Sonnets | Page 2

manuscripts preserved in the Casa
Buonarroti at Florence with the Vatican and other Codices. It adheres
to the original orthography of Michael Angelo, and omits no fragment
of his indubitable compositions.[2] Signor Guasti prefaces the text he
has so carefully prepared, with a discourse upon the poetry of Michael
Angelo and a description of the manuscripts. To the poems themselves
he adds a prose paraphrase, and prints upon the same page with each
composition the version published by Michelangelo Buonarroti in
1623.[3]
Before the publication of this volume, all studies of Michael Angelo's

poetry, all translations made of it, and all hypotheses deduced from the
sculptor's verse in explanation of his theory or his practice as an artist,
were based upon the edition of 1623. It will not be superfluous to
describe what that edition was, and how its text differed from that now
given to the light, in order that the relation of my own English version
to those which have preceded it may be rightly understood.[4]
Michael Angelo seems to have entertained no thought of printing his
poems in his lifetime. He distributed them freely among his friends, of
whom Sebastiano del Piombo, Luigi del Riccio, Donato Giannotti,
Vittoria Colonna, and Tommaso de' Cavalieri were in this respect the
most favoured. In course of time some of these friends, partly by the
gift of the originals, and partly by obtaining copies, formed more or
less complete collections; and it undoubtedly occurred to more than one
to publish them. Ascanio Condivi, at the close of his biography, makes
this announcement: 'I hope ere long to make public some of his sonnets
and madrigals, which I have been long collecting, both from himself
and others who possessed them, with a view to proving to the world the
force of his inventive genius and the beauty of the thoughts produced
by that divine spirit.' Condivi's promise was not fulfilled. With the
exception of two or three pieces printed by Vasari, and the extracts
quoted by Varchi in his 'Lezione,'[5] the poems of Michael Angelo
remained in manuscript for fifty-nine years after his death. The most
voluminous collection formed part of the Buonarroti archives; but a
large quantity preserved by Luigi del Riccio, and from him transferred
to Fulvio Orsini, had passed into the Vatican Library, when
Michelangelo the younger conceived the plan of publishing his
granduncle's poetry. Michelangelo obtained leave to transcribe the
Vatican MSS. with his own hand; and after taking pains to collate all
the autographs and copies in existence, he set himself to compare their
readings, and to form a final text for publication. Here, however, began
what we may call the Tragedy of his Rifacimento. The more he studied
his great ancestor's verses, the less he liked or dared to edit them
unaltered. Some of them expressed thoughts and sentiments offensive
to the Church. In some the Florentine patriot spoke over-boldly. Others
exposed their author to misconstruction on the score of personal
morality.[6] All were ungrammatical, rude in versification, crabbed and

obscure in thought--the rough-hewn blockings-out of poems rather than
finished works of art, as it appeared to the scrupulous, decorous,
elegant, and timorous Academician of a feebler age. While pondering
these difficulties, and comparing the readings of his many manuscripts,
the thought occurred to Michelangelo that, between leaving the poems
unpublished and printing them in all their rugged boldness, lay the
middle course of reducing them to smoothness of diction, lucidity of
meaning, and propriety of sentiment.[7] In other words, he began, as
Signer Guasti pithily describes his method, 'to change halves of lines,
whole verses, ideas: if he found a fragment, he completed it: if brevity
involved the thought in obscurity, he amplified: if the obscurity seemed
incurable, he amputated: for superabundant wealth of conception he
substituted vacuity; smoothed asperities; softened salient lights.' The
result was that a medley of garbled phrases, additions, alterations, and
sophistications was foisted on the world as the veritable product of the
mighty sculptor's genius. That Michelangelo meant well to his
illustrious ancestor is certain. That he took the greatest pains in
executing his ungrateful and disastrous task is no less clear.[8] But the
net result of his meddlesome benevolence has been that now for two
centuries and a half the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance has
worn the ill-fitting disguise prepared for him by a literary
'breeches-maker.' In fact, Michael Angelo the poet suffered no less
from his grandnephew than Michael Angelo the fresco painter from his
follower Daniele da Volterra.
Nearly all Michael Angelo's sonnets express personal feelings, and by
far the greater number of them were composed after his sixtieth year.
To whom they were addressed, we only know in a few instances.
Vittoria Colonna and Tommaso de' Cavalieri, the two most intimate
friends of his old age