works in Rome gave me as little worry as affairs of State!"[1]
The truth was he no longer hated. He could no longer hate. It was too late.
Ahime, lasso chi pur tropp' aspetta,
Ch' i' gionga a suoi conforti tanto tardj!
Ancor, se ben riguardj,
Un generoso, alter' e nobil core
Perdon' et porta a chi l' offend' amore.[2]
He lived at Macel de' Corvi, on the forum of Trajan. There he had a house with a little garden. He occupied it with a valet,[3] a servant and his domestic animals. He was not fortunate with his servants, "all of whom," says Vasari, "were dirty and negligent." He often changed them and complained bitterly.[4] He had as many difficulties with them as Beethoven had; and his "Ricordi" (Notes), like Beethoven's Notebooks, mention
- ↑ Letter to his nephew Leonardo (1547).
- ↑ "Poems," cix, 64.
"Woe to me, fatigued by too long a wait, woe to me who attain too late the goal I had desired! And now, do you not know it? A generous, proud and noble heart pardons, and offers love to he who has offended it."
Michael Angelo here imagines a dialogue between the poet and a Florentine exile. It is possible that he wrote the poem after the assassination of Alessandro de' Medici by Lorenzino in 1536. It appeared for the first time in 1543, with music by Giacomo Archadelt. - ↑ Among his servants I note, out of curiosity, a Frenchman, named Richard—"Riccardo franzese" (June 18, 1552. "Ricordi," p. 606).
- ↑ "I should like to find," he wrote to Leonardo, "a good, clean servant. But that is very difficult: they are all dirty and debauched ('Son tutte puttane e porche') . . . I give ten jules a month. I live poorly, but I pay well" ("Letters," August 16, 1550).
