Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 2

by Leigh Hunt

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 Deità sia quì presente
In se medesma, e non ne' suoi ministri.
Spirerò nobil sensi à rozzi petti;
Raddolcirò nelle lor lingue il suono:
Perchè, 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 è pure
Suprema gloria, e gran miracol mio,
Render simili alle più 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.