The life of Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) can at
best be called unfortunate. Born in Sorrento on the eleventh of March
to Bernardo Tasso, himself a poet of some esteem and a member of the very
minor nobility, Torquato was able to benefit from the education that was
available to those of his station. He studied at the court of Duke
Guibaldo II delle Rovere of Urbino until 1560, when, at his father's request,
he left to study law and philosophy at the University of Padua. It
was during this time that Torquato Tasso (Tasso) wrote his first major
romantic poem “Rinaldo”, which dealt with the stories of Charlemagne.
Tasso's father, upon reading this manuscript relieved Tasso of his legal
and philosophical studies so that he might further explore and develop
his poetic talents. Thus, Tasso enrolled at the University of Bologna
in 1563, and after three years of study, became a courtier of Cardinal
Luigi d’Este at Ferrara, under whose patronage, Tasso thrived in what could
probably be called the happiest years of his life. Later, he entered
into the service of the Cardinal's brother, Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara.
It was at this time that Tasso produced his “L'Aminta” and his masterwork
about the First Crusade, La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered),
which was completed between 1559 and 1575. However, it was through
this work that Tasso's life and work would no longer be his to control.
While in the process of completing his masterpiece,
Tasso sent out portions to his friends and other critics for their evaluations
and suggestions. The responses that he received were altogether unfavorable
and the work was very harshly criticized, even to the point that some of
the clergy dubbed Tasso a heretic for writing it. Tasso, sensitive
to this criticism, fell into an unhealthy state of depression and melancholy
and was prone to fits of irritability and instability. His condition
was made worse by the knowledge that some of the critics who had criticized
his work began to publish pieces of it publicly. His condition at
one point reached such a state that one night in 1577 Tasso stabbed one
of his servants who he believed to be spying on him. After this incident,
Tasso was jailed but later escaped and fled to his sister's house in Sorrento.
In 1579, however, Tasso returned to Alfonso's court. Alfonso had
him committed to an asylum in Santa Anna from 1579 to 1586. However,
while there, Tasso continued to revise Gerusalemme liberata and even produced
several prose works, including his Rime e prose and his now famous letters.
After his release from the asylum, Tasso spent several years wandering
Italy. He continued to write, however, and in 1593 he completed his
revisions to Gerusalemme liberata which he renamed Gerusalemme conquistata
(Jerusalem Conquered). However, this epic proved to be a greater
failure than the original and has in time been all but discarded.
Nevertheless, it seems that Tasso's reputation was quite international
even in his lifetime. In 1594 he was invited to Rome by Pope Clement
VIII to be crowned poet laureate. Tasso readily agreed but postponed
the ceremony until the end of April of the following year. Unfortunately,
although somewhat fittingly, Tasso became seriously ill the day before
the ceremony was to take place, and on April 25, 1595, Tasso died in the
convent of St. Onofrio, where he is still buried.
Much of Tasso's legacy has been handed down through the likes of Goethe and other Romantic writers, who saw Tasso as the ideal of the suffering lover and the embodiment of the artist as lover. Thus, the Romantic cloak placed on Tasso's life shaded much of the biographical speculation surrounding it. Thus it came to be that Goethe asserts in his play Torquato Tasso (1790) that Tasso's madness and consequent imprisonment was due to his love of the Duke's sister Leonora. Although Solerti's 1895 biography of Tasso disproves this myth, the stigma of courtly love and the sorrow and madness associated with it has remained attached to Tasso. In fact, in some regards, Tasso can be seen as to have fueled a sort-of “courtly love revival” in the Nineteenth Century. Many are the musical composers that have paid tribute to Tasso. The first, though not a Romantic, was Monteverdi with his Il Combattamento di Tancredi e Clorinda. Among the Romantics, Liszt paid homage to Tasso several times and Strauss did not escape the allure of the “Myth of Tasso”. Therefore, much of the Romantic spirit toward love and its anguish and the role of the artist was in one way or another attached to Tasso.
However, even in his own time, Tasso was reevaluating the notion of the heroic as it applied to “the epic”. In his La Gerusalemme Liberata, especially, he contrasts the notions of Valor and Honor with the idea of Christian Duty. The story is of the First Crusade and displays knights, both historic and fictional, on both the Moorish and the Christian fronts. The contrast is exhibited in the qualities Tasso gives to the knights themselves. The Moors are concerned with heroism and prowess and their knights are constantly referring to these and other ideals as their strengths. For the Christians, however, Tasso seems to paint a picture of loyalty to a cause and a sense of duty. Mingled with these ideas is the thought that Christian accomplishment, at least militarily, relies on a heavy dose of faith in God. In fact, at some points in the poem, the Christian soldiers seem to be their own stumbling blocks as the questions of romance are confronted. However, this idea of humility is essential to Tasso's point. In a way, he seems to employ a deus ex machina approach when he has God send the host of Heaven down to drive out the demonic forces, represented by the classical gods, guiding the Moors and thereby save his Christian soldier's. Yet, this seems only to strengthen Tasso's assertion that the faith of a person is much more lasting and honorable than any military prowess. There is the notion that “God will deliver his people”. Thus, Tasso creates a new Christian hero out of the remains of the chivalric traditions that preceded him. It seems a logical step from the exhortations of Bernard of Clairveaux to take up the sword and fight for Christianity to Tasso's own sentiment that the only true prowess is that of duty and faith to God. Therefore, even in the late Italian Renaissance, Tasso was developing the idea of the heroic. Thus, in both life and death, Tasso shaped the ideas of many to come and his own personal tragedy was turned to gold.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/tasso/
http://www.comptons2.aol.com/encyclopedia/ARTICLES/04703_A.htm
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/Frank/People/tasso.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ttasso.htm
Boulting, William. Tasso and His Times. London:
Metheun and Co., 1907.
Everett, William. The Italian Poets Since Dante. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904.
Kates, Judith A. Tasso and Milton: The Problem of the
Christian Epic. Cranbury, NJ: Associated
University Press, 1983.