THE COMPLETE POEMS OF MICHELANGELO

by Michelangelo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998

Italian readers have long known that Michelangelo's poetry is far more than a footnote to his long career as an artist, but few English language translators have managed to render all three hundred or so poems by the famous Florentine. Wordsworth, Longfellow, and Emerson made half-hearted attempts, but John Addington Symonds's late Victorian versions--full of ornate poetic diction--were the standard until these wonderful translations by Nims, himself a master craftsman, whose ""blunt, direct, plainspoken"" diction perfectly matches Michelangelo's rough-talking poems and their formal complexities. With his biographical introductions, based on the well-documented lives of the artist, and his scholarly notes, Nims gives us Michelangelo whole: the polymorphus love sonneteer, the political allegorist, and the solitary singer of madrigals.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0226080307

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Univ. of Chicago

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998

Categories: FICTION