Chapter 3 preface

This is a middle-class person in Emerald City,—— --where, full of gloomy palaces, lofty spiers rise like spears, soft and withered hills are delicately reflected in the endless, on which swaying fir dome peaks, and shining Olive groves made of silver, undulating like water waves;—where everything is of extreme elegance.Lorenzo Te Medici's sarcastic face, Machiavelli's wide mouth, AA Machiavelli (Niccolo Machiavel, 1469-1527), Italian politician.Yellow hair on Botticelli's painting, AA Botticelli (Sandro Botticelli, 1445-1510), Italian Renaissance painter.Anemic Venus, all together;—where, full of fanaticism, pride, nervousness, prone to indulge in all blind faith, stirred by all religious and social frenzy, where the individual The individual is free, the individual is despotism, where life is so comfortable, but there life is hell;—where the inhabitants are wise, obstinate, passionate, irritable, with a tongue of steel Generally sharp, the mood is so suspicious, tempting each other, jealous of each other, devouring each other; ——There is no room for a free thinker like Leonardo da Vinci, AA Leonardo da Vinci ( Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519), a famous Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect and engineer.There, Botticelli can only spend his days in fantasy mysticism like a Scottish Puritan. There, Savonarola is used by ordinary bad guys to set fire to artworks and make his monks die Dancing by the fire—three years later, the fire reignited and burned himself to death. AA Savonarola (Girolamo Savonarola, 1452-1498), Italian religious reformer in the late Middle Ages.

In this city of this age, he was the object of their frenzy. "Naturally, he had no tenderness for his fellow-citizens, whose grandiose genius contemptuously contemptuous of their group art, mannerisms, banal realism, their sentimentality and morbid subtleties. His attitude towards them Cruel; but he loves them. He has no Da Vinci-like indifference to his country. Stay away from Emerald and suffer from nostalgia." "I fall into deep misery from time to time. among them, like those who are far from home" (see Rome, Letter of August 19, 1497). All his life he tried every means to live in Ferencia, and during the tragic period of the war, he stayed there. He wants to "at least be able to return to Fei Leng Cui after death, since it is impossible in life". "Death seems so lovely to me; because it can bring me happiness that I can't get in life: that is, to return to my hometown."

Because he is Fei Lengcui's old family, he is very proud of his blood and race.Buonarroti Simone, descended from Setignano, is mentioned in the local chronicles of Ferenc since the twelfth century.Michelangelo certainly knew this. "We are the middle class, of the noblest descent" (to his nephew Leonardo, December 1546)—he disapproved of his nephew's desire to be nobler:" This is by no means a sign of self-respect. We are known to be the oldest and noblest family in Florence." (February 1549)—He tried to revive his family, taught his family to restore His old name was Simone, and he founded a family village in Feiluncui; but he was always frustrated by the mediocrity of his brothers.He blushed when he thought of one of his brothers (Sigismundo) pushing a cart and living like a countryman.In 1520, Count Alessandro de Canossa wrote to him that he had found evidence of their original relationship in the count's genealogy.The news was false, but Michelangelo believed it so much that he even wanted to buy the palace of Canossa, which was said to be the birthplace of his ancestors.His biographer Condive followed his instructions to include the sisters of King Henry II of France and the Countess Mathilde in his family tree.In 1515, when Pope Leo X arrived in Emerald, Michelangelo's brother Buonarotto was sealed by the Pope.Even more proud than he was of his genius.He refused to be treated as an artist: "I am not Michelangelo the sculptor... I am Michelangelo Buonarotti..." He added: "I have never been a painter or a sculptor, —A man of art commerce. I will always preserve the honor of my family." (Letter to Leoiedo, May 2, 1548) He was an aristocrat in spirit, and possessed all class prejudices.He even said: "Aristocrats, not commoners, should practice art." According to his biographer Kondivi.

He had a religious, archaic, almost barbaric conception of the family.He sacrifices everything for it, and wants others to do the same.He will, as he puts it, "sell himself, like a slave, for it."Letter to his father, August 19, 1497. ——He won adult independence from his father on March 13, 1508, at the age of thirty-three.In this respect, for the little things, he will be emotionally aroused.He scorned his brothers, and indeed they deserved his scorn.He scorned his nephew,—his heir.But for his nephews and brothers, he still respects their identity as representatives of the lineage.This language is often found in his letters: "Our lineage...maintain our lineage...do not break our lineage..." He has all the superstitions, all the blind obediences of this mighty race.These seem to be a lump of mud, (like the mud ball that God fabricated human beings), and Michelangelo was formed in this mud ball.But out of this lump of mud springs an ingredient that clarifies everything: genius.

"Those who do not believe in genius, who do not know what genius is, look at Michelangelo! No one has ever been so imprisoned by genius. The temperament of this genius seems to be quite different from his; it is a conquest and overwhelmed him by throwing himself into his arms. His will was impotent; even his spirit and his heart were impotent. It was an outburst of madness, a frightful His life is too weak for his body and soul. "He lives in continual excitement. The pain of his excessive strength compels him to act, to act without rest, without an hour's rest." He wrote: "I am exhausted from work like no one has ever worked, and I think about nothing but working day and night."

This morbid necessity activity not only accumulates his business day by day, does not force him to accept work that he cannot carry out, but also drives him into a paranoid eccentricity.He wants to carve the entire mountain top.When he wants to build a monument, he will spend years going to the stone factory to select stones and build the road to carry them; he will be everything: engineer, craftsman, stonecutter; he will be an only child Do everything; build the Gongtai Church, and he will do it alone.It was a life of penal servitude.He doesn't even want to set aside time for eating and sleeping.Here and there in his letters are the same pathetic phrases: "I hardly have time to eat... I have no time to eat... For twelve years my body has been wrecked by weariness, I have lacked all necessities... I Without a penny, I am naked, I suffer countless pains...I live in misery and pain...I struggle with affliction..." See 1507, 1509, 1512, 15 Letters from the years of 13, 1525, and 1547.

This affliction is actually an illusion.Michelangelo was rich; he tried to make himself rich, very rich.After his death, it was discovered in his Roman apartment that his gold stash contained seven or eight thousand ducats, equivalent to forty or five hundred thousand francs today.The historian Vasari says that he twice gave seven thousand ducats to his nephew, and two thousand ducats to his servant Urbino.He also has a large deposit in Fei Leng Cui.In 1534, he owned six real estate properties and seven land properties in Feilengcui and nearby places.He loves fields.In 1505, 1506, 1512, 1515, 1517, 1518, 1519, and 1520, he purchased a lot of land.It was his countryman heritage.However, his savings and property purchases are not for himself, but for others, and he himself is not willing to enjoy anything.But what good was being rich to him?He lived like a poor man, bound to his labors as a horse is bound to the axle of a grinding wheel.No one will understand why he suffers so much.No one can understand why he cannot suffer voluntarily, or that his suffering is a need for him.Even his father, whose temperament is very similar to his, complained about him: "Your brother told me that you live very frugally, even to the point of being miserable: frugality is good; but misery is bad; A wickedness which is displeasing to all; it hampers your soul as well as your body. So long as you are young, that is all right; but as you grow old, all the sickness and disability that this wretched bad life can produce, You should avoid misery, live in moderation, be careful not to lack the necessary nourishment, and watch yourself not to be overworked..." This letter is followed by some words of guidance on hygiene, which shows the degree of barbarism at that time: "First, protect your head, until it remains reasonably warm, but do not wash it: you should wipe it, but do not wash it." (Letter of the 19th of December, 1500) But no advice influences.He never refused to arrange his life more humanely.He supported his life with very little bread and wine.He only sleeps for a few hours.When he was working on the bronze statue of Julius II in Bologna, he slept in a bed with three of his assistants, since he had only one and would not have another.See letter of 1506.He didn't take off his clothes or boots when he slept.Once, his leg swelled up and he had to cut his boot; when he took it off, the skin came off his leg.

This appalling hygiene, as his father had foreseen, made him perpetually sick. In his letters, it is seen that he had given birth fourteen or fifteen times. September, 1517, While he was working on the tomb of San Lorenzo and the Minerva Christ, he became ill and nearly died.In September 1518, at the Serraveza stoneworks, he fell ill from fatigue and boredom.When Raphael died in 1520, he fell ill again.At the end of 1521, a friend, Leonardo Serraio, congratulated him: "Healed from a pain from which few escape." After the fall of the city, he suffered from insomnia, lack of food, and ailments of head and heart; this condition lasted until the end of the year; his friends thought him hopeless.In 1539, he fell from the viaduct of the Sistine Chapel and broke his leg.In June, 1544, he came down with a severe fever. From December, 1545 to January, 1546, he had a relapse which left him extremely weak.In March, 1549, he suffered terribly from stone gonorrhea.In July, 1555, he suffered from wind pains.In July, 1559, he again suffered from scoliosis and various other diseases: he became very weak.In August, 1561, he "fell fainting, with cramped limbs."Several times he had a fever and nearly died.His eyes were sick, his teeth were sick, he had a headache, and his heart troubles were found in Volume 82 of his poetry collection.He was often afflicted with neuralgia, especially when he slept; sleep was a torment to him.He is getting old very early.At forty-two, he felt old.To Domenico Boninseni, July 1517.At the age of forty-eight, he said that he had to rest for four days after a day of work.To Barthes Angelini, July 1523.He also stubbornly refused to call any doctor for treatment.

His spirit was more affected by this life of hard labor than his body.Pessimism eats at him.When he was a kind of genetic youth, he took pains to comfort his father, because he was sometimes haunted by frantic pain.In his letters to his father, he said from time to time: "Don't you suffer..." (Spring 1509)—"It makes me very sad that you are living in this pathetic mood; I beg you not to go to Think about this." (January 27, 1509) - "Don't be dismayed, don't be distressed." (September 15, 1509) His father Buonarroti was the same as him In 1521 he fled suddenly from his own house, crying out that his son had thrown him out.But Michelangelo's illness went deeper than those he cared for.The relentless activity, the exhausting weariness, plunged his suspicious mind into every kind of confusion.He is suspicious of his enemies, he is suspicious of his friends. "In a perfect friendship there is often a conspiracy to destroy reputation and life." (See his letter to his friend Luigi del Riccio - the friend who rescued him from the serious illness in 1546 -'s sonnet) See November 15, 1561, his faithful friend Cavalieri's justification letter to him after his unwarranted suspicion: "I dare say that I never No offense to you; but you are too credulous to trust the last of you..." He suspected his family, his brother, his heir; he suspected that they waited impatiently for his death.

Everything unsettles him; "I live my life in continual mistrust... trust no one, sleep with my eyes open..." His family laughs at this perpetual disquiet too.In September and October 1515, he wrote to his brother Bonarotto: "...don't laugh at everything I write...one should laugh at no one; in this age, for his There is no harm in living in fear and insecurity for body and soul...In all ages it is good to be insecure..." He was, as he put it, in "a state of mourning or even madness" "Live life.In his letters he often referred to himself as "the melancholy and mad man," "the old man," "the madman and the wicked"—but he excused the madness, saying it affected him personally.After suffering for a long time, he actually likes to have pain, and he finds a kind of sorrowful pleasure in it: "The more I suffer, the happier I am." Poems Volume 152.

For him everything was a subject of pain—even love, Sonnets, Vol. Extinction, as disaster makes hope grow." Even good. "All things make me sad," he wrote, "...even good, which, because it is so short-lived, gives me as much pain of soul as evil." "My Joy is Sorrow." Anthology of Poems, Vol. 81. No one is less near joy and more inclined to pain than he.It was all he saw and felt in the vastness of the universe.All the pessimism in the world is contained in this cry of despair, in this utterly vain phrase. "A thousand joys are not worth a single sorrow! "His violent strength," Condivi said, "almost completely isolated him from the crowd." AA Condivi (AscanoCondivi,? -1574), Italian painter, sculptor and writer.Michelangelo's student and friend.The "Biography of Michelangelo" was published in 1553. He is alone. —He hated; and he was hated.He loves; he is not loved.People admired him and feared him at the same time.In his later years he inspired a kind of religious respect.He reigns over his age.At that time, he calmed down a little.He sees people from above, and people see him from below.Never did he know repose and the tenderness which is accorded to the humblest of beings--that of being able, for one minute of his life, to fall asleep in the affection of another.A woman's love has nothing to do with him.In this desert sky, only the calm and pure friendship of Victoria Colonna shone for a moment like a star. AA Victoria Colonna (Vittoria Colon-Bna, 1492-1547), Italian poetess.The night was all around him, and his thoughts whirled violently like meteors in the darkness, his thoughts and dreams echoed in it.Beethoven was never in this situation.For the night is in Michelangelo's own heart.Beethoven's melancholy is the fault of man; he was by nature happy, and he wanted to be happy.Michelangelo was melancholy, and this melancholy was frightening, and all people instinctively avoided him.He creates an emptiness around him. That's nothing.The worst thing is not to be lonely, but to be lonely to oneself, unable to live with oneself, unable to be the master of oneself, and to deny oneself, struggle with oneself, and destroy oneself.His soul is forever deceiving his genius.It is often said that he had a destiny "against himself," which prevented him from carrying out any of his great plans.This fate is his own.The key to his unhappiness which explains the tragedy of his life—the key which men least see, or dare not look at,—is lack of will and natural cowardice. In art, in politics, in all his actions and all his thoughts, he was indecisive.Between two works, two plans, two parts, he cannot choose.The history of the monument to Julius II, the roof of San Lorenzo, the tomb of the Medici, etc., is sufficient evidence of his hesitation.He started, started, but to no avail.He wants it, but he doesn't want it.He had only chosen, and he had begun to doubt.At the end of his life he accomplished nothing: he detested everything.People say that his work is forced; people put the responsibility of changing his mind and making plans indefinitely on his client.In fact, if he decided to refuse, there was nothing his mastermind could force him to do.But he dared not refuse. He is weak.He is weak in every way, both for virtue and for cowardice.He is timid.He was troubled by all kinds of thoughts, and in a strong character, all these thoughts can be put aside.Because of his exaggerated sense of responsibility, he thinks he is compelled to do the most mediocre work, work for which any craftsman can do better than he.He spent several years in the Serravezza stone factory when he sculpted the tomb of San Lorenzo.He can neither fulfill his duty nor forget it.The statue of Christ in the Minerva Temple, which he inherited in 1514, had not yet started in 1518. "I died of pain... I did something like a thief..." In 1501, he signed a contract with the Piccolomini Temple in Siena, stipulating that he would hand over his works after three years.But sixty years later, in 1561, he was still troubled by the breach of the contract. He becomes cowardly out of prudence and fear.What Julius II called the "terrible man" was likewise called the "prudent man" by Vasari—the man who "fears everyone, even the Pope" fears everything.Sebastiano del Piombo letter in Chinese. (October 27, 1520) AA Piombo (Sebastiano del Piom B·143·bo, 1485-1547) Italian Venetian painter.He was cowardly before princes and dignitaries—but he despised most those who appeared cowardly before princes and dignitaries, whom he called "burdened asses of princes."Speaking with Vasari. —He would avoid the Pope; he kept it, he obeyed the Pope.In 1534 he tried to escape from Pope Paul III, but in the end he was sent to work to consign him to the insolent letters of his masters, to whom he respectfully replied.On February 2, 1518, Archbishop Julius Medici, suspecting that he had been bribed by the Karais, sent him a stern letter.Michelangelo resignedly accepted, writing back that he "has no other business in the world than to devote himself to pleasing him".Sometimes he resisted, he spoke proudly;—but he always yielded.Until his death, he struggled hard, but he had no strength to fight.Pope Clement VII—contrary to popular opinion—was the kindest of all popes to him, he knew his weaknesses; he pitied him too.See his correspondence with Sebastiano del Piombo after the fall of Emerald.He was restless for his health and his distress. All his dignity will be lost in the face of love.He appears very cowardly in front of villains.He takes a lovely but mediocre guy like Tommaso Cavalieri for a great genius. "...I can't compare with you. You are unique in all knowledge." (Michelangelo's letter to Tommaso Cavalieri on January 1, 1533) AA Cavalieri (Tommasode Cavalieri) ), an Italian nobleman, one of Mi's best friends.Their friendship lasted until Michael's death. Love, at least, made these weaknesses attractive.When he was cowardly out of fear, it was only—one dare not say shameful—a sign of wretched suffering.He was suddenly plunged into delirious terror.So he fled, and was driven about by terror through all parts of Italy.In 1494, because of some kind of illusion, he was so frightened that he escaped from Fei Leng Cui.In 1529, Fei Lengcui was besieged, and he, who was responsible for defending the city, fled again.He fled all the way to Venice.Almost fled to France.Afterwards he felt ashamed of this matter, and he returned to the besieged city to do his duty until the siege was over.But how timid and trembling he was when Fei Leng Cui fell, and he was strictly exiled and exiled, and acted vigorously and resolutely!He even went so far as to flatter Judge Vallaure, the judge who put to death his friend, the noble Battista della Parra.pitiful!He even forsakes his friend, the exile of Emerald. "...I have always been careful not to talk to or have anything to do with people who have been sentenced to exile; in the future I will be more careful...I don't talk to anyone; I saluted, because I had to greet them in a friendly manner, but I ignored them. If I knew who the exiled Ferengui people were, I would simply not answer him..." This was his nephew telling him that he had been arrested. His reply from Rome (1548) after being denounced for his private communion with the vagrants of Emerald was in Chinese—more than that, he was ungrateful; he denied that he was seriously ill. I was under the care of the Strozzi's at that time: "As for being accused of having been under the care of the Strozzi's in my illness, I do not think I was in the Strozzi's but in Luigi del Strozzi's. In Riccio's bedroom, he was very friendly with me." (Luigi del Riccio served in the Strozzi's house) There is no doubt that Michelangelo was a guest at the Strozzi's He himself gave Roberto Strozzi a "Slave" (now in the Louvre, France) two years ago to express his gratitude for his kindness. He fears.He was terribly ashamed of his terror.He despised himself.He hated himself so much that he fell ill.He is going to die.People also thought he was dying.It was 1531, after the fall of Emerald, after he had succumbed to Pope Clement VII and the flattering judge Vallauris. But he can't die.There is a crazy power to survive in his heart, and this power will wake up every day, to survive, in order to continue to suffer. —What if he could be inactive?But he can't.He cannot do nothing.He acts.He deserves to act. —Does he act by himself? ——He is passive!He is involved in his epileptic passions and contradictions, like Dante's prisoner. He deserved to suffer! "Trouble me! Worry! In my past, not a single day was mine!" Poetry Volume 49. (1532) He utters this desperate cry to God: "O God! O God! Who can penetrate myself more than myself?" Poems, vol. (1504-1511) If he desires death, it is because he regards death as the ultimate cause of this terrible life of slavery.How envious he spoke of the dead! "You don't have to fear the transformation of life and the transformation of desire... Later time will no longer do any violence to you; necessity and chance will no longer drive you... Thinking of this, can I not envy you?" Volume fifty-eight. (commemorating his father's death in 1534) "Death! No more being! No more being yourself! Escape from the shackles of all things! Escape from your own fantasies!" "Ah! Make me, make me no longer reply to myself!" Poetry Volume 135. His irritated eyes are still watching us in the Kyoto Museum, and on his painful face, I hear this mournful cry even more.The following descriptions are based on various portraits of Michelangelo.Francesco Lacava recently discovered a portrait of himself in The Last Judgment, and how many people have passed before him in four hundred years without seeing him.But once you see it, you will never forget it. He was of medium height, with broad shoulders and a strong prominence of bone and muscle.Due to overwork, his body was deformed. When he walked, his head was raised up, his back was bent, and his abdomen protruded forward.This is the figure in the portrait of the painter Francisco de Hollande AA Francisco de Hollande (1517-1584), Portuguese miniature painter and writer: it is standing silhouette, dressed in black. Clothes; a Roman cloak over the shoulders; a kerchief wrapped around the head; over the kerchief a bonnet.In 1564, when his remains were brought back from Rome to Emerald, and his coffin was reopened, this bonnet was worn on his head. The head is round, the forehead is square, full of wrinkles, and looks very wide.His black hair was matted and matted.The eyes were small, sad, and intense, with a changing brilliance, either yellow or blue.The nose was broad and straight, with a bulge in the middle, and it had been crushed by Torrigiani's fist.This is from 1490 to 1492. AA Torrigiani (Pietro Torrigiani, 1472-1528), a sculptor and painter of the Emerald School.After immigrating to England in 1511, he became the first advocate of Italian Renaissance style in England.There are deep wrinkles from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth, the mouth is very delicate, the lower lip is slightly protruding, the temples are thin, and the two cheekbones with protruding cheekbones are surrounded by a faun-like beard. The whole face is covered with sadness and hesitation, which is indeed the face of the poet Tasso's time, showing the traces of restlessness and suspicion. AA Tasso (Torquato Tasso, 1544-1595), the greatest poet of the late Italian Renaissance.The miserable look aroused people's sympathy. Sympathy, let's not argue with him.Let us give him the love he has hoped for all his life but has not found.He tasted all the suffering a man could suffer.He saw his hometown fall.He saw Italy fall to the hands of barbarians.He witnessed the destruction of liberty.He saw his loved ones die one by one.He saw the bright lights of art go out one by one. In this time of approaching night, he is left alone at the end.At death's gate, when he looks back, he cannot console himself by saying that he has done what he could and should have done.His life seemed wasted to him.A life without joy is futile.In vain he also sacrificed his life to the idol of art. "...passionate dreams make me regard art as an idol and a kingdom..." (Vol. He couldn't realize his dream plan just in case.None of his most important works were completed.Fate taunted him, and made the sculptor complete his work from the beginning to the end, only the painting he did not want.He called himself a "sculptor" rather than a "painter".On March 10, 1508 he wrote: "Today, I, Michelangelo, the sculptor, begin the painting of the Sistine Chapel"—"This is not my business at all," he wrote a year later Said, "...I waste my time for nothing." (January 27, 1509) He never changed his opinion.Of those great projects which made him proud and tormented him, some—the sketches for the Battle of Pisa, the bronze statue of Julius II—were destroyed in his lifetime, some—especially The tomb of Lius II, the family temple of the Medici—was a wretched miscarriage: what we see now is only a sketch of his thoughts. The sculptor Ghiberti AA Ghiberti (Lorenzo Ghiberti, 1378-1455), the main bronze sculptor of Emerald in the early Italian Renaissance, told a story in his notes, saying that a silver engraver of Duke Ernst and Young of Germany had a remarkable With a skill comparable to that of ancient Greek sculptors, he witnessed the destruction of a work that he poured his whole life into in his later years. —" Then he saw that all his weariness was in vain; he knelt and cried, "O Lord, Lord of heaven and earth, make me no longer stray, let me no longer follow anyone but thee; have pity on me Bar! ' Immediately, he distributed all his property to the poor, retired to the mountains, and died..." Like this poor German engraver, Michelangelo looked at his life, his All his efforts are in vain, his works are unfinished and ruined. So, he resigned.The light of the Renaissance, the supreme and free soul of the universe, escapes with him "in the love of the gods, who greeted us with open arms on the cross." The full cry of "Praise be to Joy" was not screamed out.For him to his last breath is always "the hymn of pain," "the hymn of death that liberates all."He was totally defeated. This is one of the conquerors of the world.We, enjoying the fruits of his genius as we enjoy the deeds of our ancestors, can no longer remember his blood shed. I would like to ooze this blood before everyone's eyes, and I would like to raise the red flag of heroes and fly over our heads.