One needn’t look much further than the Sistine Chapel to know that Michelangelo spent many hours contemplating eternity. In addition to his art, his poetry shows his mind was similarly engaged. His reflections extend beyond how we can achieve eternal life to what it will look like, and his verses paint for us a picture of what he thought it would be.
Beyond Physical Beauty in Poem 83
From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord, That which no mortal tongue can rightly say; The soul, imprisoned in her house of clay, Holpen by thee to God hath often soared: And though the vulgar, vain, malignant horde Attribute what their grosser wills obey, Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay, 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 which 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.
Poem 83, addressed to Tommaso dei Cavalieri, illustrates Michelangelo’s belief that love of physical beauty is only the first step in the soul’s progress from love of creatures to love of the Creator.The “pure joys” of love and faith described by Michelangelo are inaccessible to the masses, not only because they obey the demands of vanity and base desire, but also because these souls lack clear perception. They see nothing beyond their own motivations and attribute the same vices to others. Such souls haven’t yet moved beyond the first step of a love of physical beauty, which tethers them to the world. By contrast, the speaker moves from love of physical beauty to love of the soul, and from love of the creature he moves to love of God (“holpen by thee to God hath often soared”).
The final quartet and couplet of the poem reveal a vision of heaven as resembling the loveliness we find on earth. The speaker’s soul attains this vision and “rightly sees” because it has risen to God through contemplation. Ironically, those who are tied to sensible things are insensible to this reality. They cannot see the “source of bliss divine” by which the things they love are created.
Beauty of the Soul in Poem 105
No mortal thing enthralled these longing eyes When perfect peace in thy fair face I found; But far within, where all is holy ground, My soul felt love, her comrade of the skies: For she was born with God in Paradise; Nor all the shows of beauty shed around This fair false world her wings to earth have bound: Unto the Love of Loves aloft she flies. Nay, things that suffer death, quench not the fire Of deathless spirits; nor eternity Serves sordid Time, that withers all things rare. Not love but lawless impulse is desire: That slays the soul; our love makes still more fair Our friends on earth, fairer in death on high.
The same idea is developed in “Poem 105” in which the perception of physical beauty leads the speaker to a glimpse of the soul: he sees “no mortal thing,” but the immortal soul of the person addressed.Father Kenelm Foster explained that this poem shows how Michelangelo saw human beauty as the likeness of the Creator. He observed: “The poem’s whole movement hinges on the idea that the soul’s likeness to God implies a capacity for life such as nothing mortal can satisfy. Seeing through Cavalieri’s mortal eyes his immortal soul, formed to likeness of Life itself, Michelangelo turns spontaneously towards that Life, discovering in love its own affinity to Life: ’transcende nella Forma universale.'”
The verse Foster quotes at the end, which is somewhat lost in translation, articulates Michelangelo’s view that the proof that the soul is created in the image of God was in the fact that man wasn’t only attracted to exterior beauty but also to another’s interior, immortal beauty. If man wasn’t created in God’s image, exterior beauty alone would satisfy him, but as it is, our souls “transcend to the universal form” (trascende nella forma universale) by moving from love of the individual soul to love of Beauty itself.
Love’s Victory in Poem 62
When she who was the cause of all my sighs Departed from the world, herself, and me, Nature, who fain had made us worthy her, Rested ashamed, and who had seen her wept. But let not boastful Death, who quenched the light Of this our sun of suns, be all too vain; Since love hath conquered him, and let her live, Both here on earth and ’mong the saints above. It seemed a cruel and unrighteous thing For Death to make her scattered virtues dumb, And bear her soul where it might show less fair. But (contradiction strange!) her writings now Make her more living than she was in life; And heaven receives her dead, where she had else no part.
To further illustrate the victory of love over death and beauty over decay, “Poem 62” differs from the triumphant tone of “Poem 83.” The first half of the poem plainly lays bare the process of grief, but only to further highlight the transformation of death from thief to ferryman. Written after the death of Michelangelo’s dear friend and fellow poet Vittoria Colonna, the poem shows that faith doesn’t extinguish the need for grief over the physical separation caused by death. However, faith allows us to see past the grief of the present moment and see that in spite of our loss, the one we love isn’t diminished.The first half of the poem seems to refute the claim in “Poem 62”: that death doesn’t quench the fire of the spirit. All who had been witness to the light of the deceased, including Nature herself, weep at the seeming cruelty of death. The speaker questions the sense of the event, saying that Colonna’s virtue can’t shine forth in death, and her soul’s beauty is hidden from the world which it might formerly have led to God.
However, Colonna could have no part in heaven without death, and thus her love transformed loss into triumph, enabling her virtue to shine forth even more clearly because it attained its reward. Not only does Colonna live on in the world through her writings, but her verses are in fact made still more alive by the fact that the faith they professed has now reached its fulfillment.
Depending on our interior disposition, the body can be a “house of clay” that imprisons the soul or a crystal that the soul’s beauty shines through, giving us a glimpse of the “holy ground” within. The perception of physical beauty depends on the cultivation of love and virtue within the soul. Paradoxically, detachment from earthly beauty deepens the appreciation of that beauty as our eyes perceive how creation images the Creator. As Michelangelo showed, the more we’re able to grow in love, the more we’re drawn up to the eternal and find happiness in its foreshadowings here on earth.
