Perhaps the most complex representative of the difficult Counter-Reformation period, Torquato Tasso was a melancholic, roaming courtier, a true genius often misunderstood by his own protectors. At the time of his stay in Bologna as a law student, he had not yet been 'affected' by that obsession with Catholic orthodoxy that would lead him to devote his entire life to continuous reinterpretations of his Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered).
Torquato Tasso was born in Sorrento in 1544 to a rich and noble family at that time employed by the Sanseverino family, princes of Salerno in the Hapsburg kingdom of Naples. His father, Bernardo Tasso, was a Venetian man of letters and a courtier from the Bergamo nobility, while his mother, Porzia de' Rossi, belonged to the Tuscan aristocracy.
Torquato's childhood was conditioned by the many moves his father had to make to remain in Ferrante Sanseverino's retinue.
After their stay in Naples (1550-1554), where the young man received both a private and Jesuit college education, father and son travelled to Rome, where they were reached by the painful news of the death of Portia, who had remained in Naples and was probably poisoned by her brothers.
The political situation in Rome soon came to a crisis and Bernardo decided to send his son to the family's home town of Bergamo, only to call him back this time to Urbino, under the protection of Guidobaldo II della Rovere.
In Urbino, Torquato studied alongside the duke's son, Francesco Maria, and Guidobaldo Del Monte, the future illustrious mathematician, receiving a rich education from the court tutors. From this period is his first poetic composition, a sonnet in praise of Urbino, which testifies to the influence on the young man of the poets then present in the city.
In 1559, he moved to Venice, where his father had travelled to find new publishers for his works. It is believed that during this period Torquato started working on Rinaldo and the first book of Gerusalemme.
The following year, the young man unwillingly enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Padua, where he was happier to attend lectures on philosophy and eloquence and where he assimilated an erudite Aristotelian culture from his tutor Carlo Sigonio and Sperone Speroni, discernible in the future Discourses on the Art of Poetry (1594).
In the meantime, his father had moved to the court of Ferrara, and Tassino (as Torquato was called to distinguish him from his father) began to be noticed by the Este family for his poetic ambitions. Indeed, his first publication of poems dates back to this period, followed in 1562 by the publication of Rinaldo, a poem of chivalry that came out in Venice with a dedication to Luigi d'Este.
With the financial support of the Duke of Urbino, in 1563Torquato moved to Bologna with a scholarship that enabled him to enrol at the local university. Upon his arrival, the ancient University had just been unified in the new Archiginnasio, a symbol of ecclesiastical power and control that would persist over academic programmes and moral regulations throughout the modern age. The uninhibited student was severely punished for some texts in which he publicly ridiculed pupils and professors and for this reason, in 1564, he was expelled from the Alma Mater and his scholarship was confiscated.
Tasso's fame and courtly skills, however, soon enabled him to find a new protector, Scipione Gonzaga (his father had in the meantime entered the employ of Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua), who in Padua allowed him to continue his studies and join the Accademia degli Eterni with the name “Pentito” (meaning repentant).
His real breakthrough came in 1565 with the support of Cardinal Luigi d'Este, who called him to Ferrara and at whose court Tasso lived his golden age for ten years. With no duties of any kind, the poet was able to devote himself exclusively to his literary production, continuing primarily with the drafting of his Liberata.
After an unsuccessful trip to France in the retinue of Luigi d'Este in 1571, Tasso decided to leave his entourage and seek new protection in Rome from his uncle, Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este. Disappointed again, he stopped off in Urbino, then finally returned to Ferrara (1572), this time directly under the power of Duke Alfonso II.
This was a particularly fertile period for his plays, such as the bucolic Aminta tale (published in 1580) and the tragedy Galealto King of Norway, a work that was never completed but was later revised in King Torrismondo (1587).
Unfortunately, however, just when he had finally finished his Gerusalemme in 1575, he entered a long neurotic phase, due to concerns of not having met the needs and strict moral directives of the Counter-Reformation. He asked numerous colleagues and noble friends for their opinions, but was never convinced of the validity of his work, and even ended up submitting himself spontaneously several times to the Inquisition's judgement, without being certain about his orthodoxy even after being acquitted.
Life at court began to wear thin, also because of the little income he was able to earn, both as a courtier and as a lecturer at the University of Ferrara. Moreover, relations had soured with certain gentlemen who gravitated around Alfonso II, some of whom he even denounced to the Inquisition.
Paranoia had set in. Obsessed by the idea of being spied on and disliked, he became violent and dangerous and soon ended up in prison.
Disguised and exhausted, he fled to his sister in Sorrento and begged the duke to be readmitted to court. However, he soon returned to Ferrara, which he left immediately, more desperate than mad, for Mantua, Padua, Venice, Urbino and Turin. He then returned to the Este family, but in 1578 they were forced to lock him up for seven years in the hospital of Sant'Anna, where the grief-stricken poet remained with his manias of persecution and new self-punitive tendencies.
During his imprisonment, his well-known poem was published in Venice in 1580, butchered and without the author's consent. Two further editions were issued the following year, first in Parma and then in Casalmaggiore, the latter bearing the title, arbitrarily chosen by the editor Angelo Ingegneri, of Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered).
Tasso was thus forced to work on the imperfect versions that were circulating and that had already brought him great success, collaborating on the 1581 Ferrara edition.
Further upset soon arrived, however, when, in response to the exaltation of his work over Ariosto's by the poet Camillo Pellegrino (Il Carrafa, o vero della epica poesia, 1484), the Accademia della Crusca “rejected” the Liberata in order to pay homage to Il Furioso (Difesa dell'Orlando Furioso degli Accademici della Crusca, 1485). This triggered a harsh clash of apology and criticism, particularly between the academic Leonardo Salviati and Tasso himself.
During this heated debate, Tasso managed to write, often correcting them several times, numerous speeches and dialogues, focusing on moral, psychological, political and above all religious themes. Worthy of note are: Della gelosia (1577); Il Forno, o de la Nobiltà (1579); Gonzaga, o vero del Piacer onesto (1580); Il Messaggero (1580); Il padre di famiglia (1580); Il cavaliere amante e la gentildonna amata (1580); Romeo o vero del giuoco (1580); Dell’amor vicendevole tra ‘l padre e ‘l figliuolo (1581); Della virtù eroica e della carità (1583); Della virtù femminile e donnesca (1583); La Molza, o vero de l’Amore (1583); Il Malpiglio, o vero della corte (1583); Il Malpiglio secondo o vero del fuggir la moltitudine (1583); Il Beltramo, overo de la Cortesia (1584); Il Rangone, o vero de la Pace (1584); La Cavalletta, o vero de la poesia toscana (1584); Il Ghirlinzone, o vero l’Epitafio (1585); Il Forestiero napolitano, o vero de la Gelosia (1585); Il Cataneo, o vero de gli Idoli (1585); Dell’arte del dialogo (1586); Il Secretario (1587); Discorso intorno alla sedizione nata nel regno di Francia l’anno 1585; and his completion of Trattato della Dignità (1585).
Finally, in 1586, Tasso was released from prison, and he was able to make a new beginning at the Mantuan court of Vincenzo Gonzaga, far from Ferrara and the Este family, who, however, continued to watch over him as if he were still their courtier.
In 1587 he travelled to Rome, and the following year to Naples, where he lived a last period of ease and tranquillity, soon interrupted by financial hardship and illness. Back in Rome with Scipione Gonzaga, he was once again prevented from holding a much longed-for meeting with Pope Sixtus V.
He then travelled to Florence, to the Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici and the Tuscan nobility. This was a brief interlude of tranquillity.
When he returned to Mantua in 1591, he devoted himself to yet another correction of Liberata and the collection of his Rime (Rhymes) However, restless as he was, he soon returned to Rome and Naples, increasingly weakened and battered in health and spirit. In Naples, he managed to recover momentarily, finally completing his Conquistata and writing Le sette giornate del Mondo creato (The Seven Days of Creation).
During his new stay in Rome (1592), on the occasion of the election of Clement VIII, hosted by the Aldobrandini family, nephews of the new pontiff, he was able to devote himself again to his writings, which by now were exclusively religious. These include Le lagrime di Maria Vergine (The Tears of the Virgin Mary) and Le lagrime di Gesù Cristo (The Tears of Jesus Christ), written on the occasion of the death of Scipione Gonzaga. In the same year, 1593, the completed edition of Gerusalemme Conquistata (Jerusalem Conquered) finally saw the light of day.
At the age of 51, exhausted and ill, after a final stay in Naples, he retired to the monastery of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum, where he finally found peace.