{"id":6787,"date":"2011-05-10T10:50:26","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T17:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=6787"},"modified":"2011-05-10T10:50:26","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T17:50:26","slug":"cheerful-renaissance-thought-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/10\/cheerful-renaissance-thought-of-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheerful Renaissance Thought of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wayne Knight, who played Newman on Seinfeld, also appeared in Space Jam<\/a>, surely one of the top ten movies about cartoon characters and basketball ever made. When asked what it was like to work with Michael Jordan, he diplomatically replied: “Acting with Michael Jordan is like bowling with Picasso.” Just because you’re the best in the world at one thing doesn’t mean you will excel at something else.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to Michelangelo’s<\/a> poems. I am sufficiently uncultured that I always thought of Michelangelo as basically a sculptor<\/a>, perhaps a bit of a painter<\/a>. But then I reviewed a book for Princeton University Press, and they offered as recompense to let me choose a few volumes from their back catalogue; that’s where I came upon his Complete Poems<\/a>. Who knew?<\/p>\n

Michelangelo was not exactly writing Hallmark cards. Think early Leonard Cohen<\/a>. He specialized in sonnets and madrigals, and while there are a number of love poems, usually he ranges from grumpy and forlorn to deep existential despair. Here’s<\/a> a sunny little ditty you can reach for whenever you feel your own artistic endeavors are falling short. (Translation by Creighton Gilbert.)<\/p>\n

I keep a hornet in a water jar,
\nInside a leather sack some strings and bones,
\nAnd in a canister three balls of tar.<\/p>\n

My pale blue eyes are powdered into grounds,
\nMy teeth are like keys on an instrument,
\nSo, when they move, my voice is still or sounds.<\/p>\n

My face has the shape that causes fright;
\nIn wind when there’s no rain my clothes would scare
\nCrows from the seed, without another dart.<\/p>\n

A spider web is nestled in one ear,
\nAll night a cricket in the other buzzes;
\nWith spitting breath I do not sleep, but snore.<\/p>\n

Love, and the flowered grottoes, and the muse,
\nMy scrawls for tambourines or dunces’ caps,
\nGo to innkeepers, toilets, bawdy houses.<\/p>\n

What use to want to make so many puppets,
\nIf they have made me in the end like him
\nWho crossed the water, and then drowned in slops?<\/p>\n

My honored art, wherein I was for a time
\nIn such esteem, has brought me down to this:
\nPoor and old, under another’s thumb,<\/p>\n

I am undone if I do not die fast.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wayne Knight, who played Newman on Seinfeld, also appeared in Space Jam, surely one of the top ten movies about cartoon characters and basketball ever made. When asked what it was like to work with Michael Jordan, he diplomatically replied: “Acting with Michael Jordan is like bowling with Picasso.” Just because you’re the best in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}