Michelangelo's Poetry: Fury of Form [Course Book ed.] 9781400857593

Citation preview

Michelangelo's Poetry

GLAUCO CAMBON

Michelangelo· s Poetry FURY OF FORM

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1985 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Pnnceton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book ISBN 0-691-06648-5 Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Paul Mellon Fund of Princeton University Press This book has been composed in Linotron Bodoni Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey DESIGNED BY LAURY A. EGAN

For Mario Cambon TRUE BROTHER AND TRUE COMMANDER

Contents

Preface

ix

1

Humor, Transgressions, and Ambivalences

3

2 3

Protean Eros

41

Fury of Form

128

Notes

177

Bibliography

203

Index

213

Preface

An arresting quality of the voice in some poems by Michel­ angelo that came my way during my late adolescence (and not in school) somehow kept echoing in the recesses of my memory and startled me into shocked dissent decades later when I happened to read Benedetto Croce's respectful dis­ missal of Michelangelo's Rime in Poesia popolare e poesia d'arte. The tense asperity of the artist's verse was not for the Olympic ears of the great philosopher, historian, and aesthetician who rejected Pirandello for the same reason that Goethe in his time had rejected Kleist and ignored Holderlin. And for that matter, the poets that nurtured my generation in Italy—chiefly Ungaretti and Montale—did not find Croce much more responsive to their innovative writing, sustained though it was by an original grasp of the (individually redis­ covered) European tradition. Since both poets came to ac­ knowledge the importance of Michelangelo as poet inde­ pendently of his stature as a visual artist, it now seems natural for me, in retrospect, to have ventured upstream from a pro­ longed exploration of their work to the steep region where a subsidiary source or at least an ancestral counterpart of it lies. That the neobaroque vein of Ungaretti since Sentimento del

PREFACE

tempo of 1932 could mirror, along with Gongora's and Shake­ speare's, Michelangelo's earnest conceits need surprise no one. On the other hand, Montale's affinity is anything but obvious, and it took his 1975 essay on Michelangelo poeta to reveal it. Not so unpredictably, in that essay Montale emphasized the Dantesque propensities of Michelangelo's "rocky" versification while recognizing its Petrarchan com­ ponent. This led him to place Michelangelo's lyrics for Tommaso Cavalieri, Vittoria Colonna, and the so-called fair and cruel lady in the venerable tradition of Provengal amor de lonh, love from afar, reaching across the centuries into Mon­ tale's own cryptical effusions for "Clizia," the lady forever lost and forever desired. The stylistic and thematic contacts between Montale and Michelangelo may be largely a matter of consonance rather than of outright resonance (to borrow Montale's words), es­ pecially in view of the paramount role that Dante first, and Petrarch later, fulfilled for Montale. Close inspection of Le occasioni and La bufera e altro will nevertheless disclose the extent to which Michelangelo's mannerist sonnets probably acted as filters for the Petrarchan archetype with which Mon­ tale—the "stony" poet of Ossi di seppia—was then coming to terms. The three emblematic, sybilline sonnets of La bufera (along with the three masterly renditions of Shakespearean sonnets in Quaderno di traduzioni) are Petrarchan at one remove—through the compounded mediation of Michelan­ gelo, John Donne, and of course Shakespeare. Montale's el­ oquent reference to Michelangelo's "struggle with the sonnet form" in his 1975 essay implicitly underscores his own anal­ ogous struggle in the war years when he was working on the La bufera poems and on the poetical versions to be collected later in Quaderno di traduzioni. There are no other sonnets in Montale's opus. We can safely infer that his 1975 essay records his encounter with Michelangelo qua poet of about three decades before. The term "mannerist" gives one clue to my treatment of Michelangelo's poetry, apart from its fruitful correlation with the work of Montale. "Mannerism," to be sure, is still a χ

PREFACE

controversial definition when applied to literature, for the several scholars that have favored its extrapolation from the safer domain of the visual arts (where art historians originally devised it) are far from unanimous on its literary implications. There is a world of difference between, say, Arnold Hauser and Georg Weise, or between Wylie Sypher and John Shear­ man on the subject. In the wake of Weise's approach, Amedeo Quondam has come up with a workable if restrictive definition of the term by limiting it to the Petrarchist enhancement of figures of phrase (rather than dazzling metaphors, or figures of word). This restriction fosters an involved rhetoric that tends to seal off the language of poetry from circumambient reality in a privileged, hermetic sphere that mirrors the fairly closed world of the Cinquecento court. Weise insists on Petrarchism with its addiction to wordplay, preciosity, abstract antitheses, and topical conceits, and he sees it as a recourse of Gothic style concurrent with developments in the other arts. Unlike Shearman, however, he does not include Bembo and Bembismo in the mannerist dispensation. By so doing, Shearman in turn is hard put to justify his definition of man­ nerism in general as an "art of excess" in which the pursuit of elegance, preciosity, and uncommon twists generates, at the limit, the bizarre. There is nothing bizarre in Pietro Bembo's close imitation of Petrarch's harmony. Hauser and Sypher, however, link the mannerist phase of Cinquecento art as a whole to the religious and political turmoil that made short work of serene certainties and self-contained classical form as envisaged by Ariosto, Bramante, and Raphael or—before them—by Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, and Poliziano. Yet Shearman, followed by Esther Nyholm in the matter of visual art, rejects that historical interpretation, which Quondam on the other hand adopts with some qualifications. There is no end to this discussion, and I bring it up only to show that my use of the term that is central to it is anything but uncritical. I employ it to designate a salient aspect and phase of Michelangelo's work in verse, and not to pigeonhole him. I do not identify Petrarchism and mannerism tout court;

PREFACE

an offbeat Petrarchist like Michelangelo (or Gongora, or Donne) evinces mannerist aspects that we could hardly find in the conservative Petrarchism of a Pietro Bembo, even if Bembo's dominant influence may have brought about man­ nerist tendencies in some of his followers. If Bembo is the typical mannerist in verse, as Shearman seems to say, then Michelangelo is not, because his appropriation of Petrarch is so iconoclastic that one can hardly mention it in the same breath with Bembo's adoration. The dogmatic prescription of euphony and lexical decorum, so punctiliously observed in Bembo's poetical practice; the attendant rejection of Dante's alleged roughness; the hegemony accorded to Petrarch as a model—all fly in the face of Michelangelo's experimental restlessness, which allowed him to conflate a Petrarchan sit­ uation or motif with the rugged Dantesque vocabulary that was a sty in Bembo's eye (and ear). Shearman's description of mannerism as an art of excess would hardly fit Bembo's tame Pegasus, who never strains against the obbligato paces through which he is constantly put. With Michelangelo, on the contrary, excess lurks every­ where, whether in the surging of prayer and protest against the dykes of metric form, or in the occasional avalanche of metaphor, or in the strained casuistry, or in the twists of syntax that call to mind the "figura serpentinata" so graph­ ically recommended by the master, according to Lomazzo. Visually speaking, Michelangelo's forceful practice of "ser­ pentine form" provided the new painters and sculptors of his time with the most authoritative example they could use in the pursuit of what Vasari was triumphantly to call "the mod­ ern manner" (la maniera moderna). In the domain of verbal art, to be sure, the idiosyncratic syntactical twists and allit­ erative cumulations in which Michelangelo indulges can be too much even for a tolerant ear, and this is the price he pays for tirelessly testing the manifold resources of language. Id­ iosyncrasy, however, may be the special mark of poetical talent that has to wait for true recognition and belated fame. For such reasons—at least for the part of Michelangelo's verse that deals with Vittoria Colonna, Tommaso Cavalieri, Xll

PREFACE

and the "fair and cruel lady"—I prefer the designation "man­ nerist" to "baroque," although I do admit that a few poems, built as they are on the pyrotechnical development of met­ aphor, qualify for the latter definition. This is not meant to discredit Robert Clements's characterization of Michelange­ lo's poetry as baroque but simply to qualify and modulate it. An alternative definition, overlapping the two in question, would be "metaphysical," and indeed I have used this word to stress the intellectual ingredient (of Platonic type) in the conceits of which Michelangelo was almost as prodigal as Campanella, Donne, and Herbert (and Dickinson two cen­ turies later) were going to be. But a further element of the mannerist cult of artifice has to be seen in the fact that the convoluted yet elliptical stylization Michelangelo achieved in his middle phase signaled on his part a full consciousness of his verbal craft, of poetry's autonomy vis-a-vis its occasion. All in all, I try to show how difficult, indeed, inadvisable, it is to force one blanket label on this variegated verse, which includes a strong burlesque vein along with the Dantesque, Petrachan, and Savonarolan components of many differently pitched poems. I agree with Clements that Michelangelo plays many roles, though his voice is recognizable through each. Beginning as I do with an analysis of the poems (mainly burlesque) that show Michelangelo's seminal indebtedness to the folksy style of his mentors Lorenzo and Poliziano, I try to trace his poetical itinerary from a colorful, homespun Flor­ entine Quattrocento matrix through an intellectually sophis­ ticated career. In doing so I never quite let go of the Florentine roots, uncovered in unpredictable ways in the Roman decades up to 1560 when Michelangelo was working at the Pieta Rondanini, the unfinished counterpart in stone of his great religious sonnets from the 1550s. He certainly foreshadowed the baroque, as Heinrich Wolfflin saw a century ago, in both his art and his writing. But in everything he was a noncon­ formist; the age belonged to him, in its various movements, more than he belonged to the age. This being so, I could hardly hope to have done even minimal justice to his poetry if I had insulated it from the

PREFACE

context of eventful history—public and personal—within which it took shape. I have endeavored to treat the poetry as confession and invention at the same time; as existential statement, or autobiography, and, as verbal artifice. My sec­ ond chapter brings that endeavor to a head by focusing on the pervasive theme of eros that seems fundamental to both aspects. But I always come back to the texts; and those texts, in private confrontation, have spoken to me as suggestively as they seem to have spoken to those young scholars whose essays came to my notice too late to influence my work. This is the case with Preti, with Lucente, and with the late Fred­ erick May. As for the textual evolution of some of the major poems Michelangelo's poetical workshop is as revealing as that of Holderlin, Foscolo, and Dickinson. The graph of his suc­ cessive textual choices can be very adventurous, and in one case it may even call to mind the interminable project for Julius II's tomb, whose abandoned byproducts—the Captives, the Palazzo Vecchio Victory—now cluster in our communal memory. After synchronically descrying the formal physiog­ nomy of certain significant poems, it was rewarding to view them in diachronic perspective, to follow their documentable genesis from draft to draft and thereby see and feel his "fury of form" (fiiria della figura, as he is reported to have described his painterly and sculptural quest for dynamic grace) in full action. Such a perusal dispels any lingering misapprehension about Michelangelo's craftsmanlike commitment to the art of the word. The boundless love that recurrently possessed him for fellow humans of spiritual or aesthetic distinction, and the unappeasable striving for supreme form in whatever me­ dium, became one and the same thing, and only death could make him renounce it, no matter how heartfelt his ascetic protestations to the contrary. When prayer absorbs the Pro­ methean energy, Michelangelo gives us some of the most piercing testimonials of his art as poet, and accordingly a survey of his progress from early exuberance to drier diction shows how impressive his achievement and experiment have been.

PREFACE

For practical reasons, when dealing with narrative under­ pinning, thematic links, and synchronic shape of his liberally sampled canzoniere in chapters 1 and 2 I quote the poems in the partly modernized spelling that the Girardi edition of 1960 has adopted—with the exception of the self-caricaturing sonnet numbered 5 by Girardi, where Michelangelo's idio­ syncratic spelling is faithfully reproduced from the manu­ script because it enhances the burlesque intent. In chapter 3, on the contrary, when comparing variants, I retain the spelling of the manuscripts, as Frey did in 1897. As for my English translations, which I have found it advisable to supply for all poems quoted, they are meant to guide the reader to the text and not to compete with the artistically distinguished endeavors of John Addington Symonds, Joseph Tusiani, Creighton Gilbert, and Elizabeth Jennings. Of the several persons and institutions to whom I owe gratitude, I shall mention Robert Clements first, whose lungo studio and grande amore have considerably lightened the task for anybody wishing to come to grips with the difficult verse of Michelangelo. The University of Connecticut's Research Foundation as well as the National Endowment for the Hu­ manities have concurrently made it possible for me to devote prolonged and undivided attention to my project. I wish to thank the staff of the Laurenziana Library in Florence (es­ pecially in the person of its Director, Dr. Antonietta Morandini), Dr. Paola Pirolo Gennarelli of the Manuscripts and Rare Books Department at Florence's Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, and the librarians and colleagues of Florence Uni­ versity's Facolta di Magistero for invaluable courtesy and assistance. In Florence I also owe much to the friendship of Mrs. Piera Archi and her family, and to the advice of Pro­ fessors Marzia Pieri Toschi, Alessandro Parronchi, Claudio Varese, Sergio Romagnoli, Oreste Macn, and Piero Bigongiari. The noted Michelangelo scholar, and Director of Villa I Tatti, Professor Craig Hugh Smyth, and the librarians at Villa I Tatti have been very helpful and courteous. The Di­ rector of the Vatican Library in Vatican City has helped me to gain mediated access to Codice Vaticans Latino 3211, the

PREFACE

important Buonarrotian manuscript kept there at a time when its direct use was restricted to the publishers and editors of a new highly sophisticated facsimile edition. The colleagues and students of Bologna University's Facolta di Magistero have earned my thanks for their warm and discriminating response to a test lecture in which I outlined the basic findings and guidelines of my research on Michelangelo's poetry, and the same goes for the colleagues and students of Turin Uni­ versity's Facolta di Lettere, and of Smith College in North­ ampton, Massachusetts. Last but not least my wife, Marlis Zeller, along with our children, deserves an affectionate men­ tion for the understanding, support, and interest shown throughout the long period of my research and writing. Glauco Cambon November 1983

Michelangelo's Poetry

Fourth draft of sonnet G 285 in folio 24a of Codice Vaticano Latino 3211 at Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City

Humor, Transgressions, and Ambivalences In 1898 Heinrich WoKflin gave this afterthought on the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, which he had just described as a triumph of vitality: If the figures painted on the ceiling did not so clearly betray the surging joy of their creator at work, one could say that the artist had vented his bad mood there and endeavored to avenge himself for the unloved task: let the Vatican gentlemen get their ceiling, but they might as well have to strain their necks for it.1 Whether Wolfflin thought of it or not when writing that pas­ sage, a burlesque poem by Michelangelo himself voices the resentment we could never descry in the hovering giants that sprang from his brush during the years of this Herculean labor (1508-1512). It is a well-known caudate sonnet penned in the same period,2 apparently never meant for publication (unlike so many others), and it is visually corroborated by a

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

sketch in which the artist caricatures himself in the act of painting a ceiling just above his head. The poem is kept in the Archivio Buonarroti at the Florence Laurenziana Library,3 but the critical editions of Michelangelo's poetry by Guasti (1863) and Frey (1897)4 had made it widely known by the time Wolfflin published his book on Italian Renaissance art: I'o gia facto un gozo in questo stento chome fa l'acqua a' gacti in Lombardia ο ver d'altro paese che si sia ch'a forza Ί ventre apicha socto Ί mento. La barba al cielo ella memoria sento in sullo scrignio e Ί pecto fo d'arpia. e Ί pennel sopra Ί uiso tuctavia mel fa gocciando un ricco pauimento. E' lombi entrati mi son nella peccia e fo del cul per chontrappeso groppa e' passi senza gli ochi muouo inuano. Dinanzi mi s'allunga la chorteccia, e per piegarsi indietro si ragroppa, e tendomi com'archo soriano. Pero fallace e strano surgie el iuditio che la mente porta che mal si tra' per cerboctana storta. La mia pictura morta difendi ormai Giovanni e Ί mio onore non sendo in loco bon ne io pictore. I've developed a goiter on this chore, as water does to cats in Lombardy or wherever such kind of trouble happens, for my belly strains up to touch my chin. My beard rears up, my occiput I feel upon my back, my chest turns harpy-like, and the paintbrush drips all over my face so as to make a gaudy floor of it. My loins have pushed up well into the paunch, I use my butt for counterweight as crupper, my feet I move, unseeing, to little purpose.

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

On the front side my pelt stretches lengthwise, on the back it wrinkles up as I bend, and I tauten much like a Syrian bow. Therefore my very faculty of judgment has become faulty and odd, for it is hard to shoot a dart through an old crooked pipe. My painting, which is dead, now please defend, Giovanni, and my honor too, for I am out of place, and am no painter. Since biographical sources and direct evidence tend to date the inception of Michelangelo's verse writing either to the last years of the fifteenth century or to the first years of the six­ teenth (mainly 1502),5 this sonnet belongs to the first phase of his poetry, not to the ripe harvest of those definitively Roman years (the 1530s and 1540s) that saw his involvement with Tommaso Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna and his sodality with fellow expatriates from Florence like Luigi del Riccio and Donato Giannotti. The burlesque sonnet might accord­ ingly strike us as marginal to Michelangelo's main body of poetical work, as indeed part and parcel of his literary ap­ prenticeship, considering the dominance of Platonic earnest in theme and style of his mature phase.6 It is this earnest, with the attendant soarings, sublimations, and convolutions, that first comes to our minds when we think of Michelangelo as poet; we do not primarily consider him an earthy Bernesque writer, regardless of the admiration Berni professed for his style (all things and no words for their own sake),7 an ad­ miration that was not limited to the burlesque parts of Mi­ chelangelo's canzoniere. Now the relative importance or ratio of comical to "serious" writing in Michelangelo's canon, while drastically lower than is the case with Berni or with Lorenzo de' Medici (Michel­ angelo's patron and substitute father in the formative years from 1489 to 1492), does bear scrutiny. To begin with, the comical vein does not entirely dry up after Michelangelo's initial phase; it cannot be relegated to mere apprenticeship even though his literary talent for the most part developed in another direction altogether. We only have to recall the strik-

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

ing capitolo ternario from the 1540s where the artist lavishes saturnine humor on a caricature of himself in the compounded predicament of isolation, filth, pent-up bile, poor health, and relentless hard work. And then there is the late sonnet written to Giorgio Vasari by way of a thank-you note for some practical gifts (a mule and sundry victuals), though the mood here is jovial, not atrabilious. Earlier work in a comparable mode can also be adduced, notably the three ottava rima stanzas (G 20, from 1518-1524) obviously echoing Lorenzo de' Med­ ici's comico-rustical idyll Nencia da Barberino,8 then the similarly attuned and incomplete stanzas G 54 from 15311532, and the affable capitolo ternario G 85 of 1534 to Fran­ cesco Berni. Statistics and chronology aside, there are further aspects to be taken into account. Michelangelo's ineradicable Tuscan wit is attested by Vasari and Condivi, and it was certainly nurtured in Lorenzo's entourage at the San Marco gardens. There Pico della Mirandola, Cristoforo Landino, and Marsilio Ficino acquainted the apprentice sculptor with the essentials of Plato's thought while Angelo Poliziano and Lorenzo himself administered a good dose of vernacular humor to spice up the diet of literary sophistication to which Michelangelo was treated daily at the Medici table. Lorenzo's and Poliziano's affinity for Tuscan folk taste is well known and amply doc­ umented by some of their best poetry; it was also compatible with their humanist erudition. Michelangelo's variations on Laurentian rustic theme and mode in the strambotto-\ike stan­ zas mentioned above are one result of that rich exposure and a proof of its fruitfulness—for in the transition from G 20 to G 54 a leavening takes place, and certain attitudes of dis­ course and imagery show consonance with much else in his canzoniere. The same can be said of the differently keyed sonnet cited above. It has nothing immature or uncertain about it, and it formulates recurrent motifs of the Rime. The racy lexicon and idiomatic phrasing quicken the diction. It is a pungent Florentine voice we hear, straight from the market square, and if it makes the persona its own reflexive target it is because it can laugh at the whole world. The laughter has the savagery of satire without moralizing purposes; it is

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

rage turned inside out, with the result that caricature wreaked on the self-punishing speaker arouses a cathartic hilarity. Realist depiction is pushed by hyperbole to the verge of hallucinatory effect—a process that will peak in the capitolo of the 1540s with its similar subject and approach to paint an anti-self-portrait that is also the portrait of Michelangelo's anti-self, his underground voice. Underground and Florentine with a vengeance, the sonnet cannot be abstracted from its occasion, the protracted work in Pope Julius II's Rome. If we accept Girardi's 1512 dating, the same predicament also elicited a scathing invective from the poet in sonnet G IO.9 Chafing at Julius's overbearing, unpredictable moods (and see the complaint voiced in sonnet G 6) and resenting the blatant intrigues of the Roman court, Michelangelo could not help feeling a deep loneliness. Thus he would delve into his municipal soil to find relief in the earthy dialect that was himself, his roots, his forsaken city. The savage mirth of those words from the Arno's shore, gozzo, scrigno, peccia, cul, corteccia·, words to horrify the effete courtiers and Petrarchizing purists; words to be felt, not just heard, in their tactile quality, like clay to be modeled into bizarre shapes or flung at irritating strangers; the bluntness of statement; the liberating outrage—it was all an epistolary conspiracy with the witty fellow Tuscan, Giovanni da Pistoia, who was to receive more such "off the record" missives from Michelangelo. To view the sonnet as a mere literary exercise in the familiar Florentine tradition that went all the way back to Cecco Angiolieri two centuries before and to Rustico di Filippo, as if the mask had nothing to do with the outraged-amused writer, would do it scant justice.10 Michelangelo was always the careful craftsman in whatever he did, including literary ex­ ercise; yet such exercise was deeply motivated. The confes­ sional stance was intrinsic to his whole writing, even at its most artificial. We can also profitably reflect on the circum­ stance that, though this poem has generally been seen as a link in the intermittent chain of Michelangelo's "Bernesque" verse, it took shape long before its author could have heard of Berni, who was still in his teens at the time. Michelangelo,

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

who did get some literary education along with the solid training in painting and sculpture, toward the turn of the century immersed himself in the protracted study of vernac­ ular classics, Dante and Petrarch in particular (as Condivi reports in his biography). A 1534 lyric (G 84) shows aware­ ness of the "three styles" (the low, the middle, and the lofty) in literature, and we can credit its author with the discrim­ ination needed to comply with the requirements of the art to which he last initiated himself to practice it with almost lifelong fidelity (i.e. until 1560). As with the other arts he mastered, the craftsman's discipline helped to make the me­ dium transparent and pliable to his inner fire. Writing was a challenge, not a hobby. There can be little doubt that in the "low-style" vernacular chosen for an expressive outlet in sonnet G 5, medium promptly matched motive to make it easier for the under­ ground man in Michelangelo to emerge on the page. The manuscript shows no variant or erasure, and there are no other known drafts. One aspect we have failed to consider so far in this cantankerous persona is the extent to which his rebellion involves the very art he had been practicing rather than just the formidable pope who kept him at it. Michel­ angelo's final disclaimer of his status as a painter cannot be taken at face value, if we but keep in mind the impressive upshot of his back-breaking toil at the Sistine Chapel's ceil­ ing; not even his epistolary avowals of preference for sculpture over painting will make us forget that he earnestly competed with other artists to secure this task while having to engage in the planning and execution of the project that was to be, for over three decades, his marble albatross: Julius II's mon­ umental tomb. Far from intruding on our interpretive com­ mitment, these biographical facts help us to understand the poem that took shape as a private communication to a friend fully aware of the circumstances. All we can do is eavesdrop on the concentrated exchange. About thirty-five years later the tercets that take up the topic in comparable vein (G 267) will give* us less "in-talk" and more direct revelation, since the persona will be explicitly speaking to himself rather than to a conspiratorially addressed correspondent; and in talking

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

to himself he will grimly, if humorously, take stock of every­ thing he is and has done. Meanwhile, if we listen to the private conversation between Michelangelo and Giovanni da Pistoia during a lull in the painter's relentless work, we get a surprising unofficial pic­ ture. The giant turns dwarf, the sublime artist plays "angel of the odd" to make light of the burden he has taken on. It is a liberating game, we guess, for the destructive self-car­ icature has a hearty overtone and the low-pitched voice evinces a breeziness that undercuts the literal message. Yet the coda tercets prevent us from taking the bulk of the sonnet as pure tongue-in-cheek talk, so earnest they are. Or are they? Is not their seriousness actually a new mask, a subtler counterfeit of tone? Our judgment sways in the scales like the writer's own, "fallacious and strange." The self-mockery channels a protest, but the protest in turn fails to stifle the bizarre hilarity of the whole scene. Michelangelo demystifying himself and his own best work is uproarious, and if in the process he has belittled his figure to offset the majestic images with which he manages to people that murderous ceiling, the laughter is still gigantic. He seems to dismiss the whole endeavor with an annoyed gesture, but the incongruity between that gesture and the permanent out­ come of the endeavor so decried can only heighten our won­ derment at the pent-up genius who could both release such boundless energy and make merciless fun of the procedure. Try as he may, the underground man cannot convince us of his smallness. He is the genie in the bottle, as poem G 267 will clarify after 1545: I' sto rinchiuso come la midolla da la sua scorza, qua pover e solo, come spirto legato in un'ampolla . . . I am enclosed as the fruit's pulp is by its own husk, poor and alone as I am here, like a genie confined within a bottle. . . . The related image of pulp and husk already looms in the 1511-1512 sonnet, second tercet:

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

Dinanzi mi s'allunga la chorteccia, e per piegarsi indietro si ragroppa, e tendomi chom'arco soriano. On the front side my pelt stretches lengthwise, on the back it wrinkles up as I bend, and I tauten much like a Syrian bow. The Italian word corteccia (from Latin cortex) is multivalent; in this context it metaphorically denotes the human skin (and that has reminded some scholars, especially Robert Clem­ ents,11 of the skin of St. Bartholomew in the Sistine Last Judgment, of which Michelangelo was to make a bizarre selfportrait). Its primary meaning, however, is vegetal, denoting either a fruit's husk or peel or a tree's bark, and in this sense its synonym scorza recurs not only in the burlesque tercets of G 267 but also in some high-pitched madrigals, notably G 152 and G 158, with the same self-disparaging implication: tal alcun'opre buone, per l'alma che pur trema, cela il superchio della propria carne co' l'inculta sua cruda e dura scorza just so some good works, for the still trembling soul, my own excess flesh hides with its uncouth, crude and crusty shell (G 152) Caduto e il frutto e secca e gia la scorza, e quel, gik dolce, amaro or par ch'i' senta Fallen the fruit and dry is now its husk, and what was sweet tastes bitter now to me. (G 158) Clements connects this recurrent imagery (for which see also G 51) to the salient theme of the potential form hiding in the marble block as it waits for the sculptor's liberating mallet and chisel, with its metaphoric correlative of the redeemed

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

soul waiting to be released from its enveloping shell of flesh and sin, and madrigal 152 makes the connection good. On a different line of development, in the burlesque tercets of the late 1540s the image ushers in the climactic one of the genie in the bottle, whereas in the caudate sonnet from 1511-1512 it modulates into the likewise significant simile of the Syrian bow. And here we may notice a consonance with the motto-like verse that Michelangelo had jotted down ten years before on a sheet carrying two sketches of a David figure: Davicte colla fromba e io coll'arco. Michelagnolo. David with his sling and I with the bow. Michelagnolo. Even if we accept Girardi's interpretation, according to which the sling stands for strength and the bow for ingeniousness, it is far from inappropriate to descry a similarity of meaning and function in the comical simile of the bow as the sonnet uses it, for it conveys resilience, namely strength and re­ sourcefulness combined on the part of the grotesquely strug­ gling persona. In the very teeth of the unsparing reflexive sarcasm, this makes the difference between total defeat and survival. It also outlines a dynamic pattern that can be said to typify Michelangelo's syntactical rhythms and overall po­ etic impact: torsion, tension, and sudden release. Nor is this pattern irrelevant to the "serpentine form" that Lomazzo re­ ports as Michelangelo's specific prescription for pictorial or sculptural design12 and that actually marks so much of his visual art. Since the caudate sonnet on the Sistine ceiling labors an­ ticipates in significant respects the capitolo ternario from the late 1540s, it would seem advisable to analyze the two re­ vealing poems in juxtaposition, chronologically distant though they are; but before spanning that long interval for the sake of specific comparison, I will touch on the other burlesque poems that intervene. I shall leave out of this context the U

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

biting sonnet G 6 (a reproach to Pope Julius II that casts additional light on the preceding poem) as well as the better known sonnet G 10, which—as an outburst against Roman corruption and personal wrongs—has obvious power (thanks to the germane folksy language) but nothing properly hu­ morous about it. Closer to our context is poem G 20, a set of three ottava rima stanzas in the manner of Lorenzo the Magnificent's rustic idyll, Nencia da Barberino; it shows the eager versatility of Michelangelo in a phase of his literary development (1518-1524) when he was still feeling his way into expressive maturity and eclectically appropriating many a cherished model. It also bespeaks his love for the rich native idiom of the Florentine countryside, a welcome relief from the stylized rarefactions to which Petrarchan mannerism was subjecting literary Tuscan. Michelangelo himself was no stranger to that rarefying trend, since Petrarch (if not Bembo's Petrarchism) was with him from the start, to judge from several pieces of his early season that pale by comparison with the coeval endeavors in the burlesque, satirical, or polemical mode. Symptomatically enough, a nonburlesque love poem from 1507 (sonnet G 4) had achieved a sensuous grace that is missing from his early attempts at Petrarchan style; and if Clements has rightly indicated in certain verses from Poliziano's Stanze per la giostra the lexical and iconic model,13 that model is so successfully appropriated that the tribute to a vanished master becomes a personal achievement on the part of the pupil. I would not hesitate to place this joyful lyric alongside the humanist sculpture of the Bargello Bacchus as evidence of the surviving Quattrocento spirit in an artist bound for bleaker shores. But the folklike stanzas of poem G 54, at the beginning of the 1530s, resume the Nencia-Iike intonation of G 20 to modulate it into a variegated mimesis of nonrustic plebeian language. Some critics (Barelli, for instance) have defined this language as Bernesque to char­ acterize its comical hyperboles without taking the trouble to add that, if anything, Michelangelo here outdoes his younger friend in stylistic capers and, above all, in emotional fervor.

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

By 1531-1532 (the dating to be gathered from the manuscript itself) Berni was famous, and his maverick work could very well stimulate Michelangelo's offbeat strain; at the same time, if Lorenzo and Berni (and perhaps Angiolieri for the initial cadence) must be reckoned with as compounded models, the experiment goes way beyond literary pastiche to achieve a strange dramatic tone of its own. Berni's burlesque verse, like his literary parodies, has a steadier ring, whereas Mi­ chelangelo's voice restlessly ranges through an ample register from low to high and back, and the earthy imagery, which does not shun scatology, can also light up into glowing intensity. Several images stay with us for their poignant concreteness, sustained as it is by a narrative fluency of Florentine plebeian type that authenticates the whole dramatic monologue: Io crederrei, se tu fussi di sasso, amarti con tal fede, ch'i' potrei farti meco venir piu che di passo . . . (lines 1-3) I do believe, were you just made of stone, that I would love you with such faith that I could make you come to me at a brisk pace . . . ; Tu non se' fatta com'un uom da sarti, che si muove di fuor, si muove drento; e se dalla ragion tu non ti parti, spero ch'un di tu mi farai contento: che Ί morso il ben servir toglie a' serpenti, come l'agresto quand'allega i denti . . . (lines 11-16) You are not made like a tailor's manikin, which one can move outside and also inside; and if you don't part company with reason, I hope one day you'll make me happy, finally: for niceness takes away their bite from snakes, the way sour fruit will tie your teeth and tongue . . . ;

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

una nuova nel mondo alta beltate come la tuo non ha 'ltrimenti il core; c'una vagina, ch'e dritta a vedella, non puo dentro tener torte coltella . . . (lines 21-24) a lofty beauty as yours is, which the world never saw the like of, has no other heart; for a sheath that is good and straight to see will never hold a twisted knife inside. . . . And again, in the incomplete fifth stanza, the joy of seeing his reluctant sweetheart after just one day of absence fills our plebeian Romeo like a good meal after long fasting; in stanza 6 he sighs for her, and his sighs "would make a heated furnace even more redhot"; when she is around, he sfavillfa] come ferro in foco ardente sparklejs] like iron glowing in the fire. In the following stanza, when she smiles or greets him on the street he "jumps up like a rocket" and, to his chagrin, be­ comes self-defeatingly speechless; for the great love he feels inside (stanza 8) might lift him up to the stars, but when he wants to express it, there is no suitable outlet, and this im­ mense love once uttered will look and sound too much smaller than it is, such flights of the soul not being amenable to words. With stanza 10, the platonizing motif of the beloved image entering the lover's soul through his eyes to grow into full mastery of his inner being undergoes an uproarious burlesque metamorphosis, which both parodies genteel Renaissance po­ etry (as well as two nonburlesque pieces by Michelangelo himself, madrigal G 8 and fragment G 44) and fulfills the dramatic requirements of the jolly monologue as such. This is the tenor of the two poems in question: How can it be that I am no longer mine? O God, ο God, ο God, who has taken myself away from me

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

so as to be closer to me than myself and have more power on myself than I? O God, ο God, ο God, how can he transfix my heart who does not even seem to touch me? What is this, Love, that enters the heart through the eyes, and in such small space seems to grow inside? What if it were to overflow? (G 8) While to the beauty that I saw before birth my soul draws near, seeing through the eyes, the image grows inside, and my own soul yields and dwindles to worthless paltriness. Love, that busy engineer so apt with tools, keeps coming back so I won't cut the thread [of my life]. (G 44) And this is the tenor of the burlesque monologue at stanza 10: You entered through my eyes, from which 1 pour myself out, as a cluster of unripe grapes pressed into a bottle will regain its full size once past the neck; just so your image, which outside makes me drench in tears, grows inside thanks to the eyes, so that I swell like skin brimming with fat; since you entered me through such a narrow path, I dare not believe you'll ever find your way out. The thematic link among the three passages is emphasized, if anything, by the glaring antinomy between the lofty earnest of poems G 8 and G 44 on the one hand and the thick, degrading comicality of poem G 54's stanza 10. The degra­ dation, however, is far from destructive. Pulling down the fantasies of Platonic love from heaven to earth is the same as translating an abstraction into flesh and blood, and in this case to degrade is to revitalize, as the rich vernacular Ian-

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

guage and the physiological tenor of the imagery show. Laugh­ ter here sounds life-enhancing, not nihilist; Rabelaisian, not Swiftian. The intertextual dialectic between "high" and "low" style mirrors a protracted debate in Michelangelo's own spirit between sensuous and sublimated eros, pagan and ChristianPlatonic values, a debate reappearing within the scope of many an individual poem and ultimately reflected also in the alternative linguistic choices that we can schematically po­ larize as vernacular Florentine versus stylized literary Tuscan, burlesque versus lyrical-elegiac, plebeian versus intellectual. The debate is also between the underground and the subli­ mated self. But surely the "low" register of the burlesque stanzas on hand is far from monotonous or one-dimensional, if we listen to its modulations. Already stanza 3, pleading for humility and love against cruelty, had developed on a totally nonparodic level of diction and idea while coming to a sharp close with the knife-and-sheath metaphor quoted above—a con­ clusion, by the way, that harmonizes with the folksy sententiousness so prominent in Michelangelo's writing. Then the (self-) parody of stanza 10 shades with stanza 11 into the mercurially baroque simile of the ball inflated to full capacity and then tossed around by the Florentine players with their fists, just as the helpless speaker of the poem fills up with the contemplated image of his lover to jump to the sky at the direct impact of her eyes ("percosso da' tu' occhi al ciel po' m'alzo"). With this caper the poem touches the acme of the bizarre (a bizarre nourished by observant realism, to be sure) to modulate with the last two stanzas into rationalizing re­ flection (stanza 12) and confessional paradox (stanza 13). The remarkable fact is that although these two conclusive stanzas or rispetti do not really jar with the overall intonation, they move away from the mimetic "vulgarity" of the previous ones to come closer and closer to the kind of sophisticated meditation that would have hardly sounded out of tune in the concert of "well-bred" love lyrics (generally Petrarchan) to which Michelangelo himself contributed many a composition. Indeed, the last stanza culminates in an equivalent of the

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

several madrigals on the cherished torment of love for Vittoria Colonna or for the "donna bella e crudele," Michelangelo's dark lady: Tutt'e ripari miei son corti e folli: se l'acqua il foco accende, ogni altro e tardi a camparmi dal mal ch'i' bramo e volli, salvo il foco medesmo. O cosa strana, se Ί mal del foco spesso il foco sana! All my defenses fall short, they are foolish: if fire burns water, nothing else will do to rescue me from the illness I crave, except fire itself. Oh what a strange thing, that fire often should heal the pain of fire! The conceit of fire and water, the concentrated elegant diction mark this conclusion as an utterance of Michelangelo's trou­ badour persona, as if the jocular impersonation of the plebeian lover had been just self-parody and self-disguise, and as if at the end the speaker, having had his cathartic fun with language and mimicry, were unmasking himself before his internalized audience to reveal the essential identity of corn­ iced and sad, plebeian and sophisticated, naive and selfconscious eros. Desire is king—love that moves man and beast, nobleman and serf; love that dictates inside the strang­ est metaphors, whether in the low or in the lofty style. And in the related interplay between low comedy and what the medieval ancestors, Provengal or Sicilian and Tuscan, had called fin' amor (refined love) humor arises, a dawning re­ alization of the irreducible paradox in the human predica­ ment; it will peak, albeit taking a turn for the darker shades, in the self-decrying tercets of the late 1540s. Concurrently we can detect in the thirteen rispetti-like stan­ zas a movement from expansiveness to concentration, from uninhibited laughter and even fecal imagery (stanza 5) to purified stylization; from—I feel tempted to add—Quattro­ cento municipal folksiness, as reflected also in the choice of popular meter, to Cinquecento courtliness. Even the years of

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

composition, 1531-1532, point to the incidence of that his­ torical threshold. Republican Florence has just surrendered (1530) after a long struggle against the besieging pro-Medici forces in which Michelangelo had a prominent role as chief engineer of city fortifications, and Duke Alessandro has reimposed autocracy under Spanish and papal protection; an era is at an end, and this poem, beyond its conscious mimetic intentions, covertly commemorates its demise. No Bacchus, no laughing satyr boy will issue now from the hands of the sculptor who will soon have to leave raped Florence behind for unloved Rome, where he will die without ever revisiting his Tuscan homeland. With the irremediable fall of the Florentine Republic in 1530 and Michelangelo's definitive move to Rome in 1533 (a move prompted by the enmity of Duke Alessandro de' Medici), we may note the disappearance from Michelangelo's verse of that hearty Laurentian laughter whose intermittences had so far brightened his lines—unless we want to include in that vein the light worldly humor of capitolo G 85, written in 1534. A detached, sometimes self-derogatory humor will hover around the fifty epitaphs for Cecchino dei Bracci (1544) in the form of short accompanying messages to Cecchino's uncle, Luigi del Riccio, who kept soliciting those verse trib­ utes from an avowedly reluctant or poetically "dried up" author. "This is for the trout; and if you don't like the piece too much, please don't marinate the trout next time . . ."; "This is for the bread and figs . . "You patch this up, please . . "This is what the trout say, not I . . . Urbino [the assistant and servant] ate them . . ."; "The gawky piece! My spring is dry; we must wait for rain, and you are in too much of a hurry . . ."; "Since poetry was becalmed last night, I'm sending you four bare sketches for the three finer pieces of Mr. Constipation. . . ." The personal note to poem G 197, adding a sexually risque variant, mockingly asks the correspondent to "take those two lines, which are a moral thing" so as to complete the fifteen first compositions he had solicited from the writer. Another poem, from a different context, carries the postscript "Of

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

things divine one speaks in a blue field" because the sheet on which the poem is written happens to be of blue paper. Occasionally the dry humor invades the compositions them­ selves, as when the poet (G 184) puns on Cecchino's family name to say that the latter's "arms" (bracci) were too feeble to repel death's attack, and it would have been better to be "feet" {piedi) and run away from death instead of trying to resist. This could stand, however, as a rare example of Mi­ chelangelo's poetic failures in the worst baroque taste; it matches poem G 177 of 1543, where a Dame Mancini is mourned by proxy with this kind of scoffing epitaph: that if she could have defended herself from death with her right hand, she would have survived, but she happened to be "lefthanded" (mancina)\ Michelangelo's protobaroque leanings, strongly emphasized by Clements,14 do not inevitably result in poetical felicities. After the deaths of Luigi del Riccio in December 1546 and Vittoria Colonna in 1547, Michelangelo abandoned the se­ lective publication project on which del Riccio had been actively helping him. Stricken by those bereavements and plagued by disease, he gathered enough despair and bile to feel the need for an outlet in the form of self-mockery (poem G 267) that pushes to the limit the similar slant of poem G 5. The self-caricature of that early piece had more sheer fun than bitterness; by comparison, the capitolo ternario from the late 1540s has reversed the dosage of those two ingredients to the point where the distillation leaves a bitter taste: unre­ lieved destructiveness lurks in it, the venom of black humor. And if in the comical folk idyll of poem G 54 the persona had been able to state that "allegrezza" (mirth) conquers "dolore" (sorrow), here his visceral utterance tilts the scales the other way: La mia allegrezz'e la maninconia . . . My only mirth is melancholy . . . , which reminds us that this medical term originally meant black bile. The poem has come down to us only in one copy by the

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

hand of Donato Giannotti's scribe, in Archivio Buonarroti Codex Giannotti, and there is no reason to suppose either that it cost its author the fastidious revision process that many other poems underwent, or that he ever penned it with a view to having it published sometime; it sounds rather like a secret confession, a talk to himself from the deep smoldering un­ derground, the "foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart." His closest correspondents had vanished: Giovanni da Pistoia, Sebastiano del Piombo, Luigi del Riccio, Vittoria Colonna— those with whom he could share his laughter or outrage, his intimate concerns, his plans, his spiritual soarings. It is no accident that from now on the overwhelming majority of his letters should be addressed to his nephew Lionardo, a make­ shift son with whom he can have only a one-sided, one-way communication on practical matters that concern the younger man's well being; and while the aging artist lavishes on Lio­ nardo his good old Florentine shrewdness, along with his generosity, he shares next to nothing of his inner self; in fact as the years go on he keeps his nephew at arms' length. We see now why, in deepening and expanding the cue of sonnet G 5 on the troubles of his professional toil, Michelangelo suppresses any reference to a listening "Thou" and transforms dialogue into monologue. He has no one to talk to, and he turns inward to nihilist laughter. He turns to Florence, too; for his voice is never so Flor­ entine as when he wallows in these inner saturnalia. It is the Florence he left behind in space and time, the city he grew up in and fought for, its alleys, squares, and gardens, its churches and palaces, its people who bequeathed their vir­ ulent language to him, and their passion for art. Carnival and Lent would blend in the remembered processions through those streets, the acme of communal allegrezza, mirth, turning into the skeleton dance, a death's head laughter to crown the ritual.15 History confirmed that ritual in macabre jollity. La mia allegrezza e la maninconia: my canto carnascialesco is my acknowledgment that all is vanity, I have no fetishes left, my loves are gone, my body fails, and as to my art, what is the use of making "so many puppets" (Che giova voler far XIV,

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

tanti bambocci)? The kermess of laughter becomes a carnival of death: ch'i' son disfatto, s'i' non muoio presto for I am done for if I don't die soon, the final paradox of the clown persona—clown, and ascetic in thin disguise. The erstwhile admirer of Fra Girolamo Sa­ vonarola will avow, in the last years' access of religious soulsearching, Ne pinger ne scolpir fia piu che queti l'anima, volta a quell'amor divino . . . Neither painting nor sculpture will now appease my soul that turns toward that love divine. . . . A thin line separates the fecal and ribald grotesquerie of poem G 267 from the austere autos da fe of the terminal phase. The grotesquerie is the artist persona's concrete experience seen from the backstage viewpoint, hence the reversal of perspective, language, and tone vis-a-vis the prevalent style in Michelangelo's canzoniere. The (saturnalian) reversal makes a strange phantasmagoria of everyday reality, which a jaundiced yet amused eye heightens, by sheer acuity of observance, to eerie power: I' sto rinchiuso come la midolla da la sua scorza, qua pover e solo, come spirto legato in un' ampolla: e la mia scura tomba e picciol volo, dov'e Aragn' e mill'opre e lavoranti, e fan di lor filando fusaiuolo. D'intorn'a l'uscio ho mete di giganti, che chi mangi'uva ο ha presa medicina non vanno altrove a cacar tutti quanti. I am enclosed just as the fruit's pulp is by its own husk, poor and alone as I am here, like a genie confined within a bottle:

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

my gloomy tomb affords scant space to flight, where Arachne and her countless works and toilers make bobbins of themselves to their own spinning. Around my door I have the dung of giants, for nowhere else will always go to shit those who ate grapes or took some laxative. "Picciol volo," scant space for flight: the pent-up genie had once freely soared, on the wings of love, in the skies that Tommaso Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna had opened to him ("Volo con Ie vostr'ale senza piume ... ," I fly with your wings, I featherless . . .), and he had peopled the huge spaces of the Sistine Chapel. Now he has that mutely blared Dooms­ day of 1541 well behind him. He has crawled back into his nest—den, workshop, and tomb—to cast a detached glance on everything he has been through; his own doomsday is at hand, and the humor is the humor of a survivor, allegrezza e la maninconia. Giordano Bruno, a man of a later generation who is going to burn with a comparable inner fire, will likewise say of himself: In tristitia hilaris, in hilaritate tristis—merry in sadness, sad in mirth. There is emblematic and stylis­ tic consonance between Bruno's high-strung verse and Michelangelo's. All in all, the imagery conveys a sense of inexorable closure to offset an erstwhile openness; "I' sto rinchiuso," I am en­ closed, is the first syntagm, the keynote, and it triggers a series of cognate similes: the pulp within the fruit husk, the genie in the bottle, the lonely man in his tomb-like house and workshop that in turn seems besieged by mountainous filth, and then (tercets 6 and 7) the soul in his filthy, ailing body. In unsparing degradation to the point of cruel selfridicule, the soul cannot issue either from the anus (line 20) or from the mouth (line 21), since the poet even has trouble breathing; the crescendo of disgust from tercets 3 through 7 pushes the self-degrading process to an extent undreamed of in the by now remote sonnet (G 5) on the straining work at the Sistine ceiling. The bluntness of language matches any­ thing in Berni (anything except the sexual lexicon, which is

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

conspicuously absent from Michelangelo's writing in general), and the upshot is a stifling sense of being trapped in matter at its densest, in the carcer terreno, the earthly jail that the Platonizing poet had been alternately decrying and transfig­ uring in his love poetry. The beauty of the body shines with God's own glory; the decay of the body is infernal, and there is no exit save death (last line: "I am done for unless I die soon"). This ambiguity (or isotopy, to use Greimas's terminology16) permeates Michelangelo's verse with structuring force. Here of course it shrinks to its negative pole, recalling the luminous alternative by default: Fiamma d'amor nel cor non m'e rimasa; se Ί maggior caccia sempre il minor duolo, di penne l'alma ho ben tarpata e rasa. No flame of love has remained in my heart; if bigger pain drives out the lesser one, I have a soul plucked clean of any feathers. This eleventh tercet resumes the telescoped image of the second one ("e la mia scura tomba e picciol volo," and my gloomy tomb affords scant space to flight) to push it to its negative extreme, for now the impossibility to fly/flee is de­ termined not just by warping enclosure but by the persona's loss of wings, and in this way even the quantum of hope that could have clung to the lingering potential inherent in the "genie confined within a bottle" is dissolved. One has no trouble recognizing the Platonic panoply in those wings, now clipped, that had lifted the autobiographical persona's soul to the heights of (erotic or religious) ecstasy in so many of the earlier poems for which Marsilio Ficino's remembered conversation and carefully read commentary on Plato's Sym­ posium had provided their ideological incentive.17 The main point is the polarization of structural imagery into openness/ closure, light/dark, infinity/limitation, sky/earth, spirit/mat­ ter, rarefaction/density, energy/inertia, love/disgust. Afterthe losses visited on the aging artist, these poles of experience

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

can be only mutually exclusive instead of complementary, as what Anthony Perry has called the "integrative tradition" of Renaissance Platonism would have postulated in theory and verse.18 A split has occurred and the only conceivable way out of the utter destitution voiced by this autobiographical satire will be the ascetic Christianity of the last poems. Meanwhile the disabused poet pokes fun at his own degradation in mer­ ciless burlesque: Io tengo un calabron in un orciuolo, in un sacco di cuoio ossa e capresti, tre pillole di pece in un bocciuolo. Gli occhi di biffa macinati e pesti, i denti come tasti di stormento c'al moto lor la voce suoni e resti. La faccia mia ha forma di spavento; i panni da cacciar, senz'altro telo, dal seme senza pioggia i corbi al vento. Mi cova in un orecchio un ragnatelo, ne l'altro canta un grillo tutta notte; ne dormo e russ'al catarroso anelo. I have a bumblebee within a jug, bones and tying strings within a leather sack, three pills of pitch inside a little jar. The bluish stone of my eyes crushed and ground, my teeth like keys on a musical instrument to make the voice ring and stop at their motion. My face is downright frightening to look at; my clothes alone would be enough to scare the crows away from the seed into the wind. A spiderweb is nestling in one ear, in the other one a cricket chirps all night; snoring, I catch no sleep at my raspy breath. The same amused note that had come through at the outset with the transmogrified persona keenly watching the ubiq­ uitous spiders at work rings out again in this pathetic and

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

funny self-portrait. It is actually an anti-self-portrait; the artist literally takes himself apart and reduces his own physical reality to a catalogue of unrelated objects. The reifying es­ trangement, the obvious work of a fiorentirw spirito bizzarro turning against himself,19 takes shape as emblematic riddle: the buzzing "bumblebee" in the skull, the skeleton and nerves in their "leather bag," the kidney stones in their "jar"; the eccentric rebus images are connected only by their absurdity and by the common underlying motif of closure, which echoes the iconic series of the first part (tercets 1 through 7). Thus the regressive motion of withdrawal, already formu­ lated in the introductory section, reverberates on an even smaller scale at this point where the object of destructive analysis (his own body) replaces the earlier one (the house with himself in it); and the metaphoric insects are within him just as he in turn is within the house, with a Chinese box effect. The titan makes himself a dwarf, just as he had in the sonnet on the Sistine ceiling labors: the "genie in the bottle" within the house is besieged by [the dung of] "giants" outside. It is part of the saturnalian inversion of roles, even though the genie in the bottle need not be a self-belittling image but rather a regression to pure potentiality. The potentiality, how­ ever, is dissipated, and what is left of the regressively oversheltered genie is bugs and inanimate objects, and finally a scarecrow. As Yeats would say, "An aged man is but a paltry thing, / A tattered coat upon a stick . . ."; and Montale's description of his Muse ("La mia Musa") in his late phase will resort to the same figuration. Yeats and Montale alike were authorities on old age, but Michelangelo in his bitter burlesque vein had pointed the way. The three conclusive tercets gradually drop the burlesque tone to lay bare the unrelieved anguish of the old man who has only death to look forward to. His poems of love and his drawings are put to paltry, dirty use, and what is the point of sculpting so many "bambocci" (puppets, children's stuff, toys) if they have brought him to this pitiful end, like him who crosses the sea only to "drown in snot"? The very last stanza is totally serious and could figure in any of the un-

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

burlesque pieces where our hard-tried artificer unmasks his pain before God: L'arte pregiata, ove alcun tempo fui di tant'opinion, mi rec'a questo, povero, vecchio e servo in forz'altrui, ch'i' son disfatto, s'i' non muoio presto. The vaunted art, in which for a while I was so highly esteemed, now brings me just to this, that I am poor, old and enslaved to others, so that I'm done for if I don't die soon. Once more Michelangelo Buonarroti bares himself. "Pull down thy vanity / I say pull down"; but unlike Pound, who rescues his commitment to art from the harsh self-judgment, Michelangelo finds no such saving grace in the occupation that was his life and his pride. From saturnalian masquerade to a cry de profundis, his was a ruder jolt. We have seen that Michelangelo's burlesque compositions, increasingly sporadic though they may be, are marginal only in appearance. They provide a singular counterpoint to the majority of his lyrics, in which he strove to match the man­ nerist refinement of courtly poetry, and they rehearse the same thematic gamut (love, art, suffering, the pain of aging, death) as the main body of his verse unfolds. At times they function as a distorting mirror of that verse, as is the case with the late 1540s capitolo G 267 that we have just discussed. At other times (see the late sonnet G 299) the jolly style of Tuscan camaraderie and courtesy seems to have replaced clownery and black humor alike, not to mention the asceticism of the coeval sonnets that had left mundane vanities behind. The desultoriness of the comic mode in Michelangelo some­ how testifies to the subterranean persistence of that folksy Florentine current that had surfaced much more frequently in the decades before his final departure from the unrenounceable city. Because this mode connected him with a local tradition of long standing that was in itself the alternative

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

to official Petrarchism, it enabled him to channel deep-seated concerns in the homespun language of his vernacular roots, which he could thus keep alive in his exile. This use of folksy language was a recessive phenomenon within his own canon of verse just as it was in the verse production of Italy at large during the century marked by foreign domination, partial resurgence of feudal economy, and Counter-Reformation. But it kept up an inner debate in Michelangelo that prevented his poetical verve from drying up under the formalizing in­ fluence of courtly mannerism. We can actually trace to the persistence of this inner source the linguistic vigor that makes itself felt in so much of his nonburlesque writing. That pervasive ingredient operates in depth to nurture the vocabulary of a poetry increasingly subjected to the pressure of a leaner style. Take for instance sonnet G 94, which deals with Tommaso Cavalieri in the Platonic convention of sub­ limated love between worthy men that Ficino had certified: D'altrui pietoso e sol di se spietato nasce un vil bruto, che con pena e doglia l'altrui man veste e la suo scorza spoglia e sol per morte si puo dir ben nato. Cosi volesse al mie signor mie fato vestir suo viva di mie morta spoglia, che, come serpe al sasso si discoglia, pur per morte potria cangiar mie stato. O fussi sol la mie l'irsuta pelle che, del suo pel contesta, fa tal gonna che con ventura stringe si bel seno, ch'i' l'arei pure il giorno; ο Ie pianelle che fanno a quel di lor basa e colonna, ch'i' pur ne porterei duo nevi almeno. Merciful to others and to itself alone merciless, a lowly beast is born that painfully clothes the alien hand and sheds its own pelt and through death only can be called well born. Would I were fated in such way to clothe my lord's live body with my own dead skin,

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

so that, as a snake sheds its skin on the rock, even by death I could change my condition. O how I wish that hairy skin were mine which, woven of its fiber, makes a gown so fortunate as to clasp his handsome chest, for then I'd have him by day too; or else to be the slippers that sustain that weight for then I'd carry him for two solid winters. Even if scholars like Edgar Wind and Robert Liebert20 may be right in tracing the central imagery of this poem to the Marsyas myth, a stock reference in humanist culture and Renaissance iconography, the prime impulse comes from a personal imaginative experience to be soon expressed in the self-portrait Michelangelo was going to sketch in the skin dangling from St. Bartholomew's hand in the Last Judgment— an experience already embodied in an early sonnet (G 4) that had no cruel connotations. That sonnet shows, if anything, a touch of erotic fetishism attached to clothes. In describing a Bolognese beauty (with the artful borrow­ ings from Poliziano that Clements has spotted),21 the poem achieves an individualized Buonarrotian tone by the una­ bashed sensual feeling of the sestet, where the speaker envies the woman's ribbon or belt for the privilege to clasp her. And although the poem does not belong to the burlesque type, it is far more significantly remote from the Petrarchan model on account of its rich, suggestive language. This makes it cognate with the burlesque writing that stems from the same Quattrocento source; witness the successful Laurentian im­ personation of peasant eros (G 20) that Michelangelo enacts a little later in the three ottava rima stanzas styled on Lo­ renzo's Nencia. The kinship will result even clearer from a collation of G 4 with the comical ottava rima poem (G 54) written during Michelangelo's last Florentine years (a poem, incidentally, that was to provide him with the knife and sheath simile for one of the Cecchino Bracci epitaphs of 1544). What sonnet G 94 for Cavalieri takes over from the early sonnet for the Bolognese girl is more than a governing image,

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

though that alone would be enough. It is also a concrete language (hairy skin, gown, slippers) and a tactile sensibility to suit the frank embodiment of effusive libido—the same that had leavened the marble form of Bacchus, that had rioted in the Centaur battle bas-relief, that had guided the sculptural painter's eye and hand to shape the Sistine ceiling's Ignudi. Undeniably, a morbid element has entered the picture in the later sonnet, which by comparison makes the kindred lyric from 1507 sound detached despite its linguistic, pic­ torial, and tactile exuberance. The longing for identification with the admired girl's clothes there, while skirting fetishism, expressed an uncomplicated eros; the self-flaying wish to be the clothing of beloved Tommaso, the self-debasing desire to be his footwear in sonnet G 94 from almost three decades later are of a piece with the ecstasy and torment of obsessive love. At this point nothing would prevent the author from covertly recalling the Marsyas myth as an adjunct vehicle to his fantasy while ostensibly clinging to the emblem-like im­ ages of the silkworm and the snake. But the central point is confessional and private, so much so that Michelangelo here is on the verge of undermining the self-imposed Platonic sublimation in the second tercet (the only such instance in the love poems for Cavalieri22). A less intimate ambiguity of note, however, nestles in sonnet G 97: Al cor di zolfo, a la carne di stoppa, a l'ossa che di secco legno sieno; a l'alma senza guida e senza freno al desir pronto, a la vaghezza troppa; a la cieca ragion debile e zoppa al vischio, a' lacci di che Ί mondo e pieno; non e gran maraviglia, in un baleno arder nel primo foco che s'intoppa. A la bell'arte che, se dal ciel seco ciascun la porta, vince la natura, quantunche se ben prema in ogni loco; s'i' nacqui a quella ne sordo ne cieco,

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

proporzionato a chi Ί cor m'arde e fura, colpa e di chi m'ha destinato al foco. With heart of sulphur, with flesh made of tow and bones that are but a heap of dry wood; with a soul lacking all guide and defense against the excesses of a prompt desire; with a blind reason weak enough to stumble and get stuck in the mistletoe and snares the world teems with, it is indeed no wonder that one should blaze at the first fire he meets. If art is lovely, and a gift from Heaven enabling us to conquer even Nature whose stamp is well imprinted on all things; if from birth I'm not deaf or blind to her to match whoever burns and steals my heart, the blame is his/hers who decreed fire my lot. The sonnet is in dead earnest, poles apart from the experi­ ments in rustic idyll as well as from the unsparing, cathartic black humor we saw at work in the capitolo indited around 1547-1549. The vocabulary is far more restrained, it eschews any plebeian, markedly "low" element, to suit the confes­ sional tone aimed at a high level of communication in one version of what Baudelaire would have called "mon coeur mis a nu," my heart laid bare. Yet the blunt, pithy wording in the two opening lines injects an invigorating keynote into the whole utterance; and they appropriately echo a lusty passage in the rustic idyll stanzas of a decade before (G 20, lines 17-19): Quand'io ti ueggo, in su ciascuna poppa mi paion duo cocomer in un sacco, ond'io m'accendo tutto come stoppa When I see you, both of your breasts to me look like two watermelons in a bag, so that I blaze as if I were made of tow. (emphasis mine)

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

Other factors of style conspire to set the unmistakable tone; to begin with, the alignment of nouns denoting concrete things, the materials of which body and soul are metaphor­ ically made (but we shall not hear of soul per se, "alma," before line 3): sulphur ("zolfo"), tow ("stoppa"), dry wood ("secco legno," a frequent self-definition in the whole canzoniere). Concurrently, the metaphoric equations into whose service those concrete nouns are enlisted: they translate heart into sulphur, flesh into tow, bones into dry wood, that is, the whole living body into inanimate objects, kindling, and fuel for the threatening bonfire of love. This procedure—justifying Berni's claim that Buonarroti said "things" while the fash­ ionable Petrarchists said mere "words"—is germane to the one that will be applied in G 267 to dismember and estrange the persona's physical reality into a set of weird or sleazy objects. In the sonnet at hand, to be sure, the upshot is not selfdegradation but self-justification; and the point could not be more convincingly made, whether we take into account the rhetorical maneuver on which the poem builds toward its climax, or the expressive vividness of the material imagery as such. The iterative series that structures the poem makes for cumulative energy, rhetorically as well as lyrically; it sets up a breathless yet suspenseful rhythm—syntax, imagery, and argument pressing against the containing metric mould toward the intense resolution. The suspense effect, twice enacted (first in the octave, then in the sestet), arises from the proleptic withholding of sentence and thought completion each time until the end of the metric subdivision; and the prolepsis works even more strongly because, each time, log­ ical resolution is delayed by a parallelistic array of antici­ patory images and/or argumentative clauses. The initial met­ aphoric equations are already in themselves implicit arguments, and they contain the whole sequence in nuce. Because they are so materially vivid and unprecious, they lend concreteness to the ensuing abstract nouns in the octave (soul, reason), which become dramatic agents in their own

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

right—the soul a dazzled creature, reason a bird caught in the mistletoe traps so familiar to Italian bird hunters even today. The material quality of those keywords in the first two lines ensures that the fire they are called upon to kindle will not remain a conventional abstraction. When the word "fire" re­ curs in final clinching position at the end of the second tercet (and it had almost concluded the second quatrain too), it has gathered all the energy provided by that realistic fuel; it blazes unforgettably. And yet fire is a commonplace emblematic image in Petrarchist poetry. But here it is also reinforced by the heightening progression that makes the logical, rhetorical, and iconic development of the sonnet so sweepingly compact. The logic, however, is far from simple or reassuring; it is, if anything, subversive. The line of reasoning along which the octave unfolds seems to prepare us for a very different conclusion from the one that will actually emerge in the sestet: a conclusion, to wit, stressing the opportunity to reform one's ways after the understandable first weakness of the flesh in the face of profuse temptation. Instead of that, the concessive attitude of the premise yields to a dramatically stubborn one vindicating the inevitability of the sensual conflagration that at first sounded forgivable and therefore neither final nor destructive: If art is lovely, and a gift from Heaven if from birth I'm not deaf or blind to her the blame is his who decreed fire my lot. Nor is this all. Rhetorically speaking, the parallel structure and iterative arrangement conceal the logical swerve from the anticipated course, for "A la bell'arte . . ." in line 9 echoes the similar beginnings of lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 ("Al cor di zolfo . . . a l'ossa . . . ; a l'alma . . . al desir pronto . . . a la cieca ragion . . . al vischio, a' lacci. . ."). This iterative, anaphoric pattern is so insistent that it almost persuades us

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

to assimilate "la bell'arte," art the lovely, to the previously decried agents of moral defeat: the sulphurous heart, the susceptible flesh, the unguided soul, the weak reason. But art is placed apart from them, whether metrically, syntacti­ cally, or logically; they crowd the long sentence that takes up all of the octave's metrical space, whereas it (art) claims for itself the entire sentence that winds through the sestet. Logically, art governs the final argument in favor of selfjustification by defining its premise with two mighty "ifs": "if we have it from Heaven" and "if from birth I'm not deaf or blind to her." These "ifs" are not hypothetical; they have causal, conditioning value, making the consequence in­ escapable: colpa e di chi m'ha destinato al foco. the blame is his who decreed fire my lot. Furthermore, art is given an emphatically positive qualifier, "bella," lovely, and the relative clause employed to define its essence makes Heaven its source and victory over nature its power—a far cry from the weakness of body and soul that the octave seemed to deplore. Art's function, then, is anti­ thetical to that of the several agents—body, psyche, reason— that together make up man's vulnerable self. They lead man to defeat; art grants him victory over powerful, ubiquitous nature. With this, it would seem that the previous line of reasoning is neatly inverted by making art the redeeming force that countervails human weakness vis-a-vis insidious nature. Yet a further element has intervened to complicate matters in the conclusive tercet, where the speaker brings in his own individual reality ("if from birth I am not deaf or blind to her") to sharpen the focus and thereby seal the transition from the general aphoristic considerations of the octave to a testimonial of personal experience. It is the suffering and acting self that verifies (or subverts) the detached vision of part 1, for he alone can put ideas to the test. And once the autobiographical persona introduces himself into the picture,

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

the whole poem is refocused in such a way that an unexpected ambiguity creeps in to match the heightened tone; logic tran­ scends itself; rhetorical scaffoldings melt into vision; defeat and victory are no longer mutually exclusive. Defeat will actually amount to a kind of victory in the next poem (G 98), likewise inspired by Tommaso Cavalieri: "se vint'e preso i' debb'esser beato," if my bliss must lie in my being conquered and caught. The ambiguity, a not so rare occurrence in Michelangelo's writing, manifests itself semantically and hinges on grammar: s'i' nacqui a quella ne sordo ne cieco, proporzionato a chi Ί cor m'arde e fura, colpa e di chi m'ha destinato al foco. if from birth I'm not deaf or blind to her, to match whoever burns and steals my heart, the blame is his who decreed fire my lot. The double pronoun "chi" in the second line of this tercet, in the opinion of readers like Girardi or Barelli, may refer to Michelangelo's beloved friend, Cavalieri, for whom the poem was apparently written between 1534 and 1538, or to art personified as a feminine entity in the previous lines. As in English, the Italian relative pronoun by itself does not mark gender or number, only the personal agent as distinguished from an inanimate or nonhuman one. This means that the enkindler and stealer of the persona's heart is Tommaso him­ self, or else the personification of art, since art also claims so much of the poet's energy that it ends up consuming him utterly. Above all, art in his view is intimately tied to beauty, on which it depends for inspiration and model, hence it may well attract to itself the erotic charge otherwise more readily aimed at the inspirer in flesh and bone. In fact the artistlover persona here proclaims himself neither deaf nor blind to art the lovely, and by implication to loveliness itself, which feeds art and from it is reborn to enduring shape. Similarly, in madrigal G 164 of the early 1540s, composed for Vittoria Colonna, he will say that from birth ("nel parto")

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

he has been given beauty ("la bellezza") as a trustworthy model ("fido esemplo") to his vocation ("vocazione"), beauty that is "lamp and mirror" to him ("lucerna e specchio") in both his arts (painting and sculpture); and he will go on to deny any possible allegation of low erotic sensualism ("s'altro si pensa, e falsa opinione," if anybody thinks otherwise, he is in the wrong). Of course, along with the conceptual analogy of madrigal G 164 to the sestet of the sonnet under exami­ nation (for the close linkage of art to physical beauty, for the definition of art as a vocation given at birth, and for its lofty purpose), we have to heed a conceptual and expressive dif­ ference of note. The madrigal for Vittoria Colonna unambig­ uously sublimates beauty (and the artist's business with it) beyond any sensual implication, whereas the sonnet for Cavalieri counterpoints sublimation with erotic ardor and guilt, thereby achieving deeper resonance in its ambiguity. The madrigal amounts to a univocal statement this side of poetical drama, the sonnet is a strong dramatic monologue on a par with Michelangelo's best writing. One thinks of Yeats's dictum that poetry is born of the writer's quarrel with himself, unlike mere rhetoric, which arises from his quarrel with others. The inner tensions, the partly unresolved ambiguities of the sonnet for Cavalieri engage more than our interpretive skills; they involve us empathetically with the persona that plays hide-and-seek with the reader, whom he is receiving in his confidence only up to a point and no further, thereby reserving for himself an area of privacy to which only the unnamed, evasively implied partner can be admitted. The mystifying tactic of personal protection balances the crying need for assertive self-revelation. The ambiguity inherent in the expression "chi Ί cor m'arde e fura" can be resolved in the light of our previous considerations on the close nexus between art and its inspiring model of beauty. The one implies the other; they cannot be separated in the persona's con­ sciousness even if we favor Tommaso as the direct referent of the "chi," for reasons of dramatic relevance. Then we may want to dwell on the speaker's denial of being deaf and blind to art and, by irresistible implication now, to the erotic appeal

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

of beauty in the last line but two; that denial offsets the blindness ascribed to "feeble reason" in line 5 of the sonnet, as if to suggest that the shaping-intuitional power of art outreaches by far the range of plodding reason and thus redresses the persona's balance. Art is an inborn gift from Heaven and a conqueror of nature. The Promethean claim seems about to conclude the sonnet on a triumphant note of uplift, were it not that the last line throws that victory into question again: colpa e di chi m'ha destinato al foco. the blame is his who decreed fire my lot. The line memorably climaxes the whole crescendo, and it becomes even more intriguing when we pursue its implica­ tions. To begin with, it casts unexpected guilt or blame ("colpa") on the very vocation of art. Has that vocation, or has it not, come from heaven? Perhaps that heaven should be understood Platonically, and astrologically as sometimes happens in Dante, rather than just in the traditionally Chris­ tian sense; after all, the most Platonic poems of Michelangelo happen to be those written for Cavalieri. If so, the artistic calling is a matter of astrological determination; and let us remember that in other poems of the same phase Michelangelo does harp on the theme of destiny as determined at birth by the configuration of stars. See, for example, sonnet G 104, doctrinally modeled on Ficino's ideas. Even more cogently, madrigal 258 of a decade later will semantically equate birth ("parto") with destiny: ". . . il de­ stinato parto / mi ferm'al tuo splendore," the destiny of my birth stops me in the presence of your splendor. In sonnet G 97 (whatever the constellation involved) the destiny of birth has earmarked the autobiographical persona for a calling that is at the same time lofty and dangerous. "Foco," fire, the very last word, summarizes the essence of that calling. Art, con­ nected as it is with beauty and eros, is a consuming fire with infernal as well as heavenly connotations; how else to account for its tormenting, guilt-ridden aspect? Maybe not all the

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

"sulphur" of line 1 has been purified away by the lesser "fire" (foco) of part 1, line 8. One thinks of the Ganymede and Phaethon drawings that Michelangelo donated to Cavalieri.23 One thinks of the hidden projections of his personal expe­ rience into various heavenly or infernal figures of the Last Judgment, so provocatively analyzed by De Tolnay24 and, most recently, by Liebert25 in his psychoanalytical way. Our amazement grows when we come to dwell on that other cryptical pronoun, "chi," in the last line. Who is this "chi"? It cannot be Cavalieri this time because he did not preside over Michelangelo's destiny at birth, and it cannot be art itself because what is in question is the prime cause of Mi­ chelangelo's artistic vocation. If so, the entity responsible for this fateful predisposition can be identified only with one of the angelic intelligences that move the heavenly spheres and influence nature—a minister of God. His is the blame. An almost Lucifer-like rebelliousness lurks in the lines we are scanning. Ambivalence and transgression can be the demonic fuel of poetry; and for an earnest Christian like Michelan­ gelo, what transgression could be stronger than implicit blasphemy? The half-veiled accusation indirectly leveled at God in the sonnet at hand finds counterparts in other works by Michel­ angelo, signally visual. Thus for instance the aggressive expression and irate gesture of St. Bartholomew toward the sun-like Christ of the Last Judgment have elicited pointed comments from experienced critics like De Tolnay, who, with­ out entering the kind of psychoanalytical hypothesis that Liebert has now ventured on the basis of Michelangelo's early family predicament, frankly emphasizes the personal se­ miotics our artist injected into the biblical narrative. The angry Saint brandishes a knife in the direction of Christ and the recoiling Madonna, and it is obviously the knife with which he was skinned, but the pelt carried in St. Bartholo­ mew's other hand is a slightly distorted portrait of Michel­ angelo himself. A transgression takes place on sacred ico­ nography: Bartholomew should be exhibiting his own pelt, not anybody else's; he should not look as if he were threat-

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

ening Christ, even if the anger is really aimed at his flayers and he is just pressing his case with Jesus the Judge, neu­ tralizing the traditional intercession of Mary who in fact averts her face. That transgression compounds with a loaded au­ tobiographical symbolism, Michelangelo having shown per­ sistent interest in his own skin (pelle, scorza, scoglia), Marsyas-like, throughout his poetry (sonnet 94, for instance). Now his empty skin dangles from the Saint's hand over the infernal abyss into which the damned are being cast; has he slipped out of it altogether to join that hellish company, or is he identifying with the martyred Saint and appropriating the latter's aggressive protest/plea? We even know that flaying was a household word for Michelangelo and Urbino, his ser­ vant in Rome. And we know that the whirling fresco (De Tolnay calls it a new version of Gigantomachia) aroused pro­ tests from Counter-Reformational ecclesiastics even before the artist's death; they (but Pietro Aretino of all people had preceded them) saw rampant irreverence in the formidable imagery.26 At the same time, we know Michelangelo's prayers, whether formulated in searching verse or in the gripping forms that issued from his mallet and brush. The transgressions, the ambivalence that masked and also counterbalanced them, bespeak a torn spirit yearning for wholeness, a wholeness he was to approach only in his last years. But the suffering, the flaying, the wavering between private martyrdom and dam­ nation was what powered the expressive release of so much of his art, and of his poetry. We find the ambivalence in sonnet G 63, where this infernal suffering is emblematized as the fire that melts rock in the kiln to make it harder and perennial, "like a soul that had been purified in hell to return among the other high and divine ones." Or in the next piece, quatrain G 64, which picks up that theme to develop it in a different way: Se Ί foco il sasso rompe e Ί ferro squaglia, figlio del lor medesmo e duro interno,

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

che fara Ί piu ardente dell'inferno d'un nimico covon secco di paglia? If fire shatters compact stone and melts iron, being the very offspring of their hard entrails, what will the one that burns harder than hell do to an inimical sheaf of dry straw? This imagery, which may call to mind Hawthorne's "Ethan Brand," brings us back to sonnet 97's trial by fire with its ambivalent mixture of despair and defiance, damnation and triumph. The paradox is far from contrived. We have found paradox in the comical verse, allegrezza e maninconia, and we can see it in the grotesque masks that Michelangelo the painter or sculptor sometimes juxtaposes to his elect figures like Night in the Medici Chapel or the hand­ some Dreamer in the drawing donated to Cavalieri. The in­ fernal section of the Last Judgment has afforded him a chance to place a few such grimacing trolls in the apocalyptic context where—we cannot help noticing—the soaring saved souls just reendowed with their bodies, the heavenly Court, and the downward whirling clusters of the damned eagerly snatched by the waiting demons make one maelstrom between earth and sky, instead of being sharply polarized in two separate zones. In this regard it is not far-fetched to refer to Arnold Hauser who, in his volume on Renaissance, mannerism, and baroque,27 remarks that humor in the modern sense arose in mannerist Cinquecento, when the two opposite sides of an earnest issue would be seen together, Shakespeare and Cer­ vantes being its greatest formulators. Humor of this kind is covertly transgressive even in its elegant form, and the lusty or eerie kind that Michelangelo sparingly cultivated is no exception. But because it is only the other side of real earnest, its ambiguities and transgressions find a counterpart in the passionate or meditative utterances that make up the greatest part of his verse work. On close reading, indeed, burlesque verse turns out to share with many of Michelangelo's other poems certain vital

HUMOR, TRANSGRESSIONS, AMBIVALENCES

elements like concrete language, thematic imagery, and structural complexity. The latter can appear intertextually, rather than just within the body of each text taken by itself, as evidence of the continuing debate our poet carried on within his own soul and mind. It may be the sudden suicidal thought surfacing from the soul's underground, as if the writer were one of the damned he was to paint in the Last Judgment (G 52, "S'alcun se stesso al mondo ancider lice," if anybody is allowed to kill himself in this world); or it may be the fictionally entertained hypothesis of the Pythagorean-Platonic myth of metempsychosis (madrigal G 126, "Se l'alma e ver, dal suo corpo disciolta, / che 'n alcun altro torni / a' corti e brevi giorni," if it is true that the soul, once severed from its body, / may in another one return / to the short days of unenduring life). These thoughts, articulated under the pro­ tective guise of lyrical divagation, are nonetheless heretically transgressive for the devout Christian that Michelangelo sin­ cerely strove to be. Isolated as they are within the body of his verse, they crucially counterpoint it. To be sure, they cannot be found in other Cinquecento canzonieri. More extensively, a potentially transgressive ambivalence links certain love sonnets from the early 1530s (G 60, G 88) to a coeval one (G 87) addressed not to Tommaso Cavalieri but to God himself—whom the poet persona invokes with the selfsame appellation as he does Tommaso. The intriguing intertextual ambiguity will extend to the late religious sonnets to Christ, which explains why some editors date G 87 to that late phase before Girardi revised the dating on the strength of the handwriting. But this opens a perspective to be best explored by the next chapter.

2 Protean Eros When Michelangelo cried out to God: Come puo esser ch'io non sia piu mio? O Dio, ο Dio, ο Dio, chi m'ha tolto a me stesso, c'a me fusse piu presso ο piu di me potessi che poss'io? How can it be that I am no longer mine? 0 God, ο God, ο God, who has taken myself away from me, and is now closer to me than myself and has more power on myself than I? he dramatically stated the nature of his experience of love: a seizure, a taking over of his self by an alien power. The poem excerpted above (G 8) matters because, in the early phase of his literary production (ca. 1511), it set forth an existential theme that was to dominate his writing through so many successive formulations. Decades later, we find it more

PROTEAN EROS

circumstantially restated in the reliable account that Donato Giannotti gives (in the first of his Dialogi) of Michelangelo's explanation for his own shyness: . . . Qualunche volta io veggio alcuno che habbia qualche virtu, che mostri qualche destrezza d'ingegno, che sappia fare ο dire qualche cosa piu acconciamente che gli altri, io sono costretto ad innamorarmi di Iui, et me gli do in maniera in preda, che io non sono piu mio, ma tutto suo . . . Whenever I see someone who has some virtue, who shows some ingeniousness, who can do or say something more aptly than the others, I am compelled to fall in love with him, and I give myself in thraldom to him so utterly, that I am no longer mine, but his own entirely. . . .'(emphasis mine) Sensuous and/or intellectual, then, love is to him an alien­ ation, a becoming other, a metamorphosis that can be threat­ ening. It can also be desirable, as happens in stanza G 108 where he avers that he is more fully himself when he is of his beloved [Cavalieri], or in madrigal G 235 where he asks his godlike Vittoria Colonna to take him away from himself forever for he already is "no longer [his] own," or again in madrigal G 161 where he asks God to take him away from himself and refashion him in acceptable form. Whether feared or desired, or both, the protean force of love operates at the center of Michelangelo's poetry to trans­ form him and his inherited language, to hold him in suspense between antinomic alternatives, to acquaint him with hell and paradise. It is not necessary to make this process a biograph­ ical reference, because it is simultaneous with the writing, and the resultant changes are undergone by the authorial persona, an imaginative projection of the "real" Michelangelo as we know him from independent biographical sources like Vasari, Condivi, Giannotti, or Cellini. But it is a projection that would be our only real Michelangelo if no such sources had reached us—just as the paintings and the sculptures

PROTEAN EROS

would be his sufficient reality and, in a sense, are. To ac­ knowledge this is to recognize the autonomy of Michelangelo's writing vis-a-vis the external facts of his singular, eventful life and his vastly better known activity as a visual artist. Not certainly in the sense that his poetry has nothing to do with his human, historical experience or with his involvement in figurative art, since the poetry could hardly have taken shape apart from its existential source and from the collateral creative experiences that provided Michelangelo the poet with important thematic material as well as analogical procedures. Yet in a way Papini is right in saying that as a poet he does what he could not do as a painter or as a sculptor.2 And he does it as a poet in his own right, not as a mere autobiographer in verse who (if we listen to his authoritative critical editor Carl Frey) matters only because of the psychological selfportrait he gives us. Accordingly, when we discuss his loves or his attitude to visual art or his interest in Platonism, in the republican cause, and in religion, we do so because these themes are intrinsic to his poetry; they are its very stuff. Any self-revelation, whether in verse or prose, will of course turn out to conceal just as much as it reveals, by dint of simple omission, or innuendo, or even self-masking and plain self-invention. Michelangelo is no exception, despite the moving straightforwardness of his confessional utterances, the vehemence of his invectives and invocations, the un­ sparing candor of his soul-searching. The poems, powered by Proteus-like eros, finally take shape as independent objects in the sense that Eugenio Montale gave to the term.3 Such poetical "objects" are also impersonations, dramatic mono­ logues, the voice of a mercurial persona who, at the unpre­ dictable bidding of dictator Love, will recurrently alienate himself, to become other, to "clothe" in his dying grasp the elusive sphinx, man or woman, lofty and cruel, or frivolous, that was his cynosure. But if his heart is devoured in the process, as Dante's had been once,4 his writing in turn devours the devourer. After the savory poems to the Bolognese woman, to the NenciaIike peasant girl, which paint their respective erotic objects

PROTEAN EROS

with rich brush strokes, Michelangelo's love poems will be above all a ceaseless self-portrait; it is his love pangs, his ecstasy and misery that matter, not the specific individuality of the persona who inspired them. He never really portrays Febo, Gherardo, Tommaso, Vittoria, or the "donna bella e crudele" (his dark lady); he portrays their effect on him. At times they appear interchangeable; the twelve drafts of sonnet G 81 ("Ogni cosa ch'i' veggio mi consiglia," Everything I see advises me, numbered Cix 10 by Frey), mostly included in AB XIIi at the Laurentian library, originally envisaged an unidentified woman as the theme and addressee, then by a pronominal gender shift came to revolve on Tommaso Cavalieri, "the one and only sun," and there the matter remains. And as we shall see, even the saintly Vittoria and the mis­ chievous "cruel beauty" are not always easy to tell apart as addressees of the elaborate madrigals Michelangelo indited for them after the peak of his sublimated passion for Cavalieri had passed. Furthermore, as has been intimated at the end of the pre­ vious chapter, an even more astonishing interchange of at­ tributes occurs in a group of lyrics from those peak years and may well extend far beyond. The most important of such lyrics for our purposes happen to be sonnets G 60, G 87, G 88, G 89, and G 90. Of these, G 87 is a prayer to God; the others are all addressed to the handsome and cultivated Roman nobleman Tommaso Cavalieri, who notoriously accepted Mi­ chelangelo's wooing only in the sublimating Platonic con­ vention the artist professed, and remained his loyal friend to the end. Girardi's retrogressive dating of G 87 to the year 1534 (as against Frey's ascription to the late 1550s) makes the religious sonnet contiguous to those inspired by the Pla­ tonic passion for Cavalieri and thereby throws into sharper relief the intriguing correspondences now to be discussed. Here is the text of G 87:5 Vorrei voler, Signor, quel ch'io non voglio: tra Ί foco e Ί cor di ghiaccia un vel s'asconde che Ί foco ammorza, onde non corrisponde U

PROTEAN EROS

la penna all'opre, e fa bugiardo il foglio. 10 t'amo con la lingua, e poi mi doglio c'amor non giunge al cor; ne so ben donde apra l'uscio alia grazia che s'infonde nel cor, che scacci ogni spietato orgoglio. Squarcia Ί vel tu, Signor, rompi quel muro che con la suo durezza ne ritarda il sol della tuo luce, al mondo spenta! Manda Ί preditto Iume a noi venturo, alia tuo bella sposa, accio ch'io arda 11 cor senz'alcun dubbio, e te sol senta. I wish I wanted, Lord, what I don't want: between fire and my heart a film of ice creeps in to damp the fire, so that my pen belies my acts and makes my pages false. I love you by lip service, then I grieve that love won't reach my heart; nor know I where to open a door to grace so it may infuse my heart and rid it of pitiless pride. 0 rend that veil, my Lord, shatter that wall whose sheer hardness keeps hindering the sun of your light—it's extinguished for the world! Send us the light that for us was announced, send it to your fair bride, so I may burn my heart, unhesitating, and feel you alone. The voice establishes a strong tone from the very start and never loses it. The confessional despondency of the brooding octave yields to a gesture of invocation in the sestet, a dia­ lectical movement that strengthens the initial tone and caps the whole utterance with an open resolution, a hope beyond hope. We should listen in particular to that convoluted yet quite direct first line: Vorrei voler, Signor, quel ch'io non voglio 1 wish I wanted, Lord, what I don't want, which assuredly dodges the pitfall of mannered verbalism to

PROTEAN EROS

make good the mutual clash of identical words in breathless repetition, with no loss to the immediacy of meaning. The anxiety, the attendant effort to break through the impasse of misdirected will, is precisely conveyed by that threefold it­ eration of the key verb volere in appropriately different moods: the optative conditional in the first person, the unqualified infinitive, and the strong, personalized negative of the indic­ ative present. The entanglement of the will is portrayed in the contradictory semantics of that repetition, and it will be further developed by the hypotactic complexity of syntax in the rest of the octave. But then let us listen to the first line of the sestet: Squarcia Ί vel tu, Signor, rompi quel muro O rend that veil, my Lord, shatter that wall. It is a new beginning, sharply offsetting the first line of the poem and cutting the Gordian knot of the octave's tangled syntax and semantics. The intrinsic energy of the verb "Squarcia" (Rend) is heightened by this strategic positioning, and it will reverberate in the echoing imperatives that govern the following sentences in parallel arrangement: "rompi" (break), "Manda" (Send). This is the Jehovah or Christ of the Sistine Chapel, the God of terribilita, a violent savior; there is no mistaking the poem for a conventional edifying piece. Mi­ chelangelo's quarrel with himself is the quarrel with a titanic godhead. His Christianity, if far from heretical, is movingly personal. But apart from the intrinsic strength of the poem as such, which also depends on its convulsive rhythmical shape and on the idiomatic quality of some lexical or phraseological elements, what interests us at this point is its possible relation to the surrounding erotic poems for CavaIieri. Since at first sight sonnet G 87 negates them by opposing the desperately invoked love of God to any other kind, and implicitly a rigorist Christian theology to the more accommodating Platonic one Michelangelo had inherited from Ficino, one might summarily dismiss the possibility of any such relation. The sonnet—if

PROTEAN EROS

Girardi's dating holds against Frey's—stands totally apart from its coeval, Platonically erotic pieces and should be sim­ ply considered (along with G 66) a sporadic occurrence of the alternative Savonarolan disposition that will take over in the last years.6 But the obvious opposition of tenor between this religious sonnet and those for Cavalieri does not exclude a subtler relation between them. That relation, in fact, is already adumbrated by madrigal G 8, which has repeatedly come to our attention before. As we saw at the beginning of the present chapter, the early madrigal implores God in panting verse to make sense of the inner alienation the persona experiences upon feeling invaded by a strange force that has taken him away from himself and keeps growing inside him to the point where it threatens to overflow (and thereby destroy) the self that has fallen prey to it. The alien force is unknown; the persona wonders if it is Love—an effective way to express the newness of his experience, therefore its authenticity, in the teeth of the stale amatory rhetoric that was by now embedded in centuries of literary tradition. But God—Michelangelo's Christian God—is Love by definition. If the alien power in­ vading the soul gets tentatively so named ("Amore" with capital A, at line 9) it can only be God's rival, unless Platonic theology certifies it as an ultimately benevolent emanation of God Himself, something that will lead the smitten soul back to Him through contemplation of the (physical or intellectual) beauty of which He alone is the model and source (sonnets G 83, G 105, G 260). We thus have in this madrigal the seeds of the spiritual polarization that will later split Mi­ chelangelo's lyrical confessions in two seemingly irreconcil­ able alternatives. The madrigal weighs them, potentially at least, in the kind of inner debate that will instigate so much searing poetry, whether it appears within one poem or intertextually as in the specific case under consideration. The debate will recur, and even in the late 1540s it will test those alternatives—Platonic human love or the desire for a tran­ scendent source that rejects even the name of Love (sonnet G 276), a clear response to the dilemma outlined with such

PROTEAN EROS

anguish in madrigal G 8 and in the subsequent polarization between the Platonic sonnets to Cavalieri and the desperate prayer to God of sonnet G 87. The relation between the former and the latter, then, is oppositional and dialectical, to be understood within the larger scope of the dramatized verse autobiography that Mi­ chelangelo projects into his versatile persona. But the op­ position is also a symmetry, and the invoked Christian God can accordingly take on the attributes of the godlike mortal that raises his lover's mind and soul to the God that is Beauty as such; vice versa, we can expect the exemplary human embodiment of divine beauty to claim for himself certain prerogatives otherwise ascribed to the Thomistic God or to Christ himself. The dramatis persona will in turn find tem­ porary appeasement in the aesthetic nexus of quasi-identification between the two objects of his love and question or reject the tantalizing ambiguity, which his recurrent Christian rigorism will brand as insidious. But all this means that we cannot segregate the two sets of love poems if we want to understand the tragic tension, and therefore the aesthetic and ethical range, of the Michelangelesque persona forever driven (to say it in Ε. E. Cummings's words) "through dooms of love"—and of doubt. They—the mutually contradicting poems—belong with each other as the lines of warring char­ acters do in any strong play. Language also correlates them, in mirrored symmetry, to substantiate better the enticing/anguishing ambiguity of those divine images that are reflected in each other only to reassert their mutual exclusiveness. To begin with, the term by which the persona addresses God is "Signor" or "Mie Signor" or "Signor mie caro" (Lord, My Lord, My dear Lord), as in sonnet G 87 and in most of the later religious ones (for instance, G 270, G 274, quatrains G 280, tercets G 283, fragment G 286, quatrain G 287, sonnets G 288, G 289, G 290, G 293). But the selfsame epithet with the same variations serves to address Tommaso Cavalieri: thus sonnets G 58, G 60, G 72, G 76, G 77, G 83, G 84, G 88, madrigal G 93, sonnet G 94. Sonnet G 87 beseeches God to free the dramatis

PROTEAN EROS

persona from his sinful opacity by shattering the wall his recalcitrant pride has erected against Divine love: Squarcia Ί vel tu, Signor, rompi quel muro. Sonnet G 60, a declaration of spiritual love to Cavalieri, similarly asks him to break down the wall of reciprocal extraneousness and inhibition: rompasi il mur fra l'uno -e l'altra messo let the wall be shattered that is set up / between the one and the other. ( = between my desire and my hope) Again sonnet G 87 (which foreshadows John Donne's Holy Sonets, notably no. 14 where the persona asks God to "batter [his] heart" and renew him by knocking and burning his walled-in "usurped city") implores God to send him "the sun of His light" through the breach. Sonnet G 88 to Cavalieri compares the effect of Tommaso's lovely face on Michelangelo to that of the sun on the earth; and the next sonnet (G 89) again compares Tommaso's luminous eyes, and his whole effulgence, to the sun—because it is the sun that enables our blind eyes to see. The rapture of total identification with the beloved is so strongly and tenderly expressed in this lyric that it equals the ecstasy described by mystics in the attainment of loving union with the Divine Source; for once, Michelangelo's trau­ matic experience of losing himself to something or someone else leads to joyful fulfillment, precisely of the kind to be gained when one surrenders will, emotion, and thought to God. As a consequence, the following sonnet (no. 90) will enumerate, in breezy language and prolonged rhyme merrily reminiscent of Tuscany's best folk poetry, the blessings de­ rived from this spiritual union. The writer has become much dearer to himself since he received the beloved in his heart, and he is much worthier than before, as a stone ennobled by apt carving or a sheet of paper dignified by good writing or drawing. With this imprint (the mark of Tommaso's visage,

PROTEAN EROS

almost a veronica) he goes anywhere, secure from any danger, in charmed immunity. And—capping hyperbole—he has ac­ quired thaumaturgic powers: with the mark of Tommaso's face on his own, he prevails against water and fire, he cures blindness, he heals any poisoning by the application of his saliva—which is what the Gospels say of Christ; Godlike, Christlike Tommaso Cavalieri has conferred magical apostolic powers on his admiring friend. One remembers the ChristApollo statue in the Bargello, the likewise Hellenizing Christ of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the sunlike aura of Christ in the Last Judgment. And the Counter-Reformational zeal of popes who had clothing painted over the glorious nudes of the Last Judgment, or who tried to get the whole fresco erased as the scandal they took it to be. That the male object of his fervent intellectualized love amounts to a private cult is clear to the artist persona, on whom it occasionally dawns that his cult of beauty as em­ bodied in Tommaso Cavalieri may rival or supplant—instead of Platonically serving—the cult of the one God incarnate that brooks no other for a Christian. Hence the sudden appeals to the orthodox godhead (G 66, G 70, G 87) for drastic help in extricating the writer from the troubling ambiguity; it will be only in the last years (Michelangelo's last poem seems to have been penned in 1560) that he obtains release from this predicament, to find refuge in the crucified Christ's outspread arms (sonnet G 285) rather than in those of Tommaso (sonnets G 72 and G 88). Meanwhile, however, Tommaso's godlike sun seems to eclipse the sun of Christ except for those spo­ radic cries of religious anguish that confirm the authorial persona's subjection to that unexorcizable spell. Among the divine prerogatives ascribed to Tommaso we can notice the "force" that "moves, itself unmoved, any other weight" (che muove senza moto ogni altro peso) in sonnet G 88, as if Cavalieri were, in his lover's perception, an equiv­ alent of the Aristotelian-Thomistic God, the Unmoved Mover of the whole cosmos. In this particular poem the transcen­ dental attraction compounds with its object's inaccessibility to connote (albeit in the then fairly current Petrarchan idiom of labored oxymora) that object's divinely transcendent status.

PROTEAN EROS

The lord of the persona's heart, a "unique spirit and under­ stood [by him] alone" (Unico spirto e da me solo inteso), has no death in himself yet causes death to others (in the Stilnovo and Petrarchan sense of making them lovesick unto death); he is free yet binds his adorer's heart; it is he that helps the latter yet inflicts injury on him. An intimation of distance and frigidity comes to round out the numinous image in the last tercet, where it says that Tommaso's lovely visage does to his worshiper (whom he has deprived of peace) what the sun does to the world, che scalda il mondo e non e caldo Iui which warms the world and is itself not warm. With this, the cosmic analogy extolling Tommaso's divinity is complete. It seems that mystical paradoxes inherent in the religious mind's approach to God also serve Michelangelo in his poetical definition of his rapport with Tommaso, who ap­ pears now as the unattainable, excruciating goal of his desire, now as the source of his peace and bliss (sonnet G 61). His unison with the shining beloved (sonnet G 88) borders on total surrender of identity, so much so that to return to himself from this blissful alienation is unthinkable, is real death (madrigal G 91): Deh rendim'a me stesso, accio ch'i' mora Oh render me to myself so I may die, for as stanza G 108 says with resignation, he has not been happy in this relationship, yet he enjoys his suffering because he feels that . . . Io son piu mie vostro, che s'i' fussi mio ...I am more my own when yours than if I were mine, thereby verifying the earlier (G 8) realization of love's paradox as the dispossession of self.

PROTEAN EROS

That dispossession, needless to say, is an ecstasy, an actual being out of oneself, and Michelangelo, who knew even less Greek than did Shakespeare, is giving us the very etymology of the originally Greek word by describing the experience of erotic rapture. Its acme of fruition was well worth the anguish (G 89): Veggio co' be' vostr'occhi un dolce Iume che co' mie ciechi gia veder non posso; porto co' vostri piedi un pondo addosso, che de' miei zoppi gia non e costume. Volo con Ie vostr'ale senza piume; col vostro ingegno al ciel sempre son mosso; dal vostro arbitrio son pallido e rosso, freddo al sol, caldo alle piii fredde brume. Nel voler vostro e sol la voglia mia, i miei pensier nel vostro cor si fanno, nel vostro fiato son Ie mie parole. Come Iuna da se sol par ch'io sia, che gli occhi nostri in ciel veder non sanno se non quel tanto che n'accende il sole. With your lovely eyes I see a sweet light that I could never see with my own blind ones; with your feet I carry a burden with such ease as my lame ones can never hope to attain. I fly, utterly featherless, with your wings; with your intelligence I am moved toward heaven; I blush and pale at your sweet will, and feel cold in the sun, hot in the frostiest weather. In your will only is my each volition, my thoughts take shape only within your heart, in your breath do my words have their abode. A moon I seem to be when I am alone, for our eyes can only reach into the sky as far as what the sun lights up for us. It cannot be said of this poem, as has been said (by Guido Di Pino7) of Michelangelo's verse in general, that the poetry

PROTEAN EROS

breaks through only in desultory if concentrated fashion, un­ der the guise of one or two memorable lines. We can certainly cull some if we want: "Volo con Ie vostr'ale senza piume," the first line of the second quatrain, or "Nel voler vostro e sol la voglia mia," which opens the first tercet and may antiphonally remind us of Dante's "E 'n la sua voluntate e nostra pace." But they are hardly to be extracted from their specific context as nuggets from bedrock; if so decontextualized, they lose much of the power that accrues to them from their organic placement, for the neighboring lines are anything but indif­ ferent and in turn reverberate on them through the tight net­ work of sound, sense, and imagery. First of all, the two lines derive their fleetness from the particular correlation of meaning with the alliterative em­ phasis on fricative (υ) and liquid (/) sounds intertwined in pivotal words like volo (I fly), vostr'ale (your wings), and respectively voler vostro (your will), voglia mia (my will). This ties the two lines to each other, making the second one a climactic permutation of the first, with the result that the words volare (to fly), volere (to want), and vostro (yours) be­ come semantically close to one another even though they are not etymologically correlated. If we take into account syn­ tactical parallelism along with the v-l phonic pattern, the lines in question will reveal their close connection with line 1 ("Veggio co' be' uostr'occhi un do/ce /ume") to establish a threefold crescendo progression that reaches its acme in the first tercet and then subsides in the choral amplitude of the second tercet. This dynamic structure forms a generative chain that condenses the essential meaning of the whole and expands to innervate the entire poem. The series begins with the opening verb veggio (I see), which will recur in different inflection at the last line but one (veder, to see), and it con­ tinues with the iteration vostro, vostri that spans the lyric in combination with the liquid echoes climaxing in Iuna and sole. Then we shall notice the additional force that the line "Volo con Ie vostr'ale . . ." gains by coming right after a couplet like this:

PROTEAN EROS

porto co' vostri piedi un pondo addosso, che de' miei zoppi non e gia costume. with your feet I carry a burden with such ease as my lame ones can never hope to attain. The contrast in meaning and phonic quality could hardly be more effective. The persona first plods under a burden (and the effort is stressed by the plosive labial alliteration in porto, piedi, pondo, and zoppi), then takes off to soar into ventilated spheres. After that, the first tercet gives us the persona's spiritual homecoming, his moral, emotive, and intellectual identification with the beloved. If the octave dramatized the several acts this love caused the lover to perform (to see, to carry, to fly, to be set in motion, to blush and pale), the sestet goes straight to the root of those actions by conveying the attained inherence of the speaker's corresponding faculties (will, thought and emotion, speech) in the very being of his beloved. And once again, signification acquires further depth from deft distribution of the signifier. The actions described in the octave involved the use of prepositions like con (with) and da (by) to qualify their manner through complements indicating the means or the agent; on the contrary, the first tercet relies emphatically on the prepositional compound nel (in the) to emphasize that the speaker does not merely derive his strength from a source that happens to be the loved ad­ dressee of the utterance; he actually dwells in that source, his private Unmoved Mover. The deified beloved has attracted the lover to himself, depriving him of any autonomy to infuse him with his own celestial power; and this ecstatic dispossession ("Come puo esser ch'io non sia piu mio?") is negatively verified (second tercet) by the utter powerlessness into which the un-selved persona is thrown when apart from the deified-deifying be­ loved. The subtly "anticlimactic" point is driven home by the effective cosmic imagery of sun and moon, which (a) graph­ ically expresses the religious-erotic relation of un-selving ful­ fillment (and yet recurrent or threatening apartness) between lover and beloved; (b) brings to a head the reference to cosmic

PROTEAN EROS

space in the second quatrain (flying, being moved heaven­ ward); (c) resumes, develops, and fulfills the initial theme of blindness versus vision and light; and (d) makes the whole poem come to rest on the emblematic image of the sun that is God and/or Cavalieri, as we saw above. At the same time, the sun-moon polarity sends us forward to the series of sonnets on the Night that will conclude (G 104) on the speaker's claiming Night and the moon as his own astrological locus versus Tommaso's solar one; and the Platonic reference via Ficino is undeniable there,8 as is also the case with the spiritual wings imagery here. But by itself, the Platonism Michelangelo has imbued from his early mentor would never account for the success of a poem like the sonnet we have been analyzing, where the writer's resources have conjured a tone of ecstatic tenderness. Such is the power of Eros, the dissolver and sublimator of self, even if the speak­ er's spiritual metamorphosis cannot be final; and final would he like it to be, no matter how traumatic, if it is of the ennobling kind. The emblematic agent of metamorphosis is fire, to which (sonnet G 97) he has been doomed, but which (sonnet G 62) can also make him a phoenix or at least lift him up to heaven, the proper sphere of (literal) fire. Then again (sonnet G 63) fire can harden him so as to make him outlast perishable earth forever, even if quatrain G 64 antiphonally stresses the infernal suffering this fire of love can inflict on a vulnerable, aging man—whose soul nevertheless (quatrain G 73) cannot help feeding on what destroys others, as sonnet G 77 confirms by urging beloved Tommaso to believe that his admirer burns with love to the death. The burning is caused by Tommaso's eyes, stolen from paradise itself (sonnet G 78), for they (sonnet G 80) dazzle and leave him aflame; and madrigal G 92 sadly concludes that coal and ashes are what will be left of the enamored speaker. Yet a later sonnet (G 260, mid-1540s) will vindicate the fiery liquefaction wrought on the speaker's heart by a cruel beauty (whether Tommaso's, as Girardi thinks, or Vittoria Colonna's, as Guasti and Frey believed) on the ground of the further change that God's arrow will bring about in the

PROTEAN EROS

smitten heart after the fire of human love has made it malleable. At this point one cannot help thinking of St. Teresa de A vila's mystical rapture and of the later poem by Crashaw it was to inspire in turn, also of Bernini's chisel at work in Santa Maria della Vittoria.9 The fire of eros is ambivalent, but what destroys can save. This is why the Michelangelesque persona can accuse God of having condemned him to that fire (sonnet G 97) and, at about the same time (sonnet G 87), invoke it from Him for the purification of his heart. It matters little that fire imagery was a stock item in the repertory of Renaissance Petrarchist verse and in the emblem books; Mi­ chelangelo's demonic use purges it of staleness, just as hap­ pens intermittently with the lovestruck Gaspara Stampa who knew how to "live burning on and not to feel the pain" (vivere ardendo e non sentire il male10), and with Francis Quarles or the mystically exuberant Richard Crashaw. Taken together, the poems to or about Tommaso Cavalieri form an outstanding sequence within the body of Michelan­ gelo's Rime,11 first of all because of the artistic level they often attain, and then also because, in the variety of their tone and attitude, they add up to a dramatic autobiographical narrative that mobilizes the best resources of this secretive poet in the very act of unmasking / reinventing his restless soul. The result is a unique canzoniere of limited length but ample scope, one that in telling the story of a peculiar love from the subjective viewpoint of a burdened, if exceptionally privileged mind, skirts heresy and possibly risks ostracism and condemnation in the gathering storm of Counter-Reformational fanaticism. The reason generally given for Michel­ angelo's abandonment of the publication project is the un­ timely death, in December 1546, of his friend and confidant Luigi del Riccio, who had acted as literary advisor, editor, even copyist, and solicitor of new poems (especially the fifty verse epitaphs for Cecchino dei Bracci in 1544). That demise must have played its part in Michelangelo's letting go of the project, considering also his ceaseless textual revisions, the sure sign of an exacting literary taste; but a stronger induce-

PROTEAN EROS

ment may well have come from his realization that the Council of Trent, opened in 1545, was tightening the screw in matters of orthodoxy; and he had his share of adverse criticism for the unconventionality of the Last Judgment.12 Moreover, his friend Vittoria Colonna, with whom he had shared the hopes of a Catholic Reform from within, had been successfully pressured by zealot friars to renounce her non­ conformist sentiments.13 And she, too, had died (shortly after Luigi del Riccio) and made the world that much more of a deserted place for Michelangelo to survive in, "dilombato, crepato, stanco e rotto" (crippled, cracked, tired and broken), as the late 1540s capitolo puts it shortly before intoning a grotesque dirge to his extinguished loves. So, even apart from the obvious danger of public misunderstanding and shameful censorship, what else should he do but keep his poetical confession to himself? There was too much candor, too much ethical and intellectual defiance in it for the thickening times, as grand nephew Michelangelo Jr. was going to confirm with his well-meaning bowdlerized edition of 1623. The poetry had transgressed on the official (Bembian) norm; the deep feeling in it had chosen the officially wrong object to pour itself upon; and no amount of Platonic rationalization could hide the fact. Rather than make it a forbidden book, or destroy it as so much else he had destroyed or was going to destroy, he preferred to keep it in a private limbo, where the pale fires of memory could survive without devouring the paper to which they were committed. As we meet them on the page, however, his words burn with the strength of actuality, they convey an experience in progress rather than a past emotion recollected in tranquillity. This is particularly true of the sonnets and madrigals for Cavalieri, which do not claim our interest only for their re­ current lyrical peaks but just as well for the narrative di­ mension they achieve if read in sequential continuity. The vicissitudes of love—of an unconventional, self-censored but nevertheless great love—unfold from beginning to end, in symptomatic detail. From the start (G 56, G 57) there is the pang of unrequited, unsatisfiable, indeed still unconfessed

PROTEAN EROS

love, then (G 58) love misunderstood by the hoi polloi who apparently manage to get the ear of the young god that has inspired it; those vulgar liars cannot surmise its truth, a truth he alone could understand if given a chance; for what is in question is a feeling of spiritual oneness between the lovers (G 59), an utter self-giving on the part of each, a sharing of woes and a common soaring toward heavenly heights, a pact to be broken only by mutual wrath. Then (G 60) the first direct address to "my lord"—a sonnet as insinuatingly articulated by tortuous concatenations of rel­ ative clauses like "You know that I know that you know" (first quatrain) and of conditional clauses in the following stanzas, as the previous sonnet straightforwardly unfolded in a cre­ scendo of conditional "If" clauses to its forceful conclusion. Peremptory logic and rhetoric in the one, suasive pleading in the other—where the request of mutual greeting by way of acknowledgment is couched in the form of a rhetorical question, and the reinforcing demand to "shatter the wall" between them (second quatrain) takes the shape of an ex­ hortation in the third person, very circumstantially qualified. The avowal of love comes in the sestet; it is a love "not to be understood by human minds" and wholly spiritual, a desire whose ultimate object can be known only after death. These variations of tone and rhetorical stance are of the essence when it comes to modulating the narrative line of the several dramatic monologues that make up the Cavalieri sequence. Tommaso himself (who does not seem to have had any homosexual leanings, though he remained a loyal friend to Michelangelo to the end) is idealized in these poems as the Stilnovisti's angelicized ladies had once been, is indeed called "an angel" (sonnets G 61, G 80) who gives "peace, repose and health/salvation [salute]." He is also a "phoenix" (sonnet G 61) whose sunlike radiation rejuvenates his aged worshiper in fire so that the latter in turn becomes a phoenix (sonnet G 62) who welcomes the excruciation beause it will refine him like gold and resurrect him to make him a member of the deathless, shining company. Fire rises to its own sphere out of love, Ficino had said,14 and Michelangelo turns that

PROTEAN EROS

very passage to account in the concluding tercet of G 62: if fire naturally ascends to the sky into its own element, and he is changed into fire, how could it fail to carry him along up there? On the other hand, as we saw, this refining fire (G 63) does have infernal torment in it. Perhaps that explains the sudden aside to Christ in G 66, and the (initially Polizianolike) ottava rima digression on the loveliness and intact sim­ plicity of rustic life versus the menacing corruption of city life (G 67), with what looks like an allegorical sequel (G 68) on the gigantic power of the vices that breed there. But the dominant thought returns: the lover persona im­ plores his beloved "sweet lord" to come for good into his "unworthy and ready arms" (sonnet G 72); his devotee has nothing else to offer but his flaming love, and it should show from his eyes. This love is also his death (G 74), but he who lives on death never dies, and it is the adorer's lot to know the pangs of jealousy (G 75) for this universally admired sun who outshines the sun itself and makes day of night; to have seen him, to have met his eyes, is to have lost sense and direction, to feel a heady insecurity, a bitter sweetness (sonnet G 76): perhaps in this beauty the soul senses "the desired light" of her First Maker, unless it is communal memory of some other renowned beauty, or the aftermath of a dream. In G 77 the lover apologizes for not showing the full strength of his love; in G 78 he tells the beloved that, Laura-like, his (the beloved's) beauty "is no mortal thing," and were the lover to die of it, the beloved could not be blamed. Petrarch could not outdo his poetical emulator in passionate hyperbole, and Michelangelo, averse though he was to mannered Petrarchism, did take a leaf from his Trecento predecessor's book, knowing full well that whatever readers he was going to have would not miss the Petrarchan source of expressions like "vivo sole" (living sun) when applied to the loved person. Stylized though it may be by the conventions of literary rhetoric, the unusual rapport narratively thrives on the poign­ ancy of small vicissitudes. Thus for instance sonnet G 79 (a letter in verse that underwent assiduous elaboration in the drafts preserved by Archivio Buonarroti) rejoices in the gra-

PROTEAN EROS

ciousness shown by the beloved lord and (not without co­ quettish affectation in wordplay) appreciates the services of a go-between friend who has evidently brought back the re­ quest of some art work. Michelangelo had indeed sent Cavalieri some drawings of mythological subjects (the Phaethon, the Tityus), but here he seems to humble himself by dispar­ aging the "most dreadful pictures," which, if used as a gift to get a live beauty in exchange, would amount to sheer usury. The epistolary attitude obviously fits the chatty tone, which, however, is redeemed by the initial statement: the artist ex­ presses deep gratitude to the "happy spirit" who keeps his heart alive while he, an old man, is approaching death; and for him it is enough to be singled out for a special greeting among so many people of higher status. No wonder then that the adored friend's departure should deeply wound the en­ thralled speaker (sonnet G 80; the hyperbolic if usage-sanctioned word is actually "kill"), who first is dazzled by the beloved's "infinite beauty" but afterward is left without guide, help, or assurance, well knowing that his presumption to gaze at that beauty like a sun-staring eagle was folly. It is not possible to follow an angel if one lacks wings, and the only result will be to throw seeds to the rocks, words to the wind, mind to the abyss of God ("l'intelletto a Dio"). The play on equivocal rhyme ("sole" = only ones; "sole" = sun) is a deliberate tactic of semantic enhancement, and it will reverberate in the following madrigal (G 81), whose long evolution from worksheet to worksheet Anne Hallock15 has endeavored to spotlight in her analysis. For the madrigal, at lines 4-6 in the final draft, has reached this form: Amor, che sprezza ogni altra maraviglia, per mie salute vuol ch'i' cerchi e brami voi, sole, solo . . .

Love that despises any other prodigy for my well being makes me seek and yearn for you, sun, solely . . . ,

(emphasis mine)

PROTEAN EROS

and here certainly the focal vocative has precipitated the essence of poetical thought. What in the preceding poem was still coy allusiveness becomes here a verbal ideogram, a metonymic identification of "sun"-"addressed person""uniqueness," not just because of the unmediated alignment of relevant words, but also through the expressive scansion that is played off against the normative metric scansion of the whole line—a hendecasyllable—to slow it down into vir­ tually measureless duration. The slowing down effect of dis­ articulating caesuras is reinforced by contiguous stresses and enjambment, a device Michelangelo used to even greater advantage than his sophisticated contemporary Monsignor Delia Casa: . . . vuol ch'io cerchi e brami voi, sole, solo; et cosi l'alma tiene d'ogni alta spene et d'ogni valor priva . . . makes me seek and yearn for you, sun, solely; and thus keeps my soul deprived of any lofty hope and strength. "There is no heaven where you are not," concludes the madrigal, and sonnet G 83 will elaborate on this theme by crediting Tommaso's beauty with the power to lift its contemplator's soul to God and to make death itself sweet, since the bliss so to be had cannot be told in this life—and never mind the wretched gossip of the vulgar crowd. Yet suffering is part of the experience, and sonnets G 82 and G 84 articulate this counterstatement in tortured syntax and semantics occasion­ ally verging on obscurity, so tense are the elliptical expres­ sions. The cause of the suffering (G 84) is in the speaker himself who can only derive pain from his lord's spiritual complexion, just as the artist alone is responsible for what he can draw from the potentialities of the proffered material. All styles (low, middle, and lofty) are contained in the writer's ink; all images, whether rich and exalted or poor and base, nestle within the sculptor's marble.

PROTEAN EROS

Here the autobiographical persona's struggle to under­ stand, describe, or justify his exceptional experience in terms of Platonic (if Christianized) philosophy becomes a sober effort to make sense of it by reducing its exalted inspirer to the equivalent of the bare material of art. By so doing the artist reasserts his power, tilting the emotional scales in his own favor when he seemed ready to accept the surrender of his entire self to the godlike cynosure. What he is accepting now is his human lot of suffering, but by drawing the parallel between his painful relation to the loved person and his cre­ ative if demanding relation as artist to the material waiting to be shaped, he has dignified that suffering and found a however difficult modus vivendi with the relentless love. One can hardly miss the disenchanted, quite modern note in this solution, and needless to say it informs many other significant poems, notably those written for Vittoria Colonna, in which the convergence of amatory effusion, Platonic philosophy, and artistic experience marks Michelangelo's deepest poetical accomplishment, that which we could have expected from him alone. In the framework of the narrative line in the Cavalieri sequence, we may also notice how the swing of the pendulum from ecstasy to misery and disenchantment or resignation implies the persona's self-rescuing, the revenge contained in his adoration. These poems, straightforward as they are, amount to a searching anatomy of love—an anatomy per­ formed on the anatomist's own body and heart, at the prompt­ ings of the romantic rhapsody that repeatedly becomes re­ flexive. Self-scrutiny then will intermittently indulge in the kind of cruel fussiness that may push diction itself into lab­ yrinthine affectation (madrigal G 91), at Michelangelo's man­ nerist worst; but it is really a twist of the knife, the counterpart of fetishism, and the resolution untangles it all: Deh rendim'a me stesso, accio ch'i' mora Oh return me to myself, so I may die. Time and again the knell of looming death tolls in the soul

PROTEAN EROS

doomed to feel the inexorability of old age without any pros­ pects for rejuvenation: . . . un cor che arde e arso e gia molt'anni torna, se ben l'ammorza la ragione, non piu gia cor, ma cenere e carbone. . . . a heart that burns and has been burning on for years, though reason soothe and soften it, will be no heart in the end, but ash and coal. Yet there will also be rebounds from this dejection, as the narrative thread mercurially unwinds. Madrigal G 93, ap­ parently developing a motif from the just quoted conclusion of the previous one, polyphonically analyzes the divergent strains of feeling in the love-haunted soul to harmonize them in the end. It is a harmony banking on dissonance, no doubt a challenging text for the Dutch composer Giacomo Arcadelt, choir master in St. Peter, who set it to music to Michelangelo's avowed satisfaction. Sense mitigates its hot excesses by di­ verting its impetus from the young lord's lovely features to others and thereby attenuating it the way an Alpine torrent does if it ramifies; the heart (unschooled emotion) suffers at seeing itself robbed of its food (the fire of passion); the soul (sublimated emotion) relishes the chance to rise to heaven with the dying love sighs; and reason distributes all those torments among the three, joining their discordant company in the "accord" to love Tommaso forever: La ragione i martiri fra lor comparte; e fra piu salde tempre s'accordan tutt'a quattro amarti sempre. Reason distributes those torments among them; and so more steadily the four of them agree to love you always. One should remember that in Italian words like "tempre" and "accordare" have a specifically musical as well as a more general meaning (accordo originally signifying "chord,"

PROTEAN EROS

whereas tempra, temprare, etc. have to do primarily with metallurgy, hence "tempered steel"; but by metaphoric ex­ tension these terms came to denote also a person's "temper­ ament" and quality or timbre of voice). It is very likely that in inditing this structurally polyphonic madrigal Michelangelo heard those semantic overtones in the chosen words I discuss, and I would not exclude on his part an intention to write for music in the era of mannerist madrigals.16 The experimental versatility of the Cavalieri poems affects style as well as dramatic attitude and makes Michelangelo the most restlessly innovative of mannerist poets17 in an era that also saw a tendential involution of mannerism into courtly abstraction. The gamut of tone, style, and attitude ranged from ecstatic sonnets G 89 and G 90 to the tortuous madrigal G 91 and the despondent madrigal G 92, then also the an­ alytically acrobatic and involved G 93—an astonishing range, particularly if we accept Girardi's dating, which makes these lyrics coeval (even though some, like G 91, underwent re­ visions a decade later). What happens is that Michelangelo, in telling us the inner story of his exceptional love, is re­ capitulating his life and spiritual, also literary, development. Sonnets G 90, G 94, and G 97, the poems of happiness and fruition, take a decidedly unPetrarchan turn for the Flor­ entine folksiness of Politianesque and Laurentian memory that stayed with Michelangelo to the end even if it only emerged in spurts, whereas his nonconformist Petrarchism, unfiltered by the Bembian "orthodoxy," provided the more steady stream. But he left nothing behind of what had formed and nurtured him: not the burlesque mode;18 not the home­ spun pithiness of airy Poliziano; not the intellectual raptures of mentor Ficino; not, in short, the lost city that had been his wonderstruck Florence and her witty people. And so if I have descried a polyphonic structure in at least one of his madrigals, it can be said that the entire Cavalieri sequence is polyphonic in its alternation of divergent or contrapuntal styles; nor is this a matter of mere eclecticism, for Michel­ angelo's voice is to be heard throughout its metamorphoses, and only in this way could his story be told.

PROTEAN EROS

Sonnet G 95, as deliberately Petrarchan in manner and reference as the previous one was Laurentian-Politianesque, fits the narrative pattern; it happens to voice a lover's jealousy in the most delicately forceful way: Renda la terra i passi alle mie piante, c'ancor l'erba germugli che gli e tolta, e Ί suono eco, gia sorda a' miei lamenti; gli sguardi agli occhi mie tuo Iuci sante, ch'i' possa altra bellezza un'altra volta amar, po' che di me non ti contenti. Let earth return my steps to my footsoles, so that the grass they killed may grow again, and let deaf echo render my complaints; then let your sacred lights give back my glances so I may love another beauty in turn since you seem far from satisfied with me. The adynata, stemming from an established tradition, do not remain stock rhetoric; they are driven by gestural energy to the point of individualization, and that energy is surely not borrowed from the seductive model. The biographical infer­ ence that the consolatory diversion alluded to in the closing lines could be young Febo del Poggio, to whom the unpoetic artifice of sonnet G 99 and quatrains G 100 makes punning reference, matters much less in the sequence than the re­ newed ardor and dedication that tercets G 96 and sonnets G 97 and G 98 manifest. Sonnet G 98, by the way, also puns on the name of Cavalieri with its last line: resto prigion d'un cavalier armato I am the captive of a knight in armor, but it does have the psychological subtlety that is lacking in the Febo del Poggio pieces: Pero se Ί colpo ch'io ne rub'e 'nvolo schifar non posso, almen, s'e destinato, chi entrera 'nfra la dolcezza e Ί duolo?

PROTEAN EROS

Yet if the blow I get from Love's assault cannot be dodged, at least, since it's my lot, who will come in between sweetness and woe? This is a deft way to vindicate the exquisite privacy of love, pain inseparable from joy. There will be more poems for Tommaso, like the markedly Platonic G 105 and G 106 that restate, in Ficinian (and Petrarchan) terms, the transcendence of this love, its im­ munity to ruinous sensuality, its function of revealing God through the beauty of His creature, whom He sent to the world as His angel to heal the human mind and then return from the terrene jail to the original celestial home. Even the four sonnets to Night, with their contradictory dialectic and baroque conceits, end up reiterating the theme of Tommaso the solar godhead who illuminates the night of which his worshiper is denizen from birth. It is once again Marsilio Ficino who suggested the theme (as P. L. De Vecchi also notices)19 with his statement that, according to astrology, love is mutual between those on whose birth respectively the sun and the moon presided. What matters narratively is the selfmythifying device that enables Michelangelo to express at one and the same time his diversity from the beloved and his close tie to him, as he had done in sonnet G 89. Nor is it a shallow myth Michelangelo projects here by defining himself as nocturnal; it is actually an insightful self-characterization of the passionate introvert who hid so much in himself that he could convey only through the symbols of art. From now on, other loves will occupy him: Vittoria Colonna and the "donna bella e crudele," even though occasional addresses to Tommaso will crop up, notably in sonnet G 260 reaffirming the superiority of sublimated love between worthy men to the common love of women, which drags the lover down to earth, since "donna e dissimil troppo" (woman is too unlike the exalted Platonic paradigm). The fifty epitaphs in praise of prematurely deceased Cecchino Bracci, the winsome nephew of Luigi del Riccio, cannot be properly considered love poetry, not just because they were commissioned to Michelangelo by the bereaved uncle, but even more in view

PROTEAN EROS

of their detached tone, regardless of the intermittent poetical achievement. Ann Hallock is right in maintaining that they are essentially meditations on death and the frailty of human life, occasioned by the friend's insistent request (and Mi­ chelangelo's humorous accompanying notes to del Riccio are there in the Laurenziana manuscripts to confirm the person­ ally uninvolved nature of these compositions). When Michelangelo, well advanced in years, wrote that mi­ sogynist passage on woman's incompatibility with higher love, he cannot have thought of Vittoria Colonna, the revered woman of whom another famous poem of his says that she is un uomo in una donna, anzi uno dio a man within a woman, no, a god. (G 235) That madrigal belongs with the finest of Michelangelo's, and apart from the dubious compliment it pays to the great lady by making her worth contingent on masculinity, it may offer a clue to his attitude in her regard and, more important, to the kind of love story she elicited from his pen at the time Cavalieri's sun was setting on his inner horizon. Rather than a mere rhetorical maneuver, the attribution to Vittoria of spiritual and even godlike virility shows that she is fit to take over Cavalieri's role as inner interlocutor and erotic/poetical catalyst. Vittoria has the cold, androgynous beauty of some of Mi­ chelangelo's Madonnas, and the intellectual power to go with it: a Pidlas Athena, not a Venus; a spiritual challenge, not a feminine comforter; and if Michelangelo had mythically feminized himself vis-a-vis sun god Cavalieri by becoming nocturnal, life-sheltering, and enclosing, he does something of the sort by turning passive in the approach to virile, Pallas­ like Vittoria: S'egli e, donna, che puoi come cosa mortal, benehe sia diva di belta, c'ancor viva

PROTEAN EROS

e mangi e dorma e parli qui fra noi, a non seguirti poi, cessato il dubbio, tuo grazia e mercede, qual pena a tal peccato degna fora? Che alcun ne' pensier suoi, co' l'occhio che non vede, per virtu propria tardi s'innamora. Disegna in me di fuora, com'io fo in pietra od in candido foglio, che nulla ha dentro, ed evvi cio ch'io voglio. If, lady, such is your power that—divine though you are in your beauty—you still can live and eat and sleep and speak here among us, should one fail to follow you once by your grace our doubt is put to rest what penalty would suit such arrant sin? For a man that is thought-ridden and has unseeing eyes is sluggish to the call of higher love. Trace a design in me from where you are, as I do on a stone or on a white sheet which has nothing inside but what I want. That is an earlier madrigal, Gill, among the earliest poems written for Vittoria Colonna; but it foreshadows the later one in establishing the lady's superior, indeed divine, power and status and Michelangelo's own spiritual subservience to her. She is a vastly upgraded ProvenQal domna and midons20 to her troubadour, who offers himself to her as a tabula rasa, a rock to be completely reshaped. Clearly her function is not to lure her lover into (carnal or spiritual) possession but to awaken him to spiritual life and by so doing regenerate him. Of capital importance in this regenerative rapport is the analogy to art, which works by a metaphoric extension of the artist's own concrete handling of his materials to his lady's invisible treatment of his soul. In this way his total spiritual surrender to her becomes a tran-

PROTEAN EROS

scendence rather than an abdication of self, a heightening of what is active and noble in him, in short a fulfillment beyond abnegation. The stark simplicity of diction should be noted in this regard, particularly in the three conclusive lines, where noun is unadorned element, verb is essential act, and the only adjective ("candido") sheer quality made visible. Sig­ nificant is also the ranking of sculpture with drawing (perhaps also writing) on one and the same level, since we know Mi­ chelangelo generally defined himself as a sculptor first and foremost, whereas he could occasionally apologize for his painting and his allegedly uncouth poetry. Finally, the use of dtisegnare (design) bears scrutiny here, if we keep in mind the speech Francisco de Holanda put on Michelangelo's lips in the third of his Didlogos deRoma.21 According to Holanda's report, the great artist in one of the soirees presided over by Vittoria Colonna said that disegno is of the essence in all arts, and by that he did not mean just a technical operation but above all a formal conception, indeed form grasped as such, before and during the material execution. Whereas in the Cavalieri sequence the autobiographical persona's artistic vocation came up only sporadically, in the series of poems for Vittoria Colonna (and for her shadowy counterpart, the "fair and cruel lady") it makes up a central organizing theme recurring in several lyrics, some of out­ standing significance (G 111, as we saw, then G 151, G 152, G 153, G 159, G 164, G 172, G 173, G 236, G 237, G 239, G 240, G 241, G 242). Both statistically and qualitatively, then, the strong, pervasive presence of art as a constitutive element of the poetic text marks the Vittoria Colonna — fair and cruel lady sequences (or sequence) as a part of the canzoniere that—although far from unrelated to the Cavalieri sequence, with which it shares some aspects—nevertheless stands out with a complexion of its own. Other individualizing factors (apart from the obvious one of involving woman and not man as addressee) can be recognized in the different narrative solution (dictated by the biographical circumstances that spared Tommaso's life and not Vittoria's), in the more limited stylistic gamut, and in the fact that the problematic

PROTEAN EROS

tension of love here appears ostensibly externalized in two rival ladies rather than in the persona's contradictory attitude. Assimilating the poems for the so-called fair and cruel lady to those addressed to, or inspired by, Vittoria Colonna would be a rash policy from a sheer biographical point of view, but we do not have to postulate a biographical underpinning for this kind of literary operation. It is enough to recognize the intentional addressee and/or theme in those lyrics that have unequivocally to do with Vittoria, and to ascertain by critical analysis the dialectical relation that such poems bear to the ones gravitating on her supposed rival. The latter is, biographically speaking, little more than a hypothesis, so much so that authoritative scholars do not always agree on the poems to be ascribed to her sphere of influence.22 But even if we had clear evidence of her historical identity, the fact remains that the poems' internal evidence often makes it impossible to decide which of the two women may have inspired them. Neither did Michelangelo set the poems themselves apart in mutually definable sequences, as he did in the case of the Cecchino Bracci epitaphs, which are sequentially arranged in a series unto itself and indubitably composed on the theme of that lovely boy's premature death, even if his name did not repeatedly come up to certify the ascription. Vittoria Colonna, on the other hand, is never named in the lyrics pertaining to her, and this is consistent with the Provengal and Petrarchan tradition of love poetry; her personal identity is occasionally established by the attribution of prerogatives like the writing of poetry, the ability to speak loftily, and the charismatic, saintly attitude. But this very saintliness, a spiritual magnet for Michel­ angelo, is also what prevents fruition, a sometimes intolerable hardness (durezza), hence the pointed oxymora in the de­ scription of her impact on his tormented psyche. If the lan­ guage recalls Petrarch's, it is because a Petrarchan situation is being experienced anew, and Michelangelo's variations on the by now archetypal theme of amor de Ionh23 have enough significance to certify the authenticity of that experience. Vittoria's inaccessibility is even harsher than Tommaso's in

PROTEAN EROS

the sense that it does not rest on the homosexuality taboo but on the attractive widow's own choice and vow. By the same token, it becomes impossible to distinguish her hardness from the "cruelty" of the donna altera (haughty) or bella e crudele, as language itself will show. Take for instance madrigal G 113, placed by Frey among the first poems to Vittoria Colonna, and the next one, G 114, which in Girardi's opinion could be for the "haughty woman." The only verbal marker that allows us to secure G 113 for Vittoria is the modifier "saintly" (santi) applied to the lady's eyes in line 1. But since their action is negative vis-a-vis the speaker (they do not reciprocate his delighted gazing and so inflict untold suffering on him), we have no way to differentiate their operation and significance from that of the equally lovely and powerful fem­ inine eyes the persona addresses in the next madrigal (G 114): Ben vinci ogni durezza cogli occhi tuo, com'ogni luce ancora; che, s'alcun d'allegrezza avvien che mora, allor sarebbe l'ora che gran pieta comanda a gran bellezza. You certainly exceed any hardness with your eyes, and any light to boot; for, if a man can die of sheer rejoicing, now would it be the time when passing mercy governs passing beauty. In both cases the final effect is deleterious to the persona, who is first set afire inside and then flooded by tears in G 113, while in G 114 he is blinded by the matchless radiance of the lady's eyes: ne puoi non far chiunche tu miri cieco nor can you help blinding whomsoever you gaze at. (Here one thinks of St. Paul, portrayed in Michelangelo's own image as an old man flung to the ground and temporarily blinded by a hovering Jesus in the 1545 fresco at the Cappella

PROTEAN EROS

Paolina.) The central cause of such mannerist torment is a realized incommensurability between the speaker and the lady's transcendent beauty: O fallace speranza degli amanti! Com'esser puo dissimile e dispari Tinfinita belta, Ί superchio Iume da ogni mie costume, che meco ardendo, non ardin del pari? O the ever deceitful hope of lovers! How can her infinite beauty and exceeding light be so unlike, so disproportioned to anything I am that while they burn with me they will not burn to a comparable degree? That is in G 113; here is the counterpart in the concluding lines of G 114: Bellezza e grazia equalmente infinita, dove piii porgi aita, men puoi non tor la vita, ne puoi non far chiunche tu miri cieco. O beauty and grace equally infinite, where you most offer help least can you avoid taking one's very life, and blindness is the lot of those you look at. There is actually nothing in this madrigal to make it unsuit­ able for Vittoria Colonna as its theme and addressee, and nothing whatsoever to discriminate it, in this regard, from madrigal G 121, which in the opinion of Barelli and Testori is probably addressed to her and which in its inception seems even to echo the rhetorical module of double or cumulative negation that structures G 114: Come non puoi non esser cosa bella, esser non puoi che pietosa non sia; sendo po' tutta mia, non puo poter non mi distrugga e stempre.

PROTEAN EROS

Just as you cannot help being beautiful, you can hardly be less than compassionate; and then if you are all mine you cannot help consuming and destroying me. Conversely, there is no reason to deny that madrigal G 122, tentatively placed by Barelli among those meant for Vittoria Colonna, could also qualify for inclusion in the number of lyrics written for the supposed donna bella e crudele. It stresses the fateful nature of this love, its torture for the persona, and finally voices his plea to forgive this unrequited love that spells death for him albeit against her wish. The following madrigal, G 123, is assigned by Girardi to the donna bella e crudele group, but would the alternative ascription to the Vittoria Colonna group be untenable? After all, calling her "mie cruda e fera stella" (my cruel and savage star) is neither an insult nor a frivolous address; it actually has high Petrarchan lineage and is perfectly consonant with the respect our poet pays to his tormenting lady. The torment, by the way, affects the style as such, which is so involved (thanks to obsessive alliterations, antitheses, and meandering ratiocination) as to incur the affectation of which mannerist art is capable when it overdoes its cult of artifice; but such excess is the price Michelangelo pays for his experimental attitude to the craft of verse. In the poem I am touching on, as well as in several others that exhibit a comparable formal endeavor (G 119, for instance) Michelangelo as it were ex­ orcizes the erotic obsession by an obsession of form be­ speaking his regained dominance of the object that threatens to possess—and dispossess—him. The wizardry of art can be an antidote to the troubling power of love, and it calls for a dogged refining and testing of instruments. The poems that could be interchangeably addressed to Vittoria or to the "fair and cruel lady" are quite a few more than can be even summarily analyzed; for instance, madrigals G 118, G 119, G 120, G 125, G 126, G 127, G 130, G 136, G 138, G 139, G 140, G 141, G 142, G 143, G 149, sonnet G 150, madrigals G 155, G 157, G 158. There are also a few poems one would hesitate to credit to Vittoria Colonna's

PROTEAN EROS

inspiration, considering a mundane touch that jars with such attribution. Madrigal G 124 presents a "donna . . . pronta e ardita," a woman ready and bold who practices a flirt's wiles. Madrigal G 128 talks of a beauty who ridicules her worshiper's tears. Madrigal G 129 gives lovely blond hair to the lady, recalling certain coeval drawings of Michelangelo's, and it rebukes her for shunning the company of physically unat­ tractive people like himself. Madrigal G 146 accuses the woman of flirting with others and neglecting him. Madrigal G 168 skirts blasphemy by wishing for damnation if that means belonging completely to this woman. Madrigal G 172 (a masterpiece, rightly vindicated by Valerio Mariani24 and ingeniously allegorized by Clements) features a vampire-like woman who drains the poet persona of his lifeblood, who rejoices in her powerful beauty at the mirror, then casts en­ ticing glances to him, but he has his revenge in his art, for by portraying her in enhanced beauty he conquers nature itself. Finally, some love poems (G 137, G 167) are left by scholars without any specific label other than this: that the intended addressee is a woman. The point is not, obviously, that Michelangelo could not have had another woman than Vittoria Colonna to elicit his admiration, desire, and frustration, but that a large share of the poems supposedly written for the otherwise unspecified "fair and cruel lady" might have been inspired by Vittoria just as well. They articulate the feelings of rejection and despair that any desirable woman inspires when she refuses to belong completely to her suitor. There was a literary tra­ dition of long standing for the poetic articulation of these feelings, from the ProvenQal troubadours to Guido Cavalcanti and the Dante of rime pet rose,25 to Petrarch, who embalmed the situation for generations of Renaissance poets (or rheto­ ricians in verse); Michelangelo, apart though he stood from the Cinquecento mainstream of lyrical poetry, certainly drew on that tradition for his anatomy of love. The donna bella e crudele, if we listen to many of the poems he allegedly indited for her, is an aspect of Vittoria herself, the dark side of that bright moon at whose distant call his spirit heaved. As Vittoria, the Eternal Feminine would forever

PROTEAN EROS

draw him on high, beyond himself; as fair and cruel lady, that same hypostatized force would tease him out of coun­ tenance and threaten him with moral destruction. Similarly, Giovanna had loomed to Guido Cavalcanti as both luminous rapture and harbinger of "death"; Madonna Pietra, the stony one, had obsessed Dante into the most fastidiously elaborate, yet erotically charged poetry to come from his pen in the intervals of heavenly Beatrice's memory; and sweet but aloof Laura had occasionally ceased to be Petrarch's supernal dream to become his nightmare. Those are poets Michelangelo knew and felt in his bones, but he would never have com­ pounded their several voices in his own unless he had rec­ ognized a deep kinship with the predicament that had vexed them into song. I shall make no excuse for reading his canzoniere with this kind of latitude, independently of whatever biographical data or hypothesis could be summoned to pinpoint the identity of the woman who came in to complete the Madonna-Medusa syndrome (and to inject a welcome element of feminine whim­ sicality in his portrayal of woman). For that matter, Vittoria Colonna herself, unshakably identified outside Michelange­ lo's canzoniere by so many sources and by her own consid­ erable poems and letters (those to him in particular), interests us in his poetry as "Vittoria Colonna," as the myth he made of her. He is her servant, in sheer troubadour tradition, her friend, her admirer, her suffering worshiper, and in turn her accuser (at least through the fictional device of the fair and cruel lady) and yet, finally, her implorer who from her seeks rebirth (sonnet G 236): Simil di me model di poca istima mie parto fu, per cosa alta e prefetta da voi rinascer po', donna alta e degna. Just so I myself, a cheap model, was born to have new birth from you, lofty and worthy lady, into loftiness and perfection. That is one of the poems that Alma Altizer aptly selects26 as artistically and archetypally significant for the "symbolism of

PROTEAN EROS

the self' in Michelangelo's literary work, based as they are on art (sculpture, to be exact) as a metaphor of the regener­ ative transformation love can bring about. And there can be no doubt that these poems—centering on Michelangelo's rap­ port with Vittoria Colonna27—amount to some of his highest achievement and mark his original development of the Pe­ trarchan love story to a point that no other Cinquecento lyricist attained. The shaping experience of Michelangelo's prime art, so introduced into his love poetry, gave it a unique concreteness and semantic radiance. Now the artist persona makes good that very "hardness" or "durezza" he had imputed to the "fair and cruel lady" and, quite explicitly, to Vittoria herself. For marble is hard, but its refractory quality can be conquered by the sculptor's hammer and chisel until, the excess material being chipped off, the form nestling inside the rough block will emerge. It will endure, for hardness is lasting (durezza, durare). And in the famous sonnet G 151, on which Benedetto Varchi gave his learned lecture in Florence in 1547, durezza is attributed to Vittoria Colonna, who appears as the sphinx­ like block of stone to be quarried for the good she hides inside; but the artist is unequal to the challenge and can only extract "death" from her: Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto c'un marmo solo in se non circonscriva col suo superchio, e solo a quello arriva la man che ubbidisce all'intelletto. Il mal ch'io fuggo, e Ί ben ch'io mi prometto, in te, donna leggiadra, altera e diva, tal si nasconde; e perch'io piu non viva, contraria ho l'arte al disiato effetto. Amor dunque non ha, ne tua beltate ο durezza ο fortuna ο gran disdegno del mio mal colpa, ο mio destino ο sorte; se dentro del tuo cor morte e pietate porti in un tempo, e che Ί mio basso ingegno non sappia, ardendo, trarne altro che morte.

PROTEAN EROS

The best of artists can conceive no shape that a single marble block will not contain with its excess, and it's a goal to be attained only by the hand that obeys intellect. Even so the ill I shun and the good I envisage hides in you, lady fair, haughty and divine; and, threatening thereby my very life, the art I wield can only thwart my purpose. My ill therefore cannot be blamed on Love or on your beauty, hardness, fortune or disdain, neither can it be blamed on my appointed lot; if in your heart you carry death and mercy at the same time, and if my lowly talent, aflame, from that shrine can draw forth only death. Concrete imagery based on the kinetic experience of stone carving combines with Platonic-Aristotelian ideas (of arche­ typal form to be found rather than created) and with daredevil analogical leaps (the lofty woman as a block of marble to be hammered at) apparently normalized by a relentless logic (labyrinthine rather than rationalistically deductive) to make this poem an early example of baroque "metaphysical" style. Michelangelo sees the world sub specie sculpturae, and this primary experience in which he stakes all of himself—his sensory, pragmatic, erotic, and intellectual energies—cata­ lyzes a global vision of reality. Because it is sensuous and intellectual at the same time, that vision subjectively orga­ nizes his several concerns into an integrated whole allowing him to accept defeat itself (the defeat in love, the failure of art). His redress is that he recognizes himself as the cause of that defeat and can thus make sense of the discontinuities of experience, albeit from a negative point of view. The poem calls him to account, and it tells him that his tragedy is neither the work of fate nor of fateful Vittoria, but of his own lack of strength. By the same token, the poem reunites in the person of Vittoria the contrasting attributes, or forces, that in so many other poems are diffracted into the luminous image of the savior woman and the dark image of the cruel, haughty,

PROTEAN EROS

merciless one; Madonna and Medusa, angel and witch are no longer different beings but aspects of one and the same woman, in fact projections on her of the lover's unintegrated desire. Coming to terms with her—who at this point is Woman as such—is coming to terms with reality and with oneself. The sonnet marks a high point in Michelangelo's poetical achievement and a capital turn in the narrative of his love story. Yet it does not exhaust the possibilities of inner met­ amorphosis, or conversion, that Proteus-like love held in stock. For the sonnet casts woman into the stonily passive role of an object to be assaulted by the sculptor-lover in sublimated eros; and even though it reintegrates her multi­ farious essence, it subliminally takes revenge on her troubling charm by reducing her to enigmatically ambivalent, maternal matter. She is nothing but a stone womb. The next poem, madrigal G 152, reverses that symbolic relationship of roles by making the male speaker himself the object of his lady's maieutic sculpture. Now it is for her to extract from his rough shell the purified inner man, the best of which he is capable: Si come per levar, donna, si pone in pietra alpestra e dura una viva figura, che 1¾ piii cresce u' piu la pietra scema; tal alcun'opre buone, per l'alma che pur trema, cela il superchio della propria carne co' l'inculta sua cruda e dura scorza. Tu pur dalle mie streme parti puo' sol levarne, ch'in me non e di me voler ne forza. Just as by taking out, my lady, one sets into a hard mountain rock a figure alive which there most grows where stone most dwindles down; just so some works of goodness for the sake of my trembling soul are hidden by the excess of my own flesh

PROTEAN EROS

with its uncouth, its crude and crusty shell. You alone can lift me out of my enveloping parts, for I lack will and power over myself. Both hardness (equated semantically with imperviousness to ethical salvation) and passivity are here transposed to the male persona, whose metaphoric assimilation to stone makes him a statue of himself, or better, the raw material for the perfected shape that his lady turned sculptress will extract from his matter-bound self. The artist who knows how to change dead rock into live flesh for the benefit of the eye has allowed his own personality to become dull stone, and the opaque shell enveloping what is left morally alive of him can only be shattered by her higher art. Thus the lady has become the active partner in the sub­ limated erotic relationship that the sonnet envisaged other­ wise, and in the percussive alliterations and dark vowels of line 8 we can actually overhear the hammer blows she is dealing to free the living soul of her lover from threatening petrifaction: co' l'inculta sua cruda e dura scorza. That is a maieutic way of being "fair and cruel," and the poem gains in effectiveness by refraining from punctilious detail in this apt metaphoric transposition. After all, if Mi­ chelangelo had indulged in Marinism avant la lettre here, as he occasionally does, he might have explicitly placed in en­ ergetic Vittoria's hands the hammer that imagistically struc­ tures sonnet G 46 as the emblem of God's creative and saving force and of His human delegates. Actually, Carl Frey be­ lieved that sonnet to be a dirge for Vittoria Colonna, because it mourns the going up to Heaven of the friendly "hammer" before it had a chance to finish the job of perfecting Mi­ chelangelo here on earth: E perche Ί colpo e di valor piu pieno quant'alza piu se stesso alia fucina, sopra Ί mie questo al ciel n'e gito a volo.

PROTEAN EROS

Onde a me non finito verra meno, s'or non gli da la fabbrica divina aiuto a farlo, c'al mondo era solo. And since the hammer strikes with greater strength the higher it lifts itself above the work, this one flew into heaven, way beyond mine. Therefore it will leave me still unfinished unless God's workshop does provide some help in the job, which it was alone to pursue. Girardi, however, has given an earlier dating that removes the poem's occasion to 1528, when Michelangelo lost his beloved brother Buonarroto (or some other friend); and the style as such would be enough to exclude Frey's hypothesis (followed also by Ceriello)28 if we only heed the subtle trans­ formation that the same basic motif has undergone from the spectacular bravura of the 1528 sonnet to the internalized concentration of the madrigal first drafted a decade later and then revised in 1544. The pyrotechnical poetics of "meraviglia"—pursuing astonishment through a crescendo of con­ ceits—have been pared down to the ascetic starkness of a diction in which no element clamors for attention by itself. Instead, all converge into such a sharp semantic focus that the poem will keep revolving in our mind to radiate with meaning. A deepening has occurred rather than a simplifi­ cation; words, images are enhanced by their very bareness, no less than by the bold correlations they enter. Once again sculpture makes sense of reality and, as a key metaphor, organizes emotional, moral, and intellectual ex­ perience for the artist persona who seems to abdicate his powers and delegate them to his lady. But if we listen care­ fully, we shall find that she is more than just a sculptress. She is, as I said, a maieutic one, for in administering her spiritual discipline—in hammering away at the moral inertia that envelops her lover—she brings out the good that is still left in him. This action semantically hinges on the word levare (to take out, to subtract). It appears twice, with dominant function. In the first line it governs the first iconic and logical

PROTEAN EROS

unit of the poem, to describe the essence of stone carving as it was already Platonically indicated by sonnet G 151 and as it will be set forth in a letter of 1549 to Benedetto Varchi, in which Michelangelo says that true sculpture for him is the one "che si fa per forza di levare" (that is made by dint of taking out, not of putting in). In the last line but one, the same verb levare denotes the regenerating action of the savior lady on the speaker, and again it governs the syntax and semantics of the sentence that makes up the second and last logical unit of the poem. There is an overall correspondence between the two units in the matter of imagery and meaning, and it focuses on the verb levare; yet unit 2 does not exactly mirror unit 1, which it actually modifies by transposing its literal tenor onto a strongly metaphoric level and accordingly telescoping its basic elements in the process. Levare (take out) and porre (put in) are equated in line 1; in fact the former operation is resolved in the latter, to which it is simultaneous. In its second occurrence (line 10, last but one), levare appears by itself, as if it had absorbed the positive meaning of porre. Consequently it no longer has the purely negative meaning of subtraction, as we can see also from the fact that the object of this verb has changed: its implicit object in line 1 was the excess rock to be chipped off, and its explicit object in line 10 is the speaker's inner, living self. In the first case the operation involved was a discarding, in the second on the contrary it is a lifting in view of preser­ vation. Vittoria lifts Michelangelo's new Adam out of the dead shell of his old Adam to effect his spiritual rebirth. The shell out of which he must be lifted is a kind of placenta, the action in question is a delivery in both the moral and the obstetrical sense of the term; we should remember that the word for "midwife," in Italian, is levatrice, exactly formed from that verb levare, which is so charged with cumulative meaning in Michelangelo's writing. In a later lyric I quoted above (sonnet G 236) he longs to be reborn from her (". . . cosa alta e prefetta / da voi rinascer po', donna alta e degna"), and at that point Vittoria will become a spiritual mother and wife in one, rather than a midwife; such is the transmogrifying power

PROTEAN EROS

of love. But the stony midwifery that combines the art of sculpture with the art of delivery remains a high point, per­ haps the highest, of Michelangelo's love story as well as of his poetical achievement. Here he delves so deep into the layers of language and of his singular experience that his individual vision, uniquely formulated, becomes an arche­ type, no less than his late Pietas. What Michelangelo achieves in the madrigal under ex­ amination (G 152) is verbal magic, which enables him to unify the several dimensions of his existential experience: love, art, ethical endeavor, philosophy. Plato talked of maieutics, of spiritual obstetrics, through the character of Socrates, and Michelangelo's feat of making concrete his vision of selftranscendence through Vittoria's catalytic persona is true to the Socratic and Platonic spirit even if he never thought of it while penning this poem. For here certainly he did not translate a Platonic idea into verse; he recreated it from his own feeling. In this regard it does not even matter to what extent he absorbed Platonism as a coherent system of thought (Gavriel Moses29 has lately endeavored to qualify that influ­ ence). What matters is that philosophical ideas inherited chiefly through Marsilio Ficino took on mythic concreteness and in this way could inform Michelangelo's sculptural prac­ tice, which in turn made them new. The process poetically outlined in madrigal G 152, and in the previous sonnet, whereby the emergence of form from its matrix is to be grasped both sensuously and intellectually because it involves mind and hand alike, had also been dramatized in the Captives (.Prigioni). Originally sketched in marble for Pope Julius II's tomb, they were left incomplete by a fortunate dereliction that allows us to surprise them in the struggle to free them­ selves from enveloping matter. Their conative energy mirrors Michelangelo's commitment to the lifelong task that made him grunt and sweat now and then but also exult in quiet triumph: to bring out the living shape, the hidden truth of things. And to bring out was to bring forth, whether in the medium of marble or of words. Metal, no matter how precious, was notoriously far less

PROTEAN EROS

significant to him (and ironically, his one major effort in bronze—the statue of Julius II placed before St. Petronius Cathedral to remind the restless Bolognese of Julius's victory over his local opponents—was melted down not long after to make a cannon). Accordingly, casting being inferior to carv­ ing in Michelangelo's opinion if we go by his 1549 letter to Varchi, we should expect that kind of sculpture (per via di porre, by putting in) to have much less appeal than marble to our poet as a basis for metaphors. The one poem that makes metaphoric use of sculpture as casting is madrigal G 153, written for Vittoria Colonna. Although it does have a hold on us for the unusual way in which it restates the theme of love through the vehicle of an artistic process, it fails to equal the feat of expressive concentration and depth achieved in mad­ rigal G 152. The concrete analogy between the casting of a gold or silver statue and the introjection of the lady's image (which then demands deliverance, perhaps in the guise of objectified artistic form) is pushed to a logical extreme, in mannerist fashion, with an effect that is too breathtaking for comfort, something like a final pirouette to stun the au­ dience:30 Non pur d'argento ο d'oro vinto dal foco esser po' piena aspetta, vota d'opra prefetta, la forma, che sol fratta il tragge fora; tal io, col foco ancora d'amor dentro ristoro il desir voto di belta infinita, di coste' ch'i' adoro, anima e cor della mie fragil vita. Alta donna e gradita in me discende per si brevi spazi, c'a trarla fuor convien mi rompa e strazi. Not only silver or gold, fire-tamed, will gradually fill the expectant emptiness of the mold that must shatter to yield a perfected shape;

PROTEAN EROS

for I too feed fire of love inside to the unfulfilled desire for the infinite beauty of this idol of mine, of her who is soul and heart to my frail life. A lofty woman and welcome in me descends through such small openings that to get her out I must be cruelly shattered. The opening image and sentence (first four lines) has the authority of Michelangelo's best diction and predisposes us for something comparable in its way to Cellini's great pages on the casting of his Perseus·, but the metaphoric development that follows disappoints us, despite the intermittent fervor of lines like il desir voto di belta infinita or of segments like Alta donna e gradita in me discende. . . . The trouble is that the effort to reproduce figuratively the literal base of this promising simile down to the last detail entangles the writer in belabored correspondences. The mania for point-by-point analogy between the experience of metal casting and the experience of rapturous love leads to the pedantry of a conceit like "filling desire with love" (lines 57). What is even worse, the outwardly prestigious close makes nonsense of the passionate devotion expressed in the previous lines; if the speaker burns with desire for his lady's infinite beauty, why should he want to get rid of her image once it has visited him? Is it because he will transform her into a perfect shape? Or is it because he wants to get rid of the obsession? In either case the solution blurs the image and results in a dispersal of poetical energy, something that did not happen in the previous madrigal, where the second member of the simile that constitutes the poem eschewed any pedantic re-

PROTEAN EROS

hearsal of the first and actually raised it to incomparable intensity by a kind of foreshortening. Neither art nor ecstasy could provide the desired conclusion for the analogical de­ velopment initiated by the fervent beginning. Not art, because that would imply imparting a perfect shape to her who is already infinitely beautiful and therefore beyond any such perfecting, and not ecstasy (the more plausible of these al­ ternatives) because once the poet has tied himself down to painstaking correspondence with the material process initially described, he can only burlesque the spiritual event implied, not certainly convey it. Musical expertise and rhetorical ac­ robatics can hardly disguise the impasse. Plodding has superseded flying. How much better does Michelangelo handle his chosen difficulta in a madrigal like G 158! It happens to be one that could be claimed either for Vittoria or for the "fair and cruel lady," but one does not exclude the other in this case. It is articulated in three syntactical and semantic members, with the central one providing the iconic clarification, and the emotional propulsion, for the contorted logic that strains part 1 and part 3. The poem begins with the word Amor and ends with morte·, it dwells on the theme of love's paradox, since at his advanced age the speaker has reason to fear a love that distracts him from the peaceful thought of looming death only to inflict pain on him; in the end, the very mercy of his lady kills him. It is a frightening mercy, a coup de grace. Old as he is, love can only be a destructive visitation, as incom­ mensurable to his dwindling energy as the infinite is to the finite: Caduto e Ί frutto e secca e gia la scorza, e quel, gia dolce, amaro or par ch'i' senta; anzi, sol mi tormenta, neH'ultim'ore e corte, infinito piacere in breve spazio. Fallen the fruit and dry is now the husk, and what was sweet tastes bitter now to me; indeed it's only torture

PROTEAN EROS

to me in my brief last hours an infinite pleasure in such a short space. This is the authentic voice of Michelangelo, a memorable burst, an illumination. It makes sense of the final paradox in which the speaker thanks his lovely tormentor for killing him with kindness; anything will be better than the intolerable pain of love. Dissonances are thus resolved in a strong chord; logical entanglements are expressively efficient, the equiv­ alent of polyphonic design in musical composition—which, John Shearman well reminds us,31 typified mannerist taste in the Cinquecento. The motif of old age vis-a-vis the upset of love runs through Michelangelo's canzoniere to strengthen its tragic narrative tone. At a certain point, the only metamor­ phosis that love can bestow is death, even though it may recurrently hold out the mirage of rejuvenation. And yet sometimes, under the sway of love, he will forget that he is "vecchio e tardi" (old and slow, G 125, G 136); he will in fact glimpse the fruition that to an artist's eye is full bliss (sonnet G 166): Deh, se tu puo' nel ciel quanto tra noi, fa' del mie corpo tutto un occhio solo; ne fie poi parte in me che non ti goda. Oh, if in heaven you have the same power as here among us, make my whole body an eye; and then no part of me will fail to enjoy you. This lyrical breakthrough strikingly counterpoints the recur­ rent despondency of the age-burdened persona to enrich the tonal complexion of the canzoniere in the narrative unfolding of love's vicissitudes—of this particular love, as it imagi­ natively lives beyond the stereotypes at hand. One thinks of Emerson's supreme ingathering of consciousness into a trans­ parent eyeball, and the analogy may be casual, or just ar­ chetypal. In Michelangelo's case, however, we must keep in mind the Ficinian source, which stood him in good stead in this case as in several others:

PROTEAN EROS

Se l'occhio la conosce, solo la fruisce; solo adunque l'occhio fruisce la corporale Bellezza. If the eye knows it, the eye alone enjoys it; only the eye, then, enjoys corporeal Beauty. That comes from chapter 9 of Sopra Io amore ("Che cercano gli amanti"; What do lovers seek); and it is so unmistakably germane that the entire sonnet might be considered a poetical commentary on Ficino's statement—were it not for the imag­ inative leap the poem takes in the end by transcending the elaborate argumentation of the three previous stanzas into one shining image. A tension had been built up by the threefold reiteration of the persona's varied plea that his flesh-burdened body cannot soar with his soul-powered eyesight and intellect to the heights where the angelic lady summons him; now that tension finds exhilarating release. Just as in madrigal G 152 the pivotal word levare moved from the negative to the positive end of the semantic spectrum, and in so doing climaxed the poem, here the insistent denial of the physical limbs' ability to follow the free flight of eyes and mind toward their heavenly, yet sensuously graspable cynosure, yields to the affirmation of glimpsed total fruition when the invoked metamorphosis of body into eye culminates the madrigal. It is one of the subtlest sea-changes magician Love can bring about in the universe of poetry; burdensome body is not finally rejected but just transformed, and thereby concentrated into its highest organ and function. Indeed the body's physical desire for contact had been eloquently voiced at the outset: Ben posson gli occhi miei presso e lontano veder dov'apparisce il tuo bel volto; ma dove loro, ai pie, donna, e ben tolto portar Ie braccia e l'una e l'altra mano. Well can my eyes from near and from afar see your beautiful face where it appears;

PROTEAN EROS

but where they ranging go, Madam, my feet cannot carry my arms and my two hands. This is surely not ascetic Platonism; indeed it points to the "integrative tradition" of which Anthony Perry has talked32 apropos of a number of European Renaissance poets—from Maurice Sceve, Louise Labe, Pernette, and Heroet to Donne and Shakespeare—who seem to draw on the non-Manichean Platonic source of Leone Ebreo (and Ficino before him, I would add). The division of being into physical and spiritual is in fact healed by the integration of those two discordant aspects into one organ, one reality, one shape and function: the globular eyeball, visible synecdoche of the cosmic sphere in its perfection, totally present to its object in the simulta­ neously physical and intellectual activity it embodies. One's memory goes to the comparable poetical feat of Goethe in that erotically uninhibited Fifth Roman Elegy where the lover says apropos his naked mistress:33 Dann versteh' ich den Marmor erst recht: ich denk' und vergleiche, Sehe mit fiihlendem Aug', fiihle mit sehender Hand. Then finally do I understand marble: I think and compare, I see with feeling eyes, I feel with a seeing hand. If Platonizing sculptor Michelangelo could have read that passage, he would have underlined it. It would have shown him the fulfillment of which a liberated sensuousness is ca­ pable in the verbal medium, the fulfillment that he unex­ pectedly attained at the close of his sonnet against the sub­ limating imperative that beset his attitude toward pious Vittoria, even while straining to observe that imperative. Chisel and brush lent themselves so much better than the writer's pen to that kind of attainment, as the Sistine Chapel nudes and much of the marble statuary show; yet the literary, courtly, and religious conventions of Counter-Reformational Rome could not totally repress the healthy surge of desire on the page waiting to be filled by his poetical confession, and the result glows with joyous energy. It says to the exalted

PROTEAN EROS

lady: "I am forbidden to touch and embrace you, but I will embrace and touch you with my eyes." Even if not so explicitly as in Goethe, those eyes have absorbed the tactile power of the hands; they have actually become one "fiihlender Auge." For the rest, we cannot expect Michelangelo's literary vein to flow normally in that direction, at least not when Vittoria Colonna is the theme and addressee rather than the unknown Bolognese beauty or the unnamed peasant girl of Florentine memory. Neither can we expect from him the libertine cyn­ icism of an Aretino. As a poet, Michelangelo actually thrives on the taboos and limitations that spur his talent for verbal artifice. He feels what Mario Praz has called in another regard "the metaphysical fascination of a harmony made of oppo­ sitions (contrapposti)."34 Even the rapturous ease of sonnet G 166's resolution, which so unexpectedly foreshadows Goethe's, springs from the straining labor of the preceding contrapposti in the two quatrains and in the first tercet. Contrapposto and figura serpentinata, Lomazzo tells us, were Mi­ chelangelo's recommended devices to younger painters35 and they can be recognized in his own frescoes or statues. In the poetry, they translate into rhetorical artifice, often with note­ worthy results. Painstaking rhetoric, meandering or hairsplitting or ob­ sessive logic exploit the possibilities for development in a given repertory of images, as happens in the sonnet discussed above, which brings to a successful climax the eyes and seeing motif precisely because it had introduced it from the start and punctually repeated it—with appropriate variations—in each stanza. Many poems from this phase of Michelangelo's career (the 1530s and 1540s) are informed by the eye imagery, since the act of seeing is basic to lovers and artists alike; but the imagery is so enmeshed in the network of rhetoric and casuistical logic36 that we may overlook its proper relevance to the author's experience. From Dolce Stil Novo to Petrarch and Renaissance Petrarchism, eyes were topical in amatory poetry, and Michelangelo's mannerist tendency in his middle Roman phase to try out insistent variations on the same motif—with some of the attendant restrictions in vocabulary

PROTEAN EROS

and imagery that mark so much Cinquecento verse—is no help when it comes to assessing his original contribution. Of course the crowning achievement of a poem like sonnet G 166 reflects on the thematically related poems of this stage, especially the preceding madrigal G 165. The sonnet reaffirms desire in the very act of sublimating it, as we saw, and it transfigures the object of that desire into an image, to be possessed entirely in the erotically charged contemplation of which an artist is capable. The madrigal leads up to that climactic solution by the detour of a punc­ tilious argumentation that comes to a head in a quick, compact statement: Un punto sol m'ha acceso, ne piu vi vidi c'una volta sola. Just one point set me afire, nor did I see you more than that one time. The gist of the preliminary argument is that lovers who always keep a loved person before their eyes end up losing any objective sense of what beauty is and may actually deceive themselves in the object of their love, being conditioned by optical habituation. The speaker, on the other hand, has had no chance to accustom himself to the presence of his desired lady, whose eyes he seldom sees; consequently his love is of the sudden, overpowering kind, and he always sees her in his mind as she was when she dazzled him altogether. The logical conclusion also happens to have its own lyrical nerve, though not of the same intensity as that of the subsequent sonnet. Our appreciation of this deft close rises when we realize the use it makes of a threefold Dantesque source: ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse but one point only overpowered us (said by Francesca of the moment in her and Paolo's reading of Lancelot and Guenevere's romance that broke down their erotic restraint);

PROTEAN EROS

sempre dintorno al Punto che mi vinse always around the Point that overpowered me (said by Dante in Paradiso xxx, 11, of his vision of God as one dimensionless point of light that seems enclosed by that which it encloses); and Un punto solo m'e maggior letargo che venticinque secoli a la impresa che fe Nettuno ammirar l'ombra d'Argo One moment causes me more lethargy than the twenty-five centuries elapsed from Neptune's amazement at Argo's keel (said by Dante in Paradiso X X X I I I , 94-96, of the benumbing aftermath of his vision of God). Michelangelo's extraordinary knowledge of Dante's work and competence in Dantean ex­ egesis is shown by Donato Giannotti's Dialogues,37 confirmed by the contemporary biographers, and reflected by the two sonnets he wrote on Dante (G 248, G 250) no less than by the iconographic use he made of the Divine Comedy in the Last Judgment. Accordingly, to postulate an intentional ref­ erence to Dante's text in the madrigal under examination is at least legitimate, especially if we recall the several other analogous instances that can hardly escape a careful reader of Michelangelo's Rime.38 That the oblique reference is func­ tional to the Buonarrotian text's significance will appear be­ yond doubt when we consider how here, as well as in the following poem and in several others, our poet emphasizes the divine quality of Vittoria while stressing the pain that this difficult love causes him. There is in her something of the "donna bella e crudele" after all: hence the buried dissonance that the Dantesque reference brings out at the close of mad­ rigal G 165. Eye imagery connecting love and art appears, more ex­ plicitly than elsewhere (like sonnet G 166), in madrigal G 164, which I already quoted for its thematic relevance to a sonnet for Cavalieri, and which matters far more for the con-

PROTEAN EROS

viction it voices in the defense of the artist's cult of beauty against base insinuations than for its poetical achievement. "Nel parto mi fu data la bellezza," beauty was given me at birth (as trustworthy model for my vocation), says the auto­ biographical speaker, and any other opinion is false: Questo sol l'occhio porta a quella altezza c'a pinger e scolpir qui m'apparecchio. This alone lifts the eye to that high subject which here I am now going to paint and sculpt. Sensuality, the poem goes on, whatever rash and silly people may say, has no claim on beauty, which moves any healthy intellect to reach up to heaven; sick (infermi) eyes, forever stuck (fermi) in the lowlands from where only grace can rescue us, cannot ascend from what is mortal to what is divine. Rather than the one-sided, polemical Platonism, what holds some interest here is the dramatic staging. The artist persona speaks from his studio in the imminence of work to be done as a practical proof of his Platonic policies; we then perceive his statement of principle as a gesture of the voice, and that suffices to rescue the poem from the limbo of aesthetic in­ difference. Moreover, the poet talks both as a lover and as a practicing artist. In this capacity, to be sure, he will attain greater poetical results in other poems (for Vittoria as well as for the supposed "fair and cruel lady"): madrigal G 172, sonnet G 239, madrigals G 240, G 241, G 242. Madrigal G 172 was rightly extolled by Valerio Mariani as a successful poem, and coming to it from a reading of the far different yet not altogether unrelated madrigal G 164 it is hard to reject that interpretation: the artist at work, describing the interaction between his model and himself in the studio. As against this reading, Robert Clements propounds an al­ legory of art.39 Michelangelo did write allegories in verse, notably G 68 (ottava rima stanzas on the evils of uncontrolled greed in civic matters) and G 249 (a sonnet on the unnaturalness of despotic rule in Florence); but the allegorical slant is so obvious there that nobody in his right mind could pos-

PROTEAN EROS

sibly advance a barely literal interpretation of those poems. The fine madrigal in question functions so much better for us without a superimposed allegorical scheme that I for one, with all due respect for Clements's scholarship and critical acumen, prefer to take its text at face value and to make its further meaning a spontaneous emanation of the lively scene depicted rather than a prefabricated signification. Of course, if the artist portrays himself in the studio at the professional endeavor to capture the voluble woman's quintessence on the canvas, he cannot help conveying thereby a sense of his relation to art—to the challenge and fascination of beauty in the flesh, which is the object of art. The point will hold even if we were to discount Mariani's interpretation and, instead of placing the speaker in his studio and making the woman his model, simply view her as a lady in her private rooms and the speaker as a visitor. Art comes in at the end anyway, as the speaker's revenge on Mother Nature who chose to make him ugly if capable of reproducing or creating beauty: si, c'oltr 'all'esser vecchio, in quel col mie fo piu bello il suo viso, ond'io vie piii deriso son d'esser brutto; e pur m'e gran ventura, s'i' vinco, a farla bella, la natura. so that, apart from my being old, there with my face as foil I make hers lovelier, and I am mocked even harder for my ugliness; and yet great is my luck if by making her lovelier I conquer Nature. In the autograph postscript Michelangelo adds this com­ ment: "Questo non Io metto per polizino, ma per un sognio" (I am not penning this as the usual thing, but for a dream I had). It is sensible to take the statement literally, since it is not humorous as so many other postscripts to his poems, and to infer that having dreamed of his "fair and cruel lady" our artist indited the madrigal to recapture the intriguing dream and make it more explicit in the process. This would account

PROTEAN EROS

both for the rationalizing conclusion—which happens to be far more straightforward than can often be the case—and for the singular vividness of the depiction in the central part (lines 7-12), where the woman is seen in her lively gestures and unusually placed in her feminine milieu rather than ad­ dressed in stereotypes: La si gode e racconcia nel suo fidato specchio, ove se vede equale al paradiso; po', volta me, mi concia si, c'oltr'all'esser vecchio, in quel col mie fa piu bello il suo viso. She enjoys grooming herself at her well-trusted mirror where she sees herself truly paradisal; then, turning to me, she reduces me so that, apart from my being old, there with my face as foil I make hers lovelier. None of the "donna bella e crudele" lyrics attains this live­ liness, none figures her forth so objectively, and yet the poem had started on a very different note by heaping hyperbolic imputations on the "tameless and wild" (indomit'e selvaggia) woman, in keeping with the language of Dante's rime per madonna Pietrai4a Costei pur si delibra, indomit'e selvaggia, ch'i arda, mora e caggia a quel c'a peso non sie pure un'oncia; e Ί sangue a libra a libra mi svena, e sfibra e Ί corpo all'alma sconcia. This woman certainly plans, the tameless and wild one, that I should burn, die and wilt down to a mere ounce's weight;

PROTEAN EROS

and pound by pound she draws my blood, unnerves my body, unhinges it from soul. The poem coheres nonetheless, thanks above all to the witty vein that counterpoises the speaker's self-mocking exagger­ ations to the woman's whimsical grace. This in turn makes possible the airy finale that assigns substantial compensation to him as artist for the defeat she inflicts on him as a lover. Humor as release, not black humor or heavy lamentation as the beginning had intimated; we thought at first we were hearing a despondent voice as frequently happens with Mi­ chelangelo's verse, and we find out to our surprise and relief that the amused artist has the better of the hopeless lover. Art is the secret, or not so secret weapon, his redress for Nature's and fortune's inequity, and as such again it stands him in good stead when he has to face the prospect of de­ structive Time's victory over human beauty and life and on the artwork itself. Sculpture, "the prime art" (la prim'arte, fragment G 237), enhances the liveliness of human visage and body to begin with, and then if the commemorating statue gets shattered, the memory of that beauty will live on. But as a rule, chances are that the stone portrait will long outlive portrayed and portrayer alike (sonnet G 239 for Vittoria Colonna): Com'esser, donna, puo quel c'alcun vede per lunga sperienza, che piii dura l'immagin viva in pietra alpestra e dura che Ί suo fattor, che gli anni in cener riede? La causa a l'effetto inclina e cede, onde dall'arte e vinta la natura. I' Ί so, che Ί pruovo in la bella scultura, c'all'opra il tempo e morte non tien fede. Dunche, posso ambo noi dar lunga vita in qual sie modo, ο di colore ο sasso, di noi sembrando l'uno e l'altro volto; si che mill'anni dopo la partita, quante voi bella fusti e quant'io lasso si veggia, e com'amarvi i' non fui stolto.

PROTEAN EROS

How can it be, lady, what must be seen through long experience: that of more duration will the image be in hard alpine rock than its own maker, whom years turn to ashes? The cause yields utterly to its effect, and art overcomes nature in the end. I know it, who prove it in beautiful sculpture, not time, not death prevails over that work. Then, I can give long life to both of us in whichever way, in color or stone, conjuring there your face and mine together, so that a thousand years after our death, it will be seen how beautiful you were and how sad I, yet right in loving you. This is one instance of the power that dramatic ratiocination can muster in poetry. The brooding monologue creates an intense persona who finally wins us over with his bittersweet conclusion no less than a Ronsard would have done at about the same time when he envisaged his beloved saying in her old age Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j'estois belle Ronsard celebrated me at the time of my beauty.41 Michelangelo, however, instead of bringing his artistic glory and the inexorability of time as an inducement to erotic sur­ render, is resigned to a love without prospects of possession and therefore stakes marble against flesh, image against body. The work of eye and hands on the canvas or on the marble block is a symbolic possession of the beloved, and it confers visual permanence on her beauty, it defies time and death. In this dimension he, the patient lover and proud artificer, can attain permanent union with her. He will repudiate nei­ ther his suffering nor his love, for what matters is having rescued something of both lovers from the clutches of death, and yet his tone in looking forward to their survival as durable images is anything but triumphant; these images will be me­ mentoes of vanished beauty, of unconsummated life. A par-

PROTEAN EROS

ticular poignancy accrues to the foretasted commemoration, as if the speaker could not soothe his desire even while finding an irrefutable alternative to its consummation. His is not the carpe diem philosophy of Ronsard, nor (in this particular poem) the consolation of Christian eternity. Time matters, the here and now matters, and he deals with it in a humanly creative way, by shaping a "live image" (I'immagin viva) that will prolong (or resurrect) into a remote future the object and experience of this difficult love—though that human future, as he well knows, is not a forever. One wants to dwell with special attention on that focal modifier viva in line 3, which will echo at line 9 in the expression dar lunga vita (give long life) to provide a semantic backbone for the whole poem. Immagin viva here and in G 241, like viva figura in the initially related madrigal G 152, conveys more than the mere illusion of life we can rationally ascribe to the successful work of art; and that is why I have chosen to translate it as "live image" rather than just "life­ like." The sculpted or painted image does more than just mimic life, it has a secret life of its own precisely as an image, as almost an externalized soul (even an Egyptian Ka, the enduring "double" of the embalmed person). Such is the sculptor's feeling, certainly, as he vindicates his demiurgic privilege against all-conquering nature and time in some of the most movingly straightforward verse Michelangelo ever wrote. We sense the artist's wonder as he sees the human figure gradually take shape under his chisel, the Promethean feeling intimated by the first lines of madrigal G 152, the awe and elation at finding himself transcended (in lovelinessliveliness and durability) by his stone creature. We come to understand his deep sense for the hidden life of stone, moth­ erly stone as such. "Viva" embodies this experience for us to share, or else Michelangelo the writer could not have made that powerful transition from the act of carving to the act of (re)birth in madrigal G 152. And when his autobiographical persona promises a metaphoric "long life" to his beloved Vittoria and himself, the metaphor is no less instinct with sensuousness than the love he transferred from body to stone.

PROTEAN EROS

The metaphor is on the verge of ceasing to be one, for magic is about to take over. Something alive is durably shaped out of opaque, refractory, hard stone ("pietra alpestra e dura," as in madrigal G 152). The pun created by the equivocal rhyme between dura (endures) and dura (hard) at lines 2 and 3 of sonnet G 239 will recur, with the contrapuntal syntagm immagine viva, at lines 4 and 6 of madrigal 241, and will then turn into a distant consonance between the modifier dura (said of pietra, stone) at line 1 of madrigal G 242 and the verb durare, predicated of the woman's beauty, at the last line but one ibid. Both within the closed circuit of one poem, then, and in the wider span of a linguistic system that en­ compasses several lyrics, the phonic identification of dura and durare signals a semantic convergence of particular im­ portance to this phase of Michelangelo's poetry. Stone endures because it is hard. That may seem too obvious for comment, but what our poet implies is not the dull durability of formless matter {pietra alpestra e dura) per se; it is rather the materialized form, stone brought to life (pietra viva, madrigal G 240) by the tireless chisel, his equivalent of a magic wand. Animation, not petrifaction, is in question. The operation will become even more remarkable if we remember that on the metaphoric level Michelangelo has throughout identified durezza, hard­ ness, with deathliness, hostility, imperviousness to love, either on the part of the cruel and fair lady (madrigal G 242) or of Vittoria herself (sonnet G 151, madrigal G 255) in her Medusan aspect. He has done so on his own part vis-a-vis the yearned-for spiritual regeneration—in madrigal G 152 his carnal sinfulness, his ingrained reluctance to moral rebirth, is signified by the "inculta . . . cruda e dura scorza." Yet when viva figura or immagin viva descants on pietra dura, and the quality of hardness reverberates on immagine as durability (durare), to the point where pietra viva (madrigal G 240) can come up as a synonym of immagin viva, a radical transformation occurs, a merging of opposite qualities on a higher level. The demiurgic feat performed by the sculptor in so many memorable statues is repeated by the poet in the

PROTEAN EROS

equally resistant, and challenging, verbal medium. And, like the childlike demiurge he is, the speaker persona marvels at the material durability of his creation that will outlive him and his loved ones: "Com'esser, donna, puo quel c'alcun vede. . . ." A signal consequence of the artist's commitment to his work is his inability to take reality for granted. The further we read, the harder it becomes to separate narrative dimension from the thematic warp and woof, and from the specific poetical achievements, in the verse romance featuring Vittoria, her lover, and the shadow figure of the donna bella e crudele. The great themes—love and death, art as countervailing power—intertwine and converge in this cycle of poetical meditations," and even when one lyric seems merely to repeat a previous one, the variation on theme and treatment is enough to recommend it to our attention in its own right. This is the case of madrigals G 240, G 241, and G 242. Madrigal G 240, already mentioned above, restates the informing idea of G 239 in a different key, and instead of addressing Vittoria it meditates on her inevitable lot, since she will have to go the way of all flesh, and her portrait in stone will be all that is left of her lovely features. "Sol d'una pietra viva / l'arte vuol che qui viva / al par degli anni il volto di costei" (only in live stone / art wants her face to live / as long as years go by). The equivocal rhyme between pietra viva and viva (which I touched on before) exactly parallels the one between dura and pietra alpestra e dura in the previous madrigal, with the verb (vivere, in this case) actuating the semantic implications of the modifier. Yet we must also take into account, for the adjective as here used, that pietra viva has a widespread preliminary meaning in conventional usage (in the Italian langue before Michelangelo made it his parole), namely bare rock, the quick of the rock, rock cut to the core, hence, in the present context, pure carved stone. This does not exclude the metaphoric accrual discussed above, for it is precisely the chiseling down, the carving out (Ievare) that has conferred a kind of life on the piece of marble in question; but the qualifying adverb "Sol" (Only) tends to stress the negative shade of meaning versus the enriching

PROTEAN EROS

metaphoric one. For the artist persona goes on to say that since her soul is heaven's own work just as her stone portrait is his, there is no telling what heaven should do for her; yet, divine though she is, she lacks the privilege of immortality: E pur si parte e picciol tempo dura. And yet she goes and lasts only a short time. What good is it that a piece of stone should be left (". . . un sasso resta e pur lei morte affretta")? And a paradox it is, that nature's own work—living creatures, people—should succumb to time while their work survives. More than the concluding (and far from inane) conceit, what strikes an orig­ inal note is the complaint on the woman's existential doom, a loss for which not even art's magic can make up. The madrigal descants on the previous one, where the artist could rely on his craft as an antidote to mortality, whereas here no consolation can be derived from that vaunted power against the bare fact of physical death. It is the artist persona himself that says it; we are not hearing a restatement of impersonal wisdom but a personal utterance. The following piece, madrigal G 241, offers a further varia­ tion on the theme, sharpening the point: Negli anni molti e nelle molte pruove, cercando, il saggio al buon concetto arriva d'un'immagine viva, vicino a morte, in pietra alpestra e dura; c'all'alte cose nuove tardi si viene, e poco poi si dura. Similmente natura, di tempo in tempo, d'uno in altro volto, s'al sommo, errando, di bellezza e giunta nel tuo divino, e vecchia, e de' perire; onde la tema, molto con la belta congiunta, di stranio cibo pasce il gran desire; ne so pensar ne dire

PROTEAN EROS

qual nuoca ο giovi piu, visto Ί tuo 'spetto, ο Ί fin dell'universo ο Ί gran diletto. Through many years and many experiments, searching, the wise man gets the right conception of a living image, while nearing death, in the hard alpine stone; for things lofty and new come late in the day, and then one's time is short. In the same way if nature roaming from age to age, from face to face, has arrived at the summit of beauty in your divine one, she is old, and must perish; hence fear, so closely attached to beauty, feeds great desire with the strangest food; nor can I think or say which harms or helps more, after seeing you: the world's attendant end, or the sheer delight. Here the point is not the artist's victorious competition with nature but the kinship of nature's work to his. Almost two centuries after Michelangelo, Vico was going to say that man can know only what he makes and does, a philosophy that seems prefigured in this madrigal where the kind of making that is proper to a sculptor affords our sculptor poet an insight into the working of nature itself. The Aristotelian idea of mimesis is reversed, for in the poem's syntactical arrangement it is as if nature became the imitator of creative man, not vice versa. Nor is this a naive anthropomorphic projection. The poem's dialectic actually implies that man's hard-won experience in fashioning things of beauty enables him to understand nature's creativity as comparable, for nature as such is an experimental creator of forms, and its procedure is tentative, time-bound. In its re­ sults, nature itself is perishable. The idea is striking, and so is the poetical use to which it is put in a poem where conceit and concept coincide. Beauty is "momentary," not only "in

PROTEAN EROS

the mind," as Wallace Stevens would say, but also "in the flesh,"42 and the tragic meditation of the artist persona on nature, whose perfection he sees attained in Vittoria's doomed visage, climaxes in Dionysian fervor. Her forthcoming death (which in the cosmic perspective adopted here is seen as imminent) is the end of the universe, a Gotterdammerung, yet there is great joy in having been able to glimpse that perfection. The poem unfolds gradually from a gnomic, grave tone to a personal statement that focuses everything on the feminine Thou, epitome of the whole cosmos. The wisdom gained in a lifetime of endeavor is bitter, and impersonal only in appearance; the speaker has obviously earned it, and the long labor, the tentative process, is mirrored in the slow staccato rhythms of the syntax until the sweeping resolution comes: ο Ί fin dell'universo ο Ί gran diletto. "Diletto," delight, is the last word, but staked against catastrophe. After this noteworthy performance, in which Michelange­ lo's voice makes itself heard through the complexities of concettista artifice and philosophical meditation, madrigal G242 cannot sustain the theme of art-love-nature on a comparable level and sounds more like an exercise in the virtuoso vein that mannerist taste encouraged. It essentially repeats, with a minor thematic variation, what was said in madrigal G 172, but without the snappy wit, graphic power, and grace we saw at work there. The cruel lady makes him unhappy, and her hardness matches that of the rock that he sculpts, with the result that whatever he may portray there will reflect his sadness, since often (so the beginning says) the sculptor makes another person's portrait his self-portrait. But he has his redress in the thought that art perpetuates transitory beauty, and so if she wants to outlast her brief season let her make him happy, and he will make her beautiful. Neither the relevance of the initial thought (on the artist's self-projection in his work) nor the mimetic alliterations of the central part, where hardness and asperity are the point, manage to

PROTEAN EROS

raise the madrigal above the level of a concettista artifice in which the writer is pleased to try out his instrument once more. The power of art is reasserted, but the problematic tension and depth of the previously discussed lyrics are lack­ ing altogether. And I would say that here too Michelangelo lent an eager ear to Dante's rime petrose (which were Dante's truly "Mannerist" experiment): Ben la pietra potrei per l'aspra suo durezza, in ch'io l'esempro, dir c'a lei s'assembra; del resto non saprei, mentre mi strugge e sprezza, altro sculpir che Ie mie afflitte membra. Well could I say that the rock so harsh and hard in which I portray her, is like herself; on the other hand I could, while she destroys me with contempt, sculpt nothing else but my dejected limbs. It is impossible to get stonier than that, but the bravura remains an end in itself. The recurrent tendency to push some formal element to the extreme, risking poetical failure, is typical of Michel­ angelo's verse in other respects, too, and must be regarded as the price he pays for his experimentation. Some poems to Vittoria Colonna (sonnets G 159 and G 160; madrigals G 255 and G 256, the latter seemingly not indited for her; sonnet G 259; madrigal G 265) can only be defined as examples of exasperating casuistry.43 Madrigal G 265 in particular, harp­ ing on the theme of Vittoria's beauty as lent to the world by God who cannot be "reimbursed" for it, combines in its fussy affectations the worst of coeval mannerist style and the worst of baroque style to come. Luckily, the same cannot be said of madrigal G 264, which according to Girardi reacts to Vit­ toria's imminent death: Come portato ho gia piu tempo in seno

Advanced draft of madrigal G 264 for Vittoria Colonna in folio 42b of Codice Vaticano Latino 3211 at Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City

PROTEAN EROS

Timmagin, donna, del tuo volto impressa, or che morte s'appressa, con previlegio Amor ne stampi l'alma . . . Per procella e per calma con tal segno sicura, sia come croce contro a' suo avversari; e donde in ciel ti rubo la natura, ritorni, norma agli angeli alti e chiari . . . Just as for a long time, lady, I have carried the image of your face within imprinted, now that death is drawing near may Love stamp it as privilege on the soul . . . Through storm and calm secure with that sign may it be, as a cross against enemies; and where Nature stole you from Heaven may it return, a model to high shining angels. . . . In Codex Vaticanus 3211 folio 42b we can read the word "spirti" (spirits) in the last of the lines quoted here, but it is happily emended to "angeli" (angels), and as a result that line becomes one of the most mysteriously melodious in the opus of a poet who generally favors dissonance over melody. The open vowel ah sings out, an ecstasy of the voice. And the angels are transcendental sculptors, artists charged with the task of fashioning anew, for another soul to be sent down to earth, Vittoria's lovely visage: c'a rinuovar s'impari la su pel mondo un spirto in carne involto che dopo te gli resti il tuo bel volto. so that up there they learn to refashion a spirit enveloped in flesh for the sake of this world: it longs for your lovely face. According to Guasti and Frey, however, the death contem-

PROTEAN EROS

plated here would be that of Michelangelo himself rather than Vittoria's, and somehow the poem would stand to gain by this earlier interpretation. This would be so at least in the first part, where it makes more sense to have the speaker's own soul marked by Love with his lady's image as a salvific sign against the demons' threat than to postulate her need, in the hour of death, to carry the imprinted likeness of her own visage on her soul as a safeguard. In the second part, it is true, the soul returning to its celestial home as a model for the angels' creative work seems to fit Vittoria better than Michelangelo's autobiographical persona, but if at this point his own soul may serve the artist angels' purpose it is only because it carries Vittoria's likeness for heraldry. Besides, the implied subject of the verb "ritorni" (may it return) at the last line but three would be the image of Vittoria's face, brought back (by his or her soul) to provide the prototype for another lovely creature. It is that image that counts, more than the soul acting as its vehicle. The Platonic strain running through this Christian love song infuses it with poignant ten­ derness. At the same time—beyond the possibly intentional ambiguity—it conveys the pride of the visual artist who, skirting hubris, possessively orders the angels themselves to carry out his own cherished project as if they were his studio attendants. No ambiguity attaches to sonnet G 266, which obviously deals with the effects of Vittoria's life and death on her wor­ shiper's spirit. It is all played out on the topical motif of love's consuming fire, which is reducing him to ashes. Within Michelangelo's own canon it seems to rehearse in a different key the conclusion of madrigal G 92, probably written for Tommaso Cavalieri: c'un cor che arde e arso e gia molt'anni torna, se ben l'ammorza la ragione, non piii gia cor, ma cenere e carbone. for a heart that's been burning many years, even if reason tries to dampen it will be no heart any more, but charcoal, ashes.

PROTEAN EROS

It is also a variation on sonnet G 97 for Cavalieri, which, as we saw above in chapter 1, develops the intertwining themes of fiery love and fiery art as the persona's destiny; but the tone differs significantly enough to make this sonnet for Vittoria's death an independent work. Compared with its pred­ ecessor, it is thematically simpler because it concentrates on the power of love and its loss without bringing in the theme of art, and also without complicating it with the demonic defiance that counterpointed sonnet G 97. The love Vittoria inspired burns with a purer if equally devouring flame, and it has no sulphurous admixture in it: Qual meraviglia e, se prossim'al foco mi strussi e arsi, se or ch'egli e spento di fuor, m'affligge e mi consuma drento, e 'n cener mi riduce a poco a poco? Is it any wonder if, close to the fire as I was, I blazed out; if, now it's extinguished outside, it vexes and consumes me inside, and by and by reduces me to ashes? This is the first quatrain of G 266; the following was the octave of G 97: Al cor di zolfo, alia carne di stoppa, a l'ossa che di secco legno sieno; a Palma senza guida e senza freno al desir pronto, a la vaghezza troppa; a la cieca ragion debile e zoppa al vischio, a' lacci di che Ί mondo e pieno; non e gran maraviglia, in un baleno arder nel primo foco che s'intoppa. With heart of sulphur, with flesh made of tow and bones that are but a heap of dry wood; with a soul lacking all guide and defense against the excesses of a prompt desire; with a blind reason weak enough to stumble

PROTEAN EROS

and get stuck in the mistletoe and snares the world teems with, it is indeed no wonder that one should blaze at the first fire he meets. The rhetorical pattern and the fire topos come to G 266 from the octave of G 97, yet this similarity is offset by the difference noted above. This difference is sharpened by the fact that in the sonnet for Vittoria Michelangelo feels no need to enu­ merate the combustible materials that make up his psycho­ physical identity, preferring instead to offer his own unanalyzed self as the fuel and locus of that devouring fire that has also been his sustenance, and which (after the kindler's dis­ appearance) is dying down to an ash-covered ember ("un carbon resto acceso e ricoverto," line 11). That is what is left of him now, and pretty soon (unless another love comes up) dead ashes will be all that remains. The later poem simplifies the earlier one in the very act of rehearsing it, just as the later love purifies the previous one of any dross; magician Love has a way with metamorphoses, including those that prelude the last, irreversible one. And if one poem echoes another, just as one climactic love subliminally recalls an­ other, it means that in Michelangelo's confessional canzoniere the poetry should not be wrenched out of the narrative frame it assumes and (to a large extent) hides. Inasmuch as they achieve formal success, the poems are autonomous, but as pages of an autobiographical confession they compound rather than simply add up. One dimension postulates the other. Even if it does not rise to the lyrical intensity of other compositions we have dwelled on, this sonnet has its place among Michelangelo's successful pages. Its success does not depend on originality of an imagery that taken by itself is quite commonplace in Renaissance Petrarchism but on the deft rhetoric that knows how to exploit that iconic donnee for a rigorous development. It is the ratiocinative line that keeps the poem moving and, by grading the emblematic images related to fire, refreshes their impact. Unlike other sonnets (including G 97) that tilt the scales away from standard Pe­ trarchan balance by conglomerating several or all stanzas into

PROTEAN EROS

one rush of syntax, this one keeps each syntactical unit ex­ actly within a corresponding metric mold and thus conveys a sense of calm if desolate meditation—"emotion recollected in tranquillity"—that best fits the theme. A progressive degradation of energy—from love's sustained blaze when she was alive to the embers, charcoal, and ashes to which her demise has been reducing him—is reviewed by the recollecting persona whose only remaining sign of life is now his dying down to ashes (last line: "si 'n cener mi converto," so steadily am I changing into ash). This inexorable entropy is recapitulated, by way of prologue, in the first quatrain, on which the other three stanzas expand as expli­ cation. The rhetorical question that starts the poem strength­ ens the sense of ineluctability; Ies jeux sont faits, the rest is silence, and even the allusion to a possible new love that might stop or invert the ongoing process of inner extinction sounds so unlikely as to be ironical. With the apt collocation of the verb "mi converto" (I am changing) at the very end, that allusion serves to sharpen the experiential quality of the writing: a consciousness watching its own slow disintegration, in the convergence of memory, present experience, and writ­ ing. The firmness of phrasing and versification conspires with the rhetorical tact to precipitate the foregone conclusion and make it aesthetically alive: Ma po' che del gran foco Io splendore che m'ardeva e nutriva, il ciel m'invola, un carbon resto acceso e ricoperto. E s'altre legne non mi porge amore che lievin fiamma, una favilla sola non fie di me, si 'n cener mi converto. But since Heaven steals from me the great splendor of the fire that used to burn and nourish me, I remain a live ember buried deep. And if love won't supply new fuel to burn a single spark will not be left of me, so steadily am I changing into ash.

PROTEAN EROS

Of course, the limitation of this poem is in its being so emblematically general about Vittoria that it is not about her at all, just about her lover and survivor. In this, it follows a convention too; but it gains in relevance if it is read in the context of the other poems having to do with her. She is, in Michelangelo's poetry, a presence and a spiritual agent rather than a physically definable shape; her face has an effulgence, not a physiognomy; her reality is to be known only through the effect she has on her troubadour, therefore she wavers, aesthetically speaking, between the abstractions of courtly convention that precluded realist description in love poetry, and the ineffabilities of religious devotion (as witnessed by the designations she now and then gets: angel, god, divine). Because the stylization involved still resonates with a personal voice, however, the poetry she elicited from Michelangelo is a durable enrichment of his canon even if it deals with her only at one remove. The poetry is certainly much more about him than about her, and as such it conveys a fundamental image of his inner life, a crucial phase of his development as man and writer. Whether we take them as poetry or as intimate confession— and they are both—some of the lines that mourn her come at us from the page with a piercing quality: Perche l'eta ne 'nvola il desir cieco e sordo, con la morte m'accordo, stanco e vicino all'ultima parola. L'alma che teme e cola quel che l'occhio non vede, come da cosa perigliosa e vaga, dal tuo bel volto, donna, m'allontana . . . Because old age deprives us of blind and deaf desire, I come to terms with death, a tired man now, and close to my last word. My soul that fears and venerates what the eye does not see,

PROTEAN EROS

as from a dangerous inducement from your fair likeness, lady, now removes me. . . . This is part of an unfinished madrigal (G 268) to be found with others in Codex Vaticanus; and in this regard we may notice that some of Michelangelo's most poignant verse from now on comes in fragments like this one, which reflects a difficult debate in Iiis soul between enduring love of deceased Vittoria and the thought of God and death. The next madrigal (G 269), penned across a pencil sketch of a Last Judgment detail, concludes on the note of gratitude for the approaching of death, se la miseria medica la morte since death it is that cures misery, whereas the moving sonnet G 270, in successful emulation of Petrarch, implores Love to return the vanished woman to him, and with her, the unrecoverable time of his youthful desire: Tornami al tempo, allor che lenta e sciolta al cieco ardor m'era la briglia e Ί freno; rendimi il volto angelico e sereno onde fu seco ogni virtu sepolta, e' passi spessi e con fatica molta che son si lenti a chi e d'anni pieno; tornami l'acqua e Ί foco in mezzo Ί seno, Return me to the time, when easy and loose was bit and bridle on my blind desire; return the face angelic and serene from where all virtue along with her was buried, return my many steps that strained me so and are so slow to a man burdened with age; return the tears and the fire in my bosom. Rhetorical stance and syntax echo those of sonnet G 95 (written for Tommaso Cavalieri), but the conclusion is un­ mistakably starker, centering on the "tired old man" persona

PROTEAN EROS

that is no match for Love's trials any longer. What in the earlier poem worked as fanciful Odynatai4 to pinpoint the frustration of jealousy takes on the disconsolate tone of ir­ retrievable loss. Once more we see how Michelangelo's poetry at times develops by rehearsing earlier motifs and/or formal patterns in a changed key while it is also capable—as the grotesque capitolo G 267 shows—of drastic mutations that may be ascribed to the sudden resurgence of an alternative mode. But one thing is clear: that after 1547, with the loss of such interlocutors as Vittoria herself, Luigi del Riccio, Donato Giannotti, and Sebastiano del Piombo, Michelangelo's writing enters its critical last phase marked by a sharp drop in productiveness,45 by the much higher ratio of fragments versus finished lyrics, and by the predominantly religious inspiration. That inspiration comes as a response to the sa­ tirical cruelty of capitolo G 267. All in all, it is now the poetry of a man preparing for death, and it has a posthumous feeling about it, as if he had already left behind a life made only of losses. The style, as Alma Altizer, Walter Binni, and Anne Hallock among others have pointed out,46 has relaxed considerably from the cryptical tensions and ellipses of the earlier phases to become more candidly perspicuous. The loss of richness and complexity in the preponderant religious sonnets or fragments is, however, compensated by a capti­ vating straightforwardness that is the counterpart of the spir­ itual simplicity he is praying for and already sighting after so many struggles. The very beginning of sonnets like "Deh fammiti vedere in ogni loco!" (Oh show yourself to me every­ where! G 274), "Giunto e gia Ί corso della vita mia" (My life's long course already has arrived, G 285), "Scarco d'un'importuna e greve salma" (Disburdened of an awkward, heavy load, G 290), "Carico d'anni e di peccati pieno" (Loaded with years and full of heinous sins, G 293), "Di morte certo, ma non gia dell'ora" (Certain of death, but not at all of the hour, G 295) captures our ear and holds us to the text so memorably promised.

PROTEAN EROS

"Deh fammiti vedere in ogni loco!" This first line of G 274 comes like a burst of light, an opening up of the whole self to the possibility of that total experience which religion credits to God alone and which in Plato's philosophy was prefigured by each mortal love; by that very kind of love which this sonnet considers as a still smoldering threat to the speaker's unappeased soul: Se da mortal bellezza arder mi sento, appresso al tuo mi sara foco ispento, e io nel tuo saro, com'ero, in foco. If I feel burned inside by mortal beauty, compared to yours it will be but quenched fire, and in yours I shall be, as once, aflame. Yet, to be redeemed from fire by fire, as T. S. Eliot would put it in Little Gidding, is no purely ascetic aspiration on the part of Michelangelo, who at this point views his earthly loves as somehow not ardent enough vis-a-vis the ultimate ardor that God's love promises. In a way, divine love does not negate, it actually fulfills the passion for totality that each human love arouses and fatally disappoints. A residual Platonism seems to persist in the old poet's plea for divine deliverance; God transforms, He does not kill, the flame whose seeds He had implanted in His creature. One and the same emblematic icon—fire—will do for both meanings, but heightened. Rising to the highest fire will be the same as returning to the source, as the concentrated last line of the first quatrain intimates: e io nel tuo saro, com'ero, in foco. and in yours I shall be, as once, aflame. After this nearly Pascalian acme of semantic condensation, which matches the mystical union desired with a God con­ ceived as a furnace of primal energy (and not, as quietist mystics would envisage, as utter peace), the poem unfolds in linear simplicity. The prayerlike voice has attained its vi-

PROTEAN EROS

sionary pitch at the outset and now descends to a calmer meditative vein, in relaxed diction, to confess the speaker's inability to reform without God's help: Che poss'io altro che cosi non viva? Ogni ben senza te, Signor, mi manca; il cangiar sorte e sol poter divino. What else can I do but live in this fashion? Without you, Lord, I have no good in me; to change one's lot is in God's power only. The diminuendo ending after the fiery start deepens, instead of weakening, the voice's impact. Nor should we miss the voice's gestural quality: the dramatic appeal like a cry for help, the fervid reasoning, the argument containing a veiled reproach (when God is reminded in the first tercet that He incarcerated the pleader's soul in a frail body at the mercy of time's sea of troubles, and that therefore only He can rescue that soul), the final confession of helplessness. In this entreaty swaying between hope and despondency there still rings a faint echo of Michelangelo's Promethean defiance; his dia­ logue with God can only take place without intermediaries, in the profound spaces of an exclusive inwardness. Appropriately transformed holdovers from the language of sublimated erotic verse addressed to individual creatures rather than to their Creator can be detected in the first line (with its emphasis on the act of seeing, as in sonnet G 166 to Vittoria Colonna and generally in the poems having to do with art) and in the fifth (where the vocative "Signor mie caro," My dear Lord, reproduces exactly the formula used in several poems for Tommaso Cavalieri). Even the vocative "Amor" at the beginning of the sestet reminds us of a different, secular use of the same word—and sonnet G 276 will in fact come to terms with the beguiling homonymy, as we shall see. Taken together, all these semantic transformations of language denote the dialectical continuity of Michelangelo's religious poetry in his late years with a significant part of his earlier verse that was dictated by human, not divine love, even if

PROTEAN EROS

the men or women who inspired that secular love were openly treated as embodiments of divine beauty and therefore guides to God. To them, Michelangelo avowed to Giannotti,47 his whole being gave itself up in thrall, and we have seen how much of his poetry from the start confesses in fear (or ecstasy) to such alienation of himself. Now, thanks to protean Eros, a metamorphosis of object and quality looms, and the old man who still feels the pangs of terrene love, who once la­ mented his inability to belong to himself, will endeavor to compound and overcome that alienation by surrendering to­ tally to God, to a Love that encompasses, transcends, and outlasts all loves.48 Much as he yearns for deliverance from the bonds of pas­ sion, he is still this side of peace, and to such as him perhaps peace comes only with death. His approach to God is through stormy seas, "per tempestoso mar con fragil barca" (through stormy seas on a rickety boat, sonnet G 285). At times (quat­ rains G 279) he still balks at the commandment to renounce wordly love and protests that if a lovely visage bears the imprint of its divine Maker, there should be no guilt attached to his cherishing it, whereas elsewhere (fragment G 281) he feels liberated from the burden of that love that used to delight him in his younger years. Obviously the debate in his soul between Plato and Christ is far from resolved at this point, and still in sonnet G 276, dated by Girardi between 1547 and 1550, Michelangelo seeks a conciliation of the two al­ ternatives by bending the symposial Plato of Ficinian memory to the requirements of Christian transcendence. His heart, the speaker argues, is vulnerable to endless erotic stimulation from a variety of lovely visages that enthrall him in the bonds of fear, jealousy, and confusion, and yet none of them can satisfy him entirely. But if a mortal beauty holds fast to itself that ardent desire, that desire is not of heavenly origin; it is all too human. If on the contrary desire refuses to be chained by that one beauty and goes beyond, it is Heaven-bound and despises the very name of Love, for it seeks another god: Ma se pass'oltre, Amor, tuo nome sprezza,

PROTEAN EROS

c'altro die cerca; e di quel piu non teme c'a Iato vien contr'a si bassa spoglia. But if it goes beyond, Love, it spurns your name, seeking another god; nor does it fear any more the one that harasses our lowly body. Yet, absolute logical or linguistic consistency being rather improbable with poets, fragment G 291 of 1555 will still address God as "Amor,"49 whereas fragment G 281, in com­ menting with relief on the subsidence of that amorous fever that now can only be a nuisance to the weary soul of an old man, first confronts a personified profane Love ("Amor") with the defeat that such loss of power over his erstwhile devotee involves, and then disparagingly talks in lower case ("amor," love) of the once insatiable passion that beset the speaker in his youth. Evidently fragment G 281 (replete with manneristPetrarchan oxymora) returns to the earlier internal convention of Michelangelo's verse, as exemplified for instance in sonnets G 272 and (negatively) G 276. But fragment G 291 (the only lyrical piece to use the simple word "Amor" for God after sonnet G 276's avowed need for an alternative naming) finds no fault with a usage so memorably sanctioned by the Divine Comedy's last line: Amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle. Love that moves the sun and the other stars. Dante's example tends to be normative with Michelan­ gelo,50 and it stays with him to the end, as the second part of his last poem (sonnet fragment G 302 of 1560) shows: Signor mie car, tu sol che vesti e spogli e col tuo sangue l'alme purghi e sani da l'infinite colpe e moti umani 0 my dear Lord, you who alone clothe and strip our souls and with your blood purify and heal them from the endless guilts and human impulses.

PROTEAN EROS

I have italicized the syntagms that come respectively from the Count Ugolino episode in Inferno XXIII ("Tu ne vestisti / queste misere carni, e tu ne spoglia," said by his dying sons to the starved father) and from the prayer to God in Purgatorio ("Vinca tua guardia i movimenti umani"). The point is that after considering the possibility of a different name for the different kind of love that Amor divino is vis-a-vis Amor profano, Michelangelo rejected the Manichaean implication of such a change and, in Dante's footsteps, preferred (in language as well as in the corresponding conception) an in­ tegrative solution: a transcendence as metamorphosis rather than irreconcilable opposition of human nature and Divine wisdom. One and the same word—Amore, Love—can denote both ideas without danger of confusion once the necessary distinctions are retained; Dante of course had shown the way, by applying the same name to the destructive love that carried Paolo and Francesca to Hell, and to the primal source that created the cosmos and keeps it going; Virgil's discourse on love and reason in Purgatorio xvi-xvii provides the key to an understanding of the distinction. Even so, the integrative solution on the spiritual level fails to soothe the writer's troubled conscience, and fragments G 280 and G 291 voice deep concern over some "unknown sin" or "hidden guilt" that escapes the keenest soul-searching and requires God's infinite mercy to be purged. Only the blood of Christ can wash the speaker's sins (G 280, sonnets G 289, G 290, G 294, and G 298, and fragment G 302), for if He were to look at the worshiper's past with severe eyes and point at him an accusing arm (sonnet G 290, where the image clearly recalls the central figure of the Last Judgment) there would be no hope of salvation. Without Him, the speaker experiences utter abjection (G 289), and now and then he feels God's absence and implores Him to answer his call. In some interesting fragments he depicts himself cast into a burdensome worldly predicament to "sculpt divine things" (G 282), and (in fragment G 283 from the same year, 1552) he bemoans to God his inability to carry on the appointed task

PROTEAN EROS

of serving Him through art as his soul gets more and more detached from the things of this world: Piu l'alma acquista ove piii Ί mondo perde; Parte e la morte non va bene insieme: che convien piu che di me dunche speri? More gains the soul where the world loses more; art and the thought of death don't go together: so what can you expect of me by now? Yet (fragment G 284, still from 1552) the artist's zest re­ bounds from the depressing thought of the irreversible loss of creative energy entailed by age and approaching death: S'a tuo nome ho concetto alcuno immago, non e senza del par seco la morte, onde l'arte e l'ingegno si dilegua. Ma se, quel c'alcun crede, i' pur m'appago che si ritorni a viver, a tal sorte ti serviro, s'avvien che l'arte segua. If in your name I have conceived some shape, with it came in also the sense of death, which makes short work of art and talent alike. But if, as some believe, I too can look forward to a second life, in that condition I will serve you again, if art seconds me. The passage is moving in its simplicity—no mannerist artifice here, as if Michelangelo had tried to lay his soul bare and had accordingly stripped his language down to artless prayer. Prayer is here an intimate conversation between creator and Creator, with the liberties that only that kind of exclusive rapport can permit; for it is well nigh heretical, for a sincere Christian, to entertain the probability of reincarnation (and the idea has come up before in another poem by Michelangelo, G 126). But nearly all the poems of Michelangelo's last phase (those at least that came after the self-satirizing capitolo of the late 1540s) add up to one prolonged colloquium with Christ and/or God the Father. They vibrate with the unique

PROTEAN EROS

tone of his aristocratic religiousness, which if in some respects consonant with the austere climate of Tridentine CounterReformation is in other respects much closer to the Pauline leanings of the Protestant conscience.51 In this regard we cannot forget (apart from Savonarola's lifelong influence on him) Michelangelo's unrepudiated as­ sociation with the Catholic Reform circle of Vittoria Colonna. Sonnet G 289 in particular reflects a central idea of that circle, the idea that salvation is to be attained by the sole force of faith and not by good works in themselves. It is an idea shared by Luther (fide sola), and it would fly in the face of Tridentine Catholicism; De Tolnay has pointed out its rel­ evance to that part of the Last Judgment where some saved souls ascending to Heaven on the right side of Christ the Judge (left side for us onlookers) are pulled up by means of rosaries.52 Here is the formulation offide sola belief in sonnet G 289: Deh, porgi, Signor mio, quella catena che seco annoda ogni celeste dono: la fede, dico, a che mi stringo e sprono; Po' che non fusti del tuo sangue avaro, che sara di tal don la tuo clemenza, se Ί ciel non s'apre a noi con altra chiave? O my Lord, reach out to me that precious chain which ties to itself every gift from Heaven: faith, I mean, which I relentlessly pursue Since you were so unsparing of your blood, what will your mercy be now in this gift which is the only key that unlocks Heaven?53 For a proper assessment of the doctrinal commitment Mi­ chelangelo vested in this sonnet and in the preceding one (G 288), it helps to note that they were both sent to Giorgio Vasari (1555) with the request to hand them over to Father Fattucci,54 an old friend and advisor who had expressed the

PROTEAN EROS

wish to see some of Michelangelo's religious poems; and sonnet G 289, attuned to renunciation of the world and its beauties, was also sent to Archbishop Ludovico Beccadelli, who replied (March 1555) with a sonnet patterned on the same rhymes. Evidently those enlightened ecclesiastical friends, while not so radically minded as the members of Juan de Valdes's and Vittoria Colonna's reformist coterie (some of whom, like Bernardino Ochino and Cardinal Reginald Pole, had eventually gone over to the Protestant camp, whereas another, Monsignor Pietro Carnesecchi, had been tried by the Inquisition), were liberal enough to accept the noncon­ formist Catholicism of Michelangelo in its profound sincerity. Another aspect to keep in mind for a correct perspective on Michelangelo's writing and inner history is the early ap­ pearance of religious concern in his verse. Although it is in the very last phase that religious poetry takes over (with the exception of sonnet 299, a good-humored thank-you missive to Vasari for certain presents), this poetry had counterpointed Michelangelo's secular poetry almost from the start, so much so that the present chapter of this book has taken its initial cue from Madrigal G 8 of 1511 (to which the late sonnet G 276, touched on above, may be considered a late antiphon). The self-castigating prayer of sonnet G 66 (1532-1533), of sestina G 70 (same period), and of sonnet G 87 (1534) punc­ tuated the flow of effusions for Tommaso Cavalieri, and in the midst of love lyrics for Vittoria Colonna and the so-called cruel and fair lady we hear the unworldly note of madrigal G 161 (Per qual mordace lima, through what deep cutting file), written for Vittoria but addressed to God whom the troubled speaker beseeches to reform him: Amore, a te nol celo, ch'i' porto invidia a' morti, sbigottito e confuso, si di se meco l'alma trema e teme. Signor, nell'ore streme, stendi ver me Ie tuo pietose braccia, tomm'a me stesso e famm'un che ti piaccia.

PROTEAN EROS

Love, I don't hide it from you, that I feel envy for the dead themselves, in my bewilderment and confusion, so much my soul trembles and fears for me. O Lord, in my last hours, reach out your merciful arms toward me, take me away from myself and fashion me to your pleasure. Again, this madrigal harks back to G 8 (for the motif of selfalienation, which the speaker now wants to become an inner conversion, just as, by addressing God first as "Amor" and then as "Lord," he subsumes to Him that "Love" that in the earlier poem had appeared as the alien and secular invader of his soul). At the same time it foreshadows in its conclusion the forceful close of sonnet G 285: Ne pinger ne scolpir fia piu che queti l'anima, volta a quell'amor divino che aperse, a prender noi, 'n croce Ie braccia. Neither painting nor sculpture will now appease my soul, for it has turned to that divine love that opened, to take us, His arms on the cross. In a far less obvious way, even the following madrigal (G 162) addressed to Vittoria Colonna can be said to prelude the great sonnet of 1552-1554: Ora in sul destro, ora in sul manco piede variando, cerco della mie salute. Fra il vizio e la virtute il cor confuso mi travaglia e stanca, come chi Ί ciel non vede, che per ogni sentier si perde e manca. Porgo la carta bianca a' vostri sacri inchiostri, c'amor mi sganni e pieta Ί ver ne scriva: che l'alma, da se franca, non pieghi agli error nostri mie breve resto, e che men cieco viva.

PROTEAN EROS

Chieggio a voi, alta e diva donna, saper se 'n 'ciel men grado tiene l'umil peccato che Ί superchio bene. Now shifting to my right, now to my left foot I try to find salvation. Between sheer vice and virtue confused, the heart vexes and wears me out, like one who cannot see the sky and gets lost on all paths, missing his goal. I offer the blank paper to your holy writing, for love to undeceive me and piety to write truth: so that my soul, from itself freed, may not subjugate what's left of life to my old errors, and I may live less blind. I ask you, lofty and divine lady, to tell me if heaven holds repentance in less esteem than a flawless life. Unlike the previous madrigal, this one falls short of outstand­ ing poetical achievement; nor does it show the mannerist virtuosity that marks so many of Michelangelo's poems, in­ cluding some of those written for Vittoria Colonna. On the other hand, it has some value as confessional exercise. Even the casuistry that entangles some other lyrics of the same series (like madrigal G 160) takes on here a sharp disjunctive form to impinge on the addressee's awareness with an urgency we, as readers, cannot mistake for mere diplomatic shrewd­ ness. The voice becomes gesture, and the un-self-conscious eloquence makes its point with minimal expenditure of rhe­ torical ammunition. The poem is almost imageless, since genuine icon status belongs only to the act of offering the blank paper to the private Doctor of the Church that beloved Vittoria becomes in the persona's perception. In turn, the blank paper image at lines 7 and 8 acts as a synecdoche of the speaker's mental blankness. It is a verbal concentrate of the negations so liberally disseminated through the poem to culminate in the

PROTEAN EROS

idea of blindness—a blindness to be mitigated only by her higher instruction. (We may remember once more the floored Saul of the Cappella Paolina fresco at which Michelangelo worked in those very years; there, Saul-Michelangelo is blinded by that light he is not yet ready to receive.) The whole utterance is structured by that uncertainty, that alternation between "vice" and "virtue" that finds allegorical and kinetic embodiment in the shifting from foot to foot at lines 1 and 2. From then on, true to the initial motif, binary phrasing per­ sists, either through oppositional, disjunctive hendiadys ("be­ tween vice and virtue") or through cumulative, heightening ones ("the heart vexes and wears me out"; "gets lost. . . and misses his goal"). A swaying motion is suggested throughout, and it seals the poem with the question put to the addressee on the relative merits of the repentant sinner versus the unflawed just soul. It is certainly not a rhetorical question, even though it may remind us, at one remove, of the evangelical saying that Heaven rejoices more for one lost sheep returning to the fold than for a hundred just souls. If the previous madrigal (G 161) anticipated the late sonnet G 285 with its closing image of Christ embracing the sinner, madrigal G 162 foreshadows the same sonnet in its binary, swaying dynamics. Indeed sonnet G 285, written several years after Vittoria's death (1552-1554), is the answer to the ques­ tions asked of her in those two madrigals as the intermediary between the soul-searching speaker beset with crucial doubts and the God incarnate yet still out of reach that in those very years he kept drawing for Vittoria; this was the suffering god whose reunion in death with the mother figure he still conjured from reluctant marble in the two last Piet&s. In the sonnet, however, Christ is alive though crucified or actually because crucified, as in some of the drawings from the last period: Giunto e gik Ί corso della vita mia, con tempestoso mar, per fragil barca, al comun porto, ov'a render si varca conto e ragion d'ogni opra trista e pia. Onde Paffettiiosa fantasia

PROTEAN EROS

che l'arte mi fece idol e monarca conosco or ben com'era d'error carca e quel c'a mal suo grado ogn'uom desia. Gli amorosi pensier, gia vani e lieti, che fien or, s'a duo morti m'avvicino? D'una so Ί certo, e l'altra mi minaccia. Ne pinger ne scolpir fia piii che queti l'anima, volta a quell'amor divino c'aperse, a prender noi, 'n croce Ie braccia. My life's long course already has arrived, through stormy seas, in a rickety boat, close to the common haven where we must account for all our works, both good and evil. And so the imagination, passion-ridden, that made art an idol and a king to me well know I now, how full it was of error, like anything man wishes in his folly. As to my thoughts of love, so vain and glad, what will they be now I approach two deaths? Of one I'm certain, the other threatens me. Neither painting nor sculpture will now appease my soul, for it has turned to that divine love that opened, to take us, His arms on the cross. Carl Frey called this sonnet (numbered by him C X L V l i ) "perhaps Michelangelo's finest poem, not just of his last phase, but of the whole canzoniere,"55 and it has enjoyed a similar reputation ever since Vasari published it in the 1568 edition of his Vite. Even without accepting Frey's valuation (which does not mean much anyway since in his introduction he discounts the aesthetic value of Michelangelo's poetry— it actually sounds too rough or belabored to him and matters chiefly as autobiography), one must acknowledge the impact of a relaxed diction that, building on an initial Petrarchan motif, candidly develops its confessional message up to the powerful crowning image. The penitential stance is genuine; the poet is talking to himself, rather than to God as in the other religious sonnets or fragments from the same phase,

PROTEAN EROS

and in so doing he reviews the essential commitments of his life only to find them wanting. The severity with which he judges his lifelong dedication to art can be compared only with Dante's gesture of self-castigation in Purgatorio XI. Yet how fully does the voice ring with that very dedication in the two strong lines Onde Taffettiiosa fantasia che l'arte mi fece idol e monarca . . . , where the alliterative mesh tying affettiiosa to fantasia con­ spires with the diaeresis on the first of the two words to increase their body and duration, as if the voice wanted to dwell on them as long as possible within the given metrical framework before passing on to the line that gives us sharp judgment on what was once the speaker's unlimited devotion to his art. The Christ image that transcends that devotion and reas­ serts it on another level comes, as we saw, from madrigal G 161, but the motif of the "two deaths" (the certain physical death and the possible spiritual one, i.e. damnation) comes from sonnet 43 of the late 1520s, where the autobiographical persona faces the dilemma of yielding to the power of dan­ gerous love or listening to the dictates of reason: In mezzo di duo morti e Ί mie signore: questa non voglio e questa non comprendo: cosi sospeso, el corpo e Palma muore. Between two deaths stands my imperious master: I hate the first, the other I fail to understand: in this suspense, both body and soul will die. This dilemma also links the earlier sonnet to the madrigal for Vittoria Colonna (G 162) and to the sonnet from the 1550s (G 285), which is now occupying us; here, however, the solution is already in sight, and the speaker does really "know" (conosco, line 7) his past errors—as he did not in the sonnet from the 1520s, where the same verb "conosco" failed to trigger the needed resolution of his ethical dilemma. The

PROTEAN EROS

binary pattern recurs through sonnet G 285 as a mimetic reflection of the swaying between opposite alternatives: "conto e ragion, . . . trista e pia" (line 4), "idol e monarca" (line 6), "vani e lieti" (line 9), "d'una so il certo, e l'altra mi minaccia" (line 11), "ne pinger ne scolpir" (line 12); but in the end it is superseded by the one certainty that could calm the stormy seas of doubt and delusion: the "amor divino," the divine love of Christ. Unlike the terrene love of sonnet 43, He does stand between the "two deaths" looming on the horizon, to overcome the first and avert the second instead of making both invincible for the terror-stricken persona. Both the formal element of syntax and the semantic and iconic tenor convey that progress from stormy sea to sheltered heaven, from wave-like swaying to firmness, from duality to oneness (in and with the crucified Savior), and finally, from the double closure of death to the opening-clasping welcome of His arms. This is a welcome, by the way, that is allembracing and not just individual; the "noi" (us) of the last line merges the autobiographical persona with the rest of mankind in a choral resolution. In turning to Christ for sal­ vation, the artist no longer feels apart from humanity at large as he did when confronting God as demiurge to Creator. Yet his particular vocation is far from forgotten in the passionate yearning for union with the suffering Savior whom his hands had refashioned in color or marble, and whom his eyes are contemplating as a form in the mind, as a Dionysian presence eluding all objectifying touch now that—in death—all dis­ tance is going to be abolished between Him and the artist's hands and eyes. One no longer needs to paint or sculpt or draw what one is becoming. Still, it is a privilege for an artist to envisage identification with a god incarnate: a god that has hands and eyes like the artist himself and a body like the best of the manifold bodies his eyes and hands called forth from stone and paint in the course of a long life. To lose oneself to such a godhead is not to lose oneself at all, and at this point the anguishing question asked by the poet so many decades before in madrigal G 8 ("How can it be that

PROTEAN EROS

I am no longer mine?") receives its final answer. If one belongs to Him, one has found oneself. This is the open-ended conclusion of an autobiography in verse that dealt with some basic existential themes, eventually to focus on the crucial one of old age confronting a long, stormy past, a precarious present, and a short future (even if never ending in the perspective of faith). Two modern poets who likewise—from their respective points of view—came to dwell on the harrowing theme of old age were William Butler Yeats and Eugenio Montale, and their poetical utterances on the subject at times remind one of Michelangelo's. This is especially true of Montale, who occasionally seems to echo Michelangelo's phrasing, and who, in 1975,56 came out in open praise of Michelangelo's verbal "stoniness"; surely one of the best testimonials to the longevity of a poetry that, crabbed and nonconformist as it was, needed centuries to come into its own.

Fury of Form If the Word that was made flesh provided the last refuge for the aged artist, the translation of flesh into marble or painting and drawing, or into the written word, had been his lifework; and he put in the exercise of writing the same care that went into the carving of statue after finished (or unfinished) statue. As with his sculpture, often the unfinished poems have a life of their own and a corresponding hold on us, cryptical torsos of language that they are. Of even greater interest are the sometimes endless variants that mark the formal evolution of his poetical texts. The poignancy of his word choice and order in many a given poem has already engaged our attention in the preceding chapters, which could not help dealing with problems of style in coming to terms with the dominant thematics of this sustained and many-sided body of verse. It will now be our task to focus on Michelangelo's verbal crafts­ manship; one useful sample, to begin with, can come from the very sonnet (G 285) with which our narrative analysis came to rest in Chapter 2. Five of the six drafts that Frey (pp. 486-88) and Girardi

FURY OF FORM

(pp. 450-52) reproduce in their critical appendices come from Codice Vatieano Latino 3211, and the sixth one is extant in a scribe's copy in Arehivio Buonarroti XIV as well as in Yasari's 1568 edition of Lives (for Michelangelo had sent him his final draft in 1554, two years after starting work on the sonnet). The structure is there from the start, and the successive revisions are a matter of detail. These details, needless to say, make quite a difference, and they show that Michel­ angelo—while once sincerely protesting to del Riccio that his own verse was cut out of rough "Romagnol" cloth,1 unlike the gold-embroidered finery of Bembo's followers such as Giannotti—actually had an exacting sense of style. Style to him, of course, had little to do with ornament per se and everything to do with meaning, rhythm, and specific expressiveness. Variants and revisions are minimal in the first quatrain yet far from insignificant: "con tempestoso mar per fragil barca" (with a stormy sea by a rickety boat) is weighed as an early alternative (draft n) to the initial and final version (per tem­ pestoso mar con fragil barca) and rightly discarded, since the etymological value of "per" (through) makes itself felt to ad­ vantage in the preferred version and would be unfocused in the alternative one. More important, the hendiadys "trista e pia" (evil and pious), modifying "ogni opra" (each act) in the fourth line, was "falsa e ria" (false and wicked) in the first five drafts (two of which, nos. Ill and iv, affect only the sestet anyway). In the final version sent to Vasari,2 the poet cor­ rected the semantic redundancy to suit the obvious impli­ cation of sifting good from bad in the envisaged scene of the soul having to render account of its past behavior to a divine Judge. The line, and the whole scene, gains in expressive strength; one now feels the disjunctive hendiadys as a swaying of scales in the act of judgment. The second quatrain, firmly based on its semantic pillars "affectuosa fantasia . . . idol e monarca" throughout its diachronic progress, underwent all the same its share of local transformations. Draft IV replaced "che I'arte mi feee idolo e monarca" (that made art to me an idol and a monarch) with

FURY OF FORM

"ch'ebbe I'arte per etc." (that held art as an idol and a mon­ arch), but the change was dropped in the last two versions, and with good reason. The provisional revision tended to abstract the power of "fantasy" into a rather impersonal sphere, and the restored solution stresses that power over the speaker's self, in keeping with the overall confessional-penitential tone, and thereby ensures far greater strength for the whole. The difference is one between abstraction and personal involvement. Going on from the second to the third line of this quatrain, we find that its initial version was much in the nature of a tentative sketch: or mi torna si uana e d'error carca now seems to me so vain and full of error. The writer soon found that unsatisfactory and penned in (on the same sheet, Codice Vaticano Latino, folio 95, interlinearly or across) three alternative variants, all pivoting on the capital verb "ueggio" (I see) that refocuses the mental action on the self-judging speaker; he is now the grammatical subject of the clause, not the formerly so powerful "affectuosa fantasia," and this makes him also the moral agent: or ueggio ben com'era d'error carca come e quant'era carca quant'era d'error carca now I see well how it was full of error how and to what extent it was full how full it was of error In the following drafts, the verb "ueggio" (I see) will be replaced by the semantically deeper "conosco" (I know)— and both verbs, Frey reminds us, come from Petrarch's in­ troductory sonnet in which he likewise deplores his past va­ garies. Other than that, the early variant has taken over, to the obvious advantage of the whole poem. A significant part of the gain thus achieved must be seen in the delayed surprise effect of the governing verb conosco

FURY OF FORM

(I know): the syntactical expectation aroused by the first two lines of the quatrain, introduced as they are by "affectuosa fantasia" ("impassioned fantasy" in Longfellow's masterly rendering), was for an action or consequence depending on that "fantasy," which one tended irresistibly to see as the subject of the clause to follow; but at the third line the per­ emptory "I know" (conosco) abruptly reverses that expectation by introducing the knowing self as the subject-agent and thereby demoting "impassioned fantasy" to the status of an object. The inversion of grammatical role combines with the prolepsis to suggest mimetically the reversal that has taken place in the speaker's mind over the years. He now dominates his impassioned fantasy instead of being dominated by it. Apart from this creative reshuffling, one should also note the indecision between "come" (how) and "quanto" (how much) as adverbial modifier. The final choice of "how" over "how much" (in Italian of course the distinction between come and quanto is far sharper) rightly favors the qualitative over the quantitative nuance. One does not care to measure the quan­ tity or extent of error; what matters is its sheer presence—a massive presence at that, if we but listen to the adjective carca (laden), which refers to fantasia but immediately re­ calls, by force of rhyme and associational usage, the barca (barge, boat) of line 2. It is as if "fantasy" had turned out to be a burden to the storm-tossed boat of this life rather than a help—despite the lightness or airiness we normally asso­ ciate with a word like "fantasy." The last line of the second quatrain did not undergo momentous changes; it had origi­ nally taken shape much as it was going to remain, though draft IV experimented with an explanatory variation ("e quel c'ogn'uom contr'al suo ben desia," and what every man against his own welfare desires) that was then dropped because it was phonically awkward by comparison with the initial and quant'a

final "e quel c'a mal suo grado ogn'uom desia" (and what to ill effect each man desires). The sestet had focused from the start on the climactic image of Christ spreading His arms on the cross to take us all to

FURY OF FORM

His bosom, yet even here there were some changes of note, particularly in the phrasing of the first tercet. Draft I has: Gli amorosi pensier, che fur gia lieti, da l'una a l'altra morte e lor camino; l'una e allor certa, e l'altra gli minaccia. My thoughts of love, that were once so gladsome, from the one to the other death is now their going; certain is one, the other threatens them. The syntagm "pensieri amorosi" (thoughts of love) will reap­ pear in the two last drafts, because it specifies an essential element of the speaker's lifelong experience now under ex­ amination, but only after the test of several experimental variations: "gli aflicti mie pensier" (my distressed thoughts) in draft Il (with the appositional appendage "gia uani e lieti," once vain and gladsome); "Che fia de' mie pensier gia uani e lieti" (What will become of my thoughts, once vain and gladsome) in incomplete draft Ilia; "gli amorosi pensier, gia uani e lieti" (the thoughts of love, once vain and gladsome) in draft nib; "i pensier mie gia de' mie danni lieti" (my thoughts formerly glad of my harm) in draft IV. The vigorously colloquial (because nonsyntactically aligned) "da l'una a l'al­ tra morte e Ί lor camino" will persist in draft II, only to be sacrificed to the less dramatically agitated but focally med­ itative "che fien or, s'a duo morti m'auicino?" (what will they be, now that I approach two deaths?) of the last three drafts— a solution that Michelangelo gradually reached by the inter­ mediate approximation of draft IIIa ("s'a l'una e l'altra morte m'auicino?" if I am approaching the one and the other death?) and of draft Illb ("che son or, facti a duo morte uicini?" what are they now, having come close to two deaths?). As happened in the second quatrain, he finally opted for a phrasing that would shift the center of mental action from abstract person­ ifications to the concrete, experiencing self; and how much more incisive the result was can be seen from the sequel to the line in question: d'una so Ί certo e l'altra mi minaccia

FURY OF FORM

of one I know the certainty and the other threatens me, where the unrelieved awareness of approaching death is all the meditating self has to defend himself from the looming despair of death compounded—the eternal death of the spirit. The textual history of the second tercet is far smoother and suggests the high likelihood of a complete conception from the very start, since the only significant difference between the first two drafts and the last two lies in the pregnant use of a prepositional cluster, "apresso a" ([going] after, toward), to relate the penitent soul ("l'anima") to Christ's divine love ("quell'amor diuino"). From draft Illb on, this interesting idiosyncrasy that vested the function of an implicit clause in the preposition yields to the normalizing adoption of a past participle, "uolta" (turned, turning), in appositional place­ ment conferring upon it the strong implication of an elliptical causative clause. The semantic gain consists of the intro­ duction of the idea of turning (i.e. conversion) to seal the previous ratiocination and imagery, whereas the verb-like preposition "apresso" contained only the idea of movement in a certain direction. But in between the first three and the last two drafts a notable alternative emerged in draft IV—the draft, by the way, that also tested other divergent solutions (for lines 5, 8, and 9) against the initial and final ones. Adding to this roster the likewise unique form line 14 takes here amounts to recognizing the special function of draft IV as the testing ground for most of the specific textual alternatives that had to be given their chance before the sonnet could settle into its definitive shape. The variant in question is read by Frey as follows: Caperse in croce aprendo noi Ie braccia Who opened on the cross, opening us, His arms, and by Girardi instead: c'aperse in croce a prende[r] noi Ie braccia. who opened on the cross, to take us, His arms. (emphasis mine)

FURY OF FORM

Before discussing the difference in textual reading between the two best critical editions, I should like to point out the scrupulousness of Michelangelo's ear in matters of syntactical rhythm. Only in this particular manuscript (Codice Vaticano Latino, folio 24a) does the syntagm "in croce" (on the cross) precede the subordinate clause that Girardi reads as "a prender noi" (this being its unequivocal form and tenor in all the other manuscripts). Whether Girardi or Frey is right, the fact remains that shifting that moot dependent clause toward the end of the line would have made for much greater metrical fluency, whereas the configuration our poet restored after weighing the syntactical variant does break up syntax and rhythm with strong caesuras; and this no doubt was the reason for the provisional change. If Buonarroti had been Bembo or a Bembista, he would have made that change permanent, for the sake of the goddess Euphony. But further listening made him regret the expressive loss involved. Let us consider the line in its final version: C'aperse a prender noi 'n croce Ie braccia Who opened, to take us, on the cross His arms. Girardi marks the pause after aperse and the one after noi with commas, whereas Frey sticks to the original writing, but the punctuation (of which Michelangelo was generally spar­ ing) is not even needed to alert the reader to the caesuras that frame the dependent clause between the two segments of its governing clause in that conclusive hendecasyliable. The strong pause after aperse creates suspense within the unfolding line, emphasizes the absolute meaning of that verb that wants to be fully heard before releasing the syntactical and semantic developments it governs, and (in conjunction with the symmetrical pause after noi) gives sharper relief to the outline of the dependent clause (a prender noi). In this way the latter comes to be enclosed mimetically by the main clause just as mankind (noi, us, the object of the relevant action) is enclosed by the clasping arms that opened to receive it. Aperse, from aprire, to open: could a better word have

F U R Y OF FORM

been found to determine the rhythmical and semantic destiny of the sonnet's decisive last line and to suggest a new begin­ ning beyond the closure of death? Syncopated as it is by its caesuras, the closing line, if properly enacted by our inner voice, triumphs over fragmentation and prolongs itself beyond metrical limits. The crucified Christ essentially opens, in the many senses the verb can take at the appropriate levels of understanding; He opens the human soul to new life, mankind to new history. No wonder, then, if Carl Frey chose to read the syntactical insert of line 14 in the sonnet's fourth draft (Codice Vaticano Latino, folio 24a) as "aprendo noi" (opening us) instead of "a prender noi" as some textual clues were going to persuade Enzo Noe Girardi sixty-seven years later. The evidence in favor of Girardi's choice is quite strong: first of all, the other drafts without exception have an indisputable "a prender noi" version; second, certain peculiarities of Michelangelo's spell­ ing (preposition a often joined to the body of the word it modifies, sporadic omission of the final consonant of prender) would tend to discount rather than authorize Frey's alternative reading. Even in the relevant manuscript, the word ragion at line 4 is spelled without the final "n"; in draft II, the word "idol" at line 6 lacks its final "1," and in draft Illb the syntagm "a prender" is spelled "aprede" with the superscript mark for an omitted nasal consonant, which Michelangelo often uses in keeping with a widespread shorthand device of the time. In general, he tends to join proclitic and enclitic par­ ticles to the relevant words, and he omits apostrophe marks. In the manuscript in question, we find such orthographic agglutinations as "e gial corso" for "e gia Ί corso" or "e gia il corso"; iiOua render" for iiOViO render"; iiChebbe larte peridole monarca" for "ch'ebbe l'arte per idol e monarca"; iiCOgnud cdtralsuo be" for "c'ogn'uom contra Ί suo ben"; "aquellamor" for "a quell'amor." One easily accounts for these peculiarities by considering them a kind of phonetic spelling that tends to reproduce oral word groupings. If this were all, we should have to reject Frey's deciphering in favor of Girardi's with no more ado. But closer perusal of

FURY OF FORM

the manuscript warrants a different decision. In the expres­ sion at issue, the crucial last letter looks unlike any other final "e" in this and other coeval texts. It is indeed a firmly penned and rounded out "o" with just the faintest trace of a small horizontal bar peeping on its left inside part, as if, after writing an "e," Michelangelo had made up his mind in favor of a clear "o"—which explains the particularly heavy tracing of the letter's outline, showing a deliberate return of the pen on its tracks to ensure unequivocal correction. The penstroke joining "a" to "prendo" is likewise strengthened, as it is not in "aquellamor" one line above and in iiCaduo morte" six lines above; in fact, in the latter expression the upward stroke of the letter "a" stops short of the contiguous "d." This specific evidence of the handwriting in favor of Frey is further cor­ roborated by the fact, noted above, of the presence in this intermediate text (manuscript IV, Codice Vaticano Latino, folio 24a) of several variants appearing only here and nowhere else in the genetic textual chain of sonnet G 285. Nothing, then, would have been more natural for Michelangelo at this point than to replace "a prender" with "aprendo," on the spur of the moment, under the double suggestion of the initial "aperse" (word reduplications having been pretty frequent in his verse of the middle phase) and of his own idiosyncratic spelling of "a prender." Subsequent rewriting brought about a restoration of the earlier form as semantically more con­ sonant with the concrete tenor of the whole dynamic image. The above goes to show the extreme care with which Mi­ chelangelo composed his verse, a care documented by so many other instances that to discuss them all in detail would swell the present treatment to unmanageable size. Actually "care" is perhaps too weak a word to define the extent of Michelangelo's involvement in the perfecting of his verse. When I think of the ceaseless rewriting some poems under­ went, of their radical transformations in the process, and of the long span of time this took, I incline to apply the definition "fury of form," which I adapt for this purpose from Michel­ angelo's own expression "furia della figura"3 as reported by Lomazzo in his treatise on painting. Such is the case with

FURY OF FORM

two strong madrigals, "Te sola del mie mal contenta ueggio" (You alone I see rejoicing in my harm, Frey Cix 7, G 246; and it must be noted that the two editors differ in their re­ construction of the final text for which an autograph is lacking, Girardi giving a shorter version) and "Ogni cosa, ch'i' ueggio, mi consiglia" (Everything I see advises me, Frey CIX 10, G 81: here the two scholars agree except in minor points of punctuation and spelling). The genesis and evolution of "Te sola del mie mal" has been analyzed by Anne Hallock,4 but Frey's painstaking and far from insensitive commentary should be consulted first; suffice it to remark that the first draft was an impassioned capitolo ternario, which eventually shrank to the madrigal format (and in the process temporarily changed addressee by replacing the cruel lady with the fair youth Febo del Poggio for whom Michelangelo happened to write other poems and a very passionate letter). Madrigal G 81, according to Frey, must have dawned in Florence in the 1520s at the inspiration of the same woman who brought about the writing of "Te sola del mie mal," only to be reworked for Cavalieri in Rome in the early 1530s and finally polished up in 1546 for the pro­ jected edition sponsored by del Riccio and Giannotti. It has an even more dramatic textual history than G 246—not in the sense of changing its metric pattern altogether but just because its known drafts are many more (twelve) and the tonal change more marked, with an evolutionary graph that must register a few eccentric sallies before the final shape is reached; restless experimentation and dogged reworking, the proof of an unappeasable ear, go hand in hand. Erotic fervor has become fury of form; the writing as such has incorporated the compulsion of eros. Nor would I say that here the progress has been toward a preconceived shape just because the three initial lines have survived all those ups and downs of experimental insistence. Even if those lines have set the theme in embryonic form: Ogni cosa c'i' ueggio mi consiglia e priega e forza c'i' ti segua e ami che quel che non e te non e Ί mie bene

First draft of madrigal G 81 for Tommaso Cavalieri in folio 37 of Codex Archivio Buonarroti XIII at Laurenziana Library in Florence

FURY OF FORM

Everything I see advises me and begs and forces me to follow and love you for that which is not you is not my good they do not preempt the many possible developments that each successive version tests. Before quarrying his text for an acceptable final shape, Michelangelo has to let it grow in several directions; the solution is far from predictable, and if the analogy to his sculptural procedure often induces us to use a sculptural metaphor for his diachronical method in writing, perhaps in cases like the present one a vegetal met­ aphor might be more to the point. The text has to grow and branch out before it can be pruned. Eventually (draft vf Girardi, Ve Frey; AB XIII, folio 41b) there emerges from this luxuriance what will remain, with minor changes, the closing couplet: pace non troua ne salute poi che ben non έ, doue non siate uoi [my soul] then finds no peace or health/salvation for no good can be there, where you are not. In the last drafts, "ciel" (heaven) will replace the more generic and abstract "ben" (good), with an intermediate variant "sol" (sun), which is also dropped because the climactic play of line 6 on sole-solo (sun-solely) will have made it redundant. But this poetic closure that clinches the poem on the keynote of the third line ("che quel che non e uoi non e Ί mie bene," for that which is not you is not my good) is an invention, not a preordained corollary. The poet could not have found it if he had not launched himself on an unrestricted venture of discovery of as many alternative possibilities as his imagi­ nation would allow. Our respect for his fertile talent increases when we look at some of those possibilities rioting on the ink-stained and partly torn sheet 775 of AB XIIi that carries the first known draft of this madrigal, or in the British Museum text (draft III) that came to Frey's notice through the good offices of a fellow scholar who had seen and described it to him. As if to suit the emotional vehemence of the text for

FURY OF FORM

which it provided the material vehicle, the draft I sheet in the Laurenziana library is torn in its lower edge in such a way as to mutilate the last line beyond reconstruction, and the large ink splotches hinder the reading of several other lines. One can also notice that the interlinear spaces become narrower with the last dozen lines; perhaps the poet, seized by his creative urge, tried to squeeze the whole writing into one sheet so as to encompass the completed text at one glance. The emotional impact of the twelve lines following the theme-setting three I quoted above is undeniable: non bacte ochio mortal ne muove ciglia che uegga ο uoce che per nome chiami cosa che fuor di te non mi die pene cio che morte sostiene oue l'aier dintorno acte non luce e priuo d'ogni luce il sol Ie stelle e Ί cielo d'un tenebroso uelo s'adombra

si chiude oue tu apri gli ochi tuoi. no mortal eye bats or moves its lashes to see, no voice [rings out] to call by name anything that—save you—won't give me pain Whatever is death-bound where the air does not shine around you is deprived of all light Sun stars and sky by a darksome veil overshadowed

are enveloped where you open your eyes. The whole stirring passage is subsequently dropped, along with the ensuing twelve lines that conclude this first draft, and but for a faint cue (the beloved as a source of light) nothing of it will be left in the final version, which has a classical firmness of outline versus the turmoil of syntax, imagery, and rhetorical stance that marks draft I as a Sturm-

FURY OF FORM

und-Drang type of utterance before the fact. Yet in the process something has been lost; we would not have considered this a mediocre poem if the author had left it at this stage. The final distillation is a masterpiece of its kind, but the dramatic concreteness of image—the projection of the speaking self s passion onto the cosmos—is no longer there. For all purposes the two drafts could be considered two different poems branching out from the same initial motif; as a matter of fact this is exactly the way Michelangelo treated certain close variants of the same poem when checking for minor emen­ dations the poems that del Riccio had copied for him (Codice Riccio, first section of AB xiv). I shall return to these later, but for the time being let me point out that the fair copies of Codex Riccio are numbered 1 to 70 (and this numbering is more or less retained in Codex Giannotti and in Codex Vaticanus); now two madrigals, re­ spectively numbered 32 (G 132, "Mentre che Ί mie passato m'e presente") and 34 ("Condotto da molt'anni all'ultime hore") by the author himself and del Riccio, are variations on the same theme and contain a number of identical or closely similar lines or phrases. Also (and this is an even more striking instance) madrigals 69 and 70 in Codex Riccio numbering ("Perche Ί mezzo di me che dal ciel viene," G 168) are identical except for the last eight lines, which provide respectively antithetical conclusions. Girardi considered the madrigals 32 and 34 of Codex Riccio independent poems but placed them contiguously in his ordering to acknowledge their mutual closeness, whereas he refused to accept madrigal 69 and treated it as a provisional stage of madrigal 70 del Riccio by giving the latter text only (G 168). In so doing he went against the author's (and his prospective editor's) explicit intentions. It is as if some future editor were to eliminate one of two similarly related lyrics in Ungaretti's "La morte meditata" (from Sentimento del tempo·, nor is a reference to Ungaretti so much out of order when we talk of a poet he closely studied and admired).6 Frey behaved more or less like Girardi, but at least, in his own particular ordering of the poems he considered as meant by Michelangelo for pub-

FURY OF FORM

lication (cix), he recognized the special value of the variant versions by giving their sequential del Riccio ordering (66, 69, 70) along with what he deemed to be the more advanced text (70) as part of the CIX series. Likewise, drafts π , π ι , I V , and ν of "Ogni cosa ch'i ueggio" are all divergent, really eccentric to the evolutionary line of this text, which resumes only with draft vi; and they all experiment with alternative (totally different) sequels to the first two or three lines. It is interesting to notice that draft I i reacts to draft I by swinging the pendulum all the way to the other extreme: it is the shortest version (seven lines), whereas the previous one was the longest (twenty-four lines), and it banks on abstract ratiocination where its predecessor in­ dulged in effusive imagery and rhetoric (to the point of in­ voking God himself with the Dantesque reference of lines 1314): O cara mie salute alma che puoi cio che tu vuoi comprendi el mio dolore 0 my dear exalted salvation that can do what you will, understand my sorrow! Draft III (from the British Museum and from Michelangelo Junior's copy) returns to the effusiveness of draft I, but without restoring any of its imagery or phrasing after the three initial lines. It is shorter than draft I, but decidedly darker in tone, so much so that if for the former I could talk of a iiSturmund-Drang" foreshadowing, the latter seems to invite com­ parison to nineteenth-century maudit poetry (I take my text from Frey, pp. 402-403, except for line 15 where I follow Girardi): Ogni cosa ch'i' ueggio mi consiglia E prega e forza, ch'i' ti segua e ami, Che quel che non e te non e el mie bene. Ogni stupore e ogni marauiglia Dell'universo par, ch'a te mi chiami, E nel pensier mi ti dipinge e tiene. Odi questo, mentre n'auiene,

FURY OF FORM

Mirando la tua opre salde e ferine, Un uenenoso uerme Me scempla e mi diuora E7tutto il mondo ancora, Corroto da tuo prossimi parenti; Od'i nostri lamenti, Amor, se tu se' dio, Ch'e Ί primo intender mio: Prestando Tarme a questo orribil mostro, La colpa e tua di tucto, il danno nostro. Everything I see advises me And begs and forces [me] to follow and love you, For what is not yourself is not my good. Each astonishing thing, each and all wonder Of the universe seems to call me to you, And paints and holds you firmly in my thought. Now hear this: while it happens, While I contemplate your firm manifestations, A poisonous worm Tears and devours me And the whole world to boot Corrupted by your very next of kin; Hear our complaints, Love, if you are truly a god, Which was my first understanding: If your weapons are lent to this dire monster, Yours is the blame for all, and ours the harm There is no need to labor the point when it comes to recognizing the firmness of style and in particular the power of passages like lines 4-6. This expressive power is equaled by the cryptical nature of the message. The first six lines are as ecstatic a tribute of love as was ever addressed to a human being; but by line 8 one wonders if the tribute is meant for a person or for a godhead, a creator. Then comes the dark antiphon to the ecstatic utterance of worship, with the de­ moniac worm that embodies the destructive, sinful side of love. By now (lines 1 Iff.) the addressee is clearly somebody

F U R Y OF FORM

or something other than a human being: his "next of kin" are blamed for the enduring corruption of the world, and here one thinks of Satan and of the fall from Eden. Finally the superhuman entity is directly named as Love himself, who is supposed to be a god (but not the biblical God), and the speaker prays to him, no longer individually but as part of mankind's chorus, to deny any help to the destructive "worm" that is his sinister counterpart. What had begun as an en­ raptured hymn of love becomes an anguished questioning of love's awful ambiguity. To make sense of the poem we must assume that the addressee of "Odi questo" at line 7 is no longer the beloved person but already the god of Love (who is here credited with "opre salde e ferme," firm, enduring works), the more so as the same imperative "odi" (hear) will be addressed to him six lines down. The abrupt transition from one to the other addressee (or from an "I-it" to an "I-thou" stance) is not lacking in the Buonarrotian canon, especially where Love is in question (G 147, G 161, G 232, G 245, G 262). Madrigal G 262 ("Amor, se tu se' dio, / non puoi cio che tu vuoi?" O Love, if you are a god / can you not do what you will?) actually arose as an afterthought on draft III of "Ogni cosa ch'i veggio," line 14, compounded with the Dantean motif of draft i's lines 13-14 ("o cara mie salute alma che puoi / cio che tu uoi," ο dear salvation mine that can / do what you will). This at least shows that Michelangelo, even though discarding these two early drafts of the madrigal in progress, still felt there was enough vitality in them to salvage a significant part of each from the scrap heap of his workshop. In other cases, as we saw, he came to retain two variants of the same poem as independent compositions, if the fair copies drafted and num­ bered by del Riccio, and authenticated by Michelangelo's autograph emendations, have any claim on our consideration. A partly similar case occurred with the belabored line of sonnet G 285, discussed above, which the author at one phase of textual evolution isolated from the main body of the sonnet along with part or all of the sestet (G 285 draft Ilia and nib) for special focus: "Gli amorosi pensier . . ." (My thoughts of

FURY OF FORM

love) was finally retained in the definitive draft of the sonnet, yet at the same time it ramified into an independent offshoot with fragment G 286 ("Gl'infiniti pensier mie d'error pieni," My endless thoughts replete with error). The repeated emergence of eventually legitimized byprod­ ucts from the dogged reworking of one intentional text proves that Michelangelo, no matter how confessionally motivated he was in the writing of verse, came to acknowledge the relative autonomy of poetical language. The experimental zest, the relentless pursuit of form, led him to discover the self-generative power of that form. From here to Mallarme's extremist poetics, as stated in the principle of "leaving the initiative to words themselves" (laisser I'initiative aux mots), it was not such a long step as it might historically seem. Mallarme is in some regards a new mannerist,8 one who radicalizes the implicit poetics of Cinquecento mannerism (especially as exemplified by Sceve). The extrapolation may help us to see Michelangelo, as the secret vanguard of his time's mannerist sensibility in poetry, in the generous light he deserves for having forged his lonely way ahead of the officially accepted coteries. His extreme formal consciousness is revealed, among other things, by the craftsmanlike scruple with which he marks the rhyme scheme of an advanced draft of madrigal G 81. I have not found this draft in Girardi's critical apparatus, but I see it reproduced to the last detail in Frey as Version Vii (p. 405); it appears in sheet 79 (Frey gives it as fol. 39a) of AB xm, autograph manuscript. On the left margin the poet enters, at a certain distance from the corresponding line, the terminal syllable of each rhyme; for line 7 he marks the internal rhyme in -ne ("spene") echoing the end rhyme of line 6 ("tiene") while he gives the total bisyllabic rhyme of lines 7 and 8 ("priua-uiua"); but the left margin entries for the last lines no longer check with the rhymes used in the text, except for the -glia syllable he abstracts from the rhyme between "somiglia" (resembles) at the end of line 9 and "ciglia" within the following hendecasyllabic line. The rhymes of the last four lines are ignored because they completely depart from

FURY OF FORM

the impasto of liquid sounds prevailing in the previous lines: -iglia, -ami, -ene (as against -arte and -oi toward the end). Variants for line 11 ("e chi da uoi si parte," and whoever diverges from you) and for the verbs in line 5 ("per mie salute uol ch'i speri e brami," for my own good wants me to hope and desire) are appended below for further consideration, showing the attention our poet devoted to lexical no less than phonic details once the main body of the lyric had taken a fairly steady shape as against other alternatives. "Adori" (adore) onori (honor) cerchi (seek) speri (hope) osservi (ob­ serve) e brami (and desire)" is the list jotted down for ap­ propriate aural sifting. In the final text (Version XIi Frey, chiefly based on the del Riccio codex with the author's au­ tograph corrections) what survives of these variants is "cerchi e brami," while the rhyming cue "segua e ami" of line 2 will remain what it is here in Version VII Frey. Michelangelo's choices are very deliberate; he explores many formal possi­ bilities before deciding on any one in particular. It is hard to find a more exacting auscultation. Here is the worksheet in question: glia mi ne glia mi ne ne priua uiua

Ogni cosa ch'i ueggio mi consiglia e prega e forza ch'i' ui segua e ami che quel che non e uoi non e Ί mie bene, Amor che schiua ogni altra marauiglia per mie salute uuol ch'i speri e brami di uoi sol chiarj» e cosi l'alma tiene d'ogni altra spene e d'ogni ualor priua e uol ch'i arda e uiua non sol di uoi ma chi di uoi somiglia

glia

glia mi mi

degli ochi ο delle ciglia alcuna parte e chi da uoi si parte ochi mie uita non a luce poi che Ί ciel non e doue non siate uoi.

ne ne

adori cerchi e chiami e chi da uoi ο da simil si parte osservi

adori onori cerchi speri e brami

FURY OF FORM

Everything I see advises me and begs and forces me to follow and love you for what is not yourself is not my good. Love that recoils from any other wonder for my well being wants me to hope and yearn for you clear suns and in this way keeps my soul devoid of other hopes and of all strength and bids me burn and live not just on you but on who resembles you at least partly in the eyes or in the eyelashes and whoever from you differs eyes ο my life has no light to give for there is no heaven where you are not. The subsequent worksheet (villa Frey, VIIIGirardi) also carries rhyme pattern marks, on the right hand margin and only for the first seven lines; the marks are just abstract signs, iden­ tical for each rhyme. The first six lines correspond to the preceding draft but for the replacement of "schiua" (avoids, ignores, recoils) with the stronger verb "sprezza" (despises, and this will be the final choice) in line 4—the same verb had appeared in rhyming position at the end of draft I. The rest of the madrigal is reshuffled for new tentative solutions, notably the insertion of lines ending with "serrami" (closures), "chiami" (call), "grami" (evil; this is a variant weighed on the right side), which seems to pick up the sketchy rhyme cues in the lower part of draft VII. Though the second part of the poem is called into question again, with the subsequent drafts retaining the additional elements, the final draft will substantially return to the simpler pattern already outlined in draft vil. Meanwhile there had been much destructuring in drafts V and VI, as intimated above; but, skipping further advanced drafts, which can be perused in the two more recent critical editions, it pays to dwell now on the end result of this long labor, which already caught our attention in chapter

2: Ogni cosa, ch'i ueggio, mi consigl[i]a Et prega e forza, ch'io ui segua et amj; Che quelche non e uoi non e il mio bene.

FURY OF FORM

Amor, che sprezza ogni altra marauigl [i] a, Per mia salute uol, ch'io cerchi e bramj Uoi, sole, solo; et cosi Talma tiene D'ogni alta spene et d'ogni ualor priua Et uol, ch'io arda et uiua Non sol di uoi, ma chi di uoi somigl [i] a Degli ochi e delle ciglia alcuna parte. Et chi da uoi si parte, Ochi, mia uita, non ha luce poi; Che Ί ciel non e, doue non sete uoi. Everything I see advises, begs and forces me to follow and to love you; for what is not yourself is not my good. Love, that despises any other wonder, for my well being wants me to seek and yearn for you, sun, solely; and thus keeps my soul devoid of any high hope and of strength, and wants me to burn and live not just on you—on who resembles you even partly in the eyes and in the eyelashes. And who differs from you eyes, ο my life, has just no light to give for there is no heaven where you are not. As far as poetry is concerned, the outstanding gain must be seen in the solution "voi, sole, solo" (you, sun, solely) at line 6, where the object of verbs "cerchi e brami" (seek and yearn for) at line 5 had earlier been "you" or "your eyes" metaphorized as "shining suns" (sol chiari, as in drafts Vii and Vlll). Addressing the beloved person as such ("voi," you) instead of his/her eyes means dropping a rather precious synecdoche for a direct, encompassing gesture. Moreover, the sun image that had emerged in some advanced drafts can really come into its own now that it metaphorically defines one entire living entity instead of two however significant parts. The point is driven home by the metonymic juxtapo­ sition of solo (alone, solely) to sole (sun), a perfect instance of wordplay resulting in heightened meaning. The whole syntagm voi, sole, solo is a metonymic chain where each suc-

FURY OF FORM

cessive member intensifies the previous one or ones; it is in fact an imaginative equation. The mutual heightening of the three terms thus aligned combines with the rhythmical impact generated by the strong pauses between voi and sole and between sole and solo. These pauses are marked by commas, and they are followed by an even stronger one (marked by a semicolon) after solo, to isolate the triple vocative for stronger relief within the line. As a consequence, whether we read inwardly or aloud, our voice must dwell on each of the three cumulative words with a slow staccato effect that allows their full implications to sink in. Signification largely rests on form, and form in turn calls for oral performance to exist fully. The true rhythm is syn­ tactical and performative; without outwardly destroying the metric mold, it subverts it from within, to the point where a standard metric stressing would be a mutilation of the live voice. Standard stress for this hendecasyllable a minore is supposed to fall on the fourth syllable (first syllable of solo), on the eighth (first syllable of alma), and of course on the tenth (first syllable of tiene). This would make for bland sing­ song; but fortunately the emphatic word uoi at the very be­ ginning of the line and sole right after it impinge on our inner ear and demand to add their strong tonic stress to the standard metric stress of the rest. That in turn cannot be done without observing in full the pauses discussed above; as a conse­ quence the first half of the line is disjointed into a slow staccato rhythm that radically alters the scanning graph and prolongs the duration of the line. The expressive effect is memorable, just as much so as that of the conclusive line of sonnet G 285 that I analyzed above. Furthermore, the slowing down happens to occur after a series of swift, compact hendecasyllables and is followed by a swift hemistych spilling over, through enjambment, into an equally swift and compact hendecasyllable. The rest of the madrigal consists of two identical units, each introduced by a slender seven-syllable line to break up the massiveness of predominant hendecasyllables; internal pauses and enjambments further modulate those conglomerated long lines. Undeniably, at any rate, the syntagm uoi, sole, solo holds

FURY OF FORM

the center of the entire utterance, as if the poem were a verbal planetary system gravitating on its own sun. Other formal traits of this final draft of the long-wrought madrigal deserve attention, too, like the alta spene (high hope) that supersedes altra spene (other hope), one more instance of Michelangelo's granting the initiative to words as such, at least as concerns their alternative possibilities that are often prompted by phonic elements. The subtle impact of internal rhymes should also be noted (tiene-spene, somiglia-ciglia), though this is a carry-over from draft VII rather than a diachronic novelty. The overall effect, however, is a contrapuntal harmony, with frequent melody and rhythmical accelerations or decelera­ tions, played out on the iconic motif of the sun-eyes-light so as to achieve symbolic resonance. The fury of form can be a long patience. It does not always make for the tortuous genetic itinerary we just saw; sonnet G 76 (Frey LXXV) for instance, which kept the poet quite as busy with painstaking revisions, evolved in a far more linear fashion than madrigal G 81, whose first and third drafts are divergent self-contained poems; this son­ net gradually takes shape from tentative fragments, assidu­ ously reworked. The progress toward final form has been charted (with some difference) by Frey and Girardi, from the worksheets in AB XIII and AB XV. For our present purpose, what chiefly matters is the progressive discovery of the de­ cisive first line and, within it, of a key word that engaged the writer in a prolonged debate with himself about a definitive choice between enticing alternatives. In the final draft, as reconstructed by Guasti, Frey, and Girardi, the opening line is Non so[,] se s'e la desiata luce I don't know if it is the desired light; but in the first, incomplete drafts (ι, II, ilia Frey; la, lc, id Girardi) the first line was

Lasso ch'i sento enon so che nel core Alas—I feel, nor do I know what, in my heart,

FURY OF FORM

while the barest hint of what was going to emerge as line 1 can be detected in some early versions of the second line (l, Il Frey; la, Ic Girardi) that repeat the doubting formula "non so che" from the previous line. It is only with draft mb Frey (lib Girardi) that a recognizable matrix of what will be the sonnet's definitive first line comes to the fore, eliminating the rather trite and sentimental "Lasso etc.": Non so se s'e negli ochi mei la luce I don't know if it is, in my eyes, the light. Heart has been displaced by eyes, raw emotion by perception; and the line moves further toward intellectual tenor with the immediately following version (me Frey, lib Girardi): ta

Non so se s'e l'inmagin della luce ed

I don't know if it is the image of light, which, we should note, picks up a cue from draft I'S fifth line: O che linmaginato e fiero ardore Or that the imagined and fierce ardor. (emphasis mine) Then the grammatical alternative looming with the ta super­ script over "l'inmagin della" takes over in the next evolu­ tionary step (iv Frey, lie Girardi): Non so se s'e linmaginata luce I don't know if it is the imagined light. A good deal of these gestational vicissitudes are to be followed (in the garbled order of the manuscript sheets that makes diachronic unraveling so difficult) in folios 130-35 of AB Xlil, which also contains (folio 130) a nearly final redac­ tion. We thus get into the privacy of Michelangelo's workshop: here he applies his self-critical zest to one stanza, repeatedly revising it by itself, and there he writes in an alternative

FURY OF FORM

vertically, as if he could not wait and grab another sheet, and almost everywhere he inserts marginal or interlinear var­ iants. The "inmaginata luce,"9 the imagined light that early dawned on the horizon of this love poem (originally written for a woman and then, like others, addressed to Tommaso Cavalieri), holds its own as a choice for a while but must contend with later prospects: "esterminata luce" (boundless light) and "des'iata luce" (desired light), each of which in turn provisionally replaces the other or challenges its uniqueness. Each of the three alternatives has its merits. The "imagined light / that lifts people to such a hot desire" (Vinmaginata luce / c a si caldo desir lieua la gente; IV Frey, lie Girardi) and then becomes something that "every person mainly feels inside" (chepiu e meno ognipersona sente; V Frey, III Girardi), seems to account for the overwhelming passion of love on a psychological level, with some Platonic infusion. The "bound­ less light / of the first Mover that the soul feels" (. . . Vesterminata luce / del suo primo motor, che Valma sente; via Frey, IV Girardi) transfers that cause from the psychological to a metaphysical level conformable to Aristotelian doctrine. Finally, the "desired light / of her first Maker whom the soul feels" (. . . la desiata luce / del suo primo Fattor, che l'alma sente; AB Xlll folio 130, Vlll Frey, Vll Girardi) pinpoints the creationist Christian quality of the relevant theology beyond its Platonic-Aristotelian source. Michelangelo would not have read Ficino's Theologia platonica, which was written in Latin, but he was familiar with the philosopher's Sopra Io amore overo Convito di Platone, as I have had many an occasion to point out. One cannot leave this source out of the picture in appraising the semantic depth of certain Buonarrotian words. Even "esterminata luce," linked though it is to an Aristotelian "First Mover," reflects Ficinian Platonism. But it cannot have been just the intellectual genealogy of the underlying idea that made Michelangelo earnestly con­ sider this word for a definitive choice. We have seen his rhythmical and phonic sensibility at work. Within the range of philosophically acceptable possibilities, "esterminata"

FURY OF FORM

must have burst on his searching mind as it does in the context of the sonnet's beginning, which it temporarily took over in the course of that text's advanced becoming. It is such a rhythmically expansive word that one may feel tempted to regret Michelangelo's final rejection of it in favor of the less conspicuous "desiata." I personally confess to such a temp­ tation, but that is not to say that "desiata" amounts to a lapse from grace. Diaeresis prolongs the word in (inner or actual) performance, thereby stressing the sense of longing for the full fruition of that divine light that in this world we can only glimpse or dimly sense; and as happens, the verb governing esterminata / desiata luce, or rather that syntagm's.pronominal delegate in the dependent clause, is precisely sente (feels, senses), not "vede" (sees). It is one thing to sense a great light (and confusedly feel its effect) and quite another to see it. Direct vision of God's light, whether in Plato's or in Christ's meaning, is not granted to mankind here on earth, hence Michelangelo's possibly puzzling but really deft use of sentire (to feel, to sense) in this context. Since distance, not closeness of the divine light is in question, a modifier like "desiata" (desired) may be more germane to it than the magnificent "esterminata," which suggests the splendor of full vision. Moreover, that leaner word "desiata" resonates with the eras or desire inspired by the beloved person in the troubled speaker who is trying to explain his traumatic experience without reaching any assurance; he is left groping in the inner upheaval: Non so se s'e la desiata luce del suo primo factor, che l'alma sente, ο se dalla memoria della gente alcun'altra belta nel cor traluce, ο se fama ο se sognio alcun prodduce agli ochi manifesto, al cor presente, di se lasciando un non so che cocente, ch'e forse quel c'a pianger mi conduce. Quel ch'i sento e ch'i cerco e chi mi guidi meco non e; ne so ben ueder dove

FURY OF FORM

trouar mel possa, e par c'altri mel mostri. Questo, signor, m'auuien, po' ch'i ui uidi, c'un dolce e amaro, un si e no mi muoue. Certo saranno stati gli ochi uostri. I don't know if it is the longed-for light of her first Mover, that the soul within senses, or if from mankind's memory some other beauty gleams forth in the heart, or if fame or a dream produces something apparent to the eyes, to the heart present, whose aftermath burns on inside and so perhaps could be the cause of these my tears. What I sense and look for, and who could guide me is not with me; nor can I well discern where I could find either, though some try to show me. This, my lord, happens since I saw you; sweet and bitter, yes and no stir me. Certainly it must have been your lovely eyes. Semantic probing and formal tightening have gone hand in hand to produce a sonnet that may not have the overall appeal of others in the Cavalieri series but that nevertheless bears witness to a relentlessly searching sensibility. Searching con­ stitutes in fact the informing theme, as both diachronic tra­ jectory and final synchronic shape show—the state of un­ certainty proclaimed by the speaker reverberates throughout in dubitative and disjunctive phrasing ("I don't know if . . . or if . . . or if . . If the closing line, which leaves all the causal explanations in suspense, sounds a bit less than convincing, because it fails to sustain the cognitive earnest of the whole, it still is in keeping with the overall logical indeterminacy—it holds on to a hypothetical form, to a prob­ ability rather than to an assurance. There is some dispro­ portion between the epistemological endeavor of the first thir­ teen lines and the tenor of the last; since the cause of love is in question, however, bringing up the fascinating eyes of the beloved in that regard does at least some justice to the theme.

FURY OF FORM

Among the earlier variants of the two quatrains there are two of related interest: "o se dalla memoria ο dalla mente" (or if from memory or from the mind; Illc Frey, lie Girardi), which had eventually emerged as line 3 of quatrain 1, and "o se neU'alma ancor Hsplende e luce / del suo prestino stato il foco ardente" (or if in the soul still shines and gleams / the hot fire of her pristine state), which persisted through two early drafts of quatrain 2 (mb, nic Frey; lie, hi Girardi). Both provisional emendations were superseded by the more specific ones we can see in the final redaction, but the differentiation of memoria (memory) and mente (mind) in the absolute leaves room for speculation, with the plausible inference that at that stage a strongly Platonic mythology was operative, whereas subsequent emendations gave a more concrete, empirical turn to the phrase. Similarly, the prelapsarian innocence of the soul as connected with fire came up in another poem10 we discussed in the previous chapter, and it smacks of PlatonicStoic ideas rather than of Christian ones. The final draft confines all metaphysical speculations to the source of the Christian God and sifts empirically historical or psychological explanations otherwise, with stronger poetical results. Pla­ tonic myth still retains influence since the idea of beauty pervades the persona's reflections on the cause of his inner upheaval. We have seen that the self-critical work of revision often stimulates the poet's creativity in unforeseen directions, and sometimes he acknowledges the fact by legitimizing the off­ shoots of that growth process as independent lyrics along with the end result of that process. Something of the kind, I think, happened in the course of his composing the fifty commem­ orative poems (forty-eight epitaph quatrains, one madrigal, one sonnet: Frey LXXIII, 1-50; Girardi 179-228) on the death of Cecchino Bracci, the young nephew of Luigi del Riccio. Del Riccio apparently loved him dearly and asked Michel­ angelo to write those poems; some of them in Biblioteca Laurenziana carry the author's witty postscripts to del Riccio, to whom he sent them in batches as composition went on. In several cases one can see that the writing of one epitaph led

FURY OF FORM

to another, and after all they were variations on a given theme rather than effusions prompted by a personal involvement (Michelangelo often remarks to del Riccio, in sending him a group of poems or one, that he has done what he could and can go no further, the Muse has slept, etc.). Detachment, and quest for adequate form, set the tone in this cycle of meditations on early death—a series of lyrics that at times skirts the trivial in its hunt for unusual conceits but here and there attains memorable incisiveness. For this reason it has supported Robert Clements in his vindication of the baroque element as the dominant one in Michelangelo's verse, whereas Giovanni Testori senses in this funereal poetry a close stylistic proximity to Gongora's.11 The very concettosita that can occasionally lapse into ludicrousness will at times strike notes worthy indeed of a Gongora, or of John Donne— whose sonnet to Death easily comes to mind (". . . Death, thou wilt die") when we read epitaph G 201 for Cecchino Bracci: I' temo piii, fuor degli anni e dell'ore che m'han qui chiuso, il ritornare in vita, s'esser puo qua, ch'i' non fe' la partita; po' c'allor nacqui ove la morte muore. Having gotten away from years and hours that shut me here, I fear return to life (if that's possible) more than I did decease itself; for I was born then where death dies. The humorous postscript confirms the basically "imper­ sonal" character, the detachment (with artistic involvement for counterpart) of this writing: Questo dicono Ie trote e non io; pero s'e' versi non ui piaciono, non Ie marinate piii senza pepe This the trout say, not I; therefore if you don't like the lines, don't marinate them any more without pepper. More to the point, the style shows extreme compression,

FURY OF FORM

of a kind frequent in the whole Bracci cycle (1544) but also in the other verse from this middle phase. "Fuor degli anni e dell'ore" is an implicit clause hinging on a preposition {fuor di, out of) that takes on the function of a verb, and as such I have translated it. "Anni e . . . ore" for terrene time is a very concrete way of evoking its inexorable, accelerating rush toward death, whereas the action predicated in the relevant dependent clause, "that shut me here," condenses into the climactic moment of decease the entire movement of temporal life; and a strong ellipse it is. Michelangelo often experiments with elliptical phrasing as if he were transferring to verbal language the foreshortening effects that mark his painting. A related phenomenon, one that characterizes much of his middie-phase verse to give it a mannerist stamp, is the breakup and dovetailing of syntactical units,12 which may strain the diction at times for the sake of difficulta—a diffoculta without sprezzatura, I am afraid. Here, however, this interlocking segmentation—a verbal equivalent of the mannerist sinuos­ ities defined as figura serpentinata—works to the advantage of the poem, whose form tenses up in cumulative convolutions only to attain total release in the great last line. The strong caesuras that separate the several segments, from "Temo piu, fuor" on, counteract metrical scanning to introduce a panting rhythm that mimics the anxieties of time-bound life, and the concluding line resolves it all into its straightforward compactness. A comparable effect of syntactical mimesis had emerged, for instance, in madrigal G 120 for Vittoria Colonna, where the subject of a main clause (". . . I'alma, cieca e sorda" the soul, blind and deaf) at line 4 has to wait for its com­ plementing verbal predicate until line 11 ("prega te sol," begs you only). Meanwhile the available syntactical space is filled by diversionary subordinate clauses, of which the last one threatens to unhinge the whole sentence and frustrate the expectation aroused by the suspended syntagm "I'alma, cieca e sorda" at line 4. The wrenching clause is "e se l'arco e la corda / avvien che tronchi ο spezzi / in mille e mille pezzi" (and should bow and string / snap or shatter / into a thousand

FURY OF FORM

pieces), semantically and iconically reinforcing the kinetic mimesis of syntax, whose diagram does trace a curve, but a stressful one—like a strained bow, in fact. Strain, on the other hand, is absent from the perfect epi­ taphs G 199 and G 200 that precede the one we had been analyzing, and if I quote them now it is only to exemplify the concentrating power of Michelangelo at his dry best and his way with expressive rhyme, with unusual melody: G 199 Chi qui morto mi piange indarno spera, bagniando l'ossa e Ί mi sepulcro, tucto ritornarmi com'arbor secho al fructo; c'uom morto non risurge a primavera. Questo goffo, decto mille volte, pe finochi Who mourns me dead here certainly hopes in vain by watering my bones and tomb, to retrieve all of me like a dry tree come to fruit; for a dead man won't rise again in Spring. This awkward piece, told a thousand times, for the fennels. The conceit is effective (unlike others in the cycle), and the elegiac singing leaves nothing to be desired. The ensuing piece has an equally compelling lyrical power: G 200 S'i' fu' gia uiuo, tu, pietra, il sai, che qui mi serri, e s'alcun mi ricorda, gli par sogniar: si morte e presta e 'ngorda, che quel che e stato non par fusse mai. If I was ever alive, you, stone, know it, that lock me here, and if anyone remembers me he thinks he dreams, so quick and greedy is death, that what has been seems never to have been. Making dead Cecchino speak (or the tomb itself in turn) confers on the epitaphs the quality of dramatic monologues, one of the finest being G 194:

FURY OF FORM

Qui uol mie sorte, c'anzi tempo i' dorma, ne son gia morto; e ben c'albergo cangi, resto in te uiuo, c'or mi uedi e piangi, se l'un nell'altro amante si trasforma. Here my lot bids me prematurely sleep, nor am I dead; and though I changed my lodging, I stay alive in you, who now see and mourn me, if lover into loved one is transformed. The Ficinian13 last line (of which Michelangelo was fond, for it appears with a slight variation in still another poem, G 53, earlier than this series) is repeated from the last line but one of the preceding piece, the sonnet addressed by the autobiographical persona to friend del Riccio (G 193): Dunche, Luigi, a far Tunica forma di Cechin, di ch'i' parlo, in pietra uiua ecterna, or ch'e gia terra qui tra noi, se l'un nell'altro amante si trasforma, po' che sanz'essa l'arte non u'arriua, conuien che per far Iui ritragga uoi. Therefore, Luigi, to make the unique shape of Cecchin, of whom I talk, in live rock eternal, now that he's just dust in this our world, if lover into loved one is transformed, since art without the model will fall short, to sculpt him I shall have to portray you. The really quite fussy argument, the tortuous syntax of this sestet characterize the entire sonnet, whose second quatrain gave Michelangelo particular trouble (as the postscript to del Riccio attests); nor can one say that the reworking brought about any logical or aesthetic improvement, for the inter­ locking segmentation of clauses in this quatrain is obviously belabored and fatiguing. The opening quatrain in turn sounds like a scholastic rehash of a famous Petrarchan sonnet's con­ clusion in which dead Laura says to her loving mourner that when she closed her eyes on earth she opened them into eternal light.14 A Petrarchan motif also makes itself heard

FURY OF FORM

(with a typical "Conosco e piango," I know and mourn) at the outset of quatrain 2. All in all, Michelangelo's effort to rescue this sonnet from failure was fruitless, even though in other cases his use of mannerist devices to manipulate syntax and style had a dif­ ferent result. Here, unfortunately, he doubtless shows the faults of his mannerist virtues, and my only reason for dwell­ ing on the poem at any length is to show what a foil it is, with its hopeless entanglements, to the sustained song of the subsequent epitaph. The latter is an obvious offshoot of the former—it stands to it as pearl to shell; but Michelangelo did not feel like discarding the shell, probably because the in­ volved message to his friend mattered a lot to him. Michel­ angelo refrained from portraits in general, and this was a case in point. Del Riccio had asked him to carve a portrait of his deceased nephew, but the artist declined, and the effigy on the wall tomb in S. Maria d'Aracoeli is by another hand. Poetic diplomacy was meant to reassure his close friend about his affection, understanding, and concern; the unforeseen result was, as we saw, the lovely lyric G 194. One might even want to consider it as diachronically and qualitatively superseding G 193—the more so as the Cecchino Bracci cycle is not included in the poems meant for publication, despite the publicity Cecchino's death had among poets and litte­ rateurs of the time.15 Yet we have no right to superimpose our editorial policies on Michelangelo's own apparent intentions, entitled though we may be to our aesthetic choices. There are a few other instances (as mentioned above) of his changing a diachronic progression into a synchronic order, when the emendations brought to a given evolving text came to be felt by him as mere alternatives to the earlier corresponding passages. The two texts accordingly became divergent yet equal variants of what had preceded them. Such a case of formal gemination occurs, as we saw above, with madrigal G 168 (Frey CIX 66, 69, 70). Of it, Girardi gives only the draft numbered 70 in Codex del Riccio (AB xiv, folio 33), and Frey does the same.

FURY OF FORM

Within his own ordering system that collects the poems meant for publication under the heading CIX, however, Frey gives the numbers of the three versions contained in Codex del Riccio and the two texts considered provisional in the critical apparatus at page 442. Yet as we peruse the del Riccio Codex at the Biblioteca Laurenziana we see that before the final text of this madrigal, numbered 70 by editor del Riccio and author Michelangelo, and as such adopted by the two modern edi­ tors,16 there appears the intermediate advanced text num­ bered 69 by del Riccio (on folio 32 verso). This text—like all the other seventy in this codex—is in del Riccio's hand, but (like many others) it carries corrections or emendations in Michelangelo's own hand, specifically an interlinear "fie tutto" (will be all) that corrects an oversight of the copyist, "fe tutto" (made all). Likewise, the del Riccio copy of mad­ rigal numbered 70 by him has an autograph correction by Michelangelo at the last line but one, where the copyist had misread "i7 ciel" (Heaven) as "in ciel" (in Heaven), with serious semantic and syntactical disarray. Now if the author himself took care of perfecting both text 69 and text 70, he must have considered them equally im­ portant, otherwise he would hardly have bothered with the one that Frey and Girardi deem provisional. Moreover, the nature of the variant part of 69 and 70 bears scrutiny in this regard. The first seven lines do not vary in either (although they were slightly different in text 66 del Riccio): Perche Ί mezzo dL me, che dal ciel uiene, a quel con gran desir ritorna e uola, restando in una sola di belta donna e g[h]iaccio ardendo in lei, in duo parte mi tiene contrarie, si che l'una all'altra inuola il ben, che non diuiso auer dovrei. Because that half of me which comes from Heaven right there with great desire returns and flies, my dwelling on one lady alone

FURY OF FORM

of great beauty, and burning in her ice, keeps me split in two contrary parts, so that each from the other steals the good that undivided I should have. The conclusion instead goes in opposite directions; in text 69 (where it has nine lines, as against the eight it has in text 70) it envisages heavenly rescue from the excruciating passion that splits the poet's soul in two, with the hoped-for conse­ quence that he will one day be able to rise to heaven in undivided shape: Ma se gia mai costei pieta non muoue al mie graue tormento, et che 'n ciel piu che 'n lei cortesie troui, fie tucto a desir miei ο misurato ο spento il foco di quaggiu da pensier nuoui et s'auuien che rinnuoui sua crudelta uer me quel mentre spero salir non mezzo in ciel ma tucto intero. But should she never be moved by pity at my dire torment, and should I find Heaven kinder than her, then, to suit my wishes, this terrene fire will be restrained or stifled utterly by new thoughts, and should she meanwhile renew her cruelty against me, I hope then I shall rise to heaven not by half, but whole. In text 70, on the contrary, the recovery of spiritual whole­ ness is desired at the very cost of losing Heaven for the sake of the "cruel and fair lady": Ma se gia ma' costei cangia Ί suo stile, e c'a l'un mezzo manchi il ciel, quel mentre c'a Ie' grato sia, e mie si sparsi e stanehi

FURY OF FORM

pensier fien tucti in quelle donna mia. E se lor che m'e pia, l'alma il ciel caccia, almen quel tempo spero non piii mezz'esser, ma suo tucto intero. But if she ever should change attitude, and should one half of me lose Heaven utterly while pleasing her, my roaming and weary thoughts will all finally gather in that lady of mine. And if when she favors me Heaven rejects my soul, then at least I hope not to be half any more, but hers entirely. The transgressive (and blasphemous) solution to the dilemma in text 70 overturns the pious hope of text 69 (which Guasti, unlike the subsequent editors, had considered final) and thereby restores the motif of text 66. At this point the exis­ tential ambivalence discussed in a previous chapter finds a formal counterpart in a swaying of the pendulum between two irreconcilable alternatives, which the author himself prefers to hold in suspense and offer as independent twin poems. I think, accordingly, that even if text 70 (the one adopted by Frey and Girardi) is the stronger of the two, in a modern edition we should publish both on an equal basis instead of imposing our aesthetic choice on what seems to be Michel­ angelo's different editorial intention. After all, his beloved Dante had done something similar—something that no editor has ever thought of challenging—when offering two alter­ native beginnings to the same poem in his Vita Nuova.17 The case for accepting texts 69 and 70 in the del Riccio codex as variants promoted to synchronic status with equal claims on finality is further strengthened when we consider two madrigals that Girardi has accepted as such, numbering them 132 and 133 (and Frey had done the same: respectively, ClX 32 and Cix 33). In AB xiv, folio 13 verso and folio 14 verso, they are numbered by del Riccio respectively 32 and 34:18

FURY OF FORM DEL RICCIO 32 (G 132)

Mentre che Ί mio passato m'e presente sicome ogni hor mi uiene O mondo falso all'hor conosco bene Verror e Ί danno dell'humana gente Quel cor ch'alfin consente A' tuo' lusinghi e a' tuoi uan diletti Procaccia alValma dolorosi guai Ben Io sa chi Io sente Cosi spesso prometti Altrui la pace e 7 ben che tu non hai Ne debbi hauer gia mai Dunque ha men gratia chi piu qua soggiorna che chi men uiue piu lieue al del torna. While my own past is present to me, as happens by the hour, ο false world then do I well know the error and deceit of humankind. That heart which consents at last To your flatteries and to your vain delights Only secures grievous woes for the soul; Well knows it who feels it inside. Thus often you promise one That peace and that well being which are not yours Nor are ever to be. If so, he has less grace who longer lives— for who lives less flies lighter back to heaven. DEL RICCIO 34 (G 133)

Condotto da molti anni all'ultime hore Tardi conosco ο mondo i tuoi diletti La pace che non hai altrui prometti Et quel riposo ch'anzi al nascer muore La uergogna el timore Degl'anni c'hor prescrive Il ciel non mi rinoua

FURY OF FORM

Che Ί vechio et dolce errore Nel qual chi troppo uiue Uanima ancide et nulla al corpo gioua Il dico et so per pruoua Di me che 'n del quel sol'ha miglor sorte C'hebbe al suo parto piu presso la morte. Brought by my many years to my last hours Late do I know, ο world, your vain delights: you promise one the peace that you have not and that repose which dies before being born. The shame and fear of the years that now Heaven foreordains only bring back the old and sweet error in which who lives too long kills his soul and does nothing for the body. I say it and know it from experience, that in heaven he alone has the better lot who had death closer at the time of birth. (emphasis mine) As usual, in translating Michelangelo's verse I have tried first of all to keep as close to his phrasing as English grammar and idiom would allow, so as to provide my readers with the most serviceable key to the original text. Moreover, in this instance I have italicized those expressions or key words that appear in both texts even if in a different arrangement. Al­ though I have refrained from so doing with the respective final couplets, it will be clear enough that these in turn are just variations on the same theme: they are conceptually if not formally identical, and so are, after all, the two texts as a whole. One might debate at great length the relative merits of these closely connected madrigals, but what matters in the present context is just the fact that in reshuffling one of them the author came upon a new development: text 34 del Riccio, possibly born as an experimental afterthought, did not have to supplant text 32, for it could well coexist with it as an acceptable variation on the same theme. A throw of the dice

FURY OF FORM

will never abolish chance; and in this as well as in other cases, chance became choice. Guasti, Frey, and Girardi have all acknowledged this choice by treating the two texts as equally valid and independent; but then why did they not grant the same status to madrigals 69 and 70 del Riccio? It is true that in two other instances (madrigals 30 and 31 del Riccio = Frey Cix 30, 31 = G 91; and madrigals 51 and 52 del Riccio = Frey Cix 51, 52 = G 109) the versions copied for prospective publication are too close to each other to warrant recognition of both as distinct poems—the more so as in the case of texts 30 and 31 del Riccio there is a later draft, in Codex Vaticanus, to supersede them. Taking this into account means admitting certain qualifications to the editorial status of the del Riccio codex in AB xiv; we know it was prepared in 1546 and revised by Michelangelo himself, but in some cases he later felt it to be less than definitive and, as writers are wont to do, carried out further revisions. But especially for the texts not reproduced in Codex Vati­ canus, or reproduced there without significant changes, the del Riccio copies must count as definitive—this being the case for poems 69 and 70 so numbered there and not rec­ ognized by Frey and Girardi as independent poems. I have given my reasons above, and I will not repeat them. I shall only add the following considerations: that the advanced ev­ olutionary state of the seventy lyrics copied by del Riccio stands out (more so than that of the poems copied in Codex Giannotti or in Codex Baldi) even better if compared with the busy autograph worksheets of AB xni; that the formal concern at this point came to outweigh other considerations in Mi­ chelangelo's mind, at least on the issue of variant texts to be discarded or granted autonomy; and that, as the frequent instances of textual gemination show, his sense for differential values in word and phrase had sharpened to an extreme extent. This helps us to appraise the mannerist experimentation he conducted in several of his middle-phase poems, some of which we have already had a chance to discuss. It was a true fury of form that made him dissect the aural and semantic values of language. If in some cases he paid the price of this

FURY OF FORM

calculated excess by foundering in awkward games of allit­ erative reduplication ("gran grazia," "spirti sparti," etc.), in others he managed to discover unsuspected expressive pos­ sibilities. John Shearman has said that mannerism was an art of excess, and if so, in the case of Michelangelo's poetry it must be acknowledged that the road of excess did lead to the palace of wisdom (or beauty, to vary Blake's aphorism) in many if not in all instances. This certainly happened with madrigal G 118 (Frey cix 6, 41): Ancor che Ί cor gia molte uolte sia d'amore acceso et da troppi anni spento, Tultimo mie tormento sarie mortal senza la morte mia. Onde l'alma desia de giorni mie', mentre ch'amor m'auampa, l'ultimo primo in piu tranquilla corte. Altro refugio ο uia mie uita non iscampa dal suo morir ch'un aspra e crudel morte; ne contr'a morte e forte altro che morte, si ch'ogn'altra aita e doppia morte a chi per morte ha uita. Though many times already my heart was set afire by love and snuffed out by the weight of years, my last such torment would well be deadly unless death came to me. Therefore my soul longs, while love sets me ablaze, for my extreme day which will be the first in a calmer court. No other refuge or escape can ever rescue my life from its dying but a harsh and cruel death; nor against death prevails anything else than death, all other help is double death to those whom death revives. Not accidentally, this madrigal, too, presents the problem of textual duplication that affects several other poems of the

FURY OF FORM

group prepared by del Riccio for publication. It appears with a slightly different first line ("Bench'alcun cor piu volte stato sia"), an internal variant (felice sorte instead of tranquilla corte), and a radically different conclusion as no. 6 of Codex Riccio (folio 4); then ibidem as no. 41 (folio 17) in the version adopted by all critical editions. And even if Frey in his critical apparatus (p. 428) remarks on del Riccio's absent-mindedness in including both drafts of the madrigal at some distance from each other, he has to admit that Michelangelo's auto­ graph correction in text 6 gives it some validity of its own. My approach is somewhat different, as I have made clear apropos of other geminated texts in the codex at issue. Why on earth would Michelangelo have taken the trouble of re­ vising and correcting text 6 if he had deemed it a superseded draft of text 41? Must we assume equal absent-mindedness on his part, despite the punctilious care he devotes to the perfecting of his verse? Once again, this seems rather a case like the twin madrigals 69 and 70 (G 168). One poetic nucleus makes for alternative, even contrasting developments and conclusions; in a culture pervaded by the mannerist cult of fine casuistry Michelangelo could not help sharing in his own way, this would be an exciting intellectual game, an earnest one, requiring the commitment of which an artist of his temper would be capable. Here is the alternative conclusion in text 6 del Riccio: Altro refugio ο uia 1 mie uita non iscampa J dal suo morir che la propinqua morte a pochi dolce a molti amara et forte quel sol che rende al ciel fra l'alme diue non muor morendo anzi per morte uiue. No other refuge or escape! can ever rescue my life from its dying but the approach of death itself sweet to the few, to many bitter and hard. He alone who joins Heaven's blessed company dies not by dying and through death indeed lives.

f

FURY OF FORM

It is a melodic closure by comparison with the harmonically oriented one of text del Riccio 41, and its consolatory oxy­ moron recalls those of mystical literature (St. Theresa's for instance), whereas the tone of text 41's closure is definitely darker despite fleeting hints at the beatitude or just quiet attainable after death. The hammering, fugue-like insistence on the words "morte" and "morir," reinforced by the inter­ locking assonances or rhymes with ancor, cor, amore, tormento, amor, corte, forte, insinuates a triumph of death; the apocalyptic bass retains its dominance when the lighter but wailing flute note aita-uita makes itself heard. It is as if Michelangelo wanted to test to the bitter end a word/concept that is pervasive in his verse; here it is pushed to an extreme to yield its ultimate meaning(s), the outrance of the word matching the outrance of the corresponding experience. In the formally relaxed postmannerist phase of Michelangelo's advanced old age (the 1550s, by and large) it will be a question of the two deaths contemplated by orthodoxy, death of the body and eternal damnation (as sonnet G 285 shows), in keeping with his upsurge of religious concern in that last phase. We have seen to what good poetical account he can turn those traditional Catholic ideas; they were evidently very real to him, especially at a time when the awareness of old age and the approaching end haunted him—old age's draw­ backs being a constant theme from the late 1540s on. But in the early and middle phase of his verse writing, which is already overshadowed by the sense of death, the frequent word morte (and derivatives) shows a semantic ver­ satility that is in no way limited to the canonic Christian interpretation. In the Savonarolian barzelletta G 21, which Girardi assigns to the early phase instead of to the last as Frey had done, death is presented in its physical horror and inevitability by a chorus of dead men; in the canzone G 22 (an address of the suffering speaker to merciless Love), death emerges as a liberator from torment and a secret interlocutor of the soul-searching self (lines 22-30): La morte in questa et& sol ne difende dal fiero braccio e da' pungenti strali,

FURY OF FORM

cagion di tanti mali, che non perdona a condizion nessuna, ne a loco, ne a tempo, ne fortuna. L'anima mia, che con la morte parla, e di se stessa seco si consiglia, e di nuoui sospetti ognor s'attrista, el corpo di di in di spera lasciarla . . . Death alone at this age defends us humans from the fierce arm and from the piercing arrows [of Love] the cause of so many ills, that will spare no condition whatsoever, no place or time or fortune, none at all. My soul that holds conversation with death and keeps up with itself a long debate, saddened by new suspicions all the time— the body hopes to leave it at any moment. . . . In sonnet G 47 (which is also formally interesting because of a threefold identical rhyme on the verb "tolse" [took away] with differential nuances of meaning) death is a personified cosmic power; in poem G 51 it is once more an inner inter­ locutor of the self; in fragments G 56 and G 74 it is something on which one lives, namely a destructive passion without which life would lose meaning and thus an immunity from death, che chi vive di morte mai non muore for he who lives on death will never die. In G 86, a capitolo ternario written in 1534 on the death of his father, Michelangelo talks of death-in-life for himself be­ numbed by bereavement, and of "dying to death," that is, to the death-ridden human life, for his father, from whom as a consequence he is "learning his own death": Nel tuo morire el mie morire imparo, padre mie caro . . . In your dying I learn my own dying, ο father dear. . . .

FURY OF FORM

Death itself dies in epitaph G 201 for Cecchino Bracci, and in general it wavers between a literal, physical meaning, a demonically personified meaning, and a metaphoric one that tends to overturn the commonly accepted notion of life and death. In the madrigal (G 118) that occasioned the present digression, these meanings become operative in the haunting iterative crescendo that pushes the word "morte" and cognates to the threshold of signification as such. At line 4, "mortal" means excruciating as a modifier of "tormento," with "morte mia" (my death) as an antidote, that is, physical liberation from the possibility of suffering. At line 10 the same polarity recurs: "aspra e crudel morte" (harsh and cruel death) is a blessing, the only deliverance from "morir" (dying), dying being equated with living in the flesh, a process to be cut short by the event of physical decease. The semantic polar­ ization is enhancingly repeated at lines 11-12, where only death can be strong enough against "death," and the conclu­ sion will clinch the point hyperbolically ("any other help is double death to him who through death gets life"). The obsessive iteration is an experiment, very consistent with Michelangelo's craftsmanlike approach to language as well as with his basic existential concerns; no wonder that he should have also experimented with the sestina form, that extreme exercise in lexical repetition and semantic variation (see G 33 and G 70).19 At other times, however, his passion for form follows a different path and leads him into mannerist acrobatics of the kind that combines difficulta with sprezzatura, as happens with madrigal G 119 (only one number away from a piece like G 117 where phonic experiment actually lapses into croaking inanity: "s'io I'amo e bramo e chiamo a tucte Tore," "per quel qua questa onora"): Dal primo pianto all'ultimo sospiro, al qual son gia uicino, chi contrasse gia mai si fier destino, com'io da si lucente et fiera stella? Non dico iniqua ο fella, che Ί me saria di fore, s'hauer disdegno ne troncasse amore;

FURY OF FORM

ma piu, se piu la miro, promette al mio martiro dolce pieta con dispietato core. O desiato ardore! Ogni huom uil sol potria uincer con teco, ond'io, s'io non fui cieco, ne ringratio Ie prime et l'ultime hore, ch'io la uidi; et Terrore uincami et d'ogni tempo sia con meco, se sol forza et uirtu perde con seco. From the first crying to the very last sigh, to which I am close enough, who ever got such a hard destiny as I did from such a bright and cruel star? I will not say evil or treacherous, for on the face of it that would be better and finally disdain would cut my love short; but the more I look at her the more she promises to my suffering sweet mercy with merciless heart. O yearned-for burning! Only a coward could score victory on you, so I, if I was not blind, for this give thanks to the first and last hours that I saw her; and may error conquer me, and stay with me forever, if with her only strength and valor lose. Instead of coming at the end, lyrical release obtains at the very start with one of the most accomplished lines Michel­ angelo ever penned; nor is it limited to that one line because the singing momentum is sustained through the first four, and the astrological metaphor, although far from uncommon, sounds so semantically functional as to revive its iconic power. Opening the monologue with a rhetorical question contributes to the special impact. It is undoubtedly a Pe­ trarchan voice we hear, but not any run-of-the-mill Petrarchist's, and yet the Petrarchan paradigm makes itself heard

FURY OF FORM

further on (at line 10) with a neat oxymoron straight from the old master's arsenal. It is actually the casuistical ratiocination taking over right after the lyrical opening quatrain that steers the poem into an unpredictable course. The casuistry is anything but hair­ splitting; it simply formalizes the ambivalences of a love on the razor's edge and the tortuous course of the speaker's inner response to the troubling situation. The fervid quality of this formalized soliloquy is also enhanced by the injection of the short exclamatory line 11 that announces the speaker's so­ lution of the dilemma: to accept the seemingly unacceptable predicament, and thereby turn surrender into a kind of vic­ tory. The conclusion (lines 12-17) rationalizes this impulse, but it does so with a syntactical dynamism that stresses the emotional underpinnings of the whole argument. It is, in other words, a passionate reasoning, and attention should be paid to the effect of pauses and enjambments, particularly in lines 15-16 ch'io la uidi; // et Terrore uincami // et d'ogni tempo sia con meco, where the optative clauses unfold with sinuous resilience through strong hesitations. Love's dominion is total, and turn­ coat reason, which was supposed to fight it, goes over to the enemy. This was the unexpected turn, and it provides an effective antiphonal conclusion to the lyrical beginning, in lowered tone. Mannerist stylization modulates into dramatic movement; one could not think of a better katastrophe, and the dramatis persona might be uttering these lines from the Elizabethan stage. For there assuredly was an Elizabethan strain before the fact in the poet who, writing to Father Giovan Francesco Fattucci at Santa Maria in Florence in 1549,20 could say of some poems he was enclosing in his letter: Being very unhappy these days in my house, while rum­ maging among my things I came across a lot of those trifles I once used to send you. You will say that I am

FURY OF FORM

old and crazy: and I tell you that in order to stay sane and free of passion I find nothing better than madness. Therefore don't be amazed: and please answer some­ thing. . . . Again, it was a Shakespearean spirit before Shakespeare's time that could say (in madrigal G 124 for the "fair and cruel lady"): E cosi morte e vita, contrarie, insieme in un picciol momento dentro a l'anima sento And thus death and life, at war, together in the twinkle of an eye I feel inside my soul. The Fools, the Mercutios and Hamlets to come were going to speak a similar language, nurtured both by the sophisticated mannerist tradition that had been transplanted from the Italian courts to the Italianate Tudor court, and by the surging native folk vein. Castiglione's illustration of courtly wit is to the point, along with the particular combination of classical hu­ manism and Tuscan folk tradition that had made the poetry of Lorenzo de Medici and Angiolo Poliziano an unforgettable model for Michelangelo's poetical apprenticeship and an early precedent or example for the Elizabethan literary coterie. Finally, of course, Michelangelo's wit is his own, so much so that it managed to adapt to its own purposes the virtuoso stylization of Petrarchan mannerism. The indulgence in word­ play (again an anticipation of Elizabethan attitudes) was part and parcel of that tightrope experiment, and it accounted for his singular successes no less than for the incidental failures. The latter, as we have seen, occur when the experimental craftsmanship brings the verbal game to (and over) the brink of absurdity. Verbal subtlety then skirts mere verbalism, just as the concomitant casuistry becomes a sheer exercise in hairsplitting logic, something that never happens with the religious meditations of the last phase or with the middlephase lyrics that delve into the mutually enhancing experi-

FURY OF FORM

ences of love, art, and Platonic myth. Nor does it happen with the terza rima capitolos that take the form of a relaxed letter to friends like Sebastiano del Piombo (G 85), of a dirge­ like address to his dead father (G 86), or of a saturnine outburst on his own predicament, in black humor key (G 267). Both here, however, where substance dominates, and in the tight Petrarchan poems where formal quest takes over to the point of excess, a bizarre twist makes itself felt that sometimes also emerges in the letters (December 1525, to Giovan Francesco Fattucci)21 and, at least marginally, in the frescoes and in details of the sculptures. Michelangelo Buonarroti's was a polyphonic soul, and it speaks in his relentless and variegated quest for form in the forever challenging medium of the word.22 On the one hand, his early and not so early endeavors in the exuberant Tuscan vein with a folksy savor justify Berni's contention that Mi­ chelangelo's poetry "spoke things" and not mere words; and this vein—in the various turns it can take for hearty humor, bitter satire, epistolary conversation, and personal medita­ tion—never quite dried up. On the other hand, his own in­ grained love for Petrarch spurred him to challenge the Petrarchists on their own ground, by exploring the formal possibilities of word, phrase, and rhythm and at times pushing that exploration to the limit. This is the aspect or phase I have chosen to call mannerist, with an eye on the cult of form that characterized Cinquecento mannerist art; but that can hardly be taken as a blanket definition. Michelangelo—unlike Bembo and the dominant Bembisti—preferred perilous to predictable elegance, as witness his experiments with allit­ eration, equivocal rhyme, lexical ambiguity, semantic and syntactical ellipse, syntactical dislocation, and rhythmic mimesis. Those very experiments (even apart from the occasionally resulting obscurity) would have grated on the fastidious nerves of the humanist Petrarchan litterateur who laid down the law for Cinquecento style in prose and verse alike with his Prose della volgar lingua, published in 1525. In this regard, Mi­ chelangelo's rugged mannerism goes all the way back to Dante

FURY OF FORM

himself, rather than just to the melodious Petrarch, if Curtius's definition of mannerism23 in medieval literature can be allowed to stand. Finally, the formal relaxation (without di­ lution) of the late religious poems brings in a further aspect of Michelangelo's verbal art that shows how his assiduous experiments never led him to the dead end of semantic de­ pletion. If Michelangelo is coming at last into his own as a poet, it is because he has a unique voice, with a distinct claim on our listening. That voice's range and idiosyncrasy bespeak the authenticity of the human experience thus conveyed.

Notes

Chapter 1 1. Heinrich Wolfflin, Die klassische Kunst: Eine Einfiihrung in die italienische Renaissance [1898], 9th ed. (Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co. Yerlag, 1968), pp. 71-72. Trans­ lation mine. 2. Numbered 5 by Enzo Noe Girardi in his critical edition of Michelangelo's poems (Bari: Laterza, 1960), and the same numbering is retained by Ettore Barelli's edition, with an introduction by Giovanni Testori (Milan: Rizzoli, 1975). Unless specific considerations dictate additional references, henceforth Michelangelo's poems will be in­ dicated according to Girardi's edition, that is, with a G followed by the pertinent number, in this case, G 5. 3. Archivio Buonarroti (AB) XIIi folio 6a; facsimile repro­ duction in Robert J. Clements, The Poetry of Michelangelo (New York: New York University Press, 1966), appendix; and in the Barelli-Testori edition of Michelangelo's Rime, p. 38. 4. Le Rime di Michelagnolo Buonarroti . . . cavate dagli autograft e pubblicate da Cesare Guasti, Accademico della Crusca (Florence: Le Monnier, 1863); Die Dichtungen des Miehelagniolo Buonarroti, herausgegeben und mit kriti-

NOTES

schem Apparat versehen von Carl Frey (Berlin: G. Grotesehe Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1897); 2d ed., with a foreword by Hugo Friedrich (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter & Co., 1964). 5. Aseanio Condivi, Vita di Michelangiolo [1553], modern edition, with an introduction by Antonio Maraini (Florence: Rinascimento del Libro, 1927); Giorgio Vasari, La vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, ed. Paola Barocchi (Milan and Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1962). Apropos Condivi's remarks on the beginnings of Michel­ angelo's poetic activity, see Frey, pp. 305-306, and gen­ erally his commentary on the first six poems as ordered in his edition (pp. 301-306). 6. This component of Michelangelo's thought and art, stem­ ming from his contacts with Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola during the last years of Lorenzo de Medici's life, has been acknowledged by most scholars, from John Addington Symonds, The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, 2 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1893) to Charles De Tolnay, Michelangelo, 5 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943-1960), and Michelangelo: Sculptor-PainterArchitect (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). De Tolnay also formulates an underlying neoplatonic pattern of myth and thought for the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes. Before him, Erwin Panofsky had stressed certain Platonic aspects or motifs in Michelangelo's art and writing in "Idea," ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der alteren Kunsttheorie (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1924), pp. 64-68. Robert Clements has confirmed the importance of the Pla­ tonic affinities in Michelangelo's Theory of Art (New York: Gramercy, 1961) and in The Poetry of Michelangelo. Mean­ while Pier Luigi De Vecchi was pinpointing the specific connections between Michelangelo's poetry and Ficino's treatise De Amore in "Studi sulla poesia di Michelangelo," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 80, vol. 140, fasc. 431 (3d trimester 1963), pp. 370-402. 7. The famous part of the capitolo ternario in which Francesco Berni praises Michelangelo's poetry and sculpture to their common friend, the painter Sebastiano del Piombo, is re-

CHAPTER 1

produced by Barelli as a postscript to Michelangelo's poem in the same meter (G 85), which Michelangelo addressed to Berni writing under the name of Sebastiano. Here is the relevant passage (lines 12-23) from Berni: Poi voi sapete quanto egli e da bene, com'ha giudicio, ingegno e discrezione, come conosce il vera, il bello e Ί bene. Ho visto qualche sua composizione; son ignorante, e pur direi d'avelle lette tutte nel mezzo di Platone. Si ch'egli e nuovo Apollo e nuovo ApeIle: tacete unquanco, pallide viole, e liquidi cristalli, e fiere snelle; e' dice cose, e voi dite parole: cosi, moderni voi scarpellatori, et anche antichi, andate tutti al sole. Then you know how honest a man he is, how he has judgment, talent and discretion, how he knows what is truth, beauty and good. I have seen some of his lyrical poetry; I'm ignorant, and yet it seems to me as if I'd read it all in Plato's best. For he is a new Apollo and Apelles: so now shut up, you "pallid violets," and "liquid crystals," and "slender animals"; he speaks out real things, and you speak only words: and then you too, stone carvers of our time and of antiquity as well, get out of the way. 8. The rustic impersonation does not prevent Michelangelo here from injecting a comical but unmistakable reference to his own profession as sculptor in the two last lines: dunche s'i massi aver fussi possibile, io fare' oggi qui cose incredibile. then if I could get hold of the marble blocks today I would accomplish the unbelievable.

NOTES

This suffices to distinguish the poem from a mere imitation of Lorenzo's masterpiece. In the end Michelangelo parodies and dramatizes himself, whereas Lorenzo—without ever identifying with Vallera—had detached fun with the exu­ berant peasant that woos the country girl Nencia. 9. In his essay "Spiritualita di Michelangelo: Per una interpretazione della Tomba di Giulio II," Michelangelo 9, nos. 38-39 (1982), pp. 29-39, as well as in earlier publications, Alessandro Parronchi argues that this bitter sonnet attack­ ing the mundane depravations and unchristian militarism of Papal Rome is not aimed at Julius II but at Alexander VI, the notorious Borgia pope who, among other things, caused Savonarola to be burned as a heretic in 1498. The expression "quel del manto" (the mantled one) at line 11 would accordingly refer to Cardinal Riario, Michelangelo's controversial patron at the time, and not to Julius II, and the dating of the poem would recede from 1512 to 1497 (i.e. from Michelangelo's second to his first Roman period). If so, Michelangelo's poetical activity began earlier than is generally believed, and Condivi's opinion would have to be accepted over Frey's strictures (1502 being the initial date for him and Girardi). Parronchi's argument cannot be overlooked, especially when he points out that in the sec­ ond part of sonnet G 10 Michelangelo complains of getting no orders and losing money. This complaint is hardly jus­ tifiable if Julius II is the cause, for if anything the Pope kept Michelangelo very busy (even if, on one occasion, he kept Michelangelo waiting for the sum the artist had re­ quested to finance his work on the Tomb). 10. For a concise vindication of the sonnet's expressive ve­ hemence, see Guido Di Pino, Vocazione e vita di Michel­ angelo Buonarroti (Turin: Edizioni RAI, 1965), pp. 6364. 11. Clements, The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 48. 12. Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato delVarte della Pittura Scultura ed Architettura, in 7 libri, [Venice, 1584], 3 vols. (Rome: Tipografia Gismondi, 1844):

CHAPTER 1

Dicesi adunque che Michelangelo diede una volta questo avvertimento a Marco da Siena pittore suo discepolo, che dovesse sempre fare la figura piramidale, serpentinata, e moltiplicata per una, due, e tre. Ed in questo precetto parmi che consista tutto il secreto della pittura, imperocche la maggior grazia, e leggiadria che possa avere una figura e, che mostri di muoversi, il che chiamano i pittori furia della figura. E per rappresentare questo moto, non vi e forma piu accomodata, che quella della fiamma del fuoco, la quale secondo che dicono Aristotile, e tutti i filosofi, e elemento piu attivo di tutti, e la forma della sua fiamma e piu atta al moto di tutte, perche ha il cono, e la punta acuta, con la quale par che voglia romper l'aria, ed ascender alia sua sfera. E questa anco si puo servare in duo maniere, una e che Ί cono della piramide, che e la parte piu acuta, si collochi di sopra, e la base, che e il piu ampio della piramide, si collochi nella parte inferiore come il fuoco; ed allora s'ha da mostrare nella figura ampiezza e Iarghezza come nelle gambe ο panni da basso, e di sopra si ha d'assottigliare a guisa di piramide, mostrando l'una spalla, e facendo che l'altra sfugga, e scorci, che Ί corpo si torca, e l'una spalla s'asconda, e si rilevi, e scopra l'altra. . . . Ma perche sono due sorte di piramidi, l'una retta come e quella che e appresso S. Pietro in Roma, che si chiama la piramide di Giulio Cesare, e l'altra di figura di fiamma di fuoco, e questa chiama Michelangelo serpentinata, ha il pittore d'accompagnare questa forma piramidale con la forma serpentinata, che rappresenta la tortuosita d'una serpe viva quando cammina, che e la propria forma della fiamma del foco che ondeggia. Il che vuol dire che la figura ha da rappresentare la forma della lettera S retta, ο la forma rovescia, come e questa S, perche allora avra la sua bellezza. E non solamente nel tutto ha da servare questa forma, ma anco in ciascuna delle parti. Diceva piu oltre Michelangelo, che la figura ha da essere moltiplicata per uno, due, e tre. Ed in

NOTES

questo consiste tutta la ragione della proporzione, di che tratteremo diffusamente in questo libro. (Vol. 1, chap. 1, pp. 33-34) And so they say that Michelangelo once gave this precept to Marco the Sienese painter, a pupil of his: that he should always make the human figure pyramidal, ser­ pentine, and multiplied by one, two, and three. And I do think that in this precept lies the whole secret of painting, for the greatest grace and comeliness a figure can have is that it would seem to move, which painters call "fury of the figure." And to depict this motion there is no better form than that of fire, which according to Aristotle and all the philosophers is the most active element, and the shape of its flame is the most suited to motion because it has a cone and a sharp tip, by which it seems to try and break through the air and rise to its own sphere. And this can be reproduced in two ways. One is to place the pyramid's cone, its sharpest part, in the upper half, and the base, which is the pyramid's broadest part, in the lower half like fire; and then one must show the figure's amplitude and breadth as in the legs or lower draping, while toward the top it must taper off like a pyramid by showing one shoulder fully and letting the other recede into foreshortening; likewise the body as a whole should twist, and one shoulder should hide and protrude and uncover the other one. . . . But because there are two kinds of pyramid, one straight like the monument close to St. Peter's in Rome which is called the pyramid of Julius Caesar, and the other shaped like a fiery flame (and that is what Michelangelo calls serpentine), the painter must match this pyramidal shape with the serpentine form that rep­ resents the tortuousness of a live snake in motion, which is the very form of swaying flame. That is to say, the figure must be patterned on the letter S recto or verso, for then it will have its beauty. And not only in the entire composition should this form be retained, but also in

CHAPTER 1

each of its parts. Michelangelo besides said, that the figure must be multiplied by one, two, or three. And in this lies the whole rationale of proportion, which we shall treat at length in this book. For a thoughtful treatment of this and other aspects of Michelangelo's aesthetics see David Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). Also very useful, because it contains Benedetto Varchi's discussions and Paolo Pino's and Ludovico Dolce's germane approach to art problems, is Paola Barocchi, ed., Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento fra Manierismo e Controriforma (Bari: Laterza, 1960). 13. Clements, The Poetry of Michelangelo, pp. 202-203. 14. Ibid., pp. 38-59 ("Michelangelo as a Baroque Poet"). 15. See the frottola lyric G 21 (dated by Girardi to before 1524), a type of macabre composition usually indited for Carnival parades to offset the rambunctious canti carnascialeschi. Michelangelo's piece has reminded some critics of Luigi Alamanni's similar poem from 1511. 16. Algirdas Julien Greimas, Semantique structurale (Paris: Larousse, 1966). 17. Marsilio Ficino, Sopra Io amore overo Convito di Platone, ed. Giuseppe Rensi (Lanciano: Carabba, 1914). 18. Anthony Perry, Erotic Spirituality—The Integrative Tra­ dition from Leone Ebreo to John Donne (University: Uni­ versity of Alabama Press, 1980). 19. This commonplace expression is often used now to mean "bizarre Florentine wit," but it is lifted from Dante's Inferno VIII, 62, which stymies the hated sullen spirit Filippo Argenti ("bizzarro" stems from "bizza," anger). I take the liberty of adapting the semantic import of bizzarro to modern usage. 20. Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance (Lon­ don: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1958), chap. 11, "The Flaying of Marsyas," pp. 142-46; chap. 12, "A Bacchic Mystery by Michelangelo," pp. 147-57. Robert S. Liebert, Mi-

NOTES

chelangelo: A Psychoanalytical Study of His Life and Im­ ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 343-60. 21. Clements, The Poetry of Michelangelo, pp. 204-205. 22. In his spirited biography, Michelangelo—His Life, His Times, His Era, trans. Heinz Norden (New York: Ungar, 1963), p. 340, G. Brandes says of the poems for Tommaso Cavalieri: There is in these poems a passion that could scarcely ring stronger and purer—the passion of a lover, surely not of one who is loved in return. We are amazed to see a man of such gruff virility speak like a woman of his love to another man. Elsewhere in the same chapter ("Poems and Letters," p. 350) Brandes remarks that Michelangelo "wrote from inner necessity," without thinking of publication in the first place, and that he burned all the poetry of his youth only because "it might have afforded an insight into his youthful life he wished to deny to prying eyes." 23. Liebert, Michelangelo, chap. 16, "Tommaso de' Cavalieri and Other Young Men," pp. 270-311. 24. De Tolnay, Michelangelo, vol. 5, pp. 19-50. 25. Liebert, Michelangelo, chap. 18, "The Last Judgment," pp. 331-60. Another sensitive psychoanalytical interpreter of Michelangelo's art work in general is Leo Steinberg; see for instance his essay "The Metaphors of Love and Birth in Michelangelo's Pietas," Studies in Erotic Art, ed. Theo­ dore Bowie (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 231-85. 26. Symonds, The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, vol. 2, pp. 45-58; De Tolnay, Michelangelo, vol. 5, pp. 45-46. De Tolnay points out that St. Bartholomew (who holds with one hand his own dangling pelt with Michelangelo's face on it, and with the other hand aims the skinning knife toward Christ and the Madonna) closely resembles Pietro Aretino (of whom we have a fine portrait by Titian). 27. Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, vol. 2: Ren­ aissance, Mannerism, Baroque (New York: Vintage Books, 1957), pp. 147-49.

CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2 1. Donato Giannotti, Dialogi di D. G. de giorni che Dante consume nel cercare Vlnferno e Ί Purgatorio [1546] (Flor­ ence: Sansoni, 1939), p. 68. 2. Giovanni Papini, foreword to Michelangelo—Rime (Flor­ ence: Rinascimento del Libro, 1927). A very perceptive and eloquent interpretation. Of Papini, see also the fine biography, La vita di Michelangelo nella vita del suo tempo (Milan: Garzanti, 1949); English trans, by L. Murnane, Michelangelo: His Life and His Era (New York: Dutton, 1952). 3. Eugenio Montale, Michelangelo poeta, ed. and intr. Ar­ mando Brissoni (Bologna: Boni, 1975). For Montale's def­ inition of the poem as "object," see his 1940 essay "Parliamo delPermetismo" (Let us speak of Hermeticism) now reprinted in the collected essays, ed. G. Zampa, Sulla poesia (Milan: Mondadori, 1976), pp. 558-61. This essay has now been translated by Jonathan Galassi in The Second Life of Art: Selected Essays of Eugenio Montale (New York: The Ecco Press, 1982). 4. I refer to the first sonnet in Dante's Vita Nuova. 5. While working on the present book I was privileged to see an essay by Professor Gregory L. Lucente of Johns Hopkins University on this sonnet, "Lyric Tradition and the Desires of Absence: Rudel, Dante, and Michelangelo ('Vorrei uoler')"; this essay was due to appear in The Canadian Review of Comparative Literature in 1983, and it offers some convergences with my approach, notably apropos of the affinities between Michelangelo and John Donne. 6. Brandes, in Michelangelo, pp. 133-34, denies the often made connection between Michelangelo's religious poetry and Savonarola's powerful influence, quoting an apparently irreverent letter of March 10 to Michelangelo's brother Buonarroto, from Rome, in which Michelangelo, however, is really lambasting the Romans' callousness in religious matters. In a recent article, "Spiritualita di Michelangelo" (for which see n. 9 to chap. 1), Alessandro Parronchi takes

NOTES

issue with such anti-Savonarolan interpretation of the letter in question and points out that Professor Poggi has proved it to be written by Piero d'Argenta, a workshop assistant, albeit under Michelangelo's dictation. The mock reference to Savonarola is ironic, but not at the expense of the fiery Dominican friar. And for that matter, Brandes himself, at p. 64, says that "The rise of Savonarola impinged on the life of his [Michelangelo's] mind, matured within him the makings of exalted gravity, of an understanding of the Old Testament." This is quite an allowance to make. 7. Guido Di Pino, "Le 'Rime' di Michelangelo," in his Stile e umanitd (Messina: D'Anna, 1957), pp. 101-119. For further comment on Di Pino's emphasis on Michelangelo's apocalyptic fragmentariness as poet, see Anne Hallock, "The Genesis of Michelangelo's Poetic Expression," Neophilologus 65 (October 1981): 552-64. 8. See in particular Ficino, Sopra Io amore, oration 2, chap. 6 ("Sopra Ie passioni degli amanti," On lovers' passions), and oration 3, chap. 4 ("Che l'anima fu creata con due lumi," That the soul was created with two lights). Ficino maintains that the lover annihilates himself by identifying with the beloved, and apropos the "two lights" (supernat­ ural and natural) with which the soul has been endowed at creation he specifies that "with them joined like two wings the soul can fly through the loftiest region." On the Ficinian references in Michelangelo's poetry generally, see again De Vecchi's article, "Studi sulla poesia di Michelangelo." 9. For an illuminating comparative analysis of these three thematically correlated works in different languages or me­ dia, see Robert Petersson, The Art of Ecstasy—Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw (New York: Atheneum, 1970). 10. Gaspara Stampa, Rime, sonnet 208. A recent edition of this famous Cinquecento canzoniere, which offers some consonances with Michelangelo's coeval writing (whether or not he ever read her work), has been published by Rizzoli in Milan, with an introduction by Maria BeIlonci and notes

CHAPTER 2

by Rodolfo Ceriello (1954, 1976). (Original publication, 1554.) 11. See Clements, The Poetry of Michelangelo, chap. 10, "Michelangelo Innamorato," pp. 184-220; Liebert, Mi­ chelangelo, chap. 16, "Tommaso de' Cavalieri and Other Young Men," pp. 270-311. Also the by now superannuated but far from useless or graceless Life of Michelangelo Buo­ narroti by Symonds, vol. 2, pp. 125-42. Symonds's ele­ gantly Victorian translation of several sonnets, including quite a few of those for Cavalieri, have been reprinted from the 1878 edition (The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buo­ narroti, translated into rhymed English by John Addington Symonds. Copyright by Crown Publishers, Inc. New York: Gramercy, n.d.). 12. See De Tolnay, Michelangelo, vol. 5, pp. 45-46, and Michelangelo: Sculptor, Painter, Architect, p. 114. An anonymous letter in 1549 went as far as to accuse the artist of Lutheranism, and Pietro Aretino and later on Gilio da Ftibriano rebuked him for his cult of pagan nakedness in a sacred place like the Sistine Chapel. The episode of Michelangelo's friend and disciple, Daniele da Volterra, being officially charged by the Council of Trent's Congre­ gation with the job of painting some clothes over the Last Judgment nudes is well known. 13. See De Tolnay, Michelangelo, vol. 5, chap. 3 ("Michel­ angelo and Vittoria Colonna"), pp. 51-69, especially for their acceptance of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. Also, De Tolnay, Michelangelo: Sculptor, Painter, Architect, chap. 6 ("The Final Period"), pp. 100-123. 14. Ficino, Sopra Io amore, oration 3, chap. 4, p. 54. 15. Anne Hallock, Michelangelo the Poet (Pacific Grove, Calif.: Page-Ficklin Publications, 1978). 16. See John Shearman, Mannerism (Harmondsworth: Pen­ guin Books, 1967), "Sixteenth-century polyphony and the madrigal," pp. 96-104. 17. In view of the divergent positions taken by several schol­ arly authorities, any definition of what makes a writer

NOTES

"mannerist" is bound to be controversial. The term as such arose in the domain of art history when Luigi Lanzi (1796) applied it to the generations of visual artists who, in the interval between Raphael and Rubens, according to his predecessor Giovan Pietro Bellori had perverted the nat­ uralness and harmony of classical Renaissance painting. In his biographical treatment (1672), Bellori conferred a negative implication on the term maniera (Fr. maniere, Engl, manner), which Giorgio Vasari (1550, 1568) had dignified by talking of his Michelangelo-dominated era and style as "maniera moderna" (the modern manner). Twen­ tieth-century historians have resurrected the word man­ nerism in the wake of the epoch-making rehabilitation of the term baroque by Heinrich Wolfflin in 1888. Wolfflin himself had shown the way for a plausible extension of that visual arts term to literature, and eventually one began to talk of mannerist writing, too, in a purely descriptive fashion. Mostly, the concept of literary mannerism implied an­ alogical reference to a common denominator in the style of painters like Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Parmigianino, Bronzino, El Greco (all of them inspired by Michelangelo's formal innovations), but scholars like E. R. Curtius tried to sever the concept from any such reference and even from historical periodization. If we listen to Arnold Hauser, Giuliano Briganti, and Wylie Sypher, mannerism was a tormented style mirroring the crisis in sixteenth-century European society, whereas according to John Shearman it merely reflects a mutational development of classical Ren­ aissance art into virtuoso elegance often verging on the bizarre. Georg Weise, likewise emphasizing its courtly ma­ trix, links mannerism in art and literature to a resurgence of Gothic sensibility in the early Cinquecento, with Petrarchism providing the main pattern in poetry. Eugenio Battisti and Hiram Haydn see mannerism as an anti-Ren­ aissance, that is, anticlassical, antihumanist, finally irrationalist trend; Gustav Rene Hocke (a pupil of Curtius) metahistorically annexes the entire domain of baroque to

CHAPTER 2

mannerism as the recurrent area of labyrinthine worldview in all the arts. Esther Nyholm claims for mannerism the feat of having raised the visual artist's work to the level of deliberate autonomy freed from naturalist imitation—and in this she develops much earlier clues of Erwin Panofsky's Idea. At the same time she denies Weise's contention that mannerism is a recurrence of the gothic, but she shows little concern or understanding for parallel developments in literature, and for Michelangelo's poetry in particular. Amedeo Quondam sees in Cinquecento Petrarchism an emphasis of formalist games focusing on the rhetoric of phrase rather than of word, with the result of a perilous verbal abstractionism that corresponds to the relapse of Counter-Reformational society into feudalism, and this (in Weise's footsteps) is his account of the mannerist literary phenomenon. A list of useful sources would include the following: Hauser, The Social History of Art, vol. 2; Wylie Sypher, FourStages of Renaissance Style (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955); Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Anno CCCLIX, Quaderno 52, Manierismo, Barocco Rococo: Concetti e termini, Acts of the International Con­ vention held in Rome, April 21-24, 1960 (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1962); Georg Weise, "Ma­ nierismo e letteratura," Rivista di letterature moderne e comparate 13, nos. 1 and 2 (1960); Shearman, Mannerism; Amedeo Quondam, Problemi del manierismo (Naples: Guida, 1975), and La parola nel labirinto (Naples: Guida, 1975); Esther Nyholm, Arte e teoria del Manierismo, vol. 1: Ars naturans (Odense: Odense University Press, 1977), and vol. 2; Idea (Odense: Odense University Press, 1979). Whether or not one chooses to emphasize their linkage to biographical and/or historical predicaments, the formal peculiarities of Michelangelo's poetry in its late middle phase can qualify as mannerist, not in the sense of just stemming from Petrarch (since Michelangelo's use of that model is poles apart from Bembo's dominant Petrarchism), but because they strain the language in syntactical and

NOTES

conceptual convolutions that offer a clear counterpart of figura serpentinata, in tightrope experiments that occa­ sionally push virtuoso effects to a bizarre extent. For in­ stance, madrigal G 114 with its insistence on negation, madrigal G 117 with its conspicuous alliterations, madrigal G 118 with its obsessive iteration of the word morte (death) and cognates, madrigal G 120 with its mimetic straining of syntax to the breaking point, and madrigal G 123 with its crowding of alliterative word chains (mainly banking on the m phoneme) may supply extreme examples of Michel­ angelo's mannerist partiality for conscious manipulation of language. Along with this formalist excess that has to do with a craftsman's pride and playfulness, however, one must take into account his general care for heightened meaning and his protobaroque delight in metaphoric ca­ pers. In poetry no less than in painting, sculpture, and architecture, Michelangelo cannot be confined to one pe­ riod style. 18. For a fine treatment of this aspect, see Gianfranco Contini, Esercvzi di lettura sopra autori contemporanei (Florence: Le Monnier, 1947). 19. Ficino, Sopra Io amore, chap. 8 ("Esortazione alia morte," exhortation to death), p. 40. See also n. 7. 20. In Provengal troubadour usage, the word domna had a stronger meaning than its Italian correlative donna (woman), because it retained the force of its Latin ety­ mological source domina (mistress of the house, lady), and the word midons (from Latin "meus dominus," my lord) was often applied to the admired or beloved lady, both to disguise her identity and to enhance her worth. 21. Francisco de Holanda, Diaiogos deRoma [1548], preface and notes by Manuel Mendes (Lisbon: Livraria Sa da Costa, 1955), English trans, by C. Holroyd, Michel Angelo Buo­ narroti (London: Duckworth, 1903). 22. See De Tolnay, Michelangelo, vol. 5, p. 130: "It is partly problematical exactly which poems Michelangelo wrote to Yittoria Colonna except in a few instances in which he

CHAPTER 2

himself wrote a dedication or where the content clearly indicates that the poems were addressed to her. Steinmann . . . connects with Vittoria Colonna poems of Michelangelo which were written to the 'Donna crudele.' . . . Examples are Frey, Dichtungen, CIX, 9 and cix, 55." Frey himself, however, remains in doubt about sonnet CIX 102 (G 297), which Girardi and Barelli interpret as possibly addressed to Vittoria Colonna. Giovanni Testori's foreword to the edi­ tion annotated by Barelli squarely ascribes to Vittoria Co­ lonna as addressee all the poems allegedly composed for the "fair and cruel lady," and Barelli agrees with him that the latter is "a baseless character." 23. Literally, "love from afar," a paradigmatic situation in Provengal love poetry. 24. Valerio Mariani, Poesia di Michelangelo (Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 1941). Mariani, an art historian, is particularly sensitive to Michelangelo's "plastic" imagination in the verbal medium, and he posits interesting correspondences between Michelangelo's procedure as carver of marble and as shaper of poems. He also sees the poet's quasi-Gongorist addiction to concettismo or witty conceit but qualifies it by stressing the experiential basis of the Rime—a point made also by Walter Binni in Michelangelo scrittore (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1965), although Binni has some reser­ vations about Mariani's approach and prefers Papini's dif­ ferentiation between the poetry as such and the visual artwork. 25. Literally, "stony rimes," the rime per madonna Pietra in which Dante pushed to an unprecedented extent the metric experiments and trobar clus or hermetic style of Arnaut Daniel, the Provengal troubadour that served him as model and challenge. Deliberate echoings of that "stony" style of Dante's are to be heard in some of Michelangelo's own Rime. A punctilious translation of Dante's Rime, with Ital­ ian text en face, has been recently published by Patrick S. Diehl: Dante's Rime (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

NOTES

26. Alma Altizer, Self and Symbolism in the Poetry of Mi­ chelangelo, John Donne and Agrippa dAubigne (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973). 27. Needless to say, that rapport was of paramount importance to Michelangelo's inner life (as De Tolnay shows in his chapter on the subject in volume 5 of his Michelangelo) as well as to his poetry. He read her verse just as she read his, and the exchange occasionally resulted in his appro­ priating some of her lines and vice versa, as Clements shows at pp. 328-30 in The Poetry of Michelangelo. Clem­ ents also reminds us that a collection of her poems had been published in Venice in 1540. 28. Le Rime di Michelangelo, intr. and trans. G. R. Ceriello (Milan: Rizzoli, 1954). 29. Gavriel Moses, "Philosophy and Mimesis in Michelan­ gelo's Poems," Italianistica 10, no. 2 (May-August 1981). See also n. 5 to chap. 1. 30. It should also be kept in mind that the climactic metaphor of the beloved woman's image growing within her lover's soul to breaking point is picked up from earlier poems where it was more successfully articulated, whether on a tragic register (as in G 8, see beginning of this chapter) or on an ironically witty one (as in G 44), or finally in a rich comic vein (as in stanza 10 of G 54, the rustic idyll discussed earlier in chapter 1). 31. Shearman, Mannerism, pp. 100 and 175. See also n. 16. 32. See n. 18 to chap. 1. 33. Goethe's Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, vol. 1, ed. Erich Trunz (Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1960), p. 160. Another striking correspondence (and closer to Michel­ angelo's stylistic climate and period) is to be found in the metaphor with which Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz concludes her sonnet on hope ["Verde embelezo de la vida humana," at p. 274 of Frank Warnke, European Metaphysical Poetry (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961]: tengo en entrambas manos ambos ojos y solamente Io que toco veo

CHAPTER 2

I hold my two eyes in my two hands and I see only that which I can touch. 34. Mario Praz, Il mondo che ho visto (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1982), p. 323. 35. See n. 12 to chap. 1. 36. For the casuistical forma mentis prevailing in late Ren­ aissance Europe, Protestant and Catholic alike, and its impact on the foremost English poets of the time, see Camille Wells Slights, The Casuistical Tradition in Shake­ speare, Donne, Herbert, and Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). Although she does not mention Michelangelo, her treatment is illuminatingly germane and should possibly be taken into account for a discriminating approach to the problem of literary mannerism and (in part at least) baroque. 37. See n. 1. 38. Michelangelo's Dantesque penchant is recognized by most critics, and Clements (The Poetry of Michelangelo, pp. 315-19) makes Dante the dominant influence, whereas Girardi [Studi su Michelangiolo scrittore (Florence: Olschki, 1974), pp. 68-71] gives Petrarch the upper hand in this regard; both scholars identify certain telling quotations or echoes, to which I should like to add a few they have omitted. In madrigal G 92, the line com piu m'attempo, ognor si fa piii forte the older I get, the stronger it becomes echoes Inferno XXVI, 12:

che piu mi gravera, com piu m'attempo for it will vex me more, the older I get. The syntagm vecchio e tardi (old and tardy), which Mi­ chelangelo likes (madrigal G 125 and 136), is lifted from Inferno XXVI, 106, where Ulysses says Io e' compagni eravam vecchi e tardi

NOTES

I and my shipmates were old and tardy; in fact Michelangelo is so aurally influenced by the Dantesque passage that he retains the grammatically discordant plural tardi instead of using the appropriate singular form of the modifier, tardo. The reference, I believe, is inten­ tional and carries its tragic aura. Madrigal G 172, as I said above, reflects the lexical asperity of Dante's rime pietrose and of his canzone montanina. Madrigal G 231 has this proverb-like fourth line: che Ί tempo perso, a chi men n'ha, piu duole for time wasted most vexes him who is short of it, an obvious variation on Purgatorio III, 112:

che il perder tempo a chi piu sa piii spiace for wasting time most vexes the most wise. Madrigal G 254 has a strong Dantesque ring, with its essentialized language that could be straight from the doc­ trinal poems of the medieval Florentine exile: Donn', a me vecchio e grave, ov'io torno e rientro e come a peso il centra, che fuor di quel riposo alcun non have, il ciel porge Ie chiave. Amor Ie volge e gira e apre a' iusti il petto di costei Lady, to me burdened by age Heaven tenders the keys so I may return inside it like a weight drawn to the center outside which it cannot have any quiet. Love turns them all over and opens her breast to the righteous. The reference is not just to the Pier delle Vigne episode in Inferno xiii, as Clements doubtfully reports from some

CHAPTER 2

other critics, but more specifically to lines 85-87 of the exilic canzone "Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute": Ma questo foco m'have gi& consumato si l'ossa e la polpa, che Morte al petto m'ha posto la chiave. But this fire by now has so utterly consumed my bones and flesh, that Death has turned its key into my chest. The identity of rhyme words and of image conspires with the overall tone and lexical tenor to establish an intentional reference in Michelangelo's madrigal. Madrigal G 258 at lines 5-6 says c'a l'alma pellegrina gli e duro ogni altro sentiero erto ο arto, for to the pilgrim soul is hard any other path, whether steep or strait and the reader is meant to recall Purgatorio XXVII 132:

fuor se' de l'erte vie, fuor se' de l'arte you've left behind the steep and the strait roads, where Virgil compliments Dante the pilgrim soul on having passed all the Purgatorial tests. Once again, the clue is far from casual. But the most witty use of a Dantesque passage occurs in the jolly late sonnet G 299 to Vastui— a thank-you note for a generous gift. Here is its second quatrain: Troppa bonaccia sgonfia si Ie vele, che senza vento in mar perde la via la debile mia barca, e par che sia una festuca in mar rozz'e crudele. Too much calm weather so collapses the sails that with no wind at all over the sea my frail boat loses its bearings and seems a wisp afloat in a rough and cruel ocean.

NOTES

The tongue-in-cheek reference, pinpointed by specific rhymes and words, is to the beginning of Purgatorio·. Per correr migliori acque alza Ie vele omai la navicella del mio ingegno, che lascia dietro se mar si crudele. To course through better waters now sets sail the little vessel of my imagination, which is leaving behind such a cruel sea. In this case of course the Dantesque text is turned upside down, antiphrastically. Michelangelo is talking to another connoisseur of Dante and expects him to catch the allusion and share the fun. All in all, Girardi is right in thinking that Michelangelo's dependence on Petrarch is stronger, given the metrical similarity, whereas Dante as a model is bound to operate less hegemonically. But it was Michelangelo's tempera­ mental affinity for Dante that contributed to preserve his poetry from the pitfall of a narrow Petrarchism. 39. Clements, The Poetry of Michelangelo, pp. 163, 205, 278. 40. The same keynote rings out in madrigal G 263. In G 172, there is also some consonance of lexicon and tone with the two last stanzas (before the envoi) of Dante's canzone montanina ("Amor, de che convien pur ch'io mi doglia"). Mi­ chelangelo's creative use of Dante's verse is not limited to the Divine Comedy, and when he banks on the doctrinal lyrics and on the rimepetrose (or on the Vita Nuova poems), he is outside the Petrarchan sphere; an alternative model then operates. 41. Fourth line of Pierre de Ronsard's sonnet beginning "Quand vous serez bien vieille, Ie soir, a la chandelle" (from Sonnets pour Helene: When you will be quite old, in the evening, at candlelight). See now a fine translation by X. J. Kennedy in French Leave: Translations (Florence, Ky.: Barth, 1983). 42. Wallace Stevens, "Peter Quince at the Clavier," from The

CHAPTER 2

Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (New York: Knopf, 1957). 43. See n. 36. 44. Literally, "impossibilities," in the Greek formulation that remained a standard technical term of rhetoric. 45. The last poem (G 302) is dated 1560. The number of complete lyrics or significant fragments written after 1547 is pretty small (ca. 40) by comparison with the abundance (over 200) of poems written in the fifteen years before 1547. For these chronological data I refer to the Girardi edition. 46. See nn. 15, 24, and 26. 47. See the quotation pinpointed by n. 1 at the beginning of this chapter. 48. Georg Brandes {Michelangelo, pp. 352-54), an outspoken admirer of Michelangelo's poetry, sees in these last poems an abdication of the earlier Promethean spirit that had made Michelangelo the Renaissance hero par excellence, and he senses in them "a touch of the spirit of the Council of Trent," and consequently, the eclipse of the Renaissance itself. Yet one should keep in mind the nonconformist Catholicism and the inner dialectic in these poems. 49. An earlier poem, madrigal 161, first calls God "Amore" (Love) to confess the speaker's inner trouble and then ad­ dresses Him as "Signor" (Lord) to invoke release from that suffering. It is a religious piece inspired by the exchange with Vittoria Colonna. 50. See nn. 38 and 40. 51. See n. 48. 52. De Tolnay, Michelangelo, vol. 5, p. 37; Michelangelo: Sculptor, Painter, Architect, p. 108. 53. As my translation shows, for the interpretation of this second tercet of the sonnet I prefer, to Ettore Barelli's reading (in the footnotes at p. 327 of Michelangelo's Rime published by Rizzoli), Creighton Gilbert's [see his trans­ lation at p. 161 of Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo, trans. Creighton Gilbert, ed. Robert N. Linscott (New York: The Modern Library, 1965)]. 54. For the special quality of Michelangelo's trust in Father

NOTES

Fattucci of Santa Maria, see also two letters the artist sent him in 1549. Michelangelo's letters were published by Gaetano Milanesi [Le Lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti . . . , ed. G. Milanesi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1875); Eng­ lish trans. E. H. Ramsden, The Letters of Michelangelo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963)]. The most upto-date edition is Carteggio postumo di Michelangelo, ed. G. Poggi, P. Barocchi, and R. Ristori, whose first volume appeared in Florence (Sansoni) in 1965. The two letters to Father Fattucci I refer to, however, can be easily found in a handy selection [Michelangiolo Buonarroti, Lettere, ed. Enzo Noe Girardi (Arezzo: Ente Provinciale per il Turismo, 1976), nos. 357 and 358, p. 256], This selection is based on an earlier one by Giovanni Papini (published by Carabba in Lanciano, 1910) and on the three volumes of the Poggi-Barocchi-Ristori edition (published by Sansoni in Florence, from 1965) that had appeared by 1975. 55. Die Dichtungen des Michelagniolo Buonarroti, ed. Carl Frey, 2d ed., p. 486. 56. See n. 3. Chapter 3 1. Michelangelo did this in a postscript to madrigal G 192, one of the poems in the Cecchino Bracci series, after seeing a sonnet that Donato Giannotti had also composed to com­ memorate del Riccio's beloved nephew. This is the tenor of the postscript: Should I not speak Latin sometimes, however incor­ rectly, I'd be ashamed, considering our close friend­ ship. Messer Donato's sonnet seems to me as good as anything written in our time; but since I have bad taste, I cannot value any less a good cloth, though it be of the rough Romagnol kind, than secondhand garments of silk and gold, which would make a tailor's mannikin look handsome. Do write him about it and give him my very best.

CHAPTER 3

The reference to occasional Latin usage is motivated by the inclusion of one Latin expression ("sine peccata") in the madrigal Michelangelo is giving del Riccio. AB xiii, second section, folio 42. 2. Giorgio Vasari, La vita di Michelangelo, vol. 1, p. 101. 3. See n. 12 to chap. 1. 4. See n. 15 to chap. 2. 5. Frey, Dichtungen, p. 401, gives the alternative sheet num­ bering folio 37. 6. Giuseppe Ungaretti, "La morte meditata, 'Canto secondo' and 'Canto terzo,' " pp. 182-83 of Vita d'un uomo—tutte Ie poesie, ed. L. Piccioni (Milan: Mondadori, 1969). For Ungaretti's deep interest in Michelangelo, see "Folli i miei passi," ibid., p. 223, and at pp. 529-36, the poet's own commentary on his second book of verse, Sentimento del tempo. Further telling references to Michelangelo are in Ungaretti's collected essays, Vita d'un uomo—saggi e interventi, ed. M. Diacono and L. Rebay (Milan: Mondadori, 1974), pp. 603-612, 840-41. 7. Girtirdi reads the first word of this line as "έ" (is), with the consequence that "tutto il mondo" (the whole world) becomes the governing subject of a clause created by mak­ ing the moot particle an auxiliary verb linked to the past participle "corrotto" (corrupted): "the whole world is still / corrupted by your next of kin." I prefer Frey's reading, even though Michelangelo's habit of omitting accent marks might justify Girardi's choice. 8. In this opinion, which I have independently developed, I now find myself borne out by Mary Ann Caws, The Eye in The Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). 9. The same expression recurs in a sonnet by Vittoria Colonna ("Prima ne' chiari or negli oscuri panni," at p. 206 of Poesia italiana del Cinquecento, ed. Giulio Ferroni (Milan: Garzanti, 1978). Clements, who discusses Michelangelo's and Vittoria's mutual echoes or borrowings (The Poetry of Michelangelo, pp. 328-30), does not mention this capital

NOTES

one, though he does point out the presence, in Vittoria's verse, of another outstanding line by Michelangelo, that is, "Squarcia Ί vel tu, Signor, rompi quel muro" from G 87. One is tempted to venture the comment that such an exchange of words and lines between the two platonic lovers was an erotic communion on the level of writing, the written word having become each other's symbolic body to share. 10. G 274, addressed to God. 11. Testori, Introduction to Michelangelo Buonarroti, Rime. Other scholars who have seen in Michelangelo's verse some foreshadowing of Gongora's are Valerio Mariani and Walter Binni. 12. Here I must admit that in my translation I have been unable to reproduce the syntactical fragmentation that jerk­ ily pulses through Michelangelo's Italian and that gives an imbricated complexion to quite a few other poems of his, like G 126, G 130, G 180, G 181, G 192. The difficulty is compounded by the use of syntactical ellipse, to the dismay of whoever favors smooth writing; but there is no reason to suppose that such crabbed writing on Michel­ angelo's part was due to ineptitude rather than to deliberate formal daring, like all his idiosyncrasies. 13. Ficino, Sopra Io amore, p. 34 (from oration 2, chap. 6, "Delle passioni degli amanti," Of lovers' passions): "Avviene eziandio spesse volte, che Io Amante desidera transferirsi nella persona amata: e meritamente. Perche in questo atto egli appetisce, e sforzasi di uorao farsi Dio. . . . Ei sospirano, perche ei lasciano se medesimi e distruggonsi: rallegransi, perche in migliore obbietto si transferiscono." (It also happens often, that the Lover longs to transpose himself into the beloved: and rightly so, because in this act he yearns and endeavors to make himself God. . . . They [the lovers] sigh, because they relinquish and destroy themselves: they rejoice, because they transpose themselves into a better object.) See also oration 2, chap. 8. It must be noticed, however, that in its earlier occurrence within fragment G 53 (dated 1531), the persistent line has a slightly different makeup and a totally different tenor:

CHAPTER 3

Non dura Ί mal dove non dura Ί bene, ma spesso l'un nell'altro si trasforma. The ill lasts not where good itself does not, but the one often changes into the other. This would show that Michelangelo's aesthetic motivation may at times prevail on philosophical import when it comes to formal choices, and that besides, context may transform any given formal element. 14. Another echo of the same Petrarchan motif can be de­ tected in epitaph G 189: Qui son chiusi i begli occhi, che aperti facen men chiari i piu lucenti e santi; or perche, morti, rendon luce a tanti, qual sie piu Ί danno ο l'util non sian certi. Here are shut the lovely eyes that, open, made the brightest and saintliest look less shining; now since they, dead, bestow light on so many, there is no telling if loss or gain prevails. 15. See Frey, Dichtungen, appendix comprising poems writ­ ten by others on the death of Cecchino Bracci, pp. 26771. 16. In his critical edition, Cesare Guasti (1863) considered poem no. 69 of Codex del Riccio the final draft. 17. Sonnet in Vita Nuova, chap. 34. Its first line is: "Era venuta ne la mente mia" (There had come into my mind), and the remaining three lines of the final quatrain are those that change in the alternative version. Both versions are offered by Dante in his prose commentary as equally valid. See pp. 41-42 of Le opere di Dante, testo critico della Societa dantesca italiana, 2d ed. (Florence: Societa dantesca italiana, 1960). 18. I am offering the text from the del Riccio codex in AB xiv, whose spelling is less idiosyncratic than Michelan­ gelo's own autograph draft in AB xm. 19. Sestina G 70's manuscript is so garbled that Frey gave

NOTES

up on it after the first few lines, whereas Girardi has man­ aged to produce a plausible reading. See Marianne Sha­ piro's interpretation of this latter sestina in Hieroglyph of Time: The Petrarchan Sestina (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), pp. 213-21. 20. See n. 54 to chap. 2. 21. Ibid. 22. Clements, in The Poetry of Michelangelo, p. 27, observes that Michelangelo had "several styles" rather than just one, in poetry and art alike. 23. Ernst Robert Curtius, Europaeische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1948); English trans, by Willard Trask, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953).

Bibliography

Primary Sources Archivio Buonarroti MSS at the Laurenziana Library in Flor­ ence, especially AB Xin (autograph poems and work­ sheets), AB XlV (authoritative copies, notably Codex Riccio with autograph emendations by Michelangelo, Codex Baldi, Codex Giannotti with the only extant text of capitolo G 267), AB xv and AB xvi (Michelangelo the Younger's copies of his great-uncle's poems, with notes and worksheets toward the piously bowdlerized 1623 edition: Rime di M.B., Raceolte da M. suo nipote. In Firenze, appresso i Giunti, con licenza de' Superiori, 1623), AB V (Michelangelo's letters to others), and AB Vl-X (Letters to Michelangelo, including four by Vittoria Colonna in AB ix). Codice Vatieano Latino 3211 at the Vatican Library in Vatican City (mostly autograph drafts of many poems, often rep­ resenting the more advanced stage of textual elaboration, and some letters by Michelangelo). Le Rime di Michelagnolo Buonarroti, pittore, scultore e architetto, cavate dagli autograft e pubblicate da Cesare Gunsti, Aceademieo della Crusca. Florence: Le Monnier, 1863 (the first critical edition, later utilized by Frey for

BIBLIOGRAPHY

his, and reprinting also Varchi's 1547 lecture on sonnet G 151 as well as two lectures on Michelangelo's poetry originally given by Mario Guiducci at the same Flor­ entine Academy to celebrate the publication of Michel­ angelo's poems in 1623). Die Dichtungen des Michelagniolo Buonarroti, herausgegeben und mit kritischem Apparat versehen von Dr. Carl Frey. Berlin: G. Grotesche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1897. Sec­ ond edition, with expanded critical apparatus by Herman-Walther Frey and a foreword by Hugo Friedrich. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1964. Michelangiolo Buonarroti, Rime, con Varianti, Apparato, Nota filologica. Edited by Enzo Noe Girardi. Bari: Laterza, 1960. Michelangelo—Rime. Edited and introduced by Giovanni Papini. Florence: Rinascimento del Libro, 1927. Michelangelo, Le Rime. Edited by Valentino Piccoli. Turin: U.T.E.T., 1930. Le Rime di Michelangelo. Introduced and translated by G. R. Ceriello. Milan: Rizzoli, 1954. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Rime. Edited by Ettore Barelli and introduced by Giovanni Testori. Milan: Rizzoli, 1975. Michelangiolo Buonarroti, Lettere. Edited by Enzo Noe Gi­ rardi. Arezzo: Ente Provinciale per il Turismo, 1976. The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti. Translated into rhymed English by John Addington Symonds. New York: Gramercy Publishing Co., n.d.; copyright 1948 by Crown Publishers, Inc. Reproducing the relevant part of The Sonnets of M. A. Buonarroti and T. Campanella. Translated by J. A. Symonds. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1878. The Complete Poems by Michelangelo. Translated by Joseph Tusiani. New York: The Noonday Press, 1960. Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo. Trans­ lated by Creighton Gilbert and edited by Robert N. Linscott. New York: Random House, 1963. Michelangelo—A Self-portrait, Texts and Sources. Edited with

BIBLIOGRAPHY

new commentaries and new translations by Robert J. Clements. New York: New York University Press, 1968. Secondary Sources Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Anno CCCLIX, Quaderno 52. Manierismo, Barocco, Rococo: Concetti e termini (Acts of the International Convention held in Rome, April 21-24, 1960). Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1962. Altizer, Alma. Self and Symbolism in the Poetry of Michel­ angelo, JohnDonne and Agrippa d'Aubigne. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973. Arthos, John. Dante, Michelangelo and Milton. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963. Baldacci, Luigi. Il petrarchismo italiano nel Cinquecento. Nuova edizione accresciuta. Padua: Liviana editrice, 1974. Barocchi, Paola, ed. Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento fra Ma­ nierismo e Controriforma. Bari: Laterza, 1960. . Michelangelo artista—pensatore—scrittore. Intro­ duced by Mario Salmi. Essays by Charles De Tolnay, Umberto Baldini, Roberto Salvini, Guglielmo de Angelis d'Ossat, Luciano Berti, Eugenio Garin, Enzo Noe Girardi, Giovanni Nencioni, Francesco de Feo, Peter Meller. Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1965. Battisti, Eugenio. L'antirinascimento. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962. Beall, Chandler. "The Literary Figure of Michelangelo," Italica 41 (September 1964): 235-51. Bigongiari, Piero. Dal barocco all'informale. Bologna: Cappelli, 1980. Binni, Walter. Michelangelo scrittore. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1965. Bizziccari, Alvaro. "L'idea della bellezza nelle poesie di Mi­ chelangelo," Italica 41 (September 1964): 252-65.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Borsellino, Nino. Gli anticlassicisti del Cinquecento. Bari: Laterza, 1973. , and Marcello Aurigemma. Il Cinquecento—dal Rinascimento alia Controriforma (La letteratura italiana, storia e testi, vol. 4, tome 1). Bari: Laterza, 1973. Bosco, Umberto. Saggi sul Rinascimento italiano. Florence: Le Monnier, 1970. Brandes, Georg. Michelangelo—His Life, His Times, His Era. Translated by Heinz Norden. New York: Ungar, 1963. Buck, August, ed. Zu BegHff und Problem der Renaissance. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969. Burckhardt, Jacob. Kultur und Kunst der Renaissance in Italien. Klosterneuburg-Wien-Leipzig: Johannes Miiller & Co., n.d. (Reprinting in one volume the original un­ abridged text of Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien [1860] and Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien [1867], the latter properly retitled Die Kunst der Renaissance in Italien.) Cassirer, Ernst; Paul Oskar Kristeller; and John Herman Ran­ dall, eds. The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Caws, Mary Ann. The Eye in The Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to Modern. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Cellini, Benvenuto. La vita. Edited and introduced by Guido Davico Bonino. Turin: Einaudi, 1973. Clements, Robert J. Picta Poesis: Humanistic and Literary Theory in Renaissance Emblem Books. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1960. . Michelangelo's Theory of Art. New York: Gramercy, 1961. . The Poetry of Michelangelo. New York: New York University Press, 1966. Condivi, Ascanio. Vita di Michelangiolo [1553]. Modern edi­ tion, with an introduction by Antonio Maraini. Florence: Rinascimento del Libro, 1927. Contini, Gianfranco. Esercizi di lettura sopra autori contemporanei. Florence: Le Monnier, 1947.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Croce, Benedetto. Poesia popolare e poesia d'arte. Ban: Laterza, 1933. De Holanda, Francisco. Dialogos de Roma [1548]. Preface and notes by Manuel Mendes. Lisbon: Livraria Sa da Costa, 1955. De Tolnay, Charles. Michelangelo, 5 vols. Princeton: Prince­ ton University Press, 1943-1960. . Michelangelo: Sculptor, Painter, Architect. Prince­ ton: Princeton University Press, 1975. De Vecchi, Pier Luigi. "Studi sulla poesia di Michelangelo," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 80, vol. 140, fasc. 431 (3d trimester 1963), pp. 370-402. Di Pino, Guido. "Le 'Rime' di Michelangelo." In his Stile e umanita, pp. 101-119. Messina: D'Anna, 1957. . Vocazione e vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti. Turin: Edizioni RAI, 1965. Ferroni, Giulio, ed. Poesia italiana del Cinquecento. Milan: Garzanti, 1978. Ficino, Marsilio. Sopra Io amore overo Convito di Platone [1544]. Edited by Giuseppe Rensi. Lanciano: Carabba, 1914. Foscolo, Ugo. "Michelangelo" [1822]; "Poems of Michel Angelo" [1826]. In Edizione nazionale delle opere di U.F., vol. 10. Edited by C. Foligno (Saggi e discorsi critici). Florence: Le Monnier, 1953. Friedrich, Hugo. Epochen der italienischen Lyrik. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1964. Garin, Eugenio. Uumanesimo italiano. Bari: Laterza, 1965. Giannotti, Donato. Dialogi di D. G. de' giorni che Dante consumd nel cercare VInferno e 7 Purgatorio [1546]. Critical edition by Deodecio Redig de Campos. Flor­ ence: Sansoni, 1939. Girardi, Enzo Νοέ. Studi su Michelangiolo scrittore. Florence: Olschki, 1974. Greimas, Algirdas Julien. Semantique structurale. Paris: Larousse, 1966. Hallock, Anne. Michelangelo the Poet. Pacific Grove, Calif.: Page-Ficklin Publications, 1978.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hartt, Frederick. A History of Italian Renaissance Art. Lon­ don: Thames and Hudson, 1980. Hauser, Arnold. The Social History of Art, vol. 2: Renais­ sance, Mannerism, Baroque. New York: Vintage Books, 1957. Liebert, Robert S. Michelangelo: A Psychoanalytical Study of His Life and Images. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Lomazzo, Giovan Paolo. Trattato dell'arte della Pittura Scultura ed Architettura, in 7 libri [Venice, 1584]. Rome: Tipografia Gismondi, 1844. Lucente, Gregory L. "Lyric Tradition and the Desires of Ab•sence: Rudel, Dante, and Michelangelo ("Vorrei uoler")." The CanadianReview of Comparative Literature 10 (September 1983): 305-332. Mariani, Valerio. Poesia di Michelangelo. Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 1941. May, Frederick. "The Poetry of Michelangelo." In Altro Polo, a volume of Italian studies. Edited by Silvio Trambaiolo and Nerida Newbigin. Sydney: Frederick May Foun­ dation for Italian Studies, University of Sydney, 1978. Mendelsohn, Beatrice. Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi's Due Lezioni and Cinquecento Art Theory. Ann Arbor: U.M.I. Research Press, 1982. Montale, Eugenio. Michelangelo poeta. Edited and intro­ duced by Armando Brissoni. Bologna: Boni, 1975. Moses, Gavriel. "Philosophy and Mimesis in Michelangelo's Poems," Italianistica 10, no. 2 (May-August 1981). Muscetta, Carlo, and Daniele Ponchiroli, eds. Poesia del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento. Turin: Einaudi, 1959. Nyholm, Esther. Arie e teoria del Manierismo, vol. 1: Ars Naturans. Odense: Odense University Press, 1977. Panofsky, Erwin. "Idea," ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der alteren Kunsttheorie. Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1924. Papini, Giovanni. La vita di Michelangelo nella vita del suo tempo. Milan: Garzanti, 1949. English translation by

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Murnane, Michelangelo: His Life and His Era. New York: Dutton, 1952. Parronchi, Alessandro. "Michelangelo e Leopardi." In his Opere giovanili di Michelangelo III, Miscellanea michelangiolesca, pp. 267-87. Florence: Olschki, 1981. . "Spiritualita di Michelangelo: Per una interpretazione della Tomba di Giulio II," Michelangelo 9, nos. 38-39 (1982). Pater, Walter. The Renaissance, Studies in Art and Poetry [1893]. Edited, with textual and explanatory notes, by Donald L. Hill. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Petersson, Robert. The Art of Ecstasy—Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw. New York: Atheneum, 1970. Perry, Anthony. Erotic Spirituality—The Integrative Tradi­ tion from Leone Ebreo to John Donne. University: Uni­ versity of Alabama Press, 1980. Praz, Mario. The Flaming Heart, Essays on Crashaw, Machiavelli and Other Studies of the Relations between Italian and English Literature from Chaucer toT.S. Eliot. Gar­ den City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958. . Mnemosine—Parallelo tra la letteratura e Ie arti visive. Milan: Mondadori, 1971. . Il giardino dei sensi. Milan: Mondadori, 1975. . Fiori freschi. Milan: Garzanti, 1982. Prete, Antonio. "Sulla poesia di Michelangelo," Il piccolo Hans, rivista di analisi materialistica 36 (October-December 1982): 66-84. Quondam, Amedeo. La parola nel labirinto. Naples: Guida, 1975. . Problemi del manierismo. Naples: Guida, 1975. Raimondi, Ezio. Rinascimento inquieto. Palermo: Manfredi, 1965. Robb, Nesca A. Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance. London: Allen & Unwin, 1935. Romagnoli, Sergio. Le Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti. Padua: Liviana Editrice, 1965.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Salvini, Roberto. Michelangelo. Translated by Catherine Atthill. New York: Mayflower Books, 1981. Sckommodau, Hans. "Die Dichtungen Michelangelos," Romanische Forschungen 56 (1942): 49-104. Scrivano, Riccardo. Cultura e letteratura nel Cinquecento. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1966. Segel, Harold B. The Baroque Poem: A Comparative Survey. New York: Dutton, 1974. Shapiro, Marianne. Hieroglyph of Time: The Petrarchan Sestina. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980. Shearman, John. Mannerism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967. Slights, Camille Wells. The Casuistical Tradition in Shake­ speare, Donne, Herbert, and Milton. Princeton: Prince­ ton University Press, 1981. Steinberg, Leo. 'The Metaphors of Love and Birth in Mi­ chelangelo's Pietds." In Studies in Erotic Art. Edited by Theodore Bowie, pp. 231-85. New York: Basic Books, 1970. Summers, David. Michelangelo and the Language of Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Symonds, John Addington. The Life of Michelangelo Buo­ narroti, 2 vols. London: John C. Nimmo, 1893. Sypher, Wylie. Four Stages of Renaissance Style. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955. Ungaretti, Giuseppe. Vita d'un uomo—tutte Ie poesie. Edited by L. Piccioni. Milan: Mondadori, 1969. . Vtia d'un uomo—saggi e interventi. Edited by M. Diacono and L. Rebay. Milan: Mondadori, 1974. Varchi, Benedetto. Orazione funebre, fatta e recitata da Iui pubblicamente nell'essequie di Michelangelo Buonarroti in Firenze, nella Chiesa di San Lorenzo. Florence: Giunti, 1564 (Facsimile edition by Giunti Barbera, Flor­ ence, 1975). Vasari, Giorgio. La vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568. Edited by Paola Barocchi. Milan and Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1962.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Warnke, Frank. European Metaphysical Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961. Weise, Georg. "Manierismo e letteratura," Rivista di letterature moderne e comparate 13, nos. 1 and 2 (1960), pp. 6-52. Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1958. Wolfflin, Heinrich. Renaissance und Barock [1888]. Basel: Benno Schwabe & Co., 1961. . Die klassische Kunst: Eine Einfiihrung in die italienische Renaissance [1898], 9th ed. Basel and Stutt­ gart: Schwabe & Co. Verlag, 1968.

Index

adynata ("impossibilities"), 112 Alamanni, Luigi, 183n Alexander VI, Pope, 180n Alighieri, Dante, 8, 36, 43, 53, 90, 91, 125, 142, 183n, 185n, 191η, 192η, 196n, 197n, 201n; in rime petrose, 94, 103, 191n, 194n; in Divine Comedy for lex­ ical linkage between Love and God, 116-17; offering two alter­ native beginnings for same poem in Vita Nuova, 163; as example of medieval manner­ ism, 175-76 Altizer, Alma, 75, 112, 192n Angiolieri, Cecco, 7, 13 Arcadelt, Giacomo, 63 Archivio Buonarroti. See Laurenziana, Library Aretino, Pietro, 38, 89, 187n Aristotelian philosophy, 50; com­ pounded with Thomist theology, 54; compounded with Platonic aesthetics, 77; as aesthetics of mimesis, reversed, in madrigal G 241, 101; as theology com­ bined with Platonism in textual evolution of sonnet G 76, 152

astrology as structuring theme and autobiographical reference, 3637, 66 Bacchus, statue of in Bargello museum, 12, 18, 29 Barelli, Ettore, 12, 34, 72, 73, 117n, 191n, 197n Barocchi, Paola, 178n, 183n, 198n baroque style, 16, 66, 79-80; metaphysical, 77. See also Marinism Battisti, Eugenio, 188n Baudelaire, Charles, 30 Beatrice (Dante's beloved), 75 Beccadelli, Archbishop Lodovico,

120 Bellori, Giovan Pietro, 188n Bembo, Pietro, and Bembismo, 12, 57, 129, 175, 189n Berni, Francesco, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 22, 31, 175, 178n, 179n Bernini, Gianlorenzo, 56, 186n Binni, Walter, 112, 191n, 200n Blake, William, 167 blasphemy, implicit or potential, 37

INDEX

Brandes, Georg, 184η, 185η, 186η, 197η Briganti, Giuliano, 188η Brissoni, Armando, 185η British Museum, 139 Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano), 188η Bruno, Giordano, 22 Buonarroti, Buonarroto (Michelan­ gelo's favorite brother, father of Lionardo), 80, 185n Buonarroti, Lionardo (Michelange­ lo's nephew), 20 Buonarroti, Michelangelo, Jr. (Mi­ chelangelo's grand nephew), 57 burlesque verse, 3-26, 39. See also Quattrocento Florentine folksiness; and saturnalian reversal canto carnascialesco (Carnival song, as black humor), 20ff. Captives (I Prigioni, Michelange­ lo's unfinished statues), 82 Carnesecchi, Msgr. Pietro, 120 Castiglione, Count Baldassare, 174

casuistry, ingrained in religious and courtly life of the 16th cen­ tury, in mannerist art, and in some of Michelangelo's writing, 168, 173, 193n Catholic Reform, as envisaged by Juan Valdes, Vittoria Colonna, and their circle, 57, 119, 120 Cavalcanti, Guido, 74, 75 Cavalieri, Tommaso, 5, 22, 2729, 34-36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46-51, 55-56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63-65, 66, 67, 69, 91, 106, 107, 111, 114, 120, 137, 152, 154, 184n, 187n Caws, Miiry Ann, 199n Cellini, Benvenuto, 42, 84 Ceriello, G. Rodolfo, 80, 187n, 192n

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 39 Christ, 37, 38, 40; as god of terribilita, 46; as paradigm of beauty, 48; as Hellenic, Apol­ lonian figure in Bargello and in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, 50; as sudden interlocutor, 59; hov­ ering, blinding godhead in Paul­ ine Chapel fresco, 71; vying with Plato in Michelangelo's mind, 115; dominant addressee in Michelangelo's last poems, 118; stern judge in Last Judg­ ment and in some poems, 119; embracing the sinner(s) from the Cross in Sonnet G 285, 123-26, 131, 132, 135, 153 Clements, Robert, 10, 12, 19, 28, 74, 92-93, 156, 177n, 178n, 180η, 183η, 184n, 187n, 192n, 193η, 194n, 199n, 202n Codex Vaticanus. See Codice Vaticano Latino 3211 Codice Vaticano Latino 3211, 105, 111, 129, 130, 135, 136, 141 Colonna, Vittoria, 5, 17, 19, 20, 34, 35, 42, 44, 55, 57, 62, 6692, 93, 97-99, 102-103, 104111, 112, 114, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 157, 190n, 191n, 192η, 197n, 199n, 200n Concettismo, as artifice, 102-103; coincident with concept, 103; resulting in poetically effective conceit, 158; anticipating Gongora, 191n Condivi, Ascanio, 6, 8, 42, 178n, 180n Contini, Gianfranco, 190n contrapposto, 89 Council of Trent, 57, 187n, 197n. See also Counter-Reformation Counter-Reformation, 56, 88,

INDEX 119, 189n. See also Council of

De Vecchi, Pier Luigi, 6 6 , 178n, 186n

Trtnt Crashaw, Richard, 56, 186n Cummings, Edward Estlin, 4 8 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 176, 188n, 202n

da Fabriano, Gilio, 187 Daniel, Arnaut, 191n Dante. See Alighieri, Dante da Pistoia, Giovanni, 4 , 5, 7, 9 ,

20 d'Argenta, Piero, 186n da Rimini, Francesca, 9 0 , 117 da Siena, Marco, 181n d'Aubigne, Agrippa, 192n David, statue of, 11 da Volterra, Daniele, 187n death ("Morte"), semantically differentiated as word in Michelangelo's middle to late poetry, 169-71

diachronic progression (of text) changed into a synchronic order, 160, 1 6 3 - 6 6 Diacono, Mario, 199n dialectic of levare (to take out) and pone (to put in), 8 0 - 8 1 . See also maieutic sculpture; and sculpture as spiritual midwifery Diehl, Patrick S., 191n d i f f i c u l t (challenge), 8 5 , 157, 171 di Filippo, Rustico, 7 Dionysian fervor (at the end of madrigal G 241 for Vittoria Colonna), 102 Di Pino, Guido, 52, 180n, 186n dissonance, prevalent over melody in Michelangelo's verse, 105 Dolce, Ludovico, 183n Dolce Stil Novo, 51, 58, 8 9 domna (Provencal lady), 68, 190n. See also Provengal tradition donna bella e crudele. See fair

de Holanda, Francisco, 69, 190n dei Bracci, Cecchino, 18, 19, 28, 56, 6 6 , 70, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 198n, 201n de la Cruz, Sor Juana Ines, 19293n

and cruel lady Donne, John, 4 9 , 88, 156, 183n, 185n, 192n Du Guillet, Pernette, 8 8

Delia Casa, Msgr. Giovanni, 61 della Mirandola, Pico, 6 , 178n Del Piombo, Sebastiano, 20, 112, 175, 178n, 179n Del Poggio, Febo, 44, 65, 137 Del R i c c i o , Luigi, 5, 18, 19, 20, 56, 5 7 , 6 6 , 6 7 , 112, 129, 137, 142, 155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 165, 198n, 199n, 201n De' Medici, Duke Alessandro, 18 De' Medici, Lorenzo, The Magnificent, 5, 6 , 12, 13, 18, 28, 6 4 , 65, 174, 178n, 180n De Tolnay, Charles, 3 7 , 119, 178n, 184n, 187n, 190n, 192n, 197n de Valdes, Juan, 120

Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 113 Elizabethan foreshadowings, 17374 emblem books, 56 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 8 6 Eternal Feminine, 7 4 eye, as tactile organ, 8 8 - 8 9 fair and cruel lady (donna bella e crudele), as negative counterpart of Vittoria Colonna, 6 9 71ff. Fattucci, Father Giovan Francesco, 119, 173, 197-98n fecal imagery, 13, 17, 21

215

INDEX

Ferroni, Giulio, 199η Ficino, Marsilio, 6, 22, 23, 27, 36, 46, 55, 58, 66, 82, 86, 87, 88, 115, 158, 178η, 183η, 186η, 187η, 190η; author of Theologia platonica and Sopra Io amore overo Convito di Platone, 152, 200η fide sola. See salvation by faith alone figura serpentinata (serpentine form), 11, 89, 157, 190n fin'amor (refined love). See Provengal tradition fire icon and emblem, 32-33, 36, 38-39, 108-109, 113 Florentine republic, 18, 43 Frey, Carl, 4, 42, 55, 71, 79, 105, 124, 130, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 155, 160, 161, 163, 166, 167, 169, 178η, 191n, 198n, 199n Friedrich, Hugo, 178n fugue-like insistence on the word "morte" (death) and cognates or assonants in madrigal G 41, 169 furia della figura, 136. See also fury of form fury of form, 137, and Chapter 3, passim. See also furia della figura; and figura serpentinata Galassi, Jonathan, 185n Ganymede (Michelangelo's draw­ ing), 37 Giannotti, Donato, 5, 20, 42, 91, 112, 115, 129, 137, 141, 166, 185n, 198n Gilbert, Creighton, 197n Giovanna (Cavalcanti's beloved), 75 Girardi, Enzo Noe, 7, 11, 34, 40, 44, 55, 64, 71, 73, 80, 103,

115, 133, 134, 135, 137, 139, 141, 142, 145, 147, 150, 151, 152, 155, 160, 161, 163, 166, 177η, 180η, 183n, 191n, 193n, 196η, 197η, 198n, 199n, 202n Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 88-89, 192n Gongora, Luis Argote de, 156,

200n Greco, El (Domenicos Theotocopulos), 188n Greimas, Algirdas Julien, 23, 183n Guasti, Cesare, 4, 55, 105, 150, 163, 166, 177n, 201n Hallock, Anne, 60, 67, 137, 186n, 187n Hauser, Arnold, 39, 188n, 189n Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 39 Haydn, Hiram, 189n Heroet, Antoine, 88 Hocke, Gustav Rene, 188n Holroyd, C., 190n homosexuality, 58 Inquisition, 120 integrative tradition (in Anthony Perry's sense), 24, 88, 183n Julius II, Pope, 7, 8, 12, 82, 83,

180n katastrophe (climactic inversion) in poem G 119, 173 Kennedy, X. J., 196n Labe, Louise, 88 Landino, Cristoforo, 6 Lanzi, Luigi, 188n Last Judgment (in Sistine Chapel), 37, 39, 40, 91, 111, 117 Laura (Petrarch's beloved), 59, 75, 159 Laurenziana library in Florence

INDEX

(Biblioteca Laurenziana), 4, 20, 44, 59, 67, 129, 138, 155, 161, 177n Leone Ebreo (Judah Abravanel), 88, 183n Liebert, Robert, 28, 37, 183n, 184n, 187n Lincei, Accademia Nazionale dei, 189n Linseott, Robert N., 197n Lomazzo, Giovan Paolo, 11, 89, 136, 180-83n Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 131 love as dispossession and ecstasy, 51-55 Lucente, Gregory, 185n Lucifer, 37 Luther, Martin, 119, 187n Madonna-Medusa syndrome, in medieval poetry and in Michel­ angelo's, 75, 78 Madonna Pietra (in Dante's rime petrose), 94 maieutic sculpture, 78, 80, 82. See also sculpture as spiritual midwifery Malatesta, Paolo, 90, 117 Mallarme, Stephane, 145 Mancini Attavanti, Fausta, 19 manichean implications in con­ ception of divine love, rejected by Michelangelo and Dante, 117 mannerist style, in poetry and in visual arts, 12, 39, 89, 116, 157; in relation to polyphonic music, 63-64, 86; meandering ratiocination of, 73; as art of excess, 167-69; Petrarchist for­ mal emphasis of, 174; Dantesque, 175-76; problem of def­ inition, 187-90n. See also casuistry; figura serpentinata;

and Petrarchism Maraini, Antonio, 178n Mariani, Valerio, 74, 92-93, 191n, 200n Marinism, 79; as poetics of meraviglia, 80. See also baroque style Marsyas myth, 28, 29, 38 maud.it poetry, in early draft of madrigal G 81, 142 Mendes, Manuel, 190n metaphysical style. See baroque metempsychosis myth, 40, 118 midons (masculine appellative of Provengal lady), 68, 190n Milanesi, Gaetano, 198n Montale, Eugenio, 25, 42, 127, 185n Moses, Gavriel, 82, 192n Murnane, L., 185n narrative dimension of Michelan­ gelo's verse work, 56ff. (Cavalieri sequence); 99 (Vittoria Colonna sequence) Night (La Notte), statue in Medici Chapel at St. Lorenzo, 39; four sonnets of Michelangelo to, 66 Norden, Heinz, 184n Ochino, Bernardino, 120 old man persona, 85-86, 93, 11112, 126-27 outrance of the word, 169 Pallas Athena, 67 Panofsky, Erwin, 178n, 189n Papini, Giovanni, 42, 185n, 191n, 198n Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola),

188n Parronchi, Alessandro, 180n Pascal, Blaise, reference to spirit­ ual testament found on him after death, 113

INDEX

Perini, Gherardo, 44 Perry, Anthony, 24, 88, 183n Perseus, statue of, as described in casting process by Cellini, 84 Petersson, Robert, 186n Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) and Petrarchism, 8, 12, 16, 27, 28, 31, 32, 50, 51, 56, 59, 65, 66, 70, 74, 75, 76, 89, 108, 111, 130, 159, 172, 175, 176, 189n, 201n, 202n Phaethon (drawing by Michelan­ gelo), 37, 60 Piccioni, Leone, 199n Pietas, late sculptures by Michel­ angelo, 82, 123 Pino, Paolo, 183n PIatonism, 5, 6, 16, 27, 40, 43, 50, 66, 88, 89, 106, 113, 115, 152, 153; doctrine of love as sublimation, as in Symposium, also between men, 15, 23, 2936, 44, 47, 48; integrative tra­ dition of, 24; theology of, 4647; astrological reference of to sun-moon polarization, 54-55; as rationalization, 57; as philos­ ophy, 62; aesthetic idea of, compounded with Aristotle's, 77, 81; as Socratic spiritual ob­ stetrics, 82; combined with Stoicism, 155; as myth, 175. See also Ficino, Marsilio; and maieutic sculpture poems by Michelangelo discussed here (numbered after Girardi edition), G 5, 3-11; G 20, 12; G 4, 12; G 54, 12-18; G 8, 1415; G 44, 14-15; G 267, 19-26; G 94, 27-29; G 4, 28; G 97, 29-37; G 20, 30; G 8, 41-42; G 87, 44-49; G 88, 50-51; G 89, 52-55; G 81, 60-61; G 91, 6263; G 93, 63-64; G 95, 65; G 98, 65-66; G 235, 67; G 111, 68; G 114, 71-72; G 113, 72;

G 121, 72-73; G 236, 75-76; G 151, 76-78; G 152, 78-82; G 46, 79-80; G 153, 83-84; G 158, 85-86; G 166, 86-90; G 165, 90-91; G 164, 91-92; G 172, 92-95; G 239, 95-99; G 241, 100-102; G 242, 102-103; G 264, 103-106; G 92, 106; G 266, 107-110; G 97, 107-108; G 268, 110-11; G 270, 111-12; G 274, 113-14; G 276, 115-16; G 302, 116-17; G 283, 117-18; G 284, 118-19; G 289, 119; G 161, 120; G 162; 121-23; G 285, 123-27, 128-36; G 43, 125; G 246, 137; G 81, 13750; G 76, 150-55; G 201, 15657; G 120, 157-58; G 199, 158; G 200, 158; G 194, 15859; G 193, 159-60; G 168, 160-63; G 132 and G 133, 163-66; G 118, 167-69; G 22, 169-70; G 86, 170; G 119, 171-73; G 124, 174 Poggi, G., 198n Pole, Cardinal Reginald, 120 Poliziano, Angelo (Angelo Ambrogini da Montepulciano), 6, 12, 28, 59, 64, 65, 174 polyphonic music (esp. as mir­ rored in verse structure). See mannerist style Pontormo, Jacopo [Carucci da],

188n Pound, Ezra Loomis, 26 Praz, Mario, 89, 193n Promethean attitude, 36, 97, 114 Protestant conscience, Pauline leanings of, comp. with Michel­ angelo's, 119 Provengal tradition of love poetry, 17, 70, 74, 75, 190n, 191n psychoanalytical approaches, 37, 184n Pythagorean myth. See metempsychosis

INDEX

Quarles, Francis, 56 Quattrocento folksiness, 6, 12, 17, 18, 26, 28, 49. See also burlesque verse Quondam, Amedeo, 189n Rabelais, Frangois, 16 Ramsden, Ε. H., 198n Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), 188n Rebay, Luciano, 199n Rensi, Giuseppe, 183n Riario, Cardinal Raffaele, 180n Ristori, R., 198n Romeo, 14 Ronsard, Pierre de, 96-97, 196n Rosso Fiorentino (Giovan Battista di Jacopo di Gasparre), 188n Rubens, Peter Paul, 188n Rudel, Jaufre, 185n salvation by faith alone, envisaged by Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna's circle as well as by Luther, 119 Satan and the fall from Eden, in draft III of madrigal G 81, 144 saturnalian reversal of roles, 6, 20, 21, 25, 26 Saul. See St. Paul (in the Vatican Pauline Chapel fresco) Savonarola, fra Girolamo, 21, 47, 169, 180n, 185n Sceve, Maurice, 88, 145 sculpture as spiritual midwifery, 76-84, 95-103. See also maieutic sculpture Shakespeare, William, 39, 52, 88, 174 Shapiro, Marianne, 202n Shearman, John, 86, 167, 187n, 188n, 189n, 192n Sistine Chapel, 3, 8, 10, 11, 22, 25, 29, 46, 88, 178n, 187n Slights, Camille Wells, 193n Socrates and spiritual obstetrics, 82. See also Platonism

spiritual polarization in Michelan­ gelo, 47 sprezzatura, in Castiglione's sense of graceful irregularity, 157, 171 Stampa, Gaspara, 56, 186η St. Bartholomew, in Last Judg­ ment, 28, 37 St. Maria della Vittoria, church of, in Rome, 56 Stevens, Wallace, 102, 196-97n St. Maria d'Aracoeli, church of,

160 Stoic ideas, combined with Pla­ tonic, 155 St. Paul, portrayed with Michelan­ gelo's features in Pauline Chapel fresco, 71; temporary blindness of autobiographically depicted, 123; relation to au­ thor's poetry, ibid. St. Petronius Cathedral, in Bo­ logna, 83 St. Teresa de Avila, 56, 169, 187n Sturm-und-Drang attitude in earli­ est draft of G 81, 141, 142 suicide, theme of, 40 Summers, David, 183n Swift, Jonathan, 16 Symonds, John Addington, 178n, 187n syntactical ellipse, 200n syntactical fragmentation, 200n syntactical mimesis, through alter­ nation of rhythms, 102; through straining delay of phrase com­ pletion, 157-58 Sypher, Wylie, 188n, 189n

Testori, Giovanni, 72, 156, 177n, 191n, 200n textual elaboration of one poem resulting in two independent poems, 163-66ff.

INDEX textual gemination, in Michelangelo and Ungaretti. See textual elaboration, etc. Tityus (drawing by Michelangelo),

60 Trask, Willard, 202n trobar clus (closed, hermetic style of verse writing in Provencal poetry), 191n troubadour. See Provencal tradition Tudor court, Italianate, 174

Vasari, Giorgio, 6, 42, 119, 124, 129, 188n, 195n, 199n Venus, 67 Vico, Giambattista, 101 Virgil (Publius Virgilius Maro), 117, 195n Virgin Mary, 37, 38, 67. See also Madonna-Medusa syndrome visual art, thematic and technical relation of to Michelangelo's poetry. See mannerist style; baroque style; and maieutic sculpture

Ulysses, 192n underground man, or voice, in Michelangelo's burlesque poems, 7, 8, 9. See also saturnalian reversal of roles; and burlesque verse Ungaretti, Giuseppe, 141, 199n Urbino (Michelangelo's servant and friend), 18, 38

Yeats, William Butler, 25, 35, 127

Varchi, Benedetto, 76, 81, 83, 183n

Zampa, Giorgio, 185n

Weise, Georg, 188n, 189n Wind, Edgar, 28, 183n Wolfflin, Heinrich, 3, 4, 177n, 188n

220

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Cambon, Glauco. Michelangelo's poetry. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564— Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PQ4615. B6C3 1985 851'.4 85-42679 ISBN 0-691-06648-5 (alk. paper)