THE SONNETS

OF

MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI

AND

TOMMASO CAMPANELLA

NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME TRANSLATED INTO RHYMED ENGLISH

BY

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

AUTHOR OF 'RENAISSANCE IN ITALY' 'STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS' 'SKETCHES IN ITALY AND GREECE' 'INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF DANTE'

[Greek: Chruseon chalkeia]

1878

_TO

S.F.A._

PREFATORY NOTE.

After some deliberation, and at the risk of offending the sensibility of scholars, I have adopted the old English spelling of Michael Angelo's name, feeling that no orthographical accuracy can outweigh the associations implied in that familiar title. Michael Angelo has a place among the highest with Homer and Titian, with Virgil and Petrarch, with Raphael and Paul; nor do I imagine that any alteration for the better would be effected by substituting for these time-honoured names Homêros and Tiziano, Vergilius and Petrarca, Raffaello and Paulus.

I wish here to express my heartiest thanks to Signore Pasquale Villari for valuable assistance kindly rendered in the interpretation of some difficult passages of Campanella, and to Signore V. de Tivoli for calling my attention to the sonnet of Michael Angelo deciphered by him on the back of a drawing in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford.

Portions both of the Introduction and the Translations forming this volume, have already appeared in the 'Contemporary Review' and the 'Cornhill Magazine.'

DAVOS PLATZ:

Dec. 1877.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION

PROEM

MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS

CAMPANELLA'S SONNETS

NOTES TO MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS

NOTES TO CAMPANELLA'S SONNETS

APPENDICES

INTRODUCTION.

I.

It is with diffidence that I offer a translation of Michael Angelo's sonnets, for the first time completely rendered into English rhyme, and that I venture on a version of Campanella's philosophical poems. My excuse, if I can plead any for so bold an attempt, may be found in this—that, so far as I am aware, no other English writer has dealt with Michael Angelo's verses since the publication of his autograph; while Campanella's sonnets have hitherto been almost utterly unknown.

Something must be said to justify the issue of poems so dissimilar in a single volume. Michael Angelo and Campanella represent widely sundered, though almost contemporaneous, moments in the evolution of the Italian genius. Michael Angelo was essentially an artist, living in the prime of the Renaissance. Campanella was a philosopher, born when the Counter-Reformation was doing all it could to blight the free thought of the sixteenth century; and when the modern spirit of exact enquiry, in a few philosophical martyrs, was opening a new stage for European science. The one devoted all his mental energies to the realisation of beauty: the other strove to ascertain truth. The one clung to Ficino's dream of Platonising Christianity: the other constructed for himself a new theology, founded on the conception of God immanent in nature. Michael Angelo expressed the aspirations of a solitary life dedicated to the service of art, at a time when art received the suffrage and the admiration of all Italy. Campanella gave utterance to a spirit, exiled and isolated, misunderstood by those with whom he lived, at a moment when philosophy was hunted down as heresy and imprisoned as treason to the public weal.

The marks of this difference in the external and internal circumstances of the two poets might be multiplied indefinitely. Yet they had much in common. Both stood above their age, and in a sense aloof from it. Both approached poetry in the spirit of thinkers bent upon extricating themselves from the trivialities of contemporary literature. The sonnets of both alike are contributions to philosophical poetry in an age when the Italians had lost their ancient manliness and energy. Both were united by the ties of study and affection to the greatest singer of their nation, Dante, at a time when Petrarch, thrice diluted and emasculated, was the Phoebus of academies and coteries.

This common antagonism to the degenerate genius of Italian literature is the link which binds Michael Angelo, the veteran giant of the Renaissance, to Campanella, the audacious Titan of the modern age.

II.

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.

III.

Michael Angelo's madrigals and sonnets were eagerly sought for during his lifetime. They formed the themes of learned academical discourses, and won for him the poet's crown in death. Upon his tomb the Muse of Song was carved in company with Sculpture, Architecture, and Painting. Since the publication of the rifacimento in 1623, his verses have been used among the testi di lingua by Italians, and have been studied in the three great languages of Europe. The fate of Campanella's philosophical poems has been very different. It was owing to a fortunate chance that they survived their author; and until the year 1834 they were wholly and entirely unknown in Italy. The history of their preservation is so curious that I cannot refrain from giving some account of it, before proceeding to sketch so much of Campanella's life and doctrine as may be necessary for the understanding of his sonnets.

The poems were composed during Campanella's imprisonment at Naples; and from internal evidence there is good reason to suppose that the greater part of them were written at intervals in the first fourteen years of the twenty-five he passed in confinement.[9] In the descriptive catalogue of his own works, the philosopher mentions seven books of sonnets and canzoni, which he called 'Le Cantiche.'[10] Whether any of these would have been printed but for a mere accident is doubtful. A German gentleman, named Tobia Adami, who is supposed to have been a Court-Counsellor at Weimar, after travelling through Greece, Syria, and Palestine, in company with a young friend called Rodolph von Bunau, visited Campanella in his dungeon. A close intimacy sprang up between them, and Adami undertook to publish several works of the philosopher in testimony of his admiration. Among these were 'Le Cantiche.' Instead, however, of printing the poems in extenso, he made a selection, choosing those apparently which took his fancy, and which, in his opinion, threw most light on Campanella's philosophical theories. It is clear that he neglected the author's own arrangement, since there is no trace of the division into seven books. What proportion the selection bore to the whole bulk of the MS. seems to me uncertain, though the latest editor asserts that it formed only a seventh part.[11] The manuscript itself is lost, and Adami's edition of the specimens is all that now remains as basis for the text of Campanella's poems.

This first edition was badly printed in Germany on very bad paper, without the name of press or place. Besides the poems, it contained a brief prose commentary by the editor, the value of which is still very great, since we have the right to suppose that Adami's explanations embodied what he had received by word of mouth from Campanella. The little book bore this title:—'Scelta d' alcune poesie filosofiche di Settimontano Squilla cavate da' suo' libri detti La Cantica, con l'esposizione, stampato nell' anno MDCXXII.' The pseudonym Squilla is a pun upon Campanella's name, since both Campana and Squilla mean a bell; while Settimontano contains a quaint allusion to the fact that the philosopher's skull was remarkable for seven protuberances.[12] A very few copies of the unpretending little volume were printed; and none of these seem to have found their way into Italy, though it is possible that they had a certain circulation in Germany. At any rate there is reason to suppose that Leibnitz was not unacquainted with the poems, while Herder, in the Renaissance of German literature, published free translations from a few of the sonnets in his 'Adrastea.'

To this circumstance we owe the reprint of 1834, published at Lugano by John Gaspar Orelli, the celebrated Zurich scholar. Early in his youth Orelli was delighted with the German version made by Herder; and during his manhood, while residing as Protestant pastor at Bergamo, he used his utmost endeavours to procure a copy of the original. In his preface to the reprint he tells us that these efforts were wholly unsuccessful through a period of twenty-five years. He applied to all his literary friends, among whom he mentions the ardent Ugo Foscolo and the learned Mazzuchelli; but none of these could help him. He turned the pages of Crescimbeni, Quadrio, Gamba, Corniani, Tiraboschi, weighty with enormous erudition—and only those who make a special study of Italian know how little has escaped their scrutiny—but found no mention of Campanella as a poet. At last, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, he received the long-coveted little quarto volume from Wolfenbuttel in the north of Germany. The new edition which Orelli gave to the press at Lugano has this title:—'Poesie Filosofiche di Tommaso Campanella pubblicate per la prima volta in Italia da Gio. Gaspare Orelli, Professore all' Università di Zurigo. Lugano, 1834.' The same text has been again reprinted at Turin, in 1854, by Alessandro d'Ancona, together with some of Campanella's minor works and an essay on his life and writings. This third edition professes to have improved Orelli's punctuation and to have rectified his readings. But it still leaves much to be desired on the score of careful editorship. Neither Orelli nor D'Ancona has done much to clear up the difficulties of the poems—difficulties in many cases obviously due to misprints and errors of the first transcriber; while in one or two instances they allow patent blunders to pass uncorrected. In the sonnet entitled 'A Dio' (D'Ancona, vol. i. p. 102), for example, bocca stands for buca in a place where sense and rhyme alike demand the restitution of the right word.

At no time could the book have hoped for many readers. Least of all would it have found them among the Italians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to whom its energetic language and unfamiliar conceptions would have presented insuperable difficulties. Between Dante and Alfieri no Italian poet except Michael Angelo expressed so much deep thought and feeling in phrases so terse, and with originality of style so daring; and even Michael Angelo is monotonous in the range of his ideas and uniform in his diction, when compared with the indescribable violence and vigour of Campanella. Campanella borrows little by way of simile or illustration from the outer world, and he never falls into the commonplaces of poetic phraseology. His poems exhibit the exact opposite of the Petrarchistic or the Marinistic mannerism. Each sonnet seems to have been wrenched alive and palpitating from the poet's heart. There is no smoothness, no gradual unfolding of a theme, no rhetorical exposition, no fanciful embroidery, no sweetness of melodic cadence, in his masculine art of poetry. Brusque, rough, violent in transition, leaping from the sublime to the ridiculous—his poems owe their elevation to the intensity of their feeling, the nobleness and condensation of their thought, the energy and audacity of their expression, their brevity, sincerity, and weight of sentiment. Campanella had an essentially combative intellect. He was both a poet and a philosopher militant. He stood alone, making war upon the authority of Aristotle in science, of Machiavelli in state-craft, and of Petrarch in art, taking the fortresses of phrase by storm, and subduing the hardest material of philosophy to the tyranny of his rhymes. Plebeian saws, salient images, dry sentences of metaphysical speculation, logical summaries, and fiery tirades are hurled together— half crude and cindery scoriae, half molten metal and resplendent ore— from the volcano of his passionate mind. Such being the nature of Campanella's style, when in addition it is remembered that his text is sometimes hopelessly corrupt and his allusions obscure, the difficulties offered by his sonnets to the translator will be readily conceived.

IV.

At the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, philosophy took a new point of departure among the Italians, and all the fundamental ideas which have since formed the staple of modern European systems were anticipated by a few obscure thinkers. It is noticeable that the States of Naples, hitherto comparatively inert in the intellectual development of Italy, furnished the five writers who preceded Bacon, Leibnitz, Schelling, and Comte. Telesio of Cosenza, Bruno of Nola, Campanella of Stilo, Vanini and Vico of Naples are the chief among these novi homines or pioneers of modern thought. The characteristic point of this new philosophy was an unconditional return to Nature as the source of knowledge, combined with a belief in the intuitive forces of the human reason: so that from the first it showed two sides or faces to the world—the one positive, scientific, critical, and analytical; the other mystical, metaphysical, subjective. Modern materialism and modern idealism were both contained in the audacious guesses of Bruno and Campanella; nor had the time arrived for clearly separating the two strains of thought, or for attempting a systematic synthesis of knowledge under one or the other head.

The men who led this weighty intellectual movement burned with the passionate ardour of discoverers, the fiery enthusiasm of confessors. They stood alone, sustained but little by intercourse among themselves, and wholly misunderstood by the people round them. Italy, sunk in sloth, priest-ridden, tyrant-ridden, exhausted with the unparalleled activity of the Renaissance, besotted with the vices of slavery and slow corruption, had no ears for spirit-thrilling prophecy. The Church, terrified by the Reformation, when she chanced to hear those strange voices sounding through 'the blessed mutter of the mass,' burned the prophets. The State, represented by absolute Spain, if it listened to them at all, flung them into prison. To both Church and State there was peril in the new philosophy; for the new philosophy was the first birth-cry of the modern genius, with all the crudity and clearness, the brutality and uncompromising sincerity of youth. The Church feared Nature. The State feared the People. Nature and the People—those watchwords of modern Science and modern Liberty—were already on the lips of the philosophers.

It was a philosophy armed, errant, exiled; a philosophy in chains and solitary; at war with society, authority, opinion; self-sustained by the prescience of ultimate triumph, and invincible through the sheer force of passionate conviction. The men of whom I speak were conscious of Pariahdom, and eager to be martyred in the glorious cause. 'A very Proteus is the philosopher,' says Pomponazzo: 'seeking to penetrate the secrets of God, he is consumed with ceaseless cares; he forgets to thirst, to hunger, to sleep, to eat; he is derided of all men; he is held for a fool and irreligious person; he is persecuted by inquisitors; he becomes a gazing-stock to the common folk. These are the gains of the philosopher; these are his guerdon. Pomponazzo's words were prophetic. Of the five philosophers whom I mentioned, Vanini was burned as an atheist, Bruno was burned, and Campanella was imprisoned for a quarter of a century. Both Bruno and Campanella were Dominican friars. Bruno was persecuted by the Church, and burned for heresy. Campanella was persecuted by both Church and State, and was imprisoned on the double charge of sedition and heresy. Dormitantium animarum excubitor was the self-given title of Bruno. Nunquam tacebo was the favourite motto of Campanella.

Giovanni Domenico Campanella was born in the year 1568 at Stilo in Calabria, one of the most southern townships of all Italy. In his boyhood he showed a remarkable faculty for acquiring and retaining knowledge, together with no small dialectical ability. His keen interest in philosophy and his admiration for the great Dominican doctors, Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, induced him at the age of fifteen to enter the order of S. Dominic, exchanging his secular name for Tommaso. But the old alliance between philosophy and orthodoxy, drawn up by scholasticism and approved by the mediaeval Church, had been succeeded by mutual hostility; and the youthful thinker found no favour in the cloister of Cosenza, where he now resided. The new philosophy taught by Telesio placed itself in direct antagonism to the pseudo-Aristotelian tenets of the theologians, and founded its own principles upon the Interrogation of Nature. Telesio, says Bacon, was the prince of the novi homines, or inaugurators of modern thought. It was natural that Campanella should be drawn towards this great man. But the superiors of his convent prevented his forming the acquaintance of Telesio; and though the two men dwelt in the same city of Cosenza, Campanella never knew the teacher he admired so passionately. Only when the old man died and his body was exposed in the church before burial, did the neophyte of his philosophy approach the bier, and pray beside it, and place poems upon the dead.

From this time forward Campanella became an object of suspicion to his brethren. They perceived that the fire of the new philosophy burned in his powerful nature with incalculable and explosive force. He moved restlessly from place to place, learning and discussing, drawing men towards him by the magnetism of a noble personality, and preaching his new gospel with perilous audacity. His papers were seized at Bologna; and at Rome the Holy Inquisition condemned him to perpetual incarceration on the ground that he derived his science from the devil, that he had written the book 'De tribus Impostoribus,' that he was a follower of Democritus, and that his opposition to Aristotle savoured of gross heresy. At the same time the Spanish Government of Naples accused him of having set on foot a dangerous conspiracy for overthrowing the vice-regal power and establishing a communistic commonwealth in southern Italy. Though nothing was proved satisfactorily against him, Campanella was held a prisoner under the sentence which the Inquisition had pronounced upon him. He was, in fact, a man too dangerous, too original in his opinions, and too bold in their enunciation, to be at large. For twenty-five years he remained in Neapolitan dungeons; three times during that period he was tortured to the verge of dying; and at last he was released, while quite an old man, at the urgent request of the French Court. Not many years after his liberation Campanella died. The numerous philosophical works on metaphysics, mathematics, politics, and aesthetics which Campanella gave to the press, were composed during his long imprisonment. How they came to be printed, I do not know; but it is obvious that he cannot have been strictly debarred from writing by his jailors. In prison, too, he made both friends and converts. We have seen that we owe the publication of a portion of his poems to the visit of a German knight.

V.

The sonnets by Campanella translated in this volume might be rearranged under four headings—Philosophical; Political; Prophetic; Personal. The philosophical group throw light on Campanella's relation to his predecessors and his antagonism to the pseudo-Aristotelian scholasticism of the middle ages. They furthermore explain his conception of the universe as a complex animated organism, his conviction that true knowledge can only be gained by the interrogation of nature, his doctrine of human life and action, and his judgment of the age in which he lived. The political sonnets fall into two groups— those which discuss royalty, nobility, and the sovereignty of the people, and those which treat of the several European states. The prophetic sonnets seem to have been suggested by the misery and corruption of Italy, and express the poet's belief in the speedy triumph of right and reason. It is here too that his astrological opinions are most clearly manifested; for Campanella was far from having outgrown the belief in planetary influences. Indeed, his own metaphysical speculations, involving the principle of immanent vitality in the material universe, gave a new value to the dreams of the astrologers. Among the personal sonnets may be placed those which refer immediately to his own sufferings in prison, to his friendships, and to the ideal of the philosophic character.

I have thought it best, while indicating this fourfold division, to preserve the order adopted by Adami, since each of the reprints accessible to modern readers—both that of Orelli and that of D'Ancona— maintains the arrangement of the editio princeps. Two sonnets of the prophetic group I have omitted, partly because they have no bearing on the world as it exists for us at present, and partly because they are too studiously obscure for profitable reproduction.[13] As in the case of Michael Angelo, so also in that of Campanella, I have left the Canzoni untouched, except by way of illustration in the notes appended to my volume. They are important and voluminous enough to form a separate book; nor do they seem to me so well adapted as the sonnets for translation into English.

To give reasons for my choice of certain readings in the case of either Michael Angelo's or Campanella's text; to explain why I have sometimes preferred a strictly literal and sometimes a more paraphrastic rendering; or to set forth my views in detail regarding the compromises which are necessary in translation, and which must vary according to the exigencies of each successive problem offered by the original, would occupy too much space. Where I have thought it absolutely necessary, I have referred to such points in my notes. It is enough here to remark that the difficulties presented to the translator by Michael Angelo and by Campanella are of different kinds. Both, indeed, pack their thoughts so closely that it is not easy to reproduce them without either awkwardness or sacrifice of matter. But while Campanella is difficult from the abruptness of his transitions and the violence of his phrases, Michael Angelo has the obscurity of a writer whose thoughts exceed his power of expression, and who complicates the verbal form by his endeavour to project what cannot easily be said in verse.[14] A little patience will generally make it clear what Campanella meant, except in cases where the text itself is corrupt. But it may sometimes be doubted whether Michael Angelo could himself have done more than indicate the general drift of his thought, or have disengaged his own conception from the tangled skein of elliptical and ungrammatical sentences in which he has enveloped it. The form of Campanella's poetry, though often grotesque, is always clear. Michael Angelo has left too many of his compositions in the same state as his marbles—unfinished and colossal abbozzi, which lack the final touches to make their outlines distinct. Under these circumstances, it can hardly happen that the translator should succeed in reproducing all the sharpness and vivacity of Campanella's style, or should wholly refrain from softening, simplifying, and prettifying Michael Angelo in his attempt to produce an intelligible version. In both cases he is tempted to make his translation serve the purpose also of a commentary, and has to exercise caution and self-control lest he impose a sense too narrow or too definite upon the original.

So far as this was possible, I have adhered to the rhyming structure of my originals, feeling that this is a point of no small moment in translation. Yet when the choice lay between a sacrifice of metrical exactitude and a sacrifice of sense, I have not hesitated to prefer the former, especially in dealing with Campanella's quatrains.

Michael Angelo and Campanella follow different rules in their treatment of the triplets. Michael Angelo allows himself three rhymes, while Campanella usually confines himself to two. My practice has been to study in each sonnet the cadence both of thought and diction, so as to satisfy an English ear, accustomed to the various forms of termination exemplified by Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, and Rossetti—the sweetest, the most sublime, the least artificial, and the most artful sonnet-writers in our language.

The short titles attached to each sonnet are intended to help the eye, rather than to guide the understanding of the reader. Michael Angelo and his editors supply no arguments or mottoes for his poems; while those printed by Adami in his edition of Campanella are, like mine, meant obviously to serve as signposts to the student. It may savour of impudence to ticket and to label little masterpieces, each one of which, like all good poems, is a microcosm of very varied meanings. Yet I have some authority in modern times for this impertinence; and, when it is acknowledged that the titles merely profess to guide the reader through a labyrinth of abstract and reflective compositions, without attempting to supply him with a comprehensive argument or to dogmatise concerning the main drift of each poem, I trust that enough will have been said by way of self-defence against the charge of arrogance.

The sonnet prefixed as a proem to the whole book is generally attributed to Giordano Bruno, in whose Dialogue on the Eroici Furori it occurs. There seems, however, good reason to suppose that it was really written by Tansillo, who recites it in that Dialogue. Whoever may have been its author, it expresses in noble and impassioned verse the sense of danger, the audacity, and the exultation of those pioneers of modern thought, for whom philosophy was a voyage of discovery into untravelled regions. Its spirit is rather that of Campanella than of Michael Angelo. Yet the elevation at which Michael Angelo habitually lived in thought and feeling was so far above the plains of common life, that from the summit of his solitary watch-tower he might have followed even such high-fliers as Bruno or as Campanella in their Icarian excursions with the eyes of speculative interest.

DAVOS PLATZ. Nov. 1877.

FOOTNOTES

[1] 'Le Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pittore, Scultore e Architetto, cavate dagli Autografi e pubblicate da Cesare Guasti, Accademico della Crusca. In Firenze, per Felice le Monmer. MDCCCLXIII.'

[2] See, however, page xlvii of Signor Guasti's Discorso.

[3] I have so fully expressed my admiration for Signor Guasti's edition in the text that I may allow myself to point out in a note what seems to me its chief defect, and why I think there is still, perhaps, room for another and more critical edition. The materials are amply and conscientiously supplied by Signor Guasti, indeed, I suppose we are justified in believing that his single volume reproduces all the extant manuscript authorities, with the exception, perhaps, of the British Museum Codex. But, while it is so comprehensive, we are still left in some doubt as to the preference of one reading rather than another in the large type text presented to us as the final version of each composition. It is true that when this was possible, Signor Guasti invariably selected one of the autographs, that is, a copy in the poet's own handwriting. But when we consider that very frequently Michael Angelo's own autographs give twice as many various readings as there are lines in a sonnet, when we reflect that we do not always possess the copies which he finally addressed to his friends, and when, moreover, we find that their readings (e.g. those of the Riccio MS and those cited by Varchi) differ considerably from Michael Angelo's rough copies, we must conclude that even the autographs do not invariably represent these poems in the final form which he adopted. There is therefore much room left for critical comparison and selection. We are, in fact, still somewhat in the same position as Michelangelo the younger. Whether any application of the critical method will enable us to do again successfully what he so clumsily attempted—that is, to reproduce a correct text from the debris offered to our selective faculty—I do not feel sure. Meanwhile I am quite certain that his principle was a wrong one, and that he dealt most unjustifiably with his material. For this reason I cordially accept Signor Guasti's labours, with the reservation I have attempted to express in this note. They have indeed brought us far closer to Michael Angelo's real text, but we must be careful to remember that we have not even now arrived with certainty at what he would himself have printed if he had prepared his own edition for the press.

[4] As far as I am aware, no complete translation of Michael Angelo's sonnets has hitherto been made in English. The specimens produced by Southey, Wordsworth, Harford, Longfellow, and Mr. Taylor, moreover, render Michelangelo's rifacimento.

[5] 'Lezione di Benedetto Varchi sopra il sottoscritto Sonetto di Michelagnolo Buonarroti, fatta da lui pubblicamente nella Accademia Fiorentina la Seconda Domenica di Quaresima l'anno MDXLVI.' The sonnet commented by Varchi is Guasti's No xv.

[6] I have elsewhere recorded my disagreement with Signer Guasti and Signer Gotti, and my reasons for thinking that Vaichi and Michelangelo the younger were right in assuming that the sonnets addressed to Tommaso de' Cavalieri (especially xxx, xxxi, lii) expressed the poet's admiration for masculine beauty. See 'Renaissance in Italy, Fine Arts,' pp. 521, 522. At the same time, though I agree with Buonarroti's first editor in believing that a few of the sonnets 'risguardano, come si conosce chiaramente, amor platonico virile,' I quite admit—as what student of early Italian poetry will not admit?—that a woman is generally intended under the title of 'Signore' and 'amico.'

[7] Ridurle is his own phrase. He also speaks of trasmutare and risoluzione to explain the changes he effected.

[8] See Guasti's 'Discorso,' p. xliv.

[9] See in particular 'Orazioni Tie in Salmodia Metafisicale … Canzone Prima … Madrigale iii;' and 'A Berillo, Canzone di Pentimento, Madrigale ii.'

[10] 'De Libras Proprus,' I 3, quoted by Orelli and Alessandro d'Ancona. 'Opere di Tommaso Campanella,' vol. I. p 3.

[11] 'Opere di Tommaso Campanella,' vol. I p. ccci.

[12] Campanella's own poetry justified this curious nom de plume adopted for him by his editor. See in particular 'Salmodia Metafisicale,' canzone terza, madrigale ix.

    'Tre canzon, nate a un parto
    Da questa mia settimontana testa,
    Al suon dolente di pensosa squilla.'

[13] These are the sonnets entitled by Adami 'La detta Congiunzione cade nella revoluzione della Natività di Cristo,' and 'Sonetto cavato dall' Apocalisse e Santa Brigida,' D'Ancona, vol. 1. pp. 97, 98.

[14] In this respect rifacimento of 1623 has greater literary merits— the merits of mere smoothness, clearness, grammatical coherence, and intelligibility—than the autograph; and I can understand the preference of some students for the former, though I do not share it Michelangelo the younger added fluency and grace to his great-uncle's composition by the sacrifice of much that is most characteristic, and by the omission of much that is profound and vigorous and weighty.

PROEM.

THE PHILOSOPHIC FLIGHT.

Poi che spiegate.

     Now that these wings to speed my wish ascend,
         The more I feel vast air beneath my feet,
         The more toward boundless air on pinions fleet,
         Spurning the earth, soaring to heaven, I tend:
     Nor makes them stoop their flight the direful end
         Of Daedal's son; but upward still they beat:—
         What life the while with my life can compete,
         Though dead to earth at last I shall descend?
     My own heart's voice in the void air I hear:
         Where wilt thou bear me, O rash man? Recall
         Thy daring will! This boldness waits on fear!
     Dread not, I answer, that tremendous fall:
         Strike through the clouds, and smile when death is near,
         If death so glorious be our doom at all!

THE SONNETS

OF

MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI

I.

ON DANTE ALIGHIERI.

Dal ciel discese.

From heaven his spirit came, and robed in clay
    The realms of justice and of mercy trod,
    Then rose a living man to gaze on God,
    That he might make the truth as clear as day.
For that pure star that brightened with his ray
    The undeserving nest where I was born,
    The whole wide world would be a prize to scorn;
    None but his Maker can due guerdon pay.
I speak of Dante, whose high work remains
    Unknown, unhonoured by that thankless brood,
    Who only to just men deny their wage.
Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,
    Against his exile coupled with his good
    I'd gladly change the world's best heritage!

II.

ON DANTE ALIGHIERI.

Quante dirne si de'.

No tongue can tell of him what should be told,
    For on blind eyes his splendour shines too strong;
    'Twere easier to blame those who wrought him wrong,
    Than sound his least praise with a mouth of gold.
He to explore the place of pain was bold,
    Then soared to God, to teach our souls by song;
    The gates heaven oped to bear his feet along,
    Against his just desire his country rolled.
Thankless I call her, and to her own pain
    The nurse of fell mischance; for sign take this,
    That ever to the best she deals more scorn:
Among a thousand proofs let one remain;
    Though ne'er was fortune more unjust than his,
    His equal or his better ne'er was born.

III.

TO POPE JULIUS II.

Signor, se vero è.

My Lord! if ever ancient saw spake sooth,
    Hear this which saith: Who can, doth never will.
    Lo! thou hast lent thine ear to fables still,
    Rewarding those who hate the name of truth.
I am thy drudge and have been from my youth—
    Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill;
    Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ill:
    The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth.
Once 'twas my hope to raise me by thy height;
    But 'tis the balance and the powerful sword
    Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need.
Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite
    Here on the earth, if this be our reward—
    To seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed.

IV.

ON ROME IN THE PONTIFICATE OF JULIUS II.

Qua si fa elmi.

Here helms and swords are made of chalices:
    The blood of Christ is sold so much the quart:
    His cross and thorns are spears and shields; and short
    Must be the time ere even his patience cease.
Nay let him come no more to raise the fees
    Of this foul sacrilege beyond report!
    For Rome still flays and sells him at the court,
    Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase.
Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure!
    Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he
    Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still.
God welcomes poverty perchance with pleasure:
    But of that better life what hope have we,
    When the blessed banner leads to nought but ill?

V.

TO GIOVANNI DA PISTOJA.

ON THE PAINTING OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL.

I' ho già fatto un gozzo.

I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den—
    As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
    Or in what other land they hap to be—
    Which drives the belly close beneath the chin:
My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
    Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly
    Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
    Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.
My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
    My buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
    My feet unguided wander to and fro;
In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
    By bending it becomes more taut and strait;
    Crosswise I strain me like a Syrian bow:
        Whence false and quaint, I know,
    Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
    For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.
        Come then, Giovanni, try
    To succour my dead pictures and my fame;
    Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.

VI.

INVECTIVE AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF PISTOJA.

I' l' ho, vostra mercè.

I've gotten it, thanks to your courtesy;
    And I have read it twenty times or so:
    Thus much may your sharp snarling profit you,
    As food our flesh filled to satiety.
After I left you, I could plainly see
    How Cain was of your ancestors: I know
    You do not shame his lineage, for lo,
    Your brother's good still seems your injury.
Envious you are, and proud, and foes to heaven;
    Love of your neighbour still you loathe and hate,
    And only seek what must your ruin be.
If to Pistoja Dante's curse was given,
    Bear that in mind! Enough! But if you prate
    Praises of Florence, 'tis to wheedle me.
                          A priceless jewel she:
Doubtless: but this you cannot understand:
For pigmy virtue grasps not aught so grand.

VII.

TO LUIGI DEL RICCIO.

Nel dolce d' una.

It happens that the sweet unfathomed sea
    Of seeming courtesy sometimes doth hide
    Offence to life and honour. This descried,
    I hold less dear the health restored to me.
He who lends wings of hope, while secretly
    He spreads a traitorous snare by the wayside,
    Hath dulled the flame of love, and mortified
    Friendship where friendship burns most fervently.
Keep then, my dear Luigi, clear and pure
    That ancient love to which my life I owe,
    That neither wind nor storm its calm may mar.
For wrath and pain our gratitude obscure;
    And if the truest truth of love I know,
    One pang outweighs a thousand pleasures far.

VIII.

TO LUIGI DEL RICCIO,

AFTER THE DEATH OF CECCHINO BRACCI.

A pena prima.

Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes
    Which to your living eyes were life and light,
    When closed at last in death's injurious night
    He opened them on God in Paradise.
I know it and I weep, too late made wise:
    Yet was the fault not mine; for death's fell spite
    Robbed my desire of that supreme delight,
    Which in your better memory never dies.
Therefore, Luigi, if the task be mine
    To make unique Cecchino smile in stone
    For ever, now that earth hath made him dim,
If the beloved within the lover shine,
    Since art without him cannot work alone,
    You must I carve to tell the world of him.

IX.

THANKS FOR A GIFT.

Al zucchero, alla mula.

The sugar, candles, and the saddled mule,
    Together with your cask of malvoisie,
    So far exceed all my necessity
    That Michael and not I my debt must rule,
In such a glassy calm the breezes fool
    My sinking sails, so that amid the sea
    My bark hath missed her way, and seems to be
    A wisp of straw whirled on a weltering pool.
To yield thee gift for gift and grace for grace,
    For food and drink and carriage to and fro,
    For all my need in every time and place,
O my dear lord, matched with the much I owe,
    All that I am were no real recompense:
    Paying a debt is not munificence.

X.

TO GANDOLFO PORRINO.

ON HIS MISTRESS FAUSTINA MANCINA.

La nuova alta beltà.

That new transcendent fair who seems to be
    Peerless in heaven as in this world of woe,
    (The common folk, too blind her worth to know
    And worship, called her Left Arm wantonly),
Was made, full well I know, for only thee:
    Nor could I carve or paint the glorious show
    Of that fair face: to life thou needs must go,
    To gain the favour thou dost crave of me.
If like the sun each star of heaven outshining,
    She conquers and outsoars our soaring thought,
    This bids thee rate her worth at its real price.
Therefore to satisfy thy ceaseless pining,
    Once more in heaven hath God her beauty wrought:
    God and not I can people Paradise.

XI.

TO GIORGIO VASARI.

ON THE LIVES OF THE PAINTERS.

Se con lo stile.

With pencil and with palette hitherto
    You made your art high Nature's paragon;
    Nay more, from Nature her own prize you won,
    Making what she made fair more fair to view.
Now that your learnéd hand with labour new
    Of pen and ink a worthier work hath done,
    What erst you lacked, what still remained her own,
    The power of giving life, is gained for you.
If men in any age with Nature vied
    In beauteous workmanship, they had to yield
    When to the fated end years brought their name.
You, reilluming memories that died,
    In spite of Time and Nature have revealed
    For them and for yourself eternal fame.

XII.

TO VITTORIA COLONNA.

A MATCHLESS COURTESY.

Felice spirto.

Blest spirit, who with loving tenderness
    Quickenest my heart so old and near to die,
    Who mid thy joys on me dost bend an eye
    Though many nobler men around thee press!
As thou wert erewhile wont my sight to bless,
    So to console my mind thou now dost fly;
    Hope therefore stills the pangs of memory,
    Which coupled with desire my soul distress.
So finding in thee grace to plead for me—
    Thy thoughts for me sunk in so sad a case—
    He who now writes, returns thee thanks for these.
Lo, it were foul and monstrous usury
    To send thee ugliest paintings in the place
    Of thy fair spirit's living phantasies.

XIII.

TO VITTORIA COLONNA.

BRAZEN GIFTS FOR GOLDEN.

Per esser manco almen.

Seeking at least to be not all unfit
    For thy sublime and boundless courtesy,
    My lowly thoughts at first were fain to try
    What they could yield for grace so infinite.
But now I know my unassisted wit
    Is all too weak to make me soar so high;
    For pardon, lady, for this fault I cry,
    And wiser still I grow remembering it.
Yea, well I see what folly 'twere to think
    That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven
    Could e'er be paid by work so frail as mine!
To nothingness my art and talent sink;
    He fails who from his mortal stores hath given
    A thousandfold to match one gift divine.

XIV.

FIRST READING.

TO VITTORIA COLONNA.

THE MODEL AND THE STATUE.

Da che concetto.

When divine Art conceives a form and face,
    She bids the craftsman for his first essay
    To shape a simple model in mere clay:
    This is the earliest birth of Art's embrace.
From the live marble in the second place
    His mallet brings into the light of day
    A thing so beautiful that who can say
    When time shall conquer that immortal grace?
Thus my own model I was born to be—
    The model of that nobler self, whereto
    Schooled by your pity, lady, I shall grow.
Each overplus and each deficiency
    You will make good. What penance then is due
    For my fierce heat, chastened and taught by you?

XIV.

SECOND READING.

To VITTORIA COLONNA.

THE MODEL AND THE STATUE.

Se ben concetto.

When that which is divine in us doth try
    To shape a face, both brain and hand unite
    To give, from a mere model frail and slight,
    Life to the stone by Art's free energy.
Thus too before the painter dares to ply
    Paint-brush or canvas, he is wont to write
    Sketches on scraps of paper, and invite
    Wise minds to judge his figured history.
So, born a model rude and mean to be
    Of my poor self, I gain a nobler birth,
    Lady, from you, you fountain of all worth!
Each overplus and each deficiency
    You will make good. What penance then is due
    For my fierce heat, chastened and taught by you?

XV.

THE LOVER AND THE SCULPTOR.

Non ha l' ottimo artista.

The best of artists hath no thought to show
    Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
    Doth not include: to break the marble spell
    Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
The ill I shun, the good I seek, even so
    In thee, fair lady, proud, ineffable,
    Lies hidden: but the art I wield so well
    Works adverse to my wish, and lays me low.
Therefore not love, nor thy transcendent face,
    Nor cruelty, nor fortune, nor disdain,
    Cause my mischance, nor fate, nor destiny;
Since in thy heart thou carriest death and grace
    Enclosed together, and my worthless brain
    Can draw forth only death to feed on me.

XVI.

LOVE AND ART.

Sì come nella penna.

As pen and ink alike serve him who sings
    In high or low or intermediate style;
    As the same stone hath shapes both rich and vile
    To match the fancies that each master brings;
So, my loved lord, within thy bosom springs
    Pride mixed with meekness and kind thoughts that smile:
    Whence I draw nought, my sad self to beguile,
    But what my face shows—dark imaginings.
He who for seed sows sorrow, tears, and sighs,
    (The dews that fall from heaven, though pure and clear,
    From different germs take divers qualities)
Must needs reap grief and garner weeping eyes;
    And he who looks on beauty with sad cheer,
    Gains doubtful hope and certain miseries.

XVII.

THE ARTIST AND HIS WORK.

Com' esser, donna, può.

How can that be, lady, which all men learn
    By long experience? Shapes that seem alive,
    Wrought in hard mountain marble, will survive
    Their maker, whom the years to dust return!
Thus to effect cause yields. Art hath her turn,
    And triumphs over Nature. I, who strive
    With Sculpture, know this well; her wonders live
    In spite of time and death, those tyrants stern.
So I can give long life to both of us
    In either way, by colour or by stone,
    Making the semblance of thy face and mine.
Centuries hence when both are buried, thus
    Thy beauty and my sadness shall be shown,
    And men shall say, 'For her 'twas wise to pine.'

XVIII.

BEAUTY AND THE ARTIST.

Al cor di zolfo.

A heart of flaming sulphur, flesh of tow,
    Bones of dry wood, a soul without a guide
    To curb the fiery will, the ruffling pride
    Of fierce desires that from the passions flow;
A sightless mind that weak and lame doth go
    Mid snares and pitfalls scattered far and wide;—
    What wonder if the first chance brand applied
    To fuel massed like this should make it glow?
Add beauteous art, which, brought with us from heaven,
    Will conquer nature;—so divine a power
    Belongs to him who strives with every nerve.
If I was made for art, from childhood given
    A prey for burning beauty to devour,
    I blame the mistress I was born to serve.

XIX.

THE AMULET OF LOVE.

Io mi son caro assai più.

Far more than I was wont myself I prize:
    With you within my heart I rise in rate,
    Just as a gem engraved with delicate
    Devices o'er the uncut stone doth rise;
Or as a painted sheet exceeds in price
    Each leaf left pure and in its virgin state:
    Such then am I since I was consecrate
    To be the mark for arrows from your eyes.
Stamped with your seal I'm safe where'er I go,
    Like one who carries charms or coat of mail
    Against all dangers that his life assail
Nor fire nor water now may work me woe;
    Sight to the blind I can restore by you,
    Heal every wound, and every loss renew.

XX.

THE GARLAND AND THE GIRDLE.

Quanta si gode, lieta.

What joy hath yon glad wreath of flowers that is
    Around her golden hair so deftly twined,
    Each blossom pressing forward from behind,
    As though to be the first her brows to kiss!
The livelong day her dress hath perfect bliss,
    That now reveals her breast, now seems to bind:
    And that fair woven net of gold refined
    Rests on her cheek and throat in happiness!
Yet still more blissful seems to me the band
    Gilt at the tips, so sweetly doth it ring
    And clasp the bosom that it serves to lace:
Yea, and the belt to such as understand,
    Bound round her waist, saith: here I'd ever cling.—
    What would my arms do in that girdle's place?

XXI.

THE SILKWORM.

D' altrui pietoso.

Kind to the world, but to itself unkind,
    A worm is born, that dying noiselessly
    Despoils itself to clothe fair limbs, and be
    In its true worth by death alone divined.
Oh, would that I might die, for her to find
    Raiment in my outworn mortality!
    That, changing like the snake, I might be free
    To cast the slough wherein I dwell confined!
Nay, were it mine, that shaggy fleece that stays,
    Woven and wrought into a vestment fair,
    Around her beauteous bosom in such bliss!
All through the day she'd clasp me! Would I were
    The shoes that bear her burden! When the ways
    Were wet with rain, her feet I then should kiss!

XXII.

WAITING IN FAITH.

Se nel volto per gli occhi

If through the eyes the heart speaks clear and true,
    I have no stronger sureties than these eyes
    For my pure love. Prithee let them suffice,
    Lord of my soul, pity to gain from you.
More tenderly perchance than is my due,
    Your spirit sees into my heart, where rise
    The flames of holy worship, nor denies
    The grace reserved for those who humbly sue.
Oh, blesséd day when you at last are mine!
    Let time stand still, and let noon's chariot stay;
    Fixed be that moment on the dial of heaven!
That I may clasp and keep, by grace divine,
    Clasp in these yearning arms and keep for aye
    My heart's loved lord to me desertless given!

XXIII.

FLESH AND SPIRIT.

Ben posson gli occhi.

Well may these eyes of mine both near and far
    Behold the beams that from thy beauty flow;
    But, lady, feet must halt where sight may go:
    We see, but cannot climb to clasp a star.
The pure ethereal soul surmounts that bar
    Of flesh, and soars to where thy splendours glow,
    Free through the eyes; while prisoned here below,
    Though fired with fervent love, our bodies are.
Clogged with mortality and wingless, we
    Cannot pursue an angel in her flight:
    Only to gaze exhausts our utmost might.
Yet, if but heaven like earth incline to thee,
    Let my whole body be one eye to see,
    That not one part of me may miss thy sight!

XXIV.

THE DOOM OF BEAUTY.

Spirto ben nato.

Choice soul, in whom, as in a glass, we see,
    Mirrored in thy pure form and delicate,
    What beauties heaven and nature can create,
    The paragon of all their works to be!
Fair soul, in whom love, pity, piety,
    Have found a home, as from thy outward state
    We clearly read, and are so rare and great
    That they adorn none other like to thee!
Love takes me captive; beauty binds my soul;
    Pity and mercy with their gentle eyes
    Wake in my heart a hope that cannot cheat.
What law, what destiny, what fell control,
    What cruelty, or late or soon, denies
    That death should spare perfection so complete?

XXV.

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF BEAUTY:

A DIALOGUE WITH LOVE.

Dimmi di grazia, amor.

Nay, prithee tell me, Love, when I behold
    My lady, do mine eyes her beauty see
    In truth, or dwells that loveliness in me
    Which multiplies her grace a thousandfold?
Thou needs must know; for thou with her of old
    Comest to stir my soul's tranquillity;
    Yet would I not seek one sigh less, or be
    By loss of that loved flame more simply cold.—
The beauty thou discernest, all is hers;
    But grows in radiance as it soars on high
    Through mortal eyes unto the soul above:
'Tis there transfigured; for the soul confers
    On what she holds, her own divinity:
    And this transfigured beauty wins thy love.