TASSO
From the beginning of Italian literature to the death of Ariosto nearly
three hundred years had elapsed. In that period four of its greatest
writers had appeared. Yet no literature can attain the highest rank in
which the drama and epic are not represented. Italy hitherto lacked
these two important branches. The Divine Comedy of Dante is, strictly
speaking, not an epic, but forms a class by itself, being an imaginative
journey to the supernatural world, with a record of things seen and
heard therein; Ariosto's Orlando Furioso was a revival of the old
chivalrous romances in a new and elegant form, adapted to the conditions
and taste of his times; a huge fresco, rather than an epic. As we shall
see in the next chapter, comedy and tragedy had to wait nearly two
hundred years after the death of Ariosto before finding worthy
representatives in Alfieri and Goldoni. The regular epic, however, was
given to Italy by Tasso at the end of the sixteenth century.
The story of Tasso's life is of great though painful interest. It is a
tragedy of suffering like that of Dante; yet how vast the difference
between the two. Dante bore his sufferings with unparalleled nobility of
character, exciting our admiration. Tasso, weak and vacillating by
nature, lives wretched and miserable, not from the decrees of fortune,
but owing to his unfitness to bear the trials of ordinary life.
He was born March 11, 1544, at Sorrento, near Naples, the son of
Bernardo Tasso, a man of affairs, a courtier and a poet, who, although
of noble family, was forced by straitened circumstances to pass his life
in the service of others. Tasso's education was varied enough; a few
years at a Jesuit school in Naples, an experience which left a lasting
impression on his sensitive and melancholy temperament; then under
private teachers at Rome; and finally, several years of study of law at
the universities of Padua and Bologna. He was compelled to leave the
latter as a result of certain satires against the university
authorities, which he was accused of having written.
The important period of his life begins in 1565, when he went to
Ferrara, then, as in the days of Boiardo and Ariosto, the center of a
rich and brilliant court. His life here for the next seven or eight
years was a prosperous one. Fortune seemed to have showered her fairest
gifts on this young, handsome, and gentle-mannered poet. He was treated
on terms of intimacy by the duke and his sisters, Lucretia and Leonora.
He was accustomed to take his meals with the two ladies, and to them he
read the poetry which he wrote from time to time. It was undoubtedly due
to their influence that he composed his famous pastoral poem, Aminta
(1572-73), full of exquisite pictures of rural life and bathed in an
atmosphere of tender and refined love. This poem had an unprecedented
success and made its author famous throughout all Europe.
Not long after this, however, the first germs of the terrible mental
disease which wrecked his life began to show themselves. For many years
Tasso was made the hero of a romance, in which he was depicted as a
martyr to social caste--the victim of his own love for a woman beyond
his sphere. According to this romance Tasso fell in love with the sister
of the duke of Ferrara, and for this crime was shut up in prison and
falsely treated as insane. The results of modern scholarship, however,
have dissipated the sentimental halo from the brow of the unfortunate
poet, and reduced his case to one of pathological diagnosis. Leonora was
some ten years older than Tasso, and the affection which at first
undoubtedly existed between them was that of an elder sister and a
younger brother. The duke was not cruel to Tasso, but on the contrary
treated him at first kindly, and only when he was at last worn out by
the vagaries of the poet, did he drop him and bother himself no more
about him.
The secret of Tasso's sufferings and vicissitudes of fortune lay in
himself; he was, during the latter part of his life, simply insane. All
his actions during this period illustrate perfectly the various phases
of the persecution mania, which in his case was aggravated by religious
hallucination. To this terrible mental disease he was predisposed from
early life; his Jesuit education, the mysterious death of his mother
(suspected of having been poisoned), overwork and worriment, and
especially his morbidly sensitive and melancholy temperament, all helped
to prepare the way for the catastrophe that was to darken his life.
The first open manifestations of insanity occurred in 1577 (probably as
the result of a fever), about the time he had finished the first draft
of the Jerusalem Delivered. Very foolishly for a man as sensitive as he
was, he turned over the manuscript of his poem to a number of friends
for suggestions. The heartless criticisms he thus received filled him
with bitterness and fostered the rising irritability of his nascent
disease. He was especially hurt by the brutal and stupid criticism of
the Inquisitor Antoniano, who advised him to cut out all the romantic
episodes, which form the real beauty of the poem. This put into his mind
the thought that the Inquisition might refuse him permission to print
his poem, and made him fear that he might be a heretic. The lessons of
his early teachers, the Jesuits, now began to bear fruit. In 1577,
tormented by religious doubts, he went to the inquisitor of Bologna and
laid his case before him. Although the latter absolved him from his
self-charge of heresy, Tasso was not satisfied. Henceforth religious
fear was added to the fear of assassination--a double torment to his
soul.
Under these circumstances he became more and more moody and irritable;
he was suspicious of all about him and subject to frequent outbursts of
violence. On the evening of June 17, 1577, he was discoursing of his
troubles to the Princess Lucretia, when he suspected a passing servant
of spying him, and flung a knife at him. In order to prevent further
acts of violence he was shut up, at first in his room, and later in the
monastery of St. Francis, under the care of a physician. On July 27 he
broke the door and escaped. Horsemen were sent after him, but being
disguised as a peasant, he escaped, and after many adventures, often
begging his way as a common beggar, he reached Sorrento, where, in the
quiet seclusion of his sister's house, surrounded by all the tokens of
her love and sympathy, he enjoyed a short period of rest and peace.
He soon became restless, however, and yearned for the brilliant life of
the court, which presented itself to his fancy, enhanced by the charms
of distance and of those things we have had and lost. He was like a
butterfly, always attracted toward the light that was to destroy him. He
returned to Ferrara, and again ran away, wandering from city to city,
yet finding nowhere a warm welcome. "The world's rejected guest,"
Shelley called him, who knew himself only too well the meaning of these
words.
In February, 1579, Tasso once more returned to Ferrara, this time
without previous warning, and asked to be received by the duke. It was a
singularly unpropitious moment; the duke was then in the midst of
preparations for his marriage with Margaret Gonzaga, his third wife, and
naturally enough the obscure, half-insane poet was neglected. This
neglect completely turned his mind, and losing all self-control he broke
out into violent invectives in the presence of the court. He was
immediately taken out, shut up in the insane asylum of S. Anna, and in
accordance with the barbarous customs of the age in the treatment of the
insane, put in chains. Here he remained in utter misery, a prey to the
double nightmare of his sick brain, fear of death by the assassin's
knife, and of everlasting damnation as a heretic. The letters which he
wrote by scores during this period are of heartbreaking pathos.
He remained in S. Anna nearly eight years, being released in 1586 at the
solicitation of Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga, brother-in-law of the duke of
Ferrara. From now on to the end, the story of Tasso's life becomes a
mere repetition of melancholy incidents. Once more he went from city to
city, visiting in turn Milan, Florence, Naples, and Rome, and moving
restlessly hither and thither
"Like spirits of the wandering wind,
Who seek for rest, yet rest can never find."
Finally fortune seemed about to smile upon him; a faint ray of sunshine
broke through the thick clouds that for so long had hung over his life.
In November, 1594, he was invited to Rome, there to be crowned poet, as
Petrarch had been. The pope assigned him a pension, and it seemed as if
at last some measure of happiness might again be his. It was only a
brief gleam of sunshine, however; the clouds soon closed again, and the
sun of Tasso's life hastened to its setting shrouded in gloom. The
coronation was put off on account of the ill health of Cardinal Cinzio
and the inclemency of the season. In March, 1595, he himself fell sick,
and in April was taken to the monastery of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum
hill. To the monks who came to meet him he uttered the pathetic words:
"My fathers, I have come to die among you." The pope sent his own
physician to attend him, but in vain. The world-weary poet passed away
April 25, 1595. His body lies buried in the adjacent church. The visitor
to-day can still see his room, furnished as in his lifetime, and on the
wall a copy of his last letter, in which he announces his speedy death.
Tasso's works are comparatively voluminous, and consist of lyrical
poems, the pastoral poem, Aminta, a tragedy, Torrismondo, dialogues,
letters, and the Jerusalem Delivered. In this brief sketch we can only
discuss the latter, by which alone he is known the world over.
Already when only sixteen years old, he had felt the ambition to write a
poem which should combine the merits of the regular epic (such as the
Iliad and AEneid), and the romantic interest of the poems of Boiardo and
Ariosto. His Rinaldo, written when he was only nineteen years old, was
remarkable both on account of the youth of its author and as a promise
of what was to follow. For a number of years after this, however, he
devoted himself almost exclusively to the task of preparing himself, by
reading, study, and thought, to write the great poem which he had in
mind.
His choice of a subject was a happy one. The fear of the Turk at that
time was widespread; the wars between Christian and Saracen, which
filled the old romances, were now occurring again on the eastern borders
of Europe. The Turks had conquered Hungary, and their piratic ships had
ravaged the coast of Italy, often destroying entire populations; a short
time before Sorrento, Tasso's birthplace, had been attacked, and his
sister escaped only by a miracle. Tasso himself must have heard many a
story of the crusades, when a child at Sorrento, where Pope Urban, who
had published the first crusade, was buried. His choice of the
deliverance of Jerusalem from the unbeliever then was a natural one.
Contrary to the Orlando Furioso, the story of Jerusalem Delivered, is a
simple one. Yet the main plot, _i. e._, the military operations of
Godfrey, the various battles, and the final capture of Jerusalem, are
not so effective or interesting as the various romantic episodes
introduced from time to time; the reader to-day is disposed to hurry
over the early cantos and to linger over the beautiful pages which tell
the loves of Tancred and Clorinda, Olindo and Sophronia, Rinaldo,
Armida, and Erminia.
The poem begins with the usual invocation:
I sing the pious arms and Chief, who freed
The Sepulcher of Christ from thrall profane:
Much did he toil in thought, and much in deed;
Much in the glorious enterprise sustain;
And hell in vain opposed him; and in vain
Afric and Asia to the rescue poured
Their mingled tribes;--Heaven recompensed his pain,
And from all fruitless sallies of the sword,
True to the Red-Cross flag his wandering friends restored.
O, thou, the Muse, that not with fading palms
Circlest thy brows on Pindus, but among
The Angels warbling their celestial psalms,
Hast for thy coronal a golden throng
Of everlasting stars! make thou my song
Lucid and pure; breathe thou the flame divine
Into my bosom; and forgive the wrong,
If with grave truth light fiction I combine,
And sometimes grace my page with other flowers than thine.
The poet then plunges into the midst of the action, We learn how the
Christian army has been in Holy Land for six years and had made many
conquests:
Six summers now were past, since in the East
Their high Crusade the Christians had begun;
And Nice by storm, and Antioch had they seized
By secret guile, and gallantly when won,
Held in defiance of the myriads dun,
Prest to its conquest by the Persian king;
Tortosa sacked, when now the sullen sun
Entered Aquarius, to breme winter's wing
The quartered hosts give place, and wait the coming spring.
In the spring of the seventh year the archangel Gabriel appears to
Godfrey of Bouillon and orders him to assemble the chiefs of the army
and prepare for a new and vigorous prosecution of the war. Godfrey obeys
and is himself elected commander-in-chief. Then, after a review of the
troops, which furnishes the poet an opportunity of giving a catalogue of
the various Christian forces (after the manner of Homer), the whole army
starts for Jerusalem.
The scene then changes to the Holy City itself, where King Aladine and
his followers are seized with consternation at the news of the advance
of the Christians. We now see the first of the famous episodes of the
Jerusalem Delivered. The Magician Ismeno urges the king to seize a
certain image of the Virgin Mary and shut it up in the royal mosque
(thus converting it into a palladium for Jerusalem). The king does so;
but immediately the image disappears from the mosque. Aladine is wild
with rage and being unable to discover the perpetrator of the outrage,
resolves to destroy all the Christians in the city. Now there was in the
city a beautiful Christian girl:
Of generous thoughts and principles sublime,
Amongst them in the city lived a maid.
The flower of virgins, in her ripest prime,
Supremely beautiful! but that she made
Never her care, or beauty only weighed
In worth with virtue; and her worth acquired
A deeper charm from blooming in the shade;
Lovers she shunned, nor loved to be admired.
But from their praises turned, and lived a life retired.
Although she was unconscious of love herself, there was a noble
Christian youth, Olindo, who had long loved her in secret. Sophronia
resolves to save her people. She makes her way to the king's palace, and
declares that she alone is guilty of having stolen the sacred image from
the mosque.
Thus she prepares a public death to meet,
A people's ransom at a tyrant's shrine:
Oh glorious falsehood! beautiful deceit!
Can Truth's own light thy loveliness outshine?
To her bold speech misdoubting Aladine
With unaccustomed temper calm replied:
"If so it were, who planned the rash design,
Advised thee to it, or became thy guide?
Say, with thyself who else his ill-timed zeal allied?"
"Of this my glory not the slightest part
Would I," said she, "with one confederate share;
I needed no adviser; my full heart
Alone sufficed to counsel, guide, and dare."
"If so," he cried, "then none but thou must bear
The weight of my resentment, and atone
For the misdeed." "Since it has been my care,"
She said, "the glory to enjoy alone,
'T is just none share the pain; it should be all mine own."
To this the tyrant, now incensed, returned,
"Where rests the Image?" and his face became
Dark with resentment: she replied, "I burned
The holy image in the holy flame,
And deemed it glory; thus at least no shame
Can e'er again profane it--it is free
From further violation; dost thou claim
The spoil or spoiler? this behold in me;
But that, whilst time rolls round, thou never more shall see
* * * * *
Doomed in tormenting fire to die, they lay
Hands on the maid; her arms with rough cords twining,
Rudely her mantle chaste they tear away,
And the white veil that o'er her drooped declining:
This she endured in silence unrepining,
Yet her firm breast some virgin tremors shook;
And her warm cheek, Aurora's late outshining,
Waned into whiteness, and a color took,
Like that of the pale rose, or lily of the brook.
At this moment Olindo approaches the spot, and discovering that the
victim is Sophronia, bursts through the crowd, exclaiming that he
himself is the author of the crime. Sophronia appeals to him not to
sacrifice himself for her, but he remains firm until the king, angered
at their apparent scorn of his power, condemns them both to be burned.
Thus both are about to die, when a knight appears:
In midst of their distress, a knight behold,
(So would it seem) of princely port! whose vest,
And arms of curious fashion, grained with gold,
Bespeak some foreign and distinguished guest;
The silver tigress on the helm impressed,
Which for a badge is borne, attracts all eyes,--
A noted cognizance, the accustomed crest
Used by Clorinda, whence conjectures rise,
Herself the stranger is--nor false is their surmise.
All feminine attractions, aims, and parts,
She from her childhood cared not to assume;
Her haughty hand disdained all servile arts,
The needle, distaff, and Arachne's loom;
Yet, though she left the gay and gilded room
For the free camp, kept spotless as the light
Her virgin fame, and proud of glory's plume,
With pride her aspect armed; she took delight
Stern to appear, and stern, she charmed the gazer's sight.
This is the first appearance of Clorinda, who is destined to play so
large a part in the poem, and who shows the nobility of her character by
interceding for the lovers with the king. The king, delighted at having
so powerful an auxiliary in his hour of danger and need, willingly
grants Clorinda's request, and the lovers are saved.
In the meantime the Christian army approach Jerusalem, which they reach
at early dawn, and which they greet with deep emotion:
The odorous air, morn's messenger, now spread
Its wings to herald, in serenest skies,
Aurora issuing forth, her radiant head
Adorned with roses plucked in Paradise;
When in full panoply the hosts arise,
And loud and spreading murmurs upward fly,
Ere yet the trumpet sings; its melodies
They miss not long, the trumpet's tuneful cry
Gives the command to march, shrill sounding to the sky.
* * * * *
Winged is each heart, and winged every heel;
They fly, yet notice not how fast they fly;
But by the time the dewless meads reveal
The fervent sun's ascension in the sky,
Lo, towered Jerusalem salutes the eye!
A thousand pointing fingers tell the tale;
"Jerusalem!" a thousand voices cry,
"All hail, Jerusalem!" hill, down, and dale
Catch the glad sounds, and shout, "Jerusalem, all hail!"
Erminia, daughter of the deceased king of Antioch, points out to King
Aladine from a high tower the famous warriors among the Christians, and
especially praises Tancred, who had conquered her father and taken her
prisoner, and who, by his courtesy and gentle treatment, had won her
love. A sortie is made from the city, and Tancred, finding himself
engaged in battle with Clorinda, whom he esteems a man, breaks her
helmet, and discovering her to be the maiden whom he loves, refuses to
fight further with her.
Meanwhile Clorinda rushes to assail
The Prince, and level lays her spear renowned;
Both lances strike, and on the barred ventayle
In shivers fly, and she remains discrowned
For, burst its silver rivets, to the ground
Her helmet leaped (incomparable blow!)
And by the rudeness of the shock unbound,
Her sex to all the field emblazoning so,
Loose to the charmed winds her golden tresses flow.
Thus begins the most famous episode of the Jerusalem Delivered. For the
next half of the poem Tancred and Clorinda are the real hero and
heroine.
In the meantime Satan has called together his followers for
consultation. Among the many plans for holding the Christian army in
check is the sending of the beautiful enchantress Armida to the camp
of Godfrey, where she succeeds by her wiles in drawing away from the
army a number of the bravest warriors. The king of Egypt, with an
immense army, announces his intention to help Jerusalem and from this
time on, this menace hovers like a black cloud over the horizon of the
poem, ever approaching nearer and nearer, till in the last canto the
storm is averted by the bravery of the Christian warriors and the aid
of heaven.
Argantes, one of the pagan warriors of Jerusalem, sends a herald to
Godfrey's camp, challenging any of his warriors to single combat.
Tancred is appointed by Godfrey to accept the challenge, and the two
doughty champions fight all day long with no result. When night comes on
both retire, bearing away serious wounds. Erminia, who has been in a
terrible state of anxiety during the combat, cannot rest content when
night comes on, without learning the condition of Tancred's wounds. She
puts on Clorinda's suit of armor, leaves the city, and makes her way to
the Christian camp, first sending a messenger to Tancred, announcing
that a lady desires to see him. The scene which follows is very
picturesque, describing as it does the silence of the night and the
distant view of the tents.
On high were the clear stars; the gentle Hours
Walked cloudless through the galaxy of space,
And the calm moon rose, lighting up the flowers
With frost of living pearl: like her in grace,
Th' enamored maid from her illumined face
Reflected light where'er she chanced to rove;
And made the silent Spirit of the place,
The hills, the melancholy moon above,
And the dumb valleys round, familiars of her love.
Seeing the Camp, she whispered: "O ye fair
Italian tents! how amiable ye show!
The breathing winds that such refreshment bear,
Ravish my soul, for 't is from you they blow
So may relenting Heaven on me bestow,--
On me, by froward Fate so long distressed,--
A chaste repose from weariness and woe,
As in your compass only lies my quest;
As 'tis your arms alone can give my spirit rest."
* * * * *
Ah, little does she think, while thus she dreams,
What is prepared for her by Fortune's spite!
She is so placed, that the moon's placid beams
In line direct upon her armor light;
So far remote into the shades of night
The silver splendor is conveyed, and she
Surrounded is with brilliancy so bright,
That whosoe'er might chance her crest to see,
Would of a truth conclude it must Clorinda be.
Two sentinels see her, and believing her to be Clorinda, pursue her. She
flies and is carried by her horse many miles away, finally reaching a
shepherd's cottage on the banks of the Jordan, where for some time she
takes up her abode far from war's alarms and the "pangs of despised
love." The description of Erminia's life here is much admired for its
delineations of the charm of rural life.
She slept, till in her dreaming ear, the bowers
Whispered, the gay birds warbled of the dawn;
The river roared; the winds to the young flowers
Made love; the blithe bee wound its dulcet horn:
Roused by the mirth and melodies of morn,
Her languid eyes she opens, and perceives
The huts of shepherds on the lonely lawn;
Whilst seeming voices, 'twixt the waves and leaves
Call back her scattered thoughts,--again she sighs and grieves.
Her plaints were silenced by soft music, sent
As from a rural pipe, such sounds as cheer
The Syrian shepherd in his summer tent,
And mixed with pastoral accents, rude but clear
She rose and gently, guided by her ear,
Came where an old man on a rising ground
In the fresh shade, his white flocks feeding near,
Twig baskets wove, and listened to the sound
Trilled by three blooming boys, who sate disporting round.
The shepherd, pitying Erminia's distress, takes her to his wife, and she
thus becomes a member of the humble but happy household.
In the meantime many events are taking place between the Christians and
pagans, sorties, single combats, and attacks on the walls of the city.
Godfrey has caused powerful engines of war to be built, especially a
mighty movable tower, so high that it overtops the walls of the city.
Clorinda, eager for glory, undertakes one night to destroy the tower, in
spite of the warning of her old servant Arsetes, who tells her the story
of her birth, and reveals the fact that she is of Christian parentage.
She issues forth, succeeds in setting fire to the tower, but not being
able to reenter the city, flies, followed by Tancred, who not
recognizing her, fights with her and to his own eternal sorrow, slays
her. This passage is regarded as the most beautiful of the whole poem:
As the deep Euxine, though the wind no more
Blows, that late tossed its billows to the stars,
Stills not at once its rolling and its roar,
But with its coasts long time conflicting jars;
Thus, though their quickly-ebbing blood debars
Force from their blades as vigor from their arms,
Still lasts the frenzy of the flame which Mars
Blew in their breasts; sustained by whose strong charms,
Yet heap they strokes on strokes, yet harms inflict on harms.
But now, alas! the fatal hour arrives
That must shut up Clorinda's life in shade;
In her fair bosom deep his sword he drives;
'Tis done--life's purple fountain bathes the blade;
The golden flowered cymar of light brocade,
That swathed so tenderly her breasts of snow,
Is steeped in the warm stream: the hapless maid
Feels her end nigh; her knees their strength forego,
And her enfeebled frame droops languishing and low.
He, following up the thrust with taunting cries,
Lays the pierced Virgin at his careless feet;
She as she falls, in mournful tones outsighs,
Her last faint words, pathetically sweet;
Which a new spirit prompts, a spirit replete
With charity, and faith, and hope serene,
Sent dove-like down from God's pure mercy-seat;
Who, though through life his rebel she had been,
Would have her die a fond, repentant Magdalene.
"Friend, thou hast won; I pardon thee, and oh
Forgive thou me! I fear not for this clay,
But my dark soul--pray for it, and bestow
The sacred right that laves all stains away:"
Like dying hymns heard far at close of day,
Sounding I know not what in the soothed ear
Of sweetest sadness, the faint words make way
To his fierce heart, and, touched with grief sincere,
Streams from his pitying eye the involuntary tear.
Not distant, gushing from the rocks, a rill
Clashed on his ear; to this with eager pace
He speeds--his hollow casque the waters fill--
And back he hurries to the deed of grace;
His hands as aspens tremble, whilst they raise
The locked aventayle of the unknown knight;--
God, for thy mercy! 'tis her angel face!
Aghast and thunderstruck, he loathes the light;
Ah, knowledge best unknown! ah, too distracting sight.
Yet still he lived; and mustering all his powers
To the sad task, restrained each wild lament,
Fain to redeem by those baptismal showers
The life his sword bereft; whilst thus intent
The hallowing words he spoke, with ravishment
Her face transfigured shone, and half apart
Her bland lips shed a lively smile that sent
This silent speech in sunshine to his heart:
"Heaven gleams; in blissful peace behold thy friend depart!"
A paleness beauteous as the lily's mixt
With the sweet violet's, like a gust of wind
Flits o'er her face; her eyes on Heaven are fixt,
And heaven on her returns its looks as kind:
Speak she can not; but her cold hand, declined,
In pledge of peace on Tancred she bestows;
And to her fate thus tenderly resigned,
In her meek beauty she expires, and shows
But as a smiling saint indulging soft repose.
Clorinda, being dead, Tancred has little desire to live, but is
comforted by a vision of her in heaven:
And, clad in starry robes, the maid for whom
He mourned, appears amid his mourning dreams;
Fairer than erst, but by the deathless bloom
And heavenly radiance that around her beams,
Graced, not disguised; in sweetest act she seems
To stoop, and wipe away the tears that flow
From his dim eyes: "Behold what glory streams
Round me," she cries; "how beauteous now I show,
And for my sake, dear friend, this waste of grief forego."
Up to this time the most prominent characters in the poem have been
Tancred and Clorinda. This state of things now changes and the real
hero, Rinaldo, who like Achilles has long been absent from the field of
action, reappears and brings matters to a climax.
We have already seen how Armida has come to camp and carried off a
number of the Christian warriors. At the same time Rinaldo had, in a
contest for the successor of Dudo (killed in the first skirmish between
the crusaders and the pagans), slain Gernando in the presence of the
whole army, and was forced to fly the wrath of Godfrey. He, after having
freed the fifty knights from the power of Armida, is himself caught by
her wiles, and carried off by her to a gorgeous palace situated in the
midst of a beautiful garden, on a high mountain in the island of
Teneriffe. Here, lost in luxury and idleness, he sleeps out the thought
of his duty as a Christian warrior.
In the meantime Godfrey, by various supernatural tokens, learns that
Rinaldo alone can bring about the final success of the Christian arms.
He is thus induced to pardon his crime, which indeed had in a certain
sense been justified, and sends two messengers to bring him back. These
embark on a magic vessel, traverse the Mediterranean, pass the strait of
Gibraltar, enter the Atlantic, and reach the island of Teneriffe. The
descriptions of this voyage and the allusion to Columbus, are famous and
well deserve to be quoted, if we had the space. It is especially
interesting to compare this fictitious voyage into the Atlantic Ocean
with that of Ulysses in Dante's Inferno, the one written before, the
other shortly after the discovery of America.
The ambassadors arrive at the island, climb the mountain, overcome all
obstacles, enter the enchanted garden, and discover Rinaldo, surrounded
by all the beauty of nature and magnificence of art.
The messengers succeed in arousing the dormant nobility of Rinaldo; he
tears himself away, follows them to the camp of Godfrey, is pardoned by
the latter, succeeds in breaking the spell of the enchanted forest, and
thus prepares the way for the building of new war machines. The city
then is assaulted and taken, and finally the Egyptian army, which now
appears on the scene, is defeated and the poem ends.
The literature of the Italian Renaissance, which was inaugurated by
Petrarch and Boccaccio, reached its highest point with Ariosto. Tasso,
equally great with Ariosto, lived at the beginning of a long period of
decline; the Jerusalem Delivered projecting the last rays of the glories
of the Renaissance into this new period. The sixteenth century,
especially the first half, is the golden age of Italian literature,
comparable to that of Augustus in Rome, Louis XIV. in France, and Queen
Elizabeth in England. In the narrow confines of this sketch we have only
been able to treat in some detail the great writers thereof, Boiardo,
Ariosto, and Tasso. Yet the number of men of genius and talent is
legion--giants indeed lived in those days--not only in the field of art
and scholarship but in literature. In lyrical poetry were Pietro Bembo,
the Petrarch of his times; Michel Angelo and Vittoria Colonna. In the
pastoral poem, besides Tasso, there were Sannazaro and Guarini, the
former (whose Arcadia was imitated in England by Sidney and Spenser) on
the border-line between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the
latter on that between the sixteenth and seventeenth. In comic poetry
there was Francesco Berni, who worked over Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato,
which has since then been read almost wholly in this version. In prose
was developed an especially rich literature, among the great masters of
which we may mention in history, Nicholas Machiavelli, who, in his
Prince, introduced a new philosophy of politics; Guicciardini, Varchi,
and Nardi; in the history of art, Vasari; in novels and stories, Luigi
da Porto, who first told the story of Romeo and Juliet; Giraldo Cinzio,
Matteo Bandello, who continued the work of Boccaccio and Sacchetti.
Forming a special group are Benvenuto Cellini, whose autobiography has
made him famous; Firenzuola, who wrote on the beauty of woman;
Baldasarre Castiglione, the Lord Chesterfield of his day, who in his
book on the Courtier, depicted the character of the perfect gentleman
according to the ideals of the times.
SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW
Lack of true epic hitherto--Tasso (1544-95) the first to give
Italy an epic in the style of Homer and Vergil--Pathos of his
life--His works: The pastoral poem Aminta; a tragedy,
Torrismondo; Jerusalem Delivered--Long preparation for his
masterpiece--The sixteenth century the Golden Age of Italian
literature: Bembo, Sannazaro, Guarini, Berni, Machiavelli,
Guicciardini.
1. Would you call the Divine Comedy and Orlando Furioso
true epics?
2. Give briefly the main facts of Tasso's life.
3. What was the real cause of his unhappiness?
4. Describe his death.
5. What was the Aminta; when was it written?
6. What is the theme of Jerusalem Delivered?
7. Why did Tasso choose this subject?
8. Give in brief outline the plot.
9. Tell the story of Sophronia and Olindo.
10. Who was Clorinda, by whom was she loved, and how did
she die?
11. Tell all you know about Erminia.
12. What part in the poem is played by Armida?
13. Where was Rinaldo during most of the fighting, and
how was he brought back to camp?
14. How does the poem end?
15. Mention a few other writers of the sixteenth
century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A complete translation of Jerusalem Delivered by Wiffen is
published in the Bohn Library.