MICHELANGELO ASPOET

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(Stylized M)

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.

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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 acondottiereof 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, interza 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:—

Dalle più alte stelleDiscende uno splendoreChe ’l desir tira a quelle;E qui si chiama amore.

Dalle più alte stelle

Discende uno splendore

Che ’l desir tira a quelle;

E qui si chiama amore.

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