufferance at last had given way. He firmly believed that Tasso was insane, and he felt that if he were so St Anna was the safest place for him. Tasso had put himself in the wrong by his intemperate conduct, but far more by that incomprehensible yearning after the Ferrarese court which made him return to it again and yet again. It would be pleasant to assume that an unconquerable love for Leonora led him back. Unfortunately, there is no proof of this. His relations to her sister Lucrezia were not less intimate and affectionate than to Leonora. The lyrics he addressed to numerous ladies are not less respectful and less passionate than those which See also:bear her name. Had he compromised her honour, the duke would certainly have had him murdered. See also:Custom demanded this See also:retaliation, and society approved of it. If therefore Tasso really cherished a See also:secret lifelong devotion to Leonora, it remains buried in impenetrable See also:mystery. He did certainly not behave like a loyal lover, for both when he returned to Ferrara in 1578 and in 1579 he showed no capacity for curbing his peevish humours in the hope of See also:access to her society. It was no doubt very irksome for a man of Tasso's See also:pleasure-loving, restless and self-conscious spirit to be kept for more than seven years in confinement. Yet we must weigh the facts of the See also:case rather than the fancies which have been indulged regarding them. After the first few months of his incarceration he obtained spacious apartments, received the visits of friends, went abroad attended by responsible persons of his acquaintance, and corresponded freely with whomsoever he chose to address. The letters written from St Anna to the princes and cities of Italy, to warm well-wishers, and to men of the highest reputation in the world of art and learning, See also:form our most valuable source of See also:information, not only on his then See also:condition, but also on his temperament at large. It is singular that he spoke always respectfully, even affectionately, of the duke. Some critics have attempted to make it appear that he was hypocritically kissing the hand which had chastised him, with the view of being released from See also:prison. But no one who has impartially considered the whole tone and See also:tenor of his epistles will adopt this See also:opinion. What emerges clearly from them is that he laboured under a serious mental disease, and that he was conscious of it. Meanwhile he occupied his uneasy leisure with copious compositions. The See also:mass of his prose dialogues on philosophical and ethical themes, which is very considerable, we owe to the years of imprisonment in St Anna. Except for occasional odes or sonnets—some written at See also:request and only rhetorically interesting, a few inspired by his keen sense of suffering and therefore poignant—he neglected poetry. But everything which See also:fell from his See also:pen during this period was carefully pre-served by the Italians, who, while they regarded him as a lunatic, somewhat illogically scrambled for the very offscourings of his wit. Nor can it be said that society was wrong. Tasso had proved himself an impracticable human being; but he remained a man of genius, the most interesting See also:personality in Italy. Long ago his papers had been sequestered. Now, in the year 158o, he heard that part of the Gerusalemme was being published without his permission and without his corrections. Next year the whole poem was given to the world, and in the following six months seven See also:editions issued from the See also:press. The prisoner of St Anna had no control over his editors; and from the masterpiece which placed him on the level of See also:Petrarch and Ariosto he never derived one See also:penny of pecuniary profit. A rival poet at the court of Ferrara undertook to revise and -e-edit his lyrics in 1582. This was Battista See also:Guarini; and Tasso, in his See also:cell, had to allow odes and sonnets, poems of See also:personal feeling, occasional pieces of compliment, to be collected and emended, without lifting a See also:voice in the See also:matter. A fewyears later, in 1585, two Florentine pedants of the Della Crusca See also:academy declared war against the Gerusalemme. They loaded it with insults, which seem to those who read their See also:pamphlets now See also:mere parodies of criticism. Yet Tasso felt See also:bound to reply; and he did so with a moderation and urbanity which prove him to have been not only in full See also:possession of his reasoning faculties, but a gentleman of noble See also:manners also. Certainly the history of Tasso's incarceration at St Anna is one to make us pause and wonder. The man, like See also:Hamlet, was distraught through See also:ill-See also:accommodation to his circumstances and his age; See also:brain-sick he was undoubtedly; and this is the duke of Ferrara's See also:justification for the treatment he endured. In the prison he bore himself pathetically, peevishly, but never ignobly. He showed a singular indifference to the See also:fate of his great poem, a rare magnanimity in dealing with its detractors. His own personal See also:distress, that terrible malaise of imperfect insanity, absorbed him. What remained over, untouched by the malady, unoppressed by his consciousness thereof, displayed a sweet and gravely-toned humanity. The oddest thing about his life in prison is that he was always trying to place his two nephews, the sons of his sister Cornelia, in court-service. One of them he attached to the duke of Mantua, the other to the duke of See also:Parma. After all his father's and his own lessons of life, he had not learned that the court was to be shunned like See also:Circe by an honest man. In estimating Duke Alfonso's See also:share of blame, this wilful idealization of the court by Tasso must be taken into See also:account. That man is not a tyrant's victim who moves See also:heaven and See also:earth to place his sister's sons with tyrants. In 1586 Tasso left St Anna at the solicitation of Vincenzo See also:Gonzaga, prince of Mantua. He followed his young deliverer to the See also:city by the Mincio, basked awhile in See also:liberty and courtly pleasures, enjoyed a splendid reception from his paternal See also:town of Bergamo, and produced a meritorious tragedy called Torrismonde. But only a few months had passed when he grew discontented. Vincenzo Gonzaga, succeeding to his father's dukedom of Mantua, had scanty leisure to bestow upon the poet. Tasso felt neglected. In the autumn of 1587 we find him journeying through Bologna and See also:Loreto to Rome, and taking up his quarters there with an old friend, Scipione Gonzaga, now See also:patriarch of Jerusalem. Next year he wandered off to Naples, where he wrote a dull poem on See also:Monte Oliveto. In 1589 he returned to Rome, and took up his quarters again with the patriarch of Jerusalem. The servants found him insufferable, and turned him out of doors. He fell ill, and went to a See also:hospital. The patriarch in 1590 again received him. But Tasso's restless spirit drove him forth to Florence. The Florentines said, " Actum est de eo." Rome once more, then Mantua, then Florence, then Rome, then Naples, then Rome, then Naples—such is the weary See also:record of the years 1590-94. We have to study a veritable Odyssey of malady, indigence and misfortune. To Tasso everything came amiss. He had the palaces of princes, cardinals, patriarchs, See also:nay popes, always open to him. Yet he could See also:rest in none. Gradually, in spite of all veneration for the sacer vales, he made himself the laughing-stock and bore of Italy. His health grew ever feebler and his genius dimmer. In 1592 he gave to the public a revised version of the Gerusalemme. It was called the Gerusalemme Conquistata. All that made the poem of his See also:early manhood charming he rigidly erased. The versification was degraded; the heavier elements of the plot underwent a dull rhetorical development. During the same year a prosaic See also:composition in Italian See also:blank verse, called Le Sette Giornate, saw the light. Nobody reads it now. We only mention it as one of Tasso's dotages—a dreary amplification of the first See also:chapter of See also:Genesis. It is singular that just in these years, when mental disorder, See also:physical weakness, and decay of See also:inspiration seemed dooming Tasso to oblivion, his old age was cheered with brighter rays of hope. See also:Clement VIII. ascended the papal See also:chair in 1592. He and his See also:nephew, Cardinal Aldobrandini of St Giorgio, deter-See also:mined to befriend our poet. In 1594 they invited him to Rome. There he was to assume the See also:crown of bays, as Petrarch had assumed it, on the Capitol. Worn out with illness, Tasso reached Rome in See also:November. The ceremony of his See also:coronation was deferred because Cardinal Aldobrandini had fallen ill. But the See also:pope assigned him a See also:pension; and, under the pressure of pontifical remonstrance, Prince See also:Avellino, who held Tasso's maternal estate, agreed to See also:discharge a portion of his claims by See also:payment of a yearly See also:rent-See also:charge. At no time since Tasso left St Anna had the heavens apparently so smiled upon him. Capitolian honours and See also:money were now at his disposal. Yet See also:fortune came too See also:late. Before the crown was worn or the See also:pensions paid he ascended to the convent of St Onofrio, on a stormy 1st of See also:April in 1595. Seeing a cardinal's See also:coach toil up the steep Trasteverine See also: A. S.) Taken altogether, the best See also:complete edition of Tasso's writings is that a& Rosini (See also:Pisa), in 33 vols. The prose works (in 2 vols., Floren, See also:Monnier, 1875) and the letters (in 5 vols., same publisher, 1853) were admirably edited by Cesare Guasti. This edition of Tasso's Letters forms by far the most valuable source for his biography. No student can, however, omit to use the romantic memoir attributed to Tasso's friend, Marchese Manso (printed in Rosini's edition of Tasso's works above cited), and the important Vita di Torquato Tasso by Serassi (Bergamo, 179o). See also Solerti's Life (1895), his editions of the Opere Minori in versi (1891 et seq.), and Gerusalemme (1895), and his bibliography, in the Rivista biblioteche e archivi (1895), on the occasion of the celebration of the tercentenary of Tasso's death. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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