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Estimate: $ 50,000 - $ 75,000
16TH-CENTRY POET'S "LA FENICE"; INFLUENCED MILTON'S PHOENIX TASSO, TORQUATO. Autograph Manuscript Signed, "Torq Tasso," fair copy of his poem, "La Fenice," in Italian. Signed after text and additionally inscribed by him to poet and playwright Marco Montano, in Italian, after text: "Rewritten a second time for Mr. Marco Montano of Urbino." Partially mounted to recto page facing the poem's last page is an oblong sheet of paper, folded to fit, on which is written, in Italian, a brief eulogistic passage mentioning the poem's provenance, ("Marco . . . left me, F.M.D. of Urbino, many writings, . . . also . . . this one entitled the Phoenix, written for the second time by Torquato Tasso as a gift to my friend Mr. Marco Montano"), unsigned, but presumably the words of Francesco Maria II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (1549-1631), in unknown hand, with the Duke's embossed paper seal mounted at lower right. 22 pages, 8vo, 18th century full sheep, markedly worn; worming or short tears affecting a few leaves (without loss to text), faint scattered foxing and soiling. Np, circa 1586
"Among the other varicoloured, charming birds, / that day when they first spread their wings / on the wandering air at the sound of the lofty voice, / God made the phoenix too, as it is told, / if old fame may be credited. . . ." In "Milton, Lactantius, Claudian, and Tasso," Rudolf Gottfried argues that striking similarities in the texts of Tasso and Milton suggest the influence of "La Fenice" upon Milton's Phoenix in Paradise Lost. For instance, Tasso writes: "And here the balsam with her reeds / gathers the perfume of the breathing amomum; / nor is cassia lacking, nor odourous acanthus, / nor tearful drops of incense, nor the new buds of tender nard, / and to them it joins dear pasturage of myrrh . . . ." (pages "K" through "L" in present lot; "La Sette Giornate del Mondo Creato," 1425-30). Milton seems to echo the image: ". . . to all the Fowls he seems / A Phoenix, gaz'd by all, as that sole Bird / When to enshrine his reliques in the Sun's / Bright Temple, to Aegyptian Theb's he flies / . . . through Groves of Myrrh, / And flow'ring Odours, Cassia, Nard, and Balm. . . ." (Paradise Lost, V, 271-74, 292-93; see Studies in Philology 30, no. 3 [July 1933]: 497-503). "La Fenice" forms a part of Tasso's poem, "La Sette Giornate del Mondo Creato" (see 1287-1590), published in Viterbo by Appresso Girolamo Discepolo for the first time--posthumously--in 1607.
