I. Quoted by Donato Giannotti in his DialogueDe' giorni che Dante consumò nel cercare l'Inferno e 'l Purgatorio.The date of its composition is perhaps 1545.
II. Written probably for Donato Giannotti about the same date.
III. Belonging to the year 1506, when Michael Angelo quarrelled with Julius and left Rome in anger. The tree referred to in the last line is the oak of the Rovere family.
IV. Same date, and same circumstances. The autograph has these words at the foot of the sonnet:Vostro Miccelangniolo, in Turchia.Rome itself, the Sacred City, has become a land of infidels.
V. Ser Giovanni da Pistoja was Chancellor of the Florentine Academy. The date is probably 1509. TheSonetto a Codais generally humorous or satiric.
VI. Written in one of those moments ofaffannoorstizzoto which the sculptor was subject. For the old bitterness of feeling between Florence and Pistoja, see Dante,Inferno.
VII. Michael Angelo was ill during the summer of 1544, and was nursed by Luigi del Riccio in his own house, Shortly after his recovery he quarrelled with his friend, and wrote him this sonnet as well as a very angry letter.
VIII. p. 38. Cecchino Bracci was a boy of rare and surpassing beauty who died at Rome, January 8, 1544, in his seventeenth year. Besides this sonnet, which refers to a portrait Luigi del Riccio had asked him to make of the dead youth, Michael Angelo composed a series of forty-eight quatrains upon the same subject, and sent them to his friend Luigi. Michelangelo the younger, thinking that'l'ignoranzia degli uomini ha campo di mormorare,'suppressed the name Cecchino and changedluiintolei.Date about 1544.
IX. Line 4: 'The Archangel's scales alone can weigh my gratitude against your gift.' Lines 5-8: 'Your courtesy has taken away all my power of responding to it. I am as helpless as a ship becalmed, or a wisp of straw on a stormy sea.'
X. Michael Angelo, when asked to make a portrait of his friend's mistress, declares that he is unable to do justice to her beauty. The nameMancinais a pun upon the Italian word for the left arm,Mancino. This lady was a famous and venal beauty, mentioned among the loves of the poet Molsa.
XI. Date, 1550.
XII. This and the three next sonnets may with tolerable certainty be referred to the series written on various occasions for Vittoria Colonna.
XIII. Sent together with a letter, in which we read:l'aportatore di questa sarà Urbino, che sta meco. Urbino was M. A.'s old servant, workman, and friend. See No. LXVIII. and note.
XIV. The thought is that, as the sculptor carves a statue from a rough model by addition and subtraction of the marble, so the lady of his heart refines and perfects his rude native character.
XV. This sonnet is the theme of Varchi'sLezione. There is nothing to prove that it was addressed to Vittoria Colonna. Varchi calls it 'un suo altissimo sonetto pieno di quella antica purezza e dantesca gravità.'
XVI. The thought of the fifteenth is repeated with some variations. His lady's heart holds for the lover good and evil things, according as he has the art to draw them forth.
XVIII. In the terzets he describes the temptations of the artist-nature, over-sensitive to beauty. Michelangelo the younger so altered these six lines as to destroy the autobiographical allusion.—Cp. No. XXVIII., note.
XIX. The lover's heart is like an intaglio, precious by being inscribed with his lady's image.
XX. An early composition, written on the back of a letter sent to the sculptor in Bologna by his brother Simone in 1507. M.A. was then working at the bronze statue of Julius II. Who the lady of his love was, we do not know. Notice the absence of Platonicconcetti.
XXIII. It is hardly necessary to call attention to Michael Angelo's oft-recurring Platonism. The thought that the eye alone perceives the celestial beauty, veiled beneath the fleshly form of the beloved, is repeated in many sonnets—especially in XXV., XXVIII.
XXIV. Composed probably in the year 1529.
XXV. Written on the same sheet as the foregoing sonnet, and composed probably in the same year. The thought is this: beauty passing from the lady into the lover's soul, is there spiritualised and becomes the object of a spiritual love.
XXVII. To escape from his lady, either by interposing another image of beauty between the thought of her and his heart, or by flight, is impossible.
XXVIII. Compare Madrigal VII. in illustration of lines 5 to 8. By the analogy of that passage, I should venture to render lines 6 and 7 thus:
He made thee light, and me the eyes of art;Nor fails my soul to find God's counterpart.
XXX. Varchi, quoting this sonnet in hisLezione, conjectures that it was composed for Tommaso Cavalieri.
XXXI. Varchi asserts without qualification that this sonnet was addressed to Tommaso Cavalieri. The pun in the last line,Resto prigion d'un Cavalier armato, seems to me to decide the matter, though Signor Guasti and Signor Gotti both will have it that a woman must have been intended. Michelangelo the younger has only left one line, the second, untouched in hisrifacimento. Instead of the last words he givesun cuor di virtù armato, being over-scrupulous for his great-uncle's reputation.
XXXII. Written at the foot of a letter addressed by Giuliano Bugiardini the painter, from Florence, to M.A. in Rome, August 5, 1532. This then is probably the date of the composition.
XXXIV. The metaphor of fire, flint, and mortar breaks down in the last line, where M.A. forgets that gold cannot strike a spark from stone.
XXXV. Line 9 has the wordSignor. It is almost certain that where M.A. uses this word without further qualification in a love sonnet, he means his mistress. I have sometimes translated it 'heart's lord' or 'loved lord,' because I did not wish to merge the quaintness of this ancient Tuscan usage in the more commonplace 'lady.'
XXXVI. Line 3:the lord, etc. This again is the poet's mistress. The drift of the sonnet is this: his soul can find no expression but through speech, and speech is too gross to utter the purity of his feeling. His mistress again receives his tongue's message with her ears; and thus there is an element of sensuality, false and alien to his intention, both in his complaint and in her acceptation of it. The last line is a version of the proverb:chi è avvezzo a dir bugie, non crede a nessuno.
XXXVII. At the foot of the sonnet is writtenMandato. The two last lines play on the wordssignorandsignoria. To whom it was sent we do not know for certain; but we may conjecture Vittoria Colonna.
XXXIX. The paper on which this sonnet is written has a memorandum with the date January 6, 1529. 'On my return from Venice, I, Michelagniolo Buonarroti, found in the house about five loads of straw,' etc. It belongs therefore to the period of the siege of Florence, when M.A., as is well known, fled for a short space to Venice. In line 12, I have translatedil mie signiore, my lady.
XL. No sonnet in the whole collection seems to have cost M.A. so much trouble as this. Besides the two completed versions, which I have rendered, there are several scores of rejected or various readings for single lines in the MSS. The Platonic doctrine of Anamnesis probably supplies the key to the thought which the poet attempted to work out.
XLI., XLII., XLIII., XLIV. There is nothing to prove that these four sonnets on Night were composed in sequence. On the contrary, the personal tone of XLI. seems to separate this from the other three. XLIV. may be accepted as a palinode for XLIII.
XLV., XLVI. Both sonnets deal half humorously with a thought very prominent in M.A.'s compositions—the effect of love on one who is old in years. Cp. XLVIII., L.
XLVII. The Platonic conception that the pure form of Beauty or ofTruth, if seen, would be overwhelming in its brilliancy.
XLIX. Thedolcie piantoandeterna paceare the tears and peace of piety. Thedoloroso risoandcorta paceare the smiles and happiness of earthly love.
LII. Here is another version of this very beautiful sonnet.
No mortal thing enthralled these longing eyesWhen perfect peace in thy fair face I found;But far within, where all is holy ground,My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies:For she was born with God in Paradise;Nor all the shows of beauty shed aroundThis fair false world her wings to earth have bound;Unto the Love of Loves aloft she flies.Nay, things that suffer death, quench not the fireOf deathless spirits; nor eternityServes sordid Time, that withers all things rare.Not love but lawless impulse is desire:That slays the soul; our love makes still more fairOur friends on earth, fairer in death on high.
LIII. This is the doctrine of the Symposium; the scorn of merely sexual love is also Platonic.
LIV. Another sonnet on the theme of the Uranian as distinguished from the Vulgar love. See below, LVL., for a parallel to the second terzet.
LV. The date maybe 1532. The play on words in the first quatrain and the first terzet is Shakespearian.
LIX. Two notes, appended to the two autographs of this sonnet, show that M.A. regarded it as ajeu d'esprit, 'Per carnovale par lecito far qualche pazzia a chi non va in maschera.' 'Questo non è fuoco da carnovale, però vel mando di quaresima; e a voi mi rachomando. Vostro Michelagniolo.'
LXL. Date 1547. No sonnet presents more difficulties than this, in which M.A. has availed himself of a passage in theCratylusof Plato. The divine hammer spoken of in the second couplet is the ideal pattern after which the souls of men are fashioned; and this in the first terzet seems to be identified with Vittoria Colonna. In the second terzet he regards his own soul as imperfect, lacking the final touches which it might have received from hers. See XIV. for a somewhat similar conceit.
LXIV. The image is that of a glowing wood coal smouldering away to embers amid its own ashes.
LXV. Date 1554. AddressedA messer Giorgio Vasari, amico e pittor singulare, with this letter:Messer Giorgio, amico caro, voi direte ben ch' io sie vecchio e pazzo a voler far sonetti; ma perchè molti dicono ch' io son rimbambito, ho voluto far l'uficio mio, ec. A dì 19 di settembre 1554. Vostro Michelagniolo Buonarroti in Roma.
LXVL, LXVII. These two sonnets were sent to Giorgio Vasari in 1555(?) with this letter:Messer Giorgio, io vi mando dua sonetti; e benchè sieno cosa sciocca, il fo perchè veggiate dove io tengo i mie' pensieri: e quando arete ottantuno anni, come ò io, mi crederete. Pregovi gli diate a messer Giovan Francesco Fattucci, che me ne à chiesti. Vostro Michelagniolo Buonarroti in Roma. The first was also sent to Monsignor Beccadelli, Archbishop of Ragusa, who replied to it. For his sonnet, see Signor Guasti's edition, p. 233.
LXVIII. Date 1556. Written in reply to his friend's invitation that he should pay him a visit at Ragusa. Line 10: this Urbino was M.A.'s old and faithful servant, Francesco d'Amadore di Casteldurante, who lived with him twenty-six years, and died at Rome in 1556.
LXIX.-LXXVII. The dates of this series of penitential sonnets are not known. It is clear that they were written in old age. It will be remembered that the latest piece of marble on which Michael Angelo worked, was the unfinished Pietà now standing behind the choir of the Duomo at Florence. Many of his latest drawings are designs for a Crucifixion.
I. Line 1: the Italian words which I have translatedGod's WisdomandPhilosophyareSennoandSofia. Campanella held that the divineSennopenetrated the whole universe, and, meeting with createdSofia, gave birth to Science. This sonnet is therefore a sort of Mythopoem, figuring the process whereby true knowledge, as distinguished from sophistry, is derived by the human reason interrogating God in Nature and within the soul. Line 5: Sofia has for her husband Senno; the human intellect is married to the divine. Line 9: it was the doctrine of Campanella and the school to which he belonged, that no advance in knowledge could be made except by the direct exploration of the universe, and that the authority of schoolmen, Aristotelians, and the like, must be broken down before a step could be made in the right direction. This germ of modern science is sufficiently familiar to us in the exposition of Bacon. Line 12: repeats the same idea. Facts presented by Nature are of more value than anyIpse dixit. Line 14: he compares himself not without reason to Prometheus; for twenty-five years spent in prison were his reward for the revelation which has added a new sphere to human thought.
II. The bitter words of this sonnet will not seem unmerited to those who have studied Italian poetry in the Cinque Cento—the refined playthings of verse, the romances, and the burlesque nonsense, which amused a corrupt though highly cultivated age.
III. Campanella held the doctrine of an Anima Mundi in the fullest and deepest sense of the term. The larger and more complex the organism, the more it held, in his opinion, of thought and sentient life. Thus the stars, in the language of Aristotle, are [Greek: thiotera aemon]. Compare Sonnets VIII., XIX.
IV. Though the material seat of the mind is so insignificant, the mind itself is infinite, analogous to God in its capacity. Aristarchus and Metrodorus symbolise, perhaps, the spheres of literature and mathematics. This infinitude of the intellect is our real proof of God, our inner witness of the Deity. We may arrive at God by reasoning; we may trust authority; but it is only by impregnating our minds with God in Nature that we come into immediate contact with Him. Cp. Sonnet VI., last line.
V. The theme of this sonnet is the well-known Baconian principle of the interrogation of Nature. The true philosopher must go straight to the universe, and not confine himself to books. Cp. Sonnets I., LV., LVI.
VI. A further development of the same thought. Tyrants, hypocrites, sophists are the three plagues of humanity, standing between our intellect and God, who is the source of freedom, goodness, and true wisdom. In the last line Campanella expresses his opinion that God is knowable by an immediate act of perception analogous to the sense of taste:Se tutti al Senno non rendiamo il gusto. Compare Sonnet IV., last line.
VII. Ignorance is the parent of tyranny, sophistry, hypocrisy; and the arms against this trinity of error are power, wisdom, love, the three main attributes of God.
VIII. Human egotism inclines men to deny the spiritual life of the universe, to favour their own nation, to love their individual selves exclusively, to eliminate the true God from the world, to worship false gods fashioned from them selves, and at last to fancy themselves central and creative in the Cosmos. Adami calls this sonnetscoprimento stupendo.
IX. The quatrains set forth the condition of the soul besotted with self love. We may see in this picture a critique of Machiavelli'sPrincipe, which was for Campanella the very ideal portrait of a tyrant. The love of God, rightly understood, places manen rapportwith all created things. S. Francis, for example, loved not only his fellow men, but recognised the brotherhood of birds and fishes.
X. Ignorance, the source of all our miseries, blinds us to celestial beauty and makes us follow carnal lust. Yet what is best in sexual love is the radiance of heavenly beauty shining through the form of flesh. This sonnet receives abundant illustration in Michael Angelo's poems.
XI, XII. Two sonnets on the condition of the philosopher in a world that understands him not. The first expresses that sense of inborn royalty which sustained Campanella through his long martyrdom. The second expands the picture drawn of the philosopher in Plato'sRepublicafter his return to the cave from the region of truth.
XIII. Campanella frequently expressed his theological fatalism by this metaphor of a comedy. God wrote the drama which men have to play. In this life we cannot understand our parts. We act what is appointed for us, and it is only when the comedy is finished, that we shall see how good and evil, happiness and misery, were all needed by the great life of the universe. The following stanza from one of his Canzoni may be cited in illustration:
War, ignorance, fraud, tyranny,Death, homicide, abortion, woe—These to the world are fair, as weReckon the chase or gladiatorial showTo pile our hearth we fell the tree,Kill bird or beast our strength to stay,The vines, the hives our wants obey—Like spiders spreading nets, we take and slayAs tragedy gives men delight,So the exchange of death and strifeStill yields a pleasure infiniteTo the great world's triumphant lifeNay seeming ugliness and painAvert returning Chaos' reign—Thus the whole world's a comedy,And they who by philosophyUnite themselves to God, will seeIn ugliness and evil noughtBut beauteous masks—oh, mirthful thought!
XIV. The same theme is continued with a further development. Men among themselves play their own comedy, but do not rightly assign the parts. They make kings of slavish souls, and elevate the impious to the rank of saints. They ignore their true and natural leaders, and stone the real prophets.
XV. Between the false kings of men, who owe their thrones to accident, and the really royal, who by chance of birth or station are a prey to tyrants, there is everlasting war. Yet the spirit of the martyrs survives, and long after their death they rule.
XVI. True kinghood is independent of royal birth or power or ensigns. High moral and intellectual qualities make the natural kings of men, and these are so rarely found in sceptred families that a republic is the safest form of government. See Sonnets XXXI., XXXVII.
XVII. As men mistake their kings, so they mistake the saints. The true spirit of Christ is ignored, and if Christ were to return to earth, they would persecute him, even as they persecute those who follow him most closely in their lives and doctrines.
XVIII. Christ symbolises and includes all saintly truth-seeking souls. Compare the three last lines of this sonnet with the three last lines of No. XV. and No. XX.
XIX., XX., XXI. Expanding the same themes, Campanella contrasts the ignorance of self-love with the divine illumination of the true philosopher, and insists that, in spite of persecution and martyrdom, saintly and truth-seeking souls will triumph.
XXII. Resumes the thought of No. X. If only the soul of man, infinite in its capacity, could be enamoured of God, it would at once work miracles and attain to Deity.
XXIII. A bitter satire on love in the seventeenth century. Lines 9-11: as Adami sometimes says,qui legit intelligat. Line 12:la squilla miais a pun on Campanella's name. He means that he has shown the world a more excellent way of love. Cp. No. XXII.
XXIV. The essence of nobility is subjected to the same critique as kinghood in No. XVI. Line 11: the Turk is Europe's foe. Campanella praises the Turks because they had no hereditary nobility, and conferred honours on men according to their actions.
XXV. That this sonnet should have been written by a Dominican monk in a Neapolitan prison in the first half of the seventeenth century, is truly note-worthy. It expresses the essence of democracy in a critique of the then existing social order.
XXVI. A very obscure piece of writing. The first quatrain lays down the principle that ill-doing brings its own inevitable punishment. The second distinguishes between the unblessed suffering which plagues the soul, and that which we welcome as a process of purgation. The first terzet makes heaven and hell respectively consist of a clean and a burdened conscience. The second, referring to a legend of S. Peter's controversy with Simon Magus, finds a proof of immortality in this condition of conscience.
XXVII. A bold and perilous image of the Machiavellian Prince, who drains the commonwealth for his own selfish pleasures. The play upon the wordsmentolaandmentein the first line is hardly capable of reproduction.
XXVIII. Adami says in a note:Questo sonetto è fatto perchè l'intendano pochi; nè io voglio dichiararlo. Under these circumstances it is dangerous to attempt an explanation. Yet something may be hazarded. Line 1: the lady is Italy. Line 3: the stranger races are Rome's vassals. Line 7: Dinah is again Italy(?). Line 8: Simeon and Levi are the Princes of Italy and the Papacy. Line 9: Jerusalem probably stands for Rome. Line 10: Nazareth is the Gospel of Christ, and Athens is philosophy. Here again Adami warns us:qui legit intelligat. Line 13: a critique of the ruinous policy of calling strangers in to interfere in Italian affairs.
XXIX. Line 2: Attila is meant. The Venetian Lagoons were the refuge of the last and best Italians of the Roman age, when the incursions of the barbarians destroyed the classical civility. Line 12: alludes to the fixity of the Venetian Constitution and the deliberate caution of Venetian policy.
XXX. The quatrains describe the old power of Genoa, who conquered Pisa, abased Venice, planted colonies in the East, and discovered America. Line 10: throws the blame of Genoese decrepitude upon the nobles.
XXXI. Campanella praises the Poles for their elective monarchy, but blames them for choosing the scions of royal houses, instead of seeking out the real kings of men, such as he described in No. XVI.
XXXII. A similar criticism of the Swiss, who played so important and yet so contemptible a part in the Italian wars of the sixteenth century. With the terzets compare No. XXV. Line 11: stands thus in the original—La croce bianca e'l prato si contende.
XXXIII. A clever adaptation of the parable of the Samaritan, conceived and executed in the spirit of a modern poet like A.H. Clough.
XXXIV. Line 4: the hypocritical priest makes profit by preaching for holiness what is really hurtful to the soul. Lines 5-11 contrast the acknowledged sinners with the covert and crafty pretenders to virtue. Line 8: I have ventured to correct the punctuation. D'Ancona reads:
E poco è il male in cui poco è l'inganno. Ti puoi guardar:
but I am not sure that I am justified in the sense I put upon the verbguardarsi.
XXXV. A similar arraignment of impostors, comparing perfidious priests with the foulest literary scoundrel of the age, Pietro Aretino. The first terzet in the original is obscure.
XXXVI. I do not understand the allusion in the last line. The whole sonnet is directed against hypocritical priests.
XXXVII., XXXVIII., XXXIX. A commentary on the first clauses of the Lord's Prayer. Campanella tells the Italians they have no right to call themselves men, the children of God in heaven, while they bow to tyrants worse than beasts, and believe the lying priests who call that adulation loyalty. If they free their souls from this vile servitude, they may then pray with hopeful heart for the coming upon earth of God's kingdom, which shall satisfy poets, philosophers, and prophets with more than they had dreamed. It will be noticed that the rhymes are carried from sonnet to sonnet; so that the three form one poem, described by Adami assonetto trigemino. In XXXVII., 13, I have correctedcennointosenno. In XXXIX., 1, I have ventured to rendercon ogni istanzabywith every hour that flies, thoughistanzais notistante.
XL., XLL, XLII. These three sonnets, though not linked by rhymes, form a series, predicting the speedy overthrow of tyrants, sophists, hypocrites—Campanella's natural enemies—and the coming of a better age for human society. They were probably written early, when his heart was still hot with the hopes of a new reign of right and reason, which even he might help to inaugurate. The eagle, bear, lion, crow, fox, wolf, etc., are the evil principalities and powers of earth. No. XL., line 9: the giants are, I think, those lawless, selfish, anti-social forces idealised by Machiavelli in hisPrincipe, as Campanella read that treatise—the strong men and mighty ones of an impious and godless world. No. XLL, line 4: concerningTaida, Sinon, Giuda, ed Omero, Adami says: 'These are the four evangelists of the dark age of Abaddon.' Thais is a symbol of lechery; Sinon of fraud; Judas of treason; Homer of lying fiction. So at least I read the allegory. No. XLII., lines 9-14 are noticeable, since they set forth Campanella's philosophical or evangelical communism, for a detailed exposition of which see theCivitas Solis.
XLIII. Invited to write a comedy—and it will be here remembered that Giordano Bruno had composedIl Candelaio—Campanella replied with this impassioned outburst of belief in the approaching end of the world. It belongs probably to his early manhood.
XLIV., XLV. Adami heads these two sonnets with this title:Sopra i colori delle vesti. It is a fact that under the Spanish tyranny black clothes were almost universally adopted by the Italians, as may be seen in the picture galleries of Florence and Genoa. Campanella uses this fashion as a symbol of the internal gloom and melancholy in which the nation was sunk by vice upon the eve of the new age he confidently looked for.
XLVI. The year 1603, made up of centuriessevenandnineand yearsthree, was expected by the astrologers to bring a great mutation in the order of our planet. The celestial signs were supposed to reassume the position they had occupied at Christ's nativity. Campanella, who believed in astrology, looked forward with intense anxiety to this turning-point in modern history. It is clear from the termination of the sonnet that he wrote it some time before the great date; and we are hence perhaps justified in referring the rest of his prophetic poetry to the same early period of his career.
XLVII.Qui legit intelligat, says Adami. Line 7: refers to the outlying vassals of the Roman Empire, who destroyed it, ruled Rome, and afterwards fell under the yoke of the Roman See. Lines 9-14 are an invective against the Papacy.
XLVIII. A sonnet on his own prison. The prison or worse was the doom of all truth-seekers in Campanella's age.
XLIX. For the understanding of this strange composition Adami offers nothing more satisfactory thanmira quante contraposizioni sono in questo sonetto. The contrast is maintained throughout between the philosopher in the freedom of his spirit and the same man in the limitations of his prisoned life. Line 12 I do not rightly understand. Line 14 refers to Paradise.
L. There is an allusion in this sonnet to an obscure passage in Campanella's life. It seems he was condemned to the galleys (see line 12); and this sentence was remitted on account of his real or feigned madness. We should infer from the poem itself that his madness was simulated; but Adami, who ought to have known the facts from his own lips, writes:quando bruciò il letto, e divenne pazzo o vero o finto. Line 12: I have translatedl'astrattobythe mystic;astrattoisassorto, orlost in ecstatic contemplation.
LI. To this incomprehensible string of proverbs Adami adds, ironically perhaps:questo è assai noto ed arguto e vero. It is an answer to certain friends, officers and barons, who accused him of not being able to manage his affairs. He answers that they might as well bring the same accusation against Christ and all the sages. Line 3: I have ventured to readèforeas the only chance of getting a meaning. Line 8: seems to mean that he would not accept life and freedom at the price of concealing his opinions.
LII. The same theme is rehandled. Lines 1-4: Campanella argued that a man's mental life extends over all that he grasps of the world's history. Line 5: the Italian formiteismarmeggio, which means, I think, a cheese-worm. The eclipse of Campanella's sun is his imprisonment. Lines 7 and 8 I do not well understand in the Italian. Line 11: 'Ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,' Lines 12-14: saints and sages are made perfect by suffering.
LIII. A singular argument concerning prayer. Campanella says it is impious to hope to change the order and facts of the world, arranged by God, except in the single category of time. He therefore thinks it lawful for him to ask, and for God to grant, a shortening of the season of his suffering. See the Canzone translated by me, forming Appendix I.
LIV. Another sonnet referring to his life in prison. He asks God how he can prosper if his friends all fail him for various reasons. Lines 9-11 refer to the visit of a foe in disguise who came to him in prison and promised him liberty, probably with a view to extracting from him admissions of state-treason or of heresy. See the Canzone translated in Appendix I. The last three lines seem to express his unalterable courage, and his readiness to act if only God will give him trustworthy instruments and fill him with His own spirit. The Dantesque language of the last line is almost incapable of reproduction:
Ch' io m' intuassi come tu t' immii.
LV. Campanella tells his friend that such trivial things as pastoral poems will not immortalise him. He bids him seek, not outside in worn out fictions, but within his own soul, for the spirit of true beauty, turn to God for praise, instead of to a human audience, and go with thetabula rasaof childlike intelligence into God's school of Nature. Compare Nos I., V.
LVI. Campanella recognised in Telesio the founder of the new philosophy, which discarded the ancients and the schoolmen. Line 3: the tyrant is Aristotle. Lines 5 and 6: Bombino and Montano are the poets. Lines 7-9: Cavalcante and Gaieta were disciples of the Cosentine Academy founded by Telesio. Line 9: our saint,la gran donna, is the new philosophy. Line 12: my tocsin,mia squilla, is a pun on Campanella's name.
LVII. Rudolph von Bunau set himself at the age of sixteen to philosophise, travelled with Adami, and with him visited Campanella in prison at Naples. Campanella cast his horoscope and predicted for him a splendid career, exhorting him to make war upon the pernicious school of philosophers, who encumbered the human reason with frauds and figments, and prevented the free growth of a better method.
LVIII. Adami, to whom we owe the first edition of these sonnets, visited Campanella in the Castle of S. Elmo, having wandered through many lands, like Diogenes, in search of a man. Line 5: this, says Adami, 'refers to a dream or vision of a sword, great and marvellous, with three triple joints, and arms, and other things, discovered by Tobia Adami, which the author interpreted by his primalities'—that is, I suppose, by the trinity of power, love, wisdom, mentioned in No. VII. Line 6: Abaddon is the opposite of Christ, the lord of the evil of the age. Cp. note to No. XLI.
LIX. This is in some respects the most sublime and most pathetic of Campanella's sonnets. He is the Prometheus (see last line of No. I.) who will not slay himself, because he cannot help men by his death, and because his belief in the permanency of sense and thought makes him fear lest he should carry his sufferings into another life. God's will with regard to him is hidden. He does not even know what sort of life he lived before he came into his present form of flesh. Philip, King of Spain, has increased the discomforts of his dungeon, but Philip can do nothing which God has not decreed, and God never by any possibility can err.
LX. Arguments from design make us infer an all wise, all good Maker of the world. The misery and violence and sin of animate beings make us infer an evil and ignorant Ruler of the world. But this discord between the Maker and Ruler of the world is only apparent, and the grounds of the contradiction will in due time be revealed. See No. XIII. and note.
I have translated one Canzone out of Campanella's collection, partly as a specimen of his style in this kind of composition, partly because it illustrates his personal history and throws light on many of the sonnets. It is the first of three prayers to God from his prison, entitled by AdamiOrazioni tre in Salmodia Metafisicale congiunte insieme.
Almighty God! what though the laws of FateInvincible, and this long misery,Proving my prayers not merely spent in vainBut heard and granted crosswise, banish meFar from Thy sight,—still humbly obstinateI turn to Thee. No other hopes remain.Were there another God with vows to gain,To Him for succour I would surely go:Nor could I be called impious, if I turnedIn this great agony from one who spurned,To one who bade me come and cured my woe.Nay, Lord! I babble vainly. Help! I cry,Before the temple where Thy reason burned,Become a mosque of imbecility!
Well know I that there are no words which canMove Thee to favour him for whom Thy graceWas not reserved from all eternity.Repentance in Thy counsel finds no place:Nor can the eloquence of mortal manBend Thee to mercy, when Thy sure decreeHath stablished that this frame of mine should beRent by these pangs that flesh and spirit tire.Nay if the whole world knows my martyrdom—Heaven, earth, and all that in them have their home—Why tell the tale to Thee, their Lord and Sire?And if all change is death or some such state,Thou deathless God, to whom for help I come,How shall I make Thee change, to change my fate?
Nathless for grace I once more sue to Thee,Spurred on by anguish sore and deep distress:—Yet have I neither art nor voice to pleadBefore Thy judgment-seat of righteousness.It is not faith, it is not charity,Nor hope that fails me in my hour of need;And if, as some men teach, the soul is freedFrom sin and quickened to deserve Thy graceBy torments suffered on this earth below,The Alps have neither ice, I ween, nor snowTo match my purity before Thy face!For prisons fifty, tortures seven, twelve yearsOf want and injury and woe—These have I borne, and still I stand ringed round with fears.
We lay all wrapped with darkness: for some sleptThe sleep of ignorance, and players playedMusic to sweeten that vile sleep for gold:While others waked, and hands of rapine laidOn honours, wealth, and blood; or sexless creptInto the place of harlots, basely bold.—I lit a light:—like swarming bees, behold!Stripped of their sheltering gloom, on meSleepers and wakers rush to wreak their spite:Their wounds, their brutal joys disturbed by light,Their broken bestial sleep fill them with jealousy.—Thus with the wolves the silly sheep agreedAgainst the valiant dogs to fight;Then fell the prey of their false friends' insatiate greed.
Help, mighty Shepherd! Save Thy lamp, Thy hound,From wolves that ravin and from thieves that prey!Make known the whole truth to the witless crowd!For if my light, my voice, are cast away—If sinfulness in these Thy gifts be found—The sun that rules in heaven is disallowed.Thou knowest without wings I cannot fly:Give me the wings of grace to speed my flight!Mine eyes are always turned to greet Thy light:Is it my crime if still it pass me by?Thou didst free Bocca and Gilardo; these,Worthless, are made the angels of Thy might.—Hast Thou lost counsel? Shall Thine empire cease?
With Thee I speak: Lord, thou dost understand!Nor mind I how mad tongues my life reprove.Full well I know the world is 'neath Thine eye.And to each part thereof belongs Thy love:But for the general welfare wisely plannedThe parts must suffer change;—they do not die,For nature ebbs and flows eternally;—But to such change we give the name of DeathOr Evil, whensoe'er we feel the strifeWhich for the universe is joy and life,Though for each part it seems mere lack of breath.—So in my body every part I seeWith lives and deaths alternate rife,All tending to its vital unity.
Thus then the Universe grieves not, and IMid woes innumerable languish stillTo cheer the whole and every happier part.—Yet, if each part is suffered by Thy willTo call for aid—as Thou art God most High,Who to all beings wilt Thy strength impart;Who smoothest every change by secret art,With fond care tempering the force of fate,Necessity and concord, power and thought,And love divine through all things subtly wrought—I am persuaded, when I iterateMy prayers to Thee, some comfort I must findFor these pangs poison-fraught,Or leave the sweet sharp lust of life behind.
The Universe hath nought that changes not,Nor in its change feels not the pangs of pain,Nor prays not unto God to ease that woe.Mid these are many who the grace obtainOf aid from Thee:—thus Thou didst rule their lot:And many who without Thy help must go.How shall I tell toward whom Thy favours flow,Seeing I sat not at Thy council-board?One argument at least doth hearten meTo hope those prayers may not unanswered be,Which reason and pure thoughts to me afford:Since often, if not always, Thou dost willIn Thy deep wisdom, Lord,Best laboured soil with fairest fruits to fill.
The tilth of this my field by plough and hoeYields me good hope—but more the fostering sunOf Sense divine that quickens me within,Whose rays those many minor stars outshone—That it is destined in high heaven to showMercy, and grant my prayer; so I may winThe end Thy gifts betoken, enter inThe realm reserved for me from earliest time.Christ prayed but 'If it may be,' knowing wellHe might not shun that cup so terrible:His angel answered, that the law sublimeOrdained his death. I prayed not thus, and mine—Was mine then sent from Hell?—Made answer diverse from that voice divine.
Go song, go tell my Lord—'Lo! he who liesTortured in chains within a pit for Thee,Cries, how can flight be freeWingless?—Send Thy word down, or ThouShow that fate's wheel turns not iniquity,And that in heaven there is no lip that lies.'—Yet, song, too boldly fliesThy shaft; stay yet for this that follows now!
The 'Rivista Europea' of June 1875 publishes an article by Signor V. de Tivoli concerning an inedited sonnet of Michael Angelo, which he deciphered from the Autograph, written upon the back of one of the original drawings in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford. This drawing formed part of the Ottley and Lawrence Collection. It represents horses in various attitudes, together with a skirmish between a mounted soldier and a group of men on foot. Signor de Tivoli not only prints the text with all its orthographical confusions, abbreviations, and alterations; but he also adds what he modestly terms a restoration of the sonnet. Of this restoration I have made the subjoined version in rhyme, though I frankly admit that the difficulties of the text, as given in the rough by Signor de Tivoli, seem to me insuperable, and that his readings, though ingenious, cannot in my opinion be accepted as absolutely certain. He himself describes the MS. as a palimpsest, deliberately defaced by Michael Angelo, from which the words originally written have to be recovered in many cases by a process of conjecture. That the style of the restoration is thoroughly Michael Angelesque, will be admitted by all students of Signor Guasti's edition. The only word I felt inclined to question, isdonnein line 13, where I should have expecteddonna. But I am informed that about this word there is no doubt. The sonnet itself ranks among the less interesting and the least finished compositions of the poet's old age.
Thrice blest was I what time thy piercing dartI could withstand and conquer in days past:But now my breast with grief is overcast;Against my will I weep, and suffer smart.And if those shafts, aimed with so fierce an art,The mark of my frail bosom over-passed,Now canst thou take revenge with blows at lastFrom those fair eyes which must consume my heart.O Love, how many a net, how many a snareShuns through long years the bird by fate malign,Only at last to die more piteously!Thus love hath let me run as free as air,Ladies, through many a year, to make me pineIn sad old age, and a worse death to die.
The following translations of a madrigal, a quatrain, and a stanza by Michael Angelo, may be worth insertion here for the additional light they throw upon some of the preceding sonnets—especially upon Sonnets I. and II. and Sonnets LXV.-LXXVII. In my version of the stanza I have followed Michelangelo the younger's readings.
Per molti, donna.
'Lady, for joy of lovers numberlessThou wast created fair as angels are.Sure God hath fallen asleep in heaven afar,When one man calls the bliss of many his!Give back to streaming eyesThe daylight of thy face that seems to shunThose who must live defrauded of their bliss!''Vex not your pure desire with tears and sighs:For he who robs you of my light, hath none.Dwelling in fear, sin hath no happiness;Since amid those who love, their joy is less,Whose great desire great plenty still curtails,Than theirs who, poor, have hope that never fails.'
Caro m' è'l sonno.
Sweet is my sleep, but more to be mere stone,So long as ruin and dishonour reign;To bear nought, to feel nought, is my great gain;Then wake me not, speak in an undertone!
Ohimè, ohimè!
Ah me! Ah me! whene'er I thinkOf my past years, I find that noneAmong those many years, alas, was mine;False hopes and longings vain have made me pine,With tears, sighs, passions, fires, upon life's brink.Of mortal loves I have known every one.Full well I feel it now; lost and undone,From truth and goodness banished far away,I dwindle day by day.Longer the shade, more short the sunbeams grow;While I am near to falling, faint and low.