Michelangelo (1475–1564)

[The sonnets of Michael angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella; now for the first time translated into rhymed English] by John Addington Symonds published 1878.
Why should we read theses sonnets now? As historical artefacts they are superb, as a window into two great minds they are incomparable and they are written from the heart. The characters of these two great men shine through and when the mud or the muddle clears then the results can be astonishing.

John Addington Symonds in his excellent introduction points out the similarities in the sonnets of these two men, who both lived and worked at the end of the Italian Renaissance; although their lives were very different and did not overlap. Michelangelo 1475-1564 lived during the high renaissance period and was the leading artist of his time. Tommasso Campanella lived at the fag end of the renaissance from 1568 -1639 and spent 25 years in prison in Naples. Addington says that Michelangelo expressed the aspirations of a solitary life dedicated to the service of art, while Campanella gave utterance to a spirit exiled and isolated, misunderstood by those with whom he lived. Both men did not like what they saw around them and neither were afraid to vent their spleen on the ungodly ways of their fellow men. Both found comfort and solace in their love of God. Michelangelo was more comfortable with the catholic religion, but pursued his own course in Platonising christianity. Campanella constructed his own ideas based on God being immanent in nature. Both stood above their era and in a sense aloof from it.

Michelangelo’s sonnets were not published in his lifetime. He wrote them for his friends and for himself, some were scribbled on drawings or contained in letters and many show signs of being reworked. They were collected together and some 59 years after his death Michelangelo the younger published his ancestors poems, however they were in a bowdlerised form. Michelangelo the younger did not want to court controversy with the church and also attempted to smooth out some of the knotty pieces of prosody that he found. He re-wrote portions, finished lines that were started and tried to make more sense of his ancestors thoughts. The results were a mess and it was not until Cesare Guasti’s edition in 1863 that the world could read the poetry more or less in a manner that Michelangelo had intended. Michelangelo’s sonnets express his personal feelings and certainly in the earlier ones his irascible character is much in evidence. In the later poems of which their is a majority here, one can get a sense of his love of Beauty passing beyond it’s personal and specific manifestations to the Universal and impersonal.

“Thus beauty burns not with consuming rage
For so much only of the heavenly light
Inflames our love as finds a fervent heart”

Love of Beauty, Love of Florence and his love of Christ are the three main themes of his poetry.

Campanella a Dominican friar saw nature as a source of Knowledge combined with the intuitive forces of human reason. His philosophical approach to religion came at a time when the Italian states were dogmatically priest-ridden and under the rule of petty tyrants. They had no ear for Campanella’s vociferous outpourings and he was accused of heresy; tortured, crippled and narrowly escaped being burnt alive. He spent 25 years imprisoned in Naples and spent his time writing and attracting around him a number of converts. His prison was at times more like a open house, but one he could not leave. One of his admirers; a German Tobia Adami undertook to publish much of Campanella’s philosophical writings and his poetry. Addington says that his sonnets might be arranged under four headings: philosophical, political, prophetic and personal and I would say that it is his love of God and his zeal that calls for men to change their ways that is the glue that binds them together.

“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."

As both sonneteers got more advanced in years then death became an important theme. Many of Michelangelo’s sonnets were written after his 60th year and Campanella must have been in fear of his life during his long sojourn in prison. Both poets looked forward to death with both hope and fear; the hope was that they would be rewarded in heaven; Michelangelo:

"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 that 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.'

And Campanella

"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."

I found some of the sonnets from both of these ‘amateur’ poets obscure at times. The translation is only part of the problem as it is more inherent in the sonnets themselves. Michelangelo’s thought process are not always easy to follow and he was not a skilled writer of sonnets. A number of sonnets have no clear development of theme and often there are purple patches that do not follow through. Campanella is more logical in his thoughts and can be followed more easily, but he has a tendency to throw in a line or two that seems to jar with the rest of what has gone before, however there are some brilliant sonnets from both men and there are few without some interest.

Symonds translation has attempted to keep the original rhyming scheme and sometimes he has admitted that clear meaning has been sacrificed as a result. The sonnets follow the Petrarchan rhyming scheme with a few variations and so they look tidy and neat on the page and read well. Symonds has also taken the liberty of giving the sonnets a title (they had previously just been numbered) and his selections impose their own meaning onto the sonnet. I found this helpful and do not object to a noted scholar like Symonds giving me some guidance.

There is much to admire in theses sonnets as both men are not afraid to show their feelings. There is passion, there are calls to arms, there is some dejection about the world around them, but there is also hope for the future. If you wish to know how these two exceptional men thought and felt about their world then there is much to learn in these sonnets. Untidy, ragged at times and with a religious bent that might be foreign to our ears, they also sing from the heart and there are individual sonnets that hit their _targets. A four star read.… (more)