Michelangelo's Mystic Poetry

The spiritual struggle behind his art

You know Michelangelo as one of the greatest artists of all time — but do you know him as a poet?

On top of sculpting La Pietà and painting the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo crafted some of the most remarkable pieces of Renaissance poetry. His collection of over 300 poems, known as the Rime, is shocking in its psychological, emotional, and theological depth.

But Michelangelo’s poetry is also intensely personal and spiritual. The Florentine artist never shied away from bearing his heart, and he used poetry as a means to wrestle with his sin, and return back to God.

Today, we examine the poem that best exemplifies Michelangelo’s intense spiritual struggles. Never intended for publication, it was written on the back of a letter dated April 27, 1522.

Over seven short lines, the poem not only reveals Michelangelo’s battle with lust (which impedes him from ascending to God), but also the true depth of his genius.

It is rife with allusions to the work of Dante and Saint Augustine, and proves that the world’s greatest artist wasn’t just a sculptor, painter, and poet — he was a theologian as well.

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The Poem

What follows is the text of the poem known by scholars as G18, presented first in Michelangelo’s Tuscan, and in English:

Mille rimedi invan l’anima tenta:

poi ch’i’ fu’ preso alla prestina strada,

di ritornare endarno s’argomenta.

Il mare e ’l monte e ’l foco colla spada:

in mezzo a questi tutti insieme vivo.

Al monte non mi lascia chi m’ha privo

dell’intelletto e tolto la ragione.

The soul tries a thousand remedies in vain;

since I was captured, it’s been struggling

in vain to get back on its earlier road.

The sea, and the mountain, and the fire with the sword:

I live in the midst of all of these together.

The one who’s deprived me of my mind, and taken

away my reason, won’t let me up the mountain.

The scene is this: Michelangelo’s soul struggles to return to the path of goodness, having been “captured” by the lustful passions directed towards his beloved, “the one who’s deprived me of my mind.”

In the midst of this struggle, Michelangelo lives between “the sea, and the mountain, and the fire with the sword” — it is in these three symbols that the entire meaning of the poem is revealed.

But first, let’s address the opening three lines.

Dante’s Dark Wood

Michelangelo was regarded by his contemporaries as a gran dantista — a masterful student of Dante. Indeed, his familiarity with the work of his compatriot manifests throughout his own poetry.

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself in a dark wilderness,

for I had wandered from the straight and true.

-Inferno, v.1-3

At the start of G18, the “earlier road” that Michelangelo’s soul struggles to return to is an obvious allusion to the diritta via (“the straight and true path”) that Dante reveals to have lost in the opening lines of his Inferno. It is the first of many allusions Michelangelo makes to that work in this poem.

But more on that later. The opening lines also reveal Michelangelo’s theological understanding, as pristina (the word for “earlier,” but which also means “interior”) is used to refer to the Catholic idea of the interior life — a practice which, due to his carnal desires, the poet has abandoned.

What is the result of Michelangelo’s captured soul? In addition to not being let up the mountain (more on that symbol to follow) Michelangelo’s mind (intelleto in v.7) has been destroyed by sin. It is a situation rendered all the more dramatic when you realize that the final words of the final three lines form their own sentence:

vivo + privo [di] + ragione = “I live deprived of reason.”

In both the opening and the closing three lines of this poem, Michelangelo portrays himself as having wandered from the straight and true, and ensnared in the dark wood of sin. So how will he emerge?

The answer lies in the sea, the mountain, and the fire with the sword — three symbols that reveal the depth of Michelangelo’s spiritual struggles, and how to conquer them…