Francesco Ottonello
This article is part of the NOTCHES series on The Languages of Queer History.
Canto la rara angelica beltate
Del garzon Frigio, i bei graditi amori,
La regia stirpe, la fiorita etate
e gli eterni del cielo hauti honori.
I sing the rare angelic beauty / Of the Phrygian boy, the cherished loves, /
The royal lineage, the blooming youth / And his eternal honours of above.[…]
Ed è, Signor, a gran ragion beato
Ché rispose in amore essendo amato.
And he is, my Lord, rightly blessed / For he responded in love, being loved.
These verses, which I have translated into English for the first time, are the opening and closing lines of Ganimede rapito (“Abducted Ganymede”), a homoerotic poem historically suppressed and attributable to Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), one of the most widely read Italian poets. It consists of 50 hendecasyllabic octaves and represents a unique work in European literature because it offers an unprecedented exploration of the myth of Ganymede, an extraordinarily beautiful boy who was abducted by Zeus/Jupiter, the king of gods, to serve as his cupbearer and to become his lover, according to most Greek and Latin sources.
The poem undeniably belongs to the specific genre of Renaissance mythological poetry, inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and centered on erotic themes. This genre flourished in Italy during the 1530s to 1550s and counted major representatives such as Luigi Alamanni (1495-1556) and Bernardo Tasso (1495-1569), the father of Torquato. Among Italian sources, one can find various influences from Poliziano (1454-1494) and Petrarca (1304-1374).
The Ganimede rapito is known from a single source, the manuscript Pal. 211, located at Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, which I have recently rediscovered after 130 years of oblivion. It is significant because it reveals a hidden aspect of Tasso’s work due to censorship and self-censorship. I believe that Tasso never explicitly mentioned the poem later because of its non-orthodox underlying theme: homoeroticism.
The examination of the document after so many decades made me understand that it had been neglected by Italian scholarship because of deeply rooted sexual prejudices. The Tassian canon has neither accepted nor even discussed the Ganimede rapito because the poem is also “an apotheosis of pederasty”, as it was defined by the prestigious scholar and poet Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907).
The manuscript features two distinct sections of varying handwriting and origins: the poem Ganimede rapito attributed to Torquato Tasso in the frontispiece, and the satirical piece Contro la lussuria (“Against lust”) by the priest and poet Lorenzo Azzolino (or Azzolini, 1583-1633). Indeed, while the unpublished poem by Tasso exalts the pleasures of the body and the ephebic beauty with smooth modulations and morally disengaged tones, Monsignor Azzolino’s satire adopts harsh and moralistic tones.
Evidently the satire was added to the manuscript of Ganimede rapito in order to unpower the homoeroticism suggested by Ganimede rapito. It lashes out against “the ancient fables”, such as that of Ganymede, because they would lead the youth into lasciviousness from an early age.
In 1893 the mythological poem was published for the first time in a limited run of sixty copies by Angelo Solerti (1865-1907). Actually Solerti raised questions about its possible attribution to Torquato Tasso, but in the end he left the attribution issue unresolved because of the strong opposition of Carducci.
Exploring the correspondence between Carducci and Solerti, it is evident that Solerti’s judgment is significantly influenced by Carducci’s authoritative opinion. Carducci described the Ganimede rapito as an “apotheosis of pederasty” (apoteosi della pederastia), subsequently arguing that it was impossible to attribute it to Torquato. Thus Carducci’s perspective ultimately led Solerti astray.
What is surprising is that, 130 years after Carducci’s homophobic remarks echoed by Solerti, the Tassian canon has neither formally accepted nor discussed the Ganimede rapito. In short, the author cannot be Torquato Tasso because the poem is “an apotheosis of pederasty”.
Carducci writes that “such an idea (alias pederasty) could not belong to Torquato, who never mentioned it in his works”. This is absolutely untrue: see for instance the character of Lesbino in Tasso’s masterpiece Gerusalemme liberata (9.81-88) or the sonnet Qual chiamar ti degg’io, divo o mortale? (Rime, 213). We could also mention some of Tasso’s letters to Luca Scalabrino, published by Solerti himself, in which Tasso explicitly speaks of his carnal love for a boy named Orazio Ariosto (1555-1593), a great-nephew of the renowned poet Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533).
According to my philological discoveries, it is now plausible to attribute this poem to Torquato Tasso’s early adolescence, dating it to approximately 1557-1559. This attribution would shed new light in a queer perspective on the biography of one of Italy’s most celebrated literary figures. A biography notoriously crossed by expressions such as “mental illness” or “madness”: Michel Foucault wrote very clear pages about this in his History of Sexuality.
Tasso’s authorship of the poem is supported by several objective factors. The primary evidence is the documented relationship between Torquato and his cousin Fabrizio Caraffa, who was the same age. Caraffa is identified as the recipient on the manuscript’s title page and is also mentioned in the proemium.
It can be reasonably hypothesized that Torquato composed Ganimede rapito around the age of fourteen before dedicating himself to the grand epos at about fifteen or sixteen years old. The octaves of Gierusalemme, transmitted by a single manuscript, represent Tasso’s first early attempt in the epic genre, while Rinaldo was his first epic poem published at the age of eighteen. Furthermore, the idyllic dimension characterises another major work of Tasso’s maturity, Aminta, the tones of which splendidly resonate with those of Ganimede.
Particularly notable is the final discourse delivered by the protagonist of the Fabula di Orfeo by Poliziano, echoed in the last octave of Ganimede rapito, which expresses a complete rejection of female love to turn towards male affections. In fact, both works feature Jupiter delighting in Ganymede with joy and celebration. But the primary reference model for Ganimede rapito is the eleven stanzas on Ganymede from Lodovico Dolce’s Trasformationi, a rewriting of Ovid’s Metamorphoses published in 1553.
The central themes are the celebration of youthful beauty and homoeroticism. Homoerotic love is glorified, with Jupiter’s longing for the boy. In short, the poem presents a synthesis of erotic themes stemming from lyric poetry and themes of honour derived from classical epic.
It is worth noting that the writing of the poem can be dated back to 1557-1559, and the first Index of Prohibited Books was promulgated by the Church of Rome on 30th December 1558, followed by a strong pressure to censorship and self-censorship of literary works. It is well documented that during the 1570s, Tasso developed a kind of persecution mania, becoming obsessed with the idea that he might be denounced to the Inquisition, and fearing he would be poisoned at any moment. He even decided to denounce himself to the Inquisition twice, in 1575 and 1577, to confess beliefs not aligned with the post-Tridentine faith. Therefore, it would not be difficult to believe that Tasso might have been forced to self-censor the poem written during his adolescence, deciding not to publish it.
Francesco Ottonello is contract lecturer at the University of Bergamo, where he completed his PhD in Italian and Comparative Literature in 2024 with a thesis titled “Ganymede: Reworkings of the Myth from the Classical World to Italian Literature”. His research interests include Classical Reception (Greek and Latin), Italian Literature, Contemporary Poetry, Translation Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, and Island Studies. He is the author of “Franco Buffoni un classico contemporaneo. Eros, scientia e traduzione” (Pensa MultiMedia 2022, Forum Traiani National Prize 2023) and “Pasolini traduttore di Eschilo” (GRIN, Munich 2018).
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Great poem, great earring!