1 Tasso, Torquato, Dialoghi, edizione critica a cura di Ezio Raimondi (Firenze, 1952), vol. II, tomo 2, 671-682.Google Scholar

2 Dialoghi, II, 2, 675.

3 Petrarch, Rime, I, 3.

4 The critic who has most thoroughly explored the relationship between autobiography and poetry in Tasso's work is Ulrich Leo in his book Torquato Tasso, Studien zur Vorgeschichte des Secentismo (Bern, 1951). However, recognizing the value of Tasso's letters for the critical understanding of his poetic work and his whole culture is not tantamount to establishing their autobiographical nature. After having studied -with extraordinary intelligence the phenomenology of fear in the letters, Leo does reveal Tasso's unawareness of this fear in his every act and thought.

This unawareness which is overtly manifested in the letters has its objective manifestation in the magic forest in the thirteenth canto of the Gerusalemme liberata when Tancredi, the compassionate hero, fails at a task which can only be accomplished by Rinaldo, a hero with no inner perplexities.

May one then say that for Leo fear as a biographical factor is overcome in the objective catharsis of writing poetry expressive of fear? It seems to me that one must give a negative answer to this question, because for Leo a fact as eminently practical and biographical as fear can only resolve itself in another biographical event—the pacification of the heart in religion.

The view that interprets poetry as Erlebnis attempts to read the Gerusalemme as a revelation of Tasso's inner crisis, a manifestation of tortuous Angstpsychologie, and intuitively to find Tasso closer to his devious characters like Eustazio than to such straightforward characters as Rinaldo. As a result of the great importance Leo gives to the psychological basis of Tasso's life, from the chaotic moment of fear to the moment when this fear is resolved in religious contemplation of the world, there occurs a shifting of interest to Tasso's late poetry the Mondo creato, and to the Gerusalemme conquistata rather than the Gerusalemme liberata.

5 For the definition of the ‘cultura perfetta’ see Ettore Mazzali, Cultura e poesia nelV opera di Torquato Tasso (Bologna, 1957).

6 Caretti, Lanfranco, Studi sulk Rime del Tasso (Roma, 1950)Google Scholar; by the same author see also: ‘Un sonetto attribuibile al Tasso', Studi difilologia italiana VHI (1944), 161-172; and 'Codicidi Rime del Tasso', Studi difilologia italiana ix (1951), 123-140.

The extremely complex problem of the Petrarchism in Tasso's poetry has not been examined here. For a satisfactory analysis of the problem, direct recourse to Petrarch is not sufficient, since it would be necessary also to analyze the influence of more immediate and direct sources: Bembo, Casa, Magno, and Bernardo Tasso.

7 For the vicissitudes in the publication of Tasso's works and especially for the suspicious dealings of the man in Tasso's confidence, G. B. Licino, see Angelo Solerti, Vita di Torquato Tasso (Torino, 1895), pp. 5*7 ff.

8 ‘La cavaletta overo de la poesia Toscana', Dialoghi, II, 2, 648.

9 Ibid., p. 622.

10 ‘Discorsi del poema eroico', libro v, in Prose a cura di Ettore Mazzali (Napoli- Milano, 1959), p. 663.

11 Cf. Benedetto Croce, Poeti e scrittori del pieno e del tardo Rinascimento (Bari, 1952), m, 111-120.

12 ‘Lezione di Torquato Tasso recitata da Lui nell'Accademia ferrarese sopra il Sonetto “Questa vita mortal” di Monsignor Delia Casa', Opere di Torquato Tasso (Pisa, 1823), XI, 42-60.

13 ‘Ed io ho eletto piuttosto di leggere composizione sua, che d'alcun moderno, o pur del Petrarca istesso, perche molti conosco io, che suoi imitatori vogliono essere giudicati, massimameiite in questa novella schiera di poeti, ch'ora comincia a sorgere, i quali quando abbiano imitato nel Casa le diflicolta delle desinenze, il rompimento dei versi, la durezza delle costruzioni, la lunghezza delle clausole, e il trapasso d'uno in altro quaternario, e d'uno in altro terzetto, ed insomma la severita (per cosi chiamarla) dello stile, a bastanza per loro credono aver fatto; ma quel che e in lui meraviglioso, la scelta delle voci, e delle sentenze, la novita delle figure, e particolarmente de’ traslati, il verbo, la grandczza, e la maesta sua, o non tentano, o non possono in qualche modo esprimere' (Opere, Pisa, 1823, xi, 45).

14 Petrarch, Rime, CCCLX.

15 Concerning the lyric value of the word ‘canto’ in the Liberata, which substitutes a subjective tone for the objective one proper to the opening of an epic, Fredi Chiappelli has made some excellent observations in his Studi sul linguaggio del Tasso epico (Firenze, 1957), p . 114.

I would like to add on the same subject a few observations of my own, and note that the vocabulary of the Liberata represents the middle point of a development that goes from a lyric to a narrative mood, presenting at times a felicitous suspension and temporariness. In broad terms Tasso, whose critical sensibility concentrates on problems of language, is well aware that the narrative word does not insist on a leitmotiv, nor does it tend to stress a dominant emotion, but progresses in a linear manner with the aim of reducing the song to story.

The description of action in the heroic poem is made possible by the objectification of the lyric vocabulary inherited from Petrarch; so that if the lyric exaltation around a central theme permits Petrarch to use a rapturous expression of prayer in reference to the Virgin, ‘or tu donna del ciel, tu nostra dea’ (Rime, CCCLXIV, 98), in order for a word like dea to be employed by Tasso, it is necessary to present an objective context to justify the theological error that it contains. “When in fact in the Gerusalemme liberata (n, 28) a character, Olindo, uses the same word, ‘de la dea con quali arti involo l'immagin santa?', he is authorized by the context of the narrative to adopt an inexact expression. It is not a question of his discussing with Aladino whether or not the Virgin is a goddess, but of making a minor verbal concession with the aim of attracting the attention of the king to a substantial fact: the innocence of his beloved.

The reduction of poetry to a rigorously narrative line does not, however, occur without resistance from Tasso's poetic temperament; thus when we say that the Liberata represents a high point of inventive balance, we mean to refer to the poet's capacity for wonder at the events he narrates, to the lyrical tone that his epic discourse preserves, and at the same time to his intention to narrate. Naturally the permanence of the lyric disposition in the poet has consequences for the plot of the Liberata: the ambivalence between the duration of the lyric word and the communicative effectiveness of the narrative are manifested in the incoherence of the heroes, in the separation between the cause they champion and their personal sufferings which have disparate sources not always concerned with the conquest of Jerusalem. The source of the errors which these heroes commit and from which the vicissitudes of the Gerusalemme liberata stem lies within the heroes themselves, in their nature; while in the Conquistata, where the heroes are more perfect and no margin is left for error, the obstacles to the conquest of Jerusalem are objective, diabolical, outside of the temperament of the heroes, who are equal to the situation confronting them. In the Liberata, Tancredi holds ‘la vita a sdegno tanto un suo vano amor l'ange e martira'; in the Conquistata, he despises life because Tingiuria altrui L'ange e martira'. In the Liberata the poet points out the difficulties Goffredo has in controlling his own camp, ‘i suoi compagni erranti', his knights errant, while in the Con- ^ftistata the obstacle is foreign to the camp itself and to the Christian conscience, because it is the demons who are its source, ‘gli angeli ribellanti'.

The chivalrous content of the adjective erranti, destined to disappear in the Conquistata, has perhaps not been sufficiently taken into consideration by the critics of Tasso. In it the adventurous impulse, while troubled by the verbal memory of'error', is nevertheless still evident, as it is evident in the title ‘Gerusalemme liberata'. Liberata is still a word of chivalrous content, where a wide latitude is left to individual initiative and inspiration; Conquistata, on the contrary, lays the stress on the direction and organization of the enterprise, where nothing is left to chance.

16 Aeneid, 1, 496-497.

17 Discorsi, v, 687.

18 Petrarch, Rime, XXVIII, 76.

19 ‘In queste rime e cagione di grandezza ancora il senso che sta largamente sospeso: perch'avviene al lettore com'a colui il qual camina per le solitudini, al quale l'albergo par piu lontano quanto vede le strade piu deserte e piu disabitate; ma i molti luoghi da fermarsi e da riposarsi fanno breve il camino ancora piu lungo’ (Discorsi, v, 662).

20 Demetrius, On style, II, 47-48, tr. W. Rhys Roberts (Loeb Classical Library). A «areful analysis of the text of Commentarii in librum Demetrii Phalerei de elocutione (Firenze, 1562) by Pier Vettori shows that Tasso, in the construction of this passage, took liberally from the Greek text, from Vettori's Latin translation, and finally from the Commentarii by Vettori himself. One single Greek expression, at owexels Karayoiyal 'succession of inns', rendered in Latin by Vettori asfrequentia diversoria, and in the commentary as crebra ospitia, is expressed by Tasso in the word ‘albergo’ and amplified in the expression ‘i molti luoghi da fermarsi e da riposarsi'; the Greek expression ai iprmlai. 'desolate paths', solitudines, is rendered ‘le strade piu deserte e disabitate'; as for ‘colui il qual camina per le solitudini', it seems to me that it freely echoes the commentary of Vettori, ‘cum viator crebras offendit cauponas in quibus se reficere possit’ (p. 46).

21 G.L., I, 71.

22 G.L., XVII, 6.

23 G.L., in, n .

24 Petrarch, Rime, Lin, 57-62.

25 Ariosto, Orlando furioso, XIV, 67. The image of the friars chased by Rodomonte is derived from an accumulation of particulars, from the insistence with which the poet dwells, with accentuated irreverence, on the friars and their varicolored clothing in narrating the episodes of the slaughter perpetrated by Rodomonte in Paris.

Petrarch's line is repeated twice in the course of the same Canto xrv: once to admonish the French for the slaughter perpetrated by them at Ravenna in Ariosto's own day in 1512 (XIV, 8), and for the violence against the ‘suore e frati e bianchi e neri e bigi'; and once (xiv, 67) to indicate the suffering of the siege during which the same priests and friars arc convoked by the emperor to celebrate ‘uffici e messe’ in encircled Paris.

It should be noted that the army to which Rodomonte belongs is compared to the French army (xiv, 9) responsible for the slaughter in Ravenna, that the hair of'Discord' who lives in the convents is black and grey like the clothing of the friars, that Rodomonte inflicts on the Christians ‘chieriche maggior delle fratesche’ (xiv, 121), and that in the burning of the beautiful houses and sacred temples, in the perpetration of'stupri, uccision, rapine et onte’ (xvn, 61), he does not spare the priest Andropono, whom he kills together with the drunkard Meschino:

26 ™ G.L., in, 21.

27 Petrarch, Rime, xc.

29 G.L., VI, 26.

30 G.L., xn, 69.

31 G.L., iv, 92.

32 ‘Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, duke loquentem’ (Horace, Carm., 1, 22).

33 Petrarch, Rime, CLIX, 12-14.

34 Theophil Spoerri, Renaissance und Barock bei Ariosto und Tasso (Bern, 1922); Mario Fubini, ‘Osservazioni sul lessico e sulla metrica del Tasso’ in Studi sulla letteratura del Rinascimento (Firenze, 1947); Fredi Chiapelli, Studi sul linguaggio del Tasso epico (Firenze, 1957).

35 G.L., XV, 43; XV, 31; XV, 33.

36 G.L., VI, 103-104.

37 Petrarch, Rime, xxxv.

38 Aeneid, IV, 522-528.

39 ‘… Ho deliberato, se mi sara concesso da l'infermitá, … di scrivere alcuni dialoghi, ne’ quali e mio proponimento di difender Virgilio da tutte le opposizioni che li possono esser fatte, e particolarmente da qualle che intendo che voi medesimo gli fate.’ 18 December [1579]. Le lettere di Torquato Tasso, ed. Cesare Guasti, 1, 355.

40 Ezio Raimondi in ‘II problema filologico e letterario dei dialoghi’ published in the miscellaneous volume Torquato Tasso (Milan, 1957) brings out (note on p. 496) the young Tasso's reservations with regard to Boccaccio's style, and links it rightly with Castiglione's professio fidei in the dedication of The Courtier, and the stand of Alessandro Piccolomini in chapter xi of book 111 in Delia istituzion morale. Giovanni Getto, however, in the essay ‘Di alcune immagini del Decameron nella Gerusalemme Liberata', which appeared in Studi Tassiani vi (1956), 3-27, studied the repercussions of Tasso's reading of the Decameron to be found in several episodes of the Gerusalemme liberata despite Tasso's theoretical attitude toward Boccaccio. The same problem has been discussed from a different point of view by Gianvito Resta, ‘Nuove immagini del Boccaccio nel Tasso', in Lettere italiane ix (1957), 357 ff.

41 Operc (Pisa, 1831), xxx.

42 G.L., 1, 46,1. 6. Arse labbia is a recollection oicambiate labbia and asciutta scabbia from Canto xxm of the Purgatorio. 43 A good source of examples, although not always satisfactory, is the article by Arthur Franz, ‘Dante in Tasso', which appeared in the Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch, neue Folge 22/23 (!953). 148-167. The example I have given is not in this article. To study Tasso's experience of Dante one should, moreover, take into account Tasso's marginal notes to Dante's Convivio which are in a 1521 Venetian edition of the Convivio now at the Riccardiana of Florence (ed. rare 23“).