That like the column’s base, her steps sustain,
If only in the falling of the rain!
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.
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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.