Torquato Tasso

“ Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of great merit, who [Pg iv] was for many years deprived of liberty, and subjected to severe trials and misfortunes by the jealousy and cruelty of his patron, the Duke of Ferrara. That master-piece of music, so justly admired and so much sung by the high and low throughout all Italy, had its origin in the wrongs of Tasso. An ardent love of humanity—a deep consciousness of the injustice of slavery—a heart full of sympathy for the oppressed, and a due appreciation of the blessings of freedom, has given birth to the poetry comprising this volume. ”

“ Torquato was the son of Bernardo Tasso, himself a poet of first rank in {Pg 97} his generation, and who has left works, both in prose and verse, to which posterity is yet willing to give honour; but which suffer more eclipse by proximity to the surpassing splendour of his son's, than might have been their lot had he appeared by himself, the single one of his race, who had proved how hard, and yet how possible, it is to climb
"The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar." ”

“ DANTE
9“Why keep you your eyes closed, Signor Torquato?” said a watcher at the death-bed of Tasso—one of those silly persons who ask silly questions, even under the most serious circumstances—“Why keep you your eyes closed?” “That they may grow accustomed to remain closed,” was the feeble reply. They have been closed to all mortal vision for three hundred years now, but in the pale, cold plaster of the accompanying mask his face is still seen as it was seen by the vast and sorrowing multitudes who lined the streets of Rome to look upon his triumphant funeral procession. ”

“ But the name which above all others Sorrento will cherish as her own, “so long as men shall read and eyes can see,” is that of the famous Italian poet, Torquato Tasso, whose interesting but melancholy life-story is closely associated with this, the town of his birth. Tasso is reckoned as the fourth greatest bard of Italy, ranking after Dante and Petrarch, and being esteemed on a level with rather than below his rival and contemporary, Ludovico Ariosto. ”

“ Those who saw him as he passed along the streets, would exclaim, "See! there is Tasso! That is the wonderful and unfortunate poet!"
It is useless minutely to trace his wanderings from Florence to Rome, from Rome to Mantua, and back again to Rome and Naples. At the latter place he dwelt in the palace of the Prince of Conca, where he composed a great part of the "Jerusalem Conquered." But having apprehended, not without reason, (p. 038) that the prince wished to possess himself of his manuscripts, Torquato left the palace to reside with his friend Manso. ”

“ Here Torquato read, but not at the law, and wrote his epic poem the Rinaldo—little to the satisfaction of his father, who, though a verse-writer himself, wished his son to qualify for a lucrative trade. But the son was resolved to be a poet, and not a lawyer, which decision brought with it the absolute necessity of finding a patron. The Cardinal Luigi d’Este introduced him to the Court of Ferrara. Tasso had already begun his Jerusalem Delivered and his play of Torrismondo, and had written his Discourses on Epic Poetry. ”

“ I grew up in poverty and exile."
Torquato Tasso lost Bernardo Tasso [171] at Ostiglia. Torquato has killed Bernardo as a poet; he has made him live as a father.
Drawn from obscurity by the publication of Rinaldo [172] , Tasso was summoned to Ferrara. He made his first appearance there amid the festivals on the occasion of the marriage [Pg 82] of Alphonsus II. with the Archduchess Barbara. He there met Leonora, Alphonsus' sister: love and misfortune ended in giving his genius all its beauty. ”

“ Her son Alfonso II succeeded to the throne of Ferrara in 1559. This was the duke whom Tasso made immortal. Just as Ariosto, during the reign of the first Alfonso and Lucretia, had celebrated the house of Este in a monumental poem, so Torquato Tasso now continued to do at the home of his descendant, Alfonso II. By a curious coincidence the two greatest epic poets of Italy were in the service of the same family. ”

“ The fate which condemned him for life to be a poet and a courtier like his father was sealed by this early entrance into princely palaces. At Urbino a society of cultivated men pursued the eesthetical and literary studies which were then in vogue. Bernardo Tasso read cantos of his Amadigi to the duchess and her ladies, or discussed the merits of Homer and Yirgil, Trissino and Ariosto, with the duke's librarians and secretaries, Torquato grew up in an atmosphere of refined luxury and somewhat pedantic criticism, both of which gave a permanent tone to his character. ”

“ Tasso in prison.
And Torquato conversed with a sun-beam. He re-entered the fatal city even as the bird flings itself into the jaws of the serpent that fascinates it. Disowned and spurned by the courtiers, taunted by the servants, he launched out into complaints, and Alphonsus ordered him to be locked up in a mad-house in the Hospital of Sant' Anna.
Then the poet wrote to one of his friends:
"Bowed down under the weight of my misfortunes, I have renounced all thoughts of glory ”

“ He next makes this assertion,—“the only things required in poetry are invention, imagery, pathos, and a display of every kind of knowledge.”276 Considered in this point of view, he admits Marino to be far inferior to Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Ariosto, and similar poets. But then Torquato Tasso is 285 scarcely a poet worth naming; for in Tasso’s poetry there is but little learning, little invention, and a common style of composition. Tasso is in his opinion a second Lucan, and nothing more; a historian indeed, but no poet. ”

“ Monsieur Tudesco, who at the moment was imbibing a glass of kümmel, pointed to his waistcoat of ticking.
"The misfortune is," he observed, "that I am garbed like a philosopher. How show myself in such a costume among elegant females? 'Tis a sad pity! for it would be an easy matter for me to pay my respects to an actress at an important theatre. I have translated the Gerusalemme Liberata, that masterpiece of Torquato Tasso's. I could propose to the great actress whom you love and who is worthy of your love, at least I hope so, a French adaptation of the Myrrha of the celebrated Alfieri. ”

“ That Prince having been deprived of his estates, and expelled from the kingdom of Naples by the court of Spain, Bernardo was involved in his proscription, and retired with him to Rome. Tarquato, then five years old, remained with his mother, who left Sorrento and went to reside with her family in Naples.
Bernardo Tasso having lost all hopes of ever returning to that capital, advised his wife to retire with his daughter into a nunnery, and to send Torquato to Rome. Our young poet suffered much in parting from his mother and sister ”

“ Throughout the last night a monk prayed by his side till the morning, when Tasso was heard to murmur, "In manus tuas, Domine," and then he died. The room in which he expired, April 25, 1595, contains his bust, crucifix, inkstand, autograph, a mask taken from his face after death, and other relics. The archives of S. Onofrio have this entry:
"Torquato Tasso, illustrious from his genius, died thus in our monastery of S. Onofrio. In April, 1595, he caused himself to be brought here that he might prepare for death with greater devotion and security, as he felt his end approaching. ”

“ In the following November the poet arrived at Rome, and was received with general applause. The pope himself overwhelmed him with praises, and one day said, "Torquato, I give you the laurel, that it may receive as much honor from you as it has conferred upon them who have worn it before you." To give to this solemnity greater splendor, it was delayed till April 25, 1595; but during the winter Tasso's health became worse. ”

“ The young poet in his distress sought the intervention of some of his father's literary friends, and through their mediation the destiny of Torquato Tasso and of Italian poetry was accomplished, and the poem of Rinaldo was given to the world through the renowned press of the Franceschi of Venice. ”

“ Torquato Tasso is the sole modern instance of the recurrence of the surname of this “Roman Father,” the northern Torquil being from an entirely different source, i.e. Thorgils (Thor’s pledge) . [66]
66. Pott; Michaelis; Camden; Diefenbach; Philological Society; Niebuhr; Butler; Dante; Arnold.
165 Section VIII.—Paullus and Magnus [small and large] . The precedence must be given to the less on account of its far greater dignity.
There can be no doubt that the cognomen Paullus, or Paulus, the contraction of Pauxillus, originated with one of the Æmilian gens, who was small in stature. ”

“ The fluctuating fortunes of the elder Tasso caused Torquato to visit successively Bergamo, the abode of his paternal relatives, and Pesaro, where his manners and intelligence made so favourable an impression, that the Duke of Pesaro chose him for companion to his son, then studying under the celebrated Corrado of Mantua. In 1559, he accompanied his father to Venice, and there perused the best Italian authors, especially Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The next year he went to the University of Padua, where, under Sperone Speroni, 150and Sigonio, he studied Aristotle and the critics ”

“ Contemporary conditions of society and thought rendered any attempt to do so futile. Italy had passed into a different stage of culture; and the representative poem of Tasso's epoch was imperatively forced to assume a different character. Its type already existed in the Amadigi, though Bernardo Tasso had not the genius to disengage it clearly, or to render it attractive. How Torquato, while still a student in his teens at Padua, attacked the problem of narrative poetry, appears distinctly in his preface to Rinaldo. ”

“ The same fault of frigidity and overmuch refinement of thought, though variously modified, applies to many of his sonnets; others are free from all affectation, and of singular beauty. His odes are more uniformly excellent. In the last of them, Garcilasso shows some approach to a sublimer height than he had yet aspired to; his lyre assumes in its tones somewhat of the fervid grandeur that was soon to be exhibited in the lyric poetry of Torquato Tasso. In this the shades are darker, the colours more burning, the thoughts, if I may so say, more gigantic than in any other of his poems whatever ”

“ Tasso's father was a poet by x^redilection and a professional courtier of some distinction. In those days an Italian gentleman of modest fortunes had no congenial sphere of society or occupation outside the courts of petty ecclesiastical and secular princes. When, therefore, an opening at the court of Urbino offered in 1557, Bernardo Tasso gladly accepted it. The young Torquato, a handsome and brilliant lad, became the companion in sports and studies of Prancesco Maria della Bov ere, heir to the dukedom of Urbino. ”

“ At length, in 1573, and in the twenty-ninth year of his age, Tasso found leisure, during a visit of the Duke's to Rome, to produce his Aminta; which he is said to have written in the course of two months; an expedition that has been much admired. The poet, however, probably thought nothing of it; for if the impulse was upon him, he might as well have done it in two months as in twenty. He enjoyed his work; it was one of feeling, rather than thought; and love is a quick traveller. At the return of the Duke, it was performed by his orders, and obtained the greatest applause. ”

“ An excellent, pleasant, and Philosophicall Controuersie, betweene the famous Tassi now liuing, the one Hercules the Philospher, the other Torquato the Poet. Done into English by R.T. Gentleman.’ In this work ‘The Declamation ... against Marriage or wedding of a Wife’ is by Ercole Tasso, the ‘Defence’ by Torquato Tasso. Copies are in the British Museum and in the Huth and Britwell collections. Mothing more from Tofte’s pen appeared until 1608, in which year was published ‘Aristo’s Satyres, in seuen famous Discourses ... ”

“ Tasso's, far surpassing all three, was the next, and has stood without a rival of Italian growth ever since, though it has had crowds of followers. In 1614, a collection had been made of them amounting to eighty; and in 1700, more than two hundred were to be seen in a person's possession at Rome. We speak rather from our own feelings, than from universal consent, when we say that the Aminta had no rival; for it soon met with one in the Pastor Fido of Battista Guarini, Tasso's contemporary and fellow-courtier. ”

“ Rinaldo followed them from place to place,
Till quite discomfit and dispersed they were.
That done, he stays, and all his knights recalls,
And scorns to strike his foe that flies or falls.
LVIII
Like as the wind stopped by some wood or hill,
Grows strong and fierce, tears boughs and trees in twain,
But with mild blasts, more temperate, gentle, still,
Blows through the ample field or spacious plain;
Against the rocks as sea-waves murmur shrill,
But silent pass amid the open main:
Rinaldo so, when none his force withstood,
Assuaged his fury, calmed his angry mood ”

“ Nessun val quanto Torquato;” sang the populace of Ferrara in honour of their illustrious Sorrentine guest, for the Ferrarese delighted in the handsome stranger who could in an emergency wield the sword as skilfully as he could ply his quill. Twice only however did Tasso revisit the city of his birth, and each return home was occasioned by deep tragedy. In 1577, wounded by the attacks of his literary rivals and humiliated by the Duke Alfonso’s discovery of his infatuation for the Princess Leonora d’Este, the unhappy poet travelled southward, reaching Sorrento in the disguise of a shepherd. ”