Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 - Leigh Hunt
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A foolish young fellow, garnished with a number of golden chains, coming
into a room where he was, and being overheard by him exclaiming, "Is this
the great man that was mad?" Tasso said, "Yes; but that people had never
put on him more than one chain at a time."
His character may be gathered, but not perhaps entirely, from what has
been written of his life; for some of his earlier letters shew him to
have been not quite so grave and refined in his way of talking as readers
of the _Jerusalem_ might suppose. He was probably at that time of life
not so scrupulous in his morals as he professed to be during the greater
part of it. His mother is thought to have died of chagrin and impatience
at being separated so long from her husband, and not knowing what to do
to save her dowry from her brothers; and I take her son to have combined
his mother's ultra-sensitive organisation with his father's worldly
imprudence and unequal spirits. The addition of the nervous temperament
of one parent to the aspiring nature of the other gave rise to the poet's
trembling eagerness for distinction; and Torquato's very love for them
both hindered him from seeing what should have been corrected in the
infirmities which he inherited. Falling from the highest hopes of
prosperity into the most painful afflictions, he thus wanted solid
principles of action to support him, and was forced to retreat upon an
excess of self-esteem, which allowed his pride to become a beggar, and
his naturally kind, loving, just, and heroical disposition to condescend
to almost every species of inconsistency. The Duke of Ferrara, he
complains, did not believe a word he said;[35] and the fact is, that,
partly from disease, and partly from a want of courage to look his
defects in the face, he beheld the same things in so many different
lights, and according as it suited him at the moment, that, without
intending falsehood, his statements are really not to be relied on. He
degraded even his verses, sometimes with panegyrics for interest's sake,
sometimes out of weak wishes to oblige, of which he was afterwards
ashamed; and, with the exception of Constantini, we cannot be sure that
any one person praised in them retained his regard in his last days. His
suspicion made him a kind of Rousseau; but he was more amiable than
the Genevese, and far from being in the habit of talking against old
acquaintances, whatever he might have thought of them. It is observable,
not only that he never married, but he told Manso he had led a life of
entire continence ever since he entered the walls of his prison, being
then in his thirty-fifth year.[36] Was this out of fidelity to some
mistress? or the consequence of a previous life the reverse of continent?
or was it from some principle of superstition? He had become a devotee,
apparently out of a dread of disbelief; and he remained extremely
religious for the rest of his days. The two unhappiest of Italian poets,
Tasso and Dante, were the two most superstitious.
As for the once formidable question concerning the comparative merits
of this poet and Ariosto, which anticipated the modern quarrels of the
classical and romantic schools, some idea of the treatment which Tasso
experienced may be conceived by supposing all that used to be sarcastic
and bitter in the periodical party-criticism among ourselves some thirty
years back, collected into one huge vial of wrath, and poured upon the
new poet's head. Even the great Galileo, who was a man of wit, bred up
in the pure Tuscan school of Berni and Casa, and who was an idolator
of Ariosto, wrote, when he was young, a "review" of the _Jerusalem
Delivered_, which it is painful to read, it is so unjust and
contemptuous.[37] But now that the only final arbiter, posterity, has
accepted both the poets, the dispute is surely the easiest thing in the
world to settle; not, indeed, with prejudices of creeds or temperaments,
but before any judges thoroughly sympathising with the two claimants. Its
solution is the principle of the greater including the less. For Ariosto
errs only by having an unbounded circle to move in. His sympathies are
unlimited; and those who think him inferior to Tasso, only do so in
consequence of their own want of sympathy with the vivacities that
degrade him in their eyes. Ariosto can be as grave and exalted as Tasso
when he pleases, and he could do a hundred things which Tasso never
attempted. He is as different in this respect as Shakspeare from Milton.
He had far more knowledge of mankind than Tasso, and he was superior in
point of taste. But it is painful to make disadvantageous comparisons of
one great poet with another. Let us be thankful for Tasso's enchanted
gardens, without being forced to vindicate the universal world of his
predecessor. Suffice it to bear in mind, that the grave poet himself
agreed with the rest of the Italians in calling the Ferrarese the "divine
Ariosto;" a title which has never been popularly given to his rival.
The _Jerusalem Delivered_ is the history of a Crusade, related with
poetic license. The Infidels are assisted by unlawful arts; and the
libertinism that brought scandal on the Christians, is converted into
youthful susceptibility, led away by enchantment. The author proposed
to combine the ancient epic poets with Ariosto, or a simple plot, and
uniformly dignified style, with romantic varieties of adventure, and
the luxuriance of fairy-land. He did what he proposed to do, but with a
judgment inferior to Virgil's; nay, in point of the interdependence of
the adventures, to Ariosto, and with far less general vigour. The mixture
of affectation with his dignity is so frequent, that, whether Boileau's
famous line about Tasso's tinsel and Virgil's gold did or did not mean to
imply that the _Jerusalem_ was nothing but tinsel, and the _AEneid_ all
gold, it is certain that the tinsel is so interwoven with the gold, as to
render it more of a rule than an exception, and put a provoking distance
between Tasso's epic pretensions and those of the greatest masters of the
art. People who take for granted the conceits because of the "wildness"
of Ariosto, and the good taste because of the "regularity" of Tasso, just
assume the reverse of the fact. It is a rare thing to find a conceit in
Ariosto; and, where it does exist, it is most likely defensible on some
Shakspearian ground of subtle propriety. Open Tasso in almost any part,
particularly the love-scenes, and it is marvellous if, before long, you
do not see the conceits vexatiously interfering with the beauties.
"Oh maraviglia! Amor, the appena e nato,
Gia grande vola, e gia trionfa armato." Canto i. St. 47.
Oh, miracle! Love is scarce born, when, lo,
He flies full wing'd, and lords it with his bow!
"Se 'l miri fulminar ne l'arme avvolto,
Marte lo stimi; Amor, se scopre il volto." St. 58.
Mars you would think him, when his thund'ring race
In arms he ran; Love, when he shew'd his face.
Which is as little true to reason as to taste; for no god of war could
look like a god of love. The habit of mind would render it impossible.
But the poet found the prettiness of the Greek Anthology irresistible.
Olindo, tied to the stake amidst the flames of martyrdom, can say to his
mistress
"Altre fiamme, altri nodi amor promise." Canto ii. st. 34.
Other flames, other bonds than these, love promised.
The sentiment is natural, but the double use of the "flames" on such an
occasion, miserable.
In the third canto the fair Amazon Clorinda challenges her love to single
combat.
"E di due morti in un punto lo sfida." St. 23.
"And so at once she threats to kill him twice." _Fairfax_.
That is to say, with her valour and beauty.
Another twofold employment of flame, with an exclamation to secure our
astonishment, makes its appearance in the fourth canto
"Oh miracol d'amor! che le faville
Tragge del pianto, e'i cor' ne l'acqua accende." St. 76.
Oh, miracle of love! that draweth sparks
Of fire from tears, and kindlest hearts in water!
This puerile antithesis of _fire_ and _water, fire_ and _ice, light_
in _darkness, silence_ in _speech_, together with such pretty turns as
_wounding one's-self in wounding others_, and the worse sacrifice of
consistency and truth of feeling,--lovers making long speeches on the
least fitting occasions, and ladies retaining their rosy cheeks in the
midst of fears of death,--is to be met with, more or less, throughout
the poem. I have no doubt they were the proximate cause of that general
corruption of taste which was afterwards completed by Marino, the
acquaintance and ardent admirer of Tasso when a boy. They have been laid
to the charge of Petrarch; but, without entering into the question, how
far and in what instances conceits may not be natural to lovers haunted,
as Petrarch was, with one idea, and seeing it in every thing they behold,
what had the great epic poet to do with the faults of the lyrical? And
what is to be said for his standing in need of the excuse of bad example?
Homer and Milton were in no such want. Virgil would not have copied the
tricks of Ovid. There is an effeminacy and self-reflection in Tasso,
analogous to his Rinaldo, in the enchanted garden; where the hero wore
a looking-glass by his side, in which he contemplated his sophisticated
self, and the meretricious beauty of his enchantress.[38] Agreeably to
this tendency to weakness, the style of Tasso, when not supported by
great occasions (and even the occasion itself sometimes fails him), is
too apt to fall into tameness and common-place,--to want movement and
picture; while, at the same time, with singular defect of enjoyment, it
does not possess the music which might be expected from a lyrical and
voluptuous poet. Bernardo prophesied of his son, that, however he might
surpass him in other respects, he would never equal him in sweetness;
and he seems to have judged him rightly. I have met with a passage in
Torquato's prose writings (but I cannot lay my hands on it), in which he
expresses a singular predilection for verses full of the same vowel.
He seems, if I remember rightly, to have regarded it, not merely as a
pleasing variety, which it is on occasion, but as a reigning principle.
Voltaire (I think, in his treatise on _Epic Poetry_) has noticed the
multitude of _o_'s in the exordium of the _Jerusalem_.This apparent
negligence seems to have been intentional.
"Canto l'armi pietose e 'l capitano
Che 'l gran Sepolero libero di Cristo;
Molto egli opro col senno e con la mano,
Molto soffri nel glorioso acquisto;
E invan l'inferno a lui s'oppose; e invano
S'armo d'Asia e di Libia il popol misto;
Che il ciel gli die favore, e sotto ai santi
Segni ridusse i suoi compagni erranti."
The reader will not be surprised to find, that he who could thus confound
monotony with music, and commence his greatest poem with it, is too often
discordant in the rest of his versification. It has been thought, that
Milton might have taken from the Italians the grand musical account to
which he turns a list of proper names, as in his enumerations of realms
and deities; but I have been surprised to find how little the most
musical of languages appears to have suggested to its poets anything of
the sort. I am not aware of it, indeed, in any poets but our own. All
others, from Homer, with his catalogue of leaders and ships, down to
Metastasio himself, though he wrote for music, appear to have overlooked
this opportunity of playing a voluntary of fine sounds, where they had no
other theme on which to modulate. Its inventor, as far as I am aware, is
that great poet, Marlowe.[39]
There are faults of invention as well as style in the _Jerusalem_. The
Talking Bird, or bird that sings with a human voice (canto iv. 13), is a
piece of inverisimilitude, which the author, perhaps, thought justifiable
by the speaking horses of the ancients. But the latter were moved
supernaturally for the occasion, and for a very fine occasion. Tasso's
bird is a mere born contradiction to nature and for no necessity. The
vulgar idea of the devil with horns and a tail (though the retention
of it argued a genius in Tasso very inferior to that of Milton) is
defensible, I think, on the plea of the German critics, that malignity
should be made a thing low and deformed; but as much cannot be said for
the storehouse in heaven, where St. Michael's spear is kept with which
he slew the dragon, and the trident which is used for making earthquakes
(canto vii. st. 81). The tomb which supernaturally comes out of the
ground, inscribed with the name and virtues of Sueno (canto viii. st.
39), is worthy only of a pantomime; and the wizard in robes, with
beech-leaves on his head, who walks dry-shod on water, and superfluously
helps the knights on their way to Armida's retirement (xiv. 33), is
almost as ludicrous as the burlesque of the river-god in the _Voyage_ of
Bachaumont and Chapelle.
But let us not wonder, nevertheless, at the effect which the _Jerusalem_
has had upon the world. It could not have had it without great nature and
power. Rinaldo, in spite of his aberrations with Armida, knew the path
to renown, and so did his poet. Tasso's epic, with all its faults, is a
noble production, and justly considered one of the poems of the world.
Each of those poems hit some one great point of universal attraction,
at least in their respective countries, and among the givers of fame in
others. Homer's poem is that of action; Dante's, of passion; Virgil's, of
judgment; Milton's, of religion; Spenser's, of poetry itself; Ariosto's,
of animal spirits (I do not mean as respects gaiety only, but in strength
and readiness of accord with the whole play of nature); Tasso looked
round with an ultra-sensitive temperament, and an ambition which required
encouragement, and his poem is that of tenderness. Every thing inclines
to this point in his circle, with the tremulousness of the needle. Love
is its all in all, even to the design of the religious war which is
to rescue the sepulchre of the God of Charity from the hands of the
unloving. His heroes are all in love, at least those on the right side;
his leader, Godfrey, notwithstanding his prudence, narrowly escapes the
passion, and is full of a loving consideration; his amazon, Clorinda,
inspires the truest passion, and dies taking her lover's hand; his
Erminia is all love for an enemy; his enchantress Armida falls from
pretended love into real, and forsakes her religion for its sake. An old
father (canto ix.) loses his five sons in battle, and dies on their
dead bodies of a wound which he has provoked on purpose. Tancred cannot
achieve the enterprise of the Enchanted Forest, because his dead mistress
seems to come out of one of the trees. Olindo thinks it happiness to be
martyred at the same stake with Sophronia. The reconciliation of Rinaldo
with his enchantress takes place within a few stanzas of the close of
the poem, as if contesting its interest with religion. The _Jerusalem
Delivered_, in short, is the favourite epic of the young: all the lovers
in Europe have loved it. The French have forgiven the author his conceits
for the sake of his gallantry: he is the poet of the gondoliers; and
Spenser, the most luxurious of his brethren, plundered his bowers of
bliss. Read Tasso's poem by this gentle light of his genius, and you pity
him twentyfold, and know not what excuse to find for his jailer.
The stories translated in the present volume, though including war and
magic, are all love-stories. They were not selected on that account. They
suggested themselves for selection, as containing most of the finest
things in the poem. They are conducted with great art, and the characters
and affections happily varied. The first (_Olindo and Sophronia_) is
perhaps unique for the hopelessness of its commencement (I mean with
regard to the lovers), and the perfect, and at the same time quite
probable, felicity of the conclusion. There is no reason to believe that
the staid and devout Sophronia would have loved her adorer at all, but
for the circumstance that first dooms them both to a shocking death,
and then sends them, with perfect warrant, from the stake to the altar.
Clorinda is an Amazon, the idea of whom, as such, it is impossible for
us to separate from very repulsive and unfeminine images; yet, under the
circumstances of the story, we call to mind in her behalf the possibility
of a Joan of Arc's having loved and been beloved; and her death is a
surprising and most affecting variation upon that of Agrican in Boiardo.
Tasso's enchantress Armida is a variation of the Angelica of the same
poet, combined with Ariosto's Alcina; but her passionate voluptuousness
makes her quite a new character in regard to the one; and she is as
different from the painted hag of the _Orlando_ as youth, beauty, and
patriotic intention can make her. She is not very sentimental; but all
the passion in the world has sympathised with her; and it was manly and
honest in the poet not to let her Paganism and vehemence hinder him from
doing justice to her claims as a human being and a deserted woman. Her
fate is left in so pleasing a state of doubt, that we gladly avail
ourselves of it to suppose her married to Rinaldo, and becoming the
mother of a line of Christian princes. I wish they had treated her poet
half so well as she would infallibly have treated him herself.
But the singer of the Crusades can be strong as well as gentle. You
discern in his battles and single combats the poet ambitious of renown,
and the accomplished swordsman. The duel of Tancred and Argantes, in
which the latter is slain, is as earnest and fiery writing throughout as
truth and passion could desire; that of Tancred and Clorinda is also
very powerful as well as affecting; and the whole siege of Jerusalem is
admirable for the strength of its interest. Every body knows the grand
verse (not, however, quite original) that summons the devils to council,
"Chiama gli abitator," &c.; and the still grander, though less original
one, describing the desolations of time, "Giace l'alta Cartago."[40] The
forest filled with supernatural terrors by a magician, in order that the
Christians may not cut wood from it to make their engines of war, is one
of the happiest pieces of invention in romance. It is founded in as true
human feeling as those of Ariosto, and is made an admirable instrument
for the aggrandizement of the character of Rinaldo. Godfrey's attestation
of all time, and of the host of heaven, when he addresses his army in the
first canto, is in the highest spirit of epic magnificence. So is the
appearance of the celestial armies, together with that of the souls of
the slain Christian warriors, in the last canto, where they issue forth
in the air to assist the entrance into the conquered city. The classical
poets are turned to great and frequent account throughout the poem;
and yet the work has a strong air of originality, partly owing to the
subject, partly to the abundance of love-scenes, and to a certain
compactness in the treatment of the main story, notwithstanding the
luxuriance of the episodes. The _Jerusalem Delivered_ is stately,
well-ordered, full of action and character, sometimes sublime, always
elegant, and very interesting-more so, I think, as a whole, and in
a popular sense, than any other story in verse, not excepting the
_Odyssey_. For the exquisite domestic attractiveness of the second
Homeric poem is injured, like the hero himself, by too many diversions
from the main point. There is an interest, it is true, in that very
delay; but we become too much used to the disappointment. In the epic
of Tasso the reader constantly desires to learn how the success of the
enterprise is to be brought about; and he scarcely loses sight of any of
the persons but he wishes to see them again. Even in the love-scenes,
tender and absorbed as they are, we feel that the heroes are fighters, or
going to fight. When you are introduced to Armida in the Bower of Bliss,
it is by warriors who come to take her lover away to battle.
One of the reasons why Tasso hurt the style of his poem by a manner too
lyrical was, that notwithstanding its deficiency in sweetness, he was one
of the profusest lyrical writers of his nation, and always having his
feelings turned in upon himself. I am not sufficiently acquainted with
his odes and sonnets to speak of them in the gross; but I may be allowed
to express my belief that they possess a great deal of fancy and feeling.
It has been wondered how he could write so many, considering the troubles
he went through; but the experience was the reason. The constant
succession of hopes, fears, wants, gratitudes, loves, and the necessity
of employing his imagination, accounts for all. Some of his sonnets, such
as those on the Countess of Scandiano's lip ("Quel labbro," &c.); the one
to Stigliano, concluding with the affecting mention of himself and his
lost harp; that beginning
"Io veggio in cielo scintillar le stelle,"
recur to my mind oftener than any others except Dante's "Tanto gentile"
and Filicaia's _Lament on Italy_; and, with the exception of a few of the
more famous odes of Petrarch, and one or two of Filicaia's and Guidi's, I
know of none in Italian like several of Tasso's, including his fragment
"O del grand' Apennino," and the exquisite chorus on the _Golden Age_,
which struck a note in the hearts of the world.
His _Aminta_, the chief pastoral poem of Italy, though, with the
exception of that ode, not equal in passages to the _Faithful
Shepherdess_ (which is a Pan to it compared with a beardless shepherd),
is elegant, interesting, and as superior to Guarini's more sophisticate
yet still beautiful _Pastor Fido_ as a first thought may be supposed to
be to its emulator. The objection of its being too elegant for shepherds
he anticipated and nullified by making Love himself account for it in a
charming prologue, of which the god is the speaker:
"Queste selve oggi ragionar d'Amore
S'udranno in nuova guisa; e ben parassi,
Che la mia Deita sia qui presente
In se medesma, e non ne' suoi ministri.
Spirero nobil sensi a rozzi petti;
Raddolciro nelle lor lingue il suono:
Perche, ovunque i' mi sia, io sono Amore
Ne' pastori non men che negli eroi;
E la disagguaglianza de' soggetti,
Come a me piace, agguaglio: e questa e pure
Suprema gloria, e gran miracol mio,
Render simili alle piu dotte cetre
Le rustiche sampogne."
After new fashion shall these woods to-day
Hear love discoursed; and it shall well be seen
That my divinity is present here
In its own person, not its ministers.
I will inbreathe high fancies in rude hearts;
I will refine and render dulcet sweet
Their tongues; because, wherever I may be,
Whether with rustic or heroic men,
There am I Love; and inequality,
As it may please me, do I equalise;
And 'tis my crowning glory and great miracle
To make the rural pipe as eloquent
Even as the subtlest harp.
I ought not to speak of Tasso's other poetry, or of his prose, for I
have read little of either; though, as they are not popular with his
countrymen, a foreigner may be pardoned for thinking his classical
tragedy, _Torrismondo_, not attractive--his _Sette Giornate_ (Seven
Days of the Creation) still less so--and his platonical and critical
discourses better filled with authorities than reasons. Tasso was a
lesser kind of Milton, enchanted by the Sirens. We discern the weak parts
of his character, more or less, in all his writings; but we see also the
irrepressible elegance and superiority of the mind, which, in spite of
all weakness, was felt to tower above its age, and to draw to it the
homage as well as the resentment of princes.
[Footnote 1: My authorities for this notice are, Black's _Life of Tasso_
(2 vols. 4to, 1810), his original, Serassi, _Vita di Torquato Tasso_ (do.
1790), and the works of the poet in the Pisan edition of Professor Rosini
(33 vols. 8vo, 1332). I have been indebted to nothing in Black which I
have not ascertained by reference to the Italian biographer, and quoted
nothing stated by Tasso himself but from the works. Black's Life, which
is a free version of Serassi's, modified by the translator's own opinions
and criticism, is elegant, industrious, and interesting. Serassi's was
the first copious biography of the poet founded on original documents;
and it deserved to be translated by Mr. Black, though servile to
the house of Este, and, as might be expected, far from being always
ingenuous. Among other instances of this writer's want of candour is the
fact of his having been the discoverer and suppresser of the manuscript
review of Tasso by Galileo. The best summary account of the poet's life
and writings which I have met with is Ginguene's, in the fifth volume
of his _Histoire Litteraire_, &c. It is written with his usual grace,
vivacity, and acuteness, and contains a good notice of the Tasso
controversy. As to the Pisan edition of the works, it is the completest,
I believe, in point of contents ever published, comprises all the
controversial criticism, and is, of course, very useful; but it contains
no life except Manso's (now known to be very inconclusive), has got a
heap of feeble variorum comments on the _Jerusalem_, no notes worth
speaking of to the rest of the works, and, notwithstanding the claim
in the title-page to the merit of a "better order," has left the
correspondence in a deplorable state of irregularity, as well as totally
without elucidation. The learned Professor is an agreeable writer, and, I
believe, a very pleasant man, but he certainly is a provoking editor.]