My translation of Michael Angelo's sonnets has been made from Signor
Cesare Guasti's edition of the autograph, first given to the world in
1863.[1] This masterpiece of laborious and minute scholarship is based
upon a collation of the various manuscripts preserved in the Casa
Buonarroti at Florence with the Vatican and other Codices. It adheres
to the original orthography of Michael Angelo, and omits no fragment of
his indubitable compositions.[2] Signor Guasti prefaces the text he has
so carefully prepared, with a discourse upon the poetry of Michael
Angelo and a description of the manuscripts. To the poems themselves he
adds a prose paraphrase, and prints upon the same page with each
composition the version published by Michelangelo Buonarroti in
1623.[3]
Before the publication of this volume, all studies of Michael Angelo's
poetry, all translations made of it, and all hypotheses deduced from
the sculptor's verse in explanation of his theory or his practice as an
artist, were based upon the edition of 1623. It will not be superfluous
to describe what that edition was, and how its text differed from that
now given to the light, in order that the relation of my own English
version to those which have preceded it may be rightly understood.[4]
Michael Angelo seems to have entertained no thought of printing his
poems in his lifetime. He distributed them freely among his friends, of
whom Sebastiano del Piombo, Luigi del Riccio, Donato Giannotti,
Vittoria Colonna, and Tommaso de' Cavalieri were in this respect the
most favoured. In course of time some of these friends, partly by the
gift of the originals, and partly by obtaining copies, formed more or
less complete collections; and it undoubtedly occurred to more than one
to publish them. Ascanio Condivi, at the close of his biography, makes
this announcement: 'I hope ere long to make public some of his sonnets
and madrigals, which I have been long collecting, both from himself and
others who possessed them, with a view to proving to the world the
force of his inventive genius and the beauty of the thoughts produced
by that divine spirit.' Condivi's promise was not fulfilled. With the
exception of two or three pieces printed by Vasari, and the extracts
quoted by Varchi in his 'Lezione,'[5] the poems of Michael Angelo
remained in manuscript for fifty-nine years after his death. The most
voluminous collection formed part of the Buonarroti archives; but a
large quantity preserved by Luigi del Riccio, and from him transferred
to Fulvio Orsini, had passed into the Vatican Library, when
Michelangelo the younger conceived the plan of publishing his
granduncle's poetry. Michelangelo obtained leave to transcribe the
Vatican MSS. with his own hand; and after taking pains to collate all
the autographs and copies in existence, he set himself to compare their
readings, and to form a final text for publication. Here, however,
began what we may call the Tragedy of his Rifacimento. The more he
studied his great ancestor's verses, the less he liked or dared to edit
them unaltered. Some of them expressed thoughts and sentiments
offensive to the Church. In some the Florentine patriot spoke over-boldly.
Others exposed their author to misconstruction on the score of
personal morality.[6] All were ungrammatical, rude in versification,
crabbed and obscure in thought--the rough-hewn blockings-out of poems
rather than finished works of art, as it appeared to the scrupulous,
decorous, elegant, and timorous Academician of a feebler age. While
pondering these difficulties, and comparing the readings of his many
manuscripts, the thought occurred to Michelangelo that, between leaving
the poems unpublished and printing them in all their rugged boldness,
lay the middle course of reducing them to smoothness of diction,
lucidity of meaning, and propriety of sentiment.[7] In other words, he
began, as Signer Guasti pithily describes his method, 'to change halves
of lines, whole verses, ideas: if he found a fragment, he completed it:
if brevity involved the thought in obscurity, he amplified: if the
obscurity seemed incurable, he amputated: for superabundant wealth of
conception he substituted vacuity; smoothed asperities; softened
salient lights.' The result was that a medley of garbled phrases,
additions, alterations, and sophistications was foisted on the world as
the veritable product of the mighty sculptor's genius. That
Michelangelo meant well to his illustrious ancestor is certain. That he
took the greatest pains in executing his ungrateful and disastrous task
is no less clear.[8] But the net result of his meddlesome benevolence
has been that now for two centuries and a half the greatest genius of
the Italian Renaissance has worn the ill-fitting disguise prepared for
him by a literary 'breeches-maker.' In fact, Michael Angelo the poet
suffered no less from his grandnephew than Michael Angelo the fresco
painter from his follower Daniele da Volterra.
Nearly all Michael Angelo's sonnets express personal feelings, and by
far the greater number of them were composed after his sixtieth year.
To whom they were addressed, we only know in a few instances. Vittoria
Colonna and Tommaso de' Cavalieri, the two most intimate friends of his
old age in Rome, received from him some of the most pathetically
beautiful of his love-poems. But to suppose that either the one or the
other was the object of more than a few well-authenticated sonnets
would be hazardous. Nothing is more clear than that Michael Angelo
worshipped Beauty in the Platonic spirit, passing beyond its personal
and specific manifestations to the universal and impersonal. This
thought is repeated over and over again in his poetry; and if we bear
in mind that he habitually regarded the loveliness of man or woman as a
sign and symbol of eternal and immutable beauty, we shall feel it of
less importance to discover who it was that prompted him to this or
that poetic utterance. That the loves of his youth were not so tranquil
as those of his old age, appears not only from the regrets expressed in
his religious verses, but also from one or two of the rare sonnets
referable to his manhood.
The love of beauty, the love of Florence, and the love of Christ, are
the three main motives of his poetry. This is not the place to discuss
at length the nature of his philosophy, his patriotism, or his
religion; to enquire how far he retained the early teaching of Ficino
and Savonarola; or to trace the influence of Dante and the Bible on his
mind. I may, however, refer my readers who are interested in these
questions, to the Discourse of Signor Guasti, the learned essay of Mr.
J.E. Taylor, and the refined study of Mr. W.H. Pater. My own views will
be found expressed in the third volume of my 'Renaissance in Italy';
and where I think it necessary, I shall take occasion to repeat them in
the notes appended to my translation.