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Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) | |
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The greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance, best remembered for his masterpiece LA GERUSALEMME LIBERATA (Jerusalem Delivered, 1575). Its hero was the leader of the first Crusade, Godfrey of Bouillon; the climax of the epic was the capture of the holy city. In the 1570s Tasso developed a persecution mania which led to legends about the restless, half-mad, and misunderstood author. He died a few days before he was due to be crowned as the king of poets by the Pope. Until the beginning of the 19th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe. Io, ch'altre volte fui nelle amorose Torquato Tasso was born in Sorrento. The family had branches all over Europe, notably the Taxis family in Germany. Tasso attended a Jesuit school in Naples, and was also educated at home by his father, Bernardo Tasso, himself a distinguished man of letters, a poet-courtier, who had been exiled from Naples and held posts here and there. Tasso continued his education in various Italian cities, notably in Urbino, where he studied at the court of Duke Guidobaldo II delle Rovere. His first major work, the narrative poem RINALDO, appeared when he was 18 years old. The work was dedicated to Cardinal d'Este. From 1560 to 1565 he studied law and philosophy at the universities of Padua and Bologna. One of Tasso's friends in Padua was Scipio Gorzaga, later a famous cadinal, whose help meant much to Tasso. For the Academy of the Ethereals Tasso wrote three essays on the heroic poem. In Ferrara he entered the service of Cardinal Luigi d'Este, and later his brother, Duke Alfonso II, as poet-in-residence. O heavenly Muse, that not with fading bays During this time Tasso wrote the pastoral drama AMINTA (1573) for the d'Este sistsrs. La Gerusalemme liberata was born between the years 1559 and 1575. Tasso had left his first love in Padua, but he then fell in love with Lucrezia Bendidio, a singer, whose father was a Ferrarese nobleman. Tasso dedicated to her forty-two poems of RIME DEGLI ACADEMICI ETEREI (1567). Lucrezia later married a widower, Conte Paolo Macchiavelli. La Gerusalemme liberata depicts in 20 songs the First Crusade (1096-9) and the Crusaders siege of Jerusalem under the leadership of Godfrey of Boulogne. Models of the heroic epic were Homer and Virgil's Aeneid. Tasso portrayed both imaginary characters and real historical persons, among them the most interesting are heroes Rinaldo and Tancredi, and their Saracen ladies Armida and Clorinda. Its subject matter, a clash between cultures, had contemporary relavance and is significant even today. After finishing his masterwork, Tasso started to suffer from mental problems - his sensitive nature was racked by doubts about the critical and religious orthodoxy of his work and by suspicions of hostility toward him on the part of patrons and friends. Tasso had travelled with Cardinal d'Este to France, and when King Charles IX praised his work, he answered with an undiplomatic remark about toleration of Protestants at the court. From this disastrous journey started Tasso's problems. He couldn't tolerate criticism, feared assassins, negotiated with the Medicis, who were the enemy of the house of Este, and attacked a servant with a knife. It has been also claimed that Tasso had an affair with Duke Alfonson's older sister, Leonora Tasso didn't stay long in one place, and when Alfonso was getting married, he shouted curses in public. Finally he was declared insane. By order of the duke, he spent from 1579 seven years in the hospital of Santa Anna, chained in solitary confinement, or according to some sources, he lived there like a country gentleman. However, during this time Tasso wrote a number of philosophical and moral dialogues, and was visited in the middle of his misery by Montaigne. Tasso never totally regained his sanity. He was released in 1586 into the care of the duke of Mantua, on condition that he would leave Ferrara. At the same time he found himself honored for his Jerusalem, which had gained a huge popularity. Also a pirated edition of the poem appeared. In 1587 Tasso published, together with the DISCORSI DELL'ARTE POETICA which he had composed between 1562 and 1565, a selection of his letters, written 1575-76. In this contribution to epic theory Tasso criticized Ariosto's Orlando furioso for its episodic narrative. A few years earlier Camillo Pellegrino had stated in his dialogue Il Carrafa o vero della epica poesia, that Gerusalemme liberata was in comparison to Ariosto's work a far superior epic poem. For the rest of his life, Tasso wandered in Italy from court to court, unhappy, paranoid, and poverty-stricken. To meet critical and ecclesiastical objections, he made numerous changes to Jerusalem Conquered. The d'Estes did not return his manuscript after he left Ferrara. Because of the numerous revisions and changes, there are no "definitive" version of the poem. Its sequel, GERUSALEMME CONQUISTATA (1593), which expanded the poems legth by four book, was judged as a failure. In APOLOGIA IN DIFESA DELLA GERUSALEMME LIBERATA Tasso defended his later version and attacked against accusations that there was too much magic and romance in Jerusalem Delivered. The public preferred the earlier version. Tasso's later writings include a tragedy, IL RE TORRISMONDO, and a poem about creation, IL MONDO CREATO (1609), which was admired by John Milton. In 1594 he was invited to Rome by Pope Clement VIII to be crowned Italy's Poet Laureate. However, Tasso became seriously ill and died in Rome on April 25, 1595 before he could accept the honor. Among Tasso's other works are some 2 000 short poems, including sonnets and madrigals. He wrote letters, dialogues, the tragedy RE TORRISMONDO (1587), and the theoretical restatement of ancient theories of poetry, DISCORSI DEL POEMA EROICO (1594). From the time of Edward Fairfax's translation into English of Jerusalem Delivered (1594, 1600), Tasso strongly influenced English poets, from Spencer, who used Tasso's sonnets in many of his Amoretti, to Byron, whose The Lament of Tasso is based on the legend of Tasso's passion for Leonora d'Este. The French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) visualized scenes from the epic and Tasso's Discorsi inspired his theory of art. For further reading: Tasso and Milton: The Problem of Christian by Judith A. Kates (1984); Corneille, Tasso and Modern Poetics by A. Donald Sellstrom (1986); Gender and Genealogy in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata by Marilyn Migiel (1993); Three Renaissance Pastorals: Tasso, Guarini, Daniel, ed. by Elizabeth Story Donno, et al (1993); Torquato Tasso in Deutschland by Achim Aurnhammer (1995) - Note: Goethe stated in his play Torquato Tasso (1790), that Tasso was imprisoned for daring to love Duke Alfonso's sister Leonora d'Este, but Angelo Solerti's biography of the poet (1895) corrected this myth. Donizzetti's opera (1833) was also based on the legend. - See also: Ariosto Selected works:
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