[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.”