n.

Oh, blissful day! When in a single flash
Time slips away into eternity--
The sun no longer rides across the skies....

Michelangelo was conscious of his near kinship with Dante; he
illustrated a copy of the _Divine Comedy_ which, unfortunately, is lost,
and wrote a poem on Dante in which the following lines occur:

Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,
Against his exile, coupled with his good,
I'd gladly change the world's inheritage.

(_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.)

The paintings in the Sistine Chapel, with their materialised thoughts of
destiny, retribution and eternity, originated in a feeling akin to the
feeling underlying the _Divine Comedy_. Both here and there the creation
of celestial and infernal spirits was the outcome of the infinite
longing of the artistic imagination. Both men could spend the human and
creative passions with which their souls were thrilled only on the
supreme and universal. The eternal destiny of man, fate, sin, the
futility of all earthly things, the relationship of the world to God,
love surpassing all human limits and aspiring to the eternal--these are
the common objects over which they brooded. But while it was given to
Dante to create his picture of the world in harmony with his own soul,
and account it a true representation of the world-system; while his
world was a definite place with a beginning and an end, and his
life-work remained in harmony with his own soul, and the universe,
Michelangelo's lacerated soul could find peace only in the ultimate
truth, which filled his heart, and to which he yearned to give plastic
life, only to be unsatisfied after achieving it. George Simmel, in a
profound work, draws our attention to the infinite melancholy which
overshadows all Michelangelo's figures, because his genius aspired to
express the inexpressible. Even the supremest plastic representation of
the passion and longing for the transcendental which thrilled his soul
did not satisfy him. This tragedy is the tragedy of the metaphysical
erotic overflowing its own specific domain. Dante's faith in the
absolute value of his work and in the truth of the consummation of his
love in eternity--which was the sustaining power of his life--remained
unshaken, but Michelangelo lost his faith in his work; art and love
forsook him and withdrew into a transcendental world which he could
divine, but could not grasp. His faith was no bl