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Cartas (El Libro De Bolsillo)
Las CARTAS que MIGUEL ÁNGEL escribió entre el 2 de julio de 1496, cuando tenía veintiún años, y febrero de 1564, poco antes de morir, constituyen una fuente insustituible para conocer su vida, su personalidad y sus relaciones no siempre amigables con parientes, artistas y gobernantes de la época. Especial interés tienen las referencias al proceso crea-dor de sus más importantes obras (en concreto al desarrollo volumétrico, la creciente complicación gestual y la organización espacial de las escenas), pero también las que ayudan a ilustrar su desarrollo como hombre y como artista. La presente traducción, realizada por David García López, autor también de la selección y del prólogo, es la primera que se hace al español de esta correspondencia. La edición se completa con algunas cartas dirigidas al propio Miguel Ángel, con el objeto de facilitar la contextualización de las que escribiera el propio artista.
- GenresArt
320 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
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July 31, 2023
Portretul unui pasionat.
Michelangelo se plînge mereu de lipsă de timp. Lucrează ca un posedat, uneori nici nu mai știe în ce zi se găsește, mănîncă pe apucate, refuză orice vizită. Lumea din jur îl crede puțin nebun. Chiar el recunoaște că și-a găsit adesea refugiu în nebunie: „Uneori trebuie, ca să mă pot apăra împotriva nemernicilor, să devin nebun, după cum vedeți” (scrisoarea 236). De multe ori, nu are răgaz să scrie: „Nu ți-am răspuns imediat, fiindcă n-am avut timp pînă astăzi” (8); sau: „N-am timp de scris” (14); sau: „N-am timp să scriu altceva, nici să răspund lui Giovansimone. Sînt sănătos și lucrarea merge bine” (19).
Duce o existență monotonă, repetitivă: „Eu sînt gata să fac iarăși același lucru, atîta timp cît voi trăi și cît îmi stă în puteri” (90). Pînă și scrisorile lui sînt monotone: „Nimic altceva”, „Gata cu asta”, „Atîta tot”, „N-am ce să-ți mai spun”, „Nu mi s-a întîmplat nimic”, „Nu-ți scriu despre mine anume, fiindcă nu mi se întîmplă nimic”. Ultima frază e din scrisoarea 194.
Michelangelo nu are timp nici să mediteze. În cazul lui, munca însăși e o formă de meditație. Epistolele sînt mai totdeauna practice: o dată cere unui „frate Iacopo” să-i cumpere „o anumită cantitate de bel-azur” (40), de mai multe ori confirmă nepotului Lionardo că a primit „panerul cu năut alb și roșu, cu mazăre și mere” (429) sau cele treizeci și șase de carafe cu vin de trebiano, despre care conchide că e „cel mai bun pe care mi l-ai trimis vreodată” (431).
În fine, încă un lucru sare în ochi: Michelangelo nu compune scrisori frumoase, nu-și închipuie că ar putea fi citite și de altcineva decît destinatarii lor (și, cu atît mai puțin, în postumitate). Abdică de la acest principiu doar în cele cîteva scrisori către Tommaso dei Cavalieri. În rest, corespondența lui se remarcă tocmai prin lipsa oricărei intenții literare.
Cine ar cuteza să mai scrie atît de firesc: „Am primit cele douăsprezece cașuri pe care mi le-ai trimis: sînt foarte frumoase și bune” (scrisoarea 463).
Michelangelo se plînge mereu de lipsă de timp. Lucrează ca un posedat, uneori nici nu mai știe în ce zi se găsește, mănîncă pe apucate, refuză orice vizită. Lumea din jur îl crede puțin nebun. Chiar el recunoaște că și-a găsit adesea refugiu în nebunie: „Uneori trebuie, ca să mă pot apăra împotriva nemernicilor, să devin nebun, după cum vedeți” (scrisoarea 236). De multe ori, nu are răgaz să scrie: „Nu ți-am răspuns imediat, fiindcă n-am avut timp pînă astăzi” (8); sau: „N-am timp de scris” (14); sau: „N-am timp să scriu altceva, nici să răspund lui Giovansimone. Sînt sănătos și lucrarea merge bine” (19).
Duce o existență monotonă, repetitivă: „Eu sînt gata să fac iarăși același lucru, atîta timp cît voi trăi și cît îmi stă în puteri” (90). Pînă și scrisorile lui sînt monotone: „Nimic altceva”, „Gata cu asta”, „Atîta tot”, „N-am ce să-ți mai spun”, „Nu mi s-a întîmplat nimic”, „Nu-ți scriu despre mine anume, fiindcă nu mi se întîmplă nimic”. Ultima frază e din scrisoarea 194.
Michelangelo nu are timp nici să mediteze. În cazul lui, munca însăși e o formă de meditație. Epistolele sînt mai totdeauna practice: o dată cere unui „frate Iacopo” să-i cumpere „o anumită cantitate de bel-azur” (40), de mai multe ori confirmă nepotului Lionardo că a primit „panerul cu năut alb și roșu, cu mazăre și mere” (429) sau cele treizeci și șase de carafe cu vin de trebiano, despre care conchide că e „cel mai bun pe care mi l-ai trimis vreodată” (431).
În fine, încă un lucru sare în ochi: Michelangelo nu compune scrisori frumoase, nu-și închipuie că ar putea fi citite și de altcineva decît destinatarii lor (și, cu atît mai puțin, în postumitate). Abdică de la acest principiu doar în cele cîteva scrisori către Tommaso dei Cavalieri. În rest, corespondența lui se remarcă tocmai prin lipsa oricărei intenții literare.
Cine ar cuteza să mai scrie atît de firesc: „Am primit cele douăsprezece cașuri pe care mi le-ai trimis: sînt foarte frumoase și bune” (scrisoarea 463).
July 25, 2018
≪La mano che ubbidisce all'intelletto.≫
[The hand that obeys the intellect.]
Michelangelo, Rime, 151
Would be much, or maybe not, in saying that any word of Michelangelo is sacred.
This assertion, repeated by all those who had a life-long interest for the brilliant artist - that has evolved from adoration to exegesis - has, besides soulful and enchanting value, also a meaningful practice, especially for the ardour of rebuilding from environmental reflections, including from the letters, of his personality.
To my surprise - unpleasant though - Michelangelo's epistle, to his stretch, speaks little about the artist. His relentless hand listening to the irresistible calls of an energetic, proud spirit, aware of his own genius and inclined to transcend, delays less in the surrounding world and more in his thoughts' dwelling. No doubt he knew it better: more in art, less in letters. The inner and the surrounding worlds would hardly mix or even not, and the letters directed to the world were related only to concrete, common and precise facts, foreign - most of the times - from the artistic universe in which it profoundly existed as a great loner.
The texts leave the impression of the secular letters of a supreme priest for which the confession of the most intimate thoughts, the motivation of the acts or the fundamental position towards existence is made with difficulty, impossible to achieve without leaving the impression of some impatience. Artistic creation must be a consequence of the effort to think, not a sensory emanation. It is not appropriate to imitate the appearances of the world, the shadows, the more lethargic the more sensitive, of the divine idea, to which the spirit of the superior artist must tend.
The excellence of his art lies in the ability to represent abstract worlds. The spirit is about to progress under the condition that it manages to unravel the meaning of a situation or fact, and progress, is nothing but a history of archetypes, is an ascension.
The artist must follow the path of discovering the idea, and the senses, underlying and inferior to the thought, have no other purpose than to obey the reason. The sculptor's hand must listen to the mind. The great artist tells it in one of his fundamental sonnets dedicated to Vittoria Colonna.
Beyond the doctrinal value, the concept of the obedient hand, the hand that listens to the intellect, the key of its entire creation, remains an element that marks the boundary, firmly drawn between the world of thought and the physical ambiance, as Michelangelo sees them.
The day-by-day life as revealed by Letters, seem, with few exceptions, isolated from the abstract life of the creator. There are two worlds that, although adjacent to or even intertwined, keep - with all the turmoil of a unique destiny - the contour intact. The Letters, addressed especially to the members of his family, craftsmen, relatives, artists, friends, cardinals, popes, and even kings - to whom the artist rarely confessed or failed to confess at all - are written by a foreign hand or by his hand, but not in the moment of communication with the ideas on whose trauma he organized his plastic and poetic life.
Through the fingers of his hand it drains away the rough temperamental lymph, or the dry information regarding work, or the banalities inherent in the everyday life, but almost never discloses the light of his universe of thoughts.
As a whole, the Letters forbid access to the deepest self of the artist, to whom only art will give full expression. The agitation of the outer world perfectly cut off by the universe of inner living, remains like a world of scores, always inferior if we look at it in the order of spiritual ascension, with its secret and dangerous powers, with its obscure machinery, to which Michelangelo gives carefully all that belongs to it and nothing else.
The reader of this correspondence feels somehow the vague fear that this universe inspires, to some extent, also to the artist, as the ineluctable defiance and hostility of antipodes. Michelangelo's attitude towards the devaluation of the surrounding world, as reflected in the letters, is clear and dictated by the inclination to offer it: either everything or nothing. The decision is taken from the beginning and is in favour of this latter solution. But with a hand, even in the case of the letters he writes, he cannot do it outside of an intellect, it is supposed that the artist gives to the notion of intellect first of all a transcendental meaning, as for a communication, that shows its whole value in art, and only then the psychological meaning of the spontaneous prose of some current missives.
Michelangelo was, however, linked to the world in which he lived by a sum of social relationships, given the size of his personality and increased popularity. These are not all compressed in the Letters, therefore, given the lack of time and the tendency to isolation of the artist, the number of the correspondents is quite small, limited to the most appropriate members and his family, to some artists, craftsmen, clergy. This restrictive tendency is consumed up to the last point of the Letters, in the lack of words through which he solves the problems or sent them, in the exact style, absolutely redundant. Concentrated in his artistic work and entirely devoted to his art, he could not know- except Christian love and devotion- other offerings, and was not lured by the world's great temptations: "The futility of this world have taken my time to contemplate God. "[Rime, 288]. ....
[The hand that obeys the intellect.]
Michelangelo, Rime, 151
Would be much, or maybe not, in saying that any word of Michelangelo is sacred.
This assertion, repeated by all those who had a life-long interest for the brilliant artist - that has evolved from adoration to exegesis - has, besides soulful and enchanting value, also a meaningful practice, especially for the ardour of rebuilding from environmental reflections, including from the letters, of his personality.
To my surprise - unpleasant though - Michelangelo's epistle, to his stretch, speaks little about the artist. His relentless hand listening to the irresistible calls of an energetic, proud spirit, aware of his own genius and inclined to transcend, delays less in the surrounding world and more in his thoughts' dwelling. No doubt he knew it better: more in art, less in letters. The inner and the surrounding worlds would hardly mix or even not, and the letters directed to the world were related only to concrete, common and precise facts, foreign - most of the times - from the artistic universe in which it profoundly existed as a great loner.
The texts leave the impression of the secular letters of a supreme priest for which the confession of the most intimate thoughts, the motivation of the acts or the fundamental position towards existence is made with difficulty, impossible to achieve without leaving the impression of some impatience. Artistic creation must be a consequence of the effort to think, not a sensory emanation. It is not appropriate to imitate the appearances of the world, the shadows, the more lethargic the more sensitive, of the divine idea, to which the spirit of the superior artist must tend.
The excellence of his art lies in the ability to represent abstract worlds. The spirit is about to progress under the condition that it manages to unravel the meaning of a situation or fact, and progress, is nothing but a history of archetypes, is an ascension.
The artist must follow the path of discovering the idea, and the senses, underlying and inferior to the thought, have no other purpose than to obey the reason. The sculptor's hand must listen to the mind. The great artist tells it in one of his fundamental sonnets dedicated to Vittoria Colonna.
Beyond the doctrinal value, the concept of the obedient hand, the hand that listens to the intellect, the key of its entire creation, remains an element that marks the boundary, firmly drawn between the world of thought and the physical ambiance, as Michelangelo sees them.
The day-by-day life as revealed by Letters, seem, with few exceptions, isolated from the abstract life of the creator. There are two worlds that, although adjacent to or even intertwined, keep - with all the turmoil of a unique destiny - the contour intact. The Letters, addressed especially to the members of his family, craftsmen, relatives, artists, friends, cardinals, popes, and even kings - to whom the artist rarely confessed or failed to confess at all - are written by a foreign hand or by his hand, but not in the moment of communication with the ideas on whose trauma he organized his plastic and poetic life.
Through the fingers of his hand it drains away the rough temperamental lymph, or the dry information regarding work, or the banalities inherent in the everyday life, but almost never discloses the light of his universe of thoughts.
As a whole, the Letters forbid access to the deepest self of the artist, to whom only art will give full expression. The agitation of the outer world perfectly cut off by the universe of inner living, remains like a world of scores, always inferior if we look at it in the order of spiritual ascension, with its secret and dangerous powers, with its obscure machinery, to which Michelangelo gives carefully all that belongs to it and nothing else.
The reader of this correspondence feels somehow the vague fear that this universe inspires, to some extent, also to the artist, as the ineluctable defiance and hostility of antipodes. Michelangelo's attitude towards the devaluation of the surrounding world, as reflected in the letters, is clear and dictated by the inclination to offer it: either everything or nothing. The decision is taken from the beginning and is in favour of this latter solution. But with a hand, even in the case of the letters he writes, he cannot do it outside of an intellect, it is supposed that the artist gives to the notion of intellect first of all a transcendental meaning, as for a communication, that shows its whole value in art, and only then the psychological meaning of the spontaneous prose of some current missives.
Michelangelo was, however, linked to the world in which he lived by a sum of social relationships, given the size of his personality and increased popularity. These are not all compressed in the Letters, therefore, given the lack of time and the tendency to isolation of the artist, the number of the correspondents is quite small, limited to the most appropriate members and his family, to some artists, craftsmen, clergy. This restrictive tendency is consumed up to the last point of the Letters, in the lack of words through which he solves the problems or sent them, in the exact style, absolutely redundant. Concentrated in his artistic work and entirely devoted to his art, he could not know- except Christian love and devotion- other offerings, and was not lured by the world's great temptations: "The futility of this world have taken my time to contemplate God. "[Rime, 288]. ....
August 1, 2020
Prea multe amănunte conjuncturale. Se vede clar un om pasionat, chiar obsedat de munca lui.
December 22, 2020
"La pintura y la escultura, el trabajo y la fe me han arruinado y todo va de mal en peor. ¡Mejor hubiera sido que en mis años jóvenes me hubiera dedicado a hacer cerillas, que no tendría tantos problemas."
Para conocer a la persona que vivía detrás del artista genial.
Para conocer a la persona que vivía detrás del artista genial.
July 22, 2024
la personificación del síndrome de Burnout y la capacidad de ser tacaño y generoso a la vez. pero me da penita, lo explotaron mucho y se autoexplotó al mismo tiempo... 😔
te amo catiño💛😊 💤🐱
te amo catiño💛😊 💤🐱
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