1Can a single sentence, especially when it is confined to a footnote, explain the significance of a new edition of Torquato Tasso’s “portento”, as a canonical essay by Giosuè Carducci praised the classic pastoral play Aminta (1896, 1)? The answer is no, of course, but you might still wish to read the following lines from a note on the text authored by Paolo Trovato and published by Einaudi in the edition which he recently co-edited with Davide Colussi:
Questa Nota al testo è quindi anche un tentativo, certo parziale, di “aprire” alle persone colte, anziché ai soli addetti ai lavori, il laboratorio nel quale il testo viene fissato e la logica delle sue operazioni.
[This Note on the Text is thus also an attempt, however partial, to “welcome” the learned public, rather than the experts alone, into the laboratory where the text is established together with the logic of its operations.]
(201)
2Although the statement refers to the note on the text specifically, in my opinion it is relevant to the whole edition, taking a clear standpoint on the purposes of a state-of-the-art philological and critical publication. Needless to say, good intentions must be tested, even if the two co-editors are doubtlessly established scholars in the two separate but contiguous fields of linguistics and philology, while also belonging to the research tradition which focuses on Tasso’s life and works. (Trovato’s involvement in a new critical edition of Dante Alighieri’s Commedia (2022) also deserves honourable mention).
3Colussi and Trovato’s critical edition of Tasso’s Aminta has everything we need: an introduction by Colussi (VII–XXXV), which details the reasons for a new commentary, the places and times of composition, the peculiarities of the pastoral genre which flourished in Ferrara, as well as the sources, the linguistic aspects, the metrical innovations and the rhetorical strategies which characterize Tasso’s play. As far as the body of the edition is concerned, instead, which is to say the critical text and apparatus of Aminta (1–198), the editors opt for a single apparatus which follows the continuously line-numbered text (272), also adding a closing note to each act which recapitulates its main aspects focusing on language, structure and characters. The critical text and apparatus are followed by the aforementioned note on the text (199–279) and indexes (281–304).
4What we are presented with, then, is in the first instance a new critical text, which is the result of extensive philological research and which is quite different from the outdated authoritative texts established by Angelo Solerti (Tasso 1895) and Bortolo Tommaso Sozzi (Tasso 1964), which applied what we now consider to be questionable editorial principles. Solerti, in particular, relied more extensively on the printed editions of his day, also given that access to manuscripts and early witnesses was limited or more challenging than it is nowadays. This might have led Solerti to accept common but not always accurate readings, as well as “conventional” variants without a thorough analysis of the tradition. Sozzi, instead, dismissed as irrelevant the “autonomous” variants which are given higher importance in Colussi and Trovato’s edition, establishing the text of Aminta only basing on Aldo Manuzio’s 1590 edition.
5Trovato’s findings, on the contrary, are clear and absolutely convincing. The new critical text is established following the principle that,
nei casi in cui non ci sia accordo o maggioranza netta (dei rami) tra tutti i testimoni o almeno tra i manoscritti, si assume come testo di superficie (esclusi CII, CIII e CIV) il manoscritto Est, che, pur non impermeabile alle innovazioni […], sembra più conservativo del suo collaterale Ub.
[where there is no agreement or a clear majority (of the branches) among all witnesses or at least among the manuscripts, the surface text is assumed to be (with the exception of CII, CIII and CIV) manuscript Est, which, without being impervious to innovations […], seems more conservative than its collateral Ub.]
- 1 See also 254–58, for a description of the archetype and a provisional stemma; 258–62, for the macro (...)
(272)1
6Trovato’s editorial criteria, then, are rooted in the revised definition of archetype suggested in his handbook of textual scholarship, in English: “The archetype is a lost copy marred by at least one conjunctive error guaranteed by the agreement of the majority of the primary branches, from which the whole surviving tradition derives” (Trovato 2017, 154; qtd. 225). The definition, as Trovato clarifies on the same page, conceives the archetype not on the basis of common errors, but of conjunctive errors and the law of majority.
7Pairing Trovato’s philological work, Colussi’s commentary, which grows out of his long experience as a linguist, aims to integrate the commentaries published to date by modern editions. Which implies, in the first instance, reconsidering the invaluable commentaries published in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, but the many studies which, in recent decades, further increased our understanding of Tasso’s Aminta are also extensively covered, as the bibliography clearly testifies. Basing on this broad corpus of bibliographical sources, Colussi can achieve two main goals.
8First of all, Colussi’s commentary traces new (or forgotten) intertextual relations embedded in Tasso’s pastoral play, which link it not only to other works authored by Tasso himself, but also to an entire literary tradition. To this regard, we could examine a short but meaningful note (73 n. 665) to a single verse in a section of the first chorus (I.ii.662–66 [I.ii.325–29]):
non perché nuvol fosco
non spiegò allhor suo velo,
e ’n primavera eterna,
c’hora s’accende e verna,
rise di luce e di sereno il cielo;
(72–73)
[no dark cloud ever chilled,
nor close to earth did cling;
the skies that now inflame
or chill smiled light, serene
in an eternal spring;]
(Tasso 2000, 51 and 53)
9Solerti’s edition interprets the archaic Italian verb “verna” as synonymous with the current far primavera [to blossom], rooting it in the Latin noun ver [spring] which the expression “primavera eterna” translates echoing the words “Ver erat aeternum” from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (I.107). A few editions — although not the translation quoted here above — follow Solerti’s interpretation. However, Colussi and Trovato’s edition gives the Italian verb the opposite meaning, interpreting it as synonymous with the current ibernare, raggelare [hybernate, freeze], as in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata [Jerusalem Delivered] (XV.54.3–4) and Rime [Rhymes] (389.2 and passim). The interpretation does not concern a single verb, but an entire section of the most famous chorus of Aminta.
10Tasso’s Greek sources are extensively discussed as well. In this context, besides Theocritus, the Bucolic genre and, even more generally, the Greek lyric, Hellenistic romances, which were read at the Este court in Ferrara, also have crucial importance. According to Colucci’s introduction, if “Non certa ma ben plausibile appare la conoscenza degli Amori di Dafni e Cloe di Longo Sofista” [Not certain but highly plausible appears to be Tasso’s knowledge of Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe], “Certa, invece, poiché influente anche sul piano dell’inventio narrativa, la conoscenza del Leucippe e Clitofonte di Achille Tazio” [Certain, instead, due to its influence in terms of narrative inventio, is Tasso’s knowledge of Achilles Tatius’s LeucippeandClitophon] (XXI). This conclusion supports once again, and more persuasively, the idea that Tasso conceived Aminta under the influence of multiple literary models.
11Secondly, Colussi’s commentary unveils for the first time historical relations within the Ferrarese court which Tasso carefully disguised, finding specific sources of inspiration for Nerina and Dafne, for instance. As far as Dafne is concerned, a note at the very beginning of the first act (19–20 n. 92–97) sheds light on the research carried on by the editors. Dafne is the character desired by Tirsi, who is the wise counselor and Tasso’s own alter ego. She is a middle-aged woman who accepts to be courted and involved in romantic skirmishes, which can also be said for the “Signora Laura” mentioned in Tasso’s Rime (159, 164 and 168). Although, according to a study by Elio Durante and Anna Martellotti (2010), the “Signora Laura” is not Laura Peperara, the character Dafne certainly has its source of inspiration in the “Signora Laura”. This is also confirmed by the relation between the myth of Daphne and the name “Laura” (from the Latin laurum [laurel]), rooted in Petrarch’s verses and occurring in Tasso’s dialogue Dimmi mesto pastore, written in 1581. When that dialogue was performed at the Este court, the role of Dafne was assigned precisely to Laura Peperara.
12In conclusion, Colussi and Trovato’s new edition of Aminta is based on the best tradition of Italian philology and linguistics, and at the same time can be read with pleasure even outside Italy and a narrow circle of experts.