Gierusalemme

Extant only in ms. Urb. Lat. 413, the Gierusalemme is Tasso’s early attempt at heroic poetry during his stay in Venice. He was encouraged by a group of young men of letters, among whom Danese Cataneo, the author of the poem L’Amor di Marfisa. Here are the opening lines of the Gierusalemme, which contains in embryonic form the opening stanza of his later Gerusalemme liberata:

L’armi pietose io canto e l’alta impresa

di Gotifredo e de’ cristiani eroi

da cui Gierusalem fu cinta e presa

e n’ebbe impero illustre origin poi.

Tu, Re del Ciel, come al tuo foco accesa

la mente fu di quei fedeli tuoi,

tal me n’accendi, e se tua santa luce

fur lor nell’opre, a me nel dir sia duce. (See L. Caretti, Parma, Zara, 1993).

The manuscript, according to Caretti not in Tasso’s hand but copied by Giovan Mario Verdizzotti, contains a dedication to Guidubaldo Della Rovere. The topic is the First Crusade, launched by Pope Urban II at the end of the eleventh century. The work stops after around one hundred octave stanzas. Aware of the theoretical difficulties underlying epic poetry, Tasso decided to shift to the Ariostan chivalric romance model of verse, which entailed constraints and precepts of a less demanding nature. This change resulted in the Rinaldo. The Gierusalemme’s opening canto, however, in narrating the Crusaders’ journey to the Holy City, the assembly of the army and even the ambassadorial role of Aletes and Argantes, material which was maintained in the first three cantos of the Gerusalemme, points to the brilliance of Tasso’s early writing, temporarily set aside but picked up again a few years later when he began working on the Liberata.