A Legend from Torquato Tasso and its versions: The tale of Tancred and the woman warrior Clorinda in Dmitry Merezhkovsky's retelling

This article aims at comparing three versions of D. Merezhkovsky's poem about the knight Tancred and the woman warrior Clorinda (1883) and its source text - the poem by Torquato Tasso “Jerusalem Delivered”. It is demonstrated that with each subsequent version Merezhkovsky departed further away from the primary source - he not only forgoes Tasso's verbal formulas but also changes the sequence of events, i.e. the story's meaning, which is evidenced by the didactic ending that draws a finish line in the tale of Tancred and Clorinda not where Tasso drew it. The characters' characterization also changes so as to better correspond to the pacifistic pathos of the ending. In the case of Clorinda, the traditional “masculine” elements of the woman warrior image, which are rather important both in “Jerusalem Delivered” and in mythology, get smoothed out. It is shown that the woman warrior in Tasso is a moritura character (i.e. destined to death) - the only two heroines of the poem who perish are female warriors Clorinda and Gil-dippe. This is very much in accordance with the epic tradition where the relationship between such a heroine and a stronger male warrior does not get a happy ending: she either loses her selfidentity and wondrous strength after being defeated and/or after surrendering to love or dies in combat. The elements of chivalric romance and legend in “Jerusalem Delivered” are analyzed, and it is concluded that they are overshadowed by the tradition of the epic poem whereas Merezhkovsky creates a legend proper. Already at this earliest stage of his artistic life, he was concerned with the problem of incompatibility of Christianity and earthly (“carnal”) love. Therefore, the miracle that occurs in the poem (an indispensable element of the genre of legend) gets associated with the transformation and renewal of the individual by love and beauty, which makes the characters renounce the contest of strength (i.e. single combat) and lay down their arms. The uniqueness of the artistic choice of Merezhkovsky whose inspiration was sparked by this first and not second, more famed, encounter of Tancred and Clorinda is emphasized by the fact that the episode of Clorinda's death in combat (and her baptism) was repeatedly and almost exclusively represented in painting, music and poetry. But for Merezhkovsky the rehabilitation of flesh, beauty and earthly love was fundamentally important; it is also shown that in his work this rehabilitation is closely associated with the chronotope of Italian Renaissance (cf. his Italian Novellas and The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci). The conclusion is made that “A Legend from Torquato Tasso” has preempted many of Merezhkovsky's later ideas, in particular, his religious-philosophical conception of “sacred flesh” and of the Third Testament. Finally, the heroine of the poem is compared to another woman warrior in Merezhkovsky's work: if the beginning of his artistic life is marked by the image of Clorinda, there is Joan of Arc at its end (from the book Joan of Arc of 1938 completing the trilogy Faces of Saints: from Jesus to Nowadays). Their similarities and, mainly, differences, due to the different phases in the author's ideological evolution, which however is represented as an integral spiritual path, are discussed.

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