Lena’s Reviews > Jerusalem Delivered > Status Update

Whenever I watch a movie and then pick up a book, the scenes in my mind's eye unfold cinematically. Recently I've been wondering how visual culture informs literary imagery. Tasso's imagination, I think, has been pollinated by Baroque theater: so many scenes could be staged easily. The narrative sweep doesn't glide over the landscape; there is little sense for geography; scene-based plotting circles onto itself...

Ah! The descriptions of heat make me feel feverish. (Within his caves sweet Zephyr silent lies,/Still was the air, the rack nor came nor went,/But o'er the lands with lukewarm breathing flies/The southern wind, from sunburnt Afric sent,/Which thick and warm his interrupted blasts/Upon their bosoms, throats, and faces casts.)

By the way, Max Wickert in the Oxford World Classics edition has a marvelously helpful introduction. (https://books.google.com/books/about/...)

Just... wow. Some really haunting and brilliantly-observed sequences here. Book XII is legendary.

This gets really gory -- pierced hearts bursting blood, heads 'cleft in twain', severed limbs twitching after dismemberment: (Gernier's right hand she from his arme divided,/Whereof but late she had receiv'd a wound;/The hand his sword still held, although not guided,/The fingers halfe alive stirr'd on the ground...)

This book is fantastic. Soap-opera dramatic irony + copious bloodshed + a gloriously overwrought and musical Elizabethan translation = tremendous emotional and cerebral entertainment. And look how Fairfax writes! He's describing a restless and bloodthirsty knight hungering for his next tournament: (Above his head he shooke his naked blade,/And gainst the subtle aire vaine battaile made.) Genius!

Huh, I just found out that Galileo hated this book. (https://books.google.com/books?id=0hS...) He gives some scathing (and hilarious) criticisms. I personally disagree, but that shall await my review :)

How puzzling our Tasso is: he is caught between extremes of idealism (stoic martyrs, pious knights) and complex, precisely-articulated emotion (the deeply moving scene when the Christians first encounter Jerusalem). Fairfax's embellishments only heighten this contrast. The translation is as vivid and overwrought as any Mannerist painting.

That said, the poetry is impressive: (Of silver wings he tooke a shining paire/Fringed with gold, unwearied, nimble, swift;/With these he parts the windes, the clouds, the aire,/And over seas and earth himselfe doth lift,/Thus clad he cut the spheares and circles faire,/And the pure skies with sacred feathers clift;/On Libanon at first his foot he set,/And shooke his wings with roarie May-dewes wet.)

So the first book is mostly set-up: acquainting the reader with the heroes and villains. But it also serves as a training period for the reader -- Fairfax has contrived his translation in full-blown ottava rima, and to pull it off in rhyme-poor English he uses complex syntax and abundant archaisms.