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Quote of the Day: Michelangelo on Transformation
— Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni in a sonnet
Few natives of the Anglosphere may know just how much of a Renaissance man Michelangelo was. Not only a painter and sculptor, but also a poet. Here he describes the process of creating a statue from marble, wasting away bits of the marble until only the statue is left. Sometimes, we don’t like to see waste. We don’t like to see people without or between jobs, but we are collectively shaping our country and our economy into something new each day. There will be chips of marble separated off that cannot be used for a smaller statue or for any other high purpose. Some will just wind up as dust and gravel, perhaps to mend a road. It will all be used in the end.
Published in General
Michelangelo was born 210 years after Dante. So, Italian as can plainly be seen in what I had linked above:
Da che concetto ha l’arte intera e diva
Le membra e gli atti d’alcun, poi di quello
D’umil materea un simplice modello
E ‘l primo parto che da quel deriva
Poi, nel secondo, in pietra alpestra e viva
S’arrogie le promesse del martello
E si rinascie tal concetto bello,
Ch’il suo eterno non è ch ‘il prescriva,
Tal di me stesso nacqui e venni prima
Umil model, per opra più perfetta
Rinascer poi di voi, donna alta e digna,
S’el manco adempie, e ‘l mio soperchio lima,
Vostra pietà, qual penitenzia aspetta
Mie fiero ardor se mi gastiga e insegna.