Jerusalem Delivered
The First Crusade
THE story of "Jerusalem Delivered" is a romantic treatment of the First Crusade, which followed upon the preaching of Peter the Hermit, supported by Pope Urban II, who, from a high scaffold at the Council of Clermont, bade the Christians go on their errand of love, to die and possess mansions in heaven, or to live and pay their vows before the Holy Sepulchre. The Crusaders were to set out on the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1096. They were a throng gathered from all Christendom, of which the chief among many leaders was Godfrey, son of Eustace II, Count of Bouillon in the Ardennes, who through his mother claimed descent from Charlemagne. At the age of about four-and-twenty he was with the Emperor's force at the siege of Rome, in 1084, and was the first to scale the walls. For this service, he was made Marquis of Antwerp and Duke of Lorraine. When the Crusade was being preached, he rose from a fever, shook off his disease, pawned his lordship of Bouillon for the loan of 1,300 marks from the Church of Liège, and led a force of 80,000 foot-soldiers and 10,000 horse to Constantinople, where he rescued a fellow-Crusader, Hugh of Vermandois, who was detained by the Greek Emperor Alexius. Then Godfrey took Antioch, achieved a victory over a great host of the Saracens at Dorylæum, reached Jerusalem in 1099, and captured the city after a five-weeks' siege. In the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem then founded, Godfrey ruled for a year, but refused to be crowned with gold where his Saviour had been crowned with thorns. He repelled attacks of the Saracens, caused to be drawn up a system of jurisprudence known as the Assizes of Jerusalem, and died in the year 1100, honored even by his enemies. His exploits, said Geoffrey of Vinsauf, "were as food in the mouth of their narrators." His brother Baldwin was made his successor as King of Jerusalem.
Other leaders of this Crusade were Hugh, Count of Vermandois, brother to the King of France, and Robert, Duke of Normandy, brother to the King of England. Duke Robert had raised money by the pawning of his dukedom. Tancred was son of the Marquis Odo the Good, and Emma, sister of Robert Guiscard. Bohemond was Robert Guiscard's son, who inherited Tarentum and Apulia. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, is fabled to have led to the Crusades 160,000 horse and foot.
Edward Fairfax
EDWARD FAIRFAX, of Newhall, in the parish of Faiston, Yorkshire, was of a Yorkshire family and married to a Yorkshire woman. He was born at Leeds. His father was Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton and Nun Appleton and Bilbrough, in Yorkshire, whose eldest son, born at Bilbrough, was Thomas, first Lord Fairfax of Cameron in the Scottish peerage. Thomas was born in 1560, and lived to the age of eighty; but there is no record of the birth-date of his brother Edward, who died five years before him. Edward was very serviceable to his eldest brother, for he lived a studious life upon his own little estate near by, as one of the family (though his legitimacy has been doubted), and had looked after the education of his brother's children. He had also the charge of his brother's affairs while his brother was much away on diplomatic and military service in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was not until after the accession of James I that Thomas, first Lord Fairfax, settled down at Denton, where he gave attention to the breeding of his horses and carefully defined the duties of his servants.
Edward Fairfax married a sister of Walter Laycock of Copmanthorpe in Yorkshire, and had several children of his own. His translation of Tasso was his chief work. It was first published in 1600, toward the end of the reign of Elizabeth, and dedicated to the Queen. It was valued greatly by King James, who gave it a first place in English poetry. It is said to have solaced Charles I in his confinement, and Dryden records that he and others had heard Waller say that he "derived the harmony of his numbers from 'Godfrey of Bulloigne.'"
Edward Fairfax wrote also twelve eclogues, of which two or three have been printed and the rest are lost. He died in 1635, and was buried at Faiston on January 27th. His wife survived him thirteen years.
Richard Carew, who had distinguished himself at Oxford in his student days, and afterward, when sheriff of Cornwall, published a valuable "Survey of Cornwall," published in 1594 a translation of the first five cantos of Tasso's "Gerusalemme." Carew printed his English version and the Italian original facing each other, page for page, and his translation was accurate. I take, for example, the fourth stanza of the first book, where Fairfax has generalized into "Princes," Tasso's direct dedication to Alfonso II:
"Thou noble-minded Alfonso, who dost save
From fortune's fury and to port dost steer
Me, wandering pilgrim, midst of many a wave
And many a rock betossed, and drenched well near,
My verse with friendly grace to accept vouchsafe,
Which, as in vow, sacred to thee I bear.
One day, perhaps, my pen forehalsening
Will dare what now of thee 'tis purposing."
Fairfax in his translation of the first five cantos shows now and then that he has read Carew's translation; but on the whole, here as throughout, he takes his own way, and writes like an English poet of his day, according to the fashion of his day, but with addition of the clearest evidence of his delight in Spenser. Many a phrase and image used in the elaboration of his stanzas has been suggested to Fairfax by his study of the "Faerie Queene," which was a new poem while he wrote; its first three books published in 1590, its next three in 1596; Fairfax's "Tasso" in 1600. He translates, indeed, stanza for stanza, so that the numbering of his stanzas corresponds to that of the original. But he gives in his own way the sense of each stanza, or what he takes it to be, when, as not seldom happens, he is doubtful, or goes, unconscious of error, more or less astray as to the meaning of a sentence. Spenser had planned his great poem early in life, to be a spiritual allegory with a poem of knights, ladies, and enchantments, that was to have outward resemblance to the "Orlando" of Ariosto; only it was to be "in sage and solemn tunes"—
"Of turneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear."
While Spenser was planning and beginning to write, Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered" came, as a new poem, into his hands. His pleasure in it was declared by touches of paraphrase and imitation in his verse. Of a beautiful song in the garden of Armida, he gave a poet's translation in the last canto of his second book, where the description of the gardens of Acrasia owed many a touch to recollections of Tasso. In such passages Fairfax translated with Spenser in his mind.
Fairfax's worst blunders, or seeming blunders, in translation do little damage to the spirit of his text. Thus in canto iii, stanza 32, the commonest inflection of a familiar verb, volgere, "to turn," which of course he knew, and, here as elsewhere, has translated rightly, slips through his eye into his mind the name of a great river, and we have this version of the lines:
"Tal gran tauro talor ne l'ampio agone,
Se volge il corno ai cani ond' è seguito,
S'arretran essi; e s'a fuggir si pone,
Ciascun ritorna a seguitarlo ardito."
"As the swift ure, by Volga's rolling flood,
Chased through the plains the mastiff curs toforn,
Flies to the succor of some neighbor wood,
And often turns again his dreadful horn
Against the dogs imbrued in sweat and blood,
That bite not till the beast to flight return."
Here there is no blunder at all. "Se volge il corno" is translated; the image is correctly given, although part is amplified and part condensed. We only find that the word volge suggested to Fairfax his addition of the river. In and after Elizabeth's time river names were much used as ornaments of verse.
The English of Fairfax's "Tasso" has, in pronunciation and vocabulary, some ring of the North. The letter r is well sounded. Wh
en Carlos is translated "Charles" I have once or twice accented the é to remind the reader that the word is a dissyllable. But the pronunciation is not "Char-lés," it is "Char-els;" the second syllable is made by the rolled r before the letter l. In the same way we find "pearls" used as a word of two syllables—pear-els—in the twenty-third stanza of the seventeenth canto, and so in another place with the word "curls." A glance at the Glossary, on the last pages of this volume, will show the use of Northern words, as "busk" and "bield." The reader may also now and then observe what looks like a false concord between noun and verb, caused by use, in a few places, of the Northern plural in s, or of the second person singular of the present indicative in es for est.
Fairfax interspersed old words in his translation to grace an antique tale, for the same reason that caused Spenser to use them in "The Faerie Queene"; he had also, in this respect, by imitation and by likeness of experience—for Spenser's family was also of the North of England—a Spenserian vocabulary. He often uses the prefix y for the old ge, in past participles, as "yclept," "ypraised" Sometimes he adds the n of the infinitive where it had been dropped by the usage of his time—"Two barons bold approachen gan the place;;" "Do thou permit the chosen ten to gone." He has old plurals in n, "eyne," "fone," "treen." Sometimes he drops, sometimes retains, the n of a past participle, writing "know" for "known," "bounden" for "bound." Very commonly he takes the old indicative-present of the verb "to be," using "been" for "are." Now and then he drops the sign of the past in a weak verb ending in t. In this edition, while the spelling has been modernized, archaic words and forms have been retained.
As translator, according to the fashion of his day in England, Fairfax turns many a direct and simple sentence of his original into metaphor or simile, interweaves mythological and scriptural allusions, or finds emphasis in a homely English proverb, as "A stick to beat that dog he long had sought," or "Doubtless the county thought his bread well baken."
With all this, Fairfax found that the vowel-endings of Italian add many syllables that lengthen the expression of a thought while making it more musical. Chaucer's seven-lined stanza perhaps originated in his experience as a translator from the octave rhyme as it was used by Boccaccio. It is formed by striking out the fifth line, and so producing a new measure with a system of its own. Thus Chaucer translated eight lines into seven. Fairfax, by the compactness of his style, was led to devices of expansion as well as of addition. He set up triplets of words where Tasso had but one, and sometimes gave an air of condensed energy to a line that was in fact one bold expansion by a string of words.
When Tasso simply wrote (xiv. 1),
"E i venticelli dibattendo l'ali
Lusingavano il sonno de' mortali,"
Fairfax translated,
"And sweet-breathed Zephyr on his spreading wings,
Sleep, ease, repose, rest, peace, and quiet brings."
When Tasso wrote,
"China poi, disse, e gli addito la terra,
Gli occhi a ciò che quel globo ultimo serra,"
Fairfax, having used up the rest of the matter of the stanza in five lines, and having three to fill, translated,
"Then bend thine eyes on yonder earth and mould,
All in that mass, that globe and compass see,
Land, sea, spring, fountain, man, beast, grass, and tree."
And as an example of the frequent triplets in Fairfax, which became a favorite device, we may take the translation of Tasso's
"Ben sono in parte altr' uom da quel ch'io fui;
Ch' or da lui pendo, e mi rivolgo a lui"—
"Thus hath he changed my thoughts, my heart, my will,
And rules mine art, my knowledge, and my skill."
Iteration is part of a speaker's art, because the spoken word has wings, and may not always be caught as it is uttered. In our church service its use is recognized by frequent doublings of nouns and verbs, as when we "acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and iniquities;" and the form of writing is not ill-suited to a poem that one may imagine planned for recitation. Fairfax uses it to excess, but there is so much robust vigor in his way of suiting to his own time and country the contents of each successive stanza, and his own music is so clear and tuneful, that his translation still holds high place in our literature, among the books "that so did please Eliza and our James," and have not lost their pleasantness by lapse of time.
Jerusalem Delivered
Torquato Tasso
1873 Press
First Published 1901
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Published in the United States by 1873 Press, New York.
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ISBN 0-594-05289-0
Contents
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V
Book VI
Book VII
Book VIII
Book IX
Book X
Book XI
Book XII
Book XIII
Book XIV
Book XV
Book XVI
Book XVII
Book XVIII
Book XIX
Book XX
Glossary
Introduction
TORQUATO TASSO was born at Sorrento on March 11, 1544, and died in Rome on April 25, 1595, aged fifty one. He belonged to an old family of Bergamo, and was a poet's son. His father Bernardo Tasso, full fifty years old at the time of his son's birth, had then been for thirteen years in the service of Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, and had married in 1536 the beautiful and spiritual Porzia de' Rossi, of the house of the Marquises of Calenzano. Their son Torquato was first educated at schools of the Jesuits in Naples, Rome, and Bergamo. They were the best schools of the time. At eight years old the boy read Greek and Latin, and had begun to write Italian verse. Then he was in Pesaro for a time, sharing the education given to the son of the Duke of Urbino. After this he was for a year in Venice with his father, and then, at the age of thirteen, he was sent to study law at Padua.
Bernardo Tasso, the father, shared the troubles of his patron, the Prince of Salerno, who in 1550 incurred the displeasure of the Emperor Charles V, for seeking support from the King of France while urging on the Emperor the pleadings of the Neapolitans against establishment of the Inquisition in Naples. Ferrante Sanseverino was in 1552 declared a rebel, his estates were forfeited, and he was exiled from Salerno. Bernardo Tasso lost at the same time his income of 900 scudi, and what little possessions he had, except the poem on Amadis that he had begun. He left Salerno and went to France, leaving his wife and children to the care of relatives. After two years in France, Bernardo Tasso joined his prince in Rome, and sent for his son Torquato; his wife and daughter then entering a convent at Naples. Torquato Tasso wrote a little sonnet to his mother on their parting. Political feuds parted Bernardo Tasso from his wife's relations. He never could see his wife again—she died heart-broken in 1556—and his daughter was denied to him: she was married at fifteen. Rome became an unsafe place for the father when Emperor and Pope fell out, but shelter was offered to him at Pesaro by a liberal patron of literature, the Duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo II, and it was thus that Torquato Tasso was taught with the Duke of Urbino's son, Francesco Maria della Rovere.
Bernardo Tasso's poem, "L'Amadigi di Francia," founded on the first and best of the Spanish romances of chivalry, "Amadis of Gaul," was begun with encouragement from his patron, Sanseverino, and was planned in stanzas of octave rhyme on a scale as large as that of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," of which the first forty cantos had been published in 1515. Ariosto's death was in January, 1533, eleven years before the birth of Torquato Tasso. Bernardo Tasso's "Amadigi" was first published at Bergamo in 1555, when his son Torquato was a boy of eleven. The "Amadigi" had
been two years before the public when Torquato, poet born, went from a rhymer's home to study law at Padua. This was a year after his mother's death. At Padua he studied little law, much Dante, and wrote verse. His father's long romance in verse told of the loves of Amadis and Oriana, with interwoven love-stories of Floridante and Floridora, and of Alidoro and Miranda. It was followed by nineteen cantos of a separate poem of "Floridante," worked out of the episode in the "Amadigi," and including a repetition of eight of its cantos with little change. "Floridante" was left unfinished, and published by the son after the father's death.
It was of little use for such a father to dissuade his son from writing verse. Young Tasso, while a student at Padua, but eighteen years old, printed at Venice in 1562 an epic poem in twelve books on one of Ariosto's heroes, "Rinaldo." The poem was written in ten months, was praised throughout Italy, and found more readers than Bernardo's "Amadigi." In the "Amadigi" musical verse and grace of expression, with abundant supply of battles, combats, and love-passages, could not atone for want of skill in twisting the threads of the fable. The success of his son's "Rinaldo" satisfied Bernardo Tasso as a crowning argument against continuance of the law studies. Free way was made for literature and philosophy, and already, while student at Padua, Torquato Tasso resolved upon the poem which became his masterpiece, and of which this volume contains the best English translation.
Meanwhile Bernardo Tasso in the year of the publication of "L'Amadigi" at Bergamo, had published at Venice "I tre libri degli Amori," and hau published at Venice, also in 1560, "Inni, Ode e Salmi," two years before the appearance of his son's "Rinaldo."
Torquato Tasso left Padua to continue studies of philosophy and literature at Bologna. There he began to write the poem on the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, which had been resolved upon at Padua. At Bologna he was suspected of the authorship of satirical verses that attacked himself as well as others. They amused him; and his good-will to them caused his papers to be seized and searched. Nothing was found against him, but his annoyance caused him to leave Bologna for Modena, whence he was recalled to Padua by his kinsman and friend, Scipione Gonzaga, who was there founding an academy. Tasso was then zealous in study of Plato's philosophy, and he afterward himself wrote dialogues in Plato's manner. By the time that he was two-and-twenty Torquato Tasso was formally attached to the service of the great Italian house of Este, whose history he glorified in his "Jerusalem Delivered" (canto xvii. st. 66-94), as shown in the shield given to Rinaldo; Rinaldo being represented as himself of the Este family.
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