Part 6

_That perfectness of beauty free from peer Might be reclaimed and garnered without fail, Upon a lady excellently clear Was it bestowed beneath a shining veil; The heavenly boon had hardly been repaid, If scattered among all that Heaven had made. Now, from world unaware, In breathing of a sigh, Hath God who reigns on high Resumed, and hid away his beauty fair. Yet, though the body die, Cherish shall memory still Sacred and sweet, her written legacy. Compassionate and stern, if Heaven’s will To all had granted what to her alone, We all had died for making good the loan._

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.

NOTES ON THE EPIGRAMS

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 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.

NOTES ON THE MADRIGALS

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 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 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

_On me hath been bestowed by birthtide-gift, Of both mine arts the mirror and the light, Beauty, my model in my calling here. It only hath the competence to lift The vision of the artist to that height At which I aim in form or color clear._

_If judgment rash and fantasy unwise Degrade to sense the beauty, that doth bear And raise toward heaven all sane intelligence, Man’s wavering glances have no power to rise, Above inconstant, faithful only where They linger, unless mercy call them thence._

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. 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.”

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 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 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 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.

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.

[XVII]

NELLA MEMORIA DELLE COSE BELLE

_When Memory may cherish and endear Some lovely sight, resolve availeth not For her discrowning, until Death appear, And exile her, as she made him forgot, Chill flame to frost, change laughter into pain, And make abhorred the beauty loved before, That tenanteth the empty heart no more. Yet if she turn again Her lucid eyes toward home of their desire, With arid bough more ardent grows the fire._

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:”--

_Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once more An inaccessible splendor to adore, A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth As bred ennobling discontent with earth; Give back the longing, back the elated mood That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good; Give even the spur of impotent despair That, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; Give back the need to worship that still pours Down to the soul that virtue it adores!_

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

_Goddess triform, I own thy triple spell, My heaven’s queen,--queen, too, of my earth and hell!_

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?

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 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.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

_The Roman numbers refer to the numeration of Guasti_

SONNETS

PAGE

XXXI. _A che più debb’io mai l’intensa voglia_ 72

XVIII. _Al cor di zolfo, alla carne di stoppa_ 74

XLI. _Colui che fece, e non di cosa alcuna_ 83

XVII. _Com’esser, donna, può quel ch’alcun vede_ 7

XIV. _Da che concetto ha l’arte intera e diva_ 5

I. _Dal ciel discese, e col mortal suo, poi_ 3

XXI. _D’altrui pietoso e sol di sè spietato_ 68

XXV. _Dimmi di grazia, amor, se gli occhi mei_ 11

XXIX. _I’ mi credetti, il primo giorno ch’io_ 15

XIX. _Io mi son caro assai più ch’io non soglio_ 7

XXXIX. _La ragion meco si lamenta e dole_ 19

XXVIII. _La vita dal mie amor non è ’l cor mio_ 13

XV. _Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto_ 5

XXVI. _Non men gran grazia, donna, che gran doglia_ 79

XXVII. _Non posso altra figura immaginarmi_ 13

XL. _Non so se s’è la desiata luce_ 19

LII. _Non vider gli occhi miei cosa mortale_ 23

XLIV. _O nott’, o dolce tempo benchè nero_ 21

XLIII. _Perchè Febo non torc’e non distende_ 21

XXXIII. _Perchè tuo gran bellezze al mondo sieno_ 17

LVI. _Per ritornar là donde venne fora_ 23

LXII. _Quand’el ministro de’ sospir me’ tanti_ 86

II. _Quante dirne si de’ non si può dire_ 63

XX. _Quanto si gode lieta e ben contesta_ 9

XXXVIII. _Rendete a gli occhi miei, o fonte o fiume_ 80

LXI. _Se ’l mie rozzo martello i duri sassi_ 25

XXII. _Se nel volto per gli occhi il cor si vede_ 9

XXXV. _Sento d’un foco un freddo aspetto acceso_ 79

L. _S’i’ avessi creduto al primo sguardo_ 81

XXIV. _Spirto ben nato, in cui si specchia e vede_ 11

XXXII. _S’un casto amor, s’una pietà superna_ 17

LI. _Tornami al tempo allor che lenta e sciolta_ 87

XXX. _Veggio co’ bei vostri occhi un dolce lume_ 15

EPIGRAMS

I. _Caro m’è ’l sonno, e più l’esser di sasso_ 27

II. _Io dico a voi, ch’al mondo avete dato_ 27

V. _Amore è un concetto di bellezza_ 27

MADRIGALS

XXI. _A l’alta tuo lucente diadema_ 47

XCIII. _Amor, se tu se’ dio_ 57

XV. _Beati, voi che su nel ciel godete_ 41

LIII. _Chi è quel che per forza a te mi mena_ 51

XXV. _Come può esser ch’io non sia più mio_ 49

XXIII. _Deh! dimmi, amor, se l’alma di costei_ 47

VIII. _Gli occhi miei vaghi delle cose belle_ 35

LXVIII. _Io dico che fra noi, potenti dei_ 53

CII. _Lezzi, vezzi, carezze, or feste e perle_ 67

LXXIII. _Mestier non era all’alma tuo beltate_ 55

XI. _Negli anni molte e nelle molte pruove_ 37

XVII. _Nella memoria delle cose belle_ 100

XIV. _Non pur d’argento o d’oro_ 39

XVI. _Non pur la morte, ma ’l timor di quella_ 41

III. _Non sempre al mondo è sì pregiato e caro_ 31

LII. _Ogni cosa ch’i’ veggio mi consiglia_ 49

V. _Ora in sul destro, ora in sul manco piede_ 33

IV. _Perchè è troppo molesta_ 31

VII. _Per fido esemplo alla mia vocazione_ 93

I. _Per molti, donna, anzi per mille amanti_ 29

VI. _Per non s’avere a ripigliar da tanti_ 88

XIX. _Quantunche ver sia, che l’alta e divina_ 45

LXIX. _S’alcuna parte in donna è che sia bella_ 55

IX. _Se dal cor lieto divien bello il volto_ 35

XIII. _Se d’una pietra viva_ 39

XVIII. _S’egli è che ’l buon desio_ 43

LIV. _Se ’l commodo de gli occhi alcun constringe_ 51

XII. _Sì come per levar, donna, si pone_ 37

LVII. _Un uomo in una donna, anzi uno dio_ 53

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

English translations have been moved to imediately follow the original text, rather than on opposing pages as in the original text.

The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 10: “tuo” replaced with “tue” Pg 90: “Gianotti” replaced with “Giannotti”