Part 7

Wisdom and love, O Bina, gave thee wings, Before the blossom of thy years had faded, To fly with Adam for thy guide, God-aided, Through many lands in divers journeyings. Pure virtue is thy guerdon: virtue brings Glory to thee, death to the foes degraded, Who through long years of darkness have invaded Thy Germany, mother of slaves not kings. Yet, gazing on heaven's book, heroic child, My soul discerns graces divine in thee:-- Leave toys and playthings to the crowd of fools! Do thou with heart fervent and proudly mild Make war upon those fraud-engendering schools! I see thee victor, and in God I see.

LVIII.

_TO TOBIA ADAMI._

_Portando in man._

Holding the cynic lantern in your hand, Through Europe, Egypt, Asia, you have passed, Till at Ausonia's feet you find at last That Cyclops' cave, where I, to darkness banned, In light eternal forge for you the brand Against Abaddon, who hath overcast The truth and right, Adami, made full fast Unto God's glory by our steadfast band. Go, smite each sophist, tyrant, hypocrite! Girt with the arms of the first Wisdom, free Your country from the frauds that cumber it! Swerve not: 'twere sin. How good, how great the praise Of him who turns youth, strength, soul, energy, Unto the dayspring of the eternal rays!

LIX.

_A SONNET ON CAUCASUS._

_Temo che per morir._

I fear that by my death the human race Would gain no vantage. Thus I do not die. So wide is this vast cage of misery That flight and change lead to no happier place. Shifting our pains, we risk a sorrier case: All worlds, like ours, are sunk in agony: Go where we will, we feel; and this my cry I may forget like many an old disgrace. Who knows what doom is mine? The Omnipotent Keeps silence; nay, I know not whether strife Or peace was with me in some earlier life. Philip in a worse prison me hath pent These three days past--but not without God's will. Stay we as God decrees: God doth no ill.

LX.

_GOD MADE AND GOD RULES._

_La fabbrica del mondo._

The fabric of the world--earth, air, and skies-- Each particle thereof and tiniest part Designed for special ends--proclaims the art Of an almighty Maker good and wise. Nathless the lawless brutes, our crimes and lies, The joys of vicious men, the good man's smart, All creatures swerving from their ends, impart Doubts that the Ruler is nor good nor wise. Can it then be that boundless Power, Love, Mind, Lets others reign, the while He takes repose? Hath He grown old, or hath He ceased to heed? Nay, one God made and rules: He shall unwind The tangled skein; the hidden law disclose, Whereby so many sinned in thought and deed.

NOTES ON MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS.

I. Quoted by Donato Giannotti in his Dialogue _De' 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. The _Sonetto a Coda_ is generally humorous or satiric.

VI. Written in one of those moments of _affanno_ or _stizzo_ to 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 changed _lui_ into _lei._ 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 name _Mancina_ is 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's _Lezione_. 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 Platonic _concetti_.

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 his _Lezione_, 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 his _rifacimento_. Instead of the last words he gives _un 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 word _Signor_. 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 written _Mandato_. The two last lines play on the words _signor_ and _signoria_. 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 translated _il 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 of Truth, if seen, would be overwhelming in its brilliancy.

XLIX. The _dolcie pianto_ and _eterna pace_ are the tears and peace of piety. The _doloroso riso_ and _corta pace_ are the smiles and happiness of earthly love.

LII. Here is another version of this very beautiful sonnet.

No mortal thing enthralled these longing eyes When 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 around This 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 fire Of deathless spirits; nor eternity Serves sordid Time, that withers all things rare. Not love but lawless impulse is desire: That slays the soul; our love makes still more fair Our 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 a _jeu 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 the _Cratylus_ of 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. Addressed _A 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.

NOTES ON CAMPANELLA'S SONNETS.

I. Line 1: the Italian words which I have translated _God's Wisdom_ and _Philosophy_ are _Senno_ and _Sofia_. Campanella held that the divine _Senno_ penetrated the whole universe, and, meeting with created _Sofia_, 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 any _Ipse 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 sonnet _scoprimento 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's _Principe_, which was for Campanella the very ideal portrait of a tyrant. The love of God, rightly understood, places man _en rapport_ with 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's _Republic_ after 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 we Reckon the chase or gladiatorial show To 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 slay As tragedy gives men delight, So the exchange of death and strife Still yields a pleasure infinite To the great world's triumphant life Nay seeming ugliness and pain Avert returning Chaos' reign-- Thus the whole world's a comedy, And they who by philosophy Unite themselves to God, will see In ugliness and evil nought But 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 mia_ is 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 words _mentola_ and _mente_ in 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.