Rogo amoroso

The Rogo amoroso is a short pastoral elegy that Tasso wrote between 1588 and 1590, at the request of Fabio Orsini, his patron in his later years, to whom he dedicated his Risposta di Roma a Plutarco. The composition is dedicated to the death of the woman that Orsini loved, Corinna, her funeral pyre representing the soul’s release from the burden of the earthly world. In contrast to the divine light and his woman’s happiness in the afterlife, for Aminta (here representing Orsini) there is only a desperate, Leopardian lament: “Cade e risorge l’amorosa stella; tu cadesti, Corinna, ahi duro caso, per non risorger mai” (lines 562-564 in the text edited by F. Gavazzeni, in Studi tassiani, XI, 1961, 49-103). Here, and in the Muses’ final chorus, based entirely on the theme of weeping, a work that was initially created for a specific occasion shows the tones of profound sadness found in the Mondo creato, while the use of the pastoral form makes it strikingly clear how far the poet now was from the happy period of the Aminta.