TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.

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[Pg iii]

MICHELANGELO AS
POET

Michelangelo, who considered himself as primarily sculptor, afterwards painter, disclaimed the character of poet by profession. He was nevertheless prolific in verse; the pieces which survive, in number more than two hundred, probably represent only a small part of his activity in this direction. These compositions are not to be considered merely as the amusement of leisure, the byplay of fancy; they represent continued meditation, frequent reworking, careful balancing of words; he worked on a sonnet or a madrigal in the same manner as on a statue, conceived with ardent imagination, undertaken with creative energy, pursued under the pressure of a superabundance of ideas, occasionally abandoned in dissatisfaction, but at other times elaborated to that final excellence which exceeds as well as includes all merits of the sketch, and, as he himself said,[iv] constitutes a rebirth of the idea into the realm of eternity. In the sculptor’s time, the custom of literary society allowed and encouraged interchange of verses. If the repute of the writer or the attraction of the rhymes commanded interest, these might be copied, reach an expanding circle, and achieve celebrity. In such manner, partly through the agency of Michelangelo himself, the sonnets of Vittoria Colonna came into circulation, and obtained an acceptance ending in a printed edition. But the artist did not thus arrange his own rhymes, does not appear even to have kept copies; written on stray leaves, included in letters, they remained as loose memoranda, or were suffered altogether to disappear. The fame of the author secured attention for anything to which he chose to set his hand; the verses were copied and collected, and even gathered into the form of books; one such manuscript gleaning he revised with his own hand. The sonnets became known, the songs were set to music, and the recognition of their merit induced a contemporary author, in the seventy-first year of the poet’s life, to deliver before the Florentine Academy a lecture on a single sonnet.

Diffusion through the printing-press, however,[v] the poems did not attain. Not until sixty years after the death of their author did a grand-nephew, also called Michelangelo Buonarroti, edit the verse of his kinsman; in this task he had regard to supposed literary proprieties, conventionalizing the language and sentiment of lines which seemed harsh or impolite, supplying endings for incomplete compositions, and in general doing his best to deprive the verse of an originality which the age was not inclined to tolerate. The recast was accepted as authentic, and in this mutilated form the poetry remained accessible. Fortunately the originals survived, partly in the handwriting of the author, and in 1863 were edited by Guasti. The publication added to the repute of the compositions, and the sonnets especially have become endeared to many English readers.

The long neglect of Michelangelo’s poetry was owing to the intellectual deficiencies of the succeeding generation. In spite of the partial approbation of his contemporaries, it is likely that these were not much more appreciative, and that their approval was rendered rather to the fame of the maker than to the merits of the work. The complication of[vi] the thought, frequently requiring to be thought out word for word, demanded a mental effort beyond the capacity of literati whose ideal was the simplicity and triviality of Petrarchian imitators. Varchi assuredly had no genuine comprehension of the sonnet to which he devoted three hours of his auditors’ patience; Berni, who affirmed that Michelangelo wrote things, while other authors used words, to judge by his own compositions could scarce have been more sensible of the artist’s emotional depth. The sculptor, who bitterly expressed his consciousness that for the highest elements of his genius his world had no eyes, must have felt a similar lack of sympathy with his poetical conceptions. Here he stood on less safe ground; unacquainted with classic literature, unable correctly to write a Latin phrase, he must have known, to use his own metaphor, that while he himself might value plain homespun, the multitude admired the stuffs of silk and gold that went to the making of a tailors’ man. It is likely that the resulting intellectual loneliness assumed the form of modesty, and that Michelangelo took small pains to preserve his poetry because he set on it no great value.

[vii]

The verse, essentially lyric, owed its inspiration to experience. A complete record would have constituted a biography more intimate than any other. But such memorial does not exist; of early productions few survive; the extant poems, for the most part, appear to have been composed after the sixtieth year of their author.

The series begins with a sonnet written in 1506, when Michelangelo was thirty-one years of age. The sculptor had been called to Rome by pope Julius, who conceived that the only way to ensure an adequately magnificent mausoleum was to prepare it during his own lifetime. A splendid design was made for the monument destined to prove the embarrassment of Michelangelo’s career; but the pope was persuaded that it was not worth while to waste his means in marbles, and in the spring of 1506 the artist fled to Florence. In that city he may have penned the sonnet in which Julius is blamed for giving ear to the voice of Echo (misreporting calumniators) instead of holding the balance even and the sword erect (in the character of a sculptured Justice). The writer adds a bitter complaint of the injustice of fate, which sends merit to pluck the fruit[viii] of a withered bough. Another sonnet of the period seems to have been written in Rome; the subscription reads: “Your Michelangelo, in Turkey.” The piece contains an indictment against the papal court, at that time occupied with plans for military advancement, where the eucharistic cup is changed into helmet, and cross into lance; for safety’s sake, let Christ keep aloof from a city where his blood would be sold dropwise. Work there is none, and the Medusa-like pope turns the artist to stone; if poverty is beloved by heaven, the servants of heaven, under the opposite banner, are doing their best to destroy that other life. In 1509, a sonnet addressed to Giovanni of Pistoia describes the sufferings endured in executing the frescoes of the Sistine chapel. We are shown Michelangelo bent double on his platform, the paint oozing on his face, his eyes blurred and squinting, his fancy occupied with conjecture of the effect produced on spectators standing below. Allusion is made to hostile critics; the writer bids his friend maintain the honor of one who does not profess to be a painter. While looking upward to the vault retained in the memory of many persons as the most holy spot in[ix] Europe, it is well to recollect the sufferings of the artist, who in an unaccustomed field of labor achieved a triumph such as no other decorator has obtained. A fourth sonnet, addressed to the same Giovanni, reveals the flaming irritability of a temper prone to exaggerate slights, especially from a Pistoian, presumably insensible to the preëminence of Florence, “that precious joy.”

With this group can be certainly classed only one sonnet of a different character (No. XX). This was penned on a letter of December, 1507, addressed to Michelangelo at Bologna, where he was then leading a miserable life, engaged on the statue of Julius; this work, on which he wasted three years, was finally melted into a cannon, in order that the enemies of the pope might fire at the latter by means of his own likeness. The verse is a spontaneous and passionate outburst of admiration for a beautiful girl. With this piece might be associated two or three undated compositions of similar nature, which serve to show the error of the supposition that the artist was insensible to feminine attractions. It may be affirmed that the reverse was the case, and that the thoughtful temper of the extant poetry[x] is due solely to the sobering influences of time.

The verse which might have exhibited the transition from early to later manhood has not been preserved; during twenty years survive no compositions of which the date is assured. Subsequently to that time, assistance is derived from the fortunate accident that several of the sonnets were written on dated letters. It is true that this indication is far from furnishing secure testimony. Even at the present day, when paper is so easily obtained, I have known a writer of rhyme who was in the habit of using the backs of old letters. That Michelangelo sometimes did the same thing appears to be demonstrated by the existence of a sonnet (No. L), which, though written on the back of a letter of 1532, professes to be composed in extreme old age. The evidence, therefore, is of value only when supported by the character of the piece. Nor is internal testimony entirely to be depended on. It is to be remembered that all makers of verse remodel former work, complete imperfect essays, put into form reminiscences which essentially belong to an earlier stage of feeling. Attempts to classify the productions must follow a subjective[xi] opinion, very apt to err. Nevertheless something may be accomplished in this direction.

The nephew states that two sonnets (Nos. XXIV and XXV) were found on a leaf containing a memorandum of 1529. Extant is another sonnet, certainly written on a page having an entry of that year. These three sonnets seem to breathe the same atmosphere; the emotion is sustained by a direct impulse, the verse is apparently inspired by a sentiment too lyric to be unhappy; the employment of theologic metaphor and Platonic fancy is still subsidiary to emotion. Allowing for the imaginative indulgence of feeling common to lyrical poets, it seems nevertheless possible to perceive a basis of personal experience. With these pieces may be associated a number of sonnets and madrigals, among the most beautiful productions of the author, which may conjecturally be assigned to the period before his permanent Roman residence, or at any rate may be supposed to represent the impressions of such time. As compared with the work which may with confidence be dated as produced within the ensuing decade, these correspond to an earlier manner. Wanting the[xii] direct and impetuous passion of the few youthful verses, they nevertheless show a spiritual conception of sexual attachment, not yet resolved into religious aspiration. They suggest that the inflammable and gentle-hearted artist passed through a series of inclinations, none of which terminated in a permanent alliance.

At the end of 1534, near his sixtieth year, Michelangelo came to live in Rome; and to that city, three years later, Vittoria Colonna came for a long visit, in the twelfth year of her widowhood, and the forty-seventh of her life. An acquaintance may have been established in the course of previous years, when the lady visited Rome, or possibly even at a prior time. Whatever was the date of the first encounter, allusions in the poems seem to imply that the meeting produced a deep impression on the mind of the artist (Madrigals LIV, LXXII). At all events, the relations of the two grew into a friendship, hardly to be termed intimacy. Only a very few of the poems are known to have been addressed to Vittoria; but the veiled references of several pieces, and the tone of the poetry, appear to justify the opinion that admiration for this[xiii] friend was the important influence that affected the character of the verse written during the ten years before her death in 1547.

In Rome, the Marchioness of Pescara made her home in the convent of San Silvestro, where she reigned as queen of an intelligent circle. A charming and welcome glimpse of this society is furnished by Francis of Holland, who professes to relate three conversations, held on as many Sunday mornings, in which the sculptor took a chief part. It is not difficult to imagine the calmness and coolness of the place, the serious and placid beauty of the celebrated lady, the figure of Michelangelo, the innocent devices by which the sympathetic Vittoria contrived to educe his vehement outbursts on artistic questions, the devout listening of the stranger, hanging on the chief artist of Italy with the attention of a reporter who means to put all into a book. So far as the conversation represents a symposium on matters of art, no doubt the account is to be taken as in good measure the method adopted by Francis to put before the world his own ideas; but among the remarks are many so consonant to the character of the sculptor that it is impossible to doubt the essential correctness of the narration.[xiv] In the language of Michelangelo speaks haughty reserve, the consciousness of superiority, accompanied by a sense that his most precious qualities exceeded the comprehension of a world which rendered credit less to the real man than to the fashionable artist, and whose attention expressed not so much gratitude for illumination as desire of becoming associated with what society held in respect.

All students who have had occasion to concern themselves with the biography of Vittoria Colonna have become impressed with the excellence of her character. After the loss of a husband to whom she had been united in extreme youth, she declared her intention of forming no new ties; and it must have been an exceptional purity which the censorious and corrupt world could associate with no breath of scandal. She had been accounted the most beautiful woman in Italy, of that golden-haired and broadbrowed type recognized as favorite; but her intelligence, rather than personal attractions or social position, had made her seclusion in Ischia a place of pilgrimage for men of letters. The attraction she possessed for the lonely, reserved, and proud artist is a testimony that to her belonged especially the inexplicable attraction[xv] of a sympathetic nature. Such disposition is a sufficient explanation of her devotion to the memory of a husband who appears to have been essentially a condottiere of the time, a soldier who made personal interest his chief consideration. She may also be credited with a sound judgment and pure ethical purpose in the practical affairs of life.

Yet to allow that Vittoria Colonna was good and lovable does not make it necessary to worship her as a tenth muse, according to the partial judgment of her contemporaries. Unfortunately, time has spared her verses, respecting which may be repeated advice bestowed by Mrs. Browning in regard to another female author, by no means to indulge in the perusal, inasmuch as they seem to disprove the presence of a talent which she nevertheless probably possessed. In the case commented on by the modern writer, the genius absent in the books is revealed in the correspondence; but epistolary composition was not the forte of the Marchioness of Pescara, whose communications, regarded as pabulum for a hungry heart, are as jejune as can be conceived. Neither is she to be credited with originality in her attitude toward political or religious problems. It does[xvi] not appear that she quarreled with the principles of the polite banditti of her own family; nor was she able to attain even an elementary notion of Italian patriotism. She has been set down as a reformer in religion; but such tendency went no further than a sincere affection toward the person of the founder of Christianity, a piety in no way inconsistent with ritual devotion. When it came to the dividing of the ways, she had no thought other than to follow the beaten track. Nor in the world of ideas did she possess greater independence; with all her esteem for Michelangelo as artist and man, it is not likely that she was able to estimate the sources of his supremacy, any more than to foresee a time when her name would have interest for the world only as associated with that of the sculptor. It may be believed that a mind capable of taking pleasure in the commonplaces of her rhyme could never have appreciated the essential merits of the mystic verse which she inspired. Here, also, Michelangelo was destined to remain uncomprehended. Vittoria presented him with her own poems, neatly written out and bound, but never seems to have taken the pains to gather those of the artist. Intellectually, therefore,[xvii] her limitations were many; but she was endowed with qualities more attractive, a gentle sympathy, a noble kindness, a person and expression representative of that ideal excellence which the sculptor could appreciate only as embodied in human form.

While earlier writers of biography were inclined to exaggerate the effect on Michelangelo of his acquaintance with Vittoria Colonna, later authors, as I think, have fallen into the opposite error. To Vittoria, indeed, whose thoughts, when not taken up with devotional exercises, were occupied with the affairs of her family or of the church, such amity could occupy only a subordinate place. One of her letters to Michelangelo may be taken as a polite repression of excessive interest. But on the other side, the poetry of the artist is a clear, almost a painful expression of his own state of mind. We are shown, in the mirror of his own verse, a sensitive, self-contained, solitary nature, aware that he is out of place in a world for which he lacks essential graces and in which he is respected for his least worthy qualities. That under such circumstances he should value the kindness of the only woman with whom he could intelligently converse, that he should[xviii] feel the attraction of eyes from which seemed to descend starry influences, that he should suffer from the sense of inadequacy and transitoriness, from the difference of fortune and the lapse of years, the contrasts of imagination and possibility, was only, as he would have said, to manifest attribute in act, to suffer the natural pain incident to sensitive character.

In the most striking of the compositions devoted to the memory of Vittoria Colonna Michelangelo speaks of her influence as the tool by which his own genius had been formed, and which, when removed to heaven and made identical with the divine archetype, left no earthly substitute. That the language was no more than an expression of the fact is shown by the alteration which from this time appears in his verse. Poetry passes over into piety; artistic color is exchanged for the monotone of religious emotion. One may be glad that the old age, of whose trials he has left a terrible picture, found its support and alleviation; yet the later poems, distressing in their solemnity, pietistic in their self-depreciation, exhibit a declining poetic faculty, and in this respect are not to be ranked with their forerunners.

The verse of Michelangelo has been lauded[xix] as philosophic. The epithet is out of place; if by philosophy be meant metaphysics, there is no such thing as philosophic poetry. Poetry owes no debt to metaphysical speculation, can coexist as well with one type of doctrine as with another. The obligation is on the other side; philosophy is petrified poetry, which no infusion of adventitious sap can relegate to vital function. Like all other developments of life, philosophic theories can be employed by poets only for colors of the palette. If Platonic conceptions be deemed exceptional, it is because such opinions are themselves poetry more than metaphysics, and constitute rather metaphorical expressions for certain human sentiments than any system of ratiocination. For the purposes of Michelangelo, these doctrines supplied an adequate means of presentation, quite independent of the abstract verity of the principles considered as the product of reasoning.

With the sculptor, it was the impressions and feelings of later life that this philosophy served to convey. The few remains of comparative youth lead us to suppose that in the verse of this time the reflective quality was subordinate; the productions of later manhood breathe[xx] a gentle emotion, which, allowing for contrasts, may be compared with that animating the poetry of Wordsworth; only in compositions belonging to incipient age do we find a full development of Platonic conceptions; these, again, constitute a step in the progress toward that Christian quietism into which the stream of the poet’s genius emerges, as from its impetuous source, through the powerful flow of its broadening current, a great river at last empties itself into the all-encompassing sea.

This philosophy was no result of reading, but a deposit from conversations which the youth had overheard in the Medicean gardens, where he may have listened to the eloquence of Marsilio Ficino. When the time came, these reminiscences were able to influence imagination and color fancy. For a commentary on Michelangelo, one has no need to go to the Phaedrus or Symposium; the verse, like all true poetry, is self-illuminative. That God is the archetype and fountain-head of all excellency, that external objects suggest the perfection they do not include, that objects of nature, reflected in the mirror of the intelligence, move the soul to perform the creative act by which outward beauty is reborn into her own likeness,[xxi] and loved as the representation of her own divinity, that the highest property of external things is to cause human thought to transcend from the partial to the universal,—these are conceptions so simple and natural that no course of study is necessary to their appreciation. The ideas are received as symbols of certain moral conditions, and so far not open to debate. Only when the attempt is made to generalize, to set them up as the sum of all experience, do they become doubtful; the principles are better comprehended without the dialectic, and indeed it frequently happens that he who has paid most attention to the latter is least informed respecting the true significance of the imaginations for the sake of which the argument professes to exist.

Hand in hand with this Hellenic, one might say human mysticism, went the Christian mysticism expressed in the poetry of Dante. In place of the serene archetype, the apotheosis of reason, we are presented with the archetypal love, reaching out toward mankind through the forms of nature. No longer the calm friend, the beloved person is conceived as the ardent angel, messenger from the empyrean, descending and revealing. It has been held that these[xxii] two forms of thought are irreconcilable; I should consider them as complementary. Before the beginnings of the Christian church had been effected a union of Platonic imagination with Hebrew piety; Christian sentiment expresses in terms of affection the philosophic doctrine, also pious and poetic, however proclaimed under the name and with the coloring of sober reason.

It could not have been expected that in the poetical activity which of necessity with him remained a subordinate interest, Michelangelo should have manifested the full measure of that independent force, which in two arts had proved adequate to break new channels. This third method of expression served to manifest a part of his nature for which grander tasks did not supply adequate outlets; the verse accordingly reveals new aspects of character. It was for gentle, wistful, meditative emotions that the artist found it necessary to use rhyme. If not torrential, the current was vital; no line unfreshened by living waters. This function explains the limitation of scope; essays in pastoral, in terza rima, served to prove that here did not lie his path; in the conventional forms of the sonnet and the madrigal he found the[xxiii] medium desired. The familiarity of the form did not prevent originality of substance; he had from youth been intimate with the youthful melodies of Dante, the lucid sonnets of Petrarch; but his own style, controlled by thought, is remote from the gentle music of the one, the clear flow of the other. The verse exhibits a superabundance of ideas, not easily brought within the limits of the rhyme; amid an imagery prevailingly tender and reflective, now and then a gleam or a flash reveals the painter of the Sistine and the sculptor of the Medicean chapel.

Essentially individual is the artistic imagery. As Michelangelo was above all a creator whose genius inclined him toward presentation of the unadorned human form, so his metaphors are prevailingly taken from the art of sculpture, a loan which enriches the verse by the association with immortal works. These comparisons, taken from the methods of the time, are not altogether such as could now be employed. At the outset, indeed, the procedure scarcely differed; with the sculptor of the Renaissance, the first step was to produce a sketch of small dimensions; the same thing is done by the modern artist, who commonly uses clay and plaster[xxiv] in place of wax. It is in the nature of the design, or, as Michelangelo said, of the “model,” that, as having the character of an impression, it must superabound in rude vitality, as much as it is deficient in symmetry and “measure.” The next step, then as now, might be the preparation of a form answering in size to that of the intended figure, but also in wax or clay. In the final part of the process, however, the distinction is complete; in the sixteenth century no way was open to the maker, but himself to perfect the statue with hammer and chisel. The advance of mechanical skill has enabled the modern artist to dispense with this labor. It may be questioned whether the consequent saving of pains is in all respects an advantage; at least, I have the authority of one of the most accomplished of modern portrait sculptors for the opinion that in strict propriety every kind of plastic work ought to receive its final touches from the hand of the designer. Even if this were done, the method would not answer to that of the earlier century, when it was the practice to cleave away the marble in successive planes, in such manner as gradually to disengage the outlines of the image, which thus appeared to lie veiled beneath the superficies, as an indwelling[xxv] tenant waiting release from the hand of the carver. Moreover, the preciousness of the material had on the fancy a salutary influence; before beginning his task, the sculptor was compelled to take into account the possibility of execution. He would commonly feel himself obliged to make use of any particular block of marble which he might have the fortune to possess; it might even happen that such block possessed an unusual form, as was the case with the stone placed at the disposal of Michelangelo, and from which he created his David. The test of genius would therefore be the ability, on perception of the material, to form a suitable conception; a sculptor, if worthy of the name, would perceive the possible statue within the mass. The metaphor, so frequently and beautifully used by Michelangelo, which represents the artist as conceiving the dormant image which his toil must bring forth from its enveloping stone, is therefore no commonplace of scholastic philosophy, no empty phrase declaring that matter potentially contains unnumbered forms, but a true description of the process of creative energy. Inasmuch as by an inevitable animism all conceptions derived from human activity are imaginatively transferred[xxvi] to external life, the comparison is extended into the realm of Nature, which by a highly poetic forecast of the modern doctrine of evolution is said through the ages to aim at attaining an ideal excellence. The impulse visible in the art of the sculptor thus appears in his poetry, which, also perfected through unwearied toil, terminates in a result which is truly organic, and of which all parts seem to derive from a central idea.

A lyric poet, if he possess genuine talent, is concerned with the presentation, not of form or thought, but of emotion. His fancy, therefore, commonly operates in a manner different from that of the artist, whose duty it is primarily to consider the visual image; the verse of the latter, if he undertakes to express himself also in the poetic manner, is usually characterized by a predominance of detail, an overdistinctness of parts, an inability of condensation, qualities belonging to an imagination conceiving of life as definitely formal rather than as vaguely impressive. On the contrary, Michelangelo is a true lyrist, whose mental vision is not too concrete to be also dreamy. This property is a strange proof of the multiformity of his genius, for it is the reverse of what one[xxvii] would expect from a contemplation of his plastic work. The inspiration, though in a measure biographic, is no mere reflection of the experience; notwithstanding the sincerity of the impulse, as should be the case in lyric verse, the expression transcends to the universal.

It does not detract from his worth as a lyrical writer, that the range of the themes is narrow, a limitation sufficiently explained by the conditions. The particular sentiment for the expression of which he needed rhyme was sexual affection. In the verse, if not in the art, “all thoughts, all passions, all delights” are ministers of that emotion. Michelangelo is as much a poet of love as Heine or Shelley.

The sonnets were intended not to be sung, but to be read; this purpose may account for occasional deficiencies of music. The beauty of the idea, the abundance of the thought, the sincerity of the emotion, cause them to stand in clear contrast to the productions of contemporary versifiers.

Less attention has been paid to the madrigals, on which the author bestowed equal pains. These are songs, and the melody has affected the thought. The self-consciousness of the[xxviii] poet is subordinated to the objectivity of the musician who aims to render human experience into sweet sound. For the most part, and with some conspicuous exceptions, even where the idea is equally mystical, the reasoning is not so intricate nor the sentiment so biographic. A certain number have the character of simple love verse. In these compositions ardor is unchecked by reflection, and desire allowed its natural course, unquenched by the abundant flow of the thought which it has awakened. What assumes the aspect of love-sorrow is in reality a joyous current of life mocking grief with the music of its ripples. If one desired to name the composer whom the sentiment suggests, he might mention Schumann rather than Beethoven.

Other indifferent artists have been excellent poets, and other tolerable versifiers clever artists; but only once in human history has coexisted the highest talent for plastic form and verbal expression. Had these verses come down without name, had they been disinterred from the dust of a library as the legacy of an anonymous singer, they would be held to confer on the maker a title to rank among intellectual benefactors. It would be said that an unknown[xxix] poet, whose verse proved him also a sculptor, had contributed to literature thoughts whose character might be summed up in the lines of his madrigal:—

I

Dal ciel discese, e col mortal suo, poi

Che visto ebbe l’inferno giusto e ’l pio,

Ritornò vivo a contemplare Dio,

Per dar di tutto il vero lume a noi:

Lucente stella, che co’ raggi suoi

Fe chiaro, a torto, el nido ove naqqu’io;

Nè sare’ ’l premio tutto ’l mondo rio:

Tu sol, che la creasti, esser quel puoi.

Di Dante dico, che mal conosciute

Fur l’opre suo da quel popolo ingrato,

Che solo a’ iusti manca di salute.

Fuss’io pur lui! c’a tal fortuna nato,

Per l’aspro esilio suo, con la virtute,

Dare’ del mondo il più felice stato.

From heaven he came, and clothed in mortal clay,

Traversed the vengeful and the chastening woes,

Living, again toward height eternal rose,

For us to win the light of saving day;

Resplendent star, whose undeservèd ray

Made glory in the nest where I had birth;

Whose recompense not all a stainèd earth,

But Thou his Maker, Thou alone couldst pay.

Dante I mean, and that unfair return

Endured from a community ingrate,

That only to the just awardeth scorn;

Would I were he! To equal fortune born,

For his pure virtue, for his exile stern,

I would resign earth’s happiest estate.

[4]

[5]

II

III

[6]

[7]

IV

V

[8]

[9]

VI

VII

[10]

[11]

VIII

IX

[12]

[13]

X

XI

[14]

[15]

XII

XIII

[16]

[17]

XIV

XV

[18]

[19]

XVI

XVII

[20]

[21]

XVIII

XIX

[22]

[23]

XX

XXI

[24]

[25]

XXII

I

II

III

I

[30]

[31]

II

III

[32]

[33]

IV

[34]

[35]

V

VI

[36]

[37]

VII

VIII

[38]

[39]

IX

X

[40]

[41]

XI

XII

[42]

[43]

XIII

[44]

[45]

XIV

[46]

[47]

XV

XVI

[48]

[49]

XVII

XVIII

[50]

[51]

XIX

XX

[52]

[53]

XXI

XXII

[54]

[55]

XXIII

XXIV

[56]

[57]

XXV

[61]

NOTES ON THE SONNETS

The Roman numbers, in the Introduction and Notes, refer to the numeration of Guasti (Le Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florence, 1863).

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE POEMS.—On the corrupted texts of 1623 were based the versions of J. E. Taylor (Michael Angelo considered as a Philosophic Poet. With Translations. London, 1840), and of J. S. Harford (Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti. With Translations of many of his Poems and Letters. London, 1857). The beautiful renderings of Wordsworth (five sonnets) depended on the same faulty presentation. The correct texts of Guasti were followed by J. A. Symonds in his complete translation of the sonnets (The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommasi Campanella. London, 1878). In his biography of the sculptor (The Life of Michael-Angelo Buonarroti. London, 1893), Symonds rendered several of the madrigals. A selection[62] from the poems, with the Italian text, and renderings by different hands, was edited by Mrs. E. D. Cheney (Selected Poems from Michael-Angelo Buonarroti. With Translations from various sources. Boston, 1885). This publication includes thirteen epitaphs for Cecchino Bracchi, and the verses written by Michelangelo on the death of his father, as well as a number of the sonnets of the last period (after 1547). Versions of single sonnets may be found scattered through periodical literature.

1 [I] Donato Giannotti wrote an essay concerning the duration of the journey through Hell and Purgatory, as related in the “Divina Commedia.” This discussion he cast into the form of a dialogue, in which Michelangelo is given the principal part; the conversation is dated as taking place in 1545, and one of the interlocutors is made to recite the sonnet which, with doubtful accuracy, is said to have been composed a few days before. The work of Giannotti is interesting as containing the estimate of a contemporary concerning the character of Michelangelo, but the words assigned to him cannot be considered as a record of his actual expressions. The essayist seems to have applied to the artist for material, as indicated by the subscription of the following sonnet, probably composed at this time.

[63]

[II]

QUANTE DIRNE SI DE’ NON SI PUÒ DIRE

2 [XIV] The sketch, characterized by rude vigor, lacks the truth and harmony essential to a beautiful work; these qualities are to be attained by the final touches of the hammer, or, as we should now say, of the chisel. So it is only the influence of the beloved person which can perfect the incomplete design of Nature, and bestow on the character its final excellence. Of all the sonnets, this is the most celebrated.

Respecting an inferior variant, the younger Buonarroti, in an obscure mention, appears to say that it was contained in a letter of the[64] sculptor written in 1550, which letter made mention of the marchioness of Pescara; and this assertion has led Guasti to refer the sonnet to that date. It is quite clear, however, that the treatment does not belong to the later period, after the death of Vittoria Colonna, in which the productions of Michelangelo had assumed the monotone of a colorless piety. It seems to me more likely that the time of composition is to be set earlier than 1534, and that the conception, ideal in character, had no relation to Vittoria, with whom the sculptor had perhaps not yet become acquainted.

3 [XV] The sculptor, who is designated as the best of artists, on beholding the block of marble at his disposal, obtains the suggestion of a statue; this possible work appears to him as a figure concealed beneath the veil of superincumbent matter, which he proceeds to remove. His success will depend on the clearness of internal vision; if he lack the vivid conception, the result will be an abortive product, which metaphorically may be called a likeness of Death. So if the lover, in place of the “mercy” which he desires to awaken, can create in the heart of his lady only a feeling inconsistent with his wishes, the blame should be laid solely to his own insufficiency. The idea is poetic, not philosophic, and the sonnet a poem of love,[65] belonging to what I have called the earlier manner of the poet. The sonnet has been paraphrased by Emerson:—

In this rendering the fourth line is open to criticism; it is not want of manual skill that is the cause of failure, but the inability to form an adequate idea. Harford modernizes the introductory lines:—

The metaphor is thus reduced to the scholastic platitude, that in all matter lies the potentiality of form. So Varchi understood[66] the lines, and cites Aristotle as authority that the action of an agent is nothing but the extraction of a thing from potency to act; with changes on such intolerable jargon he occupies two pages. The lecture, intended to be flattering, only serves to show with what contemporary crassness the delicate conceptions of Michelangelo were obliged to struggle.

4 [XVII] The contrast between the permanence of the artistic product and the transitoriness of the mortal subject suggests reflections which may take different turns. (See madrigal No. 9 [XIII].) One is reminded of certain sonnets of Shakespeare.

5 [XIX] The lover feels himself enriched by the impression of the beloved, which, like the divine name on the seal of Solomon, confers the power of working miracles. The pretty composition is among the few which may be said to be inspired by a really cheerful and joyous sentiment, and, like the preceding, may be held to belong to the earlier manner of the poet.

6 [XX] This most beautiful sonnet, somewhat immature in its music, is a precious relic of Michelangelo’s early love verse. The poem was written below a letter from his father, received in Bologna, and dated 24 December, 1507. Subscribed is the line: La m’arde e lega et emmi e parmi un zucchero.[67] “She burns me and binds me and eats me, and I think her a sugarplum.” The lines, therefore, have a biographic inspiration, and may be presumed to have been in honor of some young beauty of Bologna. A fragment of a madrigal seems akin.

[CII]

In this connection also should be cited the sonnet which Guasti has placed next in order, and which also seems to contain internal evidence of belonging to a period relatively early.

[68]

[XXI]

D’ALTRUI PIETOSO E SOL DI SÈ SPIETATO

It would seem that these remains of the poetical activity of early manhood, though not numerous, are yet sufficient to refute the rash generalizations of biographers who undertake to sum up the personality from their impressions of the artistic product. It does seem strange that with these lines before him, Mr. Symonds could have written: “Michelangelo emerges as a mighty master who was dominated by the vision of male beauty, and who saw the female mainly through the fascination of the other sex. The defect of his[69] art is due to a certain constitutional callousness, a want of sensuous or imaginative sensibility for what is specifically feminine.... Michelangelo neither loved nor admired nor yielded to the female sex.... I find it difficult to resist the conclusion that Michelangelo felt himself compelled to treat women as though they were another and less graceful sort of males. What he did not comprehend and could not represent was woman in her girlishness, her youthful joy, her physical attractions, her magic of seduction.... What makes Michelangelo’s crudity in his plastic treatment of the female form the more remarkable is that in his poetry he seems to feel the influence of women mystically. I shall have to discuss this topic in another place. It is enough here to say that, with very few exceptions, we remain in doubt whether he is addressing a woman at all. There are none of those spontaneous utterances by which a man involuntarily expresses the outgoings of his heart to a beloved object, the throb of irresistible emotion, the physical ache, the sense of wanting, the joys and pains, the hopes and fears, which belong to genuine passion.... Michelangelo’s ‘donna’ might just as well be a man; and indeed, the poems he addressed to men, though they have nothing sensual about them, reveal a finer[70] touch in the emotion of the writer.” (Life, vol. i, c. vi, 8. See vol. ii, pp. 381-5.)

The reasons for the limitation which may have prevented Michelangelo from adequately representing the sensuous aspect of womanhood, should be sought in the character of his plastic genius. So far as the power of appreciation is concerned, and especially in regard to the spirit of the verse, the opinion of Mr. Symonds appears to me to reverse the fact. The nature of the artist may be pronounced especially sensitive to the physical influence of woman. If, in the extant poetry, this sentiment appears in chastened form, such calmness may be set down solely to the period of life. Yet even in these later compositions, extreme impressibility is revealed in every line. Mr. Symonds’s error has prevented him from entering into the spirit of the sonnets, and also constitutes a deficiency in his instructive biography. (See note to sonnet No. 13 [XXX].)

7 [XXII] The verse, direct and passionate, though doubtless of a later date, still bears the character of pieces which must be pronounced relatively early. Observable is the use of theologic metaphor, employed only for the sake of poetic coloring, and not yet sublimed to pure thought.

[71]

8 [XXIV] This delightful sonnet, according to the nephew, was found on a letter bearing date of 1529. (See p. 7.) The lines seem to give the idea of a gentle and lovely personage whose countenance shines out as through a golden mist. In later compositions, the conflict of Death and Love is worked out differently. (See madrigal No. 9 [XIII].)

9 [XXV] On the same authority, this inexpressibly charming production is assigned to 1529. Here appear the germs of Platonic imagination. The soul, a divine essence, endows the visible suggestion with the spiritual essence derived from its own store. But the object is not completely divinized; the end is still possession. The reflective element will increase, the sensuous lessen, until poetry passes over into piety.

10 [XXVII] The love verse is not to be taken as wholly biographic, but rather as ideal.

11 [XXVIII] The atmosphere of the sonnet is that of later time and of a more rarefied height. We are now in full Platonism. The soul, heaven-born, perceives in the eyes of the beloved its primal home, the Paradise whence itself has descended, and the heavenly affection of which earthly love is a reminiscence. But the period may still be before the Roman residence, and the meeting with Vittoria Colonna.

[72]

12 [XXIX] This sonnet may safely be set down as belonging to the later time. The sentiment of unhappy attachment, impossible desire, wistful loneliness, breathes through the verse. The piece contains two mystical but grand lines. Whoever has hoped for an elevation not given to mortals has wasted his thought in the endeavor to penetrate the recesses of deity, as seed is lost on the stony ground, and words spent in the limitless air.

13 [XXX] This gentle and tender poem, of the earlier period, somewhat similar in sentiment to No. 5 [XIX], and obviously from the heart, is penetrated by the same feeling as that discernible in Nos. 8 and 9 [XXIV and XXV]. Varchi, with his characteristic want of perception, chose to fancy that it might be addressed to a man, like the following, said to be composed for Tommaso Cavalieri.

[XXXI]

A CHE PIÙ DEBB’IO MAI L’INTENSA VOGLIA

The words cavalier armato are supposed to have referred to the aforesaid Cavalieri, a Roman youth whom Varchi describes as all that was beautiful and lovable. The highest male beauty seems to have had for Italians of the Renaissance, an attraction similar to that which it possessed for Athenians, a charm which our modern taste does not entirely comprehend. Thus the early death of Cecchino Bracchi had produced a great sensation; the epitaphs addressed to his memory by Michelangelo, who had never looked on his face, attest the sincerity of his own sentiment. For Cavalieri, whom the artist had known in 1533, he seems to have what can be described only as a passion; the three extant letters addressed to the young man breathe that timidity, sense of inferiority, and fear of misunderstanding which ordinarily belong only to sexual attachment. This emotion needs no apology other than that contained in a letter to this friend: “And if you are sure of my[74] affection, you ought to think and know that he who loveth remembereth, and can no more forget the things he fervently loves, than a hungry man the food that nourishes him; nay, much less may one forget beloved objects than the food on which man liveth; for they nourish both soul and body, the last with the greatest sobriety, and the first with tranquil felicity and the expectation of everlasting salvation.” (Lettere, No. 4, 16.) The susceptibility of Michelangelo toward external impressions is noted by Giannotti, who makes him affirm that as often as he set eyes on any person endowed with excellence he could not help becoming enamored of him in such manner that he surrendered himself to him as a prey. (Guasti, Rime, p. XXXI.) To the point is Michelangelo’s own estimate of his character expressed in a sonnet.

[XVIII]

AL COR DI ZOLFO, ALLA CARNE DI STOPPA

It is well to know that Cavalieri seems to have had a modest and noble nature, and that his personal attachment and artistic appreciation soothed the declining days of Michelangelo, at whose end he was present.

The mention of Michelangelo himself (Lettere, No. 466; Symonds, Life, vol. ii, p. 130) seems to prove that this sonnet was really composed for his young friend. But it is one thing to conclude that the piece was addressed to Cavalieri, quite another to suppose that it was inspired by him. The ideas are the same as those elsewhere appearing in reference to women. The composition does not appear to me one of the most original, and I should be disposed to regard it as ordinary love verse, into which, out of compliment, the writer had introduced the punning allusion. In any case, it is to be observed that in the Platonic compositions treating of male friendship, the whole argument is metaphorical, the comparisons being[76] borrowed from the earlier poetry of sexual love.

Fundamental is the question, What proportion of Michelangelo’s verse was intended to relate to men, and how far can such verse, if existent, be taken to imply that he had no separate way of feeling for women? The opinions of Mr. Symonds have already been cited (see note to No. 6 [XX]). In noticing Michelangelo’s use of the idiomatic Tuscan word signore, lord, as applied in the sonnets to female persons as well as male (the English liege may similarly be used), he says, “But that Michelangelo by the signore always or frequently meant a woman can be disproved in many ways. I will only adduce the fragment of one sonnet” (No. LXXXIII). It is a pity that Mr. Symonds did not enter into detail; I am quite at a loss for any circumstances that can be held to warrant his declaration. For the word, the sonnets only afford information. No. XVI, containing the words signior mie car, is a variant of No. XV, expressly addressed to a lady. In No. XXII, no one will doubt that the reference is to a woman. In No. XXXV the sex is shown by the epithet leggiadre, fair, applied to the arms (Mr. Symonds renders “fragile”). No. XXXVII qualifies signor by donna. No. LV treats of the shyness of a lady in presence of[77] her lover. In No. XL, instead of signior, the variant gives donna. No. XLVII seems obviously addressed to Vittoria Colonna. In No. XXXVI, the feminine application appears to be indicated by the description of the sovereign person as reigning nella casa d’amore. Thus in not a single instance can the suggestion of Mr. Symonds be accepted.

There remains the fragment mentioned, No. LXXXIII, a beautiful and interesting piece, unhappily imperfect. “Yonder it was that Love (amor; variant, signior), his mercy, took my heart, rather my life; here with beauteous eyes he promised me aid, and with the same took it away. Yonder he bound me, here he loosed me; here for myself I wept, and with infinite grief saw issue from this stone him who took me from myself, and of me would none.” It will be seen that the masculine pronoun is rendered necessary by the reference to personified Love, and that the allusion is clearly to sexual passion. Mr. Symonds has not entirely comprehended the scope of the fragment. The mystical description of Love as issuing from a stone (sasso) may probably be an application of the familiar sculpturesque metaphor.

As, in the instances considered, the opinion of Mr. Symonds appears void of foundation, so it is counter to the tenor of the poetry.[78] If No. XXXI really was written for Cavalieri, the reference probably consisted of no more than the introduction, into the ordinary phrases of a love poem, of a complimentary play on words. As for the metaphor by which a lady is compared to an armed enemy, that was already commonplace in the day of Dante.

14 [XXXII] From pieces dealing with ideal affection we pass to one obviously biographic in its inspiration. The poem is written below a letter of 1532, addressed to the sculptor when in Rome. The artist seems to refer to his own impetuous nature, too liable to quarrel with friends. Analogous is the sonnet addressed to Luigi del Riccio. (See madrigal No. 3 [IV] note.) But this composition evidently relates to a lady, as is shown by the mention of the dorato strale, gilded dart of Love.

15 [XXXIII] As with all lyric poetry, so in the compositions of Michelangelo, it is not to be assumed that every expression of emotion of necessity corresponds to some particular experience. Yet the tenderness, melancholy, and gentle regret which inspire the verse evidently reflect the character and habitual manner of feeling of the author. Related in sentiment are the following sonnets:—

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[XXVI]

NON MEN GRAN GRAZIA, DONNA, CHE GRAN DOGLIA

[XXXV]

SENTO D’UN FOCO UN FREDDO ASPETTO ACCESO

[XXXVIII]

RENDETE A GLI OCCHI MIEI, O FONTE O FIUME

With these sonnets of ideal love may be compared one later in date, apparently more biographic in sentiment, and doubtless inspired by Vittoria Colonna.

[81]

[L]

S’I’ AVESSI CREDUTO AL PRIMO SGUARDO

16 [XXXIX] The timid lover, who finds himself involved in the dangers of a hopeless passion, endeavors to withdraw from the perilous situation, but in so doing finds himself confronted by another danger, that of losing the affection which has become his life. As the vain desire will prove the death of the body, so the renunciation will be that of the soul; thus the suitor, according to the familiar metaphorical system furnished by plastic[82] art, is said to see his lady with a statue of Death on either hand.

The beautiful and mystic sonnet was written on a stray leaf bearing a memorandum of 1529, and was probably composed in that year. According to the statement of the nephew, Nos. 8 and 9 [XXIV and XXV] were also written on letters of that year; and these two poems correspond in sentiment with the present piece.

17 [XL] This most beautiful sonnet might conjecturally be referred to the same period as No. 12 [XXIX]. The spirit of the verse ought to be enough to satisfy any reader that it was composed with reference to a woman. (See note to No. 13 [XXX].)

18, 19 [XLIII, XLIV] These two pieces, containing respectively the dispraise and praise of night, are obviously intended to be counterparts, the first forming an introduction to the second. The consolations belonging to darkness and slumber have furnished themes to very many writers of verse; but among all such pieces Michelangelo’s tribute is entitled to preëminence. The emotion, deepening with the progress of the rhyme, ends in one of those outbursts which make the poetry a key to the character. Two other sonnets treating of the same subject do not appear to be connected.

[83]

[XLI]

COLUI CHE FECE, E NON DI COSA ALCUNA

In No. XLII Night is lauded, as the shadow in which man is engendered, while in the day the soil is broken only for the seed of the corn; but the composition does not rival the sweetness and sublimity of No. XLIV.

20 [LII] This fine sonnet, belonging to the later period, may be set down as among those inspired by Vittoria Colonna. Thoroughly characteristic is the grand fifth line, in which the soul is said to have been created as God’s equal. The nephew, of course, diluted such daring conceptions into commonplace,[84] and his restoration altogether fails to convey the essential meaning of the piece. Wordsworth, unfortunately, knew only the emasculated version.

Similar in theme is another sonnet, No. LX, also rendered by Wordsworth, from a text more nearly representative. In this instance the English poet has transcended his source, and furnished a proof that on fortunate occasions a translation may belong to the very best poetry, and deserve that immortality which commonly belongs only to expressions of original genius.

[85]

21 [LVI] The sonnet is to be classed with the preceding. In a variant, the theologic metaphor is carried further: “From without, I know not whence, came that immortal part which separateth not from thy sacred breast, yet traverseth the entire world, healeth every intellect, and honoreth heaven.”

22 [LXI] As all tools used by man are formed by means of other tools, the archetypal tool must be that celestial instrument by which the world is fashioned. On earth, Vittoria Colonna had been the hammer (as we now say, the chisel) by which had been inspired the creative activity of the artist. By her death, this influence had been withdrawn to heaven, there to become united with the all-forming hammer of the eternal Maker; it is, therefore, only from on high that the artist can look for the completion of his own genius.

To the text, in the hand of Michelangelo, is added a sentence expressing his sense of the incomparable merit of Vittoria, as the divine instrument which none other is able to wield, and a prayer that his own hammer, as he metaphorically says, may also attain a reception in heaven.

The mystically expressed, but in reality simple and direct verse is crowded with ideas which strive for utterance. The sculptor[86] seems to have written prophetically; after the passing away of Vittoria, the last of his animating impulses appears to have been removed, and his life becomes that of a recluse, struggling with the infirmities of advancing age.

Several other pieces relate to the death of Vittoria.

[LXII]

QUAND’EL MINISTRO DE’ SOSPIR ME’ TANTI

The thought, that Nature is disgraced in the loss of its best creation, is repeated in Michelangelo’s poetry. (See sonnet No. 4 [XVII], madrigal No. 9 [XIII].)

[87]

Two other sonnets, Nos. LXIII and LXIV, breathe an atmosphere of the most gloomy despair. The first expresses a profound self-reproach; the time to soar heavenward was while the sun of life still shone; it is now too late. The second declares that the flame has expired, to leave only ashes without a spark.

I do not doubt that here also belongs another sonnet, placed by Guasti as if belonging to an earlier date.

[LI]

TORNAMI AL TEMPO ALLOR CHE LENTA E SCIOLTA

[88]

A madrigal relates to the same theme.

[VI]

PER NON S’AVERE A RIPIGLIAR DA TANTI

The madrigal recites that deity had chosen to embody in a single life the sum of beauty, to the end that the celestial gift might be more easily resumed. Similar concetti are to be found in the series of epitaphs composed on Cecchino Bracci, in 1544. Mr. Symonds very unjustly criticises the verse as constrained, affected, and exhibiting an absence of genuine grief.

1 [I] THE NIGHT OF THE MEDICI CHAPEL. According to Vasari, when the statues of the Medici Chapel were exposed to view, after Michelangelo’s departure for Rome, early in 1535, an unknown author affixed a quatrain to the image of Night. This person was afterwards known as Giovanni di Carlo Strozzi, at the time eighteen years of age. The verse, not ungraceful but superficial, recited that Night, carved by an angel, was living, for the very reason that she seemed to sleep, and if accosted, would make reply. To this fanciful compliment, Michelangelo responded in the beautiful quatrain, which exhibits his view of the Medicean usurpation.

It were to be wished that in presence of the awful forms, visitors would bear in mind the sculptor’s advice. I have heard a young American lady, in a voice somewhat strident, expound to her mother the theme of the statue, reading aloud the information furnished by Baedeker.

2 [II] DEATH AND THE COFFIN. The younger Buonarroti cites the statement of Bernardo Buontalenti, that in his house in Rome, halfway up the stair, Michelangelo[90] had drawn a skeleton Death carrying on his shoulder a coffin, on which were inscribed these lines. The story is interesting, in connection with the part taken by Death in the verse of the sculptor. Giannotti represents him as declining to attend a merry-making on the ground that it was necessary to muse on Death. (See madrigal No. 12 [XVI].) The idea appears to be that death cannot be dreadful, since it bequeaths to life not only the immortal soul, but even the body; probably the artist meant to say the body made immortal through art.

3 [V] DEFINITION OF LOVE. With this definition from the subjective point of view, may be compared madrigal No. 5 [VIII]. As usual the imagination of the poet takes plastic form; Love, in his mind, is a statue lying in the heart, and waiting to be unveiled. Akin is the celebrated sonnet of Dante, Amor e cor gentil sono una cosa, which contains the same conception, and which perhaps Michelangelo may have remembered. But the more mystical idea of the sculptor borrows only the suggestion.

1 [I] During his Roman residence, Michelangelo was brought into intimate relations with Florentine exiles, who gathered in Rome, where ruled a Farnese pope, and where certain cardinals favored the anti-Medicean faction. From the course of a turbulent mountain-brook, Florence, following an inevitable law, was obliged to issue into the quiet but lifeless flow of inevitable despotism. It could not be expected that the fiery Michelangelo could comprehend the inexorableness of the fate which, in consequence of the necessities of trade, compelled Florence to prefer conditions ensuring tranquillity, though under an inglorious and corrupt personal rule. The sublime madrigal shows the depth of his republican sentiments. (See No. 22 [LXVIII].)

2 [III] The difficult but very interesting madrigal gives a profound insight into the spirit of the writer, who felt himself to move in a society foreign from the higher flight of his genius. His habits of isolation are remarked by contemporaries. Giannotti, in the dialogue above mentioned, discourses amusingly on this trait of character, putting[92] into the mouth of the artist a reply to an invitation. “I won’t promise.” “Why?” “Because I had rather stay at home.” “For what reason?” “Because, if I should put myself under such conditions, I should be too gay; and I don’t want to be gay.” Luigi del Riccio, introduced as interlocutor, exclaims that he never heard of such a thing; in this sad world one must seize every opportunity of distraction; he himself would supply a monochord, and they would all dance, to drive away sorrow. To this comforting proposition, Michelangelo returns that he should much prefer to cry. Giannotti romances; but Francis of Holland is nearer the fact when he makes the sculptor answer an accusation urged against solitary habits. The artist declares that there is good ground for such accusation against one who withdraws from the world by reason of eccentricity, but not against a man who has something better to do with his time. The particular occasion of the madrigal seems to have been dissatisfaction with praise lavished on what to Michelangelo seemed an unworthy work. Southey paraphrases the poem, but gives the idea only imperfectly.

Here, in connection with the idea of beauty as furnished from within, may be introduced a version of a madrigal interesting rather on[93] account of the philosophic conception than the poetic excellence. (See also sonnet XVIII, translated in the note to No. XXX.)

[VII]

PER FIDO ESEMPLO ALLA MIA VOCAZIONE

3 [IV] The madrigal is addressed to Luigi del Riccio, friend of Michelangelo’s declining years, and a correspondent to whom were transmitted many of the extant poems. In 1544 Luigi, during a sickness of the sculptor, took him into his own house and acted as his nurse; but shortly afterwards, he refused a request of the artist, declining to suppress an engraving he had been requested to destroy.[94] The indignation of Michelangelo found vent in a bitter letter. Riccio died in 1546. Symonds (Life, vol. ii, p. 194) thinks that Michelangelo speedily excused his friend and repented his anger. Here the whole heart of the artist is disclosed, and we have a revelation of the manner in which internal brooding and many disappointments had rendered somewhat morose a gentle and affectionate nature, characterized by pride amounting to a fault.

With the idea may be compared Emerson’s essay on “Gifts.” “Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things, for gifts. This giving is usurpation, and therefore, when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with the beneficiary than with the anger of my lord Timon. For the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning from one who has had the ill-luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap.” He adds, entirely in the spirit of Michelangelo, “No services are of any value, but only likeness.”

[95]

4 [V] The poet addresses to his friend Vittoria Colonna a theologic inquiry, after the manner of the appeals of Dante to Beatrice. Apparently the letter included a blank leaf for an answer. The question is, “In heaven are contrite sinners less valued than self-satisfied saints?” The obvious reply must be that in the nature of things such saints are impossible. The inquiry, therefore, is not to be taken as serious, but as playful and ironical. I should be inclined to interpret the verse as asking, “Am I, an humble artist, but sincerely devoted, of less value in your eyes than the very courtly and important personages by whom you are surrounded?” (as Vittoria was in close intimacy with high ecclesiastical functionaries). The sentiment is gay and jesting, while full of pleading affection.

5 [VIII] If of all the compositions of Michelangelo, one were asked to name the most representative, it would be natural to select this incomparably lovely madrigal. No lyric poet has brought into a few words more music, more truth, more illumination. The four lines cited at the end of the Introduction might well be taken as the motto for a gathering of the poems; and if the arrangement had not seemed inconsistent with the numbering of the pieces, I would gladly have placed[96] the madrigal at the end, as summing up the especial contribution of Michelangelo to letters.

6 [IX] A charming and light-hearted piece of music, obviously belonging to the earlier period of Michelangelo’s poetic activity. The verse is written on blue paper, with the subscription, “Divine things are spoken of in an azure field” (in heaven). The suggestion is furnished by a conventional concetto of the period; but the familiarity does not prevent the thought lending itself to genuinely poetical treatment. No. X is a pretty variant, in which the cruelty of the lady is compared to the hardness of the marble in which her image is wrought. The lines are subscribed “for sculptors” (Da scultori). The close connection with his art lends to even the most simple of these verses an unspeakable attraction.

7 [XI] In this magnificent song, worthy of the greatest of lyric poets, we are still occupied with the concepts of plastic art. The artist achieves the complete expression of his idea only through painful toil, and often lapse of years which leave him ready to depart from a world in which accomplishment is itself a sign of ripeness for death. With that universal animism, as we now say, by which all general truths of man’s life are felt to be also applicable to the course of Nature, the poet[97] is entitled to apply the idea to external being. And with what insight! If ever genius can be said to have forecast the conclusions of scientific inquiry, it is so in this instance; Michelangelo presents us with a truly modern conception of Nature, as the creative artist, who through a series of ages and a succession of sketches, is occupied with continually unsuccessful, but ever-improving efforts at the expression of her internal life. The perfection of the creature, which marks the accomplishment of the undertaking, signifies also the end of the process; with such completeness is felt the sorrow incident to all termination, and especially the pain of the mortal, who feels that delight in perfect beauty enforces the consciousness of his own transitoriness, and emphasizes the sense of Nature as perishable. Hence, perhaps it may be explained that all perception of perfect loveliness is said to be accompanied by a sensation of fear. The piece possesses a grandeur of rhythm corresponding to its depth of intellectual apprehension, and is worthy to stand beside the greatest of the artist’s plastic productions, as equally immortal. In such verse Michelangelo rose to the level of a world poet; nor has early English literature anything of a kindred nature worthy to be placed in comparison.

8 [XII] Michelangelo perpetually varies[98] but never repeats the theme. Once more, it is not the trembling of the hand which causes the artist’s failure; it is the uncertainty of the mind, not clear as to its intent.

9 [XIII] Again the bitter contrast of the permanence of art with the fleeting period of human life. We have had the idea in sonnet XVII. But the argument is now carried a step further. According to mediæval (and also modern) national morality, the destruction of kindred implies the duty of blood-vengeance. On whom, then, devolves the conduct of the feud made necessary by the taking away of the beloved? Not on man, but on Nature, whose pride must be offended by the preference given to the works of her children as compared with the transitoriness of her own. The permanence of the artistic product is therefore a sign that Nature herself is bound to require of Time atonement for the wrong done to imagination; and thus art is made the prophet of restoration.

10 [XIV] The metaphor is now furnished by the work of the metal-caster; and since in this case there has been no change in the conditions of manufacture, the comparison still seems simple and natural.

11 [XV] The tender, simple, and universally applicable lament at the same time includes its own consolation.

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12 [XVI] The idea of Death as deliverer from Love is often repeated by the poet. Giannotti probably followed rather the verse than any spoken words in the sentences he has put into the lips of the artist: “I remind you that to re-discover one’s self, and to enjoy one’s self, it is not necessary to seize on so many pleasures and delights, but only to reflect on death. This is the only thought which enables us to recognize ourselves, which maintains us in unity with ourselves, and prevents us from being robbed by parents, kinsfolk, friends, great masters, ambition, avarice, and other vices and sins, which take man from man, and keep him dispersed and dissipated, without suffering him ever to find himself and become at one with himself. Marvellous is the effect of this thought of death, which in virtue of its nature all-destructive, nevertheless conserves and supports those who include it in their meditation, and defends them from every human passion. Which, methinks, I have sufficiently indicated in a madrigal, where, in treating of love, I conclude that against it is no better defence than the thought of death.”

A beautiful variation, characterized by the author’s invariable originality, is furnished by the number next in Guasti’s edition.

[100]

[XVII]

NELLA MEMORIA DELLE COSE BELLE

13 [XVIII] The idea that only through contemplating the person of the beloved can the soul transcend from time to eternity is familiar in the later compositions of Michelangelo. Compare sonnet 21 [LVI].

14 [XIX] The same conception receives a different treatment; mortal beauty is now represented as exercising too potent an attraction, and preventing the desire from mounting beyond it.

15 [XXI] The thought has been elaborated in a modern sense by Lowell in his “Endymion:”—

[101]

So far the idea coincides with that of Michelangelo; but the conclusion of the later poet varies:—

Such could not be the termination of the author of the Renaissance, at a time when his star was Vittoria Colonna.

16 [XXIII] The sweet and plaintive verse was popular as a song even in the lifetime of Michelangelo, as may be inferred from its mention by Varchi.

17 [XXV] The madrigal has all the spirit of English song in the early part of the seventeenth century; but what English verse, having the same idea, could be mentioned in comparison?

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18 [LII] The beautiful song exhibits a great number of variations. Perhaps on account of the musical character, counteracting a meditative tendency, Platonic philosophy appears only as lending a gentle mist transformed by the sunshine of pleasurable passion.

19 [LIII] Compare No. LXXII. I should assign this madrigal, in spite of its light character, to the later epoch.

20 [LIV] The ninth line appears to contain a reference to Vittoria Colonna, who lived in a convent, toward which the desires of the poet, as he says, scarce dared to reach.

21 [LVII] It can scarce be doubted that the attribution of masculine thought to the beloved is a reference to the character of Vittoria.

22 [LXVIII] The dialogue of this madrigal is intentionally veiled, as if the poet were conscious of dealing with a dangerous theme. Sublime are the last two lines, containing all the Michelangelo of the Sistine frescoes; the sentiment is not the purely Christian conception of forgiveness of injuries, the mildness which on principle turns the other cheek. Significant is the word altero, haughty; Michelangelo describes the sentiment of a great and proud spirit, so lofty as to feel a superiority to personal resentment, so truly Florentine[103] as to receive no satisfaction in the prospect of vengeance taken on a citizen of Florence.

23 [LXIX] A pretty piece of poetic ratiocination, cast into the form of a case tried before a court of love, and ending, in the spirit of the poet, with a universal truth.

24 [LXXII] Compare No. 20 [LIV]. It will be seen that the allusions give some reason to believe that the idea is intended to be biographic, though of course not to be taken as entirely literal.

25 [XCIII] A pleasing way of expressing a sense of the incompatibility of Love and Death, that appears in many variations, and must be considered biographic in its sentiment.

The Roman numbers refer to the numeration of Guasti

SONNETS

EPIGRAMS

MADRIGALS

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