Part 15 (1/2)
The religious conception of eternity and transcendent beauty, the _forma universale_ became his last refuge. After Vittoria's death Michelangelo said to Condivi: ”I have only one regret and that is that I never kissed Vittoria's brow or lips when she lay dying.” More and more he brooded on sin and salvation, incarnation and crucifixion. The beloved mistress had become the sole herald of eternal truths. Melancholy and mourning took possession of his soul with an iron grip; he could conceive of only one happiness, death closely following on birth. But the thought of death again was seized and symbolised with the old artistic pa.s.sion:
And cleansed by fire, I shall live for ever.
And as the flames are soaring to the sky, I, changed and purified, shall soar to heaven.
Oh, blissful day! When in a single flash Time slips away into eternity-- The sun no longer rides across the skies....
Michelangelo was conscious of his near kins.h.i.+p with Dante; he ill.u.s.trated a copy of the _Divine Comedy_ which, unfortunately, is lost, and wrote a poem on Dante in which the following lines occur:
Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains, Against his exile, coupled with his good, I'd gladly change the world's inheritage.
(_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.)
The paintings in the Sistine Chapel, with their materialised thoughts of destiny, retribution and eternity, originated in a feeling akin to the feeling underlying the _Divine Comedy_. Both here and there the creation of celestial and infernal spirits was the outcome of the infinite longing of the artistic imagination. Both men could spend the human and creative pa.s.sions with which their souls were thrilled only on the supreme and universal. The eternal destiny of man, fate, sin, the futility of all earthly things, the relations.h.i.+p of the world to G.o.d, love surpa.s.sing all human limits and aspiring to the eternal--these are the common objects over which they brooded. But while it was given to Dante to create his picture of the world in harmony with his own soul, and account it a true representation of the world-system; while his world was a definite place with a beginning and an end, and his life-work remained in harmony with his own soul, and the universe, Michelangelo's lacerated soul could find peace only in the ultimate truth, which filled his heart, and to which he yearned to give plastic life, only to be unsatisfied after achieving it. George Simmel, in a profound work, draws our attention to the infinite melancholy which overshadows all Michelangelo's figures, because his genius aspired to express the inexpressible. Even the supremest plastic representation of the pa.s.sion and longing for the transcendental which thrilled his soul did not satisfy him. This tragedy is the tragedy of the metaphysical erotic overflowing its own specific domain. Dante's faith in the absolute value of his work and in the truth of the consummation of his love in eternity--which was the sustaining power of his life--remained unshaken, but Michelangelo lost his faith in his work; art and love forsook him and withdrew into a transcendental world which he could divine, but could not grasp. His faith was no blissful certainty; he knew no more than the dark aspect of things; the imperfection of even the sublimest, of his art and his love.
Shakespeare's genius could breathe life into all things human, and he found satisfaction in doing so. Michelangelo's creative, plastic power seemed illimitable; he possessed all the gifts an artist could possibly have, but from year to year his conviction of the futility of all earthly things grew to a profounder certainty. He had knocked at the iron gate of humanity with his hammer and his chisel; they had broken into fragments and sorrow made him dumb. There is a stage in the life of every genius when he comes to this gate, when he has to show his credentials and reveal the inmost kernel of his being. Dante attempted to grasp the transcendental in one gigantic vision, Goethe timidly shrank back from it.
In examining the prophets and youths in the Sistine Chapel, or the chained men in the Louvre, who seem unable to bear existence, and are therefore ”slaves” of the earth; or in contemplating the half-finished slaves in the Boboli Gardens, who seem almost to burst the stone in their wild longing for a higher life; or in reading his last sonnets, we can conceive a vague idea of the deep melancholy darkening the life of this man, a gloom which was not the melancholy of the individual, but of all humanity, unable and unwilling to deceive itself further. Can there be a greater tragedy than the tragedy of this incomparable artist, looking back at the work of his lifetime with despair?
For art and wit and pa.s.sion fade and vanish, Countless achievements, ever new and great, Are naught but dross within the sight of heaven.
To Vasari he sent a sonnet denouncing the artistic pa.s.sion which abandons itself completely to art:
Now know I well that that fond phantasy Which made my soul the wors.h.i.+pper and thrall Of earthly art is vain.
(_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.)
Faith, is to him ”the mercy of mercies,” for he has never possessed its deepest conviction.
But the pa.s.sion which burned in him remained unquelled to the last: his soul is torn between love and the thought of death.
Flames of love And chill of death are battling in my heart.
He longed to break away from love and find peace, and he called on death for delivery, but in vain:
Burdened with years and full of sinfulness With evil customs grown inveterate, Both deaths I dread that both before me wait, Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.
(_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.)
And later on he thanks love again for being his deliverer, and not death.
Michelangelo poured all his heart into these last sonnets. We see his solitary and heroic age overshadowed by the thought of death. His whole soul is wrapped in gloom; art is vanity, love is sorrow, the thought of the futility of all things frames the portrait of his love with a wreath of black laurel. He ponders on his life, and comes to the conclusion that
Among the many years not one was his.
This man, the supremest creative genius the world has known, accused himself of having wasted his life.
No song of praise ever rose to the Deity from Michelangelo's heart, as it did at least once or twice during his lifetime from the heart of Beethoven. He never had one hour of true inward peace. He represents the metaphysical world-feeling which (in addition to love) is the foundation of the deification of woman, but it has grown into immensity, and has been lifted to a higher plane; not only love, but all life is felt as fragmentary and pointing to a world beyond. If at an earlier stage it was the love of woman which could not find its consummation on earth, it is now the whole of our earthly life and all our aspirations which can only attain to their highest meaning and to final truth in a metaphysical existence. The tragedy of metaphysical love has deepened into the supreme tragedy of life.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The quotations from _Faust_ are from the translation of Anna Swanwick.