Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/28

6 he respected them. We find these words continually recurring in his letters: "Our family ... la nostra gente ... uphold our family ... so that our family die not...."

He possessed all the superstitions and fanaticism of that rough, strong family. They were the dust from which his being was formed. But from that dust sprang the fire which purifies everything—genius.

He who does not believe in genius, who knows not what it is, let him look at Michael Angelo. Never before was man thus its prey. The genius which filled him did not seem to be of the same nature as he: it was like a conqueror who had rushed upon him and held him enslaved. His will in no way entered into it, and one might almost say the same of his mind and heart. It took the form of a frenzied enthusiasm—a formidable fife in a body and soul too weak to hold it.

Michael Angelo lived in a state of continual enthusiasm. The suffering caused by the excess of strength with which he was, as it were, inflated forced him to act, to act ceaselessly, without an hour's repose. "I am wearing myself out with work as never man did before," he wrote. "I think of nothing else save working day and night."

This unhealthy craving for activity caused him not only to accumulate tasks and accept more commissions than he could execute—it degenerated into a mania. He wished to sculpture mountains. When he had a monument to build he wasted years in quarries, selecting his blocks of marble and making roads along which to carry them. He wanted to be everything—engineer, workman, stone-cutter; to do everything himself—build palaces and churches with no other aid than his own. His life resembled that of a convict. He did not grant himself