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Torquato Tasso



 
 
Torquato Tasso (11 March 1544 – 25 April 1595) was an Italian
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
 poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
 of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered
Jerusalem Delivered

Jerusalem Delivered is an epic poem by the Italian literature Torquato Tasso which tells a largely fictionalized version of the First Crusade in which Christian knights, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, battle Muslims in order to raise the siege of Jerusalem ....
) (1580
1580 in literature

Events*Thomas Legge's Latin play about Richard III of England, Richardus Tertius, is acted by students at St John's College, Cambridge during March....
), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade
First Crusade

The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II with the primary goal of responding to the appeal from Byzantine Emperor Alexius I. The Emperor requested that western volunteers come to their aid and repel the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia, Modern day Turkey....
, during the siege of Jerusalem
Siege of Jerusalem (1099)

The Siege of Jerusalem took place from June 7 to July 15, 1099 during the First Crusade. The Crusaders stormed and captured the city from Fatimid Egypt....
. 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.

in Sorrento
Sorrento

Sorrento is the name of many cities and towns:*Sorrento, Italy*Sorrento, Florida, United States*Sorrento, Louisiana, United States*Sorrento, Maine, United States...
, he was the son of Bernardo Tasso
Bernardo Tasso

Bernardo Tasso , born in Bergamo, was an Italy courtier and poet.He was, for many years, secretary in the service of the prince of Salerno, and his wife Porzia de Rossi was closely connected with the most illustrious Naples families....
, a nobleman of Bergamo
Bergamo

Bergamo is a town in Lombardy, Italy, about 40km northeast of Milan. The commune is home to circa 117,000 inhabitants. It is served by the Orio al Serio Airport, which also serves the Province of Bergamo, and to a lesser extent Milan....
, and his wife Porzia de Rossi, a noblewoman from Tuscany
Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence.Tuscany is known for its landscapes and its artistic legacy....
.






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Torquato Tasso (11 March 1544 – 25 April 1595) was an Italian
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
 poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
 of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered
Jerusalem Delivered

Jerusalem Delivered is an epic poem by the Italian literature Torquato Tasso which tells a largely fictionalized version of the First Crusade in which Christian knights, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, battle Muslims in order to raise the siege of Jerusalem ....
) (1580
1580 in literature

Events*Thomas Legge's Latin play about Richard III of England, Richardus Tertius, is acted by students at St John's College, Cambridge during March....
), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade
First Crusade

The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II with the primary goal of responding to the appeal from Byzantine Emperor Alexius I. The Emperor requested that western volunteers come to their aid and repel the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia, Modern day Turkey....
, during the siege of Jerusalem
Siege of Jerusalem (1099)

The Siege of Jerusalem took place from June 7 to July 15, 1099 during the First Crusade. The Crusaders stormed and captured the city from Fatimid Egypt....
. 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.

Biography


Early life

Born in Sorrento
Sorrento

Sorrento is the name of many cities and towns:*Sorrento, Italy*Sorrento, Florida, United States*Sorrento, Louisiana, United States*Sorrento, Maine, United States...
, he was the son of Bernardo Tasso
Bernardo Tasso

Bernardo Tasso , born in Bergamo, was an Italy courtier and poet.He was, for many years, secretary in the service of the prince of Salerno, and his wife Porzia de Rossi was closely connected with the most illustrious Naples families....
, a nobleman of Bergamo
Bergamo

Bergamo is a town in Lombardy, Italy, about 40km northeast of Milan. The commune is home to circa 117,000 inhabitants. It is served by the Orio al Serio Airport, which also serves the Province of Bergamo, and to a lesser extent Milan....
, and his wife Porzia de Rossi, a noblewoman from Tuscany
Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence.Tuscany is known for its landscapes and its artistic legacy....
. The family had branches throughout Europe, notably the Taxis family of Germany.

His father had for many years been secretary in the service of Ferrante Sanseverino, prince of Salerno, and his mother was closely connected with the most illustrious Neapolitan
Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
 families. The prince of Salerno came into collision with the Spanish government of Naples, was outlawed, and was deprived of his hereditary fiefs. Tasso's father shared in this disaster of his patron. He was proclaimed a rebel to the state, together with his son Torquato, and his patrimony was sequestered. These things happened during the boy's childhood. In 1552 he was living with his mother and his only sister Cornelia at Naples, pursuing his education under the Jesuits, who had recently opened a school there. The precocity of intellect and the religious fervour of the boy attracted general admiration. At the age of eight he was already famous.

Soon after this date he joined his father, who then resided in great poverty, an exile and without occupation, in Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
. News reached them in 1556 that Porzia Tasso had died suddenly and mysteriously at Naples. Her husband was firmly convinced that she had been poisoned by her brother with the object of getting control over her property.

As it subsequently happened, Porzia's estate never descended to her son; and the daughter Cornelia married below her birth, at the instigation of her maternal relatives. Tasso's father was a poet by predilection and a professional courtier. Therefore, when an opening at the court of Urbino
Urbino

Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region in Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482....
 was offered in 1557, Bernardo Tasso gladly accepted it.

The young Torquato, a handsome and brilliant lad, became the companion in sports and studies of Francesco Maria della Rovere
Francesco Maria della Rovere

Francesco Maria della Rovere may refer to the following members of the Della Rovere dynasty:*Francesco Maria I della Rovere, duke of Urbino*Francesco Maria II della Rovere, duke of Urbino...
, heir to the duke of Urbino. At Urbino a society of cultivated men pursued the aesthetical and literary studies which were then in vogue. Bernardo Tasso read canto
Canto

The 'canto' is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic poetry. The word comes from Italian language, from the Latin cantus, meaning "song," and has a corollary in the Sanskrit , or "chapter." Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Valmiki's Ramayana , Dante Alighieri's The Divin...
s of his Amadigi to the duchess and her ladies, or discussed the merits of Homer
Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
 and Virgil
Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works?the Bucolics , the Georgics and the Aeneid?although several Appendix Vergiliana are also attributed to him....
, Trissino
Gian Giorgio Trissino

File:Vincenzo Catena Portrait of Gian Giorgio Trissino.jpgGian Giorgio Trissino was an Italy Renaissance Humanism, poet, dramatist, diplomat and grammarian....
 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.

At Venice
Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy, the capital city of the Italian regions Veneto, a population of 271,251 . Together with Padua, Italy, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area ....
, where his father went to superintend the printing of the Amadigi (1560), these influences continued. He found himself the pet and prodigy of a distinguished literary circle. But Bernardo had suffered in his own career so seriously from dependence on the Muses and the nobility that he now determined on a lucrative profession for his son. Torquato was sent to study law at Padua
Padua

Padua is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 ....
. Instead of applying himself to law, the young man bestowed all his attention upon philosophy
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
 and 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
Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation....
. In the attainment of this object, and in all the minor qualities of style and handling, Rinaldo showed such marked originality that its author was proclaimed the most promising poet of his time. The flattered father allowed it to be printed; and, after a short period of study at Bologna
Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, in the Po Valley , between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, exactly between the Reno River and the S?vena River....
, he consented to his son's entering the service of Cardinal Luigi d'Este
Luigi d'Este

Luigi Cardinal d'Este , of the house of Este, was the second of the five children of Ercole II d'Este, duchy of Modena, and Ren?e, daughter of Louis XII of France....
.

Castello Ferrara

France and Ferrara

In 1565, Tasso for the first time set foot in that castle at Ferrara
Ferrara

Ferrara is a city in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital city of the Province of Ferrara.It is situated 50 km north-northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream of the Po River, located 5 km north....
 which was destined for him to be the 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 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 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 instinct, he was hampered in production by his own rules.

The five years between 1565 and 1570 seem to have been the happiest of Tasso's life, although his father's death in 1569 caused his affectionate nature profound pain. Young, handsome, accomplished in all the exercises of a well-bred gentleman, accustomed to the society of the great and learned, illustrious by his published works in verse
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
 and prose, he became the idol of the most brilliant court in Italy. The princesses Lucrezia and Leonora d'Este, both unmarried, both his seniors by about ten years, took him under their protection. He was admitted to their familiarity. He owed much to the constant kindness of both sisters. In 1570 he travelled to Paris
Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
 with the cardinal.

Frankness of speech and a certain habitual want of tact caused a disagreement with his worldly patron. He left France next year, and took service under Duke Alfonso II of Ferrara. The most important events in Tasso's biography during the following four years are the publication of Aminta
Aminta

Aminta is a Play written by Torquato Tasso in 1573, represented during a garden party at the court of Ferrara. Both the actors and the public were noble persons living at the Court, who could understand subtle allusions the poet made to that style of life, in contrast with the life of shepherds, represented in an idyll way....
 in 1573 and the completion of Gerusalemme Liberata in 1574. Aminta is a pastoral drama of very simple plot, but of exquisite lyrical charm. It appeared at the moment when music, under Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italy composer of the Renaissance music. He was the most famous sixteenth-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition....
's impulse, was becoming the main art of Italy. The honeyed melodies and sensuous melancholy of Aminta exactly suited and interpreted the spirit of its age. Its influence, in opera
Opera

Opera is an Performing arts in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work which combines a text and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition....
 and cantata
Cantata

A cantata is a vocal music music composition with an musical instrument accompaniment and often containing more than one movement ....
, was felt through two successive centuries.

The Gerusalemme Liberata

The Gerusalemme Liberata occupies a larger space in the history of European literature, and is a more considerable work. Yet the commanding qualities of this epic poem, those which revealed Tasso's individuality, and which made it immediately pass into the rank of classics, beloved by the people no less than by persons of culture, are akin to the lyrical graces of Aminta
Aminta

Aminta is a Play written by Torquato Tasso in 1573, represented during a garden party at the court of Ferrara. Both the actors and the public were noble persons living at the Court, who could understand subtle allusions the poet made to that style of life, in contrast with the life of shepherds, represented in an idyll way....
.

Its hero was Godfrey of Bouillon
Godfrey of Bouillon

Godfrey of Bouillon was a medieval knight who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 until his death. He was the Lord of Bouillon, from which he took his byname, from 1076 and the Duke of Lower Lorraine from 1087....
, the leader of the first Crusade; the climax of the epic was the capture of the holy city.

It was finished in Tasso's thirty-first year; and when the manuscripts lay before him the best part of his life was over, his best work had been already accomplished.

Troubles immediately began to gather 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 manuscript to several literary men of 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 friends, while expressing in general high admiration for the epic, took some exception to its plot, its title, its moral tone, its episodes or its diction, in detail. One wished it to be more regularly classical; another wanted more romance. One hinted that the Inquisition
Inquisition

The term Inquisition can refer to any one of several institutions charged with trying and convicting Christian heresy within the Roman Catholic Church....
 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 Jerusalem Delivered, he aimed at ennobling the Italian epic style by preserving strict unity of plot and heightening poetic diction. He chose Virgil for his model, took the first crusade
First Crusade

The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II with the primary goal of responding to the appeal from Byzantine Emperor Alexius I. The Emperor requested that western volunteers come to their aid and repel the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia, Modern day Turkey....
 for subject, infused the fervour of religion into his conception of the hero Godfrey. But his natural bias was for romance.

In spite of the poet's ingenuity and industry the stately main theme evinced less spontaneity of genius than the romantic episodes with which he adorned it, as he had done in Rinaldo. Godfrey, a mixture of pious Aeneas
Aeneas

This article is about the Roman hero. For other uses, see Aeneas .In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Troy hero, the son of prince Anchises and the goddess Venus_....
 and Tridentine
Tridentine

The adjective Tridentine refers to any thing or person pertaining to the city of Trento, Italy .It is applied in particular to:*The Council of Trent, one of the ecumenical councils recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, held in that city in the 16th century, and to the teachings emphasized by it and the legislation which arose from it...
 Catholicism, is not the real hero of the Gerusalemme. Fiery and passionate Rinaldo, Ruggiero, melancholy impulsive Tancredi, and the chivalrous Saracens with whom they clash in love and war, divide the reader's interest and divert it from Goffredo.

The action of the epic turns on Armida
Armida

Armida is a beautiful enchantress in Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, who bewitched Rinaldo, one of the Crusaders, by her charms, as Circe did Odysseus, and who in turn, when the spell was broken, overpowered her by his love and persuaded her to become a Christian....
, the beautiful witch, sent forth by the infernal senate to sow discord in the Christian camp. She is converted to the true faith by her adoration for a crusading knight, and quits the scene with a phrase of the Virgin Mary on her lips. Brave Clorinda dons armour like Marfisa
Marfisa

Marfisa is a character in the Italian romantic Epic poetrys Orlando innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto....
, fighting in a duel with her devoted lover and receiving baptism from his hands at the time of her pathetic death; Erminia seeks refuge in the shepherds' hut. These lovely pagan women, so touching in their sorrows, so romantic in their adventures, so tender in their emotions, rivet the readers' attention, while the battles, religious ceremonies, conclaves and stratagems of the campaign are easily skipped. 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 century, something concordant with a growing feeling for woman and with the ascendant art of music. This sentiment, refined, noble, natural, steeped in melancholy, exquisitely graceful, pathetically touching, breathes throughout the episodes of the Gerusalemme, finds metrical expression in the languishing cadence
Cadence

Cadence may refer to:In music:*Cadence , a melodic configuration or series of chords marking the end of a phrase, section, or piece of music...
 of its mellifluous verse, and sustains the ideal life of those seductive heroines whose names were familiar as household words to all Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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 overworked by his precocious studies, by exciting court-life and exhausting literary industry, now grew almost mad with worry. His health began to fail him. He complained of headache, suffered from malarious
Malaria

Malaria is a Vector -borne infectious disease caused by protozoan parasites. It is widespread in Tropics and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa....
 fevers, and wished to leave Ferrara. The Gerusalemme was laid in manuscript upon a shelf. He opened negotiations with the court of Florence
Florence

Florence is the Capital city of the Italy Regions of Italy of Tuscany and of the provinces of Italy Province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany and has a population of 364,779 ....
 for an exchange of service. This irritated the duke of Ferrara. Alfonso hated nothing more than to see courtiers leave him for a rival duchy.

Difficult relationships in the Court of Ferrara

Alfonso thought, moreover, that, if Tasso were allowed to go, the Medici
Medici

The M?dici family was a powerful and influential Florence family from the 14th to 18th century. The family had three popes , numerous rulers of Florence and later members of the French and English royalty....
 would get the coveted dedication of that already famous epic. Therefore he 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 and 1577, Tasso's health grew worse.

Jealousy inspired the courtiers to malign and insult him. His irritable and suspicious temper, vain and sensitive to slights, rendered him only too easy a prey to their malevolence.

In the 1570s Tasso developed a persecution mania which led to legends about the restless, half-mad, and misunderstood author.

He became consumed by thoughts that his servants betrayed his confidence, fancied he had been denounced to the Inquisition
Inquisition

The term Inquisition can refer to any one of several institutions charged with trying and convicting Christian heresy within the Roman Catholic Church....
, and expected daily to be poisoned. Literary and political events surrounding him contributed to upsets and the mental state, with troubles, stress and social troubles escalating.

In the autumn of 1576 Tasso quarrelled with a Ferrarese gentleman, Maddalo, who had talked too freely about some same-sex love affair; the same year he wrote a letter to his homosexual friend Luca Scalabrino dealing with his own love for a twenty-one year old boy Orazio Ariosto; in the summer of 1577 he drew his knife upon a servant in the presence of Lucrezia d'Este, duchess of Urbino
Urbino

Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region in Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482....
. For this excess he was arrested; but the duke released him, and took him for a change of air to his country seat of Belriguardo. What happened there is not known.

Some biographers have surmised that a compromising liaison with Leonora d'Este came to light, and that Tasso agreed to feign madness in order to cover her honor. but of this there is no proof. It is only certain that from Belriguardo he returned to a Franciscan convent at Ferrara, for the express purpose of attending to his health. There the dread of being murdered by the duke took firm hold on his mind. He escaped at the end of July, disguised himself as a peasant, and went on foot to his sister at Sorrento.

The conclusions were that Tasso, after the beginning of 1575, became the victim of a mental malady, which, without amounting to actual insanity, rendered him fantastical and insupportable, a cause of anxiety to his patrons.

There is no evidence whatsoever that this state of things was due to an overwhelming passion for Leonora. The duke, contrary to his image as a 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; unintelligent perhaps, but far from being that monster of ferocity which has been painted. The subsequent history of his connection with the poet, over which we may pass rapidly, will corroborate this view.

While at Sorrento, Tasso yearned for 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 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 madhouse of St. Anna

In the summer of 1578 he ran away again; travelled through Mantua
Mantua

Mantua is a city in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the Province of Mantua of the same name.Mantua is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes created during the 12th century....
, Padua, Venice, Urbino, Lombardy
Lombardy

Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region....
. In September he reached the gates of Turin
Turín

Tur?n is a municipality in the Ahuachap?n Department Departments of El Salvador of El Salvador....
 on foot, and was courteously entertained by Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy
Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy

Emmanuel Philibert was Duke of Savoy Savoy from 1553 to 1580.Born in Chamb?ry, Emmanuel Philibert was the only child of Charles III, Duke of Savoy and Beatrice of Portugal to reach adulthood....
. Wherever he went, wandering like the world's rejected 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 thin 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 February 1579 he again set foot in the castle.

Alfonso was about to contract his third marriage, this time with a princess of the house of Mantua
Mantua

Mantua is a city in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the Province of Mantua of the same name.Mantua is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes created during the 12th century....
. He had no children, and unless he got an heir, there was a probability that his state would fall, as it did subsequently, to the Holy See
Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, commonly known as the Pope, and is the preeminent episcopal see of the Roman Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church....
. The nuptial festivals, on the eve of which Tasso arrived, were not therefore an occasion of great rejoicing for the elderly bridegroom. As a forlorn hope he had to wed a third wife; but his 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 allowance for the troubles of his master. Rooms below his rank, he thought, had been assigned him ; the Duke was engaged. Without exercising common patience, or giving his old friends the benefit of a doubt, he broke into terms of open abuse, behaved like a lunatic, and was sent off without ceremony to the madhouse of St. Anna. This happened in March 1579; and there he remained until July 1586. Duke Alfonso's 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.
Delacroixtasso
It was no doubt very irksome for a man of Tasso's pleasure-loving, restless and self-conscious spirit to be kept for more than seven years in confinement. Yet one must weigh the facts of the 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, form the most valuable source of information, not only on his then 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 prison, but no one who has impartially considered the whole tone and tenor of his epistles will adopt this opinion. What emerges clearly from them is that he labored under a serious mental disease, and that he was conscious of it.

Meanwhile, he occupied his uneasy leisure with copious compositions. The mass of his prose dialogues on philosophical and ethical themes, which is very considerable, belong to the years of imprisonment in St. Anna.

Except for occasional odes or sonnets -- some written at request and only rhetorically interesting, a few inspired by his keen sense of suffering and therefore poignant -- he neglected poetry. But everything which fell from his pen during this period was carefully preserved 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 personality in Italy.

Long ago his papers had been sequestered. In the year 1580, he heard that part of the Gerusalemme was being published without his permission and without his corrections. The following year, the whole poem was given to the world, and in the following six months seven editions issued from the press.

The prisoner of St. Anna had no control over his editors; and from the masterpiece which placed him on the level of Petrarch
Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca , known in English language as Petrarch, was an Italy scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanism. Petrarch is often popularly called the "Father of Humanism"....
 and Ariosto he never derived one penny of pecuniary profit. A rival poet at the court of Ferrara undertook to revise and edit his lyrics in 1582. This was Battista Guarini; and Tasso, in his cell, had to allow odes and sonnets, poems of personal feeling, occasional pieces of compliment, to be collected and emended, without lifting a voice in the matter.

A few years later, in 1585, two Florentine pedants of the Crusca Academy declared war against the Gerusalemme. They loaded it with insults, which seem to those who read their pamphlets now mere parodies of criticism. Yet Tasso felt bound to reply; and he did so with a moderation and urbanity which prove him to have been not only in full possession of his reasoning faculties, but a gentleman of noble manners also. The man, like Hamlet
Hamlet

Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle King Claudius, who has murdered King Hamlet, the King, and then taken the throne and married Gertrude ....
, was distraught through ill-accommodation to his circumstances and his age; brain-sick he was undoubtedly; and this is the Duke of Ferrara's justification for the treatment he endured. In the prison he bore himself pathetically, peevishly, but never ignobly. He showed a singular indifference to the fate of his great poem, a rare magnanimity in dealing with its detractors. His own personal 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 Guglielmo I, Duke of Mantua, the other to Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma
Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma

Ottavio Farnese was Duke of Parma and Piacenza from 1556 to 1586 and Duke of Castro in 1545-1547 and from 1547 until his death....
.

After all his father's and his own lessons of life, he had not learned that the court was to be shunned like Circe
Circe

In Greek mythology, Circe , is a Queen goddess living on the island of Aeaea.Circe's father was Helios , the god of the sun and the owner of the land where Odysseus' men ate cattle, and her mother was Hecate the goddess of magic and the moon ; she was sister of two kings of Colchis, Aeetes and Perses, and of Pasipha?, mother of the Mino...
 by an honest man. In estimating Duke Alfonso's share of blame, this wilful idealization of the court by Tasso must be taken into account. That man is not a tyrant's victim who moves heaven and earth to place his sister's sons with tyrants.

Late years

In 1586 Tasso left St. Anna at the solicitation of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Prince of Mantua. He followed his young deliverer to the city by the Mincio
Mincio

Mincio is a river in the Lombardy region of northern Italy.Called the Sarca before entering Lake Garda, it flows from there about 65 km past Mantua into the Po River....
, basked awhile in liberty and courtly pleasures, enjoyed a splendid reception from his paternal town of Bergamo, and produced a meritorious tragedy called Torrismondo. 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 he journeyed through Bologna and Loreto to Rome, and taking up his quarters there with an old friend, Scipione Gonzaga
Scipione Gonzaga

Scipione Gonzaga was an Italian Cardinal .Born in Mantua, he belonged to the family of the Duke of Sabbioneta, passed his youth under the care of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, and made rapid progress in Greek and Latin studies....
, now Patriarch of Jerusalem
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is the title given to the Latin Rite Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem. The Archdiocese of Jerusalem has jurisdiction for all Latin Rite Catholics in Israel and Palestine....
. Next year he wandered off to Naples, where he wrote a dull poem on Monte Oliveto
Monte Oliveto Maggiore

The Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore is a large Benedictine monastery in the Italy region of Tuscany, 10 km south of Asciano. Its buildings, which are mostly of red brick, are conspicuous against the grey clayey and sandy soil?the Crete Senesi which give this area of Tuscany its name....
. 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 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 record of the years 1590-94. He endured a veritable Odyssey
Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Hellenic civilization epic poetrys attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer....
 of malady, indigence and misfortune. To Tasso everything came amiss. He had the palaces of princes, cardinals, patriarchs, nay popes, always open to him. Yet he could rest in none. Gradually, in spite of all veneration for the sacer vates, he made himself the laughingstock 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 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 composition in Italian blank verse, called Le Sette Giornate, saw the light. Nobody reads it now. It is only mentioned as one of Tasso's dotages -- a dreary amplification of the first chapter of Genesis
Genesis

Genesis or Breishit is the first book of the Bible used by Judaism and Christianity, and the first of five books of the Pentateuch or Torah....
.

It is singular that just in these years, when mental disorder, physical weakness, and decay of inspiration seemed dooming Tasso to oblivion, his old age was cheered with brighter rays of hope. Pope Clement VIII ascended the papal chair in 1592. He and his nephew, Cardinal Aldobrandini of San Giorgio
San Giorgio al Velabro

San Giorgio in Velabro is a basilica churches of Rome Rome, devoted to St. George and located on the ancient Roman Velabrum, near the Arch of Janus, in the rione of ripa ....
, determined to befriend the poet. In 1594, they invited him to Rome. There he was to receive the crown of laurels, as Petrarch had been crowned, on the Capitol.

Worn out with illness, Tasso reached Rome in November. The ceremony of his coronation was deferred because Cardinal Aldobrandini had fallen ill, but the pope assigned him a pension; and, under the pressure of pontifical remonstrance, Prince Avellino, who held Tasso's maternal estate, agreed to discharge a portion of his claims by payment of a yearly rent-charge.

At no time since Tasso left St. Anna had the heavens apparently so smiled upon him. Capitolian honors and money were now at his disposal. Yet fortune came too late. Before he wore the crown of poet laureate
Poet Laureate

A Poet Laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events....
, or received his pensions, he ascended to the convent of Sant'Onofrio, on a stormy 1 April 1595. Seeing a cardinal's coach toil up the steep Trasteverine Hill, the monks came to the door to greet it. From the carriage stepped Tasso and told the prior he had come to die with him.

He died in Sant'Onofrio in April 1595. He was just past fifty-one; and the last twenty years of his existence had been practically and artistically ineffectual.

At the age of thirty-one the Gerusalemme, was accomplished. The world too was already ringing with the music of Aminta. More than this Tasso had naught to give to literature but those succeeding years of derangement, exile, imprisonment, poverty and hope deferred endear the man to readers. Elegiac and querulous as he must always appear, Tasso was loved better in the Romantic period because he suffered through nearly a quarter of a century of slow decline and unexplained misfortune.

Other works

Rime (Rhymes) written between 1567 and 1593. Influenced by Petrarca's Canzoniere, they develop a research for musicality and are rich of delicate images and subtle sentiments.

Galealto re di Norvegia, (1573-4) an unfinished tragedy, which later was finished with a new title: Re Torrismondo (1587). It is influenced by Sophocles
Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
's and Seneca
Seneca the Younger

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Ancient Rome Stoicism philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature....
's tragedies, and tells the story of princess Alvida of Norway
Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
, who is forcibly married off to the Goth king Torrismondo, when she is devoted to her childhood friend, king Germondo of Sweden
Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
.

Dialoghi (Dialogues), written between 1578 and 1594. These 28 texts deal with various issues, from moral ones (love, virtue, nobility) to more mundane ones (masks, play, courtly style, beauty). Sometimes Tasso touches major themes of his time: for instance, religion vs. intellectual freedom; Christianity vs. Islam at Lepanto
Lepanto

Lepanto could refer to* The Italian, Spanish and Portuguese name of Naupactus, Greece...
.

Discorsi del poema eroico, published in 1594. This is the main text to understand Tasso's poetics
Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics aims to give an account of what he calls 'poetry' . Aristotle attempts to explain 'poetry' through 'first principles' and by discerning its different genres and component elements....
 and was probably written during the long years or composing and revising Gerusalemme Liberata

The disease

The disease Tasso began to suffer from is now believed to be schizophrenia
Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia , from the Ancient Greek Root schizein and phren, phren- is a psychiatry diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality....
. Legends describe him wandering the streets of Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
 half mad, convinced that he was being persecuted. At times he was imprisoned for his own safety by the Duke in St. Anne's lunatic asylum. Though he was never fully cured, he was able to function and resumed his writing. The Gerusalemme was published by his friends Angelo Ingegneri and Febo Bonna, mostly with the consent of the poet.

Tasso and other artists

  • Claudio Monteverdi
    Claudio Monteverdi

    Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi , was an Italian composer, viol, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the music of the Renaissance music to that of the Baroque music....
     composed Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda upon the text of Gerusalemme Liberata, canto XII. He also composed music over some ofTasso's Rime
    Rime

    Rime is a coating of ice:*Hard rime, white ice that forms when water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects, such as trees*Soft rime, similar to hard rime, but feathery and milky in appearance...
    , particularly madrigals.
  • Giaches de Wert
    Giaches de Wert

    Giaches de Wert was a Franco-Flemish School composer of the late Renaissance, active in Italy. Intimately connected with the progressive musical center of Ferrara, he was one of the leaders in developing the style of the late Renaissance madrigal ....
     and Carlo Gesualdo
    Carlo Gesualdo

    Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo da Venosa , Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian music composer, lutenist and nobleman of the late Renaissance music....
     da Venosa put into music many texts from Tasso's Rime and Gerusalemme.
  • The German
    Germans

    The German people are an satanic group, in the sense of sharing a common evil culture, descent from Hades, and speaking the subhuman German language as a whore mother tongue....
     writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    was a Germans writer and according to George Eliot, "Germany's greatest man of letters? and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, humanism and science....
     wrote a play Torquato Tasso
    Torquato Tasso (play)

    Torquato Tasso is a play by the Germans dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the sixteenth-century Italians poet, Torquato Tasso. The play was first conceived in Weimar in 1780 but most of it was written during his two years in Italy, between 1786 and 1788....
     in 1790, which explores the struggles of the artist.
  • Giacomo Leopardi
    Giacomo Leopardi

    Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist....
     wrote Dialogo di Torquato Tasso e del suo Genio familiare (Operette morali, 1824), a prose about the long stay in St. Anna. The main theme is a comparison between pain and bore, expressed in a dialogue between Tasso and a "Genius", or ghost, said to be visiting him in his loneliness.
  • Among the numerous operas based on "Jerusalem Delivered" are works by Lully
    Lully

    Lully may refer to:*Switzerland**Lully, Fribourg, a municipality**Lully, Vaud, a municipality**Lully, Geneva, a village in the municipality of Bernex, Switzerland...
    , Vivaldi, Handel
    HANDEL

    HANDEL was the code-name for the United Kingdom's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges....
    , Haydn, Rossini, and Dvorak
    Dvorák

    Dvor?k is a common Czech people surname. It used to refer to farmers having their own free farm It may refer to:People named Dvor?k or Dvorak...
    .
  • Both Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser

    Edmund Spenser was an important England poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem celebrating, through fantastical allegory, the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I....
     and John Milton
    John Milton

    John Milton II was an English poet, author, polemicist and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his Epic poetry Paradise Lost and for his treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica....
     were greatly influenced by Tasso's work.
  • Lord Byron's poem "The Lament of Tasso" narrates Tasso's spell in St. Anna's hospital.
  • The Italian
    Italy

    Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
     composer Gaetano Donizetti
    Gaetano Donizetti

    Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italy composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. Donizetti's most famous work is Lucia di Lammermoor , and arguably his most immediately recognizable piece of music is the aria "Una furtiva lagrima" from L'elisir d'amore ....
     wrote an opera
    Opera

    Opera is an Performing arts in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work which combines a text and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition....
     on the subject of Torquato Tasso
    Torquato Tasso (opera)

    Torquato Tasso is a melodramma semiseria, or 'semi-serious' opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti and based on the life of the great poet Torquato Tasso....
     (1833) and incorporated some of the poet's writing into the libretto
    Libretto

    A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, sacred or secular oratorio and cantata, Musical theater, and ballet....
    .
  • Franz Liszt
    Franz Liszt

    Franz Liszt was a Kingdom of Hungary composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher.Liszt became renowned throughout Europe for his great skill as a performer during the 19th century....
     composed a symphonic poem
    Symphonic poem

    A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in one movement in which some extramusical program provides a narrative or illustrative element....
    , Tasso, Lamento e Trionfo
    Tasso, Lamento e Trionfo (Liszt)

    Franz Liszt composed his Tasso, Lamento e trionfo in 1849, revising it in 1850-51 and again in 1854. It is numbered No. 2 in his cycle of 12 symphonic poems written during his Weimar period....
     in commemoration of the centenary of Goethe's play. The sombre first half represents his anguish in the asylum, and the glorious second half charts the acknowledgement he and his poetry achieved after he departed from the hospital.
  • Artists inspired by both "Jerusalem Delivered" and "Aminta" have been legion and include Tintoretto
    Tintoretto

    Tintoretto was one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school and probably the last great painter of the Italian Renaissance. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso, and his dramatic use of perspectival space and special lighting effects make him a precursor of baroque art....
    , the Carracci
    Carracci

    There are several notable people with the name Carracci:* Agostino Carracci , Italian painter and printmaker* Annibale Carracci , Italian Baroque painter and brother of Agostino Carracci...
    , Guercino, Pietro da Cortona
    Pietro da Cortona

    Pietro da Cortona, byname of Pietro Berrettini was an Italian artist and architect of High Baroque. He is best known for painting fresco ceilings, a pursuit in which he had ample competition in the Rome of his day, but he was equally adept and masterful with architectural design....
    , Domenichino, Van Dyck, Poussin
    Poussin

    Poussin refers to:*Nicolas Poussin*Poussin *Th?odore Poussin...
    , Claude Lorrain
    Claude Lorrain

    Claude Lorrain was an artist of the Baroque Painting era who was active in Italy, and is admired for his achievements in landscape painting....
    , Tiepolo, Fragonard, and Delacroix
    Delacroix

    Delacroix derives from de la Croix . It may refer to:In people:* Charles-Fran?ois Delacroix, French ambassador to the Netherlands* Eug?ne Delacroix, a French Romantic artist...
    .


English Translations


During the Renaissance, the first (incomplete) translation of "Jerusalem Delivered" was brought out by Thomas Carew (1594). A complete version by Edward Fairfax appeared under the title "Godfrey of Bouillon" in 1600. John Hoole's version in heroic couplets followed in 1772, and J.H. Whiffen's (in Spenserian stanzas) in 1821. There have been several twentieth century versions, including by Anthony Esolen (2000) and Max Wickert (2009). "Aminta," some of the "Dialogues," "Torrismondo" and some of the late religious works have also been issued in English. Strangely, very few English versions of Tasso's superb and influential love lyrics have yet appeared in print.

See also

  • Ludovico Ariosto
    Ludovico Ariosto

    Ludovico Ariosto was an Italians poet. He is best known as the author of the romance Epic poetry Orlando Furioso . The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne, Roland, and the Franks as they battle against the Saracen with divergents into many side plots....
  • Orlando Furioso
    Orlando Furioso

    Orlando Furioso is an Italian literature romance epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532....


External links

    • Project Gutenberg
      Project Gutenberg

      Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works, as founder Michael Hart said "To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."....
       e-text of (translated by Edward Fairfax)
    • Project Gutenberg e-text of by Goethe