Chapters 11
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1 00 - Prefatory Note, Introduction, and Proem 30:36
2. S. F.
A.
After some deliberation, and at the risk of offending the sensibility of scholars, I have adopted the Old English spelling of Michelangelo's name, feeling that no orthographical accuracy can outweigh the associations implied in that familiar title. Michelangelo 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-honored names Homero, Santiziano, Virgilius and Petrarca, Raffaello and Paulus. I was 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 Michelangelo 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, December, 1877 Introduction One. It is with diffidence that I offer a translation of Michelangelo'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 Michelangelo'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. Michelangelo and Campanella represent widely sundered, though almost contemporaneous, movements in the evolution of the Italian genius. Michelangelo 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 inquiry in a few philosophical martyrs was opening a new stage for European science. The One devoted all his mental energies to the realization of beauty. The other strove to ascertain truth. The One clung to Ficino's dream of Platonizing Christianity.
The other constructed for himself a new theology, founded on the conception of God imminent in nature. Michelangelo 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 wheel. 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 deluded and emasculated, was the Phoebus of academies and coteries. This common antagonism to the degenerate genius of Italian literature is the link which binds Michelangelo, the veteran giant of the Renaissance, to Campanella, the audacious titan of the modern age. II. My translation of Michelangelo's sonnets has been made from Signor Cesare Guasti's edition of the autograph, first given to the world in 1863. 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 Michelangelo and omits no fragment of his indubitable compositions. Signor Guasti prefaces the text he has so carefully prepared with a discourse upon the poetry of Michelangelo 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. Before the publication of this volume, all studies of Michelangelo's poetry, all translations made of it, and all hypotheses deduced from the sculptor's verse and 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.
Michelangelo 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 Gianotti, Vittoria Colonna, and Tommaso dei Cavalieri were in this respect the most favored. 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 in 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, the palms of Michelangelo remained in manuscripts 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 manuscripts 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 ancestors' 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 Patriots spoke overboldly. Others exposed their author to misconstruction on the score of personal morality. 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.
In other words, he began, as Signora 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 it. If the obscurity seemed incurable, he amputated. For superabundant wealth of conception he substituted vacuity. Smooth disparities, 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.
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, Michelangelo the poet suffered no less from his grand-nephew than Michelangelo the fresco-painter from his follower Daniele da Volterra. Nearly all Michelangelo's sonnets expressed personal feelings, and by far the greater number of them were composed after his sixtieth year, To whom they were addressed we know only 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 Michelangelo 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 no 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 inquire 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. Michelangelo'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 Rifaccimento 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. In the descriptive catalogue of his own works, the philosopher mentions seven books of sonnets and canzoni, which he calls Le Cantiche. Whether any of these would have been printed but for a mere accident is doubtful. A German gentleman, named Tobii Adami, who is supposed to have been a court counselor at Weimar, After traveling through Greece, Syria, and Palestine, in company with a young friend called Rhoda von Bunao, 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 Cantice. 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 manuscript seems to me uncertain, though the latest editor asserts that it formed only a seventh part. The manuscript itself is lost, and Adami's edition of the Specimens is all that now remains as a 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 philosophiche di Settimontano Squilla cavate da suo libri detti la Cantica con l'esposizione stampato nell'anno 1622. The pseudonym of 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.
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 Leibniz was not unacquainted with the poems, while Herter, 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 Aureli, the celebrated Zurich scholar. Early in his youth, Aureli was delighted with the German version made by Herter, and during his manhood while residing as Protestant pastor at Bergamo, he used his utmost endeavors 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 Mazzucchelli, 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 Wolfenbottle, in the north of Germany. The new edition which Aureli gave to the press at Lugano has this title.
poesie filosofiche di tommaso campanella pubblicate per la prima volta in Italia da giovanni gaspare orelli professore all'università di zurigo lugano The text has been again reprinted at Turin, in 1854, by Alessandro Dancona, together with some of Campanella's minor works and an essay on his life and writings. This third edition professes to have improved Aureli's punctuation, and to have rectified his readings. But it still leaves much to be desired on the score of careful editorship. Neither Aureli nor Dancona 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, Adio, 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 Michelangelo expressed so much deep thought and feeling in phrases so terse, and with originality of styles so daring. And even Michelangelo is monotonous in the range of his ideas in uniform in his diction, when compared with the indescribable violence and vigor 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 petro-archistic or 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 and science, of Machiavellian statecraft, and of Petrarch and art, taking the fortress 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.
Four. 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 this staple of modern European systems were anticipated by a few obscure thinkers. It is noticeable that the state 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 novihomines, 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 ardor 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, sunken 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 parietam, 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-stalk 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. Nun quam tacebo. was the favorite 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 St. Dominic, exchanging his secular name for Tommaso. But the old alliance between philosophy and orthodoxy, drawn up by scholasticism and approved by the medieval church, had been succeeded by mutual hostility, and the youthful thinker found no favor in the cloister of Cosenza, where he now resided.
The new philosophy taught by Telesio placed itself in direct antagonism to the pseudo-Erestotelian tenets of the theologians, and founded its own principles upon the interrogation of nature. Telesio, says Bacon, was the prince of the novi hominis, 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 philosophy approach the bier and pray beside it and place palms 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 savored of gross heresy.
At the same time, the Spanish government of Naples accused him of having set foot on a dangerous conspiracy for overthrowing the viceregal power in 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 jailers. 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 arranged 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 imminent 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 Orrelli and that of Dancona, maintains the arrangement of the Additio 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.
As in the case of Michelangelo, 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 Michelangelo's or Campanella's text, to explain why I have sometimes preferred a strictly literal and sometimes a more periphrastic 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 Michelangelo 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, Michelangelo has the obscurity of a writer whose thoughts exceed his power of expression, and who complicates the verbal form by his endeavor to project what cannot easily be said in verse. 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 Michelangelo 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. Michelangelo has left too many of his compositions in the same state as his marbles, unfinished and colossal abozi, which lack the final touches to make their outlines distinct. Under these circumstances, it can hardly happen that the translators should succeed in reproducing all the sharpness and vivacity of Campanella's style, or should wholly refrain from softening, simplifying, and prettifying Michelangelo 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. Michelangelo and Campanella follow different rules in their treatment of the triplets. Michelangelo 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. Michelangelo and his editors supply no arguments or mottos 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 savor 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 dogmatize concerning the main drift of each poem, I trust that enough will have been said, by way of self-defense, 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 Oroici Furori it occurs. There seems, however, good reason to suppose that it was really written by Tanzilo, 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 exaltation 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 Michelangelo. Yet the elevation at which Michelangelo habitually lived in thought and feeling was so far above the planes 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, November, 1877. 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 I'm Pinyon's fleet, spurning the earth, soaring to heaven, I tend. Nor makes them stoop their flight, the direful end of Dedal's sun.
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. End of Proem.
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2 01 - Michelangelo I-XV 13:32
I.
Andante allighieri.
Dal Ciel 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 do guerdon pay. I speak of Dante, whose high work remains unknown, unhonored 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. Two. Andante Ligieri. Quante dirne si de? No tongue can tell of him what should be told, for on blind eyes his splendor shines too strong.
"'Twer easier to blame those who wrought him wrong, Then 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 of 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. Three. To Pope Julius, the second. Signior severo e. 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 thinkest 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 into spite, here on the earth, if this be our reward, to seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed.
Four on Rome in the pontificate of Julius. The second qua si fa elmi. Here, helms and swords are made of chalices. The blood of Christ is sold so much the court. His cross and thorns are spears and shields. In 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 naught but ill.
5. To Giovanni da Pistoia. On the painting of the Sistine Chapel. You are Jaffa Tungozo. I've grown a goiter by dwelling in this den, as cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy, or on what other land they have 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 breastbone 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 straight. 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 succor my dead pictures and my fame. Since foul I fare, and painting is my shame. 6. Invective against the people of Pistoia.
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 are 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 neighbors still you loathe and hate, and only seek what must your ruin be. If to Pistoia 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 pygmy 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 honor. 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 are gratitude obscure. And if the truest truth of love I know, one pang outweighs a thousand pleasures far. Eight to Luigi del Riccio, after the death of Cecchino Bracci. Appena 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 and 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 the 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. 9. Thanks for a gift. Al zucro a la mulla.
The sugar candles in 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 breeze is full my sinking sails, so that amid the sea my bark hath mist her way, and seems to be a wisp of straw whirled on a weltering pool. To yield the gift for gift and grace for grace, for food and drink and carriage to and fro, for all my need and every time and place, O my dear Lord, match'd 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 Belta. That new transcendent fair who seems to be, peerless in heaven as in the 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 favor 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.
11. 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 learned hand, with labor 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, realluming memories that died, in spite of time and nature have revealed, for them and for yourself, eternal fame. Twelve to Vittoria Colonna. A matchless courtesy.
Felice Spirito. Blessed 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 want 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 sole 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 the ugliest paintings in the place of thy fair spirit's living fantasies. 13. To Vittoria Colonna. Brazen gifts for golden. Per esser manco amain. 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 largesse dropt from thee like dues 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. Fourteen, 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? Fourteen, 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? 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.
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3 02 - Michelangelo XVI-XXX 12:43
Translated by John Addington Simmons. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section Two. Michelangelo. Sonnets. Sixteen through thirty.
Sixteen love and art see come 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 not 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 diverse qualities, must needs reap grief and garner weeping eyes, and he who looks on beauty with sad cheer gains doubtful hope and certain miseries. 17. The artist and his work. Come ser donna po?
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 color 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 t'was wise to pine. 18 Beauty and the Artist Alcor 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. 19. The Amulet of Love. Io mi soncaro a saipiu. Far more than I was wont, myself I prize. With you within my heart, I rise and 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. 20. 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?
The Silkworm. Del trui 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 and such bliss, all through the days 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. 22. Waiting in faith. Se ne volto periochi. 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. O blessed 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 jockey. 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 splendors 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 inclined to thee, let my whole body be one eye to see. That not one part of me may miss thy sight. 24. The Doom of Beauty. Spirito Bennato. Choice soul, in whom, as in a glass we see, mirrored in thy pure form and delicate, what beauty's 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 waken 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?
Twenty-five. The Transfiguration of Beauty, a Dialogue with Love. Di mi de 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. In this transfigured beauty wins thy love. 26 Joy may kill. Non me in gran grazia, donna.
Too much good luck, no less than misery, may kill a man condemned to mortal pain, if, lost to hope and shield in every vein, a sudden pardon comes to set him free. Thus thy unwonted kindness shown to me, amid the gloom where only sad thoughts reign, with too much rapture bringing light again, threatens my life more than that agony. Good news and bad may bear the self-same knife, and death may follow both upon their flight, for hearts that shrink or swell alike will break. Let then thy beauty, to preserve my life, temper the source of this supreme delight, lest joy so poignant slay a soul so weak.
No escape from love. Non posso altra figura. I cannot by the utmost flight of thought conceive another form of air or clay wherewith against thy beauty to array my wounded heart in armor fancy wrought. For, lacking thee, So low my state is brought, that love hath stolen all my strength away, whence, when I fain would have my griefs, they weigh, with double sorrow, and I sink to naught. Thus all in vain my soul to scape thee flies, for ever faster flies her beauteous foe, from the swift-footed feebly run the slow. Yet with his hands love wipes my weeping eyes, saying, This toil will end in happy cheer, what costs the heart so much must needs be dear. Twenty eight the heavenly birth of love and beauty.
La vita del mio amor. This heart of flesh feeds not with life my love. The love wherewith I love thee hath no heart, nor harbors it in any mortal part, where erring thought or ill-desire may move. When first love sent our souls from God above, he fashioned me to see thee as thou art, pure light, and thus I find God's counterpart in thy fair face, and feel the sting thereof. As heat from fire, from loveliness divine, The mind that worships what recalls the sun, From whence she sprang, can be divided never. And since thine eyes all paradise enshrine, Burning unto those orbs of light I run, There where I loved thee first to dwell forever.
XXIX. Love's Dilemma. E mi credeti. I deemed upon that day, when first I knew, So many peerless beauties blent in one, That, like an eagle gazing on the sun, mine eyes might fix on the least part of you. That dream hath vanished, and my hope is flown, for he who, fain a seraph would pursue wingless, hath cast words to the winds, and dew on stones, and gauged God's reason with his own. If then my heart cannot endure the blaze of beauties infinite that blind these eyes, nor yet can bear to be from you divided, what fate is mine? Who guides or guards my ways, seeing my soul so lost and ill-betided, burns in your presence, in your absence dies. 30. To Tommaso de Cavalieri. Love, the light-giver. Veggio cui bei vostri occhi.
With your fair eyes a charming light I see, for which my own blind eyes would peer in vain. Stayed by your feet the burden I sustain, which my lame feet find all too strong for me. Wingless, upon your pinions forth I fly. Heavenward your spirit stirreth me to strain. And as you will, I blush and blanche again. Freeze in the sun, burn neath a frosty sky. Your will includes and is the Lord of mine. Life to my thoughts within your heart is given. My words begin to breathe upon your breath. Like to the moon I am that cannot shine, alone, for, lo, our eyes see not in heaven, save what the living sun illumineth.
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4 03 - Michelangelo XXXI-XLV 14:23
Michelangelo, sonnets, 31 to 45. 31. Tu, Tommaso de Cavalieri, Love's Lordship, A che piu de bio. Why should I seek to ease intense desire with still more tears and windy words of grief? When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief to souls whom love hath robed around with fire, why need my aching heart to death aspire, when all must die? Nay, death beyond belief unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief, since in my sum of woes all joys expire. Therefore, because I cannot shun the blow, I rather seek, say who must roll my breast, gliding between her gladness and her woe? If only chains and bands can make me blest, no marvel if alone in bare I go, an armoured knight's captive and slave confessed.
32. Love's Expostulation. Sun casto amor. If love be chaste, if virtue conquer ill, If fortune bind both lovers in one bond, if either at the other's grief despond, if both be governed by one life, one will, if in two bodies one soul triumph still, raising the twain from earth to heaven beyond, if love with one blow and one golden wand have power both smitten breasts to pierce and thrill, If each the other love, himself foregoing, with such delight, such savour, and so well, that both to one sole end their wills combine. If thousands of these thoughts, all thought outgoing, fail the least part of their firm love to tell, say, can mere angry spite this knot untwine? Thirty-three, first reading, a prayer to nature, amor redivivus.
Perché tuo gran bellezze? That thy great beauty on our earth may be, Shrined in a lady softer and more kind, I call on nature to collect and bind all those delights the slow years steal from thee, and save them to restore the radiancy of thy bright face in some fair form designed by heaven, and may love ever bear in mind, to mold her heart of grace and courtesy. I call on nature, too, to keep my sighs, my scattered tears to take and recombine, and give to him who loves that fair again. More happy he perchance shall move those eyes to mercy by the griefs wherewith I pine, nor lose the kindness that from me is ta'en.
Thirty-three, second reading, a prayer to nature, a more ready so If only that thy beauties here may be, deathless through time that rends the wreaths he twined, I trust that nature will collect and bind all those delights the slow years steal from thee, and keep them for a birth more happily, born under better auspices, refined, into a heavenly form of nobler mind, endowered with all thine angel purity. Ah, me! And may heaven also keep my sighs, my scattered tears preserve and re-unite, and give to him who loves that fair again. More happy he, perchance, shall move those eyes to mercy by the griefs my manhood blight, nor lose the kindness that from me is ta'en. Thirty-four, love's furnace. Si amico alfredo sasso.
So friendly is the fire to flinty stone, that, struck therefrom and kindled to a blaze, it burns the stone, and from the ash doth raise, what lives thenceforward binding stones in one. Kiln-hardened, this resists both frost and sun. Acquiring higher worth for endless days, as the purged soul from hell returns with praise, amid the heavenly host to take her throne. E'en so the fire struck from my soul that lay close hidden in my heart may temper me, till burned and slaked to better life I rise. If, made mere smoke and dust, I live to-day, fire-hardened I shall live eternally. Such gold, not iron, my spirit strikes and tries. Love's paradoxes. Cento dun foco. Far off with fire I feel a cold face lit, that makes me burn the while itself doth freeze.
Two fragile arms enchain me, which, with ease, unmoved themselves, can move weights infinite. A soul none knows but I, most exquisite, that deathless deals me death, my spirit sees. I meet with one who, free, my heart doth seize, and who alone can cheer hath tortured it. How can it be that from one face like thine My own should feel effects so contrary, since ill comes not from things devoid of ill. That loveliness, perchance, doth make me pine, even as the sun whose fiery beams we see inflames the world while he is temperate still. 36. Love Misinterpreted. C'est l'immortal d'esille. If the undying thirst that purifies our mortal thoughts could draw mine to the day, Perchance the Lord, who now holds cruel sway in love's high house, would prove more kindly wise.
But since the laws of heaven immortalize our souls, and doom our flesh to swift decay, tongue cannot tell how fair, how pure is day, is the soul's thirst that far beyond it lies. How, then, ah, woe is me, shall that chaste fire which burns the heart within me be made known, if sense finds only sense in what it sees? All my fair hours are turned to miseries with my loved Lord, who minds but lies alone. For, truth to tell, who trusts not is a liar.
Thirty-seven, perhaps to Vittoria Colonna, Love's servitude.
He who is bound by some great benefit as to be raised from death to life again, how shall he recompense that gift? Or gain freedom from servitude so infinite. Yet, if twere possible to pay the debt, he'd lose that kindness which we entertain for those who serve us well, since it is plain that kindness needs some boon to quicken it. Wherefore, O lady, to maintain thy grace, so far above my fortune, what I bring, is rather thanklessness than courtesy. For, if both met as equals face to face, she whom I love could not be called my king. There is no lordship in equality. 38. Love's Vain Expense. Rendete a Yoki miei. Give back unto mine eyes, ye fount and rill, those streams not yours that are so full and strong, that swell your springs and roll your waves along with force unwanted in your native hill.
And thou, dense air, wade with my sighs so chill that hidest heaven's own light thick mists among. Give back those sighs to my sad heart, nor wrong my visual ray with thy dark face of ill. Let earth give back the footprints that I wore, that the bare grass I spoiled may sprout again, and echo, now grown deaf, my cries return. Loved eyes, unto mine eyes those looks restore, and let me woo another not in vain, since how to please thee I shall never learn. 39. Love's Arguments with Reason. La ragion mecco si lamenta.
Reason laments and grieves full sore with me, the while I hope by loving to be blest. With precepts sound and true philosophy, my shame she quickens thus within my breast. What else but death will that sun deal to thee, nor like the phoenix in her flaming nest? Yet nought avails this wise morality, no hand can save a suicide confessed. I know my doom, the truth I apprehend. But on the other side my traitorous heart slays me whene'er to wisdom's words I bend. Between two deaths my lady stands apart. This death I dread, that none can comprehend. In this suspense body and soul must part. 40 First Reading Love's Lodestone. No so se la desiata lucha. I know not if it be the longed-for light of her first maker which the spirit feels, or if a time-old memory reveals some other beauty for the heart's delight.
Or fame or dreams beget that vision bright, sweet to thine eyes, which through the bosom steals, leaving I know not what wounds and heals, and now perchance hath made me weep outright. Be this what this may be, tis this I seek, nor guide have I. Nor know I where to find that burning fire, yet someone seems to lead. This, since I saw thee, lady, makes me weak. A bitter sweet sways here and there my mind, and sure I am, thine eyes, this mischief breed. 40 Second Reading Love's Lodestone. Non so se se l'imaginata luce. I know not if it be the fancied light which every man, or more or less, doth feel. Or if the mind and memory reveal some other beauty for the heart's delight, or if within the soul the vision bright of her celestial home once more doth steal, drawing our better thoughts with pure appeal to the true good above all mortal sight.
This light I long for and unguided seek, this fire that burns my heart I cannot find, nor know the way, though some one seems to lead. This, since I saw thee, lady, makes me weak, a bitter-sweet sways here and there my mind. And sure I am, Thine eyes this mischief breed.
Light and darkness.
He who ordained, when first the world began, Time, that was not before creation's hour, divided it, and gave the sun's high power to rule the one, the moon, the other span. Thence fate and changeful chance and fortune's ban did in one moment down on mortal's shower. To me they portioned darkness for a dower. Dark hath my lot been, since I was a man. Myself am ever mine own counterfeit. And as deep night grows still more dim and dun, so still of more misdoing must I rue, meanwhile this solace to my soul is sweet, that my black night doth make more clear the sun, which at your birth was given to wait on you. 42 Sacred Night. Oni vancuso. All hollow vaults and dungeons sealed from sight, all caverns circumscribed with roof and wall defend dark night, though noon around her fall, from the fierce play of solar day-beams bright.
But if she be assailed by fire or light, her powers divine are not, they tremble all, before things far more vile and trivial. Even a glow-worm can confound their might. The earth that lies bare to the sun inbreeds a thousand germs that burgeon and decay. This earth is wounded by the ploughman's share. But only darkness serves for human seeds. Night, therefore, is more sacred far than day, since man excels all fruits, however fair.
The impeachment of night.
What time bright Phoebus doth not stretch and bend his shining arms around this Tyrian sphere? The people call that season dark and drear, night, For the cause they do not comprehend. So weak is night, that if our hand extend a glimmering torch, her shadows disappear, leaving her dead, like frailest gossamer. Tinder and steel her mantle wrive and rend. Nay, if this night be anything at all, sure she is daughter of the sun and earth. This holds, the other spreads, that shadowy pall. Howbeit they err who praise this gloomy birth, so frail and desolate, and void of mirth, that one poor firefly can her might appall. The Defense of Night. O noto dolce tempo! O night, O sweet though sombre span of time!
All things find rest upon their journey's end. Whoso hath praised thee well doth apprehend, And whoso honors thee hath wisdom's prime. Our cares thou canst to quietude sublime, For dews and darkness are of peace the friend. Often by thee in dreams upborne I wend, from earth to heaven, where yet I hope to climb. Thou shade of death, through whom the soul at length shuns pain and sadness hostile to the heart, whom mourners find their last in sure relief. Thou dost restore our suffering flesh to strength, driest our tears, assuagest every smart, purging the spirits of the pure from grief. 45. Love feeds the flame of age.
When masters bind a slave with cruel chain, and keep him hope forlorn and bondage pent, use tames his temper to imprisonment, and hardly would he fain be free again. Use curbs the snake and tiger, and doth train fierce woodland lions to bear chastisement, and the young artist, all with toil for spent, by constant use a giant strength doth gain. But with the force of flame it is not so. For while fire sucks the sap of the green wood, it warms a fror, old man, and makes him grow, with such fine heat of youth and lustyhood, filling his heart and teaching it to glow, that love enfolds him with beatitude. If, then, in playful mood, he sport and jest, old age need no man blame, for loving things divine implies no shame.
The soul that knows her aim sins not by loving God's own counterfeit. Do measure kept and bounds, and order meet.
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5 04 - Michelangelo XLVI-LX 15:14
IV. MICHELANGELO.
SONNETS 46-60. 46. LOVE'S FLAME DOTH FEED ON AGE. SE DAPRIMANI. If some mild heat of love, in youth confess'd, burns a fresh heart with swift-consuming fire, what will the force be of a flame more dire, shut up within an old man's cindery breast? If the mere lapse of lengthening years hath press'd, so sorely that life, strength, and vigor tire, how shall he fare, who must ere long expire, when to old age is added love's unrest? Weak as myself, he will be whirled away, like dust by winds, kind in their cruelty. Robbing the loathly worm of its last prey, a little flame consumed and fed on me in my green age. Now that the wood is dry, what hope against this fire more fierce have I?
XLVII. Beauty's Intolerable Splendor. Sil foco alla bellezza.
If but the fire that lightens in thine eyes were equal with their beauty, All the snow and frost of all the world would melt and glow, like brands that blaze beneath fierce tropic skies. But heaven and mercy to our miseries dulls and divides the fiery beams that flow from thy great loveliness, that we may go, through this stern mortal life and tranquil wise. Thus beauty burns not with consuming rage, for so much only of the heavenly light inflames our love as finds a fervent heart. This is my case, lady, in sad old age. If, seeing thee, I do not die outright, tis that I feel thy beauty but impart.
Forty-eight, love's evening. Sil troppo in Dujo.
What, though long waiting, wins more happiness than petulant desire is wont to gain? My luck in latest age hath brought me pain, thinking how brief must be an old man's bliss. Heaven, if it heat our lives, can hardly bless this fire of love when frosts are wont to rain. For so I love thee, lady, and my strain of tears through age exceeds in tenderness. Yet peradventure, though my day is done, though nearly past the setting mid thick cloud and frozen exhalations sinks my sun. If love to only midday be allowed, and I an old man in my evening burn, you, lady, still my night to noon. May turn. 49. Love's Excuse. Del Dolce Pianto. From happy tears to woeful smiles, from peace eternal to a brief and hollow truce, how have I fallen?
When tis truth we lose, sense triumphs o'er all adverse impulses. I know not if my heart bred this disease, that still more pleasing grows with growing use. Or else thy face, thine eyes, which stole the hues and fires of paradise, less fair than these. Thy beauty is no mortal thing, twas sent, from heaven on high, to make our earth divine. Wherefore, though wasting burning, I'm content. For in thy sight what could I do but pine, if God himself thus rules my destiny? Who, when I die, can lay the blame on thee? 50. In love's own time. Sia ve si creduto. Had I but earlier known that from the eyes of that bright soul that fires me like the sun, I might have drawn new strength my race to run, burning as burns the phoenix ere it dies.
Even as the stag or lynx or leopard flies, to seek his pleasure and his pain to shun, each word, each smile of her would I have won, flying where now sad age all flight denies. Yet why complain, for even now I find, in that glad angel's face so full of rest, health and content, heart's ease and peace of mind? Perchance I might have been less simply blessed, finding her sooner, if tis age alone that lets me soar with her to seek God's throne. First reading, Love in Youth and Age. Torna mi a tempo. Bring back the time when blind desire ran free with bit and rain too loose to curb his flight. Give back the buried face, once angel bright, that hides in earth all comely things from me. Bring back those journeys tanned so toilsomely, so toilsome slow to one whose hairs are white, those tears and flames that in one breast unite, if thou wilt once more take thy fill of me.
Yet, love, suppose it true that thou dost thrive. Only on bitter honey-doos of tears. Small profit hast thou of a weak old man. My soul that toward the other shore doth strive, wards off thy darts with shafts of holier fears, and fire feeds ill on brands no breath can fan. Second reading. Love in youth and age. Torna mi a tempo. Bring back the time when glad desire ran free, with bit and rain too loose to curb his flight, the tears and flames that in one breast unite, if thou art fain once more to conquer me. Bring back those journeys ta'en so toilsomely, so toilsome slow to him whose hairs are white. Give back the buried face once angel bright that taxed all nature's art and industry. O love, an old man finds it hard to chase thy flying pinions.
Thou hast left thy nest. Nor is my heart as light as heretofore. Put thy gold arrows to the string once more. Then if death hear my prayer, and grant me grace, my grief I shall forget, again made blest. I saw no mortal beauty with these eyes, when perfect peace, and thy fair eyes I found. But far within, where all is holy ground, my soul felt love, her comrade of the skies. For she was born with God in Paradise, else should we still to transient loves be bound. But finding these so false, we pass beyond, unto the love of loves that never dies. Nay, things that die cannot assuage the thirst of souls undying, nor eternity serves time, where all must fade that flourisheth. Sense is not love, but lawlessness accursed.
This kills the soul, while thy love lifts on high, our friends on earth, higher in heaven through death. 53. Celestial and Earthly Love. None sempre di culpa. Love is not always harsh and deadly sin. If it be love of loveliness divine, it leaves the heart all soft and infantine, for rays of God's own grace to enter in. Love fits the soul with wings, and bids her win, her flight aloft, nor air to earth decline. Tis the first step that leads her to the shrine of him who slakes the thirst that burns within. The love of that whereof I speak ascends. Woman is different far, the love of her, but ill befits a heart all manlywise. The one love soars, the other downward tends. The soul lights this, while that the senses stir, and still his arrow at base quarry flies.
54 Love lifts to God. Vigio nel tuo bel viso. From thy fair face I learn, O my loved Lord, that which no mortal tongue can rightly say. The soul, imprisoned in her house of clay, Holpen by thee to God hath often soared. And though the vulgar, vain, malignant horde Attribute what their grosser wills obey, Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay, This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford. Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth, Resemble for the soul that rightly sees That source of bliss divine which gave us birth. Nor have we first fruits or remembrances Of heaven elsewhere, thus loving loyally, I rise to God, and make death sweet by thee. 55. Love's Entreaty. Tu sa' k'yo so, Signor Mie.
Thou knowest, love, I know that thou dost know, that I am here, more near to thee to be, and knowest that I know thou knowest me. What means it, then, that we are sundered so? If they are true, these hopes that from thee flow, if it is real, this sweet expectancy, break down the wall that stands twixt me and thee. For pain in prison pent hath double woe. Because in thee I love, O my loved Lord, what thou best lovest, be not therefore stern. Souls burn for souls, spirits to spirits cry. I seek the splendor in thy fair face stored. Yet living man that beauty scarce can learn, and he who fain would find it first must die. 56. First Reading. Heaven-Born Beauty. Peritornar-la. As one who will reseek her home of light, Thy form immortal to this prison-house, descended, like an angel piteous, to heal all hearts and make the whole world bright.
"'Tis this that thralls my soul in love's delight, not thy clear face of beauty glorious, for he who harbours virtue still will choose to love what neither years nor death can blight. So fairs it ever, with things high and rare, wrought in the sweat of nature, heaven above showers on their birth the blessings of her prime. Nor hath God deigned to show himself elsewhere more clearly than in human forms sublime, which, since they image him, alone I love.
It came, I know not whence, from far above, that clear immortal flame that still doth rise within thy sacred breast, and fills the skies, and heals all hearts, and adds to heaven new love. This burns me, this, in the pure light thereof, not thy fair face, thy sweet untroubled eyes. For love that is not love for aught that dies, dwells in the soul where no base passions move. If then such loveliness upon its own should graft new beauties in a mortal birth, the sheath bespeaks the shining blade within. To gain our love, God hath not clearer shown, himself elsewhere. Thus heaven doth vie with earth. To make thee worthy worship without sin. 57. First Reading. Carnal and Spiritual Love. Passa periochi.
Swift through the eyes, unto the heart within, All lovely forms that thrall our spirits stray. So smooth and broad and open is the way That thousands, and not hundreds, enter in. Burdened with scruples, and weighed down with sin, These mortal beauties fill me with dismay. Nor find I one that doth not strive to stay my soul on transient joy, or lets me win the heaven I yearn for. Lo, when erring love, who fills the world, howsoe'er his power we shun, else were the world a grave and we undone, assails the soul, if grace refuse to fan our purged desires and make them soar above. What grief it were to have been born a man!
50, second reading, Carnal and Spiritual Love. Pasa periochi. Swift through the eyes, unto the heart within, All lovely forms that thrall our spirit stray, So smooth and broad and open is the way, That thousands and not hundreds enter in, Of every age and sex, whence I begin, Burdened with griefs, but more with dull dismay, To fear, nor find mid all their bright array, One that with full content my heart may win. If mortal beauty be the food of love, It came not with the soul from heaven, and thus that love itself must be a mortal fire. But if love reach to nobler hopes above, thy love shall scorn me not, nor dread desire, that seeks a carnal prey assailing us.
Love and death. Honor querido mio. Whene'er the idol of these eyes appears, Unto my musing heart so weak and strong, Death comes between her and my soul ere long, chasing her thence with troops of gathering fears. Nothless this violence my spirit cheers, with better hope than if she had no wrong, while love invincible arrays the throng of dauntless thoughts, and thus harangues his peers. But once, he argues, can a mortal die. But once be born, and he who dies a fire, what shall he gain if erst he dwelt with me? That burning love whereby the soul flies free doth lure each fervent spirit to aspire like gold refined in flame to God on high. 59. Love is a refiner's fire. Non piu qu'il foco il fabro.
It is with fire the blacksmith's iron subdue, Unto fair form the image of their thought, Nor without fire hath any artist wrought Gold to its utmost purity of hue. Nay, nor the unmatched phoenix lives anew unless she burn. If then I am distraught by fire, I may to better life be brought, like those whom death restores, nor years undo. The fire whereof I speak is my great cheer. Such power it hath to renovate and raise. Me who is almost numbered with the dead, and since by nature fire doth find its sphere, soaring aloft, and I am all ablaze. Heavenward with it my flight must needs be sped. 60. First reading, Love's Justification. Ben puol to lor comio. Sometimes my love I dare to entertain with soaring hopes not over credulous, since if all human loves were impious, unto what end did God the world ordain?
For loving thee, what license is more plain than that I praise thereby the glorious source of all joys divine that comforts us, in thee, and with chaste fires our souls sustain? False hope belongs unto that love alone. Which with declining beauty wanes and dies, and, like the face it worships, fades away. That hope is true, which the pure heart hath known, which alters not with time or death's decay, yielding on earth earnest of paradise. 60 Second Reading Love's Justification. Ben puo tolor co casto. It must be right sometimes to entertain chaste love with hope not over credulous, Since if all human loves were impious, unto what end did God the world ordain? If I love thee, and bend beneath thy reign, tis for the sake of beauty glorious, which in thine eyes divine is stored for us, and drives all evil thought from its domain.
That is not love whose tyranny we own, in loveliness that every moment dies, which, like the face at worship, fades away. True love is that which the pure heart hath known, which alters not with time or death's decay. Yielding on earth, earnest of paradise.
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6 05 - Michelangelo LXI-LXXVII 15:10
V. The Sonnets of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella. S.T.I. After the death of Vittoria Colonna, irreparable loss, sel mie rozzo martello. When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone gives human shape, now that, now this, at will, following his hand who wields and guides it still, it moves upon another's feet alone. But that which dwells in heaven the world doth fill, with beauty by pure motions of its own, and since tools fashioned tools, which else were none, its life makes all that lives with living skill. Now, for that every stroke excels the more. The higher at the forge it doth ascend. Her soul that fashioned mine hath sought the skies. Wherefore, unfinished, I must meet my end.
If God, the great artificer, denies that aid which was unique on earth before. 62. After the death of Vittoria Colonna. Love's triumph over death. Quand el ministro de suspir? When she who was the source of all my sighs fled from the world, herself my straining sight, Nature who gave us that unique delight, was sunk in shame, and we had weeping eyes. Yet shall not vauntful death enjoy this prize, this sun of suns, which then he veiled in night. For love hath triumphed, lifting up her light, on earth and mid the saints in paradise. What, though remorseless and impidious doom, deemed that the music of her deeds would die, and that her splendor would be sunk in gloom, the poet's page exalts her to the sky, with life more living in the lifeless tomb, and death translates her soul to rain on high.
63. After the death of Vittoria Colonna. After sunset. Be mi dove.
Well might I in those days so fortunate what time the sun lightened my path above, have soared from earth to heaven, raised by her love, who winged my laboring soul and sweetened fate. That sun hath set, and I with hope alate, who deemed that those bright days would never move, find that my thankless soul, deprived thereof, declines to death, while heaven still bars the gate. Love lent me wings, my path was like a stair, a lamp unto my feet, That son was given, and death was safety and great joy to find. But dying now, I shall not climb to heaven, nor can mere memory cheer my heart's despair. What help remains when hope is left behind? 64. After the death of Vittoria Colonna. A Wasted Brand. Qual Maraviljae?
If, being near the fire, I burned with it, now that its flame is quenched and doth not show, What wonder if I waste within and glow, dwindling away to cinders bit by bit. While still it burned, I saw so brightly lit that splendor whence I drew my grievous woe, that from its sight alone could pleasure flow. And death and torment both seemed exquisite. But now that heaven hath robbed me of the blaze, of that great fire which burned and nourished me, a coal that smolders neath the ash am I. Unless love furnish wood fresh flames to raise. I shall expire with not one spark to see, so quickly into embers do I die. XVI. To Giorgio Vasari, on the brink of death. Junto Eja. Now hath my life across a stormy sea, like a frail bark reached that wide port where all are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall, of good and evil for eternity.
Now know I well How that fond fantasy which made my soul the worshipper and thrall of earthly art is vain! How criminal is that which all men seek unwillingly! Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed, what are they when the double death is nigh? The one I know for sure, the other dread. Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest, My soul that turns to His great love on high, whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.
VI. TO Giorgio Vasari. Vanity of Vanities. Le Favole del Mondo. The fables of the world have filched away the time I had for thinking upon God. His grace lies buried neath oblivion's sod, whence springs an evil crop of sins alway. What makes another wise leads me astray. Slow to discern the bad path I have trod. Hope fades, but still desire ascends that God may free me from self-love my sure decay. Shorten halfway my road to heaven from earth. Dear Lord, I cannot even halfway rise unless Thou help me on this pilgrimage. Teach me to hate the world so little worth, and all the lovely things I clasp and prize, that endless life, ere death, may be my wage. 67. A Prayer for Faith. None Piu Basa. There's not on earth a thing more vile and base than, lacking thee, I feel myself to be.
For pardon prays my own debility, yearning in vain to lift me to thy face. Stretch to me, Lord, that chain whose links enlace all heavenly gifts and all felicity, faith whereunto I strive perpetually, yet cannot find my fault her perfect grace. That gift of gifts, the rarer tis, the more I count it great, more great, because to earth without it neither peace nor joy is given. If thou thy blood so lovingly didst pour, let not that bounty fail or suffer dearth, withholding faith that opes the doors of heaven.
To Monsignor Lodovico Beccadelli, Urbino. God's grace, the cross, our troubles multiplied, will make us meet in heaven, for well I know, yet ere we yield our breath on earth below, why need a little solace be denied? Though seas and mountains and rough ways divide our feet asunder, neither frost nor snow can make the soul her ancient love forego, nor chains nor bonds the wings of thought have tied. Born by these wings with thee I dwell for aye, and weep, and of my dead Urbino talk, Who were he living, now perchance would be, for so twas planned, thy guest as well as I. Warned by his death another way I walk, to meet him where he waits to live with me. 69. Waiting for Death. Di morte certo. My death must come, but when I do not know, life's short, and little life remains for me.
Fain would my flesh abide, my soul would flee heavenward, for still she calls on me to go. Blind is the world, and evil here below, Orwhelms and triumphs over honesty. The light is quenched, quenched too is bravery. Lies reign, and truth hath ceased her face to show. When will that day dawn, Lord, for which he waits, who trusts in thee? Lo, this prolonged delay destroys all hope and robs the soul of life. Why streams the light from those celestial gates, If death prevent the day of grace, and stay our souls forever in the toils of strife?
Seventy. A Prayer for Strength. Karikordani. Burned with years and full of sinfulness, with evil custom grown inveterate, both deaths I dread that close before me wait, yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less. No strength I find in mine own feebleness to change or life or love or use or fate, unless thy heavenly guidance come, though late, which only helps and stays our nothingness. "'Tis not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearn, for that celestial home where yet my soul may be new-made, and not as erst of naught. Nay, ere thou strip her mortal vestment, turn my steps toward the steep ascent, that whole and pure before thy face she may be brought."
Seventy-one. A Prayer for Purification. Forse perque d'altrui. Perchance that I might learn what pity is, That I might laugh at erring men no more, secure in my own strength as heretofore, my soul hath fallen from her state of bliss. Nor know I under any flag but this, how fighting I may scape those perils sore, or how survive the rout and horrid roar of adverse hosts, if I thy succour miss. O flesh, O blood, O cross, O pain extreme! By you may those foul sins be purified, wherein my fathers were, and I was born. Lo, thou alone art good, let thy supreme pity my state of evil cleanse and hide. So near to death, so far from God, forlorn. A prayer for aid. De famiti vedere. O make me see thee, Lord, where'er I go, if mortal beauty sets my soul on fire, that flame when near to thine must needs expire, and I with love of only thee shall glow.
Dear Lord, thy help I seek against this woe, these torments that my spirit vex and tire. Thou only, with new strength, canst re-inspire. My will, my sense, my courage faint and low, thou gavest me on earth this soul divine, and thou within this body, weak and frail, didst prison it. How sadly there to live! How can I make its lot less vile than mine? Without thee, Lord, all goodness seems to fail. To alter fate is God's prerogative.
Seventy-three, at the foot of the cross. Scarco dun importuna. Freed from a burden sore and grievous band, Dear Lord, and from this wearying world untied, Like a frail bark I turn me to thy side. As from a fierce storm to a tranquil land, Thy thorns, thy nails, and either bleeding hand, With thy mild, gentle, piteous face Provide promise of help and mercies multiplied. And hope that yet my soul secure may stand. Let not thy holy eyes be just to see my evil past, thy chastened ears to hear, and stretch the arm of judgment to my crime. Let thy blood only lave and succor me. Yielding more perfect pardon, better cheer, as older still I grow with lengthening time.
Seventy-four. First reading. A prayer for grace and death. Savienne qu'es What though strong love of life doth flatter me, With hope of yet more years on earth to stay, Death none the less draws nearer day by day, Who to sad souls alone comes lingeringly. Yet why desire long life and jollity, If in our griefs alone to God we pray? Glad fortune, length of days, and pleasure slay The soul that trusts to their felicity. Then, if at any hour, through grace divine, The fiery shafts of love and faith that cheer and fortify the soul, my heart assail. Since not achieve these mortal powers of mine, straight may I wing my way to heaven, for here with lengthening days good thoughts and wishes fail.
Seventy-four. Second reading. A Prayer for Grace in Death. Parmi che spesso. Oft-times my great desire doth flatter me with hope on earth, yet many years to stay. Still death, the more I love it, day by day, takes from the life I love so tenderly. What better time for that dread change could be, if in our griefs alone to God we pray? O lead me, Lord, O lead me far away from every thought that lures my soul from Thee. Yea, if at any hour, through grace of Thine, the fervent zeal of love and faith that cheer and fortify the soul, my heart assail. Since not achieve these mortal powers of mine, plants like a saint in heaven, That virtue here, for, lacking thee, all good must faint and fail. 75. Heart Coldness.
Vorrei voler, Signor.
Fain would I wish what my heart cannot will. Between it and the fire a veil of ice deadens the fire, so that I deal in lies. My words and actions are discordant still. I love thee with my tongue, then mourn my fill. For love warms not my heart, nor can I rise, or ope the doors of grace, who from the skies might flood my soul, and pride and passion kill. Rend thou the veil, dear Lord. Break thou that wall, which with its stubbornness retards the rays of that bright sun this earth hath dulled for me. Send down thy promised light to cheer and fall on thy fair spouse, that I with love may blaze, and, free from doubt, my heart feel only thee.
Seventy-six, the death of Christ.
Not less elate than smitten with wild woe, to see not them but thee by death undone. Were those blessed souls, when thou above the sun, didst raise by dying men that lay so low. Elate since freedom from all ills that flow, from their first fault for Adam's race was won. Sore smitten since in torment fierce God's Son, served servants on the cruel cross below. Heaven showed she knew thee, who thou wert, and whence. Veiling her eyes above the riven earth, the mountains trembled and the seas were troubled. He took the fathers from hell's darkness dense, the torments of the damned fiends redoubled. Man only joyed, who gained baptismal birth.
Seventy-seven, the blood of Christ. Mentre matrista. Mid weariness and woe I find some cheer, in thinking of the past. When I recall my weakness and my sins, and reckon all the vain expense of days that disappear. This cheers by making, ere I die, more clear the frailty of what men delight miscall. But saddens me to think how rarely fall God's grace and mercies in life's latest year. For though thy promises our faith compel, yet, Lord, what man shall venture to maintain that pity will condone our long neglect? Still from thy blood poured forth We know full well how without measure was thy martyr's pain, how measureless the gifts we dare expect.
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7 06 - Campanella I-XV 12:38
Translated by John Addington Simmons. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section six campanella sonnets one through fifteen.
The sonnets of Dommaso Campanella. I. The Proem. Iu che nacqui del seno.
Born of God's wisdom and philosophy, Keen lover of true beauty and true good, I call the vain self-traitorous multitude back to my mother's milk. For it is she, faithful to God, her spouse, who nourished me, making me quick and active to intrude within the inmost veil, where I have viewed and handled all things in eternity. If the whole world's our home, where we may run, up, friends, forsake those secondary schools which give grains, units, inches for the whole. If facts surpass mere words, melt pride of soul, and pain and ignorance that hardens fools, here in the fire I've stolen from the sun.
Two. To the poets. In superbial valor. Valor to pride hath turned, grave holiness to vile hypocrisy, all gentle ways to empty forms, sound sense to idle lays, pure love to heat. Beauty to paint and dress. Thanks to you, poets. You who sing the praise of fabled knights, foul fires, lies, nullities, not virtue, nor the rapt sublimities of God, as bards were wont in those old days. How far more wondrous than your fantasies are nature's works, how far more sweet to sing. Thus taught the soul, falsehood and truth, descries. That tale alone is worth the pondering. Which hath not smothered history and lies, and arms the soul against each sinful thing.
III. THE UNIVERSE. IL MONDO E UN ANIMAL. The world's a living creature, whole and great, God's image, praising God, whose type it is. We are imperfect worms, vile families, that in its belly have our low estate. If we know not its love, its intellect, neither the worm within my belly seeks to know me but his petty mischief reeks. Thus it behoves us to be circumspect. Again the earth is a great animal. Within the greatest, we are like the lice upon its body, doing harm as they. Proud men, lift up your eyes. On you I call. Measure each being's worth, and thence be wise, learning what part in the great scheme you play.
IV. The soul, Dentro umpugno di cervell. A handful of brain holds me. I consume so much that all the books the world contains cannot allay my furious famine pains. What feasts were mine? Yet hunger is my doom. With one world Aristarchus fed my greed. This finished, others metrodorus gave. Yet, stirred by restless yearning, still I crave. The more I know, the more I learn to need. Thus I'm an image of that sire in whom all beings are, like fishes in the sea, that one true object of the loving mind. Reasoning may reach him, like a shaft shot home. The church may guide, but only blessed is he who loses self in God, God's self to find.
V. The Book of Nature Il mondo e libro. The world's the book where the eternal sense wrote his own thoughts, the living temple where, painting his very self with figures fair, he filled the whole immense circumference. Here, then, should each man read, and gazing find, both how to live and govern and beware of godlessness, and, seeing God all wear, be bold to grasp the universal mind. But we, tied down to books and temples dead, copied with countless errors from the life, These, nobler than the school sublime, we call. O may our senseless souls at length be led to truth by pain, grief, anguish, trouble, strife. Turn we to read the one original.
VI. An Exhortation to Mankind.
Habitatore do Mondo.
Ye dwellers on this world, To the first mind exalt your eyes, and ye shall see how low vile tyranny wearing the glorious show of nobleness and worth keeps you confined. Then look at proud hypocrisy, entwined with lies and snares who once taught men to know the fear of God. Next the sophists go. Traitors to thought and reason, jugglers blind. Keen Socrates to quell the sophists came. To quell the tyrants, Cato just and rough. To quell the hypocrites. Christ, Heaven's own flame. But to unmask fraud, sacrilege, and lies, or boldly rush on death is not enough, unless we all taste God, made inly wise. VII. The brood of ignorance. Io naque a debellar. To quell thee, titan evils, I was made, tyranny, sophistry, hypocrisy.
Whence I perceive that what wise harmony, Themis, on me, love, power, and wisdom laid. These are the basements firm whereon is stayed, supreme and strong, our new philosophy, the antidote against that trinal lie, wherewith the burdened world groaning is weighed. Famine, war, pestilence, fraud, envy, pride, injustice, idleness, lust, fury, fear. Beneath these three great plagues securely hide, grounded on blind self-love, the offspring dear, of ignorance, they flourish and abide. Wherefore, to root up ignorance, I'm here.
Eight self-love. Credulo il proprio amor. Self-love fools man with false opinion that earth, air, water, fire, the stars we see. Though stronger and more beautiful than we, feel not, love not, but move for us alone. Then all the tribes of earth except his own seem to him senseless, rude, God lets them be. To kith and kin next shrinks his sympathy, till in the end loves only self each one. Learning he shuns, that he may live at ease, and since the world is little to his mind, God and God's ruling forethought he denies. Craft, he calls wisdom, and, perversely blind, seeking to reign, erects new deities. At last, I make the universe, he cries. Nine. Love of self and God. Questo amor singular. This love of self sinks man in sinful sloth.
Yet, if he seek to live, he needs must fain sense, goodness, courage. Thus he dwells in pain, a sphinx, twice sold, of false self-stunted growth. Honours, applause, and wealth these torments soothe, till jealousy, contrasting his foul stain with virtues eminent by spur and rain, drives him to slay, steal, poison, break his oath. But he who loves our common father hath all men for brothers, and with God doth joy, and whatsoever worketh for their bliss. Good Francis called the birds upon his path brethren. To him the fishes were not coy. O blessed is he who comprehendeth this. X. Earthly and divine love. Se dio cita la vita. God gives us life, and God our life preserves. Nay, all our happiness on him doth rest.
Why then should love of God inflame man's breast, less than his lady and the Lord he serves? Through mean and wanton ignorance he swerves, and worships a false good, divinely dressed. Love cannot soar to what it never guessed. But stoops its flight, and the thralled soul unnerves. Here, too, as man deceived, he yields his own to spend on others. Yet, in vile delight, God's splendour still shines through love's earthliness. But we embrace the loss, the lure alone love fools us with. That glimpse of heavenly light, that foretaste of eternal good, we miss.
Eleven, the philosopher, Gran Fortuna El Wisdom is riches great and great estate, far above wealth, nor are the wise unblest, if born of lineage vile or race oppressed. These by their doom sublime they illustrate. They have their griefs for guerdon, to delight their name and glory, nay, the cross, the sword, make them to be like saints or God adored, and gladness greets them in the frowns of fate. For joys and sorrows are their dear delight, Even as a lover takes the weal and woe felt for his lady, such as wisdom's might. But wealth still vexes fools, more vile they grow by being noble, and their luckless light with each new misadventure burns more low. XII. A Parable of Wise Men in the World.
Yostrology ante Vista.
Once on a time the astronomers foresaw the coming of a star to madden men. Thus warned, they fled the land, thinking that when the folk were crazed, they'd hold the reins of law, when they returned, the realm to overaw. They prayed those maniacs to quit cave and den, and use their old good customs once again, but these made answer with fist, tooth, and claw, so that the wise men were obliged to rule, themselves like lunatics to shun grim death, seeing the biggest maniac now was king. Stifling their sense, they lived, aping the fool, in public praising act and word a thing, just as the whims of madmen swayed their breath. 13. The World's a Stage. No Teatro del Mondo. The world's a theatre, age after age, souls masked and muffled in their fleshy gear, before the supreme audience appear, as nature, God's own art, appoints the stage.
Each plays the part that is his heritage, From choir to choir they pass, from sphere to sphere, and deck themselves with joy or sorry cheer, as fate, the comic playwright, fills the page. None do or suffer, be they cursed or blest, ought otherwise than the great wisdom wrote, to gladden each and all who gave him mirth, when we at last to sea or air or earth yielding these masks that weal or woe denote, and God shall see who spoke and acted best.
Fourteen, the human comedy, nature, by God directed, formed in space, the universal comedy we see, wherein each star, each man, each entity, each living creature, hath its part and place. And when the play is over, it shall be that God will judge with justice and with grace. Aping this art divine, the human race plans for itself on earth a comedy. It makes kings, priests, slaves, heroes for the eyes, of vulgar folk, and gives them masks to play their several parts, not wisely, as we see. For impious men too oft we canonize, and kill the saints, while spurious lords array their hosts against the real nobility. 15. The True Kings. Neron Fouret. Nero was king by accident and show, but Socrates by nature and good sooth.
By right of both Augustus, luck and truth less perfectly were blent in Scipio. The spurious prince still seeks to extirpate the seed of nature's born imperial, like Herod, Caiaphas, Miletus, all, who by bad acts sustain their stolen state. Slaves whose souls tell them that they are but slaves, strike those whose native kinghood all can see. Martyrdom is the stamp of royalty. Dead though they be, these governed from their graves. The tyrants fall, nor can their laws remain, while Paul and Peter rise o'er Rome to reign.
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8 07 - Campanella XVI-XXX 12:30
Section seven company on its sixteen to thirty sixteen what makes a king keep a He who hath brush and colors and chance wise doth daub befouling walls and canvases is not a painter, but, unhelped by these, he who in art is masterful and wise. Cowles and the tonsure do not make a friar, nor make a king wide realms in pompous wars, but he who is all Jesus Paulus Mars, though he be slave or base-born, wears the tiare. Man is not born crowned like the natural king of beasts, for beasts, by this investiture, have need to know the head they must obey. Wherefore, a commonwealth fits men, I say, or else a prince whose worth is tried and sure, not proved by sloth or false imagining. 17 to Jesus Christ.
It was a watch. Thy followers to-day are less like thee, the crucified, than those who made thee die, good Jesus. Wandering all ways awry from rules prescribed in thy wise charity, the saints now most esteemed love lying lips, lust, strife, injustice. Sweet to them the cry drawn forth by monstrous pangs from men that die. So many plagues hath not the apocalypse, as these wherewith they smite thy friends ignored. Even as I am, search my heart and know, my life, my sufferings, bear thy stamp and sign. If thou return to earth, come armed, for, lo, thy foes prepare fresh crosses for thee, Lord. Not Turks, not Jews, but they who call them thine. 18 To death. Morte stipendio de la culpa. O death, the wage of our first father's blame, daughter of envy and nonentity, serf of the serpent and his harlotry, thou beast most arrogant and void of shame.
Thy last great conquest dost thou dare proclaim? Crying that all things are subdued to thee, against the Almighty raised all mightily? The proofs that prop thy pride of state are lame, not to serve thee, but to make thee serve him, he stoops to hell. The choice of arms was thine. Yet art thou scoffed at by the crucified? He lives, thy loss, he dies, from every limb mangled by thee, Lightnings of Godhead shine, from which thy darkness hath not where to hide. 19. On the Supplature of Christ. Number one. O Tu Cami La Parte.
O you who love the part more than the whole, and love yourself more than all humankind, who persecutes good men with prudence blind, because they combat your malign control. See scribes and Pharisees, each impious school, each sect profane, or thrown by his great mind, whose best are good to deity refined. The while they thought death triumphed o'er his soul. Deem you that only you have thought and sense, while heaven and all its wonders, sun and earth, scorned in your dullness, lack intelligence? Fool, what produced you? These things gave you birth. So have they mind and God. Repent, be wise. Man fights but ill with him who rules the skies. 20. On the sepulchre of Christ. Number two. Quinciem para here bend in boundless wonder, bow your head.
Think how God's deathless mind that men might be, robed in celestial immortality, O love divine, and flesh was raimented. How he was killed and buried from the dead, how he arose to life with victory. And reigned in heaven, how all of us shall be glorious like him whose hearts to his are wed, how they who die for love of reason give hypocrites, tyrants, sophists, all who sell their neighbors ill for holiness to hell. How the dead saint condemns the bad who live, how all he does becomes a law for men, how he at last to judge shall come again. Twenty one, the resurrection, say sol se ore. If Christ was only six hours crucified, after few years of toil and misery, which for mankind He suffered willingly, while Heaven was won for ever when He died, why should He still be shown on every side, painted and preached, in naught but agony, whose pains were light-matched with His victory, when the world's power to harm Him was defied?
Why rather speak and write naught of the realm He rules in Heaven, and soon will bring below, unto the praise and glory of His name? Ah, foolish crowd! This world's thick vapors whelm your eyes unworthy of that glorious show, blind his splendor, bent upon his shame.
XXII. Ideal Love. Il vero amante. He who loves truly grows in force and might. For beauty and the image of his love expand his spirit, whence he burns to prove, adventures high, and holds all perils light. If thus a lady's love dilate the night, what glories and what joy all joys above shall not the heavenly splendor joined by love unto our flesh-imprisoned soul excite? Once freed, she would become one sphere immense, of love, power, wisdom, filled with deity, elate with wonders of the eternal sense. But we, like sheep and wolves, wore ceaselessly that love we never seek, that light intense which would exalt us to infinity.
Twenty-three, the modern cupid. Son tri Milani. Though full three thousand years the world reveres, blind love that bears the quiver and hath wings, now, too, he's deaf, and to the sufferings of folkid anguish turns impiteous ears. Of gold he's greedy, and dark raiment wears, a child no more that, naked, sports and sings. But a sly gray beard, no gold shaft he flings, now that firearms have cursed these latter years. Charcoal and sulfur, thunder, lead, and smoke, that leave the flesh with plagues of hell diseased, and drive the craving spirit deaf and blind. These are his weapons. But my bell hath broke her silence. Yield, thou deaf, blind, tainted beast, to the wise fervor of a blameless mind.
24 True and false nobility. In Noi Valor and mind form real nobility. The witch bears fruit and shows a fair increase by doughty actions. These and not but these confer true patents of gentility. Money is false and light unless it be bought by a man's own worthy qualities, and blood is such that its corrupt disease and ignorant pretence are foul to see. Honours that ought to yield more true a type, Europe, thou measurest by fortune still. To thy great hurt, And this thy foe perceives. He rates the tree by fruits mature and ripe, not by mere shadows, roots, and verdant leaves. Why then neglect so grave a cause of ill? XXV. The People. Il popolo è una bestia.
The people is a beast of muddy brain, that knows not its own force, and therefore stands, loaded with wood and stone, the powerless hands of a mere child, guided with bit and rain. One kick would be enough to break the chain, but the beast fears, and what the child demands, it does, nor its own terror understands, confused and stupefied by Bugbear's vein. Most wonderful! With its own hand it ties and gags itself, gives itself death and war, for pence doled out by kings from its own store. Its own are all the things between earth and heaven, but this it knows not. And if one arrives to tell this truth, it kills him unforgiven. 26. Conscience.
All crime is its own torment. Bearing woe to mind or body, or decrease of fame, if not at once, still step by step our name, or blood or friends or fortune it brings low. But if our will do not resent the blow, we have not sinned. That penance hath no blame, which Magdalene found sweet, purging our shame. Self-punishment is virtue, all men know. The consciousness of goodness, pure and whole, makes a man fully blessed, but misery springs from false conscience, blinded in its pride. This Simon Peter meant when he replied, to Simon Magus, that the prescient soul hath her own proof of immortality.
XXVII. THE BAD PRINCE. Mentola o comun corpo.
Organ of rut, not reason, is the Lord, who from the body politic doth drain lust for himself instead of toil and pain, leaving us lean as crickets on dry sward. Well, too, if he, like love, would filch our hoard with pleasure to ourselves, sluicing our vein and vigor to perpetuate the strain of life by spilth of life within us stored. Love's cheat yields joy and profit. Kings less kind harm those they hoodwink. So bear rock with seed. Nor use our waste to propagate the breed. Heaven help that body which a little mind, housed in a head, lacking ears, tongue, and eyes, and senseless but for smell can tyrannize.
XXVIII. On Italy. La grandonna. That lady who to Caesar came in state upon the Rubicon, What time she feared, ruin from those strange races who appeared, erewhile to build her empire strong and great, now stays with limbs dispersed and lacerate. A bond slave, shorn of all her pomp revered. Nor seems it now that Dinah's shame can gird, Simeon or Levi, to avenge her fate. If then Jerusalem doth not repair to Nazareth or Athens, where did rain, wisdom of God or man in days of yore, none shall arise her honors to restore. For Herods are all strangers. When they swear to save the Saviour's seed, their oath is vain. XXXIX. Newa Arca di Noe. New Ark of Noah. When that cruel scourge of that barbarian tyrant like a wave went over Italy, thou then didst save the seed of just men on the weltering surge.
Here, still by discord and foul servitude untainted, Thou a hero brood dost raise, powerful and prudent. Do to thee their praise of maiden pure, of teeming motherhood. Thou wonder of the world, Rome's loyal air, Thou pride and strong support of Italy, Dial of princes, school of all things wise. Thou, like Arcturus, steadfast in the skies, With tardy sense guidest thy kingdom fair. 30. To Genoa. The Nymphs of the Arno, Adria's goddess queen, Greece, where the Latin banner floated free, the lands that border on the Syrian sea, the Euxine, and fair Naples, these have been thine. By right of conquest these should be, still thine by empire. Asia's broad domain. Africa, realms never seen, but by thy venture all belong to thee.
But thou, thyself not knowing, leavest all for a poor price to strangers, since thy head is weak, albeit thy limbs are stout and good. Genoa, mistress of the world, recall thy soul magnanimous. Nay, be not lead, slave to base gold, thou and thy tameless brood.
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9 08 - Campanella XXXI-XLV 12:56
Translated by John Addington Simmons. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section Eight. Campanella. Sonnets. Thirty-one to forty-five.
Thirty-one to Poland. Sopra Regni. High are those realms that make blind chance the air. Of Empire, Poland, dost thou lift thy head. For while thou mournest for thy monarch dead, thou wilt not let his son the sceptre bear, lest he prove weak perchance to do or dare. Yet art thou even more by luck misled, choosing a prince of fortune, courtly bred, uncertain whether he will spend or spare. Oh, quit this pride! In hut or shepherd's pen seek Cato, Minos, Numa! For of such God still makes kings in plenty. And these men will squander little substance and gain much, knowing that virtue and not blood shall be their titles to true immortality. 32 to the Swiss. Se voi piuinaltze.
Ye Alpine rocks, if less your peaks alate to heaven exalt you than that gift divine. Freedom! Why do your children still combine to keep the despots in their stolen state? Lo, for a piece of bread from windows wide you fling your blood, taking no thought what cause, righteous or wrong, your strength to battle draws. So is your valor, spurned and vilified. All things belong to freemen, but the slave clothes and feeds poorly. Even so, from you, broad lands and Malta's knighthood men withhold. Up, free yourselves, and act as heroes do. Go, take your own from tyrants. Which you gave so recklessly, and they so dear have sold. XXIII. THE SAMARITAN. Da Roma ad Ostia. From Rome to Ostia a poor man went.
Thieves robbed and wounded him upon the way. Some monks, great saints, observed him where he lay, and left him on their breviaries and tents. A bishop passed thereby, and careless bent, to sign the cross, a blessing brief to say. But a great cardinal, to clutch their prey, followed the thieves, falsely benevolent. At last there came a German Lutheran, who builds on faith, merit of works withstands. He raised and clothed, and healed the dying man. Now which of these was worthiest, most humane? The heart is better than the head, kind hands than cold lip service. Faith without works is vain. Who understands what creed is good and true for self and others? But none can doubt the good he doth his brothers.
34. Hypocrites. Nessun ti venne a dir. Who comes and saith, A tyrant low am I, and I am Antichrist? What man will swear? The crafty rogue, hiding his poisonous swear, sells you what slays your soul for sanctity. Cheats, brigands, prostitutes, and all that fry, not having fashion so devout a snare, appear worse sinners than perhaps they are. For where the craft's small, small's the villainy. You're on your guard. The meek Samaritan makes way before those guileful Pharisees, though God assign to him the higher place.
Not words nor wonders prove a virtuous man, but deeds and acts. How many deities hath this false standard given the human race? 35. SOPHISTS. Nessunti vera a dire. Behold, I am a sophist, no man saith. But the true sons of perfidy refined, Forged theologic lies the soul to blind, Calling themselves evangels of the faith. Aratine, with his scoundrels, blew his breath, And in the cynic orgies boldly joined. His ribald jests had flowers and thorns combined. A frank fair list, including life and death, for fun, not fraud. It shames him to be found less vile than those who cannot bear to see their sink of filth laid open to the ground. Wherefore they shut our mouths, our books impound, garble with lies each sentence that may be cited to prove their foul hypocrisy.
XXXVI. Against hypocrites.
Deep in their hearts they hide the lusts of hell. Christ's name is written on their brow, that those who only view the husk may not suppose what guile and malice harbor in the shell. O God, O wisdom, holy fervor, well, of strength invincible to strike thy foes. Give me the force, my spirit burns and glows, to strip those idols and to break their spell. The zeal I bear unto thy name benign, the love I feel for truth sincere and pure. When such men triumph, make me rend my hair. How long shall folk this infamy endure, that he should be held sacred, he divine, who strips e'en corpses in the graveyard bare?
Thirty-seven on the Lord's Prayer, number one, the progenie, ye vile off scourings, with unblushing face, dare ye claim sonship to our heavenly sire? Who serve brute vices, crouching in the mire, to hounds and conies? Beasts that ape our race? Such truckling is called virtue by the base, hucksters of sophistry, the priest and friar. Guilt claws of tyrant brutes, who lie for hire, preaching that God delights in this disgrace. Look well, ye brainless folk! Do fathers hold their children slaves to serfs? Do sheep obey the witless ram? Why make a beast your king? If there are no archangels, let your fold be governed by the sense of all. Why stray from men to worship every filthy thing?
XXXVIII. On the Lord's Prayer, Number Two. Dove la Libertà?
Where are the freedom and the high feats that spring from fatherhood so fair as deity? Fleas are no sons of men, although they be flesh-born. Brave thoughts and deeds this honor bring. If princes, great or small, seek any thing, adverse to good and God's authority, which of you dares refuse? Nay, who is he that doth not cringe to do their pleasuring? So then, with soul and blood and verity, you serve base gold, vices, and worthless men, God with lip service only, and with lies, sunk in the slew of dire idolatry. If ignorance begat these errors, then, To reason turn for sonship, and be wise. 39, on the Lord's Prayer, Number Three. All or putrate orar.
Then shall ye pray, with every hour that flies, Thy kingdom come, and let thy will be done, On earth as in the spheres above the sun, When all we hoped and wished shall bless our eyes, Poets shall see their age of gold arise, fairer than feigned in him or orison. Yea, all the realm, by Adam's sin undone, shall be restored in sinless paradise. Philosophers shall govern for their own that perfect commonwealth whereof they write, The which on earth as yet was never known. Judah to Sion shall return with might, Of greater wonders than shook Pharaoh's throne from Babylon to bless the prophet's sight. 40. A Prophecy of Judgment.
I. The Reign of the Antichrist. Mentre l'aquila in vola. While yet the eagle prays, and growls the bear, while roars the lion, while the crow defies the lamb who raised our race above the skies, while yet the dove laments to the deaf air, while, mixed with goodly wheat, darnel and tare, within the field of human nature rise, let that ungodly sect, profanely wise, that scorns our hope, Feed, fatten, and beware. Soon comes the day when those grim giants fell, famed through the world, died deep with sanguine hue, whom, with feigned flatteries you applaud, shall be swept from the earth and sunk in horrid hell, girt round with flames to weep and wail with you in doleful dungeons everlastingly. 41.
A Prophecy of Judgment. Number 2. The Doom of the Impious. La scuola inimicissima. You sect, most adverse to the good and true, Degenerate from your origin divine, Pastured on lies and shadows by the line, Of ties, Sinon, Judas, Homer. You, thus saith the spirit, When the retinue of saints with Christ returns on earth to shine, When the fifth angel's vile pores condign, Vengeance with awful ire and torments due. You shall be girt with gloom, your lips profane, disloyal tongues and savage teeth shall grind, and gnash with fury, fell, and anger vain. In Malabolje your damned souls confined, on fiery marl, for increment of pain, shall see the saved rejoice with mirth of mind. 42. A Prophecy of Judgment.
Number 3. The Golden Age. Se fu nel mondo.
If men were happy in that age of gold, We yet may hope to see mild Saturn's reign, for all things that were buried live again, by time's revolving cycle forward rolled. Yet this the fox, the wolf, the crow, made bold, by fraud and perfidy, deny in vain. For God that rules, the signs in heaven, the train of prophets, and all hearts this faith uphold, if thine and mine were banished in good sooth from honor, pleasure, and utility, The world would turn, I ween, to paradise. Blind love to modest love with open eyes, cunning in ignorance to living truth, and foul oppression to fraternity. 43. The millennium. Non piaccia Dio. Nay, God forbid that mid these tragic throes to idle comedy my thought should bend, when torments dire and warning woes portend, of this our world the instantaneous close.
The day approaches which shall discompose all earthly sects. The elements shall blend in utter ruin, and with joy shall send just spirits to their spheres in heaven's repose. The highest comes in holy land to hold, his sovereign court in synod sanctified, as all the Psalms and prophets have foretold. The riches of his grace he will spread wide, through his own realm. That seat and chosen fold of worship and free mercies multiplied.
XLIV. THE PRESENT. Convien al secco nostro. Black robes befit our age. Once they were white, next many-hued. Now dark as afric's moor, night-black, infernal, traitorous, obscure. Horrid with ignorance and sick with fright, for very shame we shun all colors bright, who mourn our end, the tyrants we endure, the chains, the noose, the lead, the snares, the lure. Our dismal heroes, our souls sunk in night. Black weeds again denote that extreme folly which makes us blind, mournful, and woebegone, for dusk is dear to doleful melancholy. Nathless fate's wheel still turns. This raiment done, we shall exchange hereafter for the holy garments of white in which of yore we shone.
VEGO AND CANDIDA ROBB. Clothed in white robes, I see the holy sire descend to hold his court amid the band of shining saints and elders. At his hand, the white immortal lamb commands their choir. John ends his long lament for torments dire. Now Judah's lion rises to expand the fatal book, and the first broken band sends the white courier forth to work God's ire. The first fair spirits, raimented and white, go out to meet him who, on his white cloud, comes heralded by horsemen, white as snow. Ye black-stolled folk, be dumb who hate the loud blare of God's lifted angel trumpets. Lo! The pure white dove puts the black crows to flight.
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10 09 - Campanella XLVI-LX 12:36
I. The first heaven-wandering lights I see ascend upon the seventh and ninth centenary, when in the archer's realm three years shall be added, this aeon in our age to end. Thou too, Mercurius, like a scribe dost lend, Thine aid to promulgate that dread decree, Stored in the archives of eternity, And signed and sealed by powers no prayers can bend. O'er Europe's full meridian on thy morn, In the tenth house thy court I see thee hold. The sun with thee consents in Capricorn. God grant that I may keep this mortal breath, Until I too that glorious day behold. which shall at last confound the sons of death. 47. Nebuchadnezzar's Image. Babu di Svarta.
The golden head was Babylon. She passed. Persia came next, the silvern breast. Whereto joined brazen flank and belly. These are you, ye men of Macedon. Now Rome's the last. Rome, on two iron legs, towered tall and vast. But at her feet were toes of clay that drew downfall, though scattered tribes erewhile she knew. For lords, now neath her fatal sway they're cast. Ah, thirsty soil, from your parched fallow fumes a smoke of pride, vain-glory, cruelty that blinds, infects, and blackens, and consumes. To Daniel, to the Bible, you refuse your rebel sense. For it is still your use to screen yourself with lies and sophistry.
The Dungeon. Come va al centro? As to the center, all things that have weight sink from the surface. As the silly mouse runs at a venture, rash though timorous, into the monster's jaws to meet her fate. Thus all who love high science, from the straight, dead sea of sophistry sailing like us into truth's ocean, bold and amorous, Must, in our haven, anchor soon or late. One calls this haunt a cave of polypheme, and one at Lante's palace, one of Crete, the labyrinth, and one hell's lowest pit. Knowledge, grace, mercy, are an idle dream in this dread place. Nought but fear dwells in it. Of stealthy tyranny the sacred seat. 49. The Sage on Earth. Sholto e Legato. Bound and yet free, companioned and alone, loud mid my silence I confound my foes.
Men think me fool in this vile world of woes. God's wisdom greets me sage from heaven's high throne. With wings on earth oppressed, aloft I bound, my gleeful soul, sad bonds of flesh and clothes. And though sometimes too great the burden grows, these pinions bear me upward from the ground. A doubtful combat proves the warrior's might. Short is all time matched with eternity. Not then a pleasing burden is more light. My brows I bind with my love's effigy, sure that my joyous flight will soon be sped, where, without speech, my thoughts shall all be read. 50. The Price of Freedom. Vitalia in Grecia. From Rome to Greece, from Greece to Libya's sand. Yearning for liberty, just Cato went. Nor finding freedom to his heart's content, sought it in death.
and died by his own hand. Wise Hannibal, when neither sea nor land could save him from the Roman eagles, rent his soul with poison from imprisonment, and a snake's tooth cut Cleopatra's band. In this way died one valiant Maccabee. Brutus feigned madness. Prudent Sullen hid his sense, and David, when he feared Gath's king.
Thus when the mystic found that Jonah's sea was yawning to engulf him, What he did, he gave to God. A wise man's offering. 51. Apology by Paradox. Non è brutto demon. The devil's not so ugly as they paint. He's well withal compact of courtesy. Real heroism is real piety. Before small truth, great falsehoods shrink and faint. If pots stain worse than pipkins, it were quaint to charge the pipkins with impurity. Freedom I crave, who craves not to be free? Yet life that must be feigned for leaves a taint. Ill-conduct brings repentance? If you prate this wise to me, why prate not thus to all, philosophers and prophets, and to Christ? Not too much learning, as some arrogate, but the small brains of dullards have sufficed to make us wretched in the world in thrall.
The Soul's Apology.
Six thousand years or more on earth I've been. Witness those histories of nations dead, which, for our age, I have illustrated, in philosophic volumes, scene by scene. And thou, mere might, seeing my sun serene, eclipsed, wilt argue that I had no head to live by. Why not try the sun instead? If not in fate unfathomed thou hast seen. If wise men whom the world rebukes, combined, with tyrant wolves, brute beasts we should become. The sage once stoned for sin, you canonize. When rennet melts, much milk makes haste to bind. The more you blow the flames, the more they rise, bloom into stars, and find in heaven their home. 53. To God, on Prayer. Tu que forza d'amor. O thou, who, mingling force and love, dost draw, and guide the complex of all entities, framed for that purpose, whence our reason sees, In supreme fate, the synthesis of law.
Though prayers transgress which find effect or flaw in things foredoomed by thy divine decrees, yet wilt thou modify by slow degrees, or swift, good times or bad, thy mind foresaw. I therefore pray, I who through years have been the scorn of fools, the butt of impious men, suffering new pains and torments day by day, shorten this anguish, Lord, these griefs allay, for still thou shalt not have changed counsel when— I soar from hence to liberty foreseen. 54. To God for Help. Come voi ca buon porto? How wilt thou I should gain a harbor fair, if after proof among my friends I find that some are faithless, some devoid of mind, some short of sense, though stout to do and dare? If some, though wise and loyal, like the hare, hide in a hole, or fly in terror blind, While nerve with wisdom and with faith combined, through malice and through penury despair, reason thy honor, in my wheel eschewed, that false ally who said he came from thee, with promise vain of power and liberty.
I trust I'll do. Change thou the bad to good. But ere I raise me to that altitude, needs must I merge in thee as thou in me. 55. To Annibale Caraccioli, a writer of eclogues. Non licida ne dryoper.
Lycoris, Lycidas, and Dryope cannot, dear Niblo, save thy name from death. Shadows that fleet and flowers that yield their breath match not the love that craves infinity. The beauty thou dost worship dwells in thee, within thy soul divine it harboreth. This also bids my spirit soar. And saith, Words that unsphere for me Heaven's harmony. Make then thine inborn lustre beam and shine, With love of goodness, goodness cannot fail, From God alone let praise immense be thine. My soul is tired of telling o'er the tale with men, She calls on thine, she bids thee go, Into God's school with tablets white as snow. 56. To Tullesius of Cosenza. Taliesio iltello. Taliesius, the arrow from thy bow, Midmost his band of sophists, Lays that high tyrant of souls that think.
He cannot fly, while truth soars free, Loosed by the selfsame blow. Proud leers with thine immortal praises glow, Smitten by bards elate with victory. Lo, thine own cavalcante, stormfully, Lightning still strikes the fortress of the foe. Good Gaeta bedecks our Saint Serene with robes translucent, light irradiate. Restoring her to all her natural sheen, the while, my tocsin at the temple gate, of the wide universe proclaims her queen. Pythia of first and last ordained by fate. 57. To Rodolfo di Bina, seno el amor. Wisdom and love, O Bina, gave thee wings. Before the blossom of thy years had faded, To fly with Adam for thy guide, God aided, through many lands in diverse journeyings. Pure virtue is thy guerdon, virtue brings glory to thee, death to the foes degraded, who through long years of darkness have invaded thy Germany, mother of slaves, not kings.
Yet, gazing on heaven's book, heroic child, my soul discerns graces divine in thee. Leave toys and playthings to the crowd of fools. Do thou with heart fervent and proudly mild make war upon those fraud-engendering schools? I see thee victor, and in God I see. To Tobii Adami.
Holding the cynic lantern in your hand, through Europe, Egypt, Asia you have passed, to Latazonia's feet you find at last that cyclops' cave, where I, to darkness band, In light eternal, forge for you the brand, Against Abaddon, who hath overcast the truth and right, Adami, made full fast, Unto God's glory by our steadfast band. Go, smite each sophist, tyrant hypocrite, Girt with the arms of the first wisdom, Free your country from the frauds that cumber it. Swerve not, twere sin, How good, how great the praise, Of him who turns youth, strength, soul, energy, Unto the day-spring of the eternal rays. 59. A Sonnet on Caucasus. Temo che per morir. I fear that by my death the human race would gain no vantage.
Thus I do not die. So wide is this vast cage of misery, that flight and change lead to no happier place. Shifting our pains, we risk a sorrier case. All worlds like ours are sunk in agony. Go where we will, we feel. And this, my cry, I may forget, like many an old disgrace. Who knows what doom is mine? The omnipotent keeps silence, nay, I know not whether strife or peace was with me in some earlier life. Philip, in a worse prison, me hath pent these three days past, but not without God's will. Stay we as God decrees, God doth no ill. 60. God made and God rules. La fabrica del mondo. The fabric of the world, earth, air, and skies. Each particle thereof, and tiniest part, designed for special ends, proclaims the art of an almighty maker good and wise.
Nathless the lawless brutes, are crimes and lies, the joys of vicious men, the good man smart. All creatures swerving from their ends, in part, doubts that the ruler is nor good nor wise. Can it then be that boundless power, love, mind, let others reign, while he takes repose? Hath he grown old, or hath he ceased to heed? Nay, one God made and rules, he shall unwind the tangled skein, the hidden law disclose, whereby so many sinned and thought and deed.
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11 10 - Appendices 11:12
Translated by John Addington Simmons. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Appendix I. I have translated one canzone out of Campanella's collection, partly as a specimen of his style in this kind of composition, partly because it illustrates his personal history and throws light on many of the sonnets. It is the first of three prayers to God from His prison, entitled by Adami, orazioni tre in Salmodia Metaphysicale Conjunta Insieme. I. Almighty God, what though the laws of fate invincible, and this long misery proving my prayers not merely spent in vain, but heard and granted crosswise, banish me, far from thy sight, still humbly obstinate I turn to thee. No other hopes remain. Were there another god with vows to gain, to him for succor I would surely go.
Nor could I be called impious if I turned, in this great agony, from one who spurned to one who bade me come and cured my woe. Nay, Lord, I babble vainly. Help, I cry, before the temple where thy reason burned, become a mosque of imbecility. Two. Well, I know that there are no words which can move thee to favor him for whom thy grace was not reserved from all eternity. Repentance in thy counsel finds no place. Nor can the eloquence of mortal man bend thee to mercy, when thy sure decree hath established that this frame of mind should be rent by these pangs that flesh and spirit tire. Nay, if the whole world knows my martyrdom. Heaven, earth, and all that in them have their home, why tell the tale to thee, their lord and sire?
And if all change is death, or some such state, thou deathless God, to whom for help I come, How shall I make thee change to change my fate? 3. Nathless for grace, I once more sue to thee, Spurred on by anguish sore and deep distress, Yet have I neither art nor voice to plead Before thy judgment seat of righteousness. It is not faith, it is not charity, nor hope that fails me in my hour of need. And if, as some men teach, the soul is freed from sin and quickened to deserve thy grace by torments suffered on this earth below, the Alps have neither ice I wean nor snow to match my purity before thy face.
For prison's fifty tortures seven twelve years of want and injury and woe. These have I borne, and still I stand ringed round with fears. Four. We lay all wrapt with darkness, for some slept the sleep of ignorance, and players played music to sweeten that vile sleep for gold, while others waked, and hands of rapine laid on honor's wealth and blood. Or sexless crept into the place of harlots basely bold. I lit a light, like swarming bees, behold, Stripped of their sheltering gloom, on me, sleepers and wakers rush to wreak their spite, their wounds, their brutal joys, disturbed by light, their broken, bestial sleep fill them with jealousy. Thus with the wolves the silly sheep agreed against the valiant dogs to fight.
Then fell the prey of their false friends in satiate greed. 5. Help, mighty shepherd, save thy lamp, thy hound, from wolves that raven and from thieves that prey. Make known the whole truth to the witless crowd. For if my light, my voice, are cast away, if sinfulness in these thy gifts be found, the sun that rules in heaven is disallowed. Thou knowest without wings I cannot fly. Give me the wings of grace to speed my flight. Mine eyes are always turned to greet thy light. Is it my crime, if still it pass me by? Thou didst free Boca and Gilardo. These, worthless, are made the angels of thy might. Hast thou lost counsel? Shall thine empire cease? 6. With thee I speak, Lord, thou dost understand, nor mind I how mad tongues my life reprove.
Full well I know the world is neath thine eye, and to each part thereof belongs thy love. But for the general welfare wisely planned, the parts must suffer change. They do not die, for nature ebbs and flows eternally. But to such change we give the name of death, or evil, whensoe'er we feel the strife, which for the universe is joy and life. Though for each part it seems mere lack of breath, so in my body every part I see, with lives and deaths alternate rife, all tending to its vital unity. 7. Thus then the universe grieves not, and I, mid woes innumerable, languish still to cheer the whole and every happier part. Yet, if each part is suffered by thy will, to call for aid, as thou art God Most High, who to all beings wilt thy strength impart, Who smoothest every change by secret art, With fond care tempering the force of fate, Necessity and concord, power and thought.
In love divine, through all things subtly wrought, I am persuaded, when I iterate, My prayers to these, some comfort I must find, For these pangs poison fraught, Or leave the sweet sharp lust of life behind. Eight. The universe hath naught that changes naught, Nor in its change feels naught the pangs of pain, Nor praise not unto God to ease that woe. Mid these are many who the grace obtain of aid from thee. Thus thou didst rule their lot, and many who without thy help must go. How shall I tell toward whom thy favors flow, seeing I sat not at thy council board? One argument at least doth hearten me, to hope those prayers may not unanswered be, which reason and pure thoughts to me afford. Since often, if not always, thou dost will in thy deep wisdom, Lord, Best labored soil with fairest fruits to fill.
IX. The tilth of this my field by plow and hoe yields me good hope, but more the fostering sun of sense divine that quickens me within, whose rays those many minor stars outshone. That it is destined in high heaven to show mercy and grant my prayer, so I may win the end thy gifts betoken, enter in the realm reserved for me from earliest time. Christ pray, but, If it may be, knowing well, he might not shun that cup so terrible. His angel answered, that the law sublime ordained his death. I prayed not thus, and mine—was mine then sent from hell?—made answer diverse from that voice divine. X. Go, Song, go tell my lord. Lo, he who lies, tortured in chains within a pit for thee, cries, how can flight be free, wingless?
Send thy word down, or thou— Show that fate's wheel turns not iniquity, and that in heaven there is no lip that lies. Yet, song, too boldly flies thy shaft. Stay yet for this that follows now. Appendix II. The Revista Europea of June 1875 publishes an article by Signor V. de Tivoli concerning an inedited sonnet of Michelangelo, which he deciphered from the autograph written upon the back of one of the original drawings in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford. This drawing formed part of the Otley and Lawrence collection. It represents horses and various attitudes, together with a skirmish between a mounted soldier and a group of men on foot. Signior de Tivoli not only prints the text with all its orthographical confusions, abbreviations, and alterations, but he also adds what he modestly terms a restoration of the sonnet.
Of this restoration, I have made the subjoined version in rhyme, though I frankly admit that the difficulties of the text, as given in the rough by Signior de Tivoli, seem to me insuperable. And that his readings, though ingenious, cannot, in my opinion, be accepted as absolutely certain. He himself describes the manuscript as a palimpsest, deliberately defaced by Michelangelo, from which the words originally written have to be recovered in many cases by a process of conjecture. That the style of the Restoration is thoroughly Michelangelesque will be admitted by all students of Signor Guasti's edition. The only word I felt inclined to question is Donne, in line 13, where I should have expected Donna.
But I am informed that about this word there is no doubt. The sonnet itself ranks among the less interesting and the least finished compositions of the poet's old age.
Thrice blest was I what time thy piercing dart I could withstand and conquer, and days past. But now my breast with grief is overcast. Against my will I weep, and suffer smart. And if those shafts, aimed with so fierce an art, the mark of my frail bosom overpassed, now canst thou take revenge with blows at last. From those fair eyes which must consume my heart. O love! How many a net, how many a snare, Shuns through long years the bird by fate malign, Only at last to die more piteously. Thus love hath let me run as free as air, Ladies through many a year, To make me pine in sad old age, And a worse death to die.
Appendix III. The following translations of a madrigal, a quatrain, and a stanza by Michelangelo may be worth insertion here for the additional light they throw upon some of the preceding sonnets, especially upon sonnets I and II, and sonnets 65 to 77. In my version of the stanza, I have followed Michelangelo the Younger's readings. Dialogue of Florence and her Exiles. Permolti donna. Lady, for joy of lovers numberless, thou wast created fair as angels are. Sure God hath fallen asleep in heaven afar, when one man calls the bliss of many his. Give back to streaming eyes the daylight of thy face, that seems to shun those who must live defrauded of their bliss. Vex not your pure desire with tears and sighs, for he who robs you of my light hath none.
Dwelling in fear, sin hath no happiness, since amid those who love their joy is less, whose great desire great plenty still curtails, than theirs who, poor, Have hope that never fails.
The Speech of Night. Caro me il sonno. Sweet is my sleep, but more to be mere stone. So long as ruin and dishonor reign, to bear not, to feel not, is my great gain. Then wake me not, speak in an undertone. Lament for life wasted. Oime, oime. A me, a me. Whene'er I think of my past years, I find that none among those many years, alas, was mine. False hopes and longings vain have made me pine, With tears, sighs, passions, fires upon life's brink. Of mortal loves I have known every one. Full well I feel it now, lost and undone. From truth and goodness banished far away, I dwindle day by day. Longer the shade, more short the sunbeams grow, While I am near to falling, faint and low.
End of section 10. End of the sonnets of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella. Translated by John Addington Simmons.