THE SONNETS

OF

MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI

AND

TOMMASO CAMPANELLA

NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME TRANSLATED INTO RHYMED ENGLISH

BY

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

AUTHOR OF 'RENAISSANCE IN ITALY' 'STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS' 'SKETCHESIN ITALY AND GREECE' 'INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF DANTE'

[Greek: Chruseon chalkeia]

1878

_TO

S.F.A._

PREFATORY NOTE.

After some deliberation, and at the risk of offending the sensibilityof scholars, I have adopted the old English spelling of MichaelAngelo's name, feeling that no orthographical accuracy can outweigh theassociations implied in that familiar title. Michael Angelo has a placeamong the highest with Homer and Titian, with Virgil and Petrarch, withRaphael and Paul; nor do I imagine that any alteration for the betterwould be effected by substituting for these time-honoured names Homêrosand Tiziano, Vergilius and Petrarca, Raffaello and Paulus.

I wish here to express my heartiest thanks to Signore Pasquale Villarifor valuable assistance kindly rendered in the interpretation of somedifficult passages of Campanella, and to Signore V. de Tivoli forcalling my attention to the sonnet of Michael Angelo deciphered by himon the back of a drawing in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford.

Portions both of the Introduction and the Translations forming thisvolume, have already appeared in the 'Contemporary Review' and the'Cornhill Magazine.'

DAVOS PLATZ:

Dec. 1877.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION

PROEM

MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS

CAMPANELLA'S SONNETS

NOTES TO MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS

NOTES TO CAMPANELLA'S SONNETS

APPENDICES

INTRODUCTION.

I.

It is with diffidence that I offer a translation of Michael Angelo'ssonnets, for the first time completely rendered into English rhyme, andthat I venture on a version of Campanella's philosophical poems. Myexcuse, if I can plead any for so bold an attempt, may be found inthis—that, so far as I am aware, no other English writer has dealtwith Michael Angelo's verses since the publication of his autograph;while Campanella's sonnets have hitherto been almost utterly unknown.

Something must be said to justify the issue of poems so dissimilar in asingle volume. Michael Angelo and Campanella represent widely sundered,though almost contemporaneous, moments in the evolution of the Italiangenius. Michael Angelo was essentially an artist, living in the primeof the Renaissance. Campanella was a philosopher, born when theCounter-Reformation was doing all it could to blight the free thoughtof the sixteenth century; and when the modern spirit of exact enquiry,in a few philosophical martyrs, was opening a new stage for Europeanscience. The one devoted all his mental energies to the realisation ofbeauty: the other strove to ascertain truth. The one clun

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