Spenser, Taxed

My love of Edmund Spenser is somewhat obvious; I find him a much maligned poet (even though, because of his treatment of the Irish, much of that malignance is deserved), often read very poorly or against some arcane scheme (like the apposition of each of the Amoretti to a particular verse reading from the Book of Common Prayer) likely to make ones head spin. And it is well known that Spenser adapted his Italian models, as most English Renaissance poets did, but that word, "adapted," does a great deal to conceal how a poet like Torquato Tasso is adapted in Spenser's sonnets and whether "adapt" is even the proper characterization.

The Norton edition of the Amoretti has a note to sonnet 43 that reads as follows: "The first and third quatrains adapt Tasso's 'Se taccio, il duol s'avanza.'" What follows are those first and third quatrains along with their correspondences in Tasso's rima (#166 in Bruno Maier's edition) and my own somewhat more literal translation thereof. Note, I come to Italian mostly through Dante, through whose verse I generally have to puzzle for hours, so forgive any gross oddities in my own rendition.

Qu. 1 -

Shall I then silent be or shall I speake?
And if I speake, her wrath renew I shall:
And if I silent be, my hart will breake,
Or chokèd be with overflowing gall.

Se taccio, il duol s'avanza;
se parlo, accresco l'ira,
donna bella e crudel, che mi martira.

If I am silent, my grief advances;
If I speak, I increase her ire,
lady beautiful and cruel, who martyrs me.

Qu. 3 -

Yet I my hart with silence secretly
Will teach to speak, and my just cause to plead:
And eke mine eies with meeke humility,
Love-learnèd letters to her eyes to read.

E prego Amor che spieghi
nel mio doglioso aspetto
con lettre di pietà l'occulto affetto.

And I pray Love would show
in my painful aspect
with letters of piety the hidden affection.

Of course, a sonnet is more than just two quatrains, and it is in the second qu. of sonnet 43 that Spenser shows he is more in conversation with Tasso than merely adapting him.

What tyranny is this both my hart to thrall,
And eke my toung with proud restraint to tie;
That nether I may speake nor thinke at all,
But like a stupid stock in silence die?

Spenser has appropriated Tasso's double bind and applied it not only to his amorous situation but also to the problem of the poet adapting his contemporary. For Spenser's tounge is not only enthralled to his lady but to Tasso as well, and if this poem were to remain a simple translation or adaptation of "Se taccio," Spenser's poetic voice and subjectivity would be all but eviscerated. Thus, to maintain the presence of Spenser's voice and Tasso's, the sonnet engages in a kind of poetic correspondence whose mode happens partially to be translation. Of course, the presence of Tasso' "Se taccio" is not obvious in Spenser's poem; I never would have known if it weren't for the textual note. So, a third person is invited into this conversation, a figure whose silence in the poem is genuine and not a mere figure of discourse, i.e. the reader. The poem's concluding couplet casts the reader as the always absent yet ever present lady.

Which her deep wit, that true harts thought can spel,
Wil soone conceive, and learne to construe well.

Tasso's "l'occulto affetto" and Spenser's silent speech can only be revealed through the efforts of their absent Loves, the readers whose task it is decipher the "hidden affection" in pious letters, the speech in silence, and the presence of one poet in another. So while we readers are invited into the discourse of the poem, it expects us all the while to play its game: to be as crafty in reading as it is in writing.