Many of Tasso’s letters and autobiographical passages in his dialogues contain descriptions of the flight of thoughts, a chain of images characterizing a state of melancholy. In a famous passage in Messaggiero he wrote:
“la maninconia, la qual più tosto a l’idra ch’a la chimera potrebbe assomigliarsi, perch’a pena il maninconico ha tronco un pensiero che due ne sono subito nati in quella vece, da’ quali con mortiferi morsi è trafitto e lacerato. Comunque sia, coloro che non sono maninconici per infermità ma per natura, sono d’ingegno singolare, e io son per l’una e l’altra cagione: laonde in parte vo consolando me stesso” (T. Tasso, Dialoghi, edited by B. Basile, Milan, Mursia, 1991, 49-50).
“melancholy may resemble the Hydra more than the Chimera, for as soon as one thought has ended in the sufferer, another two immediately arise in its place, piercing and tormenting him with their lethal sting. Whatever the case, those who suffer from melancholy not as an illness but by natural disposition, possess a singular mind, and my own melancholy is caused by both: thus, in part, I console myself” (translated from T. Tasso, Dialoghi, edited by B. Basile, Milan, Mursia, 1991, 49-50).
Melancholy was not simply a favourite theme, but an important concept in Tasso’s life, since his troublesome behaviour in 1577-79 was attributed to outbursts of this malcontent, and treated accordingly, both at the time and again in later years, with the specious remedies of the day. He described his symptoms in detail in the letters from Sant’Anna: one of his main symptoms, and his most frequent complaint, was a loss of memory, which had been prodigious in his youth. He also read widely on the subject, including Aristotle’s Problemata and the Neoplatonic and Ficinian tradition (also reading French texts by Symphorien Champier from the early sixteenth century), which held melancholy to be the anguished downside of creative genius. For further elaboration, see the classic work by R.Klibansky, E. Panofsky, F. Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art. London, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1964, and in relation to Tasso, B. Basile, Poëta melancholicus. Tradizione classica e follia nell’ultimo Tasso, Pisa, Pacini, 1984.
Melancholy
