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The liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata) PDF

491 Pages·2009·1.179 MB·English, Italian
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oxford world’s classics THE LIBERATION OF JERUSALEM Torquato Tasso (1544 – 95), born at Sorrento, son of the Bergamasque courtier-poet Bernardo Tasso, spent his youth wan- dering in the wake of his father’s troubled career. At the age of 18, while still a student at Padua, he published Rinaldo, a chivalric epic in his father’s manner. In 1565 he entered the service of the power- ful Este court at Ferrara, where he composed his masterpiece, The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata, 1581). His pas- toral drama Aminta (1573) had meanwhile assured his fame, but soon his paranoid temperament goaded him into outbursts that caused his seven-year confinement in a hospital for the insane. After his release and a series of renewed wanderings, he settled in Rome. He devoted his final years to religious works, including a wholly rewritten version of his epic, The Conquest of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme conquistata, 1593), which had little success. Tasso also composed a verse tragedy, Torrismondo; some charming prose dialogues and letters; several significant critical essays; and the most impressive body of Italian lyric since Petrarch. The Liberation of Jerusalem was quickly translated into many European languages. For centuries it exerted a profound influence on writers (including Spenser, Lope de Vega, Milton, Corneille, Voltaire, Goethe, and Byron), artists (including Tintoretto, the Carracci, Guercino, Pietro da Cortona, Domenichino, Van Dyck, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Tiepolo, Fragonard, and Delacroix), and composers (including Monteverdi, Lully, Vivaldi, Handel, Haydn, Rossini, and Dvorˇák). Max Wickert, born in Augsburg (Germany) and educated at Yale University and the Università per Stranieri in Perugia, has for many years been a member of the Department of English in the State University at Buffalo, New York. He is the author of two col- lections of poems, All the Weight of the Still Midnight and Pat Sonnets, and of critical articles on Spenser and early opera. He is currently preparing the first English translation of Andrea da Barberino’s Reali di Francia. Mark Davie has taught Italian at the Universities of Liverpool and Exeter, and has published studies on various aspects of Italian literature, mainly in the period from Dante to the Renaissance; he is particularly interested in the relations between vernacular and humanistic culture, and between religious and humorous writing, in Italy in the Renaissance. He is the Italian Editor of Modern Language Review. oxford world’s classics For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles — from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels — the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy, and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS TORQUATO TASSO The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata) Translated by MAX WICKERT With an Introduction and Notes by MARK DAVIE 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Translation, Chronology, Appendix, and Glossary © Max Wickert 2009 Introduction, Select Bibliography, and Explanatory Notes © Mark Davie 2009 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tasso, Torquato, 1544-1595. [Gerusalemme liberata. English] The liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata) / Torquato Tasso ; translated by Max Wickert ; with an introduction and notes by Mark Davie. p. cm.—(Oxford world’s classics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–953535–4 (alk. paper) 1. Jerusalem—History—Latin Kingdom, 1099-1244—Poetry. 2. Epic poetry, Italian—Translations into English. 3. Godfrey, of Bouillon, ca. 1060-1100—Poetry. 4. Crusades, First, 1096-1099—Poetry. I. Wickert, Max. II. Title. PQ4642.E21W53 2009 851'.4—dc22 2008039121 T ypeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd., St Ives plc ISBN 978–0–19–953535–4 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 CONTENTS Introduction vii A Note on the Translation xxviii Select Bibliography xxx A Chronology of Torquato Tasso xxxiii THE LIBERATION OF JERUSALEM Canto One 3 Canto Two 22 Canto Three 42 Canto Four 58 Canto Five 78 Canto Six 97 Canto Seven 120 Canto Eight 145 Canto Nine 163 Canto Ten 183 Canto Eleven 199 Canto Twelve 217 Canto Thirteen 239 Canto Fourteen 256 Canto Fifteen 272 Canto Sixteen 286 Canto Seventeen 302 Canto Eighteen 322 Canto Nineteen 344 Canto Twenty 371 Appendix:Tasso’sLiberation of Jerusalem in Literature, Art, and Music 400 Explanatory Notes 404 Glossary of Proper Names 435 This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION First impressions Areader who opens The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata) and reads the first few stanzas will pick up several divergent clues to the poem which they introduce. The opening lines stake its claim to be an epic poem, placing it in a tradition going back at least to Virgil’s Aeneid, whose opening words, ‘Arms and the man I sing . . .’, they echo. They specify its subject matter, the ‘holy war’ which ‘freed’ the site of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem as an object of Christian pilgrimage — the first, that is, of the European military campaigns in Palestine known as the Crusades, which culminated in the capture of Jerusalem in July 1099. And they leave no doubt that the poem will present this not just as a ‘clash of civilizations’ in which Asia and Libya (the latter a generic term for Africa) fight against the crusaders, but as a war extending even to Heaven and Hell. Yet if this suggests a stark, sim- plistic account of a battle between good and evil, the first stanza ends with a suggestion that things may not be quite so simple: the ‘Captain’ of the crusaders, Godfrey of Bouillon, had to deal not only with the alien occupiers of Jerusalem but also with ‘errant’ knights on his own side — opening up the possibility that the poem might deal not just with the crusade itself but also with whatever distractions kept the crusaders from their primary task. The same ambivalent notes continue in the next two stanzas. Stanza 2 begins with another standard piece of epic convention, the poet’s appeal to his Muse to give him inspiration to match his lofty theme — but then the stanza ends by acknowledging that he may not always fol- low the Muse’s guidance, but will sometimes ‘embroider the truth’ and embellish it with ‘pleasures other than your own’. The mere hint is enough to provoke a marked change of register in stanza 3, with a rash of words elaborating the theme of pleasure — ‘flattering sweets’, ‘delight’, ‘charming’, ‘mellifluous verse’ — and the stanza ends, via the familiar metaphor of a nurse making bitter medicine palatable by sug- aring the rim of the cup, with a positive endorsement, not of truth but of deception: ‘So stealth | restores him, and delusion gives him health.’ Already we seem to have come a long way from the sternly historical theme announced in the first few lines, so it may not be too surprising when in stanza 4 another routine poetic procedure — the dedication of the work to the poet’s patron — proves to be not entirely straightfor- ward. Tasso thanks Alfonso d’Este, duke of Ferrara, at whose court he viii introduction lived between 1567 and 1576, not just for employing him but for taking him in as an ‘errant pilgrim, battered to and fro | by waves and rocks that made my spoil their sport’. Not just errant knights, then, but an errant poet to write about them. And even the dedication of the poem is qualified, for stanza 4 ends not by offering the poem which he has already written, but by suggesting that he might one day write another: Perhaps one day my prescient pen will try boldly to write what now mere hints imply. Stanza 5 spells out what Tasso has in mind: to encourage Alfonso to renew the crusade against ‘the fierce Thracian’ — the Turks — in his own time. So his choice of the First Crusade as his theme is not fortuit- ous; Tasso expects his patron and his readers to relate it to the con- cerns of his own day, when the expanding Turkish empire posed an ever-present threat to western Europe, especially to Italy, whose coasts were always vulnerable to attack from marauding Turkish ships. As for the twenty-first-century reader, these first five stanzas will probably provoke several conflicting reactions. The Crusades are not an episode in European history which we are much inclined to cele- brate, and the crusading ethos is one which we have come to view with suspicion, so we are unlikely to want to read the poem for the sake of its declared subject-matter. But even from these few stanzas it is clear that Tasso’s poem is not the unquestioning celebration of ‘holy war’ which its title might imply, but something much more complex. These stanzas also raise most of the issues which we need to confront if we are to understand and appreciate Tasso’s poem, and they can provide a convenient framework for a brief discussion of each of these issues here. Hopefully they will also have sufficiently intrigued us to persuade us that it is worth making the effort.1 Tasso and the First Crusade In a letter to his friend Orazio Capponi, Tasso wrote explaining how he had used his historical material in his poem: ‘In the first three cantos I follow history, not just in the overall outline of events but in every circumstance, not varying or adding anything, apart from a few additions about Clorinda and Erminia. Then, having laid this founda- tion of truth, [from canto 4 onwards] I start to mingle what is true with what is invented but plausible.’ Tasso’s main historical source was the twelfth-century Chronicle of William of Tyre, one of the most widely 1 These ‘figures of conflict’ in the opening stanzas have been pointed out by Sergio Zatti; see his The Quest for Epic: From Ariosto to Tasso (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,2006). introduction ix read accounts of the crusade in the Middle Ages, of which an Italian translation was printed in Venice in 1562 (although Tasso could also have read it in Latin). In canto 1 he gives an account of the crusaders’ situation at the beginning of 1099, based on William of Tyre, which is broadly factual, although he admits to having, as he put it, ‘enlarged the truth’ by exaggerating the length of time they had already been on campaign. The army which had assembled piecemeal in Constantinople in response to Pope Urban II’s preaching of the crusade in 1095 finally crossed the Bosphorus into Asia Minor in the spring of 1097, and gained its first military success by capturing the Turkish capital of Nicea, about 90 miles south-east of Constantinople, in June. Between June and October the crusaders crossed the Anatolian plateau and reached Antioch, a few miles inland from the Mediterranean on the modern border between Turkey and Syria, in late October. They laid siege to the city, which held out through the winter of 1097 – 8. The deadlock was eventually broken the following June, when a disaffected Armenian official who commanded one of the watch-towers in the Turkish-ruled city made contact with Bohemond, one of the crusader leaders, and agreed to allow Bohemond’s men to scale the walls and open the gates. The crusaders occupied the city, only to find them- selves almost immediately defending it against an army which the Turkish governor of Mosul, several hundred miles inland, had brought to the aid of his colleague in Antioch. The crusaders successfully repulsed the attack, but their battle-weariness after the long siege, combined with disagreements among themselves about who should govern the newly conquered territory around the city, meant that they spent the rest of 1098 in frustrating inactivity. Finally, at the end of the year, Count Raymond of Toulouse undertook to lead the cru- sade on to Jerusalem. Of the other leaders, Robert of Normandy and Tancred joined him immediately, with Godfrey of Bouillon and Robert of Flanders following about a month later, and in the early months of 1099 the army slowly made its way south towards Jerusalem. Two of the most prominent leaders of the early stages of the campaign stayed behind, taking the opportunity to establish personal states for themselves in places they had already occupied: Bohemond in Antioch, where his leading role in the siege had given him an unchallengeable position; and Godfrey’s ambitious younger brother Baldwin in Edessa, an Armenian Christian state some 150 miles to the east, which he had conquered by absenting himself from the siege of Antioch in the early months of 1098. This is recognizably the factual basis for the situation which Tasso describes in the first canto of his poem. Stanza 6 summarizes ‘the story

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