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:—