Jerusalem Delivered (Gerusalemme liberata) | Torquato Tasso

Jerusalem Delivered (Gerusalemme liberata) | Torquato Tasso | Too few Tasso's have ever lived and written.

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Jerusalem Delivere...

	Jerusalem Delivered (Gerusalemme liberata) Torquato Tasso The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000 - 504 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Late in the eleventh century the First Crusade culminated in the conquest of Jerusalem by Christian armies. Five centuries later, when Torquato Tasso began to search for a subject worthy of an epic, Jerusalem was governed by a sultan, Europe was in the crisis of religious division, and the Crusades were a nostalgic memory. Tasso turned to the First Crusade both as a subject that would test his poetic ambition and as a reflection on the quandaries of his own time. He sought to create a masterpiece that would deserve comparison with the great epics of the past.

Gerusalemme liberata became one of the most widely read and cherished books of the Renaissance. First published in 1581, it was translated into English by Edward Fairfax in 1600. That translation has been the standard, even though Fairfax was only a good, not a great, poet. Fairfax tried to fit Tasso's verse into Spenserian stanzas, adding to and subtracting from the original and often changing Tasso's meaning.

Anthony Esolen's new translation captures the delight of Tasso's descriptions, the different voices of its cast of characters, the shadings between glory and tragedy -- and it does all this in an English as powerful and clear as Tasso's Italian. Tasso's masterpiece finally emerges as an English masterpiece.

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A conquest!

I am perplexed at the negative reviews of this translation (if they were even about this translation). I find it remarkable. A verse translation of an epic in ottava rima is obviously a difficult thing, and I think that Esolen does a fantastic job. The poem itself, while horrendously inappropriate as a template for international relations in the twenty-first century, is a stunning accomplishment. Tasso's painterliness is first class, and his skill as an allegorist is sublime. In good Miltonian fashion he makes the evil and wayward figures the most appealing. As for the wizardry...Tasso is the best thing since Merlin.

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Too few Tasso's have ever lived and written.

The fame of Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata was known far and wide during the Renaissance but sadly, it is far from everyday reading today. This work, describing in twenty masterful cantos the taking of Jerusalem during the first crusade, is one of the masterpieces of epic poetry; in the same lofty realms as Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno.

The poem is largely fantasy, although it draws many of its characters from the historical record, along with some of the geography and a modicum of history. While the modern view of the crusades is that of a dark hour in church history, full of bigotry and inhumanity, Tasso paints it as a glorious adventure, in the full romantic, chivalric tradition. Surprisingly, however, he makes the characters of the Islamic defenders of Jerusalem very human, rendering them in a remarkably (for the time) sympathetic light. While the poem has strong religious overtones, it is clear that Soliman, Argante, Clorinda and Armida are all characters who are motivated by chivalry and love, and not necessarily by religion. The poem was written in the Renaissance, but it still contains numerous strong female characters. from Clorinda, the Muslim warrior princess who is slain by Tancred during a battle in which neither recognizes their lover, to Armida, the sorceress who steals Rinaldo away from the Christians in Circe-like fashion, loving him and hating him all at once.

The fantastical breathes throughout the poem, with enchanted woods that bleed when cut, secret fortresses, hermits with magical staffs, and the Islands of the Blessed. In spite of the wide-ranging plot, the depth of character and the integration of the story are modern in their effect. I literaly hung on every line and read it the way I might have read Tolkien in my youth. (Indeed, I suspect Tolkien may have used Tasso as source material). There is, of course, a vast wash of blood shed with helm-splitting, dismembering accounts of medieval combat, told as if it were a children's tale. The descriptions of siege warfare are rendered with an eye that seems to have been intimately familiar with the craft, each tower, tortoise and mangonel exquisitely described. The geography of the Holy Land and the coast of North Africa seem likewise familiar to the author, although he becomes a little confused beyond Gibraltar. There is a paen to Columbus, the discoverer of the New World, included as a prophecy in Canto Fifteen, but the New World seems to consist largely of heavenly islands. One disconcerting factor is that Tasso's patronage by the house of Este places repeated effusive passages concerning the house's future greatness in the mouths of the crusaders. This patronage is responsible for the central role played by Rinaldo, a scion of the house of Este.

The book itself is a fine trade paperback on high quality paper. The translation, by M. Esolen is at once high-sounding, noble and very readable. Each stanza is rhymed but there is little or no sense of hatchet-made versification. Esolen eschews the use of archaic language and inverted grammar for the sake of rhyme, delivering a steady cadence and dependable style that lend grace and dignity to the poem. Poetic translation can be tough but Esolen pulls this off nicely. I haven't read the original Italian so I can't speak to the veracity of the language but it reads very well in English. The book also contains brief notes on the translation, an introduction, presumably by the translator, the "Allegory of the Poem" presumably by Tasso - although the text does not say, and a terminal scholarly apparatus including a dramatis personae, extensive end notes, a bibliographic essay and an index.

I can not give too high a praise to this book. It is probably the most exciting and interesting piece of literature I have read from prior to the 17th century. I read it as I would a novel, racing forward to try to catch the plot. Now, after being left breathless, I feel the need to read it again, immediately; to savour its many heroic moods and revel in its beautiful metaphors. Alas, I have too much else to do, but I am sure that I will one day return and spend some enchanted time with Godfrey, Tancred, Clorinda and company.

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Well...

It is what it is. I suppose the fact that I wish it was something different is hardly Tasso's fault; nonetheless, I have mixed emotions regarding this poem.

First of all, let's be honest here: Jerusalem Delivered has a worldview which just about everyone reading today is going to find totally repulsive: Christians--good; Pagans--bad. Utterly and absolutely. True, Tasso's pagans (ie, Muslims) are occasionally praised, and his Christians sometimes stray, but really, let's not fool ourselves: this doesn't really amount to anything. Although Tasso's life was endlessly conflicted, here he is trying his hardest to write from a good, Christian viewpoint. I wasn't expecting the civilized urbanity of Ariosto or anything, but this is really a bit much. The climax of the poem, with Christians unapologetically slaughtering, pillaging, and raping (no, seriously--check book XIX, verse XXX)--all without a hint of disapprobation from Tasso--is pretty stomache-turning. You could *try* to argue that the scene is meant as some sort of subtle criticism in itself, but I really don't think you'll find any textual evidence for this. Contrast this with the sacking of Biserta in Orlando Furioso--surely that poem's darkest moment--and the difference becomes obvious. I realize that some people will dismiss my criticisms as nothing more than political correctness run amuck, and, ..., maybe it is, but I make no apologies. As a fairly serious reader, I'm accustomed to simply accepting things in literature that run totally counter to my own ideology, but being, alas, a mere human, there IS a limit. I want to stress that this only became irksome to me towards the poem's end, but it definitely affected my opinion of the work as a whole.

Even if one is capable of totally submerging one's own biased, twenty-first-century view, however, the fact remains that the poem is frequently...well, sort of boring. I think few would argue that, poetically, the best part of the poem, by quite some margin, is the account of Rinaldo's not-so-brutal imprisonment in Armida's bower. This is where Tasso really lets himself go, giving in, I think, to his real poetic instincts. Otherwhere, however, things get a bit less interesting. The battles, its true, have a certain icy, Homeric grandeur, but a little of that--even in Homer himself--goes a long way, and when the two teams aren't duking it out, we're made to deal with the characters, which can be trying. Like many writers, Tasso makes his villains much more interesting that his heroes: Argantes is surely one of the greatest epic villains ever, with his single-minded, unquenchable fury easily rivalling the Wrath of Achilles itself; Clorinda, in spite of a disheartening but inevitable last-minute change of heart, is one of your more badass woman warriors, if not quite up to the standards of Ariosto's Marfisa; and Armida is a femme fatale with few rivals. So that's all well and good, but the focus, unavoidably, is on the heroes. Let's cut to the chase: Godfrey is incredibly boring, in spite of a truly feeble effort by Anthony Esolen to defend him. And, while Rinaldo and Tancredie do have their own crises which elevate them a little above the pack, most of the Christian host is pretty faceless.

Still, all told, the poetry is enough to recommend Tasso. Because, occasional bouts of tedium notwithstanding, Tasso is a truly great poet. I'd even go so far as to say that--although I think I'd enjoy hanging out with Ariosto far more than with Tasso, and although Orlando Furioso is a far more enjoyable (and, let's face it, just plain BETTER) poem than Jerusalem Delivered--in terms of sheer poetical prowess, Tasso wins. Which is why it's so important to read his work in a good translation, which in turn is why it's essential to stay as far away from Anthony M. Esolen as possible. Your other, better, choice is Edward Fairfax's Elizabethan translation: Esolen may be more stricly faithful to the original, but he also has a tin ear, capturing only a middling portion of Tasso's sturm und drang. I suppose he would moderately acceptable if there was no other choice, but thankfully, there is: Fairfax's poetry is electifying, and well worth the time to search out. I'm a little baffled to see the high praise that Esolen is receiving from many (he should translate Ariosto? Please...as if there's a chance in hell he could do better than Barbara Reynolds). So, to put an end to this lunacy, I would like to end this review with a side-by-side comparison between the two. XVI, XIV.

Esolen:
Look at the chaste and modest little rose
sprung from the green in her virginity!
Half open and half hid; the less she shows,
the less she shows to men, the lovelier she.
Now she displays her bold and amorous
bosom, and now she wilts, and cannot be,
the same delight which was the longing of,
a thousand girls and a thousand lads in love.

Fairfax:
The gently-budding rose (quoth she) behold,
The first scant peeping forth with virgin beams
Half ope, half shut, her beauties doth up-fold
In their dear leaves, and less seen fairer seems,
And after spreads them forth more broad and bold,
Then languisheth and dies in last extremes:
For seems the same that decked bed and bow'r
Of many a lady late and paramour.

I certainly hope that settles that.

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Good for what it is

This is a copy of what I believe is the first translation of Tasso into English from 1600. Translated within roughly 50 years of the original the translator keeps the rhyme scheme of the Italian and in doing sacrifices accuracy of meaning. However, in comparing this work to several more recent translations I actually prefer this on a line by line basis as the more recent translations sacrifice poetics to keep meaning. The real problem with this edition is that it has no footnotes, no introduction, nothing but the translated text itself. If you do not know something about epic poetry, Virgil (who is often referenced or imitated by the poet), Tasso's personal history and the first crusade you will be lost and there is nothing here to help you.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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