Nella Memoria Delle Cose Belle

When Memory may cherish and endear Some lovely sight, resolve availeth not For her discrowning, until Death appear, And exile her, as she made him forgot, Chill flame to frost, change laughter into pain, And make abhorred the beauty loved before, That tenanteth the empty heart no more. Yet if she turn again Her lucid eyes toward home of their desire, With arid bough more ardent grows the fire.

13 [XVIII] The idea that only through contemplating the person of the beloved can the soul transcend from time to eternity is familiar in the later compositions of Michelangelo. Compare sonnet 21 [LVI].

14 [XIX] The same conception receives a different treatment; mortal beauty is now represented as exercising too potent an attraction, and preventing the desire from mounting beyond it.

15 [XXI] The thought has been elaborated in a modern sense by Lowell in his “Endymion:”--

Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once more An inaccessible splendor to adore, A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth As bred ennobling discontent with earth; Give back the longing, back the elated mood That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good; Give even the spur of impotent despair That, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; Give back the need to worship that still pours Down to the soul that virtue it adores!

So far the idea coincides with that of Michelangelo; but the conclusion of the later poet varies:--

Goddess triform, I own thy triple spell, My heaven’s queen,--queen, too, of my earth and hell!

Such could not be the termination of the author of the Renaissance, at a time when his star was Vittoria Colonna.

16 [XXIII] The sweet and plaintive verse was popular as a song even in the lifetime of Michelangelo, as may be inferred from its mention by Varchi.

17 [XXV] The madrigal has all the spirit of English song in the early part of the seventeenth century; but what English verse, having the same idea, could be mentioned in comparison?

18 [LII] The beautiful song exhibits a great number of variations. Perhaps on account of the musical character, counteracting a meditative tendency, Platonic philosophy appears only as lending a gentle mist transformed by the sunshine of pleasurable passion.

19 [LIII] Compare No. LXXII. I should assign this madrigal, in spite of its light character, to the later epoch.

20 [LIV] The ninth line appears to contain a reference to Vittoria Colonna, who lived in a convent, toward which the desires of the poet, as he says, scarce dared to reach.

21 [LVII] It can scarce be doubted that the attribution of masculine thought to the beloved is a reference to the character of Vittoria.

22 [LXVIII] The dialogue of this madrigal is intentionally veiled, as if the poet were conscious of dealing with a dangerous theme. Sublime are the last two lines, containing all the Michelangelo of the Sistine frescoes; the sentiment is not the purely Christian conception of forgiveness of injuries, the mildness which on principle turns the other cheek. Significant is the word altero, haughty; Michelangelo describes the sentiment of a great and proud spirit, so lofty as to feel a superiority to personal resentment, so truly Florentine as to receive no satisfaction in the prospect of vengeance taken on a citizen of Florence.

23 [LXIX] A pretty piece of poetic ratiocination, cast into the form of a case tried before a court of love, and ending, in the spirit of the poet, with a universal truth.

24 [LXXII] Compare No. 20 [LIV]. It will be seen that the allusions give some reason to believe that the idea is intended to be biographic, though of course not to be taken as entirely literal.

25 [XCIII] A pleasing way of expressing a sense of the incompatibility of Love and Death, that appears in many variations, and must be considered biographic in its sentiment.