Jerusalem Delivered

by Torquato Tasso

  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 Æneid 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 è nato,

  Già grande vola, e già 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. 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.

  “Cantò l’armi pietòse e ‘l capitanò

  Che ‘l gran Sepòlerò liberò di Cristò;

  Mòltò egli òprò còl sennò e còn la manò,

  Mòltò sòffri nel glòriòsò acquistò;

  E invan l’infernò a lui s’òppòse; e invanò

  S’armò d’Asia e di Libia il pòpòl mistò;

  Che il ciel gli diè favòre, e sòttò ai santi

  Segni ridusse i suòi còmpagni 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.

  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 wor
ld. 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.” 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.

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