Michelangelo is an unknown poet

I have always believed that books find us at the right time to tell us something. We are not looking for them, but they are waiting for our need to appear for what they contain. I may have come across this book earlier, but she decided I needed time to be able to appreciate it as it deserved. So, sooner or later for someone, for me - at the right moment - I came across the poetry of this so famous sculptor and fresco artist. So much so that his poetry remained somewhere in the periphery of the attention of his contemporaries and of historians who later wrote and rewrote his biography.

This poetry, while unfamiliar to most of us, stands no less than the perfection of his "Pieta" or his "David", which we all know well. Fortunately, the team of Perseus Publishing House has undertaken this worthy act of translating and thus acquainting Bulgarian readers with another type of Michelangelo art, publishing the book "A Copy Throwing With Love." This is not the first translation of his poetry in Bulgaria, but it is appreciated by the precise expression and combination of biographical notes and references, as well as by the inclusion of visual material from the most famous murals and sculptures of the artist.

Michelangelo has an extremely interesting biography and needs to be read before embarking on the work itself. The biography speaks volumes about the poet's attitude to verse and to life in general, whose reflection is poetry. It is no coincidence that the book begins with comprehensive biographical data, strongly tied to the creation of specific works of art, often custom-made. I am talking about his sculptures and frescoes, since poetry is not written to order, it is the fruit of his spiritual need to express himself in this way.

Michelangelo writes mostly sonnets and madrigals, which means that music plays an extremely important role in his poetry. He immediately manifests his innate sense of musicality, along with that of the beautiful and the exquisite. He is an esthete and heavily devoted to the theme of love in the lyrics, devoting numerous verses to Vitoria Colona - the only woman he truly adored, as well as his best friend whose friendship he has cultivated - Tommaso de Cavalieri. However, I was most moved by his poems on death, which he received in a particularly dignified way.

The book contains many unfinished sonnets, which, though in this form, are amazing maxims for life and for love. The translation is by Dragomir Petrov, and the long biographical note at the beginning is by Plamen Totev. I offer you a small example of the exquisite poetic talent of the great Michelangelo.

You, spirit of bliss, with warmth

You, spirit of bliss, with warmth
you put life in the dead heart;
among people are noble and good things
not an old man but a preferred old man.

And it came to the eye,
my mind instead of the other you enjoy,
in the hope of a strong pain you reincarnate,
so that it does not depress me as a desire.

He has found in you the one who has
for me care in the midst of care is different,
thank you cowardly.

That interest would be inadmissible
to give you ugly drawings
against your speech is good and alive.

The sonnet is dedicated to Vitoria Column.

With the flesh grinded, a heart of sulfur

With the flesh grinded, a heart of sulfur
and with bones as dry as summer twigs,
with a soul without a leader, and without a covenant of reins,
with longing and wandering without measure,

with the mind and the blind and the lame to deceive
the lawns, the loops are innumerable
of this world, when the lightning shines,
I will immediately char into the fire.

Mastery is subtle in nature
overcomes anyone who is stubborn,
if by God he is doomed.

We were born deaf or blind in the eye,
measured according to the fire in the chest,
am I wrong to be called?

They can no longer enjoy me

They can no longer enjoy me
eyes glow like I do from them,
returning a sweet laugh
and a strange appearance with weeping and boredom.
You're false, hope for a team!
How can the light of day
to be so different with beauty
out of my mind and substance,
that they blazed with me, that they would not blaze with me?
Among two faces of such different flesh,
angry and enraged;
don't say that she has mercy,
if lava flows into the heart,
and water flows out of my eyes!

***

I know my death - I do not know my hour;
life on earth is impermanent:
it pleases the senses but the soul
asks me not to be long.

The world is blind, shame enlightened
it tramples here on valor.
The boldness and the light dim;
falsehood is preferred over the truth.

Why are you delayed, God?
When the believer waits a lot,
hope loses, and the spirit perishes.

What the light offered us,
if death find me without everyone
protection and bitter overtake me.