TORQUATO TASSO
From a picture once in the possession of James Dennistoun
From infancy he manifested decided symptoms of "a genius to madness near allied." Indifferent to toys, he seemed exempt from the emotions and the tastes of childhood. Precocious in all mental powers, he spoke intelligibly at six months, knew Greek and wrote verses at seven years, and at eighteen published the Rinaldo, a sustained and applauded epic.[*180] The reverses of his early days on which we have already dwelt in our notice of his father, the premature loss of his mother, the injudicious liberty of thought and action allowed him by Bernardo, and the rough criticisms to which his writings were subjected ere his character and knowledge of mankind were developed—all these tinged deeper the gloom of his constitutional sadness, and formed a training the most fatal to one of innately morbid sensibilities. The results were obvious. Bald before his time, his digestion enervated, subject to faintings and fevers intermittent or delirious, his health at thirty was ruined, his nerves and brain shattered. The natural consequence of his precocity was an overweening pride in his accomplishments, which rendered him jealous, touchy, and quarrelsome; and though destined from youth to wander in search of given bread, nature had neither granted him the humble resignation required for such a lot, nor imbued him with a daring spirit to rise above it. Men who live in courts must be prepared to encounter intrigues; those who publish poetry should lay their account with unsparing strictures; and the smaller the court, or the more prominent their poetic merits, so much the greater need have they of forbearance and philosophy. But Tasso possessed neither; and the jealousies of Pigna and Guarini, the malice of the della Crusca critics, stung him to the quick.[*181] A slight or fancied affront, which he met with from one of the courtiers of Ferrara, though avenged by a duel, brought his symptoms to a head.[*182] From that moment, when in his thirty-third year, we find him a victim to the restlessness, suspicions, fears, sad forebodings, and hopeless misery, which afflict lipemaniacs.
Under such sinister influences the crisis speedily arrived. Whilst seated in the Duchess of Urbino's apartment, in her mother's palace, he rushed with his dagger on an attendant who chanced to enter. This, whether a premeditated assault, or an idle hallucination, seems to have been the ground on which he was, by order of Alfonso, placed under restraint; but when the paroxysm was passed, he was reconducted to the Duke's presence with ample assurances of pardon. The iron had, however, entered into his soul, and the idea that he was in disgrace, owing to the malicious backbiting of foes real or imaginary, could not be driven from his mind. He retired from their supposed persecutions to a Franciscan convent,[*183] but, finding in its quiet no peace for his troubled spirit, he fled in disguise from these illusions, and, led perhaps by the bright memory of his early days, arrived on the sunny shores of Sorrento, where he sought a refuge with his married sister. But alas! the charms of that radiant land shed no gladsome influence on his soul. Ere a few months passed, he returned to Ferrara, in hopes of proving to the Duke that the crimes and the frenzy, of which he believed himself accused, were equally calumnies. In the festive and kindly reception with which he was greeted, the wayward poet found new grounds for jealousy, imagining a plot to be formed against his literary fame, by plunging him in a round of dissipation, whilst "others" (meaning his patron) should reap the glory and profits due to his creative genius. That conduct so provoking should have brought upon him real slights, in addition to his imagined wrongs, can scarcely be doubted; and, wounded at heart, he again had recourse to flight, wandering aimlessly by Mantua, Padua, and Venice, to Pesaro, the refuge of his happier youth. We shall elsewhere introduce the letter which he there addressed to the Duke of Urbino; though it obtained him a compassionate welcome, his new host naturally counselled his return to the home of his adoption, as the place where he was most certain to be cared for. But in a fresh access of disease, he escaped from such suggestions, and obeyed them not until after he had visited Turin, disguised by poverty and filth.
If these views of Tasso's malady[*184] are as conformable to truth as they appear to be with the representations of his biographers, the time seems to have been now fully arrived for his seclusion, as a measure of justice to himself and of security to others. It is quite another question how far the treatment he met with at Sant'Anna was that best suited to his symptoms. Had he lived in times when the pathology of mind was more fully understood, and more ably managed, his genius might, by timely care, have been saved from a miserable wreck; but his brain surely then required such aid as medical science could afford. If this be granted, the defence of Duke Alfonso is complete, whatever might have been the discipline resorted to in the hospital. Yet it may be well to remember, from the testimony of the poor maniac, as well as of others, that the delusions which for years had haunted him, regarding wrongs supposed to have been received from that sovereign and his courtiers, had given bitterness to his words, and pungency to his pen, little in accordance with the fulsome language of his age, or the haughty temper of his patron; that if the poet was a victim of imaginary affronts, the Duke had met at his hands with real insults. But even were Alfonso's motives not those of unmixed kindness, the necessity of seclusion for Tasso cannot be affected by any such consideration, nor by the consequent aggravation of his malady from defective skill.
An admission of Tasso's mental alienation was made by his intimate friend Manso, and has been repeated by various writers; yet other biographers, anxious to relieve their hero from the reproach of madness, have essayed to screen him by charges of cruelty against the Duke of Ferrara. Whilst Verga's theory appears to place the poet's malady upon its proper footing, and, by implication, to absolve his patron, that author goes a step further, and maintains that the oldest and best informed authorities bear out a belief in the uniform and considerate kindness of Alfonso towards his wayward laureate, and prove that the allegations of Torquato's insanity having been but the pretext of a stern tyrant, bent on punishing the presumption of an unworthy aspirant to his sister's love, were piquant additions of after writers. We shall presently have a few words to add in regard to this entanglement; meanwhile, let us see the conclusion drawn by Dr. Verga, from his able argument. "We may, therefore, infer that the Duke shut up Tasso in Sant'Anna, neither as a punishment for ambitious love, or unguarded and offensive expressions, nor as an obstacle to his conferring the illustration of his genius on rival courts, but simply because he saw that the poet's melancholy rendered him beside himself, dependent upon skilful treatment, and perhaps dangerous to others. I repeat, in the name of common sense, that his madness was the sole cause of his seclusion, not the effect of it, as some would persuade us."
Neurdein Frères
LAURA DE’ DIANTI AND ALFONSO OF FERRARA