"Wonderful. . . . Nims gives us Michelangelo whole: the polymorphous love sonneteer, the political allegorist, and the solitary singer of madrigals."—Kirkus Reviews
"A splendid, fresh and eloquent translation. . . . Nims, an eminent poet and among the best translators of our time, conveys the full meaning and message of Michelangelo's love sonnets and religious poems in fluently rhymed, metrical forms."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"The best so far. . . . Nims is best at capturing the sound and sense of Michelangelo's poetic vocabulary."—Choice
"Surely the most compelling translations of Michelangelo currently available in English."—Ronald L. Martinez, Washington Times
"Wonderful. . . . Nims gives us Michelangelo whole: the polymorphous love sonneteer, the political allegorist, and the solitary singer of madrigals."—Kirkus Reviews
"A splendid, fresh and eloquent translation. . . . Nims, an eminent poet and among the best translators of our time, conveys the full meaning and message of Michelangelo's love sonnets and religious poems in fluently rhymed, metrical forms."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"The best so far. . . . Nims is best at capturing the sound and sense of Michelangelo's poetic vocabulary."—Choice
"Surely the most compelling translations of Michelangelo currently available in English."—Ronald L. Martinez, Washington Times
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The Complete Poems of Michelangelo
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The Complete Poems of Michelangelo
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Overview
"Wonderful. . . . Nims gives us Michelangelo whole: the polymorphous love sonneteer, the political allegorist, and the solitary singer of madrigals."—Kirkus Reviews
"A splendid, fresh and eloquent translation. . . . Nims, an eminent poet and among the best translators of our time, conveys the full meaning and message of Michelangelo's love sonnets and religious poems in fluently rhymed, metrical forms."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"The best so far. . . . Nims is best at capturing the sound and sense of Michelangelo's poetic vocabulary."—Choice
"Surely the most compelling translations of Michelangelo currently available in English."—Ronald L. Martinez, Washington Times
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780226080307 |
---|---|
Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
Publication date: | 04/15/2000 |
Edition description: | 1 |
Pages: | 208 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Complete Poems of Michelangelo
University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2003
University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-226-08033-1
Chapter One
5
A goiter it seems I got from this backward craning
like the cats get there in Lombardy, or wherever
-bad water, they say, from lapping their fetid river.
My belly, tugged under my chin, 's all out of whack.
Beard points like a finger at heaven. Near the back
of my neck, skull scrapes where a hunchback's lump would be.
I'm pigeon-breasted, a harpy! Face dribbled-see?-
like a Byzantine floor, mosaic. From all this straining
my guts and my hambones tangle, pretty near.
Thank God I can swivel my butt about for ballast.
Feet are out of sight; they just scuffle around, erratic.
Up front my hide's tight elastic; in the rear
it's slack and droopy, except where crimps have callused.
I'm bent like a bow, half-round, type Asiatic.
Not odd that what's on my mind,
when expressed, comes out weird, jumbled. Don't berate;
no gun with its barrel screwy can shoot straight.
Giovanni, come agitate
for my pride, my poor dead art! I don't belong!
Who's a painter? Me? No way! They've got me wrong.
161
What file's incessant bite
left this old hide so shrunken, frayed away,
my poor sick soul? When is it due, the day
thatsloughs it off, and heaven receives you, where
in primal joy and light
you lived, unvexed by the perilous flesh you wear?
Though I change hide and hair
with little life ahead,
no way to change behavior long engrained,
cramping me all the more as years go by.
I'm envious, Love, I swear
(why hide it?) of the dead,
a panicky muddle-head,
my soul in terror of its sensual tie.
Lord, as the last hours fly,
stretch out in mercy your two arms; make me
less what I've been, more what you'd have me be.
267
I'm packaged in here like the pulp in fruit
compacted by its peel. In lonely gloom,
a genii in a jar. Dumped destitute.
No room for flying high. I'm in a tomb
where mad Arachne and her creepy crew
keep jittering up and down, a spooky loom.
My entryway's a jakes for giants, who
gorge on gut-loosening grapes or suffer flux.
No other comfort station seems to do.
Urine! How well I know it-drippy duct
compelling me awake too early, when
dawn plays at peekaboo, then yonder-yuck!-
dead cats, cesspool and privy slosh, pigpen
guck-gifts for me, flung hit-or-miss?
Can't trudge to a proper dunghill, gentlemen?
Soul gets some help from body though in this:
if guts, unclogged, could ventilate their smell
no bread and cheese would keep it in duress,
while round it now catarrh and mucus jell.
Congestion blocks the postern down in back.
With all the phlegm, top exit's blocked as well.
Gut-sprung and graveled, spavined, out of whack,
done in by drudgery's what I am. I pay
innkeeper Death for a fleabag, grub and sack.
My pleasure: gloomy moping. Old and gray,
discomfort's my repose. Who'd choose it so,
God keep him in the dumps day after day.
The bogeyman, that's me, at a twelfth-night show.
The setting's right, a stable. Disrepair's
conspicuous near fine mansions in a row.
No flames of love within my heart, a bare
cold hearthstone deep in ash. Chill drafts prevail.
Clipped are the wings that rode celestial air.
Skull hums like a hornet in a wooden pail;
gunnysack skin totes bones and jute around;
bladder's a pouch of gravel, edged like shale.
My eyes: mauve pigment pestled till it's ground;
teeth: oboe-keys that, when I puff out air,
whistle it through or else begrudge the sound.
My face says, "Boo!" It's scary. Rags I wear
rout-without bow and arrow-flocks of crows
from fresh-sown furrows even when weather's fair.
One ear's all spider fuzz. I've tremolos
in the one an all-night vocal cricket chooses.
Can't sleep for my raucous snuffling, mouth and nose.
Amor, flower-quilted grottos, all the Muses,
for these I scribbled reams-now scraps to tot
up tabs, wrap fish, scrub toilets, or worse uses.
The puppets once I postured, cocky lot,
size up my here and now: I'm like the one
who, having swum wide ocean, drowned in snot.
My cherished art, my season in the sun,
name, fame, acclaim-that cant I made a run for,
left me in servitude, poor, old, alone.
O death, relieve me soon. Or soon I'm done for.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Complete Poems of Michelangelo
Copyright © 2003
by University of Chicago.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface ~I~ THE LONG BEGINNING (1475-1532) 2 1. A man who's happy many a year, one hour 2. Brow burning, in cool gloom, as sundown shears 3. I was happy, with fate favoring, to abide 4. How joyfully it shows, the garland there 5. A goiter it seems I got from this backward craning 6. If any of those old proverbs, lord, make sense 7. Who's this that draws me forcibly to you? 8. O God, O God, O God, how can I be 9. He Who made all there is, made every part 10. Chalices hammered into sword and helmet! 11. How much less torment to breathe out my soul 12. How could I, since it's so 13. Fame keeps the epitaphs where they lie 14. The Day and the Night speak 15. Seeing I'm yours, I rouse me from afar 16. From one all loveliness and all allure 17. Rancorous heart, cruel, pitiless, though showing 18. Though shouldered from the road I chose when young 19. Fine lass or lady, they 20. Sweeter your face than grapes are, stewed to mush 21. Once born, death's our destination 22. What's to become of me? What's this you're doing 23. I was, for years and years now, wounded, killed 24. I made my eyes an entryway for poison 25. When with a clanking chain a master locks 26. Uproot a plant-there's no way it can seal 27. Flee from this Love you lovers; flee the flame! 28. Because there's never a time I'm not enchanted 29. All rage, all misery, all show of strength 30. From eyes of my beloved one, come burning 31. Love in your eyes? No; life and death are there 32. I live for sinning, for the self that dies 33. Were it true that, besides my own, another's arms 34. Where my love lives is nowhere in my heart 35. The eyelid, shadowing, doesn't interfere 36. My lover stole my heart, just over there 37. In me there's only death; my life's in you 38. He who beguiles both time and death together 39. For a wound from the searing arrows Love lets fly 40. When blithely Love would lift me up to heaven 41. O noble soul, in whom, as mirrored, show 42. Pray tell me, Love, if what my eyes can see 43. My reason, out of sorts with me, deplores 44. When to that beauty that I saw before 45. It well may be, so vehement my sighing 46. If my rough hammer shapes the obdurate stone 47. When the occasioner of my many a sigh 48. Just as a flame, by wind and weather flailed 49. Your beauty, Love, stuns mortal reckonings 50. What's to become of her, long years from now 51. Alas! Alas! for the way I've been betrayed 52. Were one allowed to kill himself right here 53. Who rides by night on horseback, come the day 54. I do believe, if you were made of stone 55. Though quite expensive, look, I've bought you this 56. My death is what I live on; seems to me 57. If I'm more alive because love burns and chars me ~II~ THREE LOVES (1532-1547) 36 58. If longings for the immortal, which exalt 59. If pure devotion, passion without stain 60. You know, my lord, that I too know you know 61. If, when it caught my eye first, I'd been bolder 62. Only with fire can men at forge and flue 63. So fond is fire of the frigid stone it waits 64. If fire can melt down steel and shatter flint 65. Just when I'm lost in adoration of you 66. Maybe, so I'd look kindly on souls in need 67. A new and more commendable delight 68. Then there's this giant-tall! So tall he can't 69. Nature knows what it's doing: one cruel as you 70. O cruel star, or say instead, cruel will 71. I have your letter, thank you, as received 72. If, through our eyes, the heart's seen in the face 73. Now that I'm banned and routed from the fire 74. I weep, I burn-burn up!-my heart thereby 75. Too much! the way he flaunts himself around 76. Whether or not the light I long for, sent 77. Supposing the passionate fire your eyes enkindle 78. From grief I cherished to a rueful laugh 79. Blissful spirit, thanks to whom new passion 80. I really believed, that first great day when, awed 81. In everything I see, the meaning's plain 82. Not even, in dreams sent soaring, can I imagine 83. What in your handsome face I see, my lord 84. From ink, from pen in hand we see outflow 85. Having, my friend, your letter here in hand 86. Already burdened with a heavy heart 87. I wish I'd want what I don't want, Lord, at all 88. By a face of fiery cold, I'm set aflame 89. Through your fine eyes I see such mellow light 90. I'm dearer to me, much more, than ever I was 91. So I can best endure 92. Although time presses hard and prods us on 93. Should the senses' rapturous burning override 94. Kindly to others, to itself unkind 95. Give back to my eyes their flow, O spring, O river 96. With all my heart I love you; if not so 97. With heart of sulphur, flesh of tinder too 98. Why ease the tension of this wild desire 99. What a chance I had! I should havet while I could 100. When heaven confirmed your brilliance, most of all 101. The night prevails where Phoebus-that's our sun 102. O night, comforting night, dark though you are 103. Every shut .. in room or space, every covered one 104. The One Who made, and from utter nothing too 105. My gaze saw no mere mortal on the day 106. From heaven it ventured forth, there must return 107. Drawn to each lovely thing, my doting eyes 108. No rest here for the wicked, as folk say 109. Not always so prized and cherished by us all 110. I'm here to say you've given earth your all 111. My lady, if it's true 112. For a safe haven, for escape at last 113. No slightest chance on earth her heavenly eyes 114. Easily you confound 115. Wiles, guilest smiles, gold and pearls, her gala ways 116. I wouldn't if I could, Love, check the urge 117. If right desire takes wing 118. Although my heart had often been aflame 119. From the first whimper to the expiring sigh 120. Time now good .. byes were said 121. Just as you cannot not be lovely here 122. If fire, so quick to char 123. The more it seems I agonize, the more 124. My lady is so impetuous, devil ... may ... care 125. Such wealth of promise lies 126. If the soul, in truth, from body once set free 127. Not death so much, but its terror rescues me 128. The fear of death! Who'd shove 129. By light more brilliant of a star more bright 130. No doubt much peril lies 131. From beneath two arching brows 132. Whenever my past unrolls before these eyes 133. Life's final hours: brought there by many a year 134. o blessed souls, who high in heaven delight 135. With much of time and life gone, all the more 136. Flooded, the soul pours out 137. If, to rejoice, you crave our tears and woe 138. Humbly I bow my shoulders, bear the yoke 139. In lovelier and crueller flesh than yours 140. If the soul returns, that last 141. If I'm to believe my eyes now, your response 142. I think it may be, so 143. Life's quick and brief; the more my days fly by 144. At times I project ahead 145. If she rejoices in my tears, and you 146. Looks thrown away on others 147. Please tell me, Love, if that lady had a soul 148. I'd feel the more secure 149. I'll surely be thought a dullard in talent, art 150. Great mercy, my lady, as likely as great pain 151. Nothing the best of artists can conceive 152. As by subtracting, my lady, one creates 153. A mould's not alone in this 154. My lady, you raise me so 155. Your kindness to me, and the ways of fate 156. That whole way up to your brilliant diadem 157. Your merciful, sweet care 158. It seems, Love, out you've flung 159. To be less unworthy, my exalted lady 160. If obligated by so great a favor 161. What file's incessant bite 162. Now on the left foot shuffling, now the right 163. Hating myself, the more I run away 164. For a reliable guide in my vocation 165. If we constrain the eyes' easy response 166. My lady, these eyes see vividly-far, near 167. From where you triumphed in me, Love, right here 168. Because there's half of me which, heaven-born 169. Impassioned as I am 170. Great beauty scattering its brilliant flame 171. Among the memory of all lovely things 172. She's made her mind up, the 173. If a joyous heart makes beautiful the face 174. From what these eyes, my lady, see of you 175. So, Love, it hasn't healed, not even the least 176. No need at all for your angel loveliness 177. Bright in our minds, but in the dark earth stranded 178. Her beauty's alive in heaven! I believe her 179. If his bright eyes are closed and laid to rest 180. My fervent prayer, if any pity me 181. "So tell me, Death, why not possess some face 182. Death didn't wish to lay Cecchino low 183. Such brightness, under earth now, put to shame 184. My name meant "Arms." But little help to me 185. Born, died. Now bedded by the churchyard wall 186. Noway he who undid me can restore 187. Inside, his soul could not be outside too 188. If nature now deferred to death, dejected 189. Closed now his shining eyes, that dazzled so 190. Here I'm thought dead. Alive, I comforted 191. Souls rise alive from the body's sad last bed 192. If true (and it is) that with body's final breath 193. His beautiful eyes! I hardly saw them, only 194. Too early fallen asleep here, I'm alive 195. 'If two hours' dying steals a hundred years 196. O lucky me, to look upon me dead! 197. My flesh turned earth, my bones turned naked shame 198. If it could be, to revive my life once more 199. Who grieve now at my grave, in vain they pray 200. Cold stone, none knows but you, my gaol forever 201. From clutch of clock and calendar now fled 202. One of the Bracci, I. Now, as you see 203. A Bracci born. From birth, born wailing 204. I'm dearer dead than ever I was, before 205. If death has buried here, hardly in leaf 206. From heaven my beauty, flawless and divine 207. I'm death's forever, who, that one forlorn 208. Gone under now, the sun you loved to greet 209. Why fallen so soon asleep? Not hard to tell 210. Peace, life-he found them in my open eyes 211. If, while I lived, a someone, eyes on me 212. No other handsome face such power possessed 213. Young Braccio's buried here. To mend a lack 214. His life gave yours rich reason for thanksgiving 215. Ashes to ashest spirit to the sky 216. Within this tomb our handsome Braccio's laid 217. If Braccio's beauty, phoenix-like, could be 218. The sun of Braccio's under earth. The sun 219. A Braccit, I. Alive because I'm dead 220. Cecchino here has laid his body low 221. Braccio lies here. No less a tomb could show 222. Death stretched an arm, stole fruit not ripened yet 223. Mere mortal once. Divine, thought born to be 224. Death shut those eyes, him too it shut below 225. A Bracci once. The soul in me withdrew 226. The soul lives on, I know it, lying here 227. Braccio retrieves from earth the mortal scrim 228. Earth lends us flesh, heaven lends the soul, the two 229. Be sure, my eyes, you know 230. To see that your famous beauty still endures 231. Too late for Love to set my heart aflame 232. No differently the guilty wretch hangs back 233. If, vulnerable from early youth, a heart 234. It's not enought if it doesn't come from you 235. A man within a woman-no I'd say 236. If by its heaven-sent power the mind conceives 237. To one of taste both flawless and robust 238. On earth, it's no unworthy soul that nurses 239. My lady, how comes it about-what all can see 240. This face, says art, alone 241. Through many a year and many a vain assay 242. As, working in hard stone to make the face 243. Whenever remembrance of the one I love 244. If sorrow makes one beautiful (it's said) 245. "Say the face I'm speaking of now, hers I mean 246. You revel in my torments, only you 247. To sleep, even more be made of stone: how these 248. Straight down from heaven, and in the flesh, he came 249. "Your beauty an angel's, Lady, you were meant 250. All there's to say of him, no way of saying 251. There's pleasure in great favors done, but hidden 252. Since I'm too obligated 253. Had I, when young, been leery of the glow 254. Though bent with age, to me 255. Your lovely eyes, now bent 256. Suppose a lady has no other graces 257. Why only at long last, why next to never 258. Although it's amply true your human face 259. No question but, when my desire's aflame 260. Not true that it's always grim with mortal sin 261. Love long delayed comes kindly, by fortune's favor 262. If a god, Love, can't you do 263. A woman's beauty, new 264. As I've carried in my heart this many a year 265. So it wouldn't need to retrieve the total sum 266. What wonder that-seeing how, beside your fire~ III ~ THE FOUR LAST THINGS (1547-1564) 136
267. I'm packaged in here like the pulp in fruit 268. Because age steals away 269. Now armed with biting ice, now tongues of fire 270. You give me only what you're glutted with 271. I fed on you, and with you, many a year 272. Bring back the day the reins hung slack and free 273. Though always one and the same, the one same who 274. Oh let me see You everywhere I go! 275. Enclosed and hidden in a monstrous stone 276. Whatever the eye finds lovely, in a flash 277. Thugh you with line and color excel, securing 278. If leaves arent, what you're wanting 279. Power of a lovely face impels me where? 280. Confused, with itself at odds, soul fails to find 281. Time was my fire burned high, yes, even on Ice 282. In such servility I and all so boring! 283. The springtime, fresh and green, can never guess 284. If, in Your name, some image comes to mind 285. So now it's over, my day's long voyage, through 286. My infinite thoughtsf so many gone awry 287. Day in, day out, from childhood long ago 288. The world and all its fables long ago 289. There's nothing lower on earth, of less account 290. Rid of this nagging nattering cadaver 291. I think, indeed know wellt some crushing sin 292. How very sweet indeed the prayers I'd say 293. Burdened with years and crapulous with sin 294. It leaves me plunged in gloom and pain-yet dear 295. Assured of death, of its timing, thought not so 296. If our very thirst for longer life bids fair 297. Though years and years in dour allurement lapped 298. With no less joy than grief and consternation 299. For the sugar, for the mule, those candles too 300. By merit of grace, the cross, and all we've suffered 301. My eyes are saddened by so much they see 302. One way remains to loose me yet, dear Lord The Text of the Poems Translating Poetry Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography