Tasso and Prešeren. Translator’s Marginalia and a Little Literary History

Abstract

Torquato Tasso, while never forgotten in the 200 or so years after his death, gained virtual cult status during the Pre-Romantic and Romantic periods of European literature. Slovene-speaking regions were no exception, although understandably on a lesser scale – Slovene secular literature had then only just begun: Tasso’s is a recurrent name in Matija Čop’s writings; France Prešeren himself mentions him three times, directly or indirectly, in his poems. Despite this fact, “Prešernology” has had comparatively little to say about the role the Italian poet might have had in shaping Prešeren’s poetry; Prešeren’s interest in him is considered to be mainly biographical or anecdotal, springing rather from the romantic myth as established by Goethe and Byron than from Tasso’s poetry itself. Indeed, Tasso is mentioned as the author of a “Coronale of Sonnets” that might have been one of the stimuli for Prešeren’s; the Slovene poet devotes nearly half of “Sonnet No. 3” of his “Sonetni venec” to a comparison between the Italian and himself; it is therefore beyond doubt that some sort of relationship exists, yet almost no serious attempt has been made to shed light on its nature. Gerusalemme liberata and Krst pri Savici are similar cases: it is generally agreed that Tasso was probably the main model for the stanza of Prešeren’s epic, but few scholars have so far considered it worthwhile venturing any further than that observation. – The starting point of the discussion is the impression that Tasso’s importance for Prešeren’s poetry is probably underestimated. It is shown that Prešeren had, had he been interested, easy access to the most important works by Tasso. The aim, however, is not to prove any factual influence, but only to form plausible hypotheses regarding, as it were, intertextual links. The approach is consciously un-methodical: trying to draw some mixed-Ievel parallels that can, or at least could, look into topology, form, substrate of ideas, technique of narration, etc., even biography or the psychology of creation. Such an open approach was felt to be suitable because Prešeren is not the type of poet who takes fragments of other poets’ work in order to integrate them into his own; when he finds a source that inspires him, he tends not to imitate, but rather to enter into a kind of dialogue with it. It does appear that some degree of such dialogue, or elective affinity, existed between him and Torquato Tasso.