First Romanian edition of Tasso’s »La Gerusalemme liberata«, 1852 – ON HOLD

Torquato Tasso: Ierusalimul liberat. Poemă epikă în doă volume. Tradukţie în proză. Precedată, de o notiţie ezaktă asupra vieţeǐ famosuluǐ eǐ autor Torkuato Tasso, adornată ku portretul săŭ şi ku doă zecǐ gravure împărţite pe kânturǐ de Atanasie N. Pâcleanu. 2 volumes. Translated into Romanian and preceded by a note on the author's life by Atanasie N. Pâcleanu. With Tasso's portrait as frontispiece as well as 20 plates, all lithographed by K. Danielis after pen and ink drawings and guarded with tissue. Bukurești: Tipografia luǐ Iosef Kopaǐnig (Bielz și Danielis, Lith.), 1852.

8vo. [8 (incl. front.)] XXXIX [1] 209 [1] pp., pl. I-X; 240 pp., pl. XI-XX, Lithography, wood engraving and letterpress in Romanian Cyrillics, bound in contemporary half leather with gilt decorative spine title as well as multicolour marbled boards and edges.

First Romanian edition of Torquato Tasso's »La Gerusalemme liberata«, profusely illustrated with gorgeous lithographies.

Edition: Present very first translation in Romanian language of Tasso's epic poem was carried out in prose by Atanasie N. Pâcleanu (1821–1856), a Brașov born boyar of lower rank and men of letters. Due to his involvement in the 1848 separatist uprisings, he had to flee his Habsburg controlled home land and also lived in Italy, where he made himself familiar with Italian literature and language. Pâcleanu is known as a translator from Greek, French and Italian, his Romanian prose version of »La Gerusalemme liberata« is considered his most important achievement. According to Marcu Pâcleanu had the edition published on a subscription basis only. An appendix to vol. 2 contains a list of those 1016 subscribers to present edition, which not only gives a detailed social insight of the structure of Romanian readership at the time, but also provides information about run.

Illustration: All 20 cantos of the poem are accompanied by lithographic plates after illustrating pen and ink drawings, executed in the renown Bucharest printer's shop of Andreas Bielz și Karl Danielis.

Condition: Cover at edges and margins slightly worn, upper third of book-block with old water-stains, foxing throughout, some pages with finger stains, owner's remarks at pre-title leaf, title leaf verso and rear end paper recto, otherwise a solid, nicely bound copy.

Rarity, Holdings: As of February 2024 only 5 copies of present first Romanian edition of Tasso's poem can be located in institutional holdings worldwide according to OCLC/WorldCat and KVK, of which only one copy in Italy, no in the SBN catalogue (Cluj [Bibl. Județeană], Iași [Univ. Lib.], London [British Library], Milan [Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore], Timișoara [Univ. Lib.])

Reference: Bibliografia românească modernă, no. 67537; Marcu, Alexandru (1937). Tasso în Romantica românească. Studii italiene, II und III, 1937.