Tasso

Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) - pronounced tor-KWAH-to TAS-so, IPA: /tor'kwato 'tasso/ - was an Italian poet, best known for his romantic epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Freed or Jerusalem Delivered).

Tasso was born in Sorrento, where his father, Bernardo, a nobleman from Bergamo, was secretary to the Prince of Salerno, and spent his earliest years in Naples and Rome. He was a precocious child, always made much of and admired by the adults around him. In 1557 he moved with his father to the court at Urbino, where he was educated with, and became the friend of, Francesco Maria della Rovere, the heir to the Duchy of Urbino. As a law student at the University of Padua, he devoted himself to literature rather than the law, and by the age of 18 had composed the romantic epic Rinaldo, which was published in 1562.

In 1565 Tasso was appointed to a position at the court of the rulers of Ferrara, the d'Este family, serving first Cardinal Luigi d'Este, and then from 1571 Duke Alfonso II of Ferrara. Unlike Ariosto, Tasso was well treated by the d'Este, who appreciated his literary gifts, and it was during this period that he composed his greatest work, Gerusalemme liberata, which was completed in 1574.

In the following years, however, Tasso's mental health deteriorated: he became violently irascible and developed a persecution complex. He repeatedly quarrelled with Duke Alfonso and left Ferrara only, after an interval, to plead with Alfonso to allow him back. In 1579 he was admitted to the asylum of St. Anna in Ferrara, remaining there until 1586, when he went to live at the court of the Gonzagas in Mantua. Predictably, he soon quarrelled with his new patron, Vincenzo Gonzaga, and his final years were spent wandering from one Italian city to another. In 1595 he travelled to Rome to receive from the Pope a crown of laurels as the greatest poet of the age, but he died before the ceremony took place.

Gerusalemme liberata is set against the background of the First Crusade and tells of the ultimately successful attempt by the Christian knights under Godfrey of Bouillon, the nominal hero of the poem, to rescue the city of Jerusalem from the besieging Muslim army. However, like Ariosto in Orlando furioso, Tasso does not aim for historical accuracy, and the poem contains a large element of fantasy, much of it concerning the romantic attachments between various women and soldiers in one or other of the opposing armies. Central to the poem is Armida, a beautiful witch, who sows dissension in the ranks of the crusaders before falling in love with the Christian knight Rinaldo and carrying him off to a magic island, from which he has to be rescued by two of his fellow crusaders.

Gerusalemme liberata, which enjoyed great popularity throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is, like Ariosto's Orlando furioso, written in ottava rima, i.e., eight-line stanzas with the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c. Here, as an example, is the opening stanza of the poem:

Canto l'arme pietose e 'l capitano

che 'l gran sepolcro liberò di Cristo.

Molto egli oprò co 'l senno e con la mano,

molto soffrì nel glorioso acquisto;

e in van l'Inferno vi s'oppose, e in vano

s'armò d'Asia e di Libia il popol misto.

Il Ciel gli diè favore, e sotto a i santi

segni ridusse i suoi compagni erranti.

(Translation: I sing of the holy armies and the knight who freed the great sepulchre of Christ. He achieved much by thought and by his hand, and suffered much in that glorious triumph; in vain did Hell oppose him, and in vain did the various nations of Asia and Libia take up arms. Heaven gave him its blessing, and through the influence of the saints brought back his companions who strayed.)