Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 - Leigh Hunt
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24
Alfonso, upon this, apparently in the mildest and most reasonable manner,
directed that he should be confined to his apartments, and put into the
hands of the physician. These unfortunate events took place in the summer
of 1577, and in the poet's thirty-third year.
Tasso shewed so much affliction at this treatment, and, at the same time,
bore it so patiently, that the duke took him to his beautiful country
seat of Belriguardo; where, in one of his accounts of the matter, the
poet says that he treated him as a brother; but in another, he accuses
him of having taken pains to make him criminate himself, and confess
certain matters, real or supposed, the nature of which is a puzzle with
posterity. Some are of opinion (and this is the prevailing one), that he
was found guilty of being in love with the Princess Leonora, perhaps of
being loved by herself. Others think the love out of the question, and
that the duke was concerned at nothing but his endeavouring to transfer
his services and his poetic reputation into the hands of the Medici.
Others see in the duke's conduct nothing but that of a good master
interesting himself in the welfare of an afflicted servant.
It is certain that Alfonso did all he could to prevent the surreptitious
printing of the _Jerusalem Delivered_ in various towns of Italy, the
dread of which had much afflicted the poet; and he also endeavoured,
though in vain, to ease his mind on the subject of the Inquisition;
for these facts are attested by state-papers and other documents, not
dependent either on the testimony of third persons or the partial
representations of the sufferer. But Tasso felt so uneasy at Belriguardo,
that he requested leave to retire a while into a convent. He remained
there several days, apparently so much to his satisfaction, that he wrote
to the duke to say that it was his intention to become a friar; and, yet
he had no sooner got into the place, than he addressed a letter to the
Inquisition at Rome, beseeching it to desire permission for him to come
to that city, in order to clear himself from the charges of his enemies.
He also wrote to two other friends, requesting them to further his
petition; and adding that the duke was enraged with him in consequence of
the anger of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who, it is supposed, had accused
Tasso of having revealed to Alfonso some indecent epithet which his
highness had applied to him.[11] These letters were undoubtedly
intercepted, for they were found among the secret archives of Modena,
the only principality ultimately remaining in the Este family; so that,
agreeably to the saying of listeners hearing no good of themselves, if
Alfonso did not know the epithet before, he learnt it then. The reader
may conceive his feelings. Tasso, too, at the same time, was plaguing
him with letters to similar purpose; and it is observable, that while
in those which he sent to Rome he speaks of Cosmo de' Medici as "Grand
Duke," he takes care in the others to call him simply the "Duke of
Florence." Alfonso had been exasperated to the last degree at Cosmo's
having had the epithet "Grand" added by the Pope to his ducal title;
and the reader may imagine the little allowance that would be made by
a haughty and angry prince for the rebellious courtesy thus shewn to a
detested rival. Tasso, furthermore, who had not only an infantine hatred
of bitter "physic," but reasonably thought the fashion of the age
for giving it a ridiculous one, begged hard, in a manner which it is
humiliating to witness, that he might not be drenched with medicine. The
duke at length forbade his writing to him any more; and Tasso, whose
fears of every kind of ill usage had been wound up to a pitch unbearable,
watched an opportunity when he was carelessly guarded, and fled at once
from the convent and Ferrara.
The unhappy poet selected the loneliest ways he could find, and directed
his course to the kingdom of Naples, where his sister lived. He was
afraid of pursuit; he probably had little money; and considering his ill
health and his dread of the Inquisition, it is pitiable to think what he
may have endured while picking his long way through the back states of
the Church and over the mountains of Abruzzo, as far as the Gulf of
Naples. For better security, he exchanged clothes with a shepherd; and as
he feared even his sister at first, from doubting whether she still
loved him, his interview with her was in all its circumstances painfully
dramatic. Cornelia Tasso, now a widow, with two sons, was still residing
at Sorrento, where the poet, casting his eyes around him as he
proceeded towards the house, must have beheld with singular feelings of
wretchedness the lovely spots in which he had been a happy little boy. He
did not announce himself at once. He brought letters, he said, from the
lady's brother; and it is affecting to think, that whether his sister
might or might not have retained otherwise any personal recollection
of him since that time (for he had not seen her in the interval), his
disguise was completed by the alterations which sorrow had made in his
appearance. For, at all events, she did not know him. She saw in him
nothing but a haggard stranger who was acquainted with the writer of the
letters, and to whom they referred for particulars of the risk which
her brother ran, unless she could afford him her protection. These
particulars were given by the stranger with all the pathos of the real
man, and the loving sister fainted away. On her recovery, the visitor
said what he could to reassure her, and then by degrees discovered
himself. Cornelia welcomed him in the tenderest manner. She did all that
he desired; and gave out to her friends that the gentleman was a cousin
from Bergamo, who had come to Naples on family affairs.
For a little while, the affection of his sister, and the beauty and
freshness of Sorrento, rendered the mind of Tasso more easy: but his
restlessness returned. He feared he had mortally offended the Duke of
Ferrara; and, with his wonted fluctuation of purpose, he now wished to be
restored to his presence for the very reason he had run away from it. He
did not know with what vengeance he might be pursued. He wrote to the
duke; but received no answer. The Duchess of Urbino was equally silent.
Leonora alone responded, but with no encouragement. These appearances
only made him the more anxious to dare or to propitiate his doom; and he
accordingly determined to put himself in the duke's hands. His sister
entreated him in vain to alter his resolution. He quitted her before the
autumn was over; and, proceeding to Rome, went directly to the house of
the duke's agent there, who, in concert with the Ferrarese ambassador,
gave his master advice of the circumstance. Gonzaga, however, and another
good friend, Cardinal Albano, doubted whether it would be wise in the
poet to return to Ferrara under any circumstances. They counselled him
to be satisfied with being pardoned at a distance, and with having his
papers and other things returned to him; and the two friends immediately
wrote to the duke requesting as much. The duke apparently acquiesced in
all that was desired; but he said that the illness of his sister, the
Duchess of Urbino, delayed the procuration of the papers, which, it
seems, were chiefly in her hands. The upshot was, that the papers did not
come; and Tasso, with a mixture of rage and fear, and perhaps for more
reasons than he has told, became uncontrollably desirous of retracing the
rest of his steps to Ferrara.
Love may have been among these reasons--probably was; though it does not
follow that the passion must have been for a princess. The poet now,
therefore, petitioned to that effect; and Alfonso wrote again, and said
he might come, but only on condition of his again undergoing the ducal
course of medicine; adding, that if he did not, he was to be finally
expelled his highness's territories.
He was graciously received--too graciously, it would seem, for his
equanimity; for it gave him such a flow of spirits, that the duke appears
to have thought it necessary to repress them. The unhappy poet, at this,
began to have some of his old suspicions; and the unaccountable detention
of his papers confirmed them. He made an effort to keep the suspicions
down, but it was by means, unfortunately, of drowning them in wine and
jollity; and this gave him such a fit of sickness as had nearly been his
death. He recovered, only to make a fresh stir about his papers, and
a still greater one about his poems in general, which, though his
_Jerusalem_ was yet only known in manuscript, and not even his _Aminta_
published, he believed ought to occupy the attention of mankind. People
at Ferrara, therefore, not foreseeing the respect that posterity would
entertain for the poet, and having no great desire perhaps to encourage a
man who claimed to be a rival of their countryman Ariosto, now began to
consider their Neapolitan guest not merely an ingenious and pitiable, but
an overweening and tiresome enthusiast. The court, however, still seemed
to be interested in its panegyrist, though Tasso feared that Alfonso
meant to burn his _Jerusalem_. Alfonso, on the other hand, is supposed to
have feared that he would burn it himself, and the ducal praises with it.
The papers, at all events, apparently including the only fair copy of the
poem, were constantly withheld; and Tasso, in a new fit of despair,
again quitted Ferrara. This mystery of the papers is certainly very
extraordinary.
The poet's first steps were to Mantua, where he met with no such
reception as encouraged him to stay. He then went to Urbino, but did not
stop long. The prince, it is true, was very gracious; and bandages for
a cautery were applied by the fair hands of his highness's sister; but,
though the nurse enchanted, the surgery frightened him. The hapless poet
found himself pursued wherever he went by the tormenting beneficence
of medicine. He escaped, and went to Turin. He had no passport; and
presented, besides, so miserable an appearance, that the people at the
gates roughly refused him admittance. He was well received, however, at
court; and as he had begun to acknowledge that he was subject to humours
and delusions, and wrote to say as much to Cardinal Albano, who returned
him a most excellent and affecting letter, full of the kindest regard
and good counsel, his friends entertained a hope that he would become
tranquil. But he disappointed them. He again applied to Alfonso for
permission to return to Ferrara--again received it, though on worse than
the old conditions--and again found himself in that city in the beginning
of the year 1579, delighted at seeing a brilliant assemblage from all
quarters of Italy on occasion of a new marriage of the duke's (with a
princess of Mantua). He made up his mind to think that nothing could be
denied him, at such a moment, by the bridegroom whom he meant to honour
and glorify.
Alas! the very circumstance to which he looked for success, tended to
throw him into the greatest of his calamities. Alfonso was to be married
the day after the poet's arrival. He was therefore too busy to attend to
him. The princesses did not attend to him. Nobody attended to him. He
again applied in vain for his papers. He regretted his return; became
anxious to be any where else; thought himself not only neglected but
derided; and at length became excited to a pitch of frenzy. He broke
forth into the most unmeasured invectives against the duke, even in
public; invoked curses on his head and that of his whole race; retracted
all he had ever said in the praise of any of them, prince or otherwise;
and pronounced him and his whole court "a parcel of ingrates, rascals,
and poltroons."[12] The outbreak was reported to the duke; and the
consequence was, that the poet was sent to the hospital of St. Anne,
an establishment for the reception of the poor and lunatic, where he
remained (with the exception of a few unaccountable leave-days) upwards
of seven years. This melancholy event happened in the March of the year
1579.
Tasso was stunned by this blow as much as if he had never done or
suffered any thing to expect it. He could at first do nothing but wonder
and bewail himself, and implore to be set free. The duke answered, that
he must be cured first. Tasso replied by fresh entreaties; the duke
returned the same answers. The unhappy poet had recourse to every friend,
prince, and great man he could think of, to join his entreaties; he
sought refuge in composition, but still entreated; he occasionally
reproached and even bantered the duke in some of his letters to his
friends, all of which, doubtless, were opened; but still he entreated,
flattered, adored, all to no purpose, for seven long years and upwards.
In time he became subject to maniacal illusions; so that if he was not
actually mad before, he was now considered so. He was not only visited
with sights and sounds, such as many people have experienced whose brains
have been over-excited, but he fancied himself haunted by a sprite, and
become the sport of "magicians." The sprite stole his things, and the
magicians would not let him get well. He had a vision such as Benvenuto
Cellini had, of the Virgin Mary in her glory; and his nights were so
miserable, that he ate too much in order that he might sleep. When he
was temperate, he lay awake. Sometimes he felt "as if a horse had thrown
himself on him." "Have pity on me," he says to the friend to whom he
gives these affecting accounts; "I am miserable, because the world is
unjust."[13]
The physicians advised him to leave off wine; but he says he could not do
that, though he was content to use it in moderation. In truth he required
something to support him against the physicians themselves, for they
continued to exhaust his strength by their medicines, and could not
supply the want of it with air and freedom. He had ringings in the ears,
vomits, and fluxes of blood. It would be ludicrous, if it were not
deplorably pathetic, to hear so great a man, in the commonest
medical terms, now protesting against the eternal drenches of these
practitioners, now humbly submitting to them, and now entreating like a
child, that they might at least not be "so bitter." The physicians, with
the duke at their head, were as mad for their rhubarbs and lancets as the
quacks in Moliere; and nothing but the very imagination that had nearly
sacrificed the poet's life to their ignorance could have hindered
him from dashing his head against the wall, and leaving them to the
execrations of posterity. It is the only occasion in which the noble
profession of medicine has not appeared in wise and beneficent connexion
with the sufferings of men of letters. Why did Ferrara possess no
Brocklesby in those days? no Garth, Mead, Warren, or Southwood Smith?
Tasso enabled himself to endure his imprisonment with composition. He
supported it with his poetry and his poem, and what, alas! he had been
too proud of during his liberty, the praises of his admirers. His genius
brought him gifts from princes, and some money from the booksellers:
it supported him even against his critics. During his confinement the
_Jerusalem Delivered_ was first published; though, to his grief, from
a surreptitious and mutilated copy. But it was followed by a storm of
applause; and if this was succeeded by as great a storm of objection and
controversy, still the healthier part of his faculties were roused, and
he exasperated his critics and astonished the world by shewing how coolly
and learnedly the poor, wild, imprisoned genius could discuss the most
intricate questions of poetry and philosophy. The disputes excited by his
poem are generally supposed to have done him harm; but the conclusion
appears to be ill founded. They diverted his thoughts, and made him
conscious of his powers and his fame. I doubt whether he would have
been better for entire approbation: it would have put him in a state of
elevation, unfit for what he had to endure. He had found his pen
his great solace, and he had never employed it so well. It would be
incredible what a heap of things he wrote in this complicated torment of
imprisonment, sickness, and "physic," if habit and mental activity had
not been sufficient to account for much greater wonders. His letters
to his friends and others would make a good-sized volume; those to his
critics, another; sonnets and odes, a third; and his Dialogues after
the manner of Plato, two more. Perhaps a good half of all he wrote was
written in this hospital of St. Anne; and he studied as well as composed,
and had to read all that was written at the time, _pro_ and _con_, in the
discussions about his _Jerusalem_, which, in the latest edition of his
works, amount to three out of six volumes octavo! Many of the occasions,
however, of his poems, as well as letters, are most painful to think
of, their object having been to exchange praise for money. And it is
distressing, in the letters, to see his other little wants, and the
fluctuations and moods of his mind. Now he is angry about some book not
restored, or some gift promised and delayed. Now he is in want of some
books to be lent him; now of some praise to comfort him; now of a little
fresh linen. He is very thankful for visits, for respectful letters, for
"sweetmeats;" and greatly puzzled to know what to do with the bad sonnets
and panegyrics that are sent him. They were sometimes too much even for
the allowed ultra courtesies of Italian acknowledgment. His compliments
to most people are varied with astonishing grace and ingenuity; his
accounts of his condition often sufficient to bring the tears into
the manliest eyes; and his ceaseless and vain efforts to procure his
liberation mortifying when we think of himself, and exasperating when we
think of the petty despot who detained him in so long, so degrading, and
so worse than useless a confinement.
Tasso could not always conceal his contempt of his imprisoner from the
ducal servants. Alfonso excelled the grandiloquent poet himself in his
love of pomp and worship; and as he had no particular merits to warrant
it, his victim bantered his love of titles. He says, in a letter to the
duke's steward, "If it is the pleasure of the Most Serene Signor Duke,
Most Clement and Most Invincible, to keep me in prison, may I beg that he
will have the goodness to return certain little things of mine, which
his Most Invincible, Most Clement, and Most Serene Highness has so often
promised me.[14]
But these were rare ebullitions of gaiety, perhaps rather of bitter
despair. A playful address to a cat to lend him her eyes to write by,
during some hour in which he happened to be without a light (for it
does not appear to have been denied him), may be taken as more probable
evidence of a mind relieved at the moment, though the necessity for
the relief may have been very sad. But the style in which he generally
alludes to his situation is far different. He continually begs his
correspondents to pity him, to pray for him, to attribute his errors to
infirmity. He complains of impaired memory, and acknowledges that he has
become subject to the deliriums formerly attributed to him by the enemies
that had helped to produce them. Petitioning the native city of his
ancestors (Bergamo) to intercede for him with the duke, he speaks of the
writer as "this unhappy person;" and subscribes himself,--
"Most illustrious Signors, your affectionate servant, Torquato Tasso, a
prisoner, and infirm, in the hospital of St. Anne in Ferrara."
In one of his addresses to Alfonso, he says most affectingly:
"I have sometimes attributed much to myself, and considered myself as
somebody. But now, seeing in how many ways imagination has imposed on
me, I suspect that it has also deceived me in this opinion of my own
consequence. Indeed, methinks the past has been a dream; and hence I am
resolved to rely on my imagination no longer."
Alfonso made no answer.
The causes of Tasso's imprisonment, and its long duration, are among
the puzzles of biography. The prevailing opinion, notwithstanding the
opposition made to it by Serassi and Black, is, that the poet made love
to the Princess Leonora--perhaps was beloved by her; and that her brother
the duke punished him for his arrogance. This was the belief of his
earliest biographer, Manso, who was intimately acquainted with the poet
in his latter days; and from Manso (though he did not profess to receive
the information from Tasso, but only to gather it from his poems) it
spread over all Europe. Milton took it on trust from him;[15] and so have
our English translators Hoole and Wiffen. The Abbe de Charnes, however,
declined to do so;[16] and Montaigne, who saw the poet in St. Anne's
hospital, says nothing of the love at all. He attributes his condition
to poetical excitement, hard study, and the meeting of the extremes of
wisdom and folly. The philosopher, however, speaks of the poet's having
survived his reason, and become unconscious both of himself and his
works, which the reader knows to be untrue. He does not appear to have
conversed with Tasso. The poet was only shewn him; probably at a sick
moment, or by a new and ignorant official.[17] Muratori, who was in the
service of the Este family at Modena, tells us, on the authority of
an old acquaintance who knew contemporaries of Tasso, that the "good
Torquato" finding himself one day in company with the duke and his
sister, and going close to the princess in order to answer some question
which she had put to him, was so transported by an impulse "more than
poetical," as to give her a kiss; upon which the duke, who had observed
it, turned about to his gentlemen, and said, "What a pity to see so great
a man distracted!" and so ordered him to be locked up.[18] But this
writer adds, that he does not know what to think of the anecdote: he
neither denies nor admits it. Tiraboschi, who was also in the service of
the Este family, doubts the truth of the anecdote, and believes that
the duke shut the poet up solely for fear lest his violence should do
harm.[19] Serassi, the second biographer of Tasso, who dedicated his
book to an Este princess inimical to the poet's memory, attributes the
confinement, on his own shewing, to the violent words he had uttered
against his master.[20] Walker, the author of the _Memoir on Italian
Tragedy_, says, that the life by Serassi himself induced him to credit
the love-story:[21] so does Ginguene.[22] Black, forgetting the age and
illnesses of hundreds of enamoured ladies, and the distraction of lovers
at all times, derides the notion of passion on either side; because, he
argues, Tasso was subject to frenzies, and Leonora forty-two years of
age, and not in good health.[23] What would Madame d'Houdetot have said
to him? or Mademoiselle L'Espinasse? or Mrs. Inchbald, who used to walk
up and down Sackville Street in order that she might see Dr. Warren's
light in his window? Foscolo was a believer in the love;[24] Sismondi
admits it;[25] and Rosini, the editor of the latest edition of the poet's
works, is passionate for it. He wonders how any body can fail to discern
it in a number of passages, which, in truth, may mean a variety of other
loves; and he insists much upon certain loose verses (_lascivi_) which
the poet, among his various accounts of the origin of his imprisonment,
assigns as the cause, or one of the causes, of it. [26]
I confess, after a reasonable amount of inquiry into this subject, that
I can find no proofs whatsoever of Tasso's having made love to Leonora;
though I think it highly probable. I believe the main cause of the duke's
proceedings was the poet's own violence of behaviour and incontinence
of speech. I think it very likely that, in the course of the poetical
love-making to various ladies, which was almost identical in that age
with addressing them in verse, Torquato, whether he was in love or not,
took more liberties with the princesses than Alfonso approved; and it is
equally probable, that one of those liberties consisted in his indulging
his imagination too far. It is not even impossible, that more gallantry
may have been going on at court than Alfonso could endure to see alluded
to, especially by an ambitious pen. But there is no evidence that such
was the case. Tasso, as a gentleman, could not have hinted at such a
thing on the part of a princess of staid reputation; and, on the other
hand, the "love" he speaks of as entertained by her for him, and
warranting the application to her for money in case of his death, was
too plainly worded to mean any thing but love in the sense of friendly
regard. "Per amor mio" is an idiomatical expression, meaning "for my
sake;" a strong one, no doubt, and such as a proud man like Alfonso might
think a liberty, but not at all of necessity an amatory boast. If it was,
its very effrontery and vanity were presumptions of its falsehood. The
lady whom Tasso alludes to in the passage quoted on his first confinement
is complained of for her coldness towards him; and, unless this was
itself a gentlemanly blind, it might apply to fifty other ladies besides
the princess. The man who assaulted him in the streets, and who is
supposed to have been the violator of his papers, need not have found any
secrets of love in them. The servant at whom he aimed the knife or the
dagger might be as little connected with such matters; and the sonnets
which the poet said he wrote for a friend, and which he desired to be
buried with him, might be alike innocent of all reference to Leonora,
whether he wrote them for a friend or not. Leonora's death took
place during the poet's confinement; and, lamented as she was by the
verse-writers according to custom, Tasso wrote nothing on the event. This
silence has been attributed to the depth of his passion; but how is the
fact proved? and why may it not have been occasioned by there having been
no passion at all?