The Life of Michael Angelo/Preface
PREFACE
In the National Museum in Florence is a marble statue which Michael Angelo called "The Victor." It represents the beautiful nude figure of a young man, with curly hair over a low forehead. Standing erect, he has placed his knee on the back of a bearded prisoner, who bends and, like an ox, stretches his head forward. But the victor looks not upon him. When about to strike he stays his hand, and turns away his sad mouth and irresolute eyes. His arm falls back towards his shoulder. He throws himself backwards. A desire for victory no longer fills his heart—it is repulsive to him. Though he has conquered, he in turn is vanquished.
This representation of heroic Doubt, this victory with shattered wings (which was the only one of all the works of Michael Angelo to remain in his Florence studio until the day of his death, and which Daniello da Volterra, the bosom friend who was acquainted with his thoughts, wished to use in the ornamentation of his catafalque) is Michael Angelo himself and the symbol of his whole life.
Suffering is infinite and assumes a multitude of forms. At one time it is caused by the blind tyranny of things—poverty, sickness, the injustice of Fate, or the wickedness of man. At another time it has its seat in one's very being. It is then no less pitiable nor less fatal. For the choice of our being was not ours: we asked neither to live nor to be what we are.
The latter form of suffering was the one which afflicted Michael Angelo. He had the strength—he had the rare good fortune to be fashioned for struggling and conquering. He conquered. But what? He had no desire for victory. That was not what he wanted. Hamlet-like tragedy! Poignant contradiction between an heroic genius and a will which was not heroic, between imperious passions and a will which willed not!
Do not expect me to see in this, after so many other proofs of greatness, an additional mark of grandeur. Never will I admit that, because a man is very great, the world is not sufficient for him. Uneasiness of mind is not a sign of grandeur. Any want of harmony between a being and things, between life and its laws, proceeds, even in the case of great men, not from their greatness but their weakness. Why endeavour to hide this weakness? Is he who is weaker less worthy of love? He is infinitely worthier of it, inasmuch as he has greater need of it. I raise not statues to inaccessible heroes. Cowardly idealism, which diverts our eyes from the woes of life and the weaknesses of the soul, I abhor. We must tell this truth to a people who are too sensitive to the deceptive illusions of sonorous words: the heroic lie is a piece of cowardice. There is only one form of heroism in the world, and it consists in seeing the world as it is—and in loving it.
The tragedy of destiny presented in the following pages is that of innate suffering, which has its origin at the root of a being, which gnaws it incessantly and will not leave it until its work of destruction is over. It shows us one of the most powerful of the types of that great human race which for nineteen centuries has filled the West with its cries of sorrow and faith—the Christian.
Some day, centuries and centuries ahead (supposing that our earth is still recollected), the people of the future will bend over the abyss into which our race has disappeared, as Dante did on the edge of Malebolge, with mingled feelings of admiration, horror and pity. But who will feel them keener than we have done—we who, as children, have experienced these anguishes; we who have seen those who were dearest to us strive against them; we whose throats know the acrid and intoxicating odour of Christian pessimism; we who, on certain occasions, have had to make an effort in order not to give way, like others, in moments of doubt, to the frenzy of the Divine Nothingness?
God! Eternal life! Refuge of those who do not succeed in living here below! Faith, which is very often but a lack of faith in life, a lack of faith in the future, a lack of faith in oneself, a lack of courage, and a lack of joy! … We are aware of the number of defeats on which your sorrowful victory is based!
And it is for that reason, Christians, that I love you, for I pity you. I pity you and admire your melancholy. You sadden the world, but you beautify it. The world will be poorer when your sorrow is no longer there. In this age of cowards, who tremble when face to face with sorrow and noisily lay claim to their right to happiness, which, as often as not, is the right to the unhappiness of others, let us have the courage to look sorrow in the face and venerate it! Blessed be joy, but blessed also be sorrow! One is the sister to the other and both are saints! They make the world and expand the souls of the great. They are strength, they are life, they are God! He who loves not both of them, loves neither the one nor the other. And he who has relished them knows the value of life and the sweetness of leaving it.
At the end of this tragic history I am tormented by a scruple. I ask myself whether, in wishing to give those who suffer companions of sorrow to support them, I have not added the sorrow of the latter to that of the former. Ought I not rather to have shown, as so many others have done, only the heroic side of the life of my hero, and to have thrown a veil over his sadness?
No! Truth above all things! I have not promised my friends happiness at the price of a lie—happiness in any and every case, at no matter what cost. I promised them truth, even at the price of happiness—virile truth which fashions eternal souls. Its breath is rough, but it is pure. Let us bathe our anaemic hearts in it.
Great souls are like mountain summits. The wind beats upon them, clouds envelop them; but we breathe better and deeper there than elsewhere. The air on those heights possesses a purity which cleanses the heart of its defilements, and when the clouds part we dominate the human race.
Such was that colossal mountain which towered above the Italy of the Renaissance and whose tortured profile we see far away in the sky.
I do not claim that the generality of mankind can live on those summits, but that once a year they ought to ascend them on a pilgrimage. There they will renew the air of their lungs and the blood of their veins. Up there they will feel that they are nearer the Eternal. And afterwards they will descend towards the plains of life with their hearts tempered for the daily struggle.
Romain Rolland