They concentrate and express, less by way of definite
conceptions than by the touches, the promptings of a piece of
music, all those vague fancies, misgivings, presentiments, which
shift and mix and are defined and fade again, whenever the
thoughts try to fix themselves with sincerity on the conditions
and surroundings of the disembodied spirit. I suppose no one
would come to the sacristy of San Lorenzo for consolation; for
seriousness, for solemnity, for dignity of impression, perhaps, but
not for consolation. It is a place neither of consoling nor of
terrible thoughts, but of vague and wistful speculation. Here,
again, Michelangelo is the disciple not so much of Dante as of
the Platonists. Dante's belief in immortality is formal, precise
and firm, almost as much so as that of a child, who thinks the
dead will hear if you cry loud enough. But in Michelangelo you
have maturity, the mind of the grown man, dealing cautiously and
dispassionately with serious things; and what hope he has is
based on the consciousness of ignorance--ignorance of man,
ignorance of the nature of the mind, its origin and capacities.
Michelangelo is so ignorant of the spiritual world, of the new
body and its laws, that he does not surely know whether the
consecrated Host may not be the body of Christ. And of all that
range of sentiment he is the poet, a poet still alive, and in [96]
possession of our inmost thoughts--dumb inquiry over the relapse
after death into the formlessness which preceded life, the change,
the revolt from that change, then the correcting, hallowing,
consoling rush of pity; at last, far off, thin and vague, yet not
more vague than the most definite thoughts men have had
through three centuries on a matter that has been so near their
hearts, the new body--a passing light, a mere intangible, external
effect, over those too rigid, or too formless faces; a dream that
lingers a moment, retreating in the dawn, incomplete, aimless,
helpless; a thing with faint hearing, faint memory, faint power of
touch; a breath, a flame in the doorway, a feather in the wind.
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