LITERARY RELATIONS by Mario Praz
Sheryl M. Esperanzate
Reporter
Mario Praz compared all the different literary creations of the different authors to “Armida’s
Garden”
Armida’s Garden is a poem written by Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, Sir (1848 - 1918), in 1908,
published 1909. It was translated by by Mary Coleridge (1861 - 1907) in English.
The poem goes this way:
ARMIDA’S GARDEN
I have been there before thee, O my love!
Each winding way I know and all the flowers,
The shadowy cypress trees, the twilight grove,
Where rest, in fragrant sleep, the enchanted hours.
I have been there before thee. At the end
There stands a gate through which thou too must pass.
When thou shalt reach it, God in mercy send
Thou say no bitterer word, love, than "Alas!"
This piece merely focused on romance/romantic, expressing love to his love one. It also
describe the beauty of nature.
Praz cited many writers who had romantic poems and masterpieces , and lovers of
nature.
Shakespeare was considered as father of Romantics because of his many romance
writings like the sonnets.
Michel de Montaigne is also a forerunner of romantic essay
Jean Rousset is the forerunner of baroque sensitivity because of his volubility, his
wavering and mobile personality of his works.
Charles Lamb wrote poems with sentimental, nostalgic quality after the love affair had
ended, to Lamb's regret.
Torquato Tasso can be produced a mannerist, a forerunner of the romantics, and in the
field of visual arts, be likened to the most diverse painters without gross impropriety
(immodest, rudeness).
Torquato Tasso also insisted on the beauty of martyrdom for the Faith and adorned the
churches with gloom, gory paintings but describe Beauty and Death are intimately
connected.
According to Tasso’ eyes, pain seemed to throw beauty into relief and martyrdom to
wring from its pathetic accents.
The most popular poem written by Tasso is “Aminta” is about a boyish a shepherd who
falls inlove with a nymph.
The story goes this way on Aminta by Tasso
The young shepherd’s boyish despair is touching in its mournful resignation, but it fails to move
Sylvia’s heart. Vainly does he rescue her from the ruthless hands of a satyr who had already
bound her to a tree. Released by Amintas, she flees without giving him a word of thanks. But
while the youth’s friends are with difficulty restraining him from killing himself at this fresh and
seemingly final blow, bad news comes from the forest. Sylvia’s useless dart is brought back from
thence, with her white veil covered with blood: she has to all appearance been devoured by the
fierce wolves she so intrepidly pursued. “Why was I not allowed to die before I could hear such
tidings?” cries Amintas. “Give me that veil, the one only wretched thing left me of my Sylvia, to
be my companion in the short journey that lies before me.” And grasping it, he goes and casts
himself headlong down a precipice.
Shortly after his departure, Sylvia, not dead, not even wounded, reappears on the scene,
and calmly explains how the mistaken report of her death had arisen. “Ah!” says Daphne,
the friend who all along had blamed her coldness, “you live, but Amintas is dead.” Her
words are confirmed by the messenger who comes in, after the way of the classic drama,
to narrate the catastrophe. Sylvia’s heart is melted; she regrets her severity, and says that
if a hater’s falsely reported death has killed Amintas, it is only fit that she should herself
be slain by the true tidings of the death of so true a lover.]
Tasso also appreciates the beauty of nature like that of Armida’s Garden. In his poem,
“Aenid” his setting is gloomy like that of the forest.
Tasso influenced many writers on romance and love for nature like Ben Jonson in his
Poem “The Silent Woman”, Robert Herrick in his Poem/ song “Carolina”.
Some also believed that because of Tasso’s; “Garden of Armida, the Royal Park of Turin
Italy was made.
He also influenced the making of “The Marquis Garden which was echoed on lines of
Armida’s Garden by Tasso.
“It all began from a percept of rhetoric that Tasso Adapted to Gardening, Horace
Walpole said.
According to Walpole, “Three new graces Poetry, Painting and Landscape Gardening had
to unite in order to dress and adorn Nature”.
Because of Tasso’s Garden of Armida, Lance Brown planted all the trees that being
admired now in England and Rudyard Kipling said” Our England is a garden” into
England is Armida’s Garden”.
Reflection:
Tasso’s Garden of Armida had a great impact to the literature of Italy and was
influenced other writers to write also in nature and romance. He also influenced other people
to make or construct a real garden out of his poem like that of the Garden in England and in
Turin. Truly, literature influenced the mind, heart and soul of ever person as soon as they
appreciate it.
