Translator's Preface
– William Dennis
Michaelangelo Buonarroti is not so well know for his verse, though he produced a large amount of it, in keeping with his active participation in all the arts of his day. He was, as they say, a Renaissance man. However, he did not change the way poetry was written, as he transformed the fields of painting and sculpture. Consideration of his tailed sonnet (#5: “I’ ho già fatto un gozzo in questo stento”), addressing Giovanni da Pistoia, illustrates that Michaelangelo was rather old-school in letters, rejecting the “new sweet school” of poetic expression. J. S. Bach was also rather old fashioned about his work, so that should not necessarily be construed as a limitation. He worked with great ability within the bounds set by his predecessors. And he earns solid marks for his writing, which is technically adroit, intelligent and emotionally forceful, and idiomatic, giving his poetry stature well above average in the history of literature, worthy of the attention of succeeding ages.
A poem consists of metrical and other sonorous devices, rational content, the idiosyncratic flavor of its native language, and emotional impact. Some of this simply must be sacrificed to the act of translation, but the more brought from the original to the translation, the better. Some translators value fidelity to the original– one or another aspect of it. Others esteem the ability of a translation to stand un-supported as a poem in the language of translation. In pursuit of this last, often the foreign-ness of the work is suppressed. I feel that there is nothing lost by and perhaps much to be gain by a poem sounding as though it has been written in a foreign language or, for that matter, in a distant time. That is simply another layer revealed. In any case, reading poetry always asks intensity of attention, intellectual flexibility and dropping of the barriers which ward off others in more quotidian interactions. The fiber of unfamiliar metaphor or syntax, degrees of linguistic formality or cultural conventions is healthful to the processing mind of a reader, or can be.
Michaelangelo’s writing is characterized by confidence, intelligence, complexity, wit and passion. He indulged in the occasional pun and felt free to complain about his lot in life and his treatment by patrons. Colloquial language came rapidly to him, and he was in the thrifty habit of jotting lines down on any handy surface, whether it was the back of a letter or corner of a sketch, thus number of the verses in this collection were preserved inadvertently among his drawings. In the age before widespread publication, much that existed only in fair copy must have been lost. Michaelangelo could be to be too clever by half, sometimes creating grammatical obscurity of sub-subordinate clauses and parenthetical diversion or obscure reference. Perhaps a sufficiently talented translator could improve on the originals, producing a smoother, clearer statement, but that would leave behind the forceful and demanding personality of the author.
No consideration of Michaelangelo’s personality, or of his poems, can avoid the matter of his sexual orientation. It seems to me that homosexuality is a cultural construct, congealing around a psychoanalytic conceptual framework in the last hundred years or so. Today, Michaelangelo would undoubtedly be called gay, but he did not live in our day of black-and-white categorization. In Lorenzo Medici’s Florence, as now in other places, he would have seemed rather to possess assertive masculinity and an enthusiasm for friendship. Still, it is probably the wound at the base of his art, the source of anxiety which produced the energy of his creative work. The epitaphs for Cecchino Bracci are one of its more direct written expressions in a field of indirection.
Death, a universal source of unease, was another driving force in Michaelangelo’s work in any medium..., or rather his attempt to overcome death by exceeding the normal bounds of human stature. His sculpted figures are larger than life, more muscular, more tensioned and tranquil on the divine plane. More usually, men marry and father children, partially to send a bit of themselves on past the term set for their individual lives. This line never seemed open to Michaelangelo. Such aspirations went into his work and gave a transcendent quality to his sculpture. I would argue that his motives and drives worked more unconsciously and, thus, more freely in fields other than verse. Words lend themselves to more self-aware expression, though subconscious inadvertency is certainly a common enough occurrence. Intelligence stands out as a feature of verse and it may be said that in his writing, Michaelangelo expressed more of his rational side than he did in sculpture or painting, and perhaps it is for this reason that his reputation stands higher in those fields. While art benefits from intelligence, it is not for its rationality that one is drawn to art. Passion is the draw. Michaelangelo staked his hopes on the blurring of boundaries one’s identity undergoes in the condition of intense love, as expressed in epitaph #19, “Se l’un nel l’altro si trasforma.” Cecchino Bracci had not really died, being alive in the hearts of those who loved him, and Michaelangelo would not die, not in the absolute sense of common men, if he could be taken into the hearts of others. He believed or hoped that one could become another, if the heart were opened and it was with his pulsing heart, given expression in his work, that he challenged death.
Any translator brings two things to his task in unique proportion: facility with the original language of the work and poetic skill in his own language. Michaelangelo has been translated by a number of worthy scholars (whose work I did not read beforehand, and so avoided their influence), but in retrospect it seems that each of them over-balanced to one side or the other of the fidelity-lyricism teeter-totter. I hope to have brought a better grasp of Michaelangelo’s Italian to the task than some; and I feel I may have had more poetry than some others to set on the English side of the enterprise. While many can easily be found better prepared on either hand, I hope here to balance knowledge and ability in a manner more appropriate to the needs of this material.
The act of translation is equivalent to crawling, magnifying glass in hand, over the body of the work in question. It imparts intimate familiarity with the means and effects of a poem, not easily gained through more casual reading. Should no other worth apply to my efforts, on display here, I may yet revel in the deepened appreciation of the mind and heart of Michaelangelo Buonarotti which I acquired along the way.
– William Dennis
Michaelangelo Buonarroti is not so well know for his verse, though he produced a large amount of it, in keeping with his active participation in all the arts of his day. He was, as they say, a Renaissance man. However, he did not change the way poetry was written, as he transformed the fields of painting and sculpture. Consideration of his tailed sonnet (#5: “I’ ho già fatto un gozzo in questo stento”), addressing Giovanni da Pistoia, illustrates that Michaelangelo was rather old-school in letters, rejecting the “new sweet school” of poetic expression. J. S. Bach was also rather old fashioned about his work, so that should not necessarily be construed as a limitation. He worked with great ability within the bounds set by his predecessors. And he earns solid marks for his writing, which is technically adroit, intelligent and emotionally forceful, and idiomatic, giving his poetry stature well above average in the history of literature, worthy of the attention of succeeding ages.
A poem consists of metrical and other sonorous devices, rational content, the idiosyncratic flavor of its native language, and emotional impact. Some of this simply must be sacrificed to the act of translation, but the more brought from the original to the translation, the better. Some translators value fidelity to the original– one or another aspect of it. Others esteem the ability of a translation to stand un-supported as a poem in the language of translation. In pursuit of this last, often the foreign-ness of the work is suppressed. I feel that there is nothing lost by and perhaps much to be gain by a poem sounding as though it has been written in a foreign language or, for that matter, in a distant time. That is simply another layer revealed. In any case, reading poetry always asks intensity of attention, intellectual flexibility and dropping of the barriers which ward off others in more quotidian interactions. The fiber of unfamiliar metaphor or syntax, degrees of linguistic formality or cultural conventions is healthful to the processing mind of a reader, or can be.
Michaelangelo’s writing is characterized by confidence, intelligence, complexity, wit and passion. He indulged in the occasional pun and felt free to complain about his lot in life and his treatment by patrons. Colloquial language came rapidly to him, and he was in the thrifty habit of jotting lines down on any handy surface, whether it was the back of a letter or corner of a sketch, thus number of the verses in this collection were preserved inadvertently among his drawings. In the age before widespread publication, much that existed only in fair copy must have been lost. Michaelangelo could be to be too clever by half, sometimes creating grammatical obscurity of sub-subordinate clauses and parenthetical diversion or obscure reference. Perhaps a sufficiently talented translator could improve on the originals, producing a smoother, clearer statement, but that would leave behind the forceful and demanding personality of the author.
No consideration of Michaelangelo’s personality, or of his poems, can avoid the matter of his sexual orientation. It seems to me that homosexuality is a cultural construct, congealing around a psychoanalytic conceptual framework in the last hundred years or so. Today, Michaelangelo would undoubtedly be called gay, but he did not live in our day of black-and-white categorization. In Lorenzo Medici’s Florence, as now in other places, he would have seemed rather to possess assertive masculinity and an enthusiasm for friendship. Still, it is probably the wound at the base of his art, the source of anxiety which produced the energy of his creative work. The epitaphs for Cecchino Bracci are one of its more direct written expressions in a field of indirection.
Death, a universal source of unease, was another driving force in Michaelangelo’s work in any medium..., or rather his attempt to overcome death by exceeding the normal bounds of human stature. His sculpted figures are larger than life, more muscular, more tensioned and tranquil on the divine plane. More usually, men marry and father children, partially to send a bit of themselves on past the term set for their individual lives. This line never seemed open to Michaelangelo. Such aspirations went into his work and gave a transcendent quality to his sculpture. I would argue that his motives and drives worked more unconsciously and, thus, more freely in fields other than verse. Words lend themselves to more self-aware expression, though subconscious inadvertency is certainly a common enough occurrence. Intelligence stands out as a feature of verse and it may be said that in his writing, Michaelangelo expressed more of his rational side than he did in sculpture or painting, and perhaps it is for this reason that his reputation stands higher in those fields. While art benefits from intelligence, it is not for its rationality that one is drawn to art. Passion is the draw. Michaelangelo staked his hopes on the blurring of boundaries one’s identity undergoes in the condition of intense love, as expressed in epitaph #19, “Se l’un nel l’altro si trasforma.” Cecchino Bracci had not really died, being alive in the hearts of those who loved him, and Michaelangelo would not die, not in the absolute sense of common men, if he could be taken into the hearts of others. He believed or hoped that one could become another, if the heart were opened and it was with his pulsing heart, given expression in his work, that he challenged death.
Any translator brings two things to his task in unique proportion: facility with the original language of the work and poetic skill in his own language. Michaelangelo has been translated by a number of worthy scholars (whose work I did not read beforehand, and so avoided their influence), but in retrospect it seems that each of them over-balanced to one side or the other of the fidelity-lyricism teeter-totter. I hope to have brought a better grasp of Michaelangelo’s Italian to the task than some; and I feel I may have had more poetry than some others to set on the English side of the enterprise. While many can easily be found better prepared on either hand, I hope here to balance knowledge and ability in a manner more appropriate to the needs of this material.
The act of translation is equivalent to crawling, magnifying glass in hand, over the body of the work in question. It imparts intimate familiarity with the means and effects of a poem, not easily gained through more casual reading. Should no other worth apply to my efforts, on display here, I may yet revel in the deepened appreciation of the mind and heart of Michaelangelo Buonarotti which I acquired along the way.
Sonata
– William Dennis With hip-shot poise, David, on bare stone, who looks with different eyes in different ways, clothes enough marble’s frozen play and serves to fig-leaf how he stands alone. The carver’s hand on marble rests out-shone in shade cast by Tuscan light of day on mass engrossed by Him to whom one prays for grace his worthlessness scarce could condone. What crouches out, here at the stony core, was ever portrait greater than the man. Of God we cannot know; here is a thing, though, his self need be abandoned in exchanged for; and there the He who once was David stands, exceeding nature to endure death’s blow. * * Shanks shape, and shawling flanks, that yearn their slow disrobe before the hunt-and-peck divan my chisel supples-out of marble’s more than ego-less, browed-tight reflections, so more chestnut-leather, brushed-braid glass than where Narcissus stared and lost himself before. My covetous, un-calloused hand made free a capriole of cleft-foot impudence, once; double-quick, its double reed convinced– that faun was wickedness and was not me. Prophets, sylphs, Madonnas, see their eyes and beings strain to middle-distance; in this unpolished block, this mirror’s instance, looking inward I find them–they, me. * * If it was your own nature you wished victories over, and it was, you cut transcendence, by which generations were entranced, in marbles, fit to shape the centuries. When to your own particularity you set a netted hand, its loss-laced essence made no new sweet wine, as old skins discontents, but verses, gnomic in their charity. When crushed, the grape grows interestingly red; a man, beneath death’s narrow foot, breaks out in works by which none rise to heaven, but by which we later live besides our bread. Twice you saw your life as written about; now, as I mouth your words, all books fall shut. |
“se l’un nell’altro amante si trasforma” (should the one into the other lover transform himself) – Michelangelo Buonarroti |
Italian – English translation
by William Dennis
by William Dennis
1. This fragment of a sonnet was found written on the reverse of a sheet of paper holding the drawing of an apostle and a sketch for a battle scene. Adjacent to the verses are the drawings of capitols of architectural columns and a mask.
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Many years in such happiness,
one brief hour brings aching and lament; whether for famous or antique descent others brighten, and in a moment– darkness. Beneath this sun nothing personal is meant, not to conquer death and change fate’s courses. |
2. Quartina isolata /Isolated quatrain
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3. Sonetto /Sonnet
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I'm gratified and happy, obstruction and defeat
of your fierce malice was conceded me already; weary, now the breast wants bathing quickly,* counter to my wishes, and I know you very valiant. And, if the dangers and the arrows over-cast their mark, my heart, had never landed thickly, now, by their blows, you see revenge on me through lovely eyes, and all be mortal here, at last. From as many nooses, as many nets the more, a wandering birdy, through malicious destiny, escapes for years, a little worse to have died, like me: women, as you all see..., Amor..., so, at this age, to give a more cruel death to me, long time have I escaped, as prophesied. *Bathing in tears, a frequent image.
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4. Sonetto /Sonnet: He so enjoys – cheerful and well thread
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He so enjoys – cheerful and well thread
with bloom upon her mane of gold – garlands – which rather than the one, another to that other sends – as one who would be first to kiss that head. Content it is, all day, that vestment spread to cover up the breast, which then, it seems, expands; and that which golden yarn demands, from touching cheeks and neckline has not rested. More joyous yet, that ribbon seems, who takes delight, with gilded point, indeed, such are his ways, and presses on to touch the breast he laces, ...and the simple sash that’s knotted tight, they seem to me to say: we’ll hold here always. Now what good works are left for my embraces? |
5. Sonetto caudato /Tailed sonnet
In line two, "Loindonderry" is substituted for "Lombardy," in order to match the pun Michelangelo made with "Lombardia" in this line and "lombi" or loins, in line nine of the original. Giovanni, here, is Giovanni da Pistoia, poet and chancellor of the Accademia Fiorentina. He was also a foremost advocate of "the New Sweet School" of poetry, to which Michelangelo did not subscribe, though they remained friends. In the margin of his tailed sonnet is the figure of a man stretched to paint on a ceiling above his head, complete with goiter, and seemingly in the nude. |
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I really got a goitre on this job,
like water does to cats in Loindonderry or in whatever other place may be, which forced my gut to stick atop my gob. Beard to sky and nape, where memory’s sent, laid back upon its coffin, Harpy-like the breast, and anyway the brush above is best, which, playing, makes the face a rich pavement. And my loins slip to my stomach, deep inside, and for counterweight, my back gets my behind; and in vain I’d move the eyes along their arc. In front of me I have my tight-stretched hide and, folding, it’s all puckered-up behind. and I extend myself, a Syrian arch. How fallacious and arch the judgement grows, for which my mind is porter: a crooked blow-pipe serves but as distorter. My lifeless picture now defend, Giovanni, and my honor, I’ll land in no good place, and I’m no painter. |
6. Sonetto /Sonnet
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Sir*, if truth in any ancient proverb be,
surely it is this: he who can, never wants to. Talk and tales are credited by you and pressed by one, in truth, an enemy.** Your good and ancient servant, I am, who was already; as rays are given to the sun, am I to you; and of my time, none brings regret or harm to you, and I am pleasing less to you, the more I weary me. Of course, I hope to rise up through your Highness, and the weight of justice and the potent sword, used at need, and not an echo’s cry. But Heaven is that which every virtue despises to let on earth, unless it would reach forward to pluck fruit from a tree that has gone dry. *Pope Giulio II della Rovere. **Condivi and Vasari recount that Bramanie, always hostile to Michelangelo, had tried to convince the Pope to assign Raffaello the work on the second half of the vault of the Sistine chapel. |
7. Madrigale /Madrigal
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Who leads me by force to you again,
Oimmé! Oimmé! Oimmé! bound and fast, and am I loose and free? If you enchanted others without chains, and without hand or arm, I have been taken, from your fair face, who will defend me? |
8. Madrigale /Madrigal
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How can it be that I’m no longer mine?
Divine! Divine! Divine! who took me from myself, who closer than myself, or more than I, on my own skills refined? Divine! Divine! Divine! and through the heart, how passing, whose touch seems not to show? So, what is love, this thing that enters hearts through glances, and seems, in that small space within, to grow? And then, what over-flows? |
9. Quartina isolata /Isolated quatrain
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He who made the whole, made every part
and then, from everything he chose the best to show which of his things exceeds the rest, as he has done now with diviner art. |
10. Sonetto /Sonnet
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Here they make helmets from goblets...and swords,
and blood of Christ by fistfulls gets sold, and cross and thorn are lance and shield, and patience descends, to be sure, from Our Lord. He comes no more, though, not to this neighborhood, so that His blood will reach, at last, the stellar, could be there are, in Rome, for him, peel-sellers, and here the streets are closed to every good. If I ever wished to waste my treasure, which here means from my works a separation, (and what this one in the mantle does, Medusa did to the Moor*); but if on high in heaven, poverty gives pleasure, that would be our state’s grand restoration, unless the other life be extinguished by another gesture.** *Atlante was petrified **wealth or war |