Even the definition of the name—Sorrento—is derived from the Latin Serentum or Sirentum, which means “land of the sirens,” in reference to Homer’s Odyssey, because Sorrento is also a land of writers.
There is a tradition of creation that can be felt in the air here. I feel it in the wind and waves and I taste it on the water.
From Sorrento’s most famed native writer, Torquato Tasso, to other writers who made Sorrento their home, it is hard to understate the amount of talent Sorrento stokes in those who know it.
Writers of Sorrento: Torquato Tasso
“Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul, that you never knew was missing.”
Born in the 1500s, Tasso is known best for “Gerusalemme Liberata” (“Jerusalem Delivered”), a fictionalized epic that depicts the First Crusade.
Known for both a balance between profound emotion and vicious battle, Tasso’s work is rife with honor, toil, and heroics nonetheless carry an undercurrent of the melancholia which mirrored that of his real life.
The love—the soul Tasso mentioned above—can be seen in the endless love and tribute Sorrento shows to him.
He can be seen wherever I turn: the Piazza Tasso, Via Tasso, Bar Tasso, and even his sister Cornelia Tasso’s own house, where a 1689 edition of Gerusalemme Liberata is shown.
Writers of Sorrento: Friedrich Nietzsche
“I saw the evening come up in the sky over Naples—a shudder of pity for myself, that I started my life old, and tears came and the feeling of having been saved at the last moment. I have enough spirit for the South.”
I first learned of Nietzsche’s connection to Sorrento at the Sorrento Experience Museum. He arrived in winter and wrote here a sizable amount of “Human, All Too Human,” a book of aphorisms.
Nietzsche’s time in Sorrento was turbulent. He had broken ties with his mentor Richard Wagner and headed South—where he would birth a different school of ideas.
Much of his later work is informed with a newfound sense of tone, environment, and theme that make clear an awareness and acknowledgement of his own desire for authentic truth.
It was, after all, Sorrento that Nietzsche found the inspiration to give up his career as a teacher and focus solely on philosophy.
Writers of Sorrento: Maxim Gorky
“Here you see right away, in a day, so much beauty that you remain inebriated and cannot accomplish anything. The Gulf of Naples is more beautiful and deeper than love and women.”
Around a year after the 1905 revolution, Maxim Gorky left Russia to live in Capri. It was there Gorky wrote “Tales of Italy,” a collection of short stories which discuss the lives of Italian workers.
He would remain in Capri for seven years, before his eventual move to Sorrento, where he lived for nine years.
People like Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Plekhanov, Lunacharsky and other members of import in Russian politics often visited Gorky in Italy.
Gorky wrote various works while he lived in Sorrento, and Italy served as robust inspiration for his craft.
