We
know how Goethe escaped from the stress of sentiments too strong for him
by making a book about them; and for Michelangelo, to write down his
passionate thoughts at all, to make sonnets about them, was already in
some measure to command, and have his way with them--
La vita del mia amor non e il cor mio,
Ch'amor, di quel ch'io t'amo, e senza core.
It was just because Vittoria raised no great passion that the space in
his life where she reigns has such peculiar suavity; and the spirit of
the sonnets is lost if we once take them out of that dreamy atmosphere
in which men have things as they will, because the hold of all outward
things upon them is faint and thin. Their prevailing tone is a calm and
meditative sweetness. The cry of distress is indeed there, but as a mere
residue, a trace of bracing chalybeate salt, just discernible in the
song which rises as a clear, sweet spring from a charmed space in his
life.
This charmed and temperate space in Michelangelo's life, without which
its excessive strength would have been so imperfect, which saves him
from the judgment of Dante on those who "wilfully lived in sadness," is
then a well-defined period there, reaching from the year 1542 to the
year 1547, the year of Vittoria's death.
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