VITTORIA COLONNA
GREAT SONNETS
VITTORIA COLONNA
THEOLOGIA CRUCIS
The CROSS as point of intersection between Christology und Anthropology - Crux sola est nostra theologia (Martin Luther) – is also true for the mystic Juan de Valdés. The Cross dominated the thought of the Spirituali in Viterbo and the sermons of Bernardino Ochino. In Vittoria Colonna, however, the cross generated ambivalent feelings. Above all, she refuted the radicality of Martin Luther, who identified the divinity of Jesus with the humility of his death on the cross: The godliness of Jesus is only recognizable per maximam et profundissimam humilitatem. In her sonnets, the Renaissance poetess contrasts Christ’s death on the cross with the painless divinity of the Greek God Apollo. In a sonnet she invokes Christ: „Be my Apollo and bathe my eyes in your heavenly fountain. In the discourse with Ochino, who like Luther, adhered to Jesus Christ’s self-humiliation on the cross as atonement for the sins of mankind to reconcile his heavenly Father. Vittoria Colonna saved the divine dignity of the Godson by interpreting his death on the cross as voluntary participation of a pitiful God in death, as the inescapable fate of man. In the first quatrain of the sonnet “Vedea l’alto Signor” the poetess offers a narrative representation of God taking the decision to participate in death as an act of divine love for the suffering mankind, however, expecting human love in return.
“The High Lord, who felt ardent longing of our love, saw that all the remedies were insufficient for us, if he did not descend on earth to make himself a human being and donate his own blood on the cross.”
This Humanist interpretation of the Godson’s voluntary death on the cross as divine agape for mankind freed the Godson’s Death from Old Testament thinking that Godfather imposed the crucifixion on his Son as an act of atonement for the sins of mankind.
Vedea l’Alto Signor ch’ardendo langue
del nostro amor, tutti I rimedi scarsi
per noi s’EI non scendea qui n terra a farSi
uomo, e donare in croce il proprio sangue.
LE BRACCIA APRENDO IN CROCE
In Le braccia aprendo in croce the Humanist Poetess exclusively interprets the death of the Son of God as a voluntary divine act of love for the world and for mankind, whose lot Jesus shared by his incarnation. With this female authentic interpretation of the death on the cross, Vittoria Colonna dissociated herself from her contemporary Reform Theologians and hurried ahead of her time by centuries, to side with the leading theologians of the Protestant Church of Germany, whose interpretation of Christ’s death on the cross is identical with hers: Bishop Wolfgang Huber: „Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is an act of self-abandonment performed in personal freedom and in love.”
The ambivalent attitude of the Renaissance Princess to the humiliating Crucifixion of the Godson, she found so hard to internalise, as could be proved in the preceding sonnets and in her letter to Michelangelo, is now compensated by her spiritualization of the humiliating death on the cross as Christ’s free act of divine love with universal effects on man in this historically tangible world. After her ambivalent turmoil in other sonnets, Le braccia aprendo in croce radiates inner calm, content, even serenity, which grows out of the feeling of having come nearer to truth. After extending the effects of this act of divine love into universal amplitude of the Cosmos and deepening the effects in historic dimensions, the poetess, in the tercets, individualises Christ’s love for man in this Dantesque sonnet (although dealing with Christ’s death on the cross), now fully trusting divine self-evidence of truth, the crucial theme of this sonnet.
Poetology of the Sonnet
Sannazaro, too, had the idea of making Christ free his arms from the bars of the cross but with completely different intention. Christ, by this gesture, directs the attention of the beholder to the wounds of suffering Christ, whereas, in Vittoria Colonna’s sonnet the Crucified, as God, encompasses the whole world and mankind in past and presence with his affectionate divine embrace.
The poetess frees the arms of the Crucified from the horizontal bars of the cross and has him embrace the whole universe, Heaven, the Limbo, the Rocks, the Veil of the Temple, which according to Matthew was torn in two after the passing away of the Lord. The embrace of the Crucified reached back into the past, encompassing Monuments, Shadows, Figures.
The renewal of the human spirit and of the heart, as effect of the affectionate, self-abandonment of Christ, onto the world and mankind is thematised in the second quatrain. Divine love makes the ice melt in the hearts and fills them with ardent zeal. The Holy Scriptures are revealed to the Christians anew, while the holy texts in their deep humane meaning were shut off to rigid scholastic or the old testament. mode of thinking. The tough legalism of the Old Testament is overcome by the love of Jesus for man. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross as self-abandoning act of love also takes beatifying effect on the new spirituality of the presence: Peace, happiness, free religiousness without rituals, mercy, light, love are Vittoria Colonna’s key words for the new Spirituality of Viterbo.
From the arms of Jesus, untied from the bars of the cross to embrace world and mankind, this sonnet starts to reach out into great dimensions and back into historical depth to unfold the renewal of man worldwide and to end in the blessed atmosphere of the Ecclesia Viterbiensis, in which the human death of the Godson also takes beatifying divine effect.
The Renaissance poetess, at the same time an erudite Humanist, succeeded in overcoming her aversion to the humiliation of the Godson through his shameful death on the cross by her authentic reinterpretation of this singular death as an act of divine love for mankind with universal effects in this world as well as taking effect in individual human beings.
LE BRACCIAAPRENDO IN CROCE
Le braccia aprendo in croce, e l’alme e pure
piaghe, largo, Signor, apristi il Cielo,
il Limbo, i sassi, i monumenti, e ‘l velo
del tempio antico, e l’ombre e le figure.
Le menti umane infin alora oscure
illuminasti, e dileguando il gielo
le riempiesti d’un ardente zelo
ch’aperse poi le sacre tue scritture
Mostrassi il dolce imperio e la bontade
che parve ascosa in quei tanti precetti
de l’aspra e giusta legge del timore;
o, desiata pace! o, benedetti
giorni felici! o, liberal pietade
che ne scopre grazie, lume, amore.
Lord, by opening the arms wide on the cross and the noble, pure wounds, you have opened Heaven, the Limbo, the Rocks, the Monuments, the Curtain of the Ancient Temple, the Shadows and the figures.
You have enlightened the Human Minds, going astray in darkness, and melting the ice, you have imbued them with glowing fervour, which makes accessible your Holy Scriptures.
You have revealed your sweet realm and your kindness, which seems hid-den by so many precepts of the rough even tough just law of fear.
Oh, desired peace, oh blessed, happy days! Oh, freed piety, which discov-ered mercies, light, and love.
SOLA FIDE
Vittoria Colonna received first-hand knowledge about the Doctrine of Justification by inner faith from Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, who asked Pietro Bembo to pass on to Vittoria Colonna his Epistola de Giustificazione, whose introductory sentence reads: „The doctrine, that the sinner is justified by lively faith is healthy and true. The faithful soul relies on God’s justification, which is given to us generously and is not dependent on human efforts”. Vittoria Colonna also chose sola fide as the subject of her sonnet in honour of Gasparo Contarini. The poetess was so impressed by this doctrine that fede after amore and core according to Veronica Sapegno is third among the rhyming words in her Rime Spirituali. As the Doctrine of Justification by Faith brings Man as Subject into immediate contact with God without the objective mediation of faith by the official church, Sola Fide is part of the religious subjectivism of the Renaissance, which was philosophically analysed by Ernst Cassirer. The German philosopher points out the Augustinian roots of the doctrine of justification by faith: „The human personality is the constitutive principle of religious life. Augustine: Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi. In interiore hominis habitat veritas, because the human spirit knows nothing as well as what is present to him and nothing is more present to him than he himself “. Cassirer draws the following conclusion: „In these sentences, the priority of religious experience is stated over all dogmatic consequences of a metaphysical doctrine of the human soul and of God. The integration of the Ego into a constructive system of knowledge has been discarded.
While Gasparo Contarini defines Sola Fide as theological doctrine, the Renaissance Poetess experiences Inner Faith as religiousness based on feeling, which is subjected to emotional fluctuations. Although Vittoria Colonna wholeheartedly affirms faith alone as the only justification of man before God and declines human merits as means of justification as well as the dogmatic mediation of the official church between man and God, thematising Sola Fide in a great number of sonnets, she, however, is also a Humanist, who deplores faith as an expedient for lacking knowledge. Contarini demanded Vittoria to love God and to believe in Him unconditionally. But Vittoria Colonna desires to see God, to understand Him, to prove His existence. Her intellect revolts against her human lot to have to believe in God, who refutes knowledge of his existence. She can never put up with her condition humaine forcing her to replace knowledge by faith.
VITTORIA COLONNA
FAITH AND SCEPTICISM
CON LA CROCE A GRAN PASSI
Con la croce a gran passi ir vorrei dietro
al Signor per angusto erto sentiero,
sì ch’io scorgessi in parte il lume vero
ch’altro che ´l senso aperse al fedel Pietro
ch‘e, se tanta mercede or non impetro,
non è ch´ei non si mostri almo e sincero,
lassa! ma non scorgo io con l’ochio intero
questa umana speranza esser di vetro:
ché s’io lo cor umil puro e mendico
appresentassi a la divina mensa,
dove con dolci ed ordinate tempre
del’angel di Dio, nostro verace amico,
se stesso in cibo per amor dispensa,
ne sarei forse un dì sazia per sempre.
With the cross, by huge strides, I would like to follow the Lord on the narrow, steep path so that I could at least have discerned part of the true light that would have opened the senses to somebody other than Saint Peter.
If, now, I do not obtain such reward, it is not that he does not show himself noble and sincere to me. Woe me, wretched soul! But with my inner eye, I cannot perceive, if this human hope is not of (fragile) glass,
so that I, if I had presented the humble, pure and beg-ging heart in the divine refectory, where among sweet harmonies in moderate timbres
of God’s sweet angel, our true friend, from love, dis-tributes himself as food, I perhaps, one day, would be satiated for ever.
At the beginning of this very subjective sonnet, expressive of her painful scepticism, the Renaissance poetess, in an impressive concetto, illustrates her longing for sensual perception of God. By giant strides – a gran passi – the poetess would like to follow Jesus along the narrow, steep Via Dolorosa so that she, at least partially, could have seen the true light, which then would not only have opened the eyes and senses of Saint Peter, but also hers. Faith is for Vittoria Colonna an expedient, arousing scepticism, because faith does not substitute sensual perception. Religion is for her not only faith but also contemplation and feeling
The poetess plays a confusing game with time levels. In the first quatrain she just identifies the biblical past with her own presence, because the Bible has remained presence for her. By giant strides, she would like to follow the Lord along Via Dolorosa so that she at least could perceive a glimmer of the true divine light, which opened the eyes and senses of Saint Peter. But restricted to her faith, the Renaissance poetess continues to be excruciated by scepticism, to be tortured by the question, whether her hope for Heaven, will break in the end like fragile glass.
Although the poetess would not say that He was not kind to her, here on earth, God, leaving her in the dark about her future life in Heaven, could have been more obliging. Her inner faith cannot eliminate her doubts, if she, after presenting her humbly begging heart at the solemn banquet, enchanted by ethereal music of angels, in the divine refectory, at which Jesus himself distributes himself as agape from love, she perhaps (!) one day could be satiated for ever.
The scepticism of the poetess is reflected in the sentence structure of the sonnet, one lengthy compound sentence, consisting of an unreal wish, unreal conditional clauses, consecutive clauses, indirect questions, emphasizing her mere assumptions by restrictive adverbs – not really, perhaps. Moreover, the poetess charges the sonnet emotionally with her conscience-stricken self-reproach: “Lassa”! – because of her doubts and her missing faith. Her bad conscience is also revealed by her hemming and hawing with doubled negations: Not, as if the Lord had not been kind to her! The poetess seems to humanize God, turning him into a noble, friendly, but reserved gentleman, whom she approaches playfully at an intellectual level, parrying his restraint with scepticism, in a graceful, intellectually stimulating conversation, struck up by the Renaissance Princess, when dealing with pundits, for instance with Pietro Bembo.
VITTORIA COLONNA
THE POETESS AS MEDIUM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
The Spirituality of the Ecclesia Viterbiensis
Efficiency of the Holy Spirit
in the Well-Born Souls
While Vittoria Colonna only laboriously internalised Theologia Crucis, she was taken by the message of immediate divine revelation as inner enlightenment by the Holy Spirit, which is inaccessible to the will of man and requires imputed grace through God. Inner Enlightenment through immediate influence by the Holy Spirit did not only fulfil Vittoria’s great longing for divine revelation now, in her earthbound existence. As a poetess, she also identifies this divine present of imputed grace with her Poetical Inspiration by immediate divine enlightenment. According to Juan de Valdes lively faith evades the will of man. Faith is a present of the Holy Spirit in need of divine grace and inspiration:
” The wind blows wherever he pleases.” Not all human beings are among the chosen ones. Valdes: „God likes directing human beings without law and rules, only by support of the Holy Spirit, who remains hidden from the senses and incomprehensible to the human intellect. The ones belonging to God’s Empire, rather feel than perceive his presence”.Vittoria Colonna imagines the influence of the Holy Spirit as divine flame, invisible strength, which is not combined with matter, lives in itself, but takes caring interest in everybody else, without feeling reluctance or exhaustion, as an eternal fire, melting each icy breast, warming up and softening the faithful.
VITTORIA COLONNA
ENLIGHTENMENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
as POETICAL INSPIRATION
QUAL DIGIUNO AUGELLIN
The poetess sees herself as Medium of the Holy Spirit and claims his divine enlightenment for herself as Inspiration of her Rime Spirituali. Of course, divine inspiration conditions complete passivity on the part of the poetess, who reduces her part in the creative process to the performance of mechanical writing motions, whereas the content is dictated to her from above. She poetises the divine influence of the Holy Spirit as inspiration of the passive, receptive poet. The poetess, a precise observer of Nature, chooses the attentively observed relationship of a mother bird to her fledgling, unfolded as an individualised concetto in the quatrains of the sonnet., to visualize her relationship to the Holy Spirit in the act of inspiration.
To express the intimacy between mother-bird and fledgling, the poetess charges the copula e with expressive force. She uses the trite, bland “e” to connect motherly giving and the infant’s thankful eceiving. Egli amando il cibo (the baby loves the food) - “e” quella si allegra “e” gode. (and the mother rejoices and enjoys)
She combines synonymous verbs in hendiadys to intensify motherly and infant feelings. The baby bird, wishfully waiting for his mother, looks around and listens. Vede ed ode. It endeavours to sing better than it can. The baby voice snaps, when the fledgling is trying hard to thank the mother by a little song.
Of course, the poetess herself resembles the little bird in her intimate relationship to her motherly Holy Spirit. She uses the verb movere (to move) to express the inspiring divine force and the past participle mossa (moved) to render its receptiveness of the poetess. “I move the pen to be moved by love. Movo la penna mossa dal amore.” The poetess, quasi an empty vessel, imagines receiving the Holy Spirit in childlike innocence, lending him her language as an instrument to instil his divine inspiration into her heart without taking influence on what she is writing.
QUAL DIGIUNO AUGELLIN
Qual digiuno augellin, che vede ed ode
batter l’ali a la madre intorno, quando
li reca il nutrimento, ond‘egli amando
il cibo e quella rallegra e gode.
e dentro al nido suo si strugge e rode
per desio di seguirla anch’ei volando,
e la ringrazia, in tal modo cantando,
che par ch’oltra il poter la lingua snode.
tal io, qualor il caldo raggio e vivo
del divin Sole, onde nutrisco il core
più del usato lucido lampeggia,
movo la penna, mossa da l’amore,
interno, e senza ch’io stessa m’aveggia
di quel ch’io dico le Sue lodi scrivo.
That hungry fledgling, who sees and hears, when his mother brings food, beating his wings round her, because he likes the meal, while she is rejoicing and enthusing
and in his nest, the little bird anguishes and pines away from desire to imitate her, because the baby wants to fly, too, and is thanking her by trying a song, but is straining the tongue beyond his strength,
just like me in the warm, vivid ray of the divine sun, from which I feed the heart much better than from usual light flashes,
I move my pen, internally moved by love, and without being aware what I say, I write down His praise.
VITTORIA COLONNA
ABSENCE OF THE HOLY GHOST IN HER SOUL
CON VOMER D’UMILITÀ
While many sonnets by Vittoria Colonna unfold just one concetto in the quatrains, the poetess, in this extraordinary sonnet, amalgamates three metaphors to one concetto: the plough furrowing the earth, the antic humoral pathology, St. John 15.5-6: „I am the vine, you are the branches”, and St John 15,6: “Whoever does not stay in me, is thrown away and withers.”
Moreover, the poetess adds drama to this sonnet, staging herself with the plough in her hands, digging deep and broad furrows into her heart to remove the bad earth, the metaphor of ploughing suggesting hard work and illustrating her energy input. She also removes bad body fluid (umore), which induced her melancholy in order not to have the loosened earth again submersed with this poisoning liquid-
After finishing her laborious preparations for an adequate reception of the Lord in her heart, in the second quatrain, she is waiting for irrigation by fresh rain from Heaven so that the vines of divine love will produce fruit. However, the hope of the I-Speaker for a good harvest seems weak, if she suggests the possibility that her vines could only produce Labrusca (sorrel) and foliage.
The most beautiful metaphor (Saint John 15.4) of Jesus growing together with human beings – I am the vine and you are the branches -is rather matter-of-factly reduced to „vines of divine love” by the poetess in the second quatrain. After frustrated former attempts, the sceptical I-Speaker wonders, if the vines will produce godly fruit this time.
Before the shadow again covers the earth, and the I-Speaker, among fruitless leaves, awaits the warmth of the heavenly sunbeam in vain (first tercet), the self-assertive Renaissance poetess approaches God directly with the awe-inspiring order to reveal himself at last so that she could be spared dark thoughts and haughty requests, the adjective “haughty” revealing that Vittoria Colonna is fully aware of her improper behaviour towards God.
VITTORIA COLONNA
CON VOMER D’UMILITÁ
Con vomer d’umilità larghe e profonde
fosse conviemmi far dentro al mio core,
sgombrando il mal terreno e ´l triste umore,
pria che l’aggravi quel, questo l’innonde
tal ch’altra poi miglior terra il circonde,
e più fresca del Ciel piogga lo irrore (?)
onde le viti del divino amore
germini frutti, non labrusca e fronde.
Ma pria che l’ombra in tutto la ricopra
e poscia indarno fra le vane foglie
aspetti il caldo del celeste raggio,
Lui, che fu sol umil, prego, che scopra
se stesso al cor, perché da me sempre aggio
tenebrosi pensier, superbe voglie.
With the plough of humility, it behoves me to dig broad and deep furrows into my heart, removing the bad earth and the melancholic humour, before it worsens and inundates the earth,
so that the heart is embedded in better earth and irrigated by fresher rain from Heaven, through which the wines of divine love generate fruit, no labrusca and foliage.
But, before the shadow totally covers the earth again and then, among the useless leaves the heart waits for the warmth of the heavenly ray in vain,
I ask HIM, who was only humble, to reveal himself to the heart so that I remove from myself dark thoughts and haughty desires for ever.
VITTORIA COLONNA
Utopian Proposal to God:
an eternal Lamp for Inner Enlightenment
Vorrei che´l vero Sol
In playful mood, the poetess, proposes to God, to send her an eternal lamp into her heart, modelled on a lamp manufactured by Homo Faber, so that divine light is collected in the lamp like in a focus and illuminates each part of her soul, which will be inflamed, while the soul now is only reached by idle, scarce sparks, by the tepid embers of which, her spirit is not inflamed, but depressed. Cheered up by such heavenly light is only the desire of the poetess. The strength for an upswing in heavenly altitudes is missing.
Never does Vittoria Colonna, standing by her authenticity, poetise the revelation of God in the human soul, augured by the Spirituali, as experience, but always as doctrine or as desire, whose fulfilment she has never experienced.
Vittoria Colonna, familiar with despair and absence of God, lived through serious inner crises in Viterbo to realize that the mysticism of the Spirituali conditioned inner calm and contemplation, and ignored panic, external and internal threat in emergencies dependent on immediate help. The Spirituali did not offer Vittoria Colonna an answer to the question, how man can cope with „servile, cold fear.”
VORREI CHE ´L VERO SOL
Vorrei, che ´l vero Sol, cui sempre invoco,
mandasse un lampo interno entro la mente.
e non si breve raggio, che sovente
le va girando intorno a poco e poco,
ma riscaldasse il cor col santo foco,
che serba dentro in sé viva ed ardente
fiamma, e queste faville tarde e lente
m’ardesser molto in ogni tempo e loco.
Lo spirto è ben dal caldo ardor compunto.
É sereno dal bel lume il desio,
ma non ho da me la forza a l‘alta impresa.
Deh! fa Signor, con un miracol, ch’io
mi veggia intorno lucido in un punto,
e tutta dentro in ogni parte accesa.
I would like the true Sun, I always invoke, to have an eternal lamp sent into my mind and not such a short, scarce flash, which only circles round a little
so that the lamp, which preserves the lively, blazing flame inside, would have warmed up my heart with holy fire and inflamed these dull and slug-gish sparks at any time and place.
The spirit is worn out by the luke-warm embers. Und only desire is cheered up by the beautiful light. But I do not have the verve for a high-altitude flight.
Lord, I beseech thee, bring about a miracle that I see myself lit all around in one focus and totally inflamed in-side in each part.
Vittoria Colonna
Longing for the Divine
Here and Now
What’s cheerful about the Beautiful Light is Desire
É sereno dal bel lume il desio.
Humble expectance of divine grace is one leitmotif of the Rime Spirituali according tothe Doctrine of the Spirituali. Searing longing for divine fulfilment already here in her life on earth, now, not only in the insecure Beyond, is the counter melody in the polyphone complexity of her sonnets. The Renaissance Poetess is not contented with sporadic presentiments of divine graces. She is longing for divine fulfilment in this world.
In serene mood, the beautiful thought occurs to the poetess that the human soul is God’s wonderful creation. Therefore, it is understandable that „God made the soul immortal, breathed pure, glowing faith into it, lovingly adorned it with light wings of hope so that the soul joyfully hurries up the stairs to heavenly abode.“
Supernatural love of God may, Vittoria Colonna dreams, lead her up from joy to joy, and from one sphere of beautiful thoughts to the next:
Di gioia in gioia e d’una in altra schiera
di dolci e bei pensier l’Amor superno
mi guida fuor del freddo arido verno
a la Sua verde e calda primavera.
From joy to joy and from one bevy of sweet, beautiful thoughts to the next, August Amor guides me out of the cold, arid winter to His green, warm spring.
VITTORIA COLONNA
Truth appears to a joyful spirit
in a beautiful world
QUANDO, MERCÉ DEL CIEL
Quando mercé del Ciel, quasi presente
scorge per viva fede ad una ad una
l’alme grazie divine, e poi le aduna
tutte in un punto, il cuor lieto ed ardente
tirar da tanta gioia alor si sente
che, quanto giace qui sotto la luna,
la morte, il mondo, e buona e rea fortuna,
riman poi sotto l’amorosa mente.
mentre servon l’ali al gran pensero,
or sul mar or sul fiume, or sovra ´l monte
veggio il sol di là su splender fra noi,
e quando Dio, quando uom‘ far qua giù conte
l’eterne glorie, e a bei raggi suoi
disparir l‘ ombre e dimonstrarsi il vero.
When, as mercy from virtually present Heaven, the joy-ful, glowing heart, thanks to its lively faith, discovers the enlivening divine graces, one after the other, and then unites all of them in one focus, and
from such joy one feels drawn up so that, as here a lot lies below the moon, Death, World, and Good and Evil Fortune, remain below the loving mind.
While the wings serve the grand thought, from up there I see the sun shining among us, on the sea or on the river or above the mountain,
and I see when God, when Man, down there perform eternal glorious deeds and how, in the beautiful sun rays, shadows disappear and the truth comes to the fore.
Quando, mercé del Ciel
Quatrains:
The Renaissance poetess speculates: If her glowing heart, bundled the weak sparks of divine grace, in a focus, she would be drawn up by such joy so that death, world, and fortune, could not harm her any longer: They would be situated below her elated mind.
Tercets:
While her elated spirit disposes of wings, the poetess is hovering above the earth. She sees the sun shining on the sea and the river and above the mountain, and while God or Man, as Homo Faber, perform many glorious deeds here on earth, she observes the shadows disappear through the beautiful rays of the sun and she sees truth come to the fore.
Again, the vision of enlightenment, potentiated in a focus, is contrasted to the lukewarm sparks of divinity she usually experienced, and her vision triggers off her fanciful flight into heavenly altitudes by equipping her euphoric mind with wings. From the fact that she, in her flight into heavenly altitudes, leaves the moon far below, she draws the analogical conclusion that quite similarly Death, World and Fortune lying far below, do not reach her elated spirit anymore.
Although the poetess emphasises that her wings still serve her great thought – gran pensiero -, she, after all, approaches earth again, as she does in her Platonic sonnets after her upswings into heavenly spheres, however this time, so it seems, without uttering her habitual frustration. She still views the sun shining on the sea, on the river and above the mountain and perceives the shadows disappear in the sunrays, and even truth comes to the fore, while God or Man performs glorious deeds here on earth.
No mood swing disturbs this exhilarated, playful sonnet. Certainly, the poetess again indulges in speculations, but without giving way to heavy thoughts, so it seems. She improves God’s scarce divine graces by uniting them in a focus, playfully giving them more weight by using a word play: una ad una aduna. After her return to earth from her imaginative euphoric flight into heavenly altitudes, she seems to content herself with her earthly existence.
In a downright vehement contrast to this serenity, she cries out her discontent with this reticent, dissatisfying God in three impatient, angry anagrams:
Striking is her three-time use of QUANDO as conjunction, as enumerative particle, and as question word. As in many sonnets she puts greatest weight on the last word: IL VERO.
The Anagrams:
QUANDO DIO IL VERO – When God truth?
QUANDO, DIO, QUANDO, QUANDO IL VERO? – When, God, when, when truth (at last)?
QUANDO, DIO, QUANDO DISPARIR L’OMBRE E DIMONSTRARSI IL VERO? When God, when (do) shadows disappear to reveal TRUTH?
Résumé
Patient expectation of divine endowment is one leitmotif of her spiritual sonnets according to the Doctrine of the Spirituali. Burning longing for the Revelation of God Here and Now in this earthly life is the subjective counter voice in the polyphone complexity of her Rime Spirituali, according to Vittoria Colonna’s Renaissance disposition. Only occasionally does she feel like sensing hardly perceptible traces of the Divine. Yet, she desires to recognize God completely and to experience divine fulfilment in this life.
The theme, to which Vittoria Colonna devoted her authentic voice in her Rime Spirituali, is the inner disjointedness of her Renaissance personality between the Beyond and This World. The poetess onestlyexpresses her swaying between these poles in her spiritual lyric.
Her strong striving for self-determination and authenticity is characteristic of Renaissance Individualism. Vittoria Colonna does not identify herself with any doctrine of salvation in self-abandonment. She insists on her religious self-definition and remains on the way as a God-Seeker, entangled in her „inner chaos. “
The sonnet, owing to its dialectic structure (two quatrains, two tercets), is the adequate seismograph of the fluctuations in the complex religious life of the passionate God Seeker.
Of course, Vittoria Colonna chose Sola Fide, the reformed doctrine of justification before God by faith alone, as the central topic of her spiritual poetry. At the same time, however, she leaves no doubt in her reflective poetry that faith alone does not fulfil her. With a thirst of knowledge sans pareil, she desires to perceive God with her senses and to comprehend Him with her intellect. However, the Renaissance woman was denied the complete recognition of God, as it has been inaccessible to all human beings of any time.
VITTORIA COLONNA
TEMPO É PUR CH´ÍO
The poetess, in the belted gown of the Sibyl (Michelangelo!), on her own, as behoves a Renaissance-Individualist, wide-awake, even alert like the nine wise virgins of the New Testament, yet not as patiently, but with great impatience, is expecting the heavenly bridegroom. Instead of their flickering oil lamps, the poetess is holding blazing torches in both hands, while she is greedily peering into the eternal night for the appearance of God. Of course, his arrival is delayed.
Abruptly, the Poetess returns into reality, her U-Turn being the result of a mood swing. A new idea occurred to her, she had never thought of before, although the intellectual Aristocrat of the Renaissance, in her earthly life, had researched all thinkable possibilities of recognizing God:
Jesus may cross her way in this earthly life, while she expected HIM in the Beyond, and she could have overlooked him. „Here, she is, the blind woman”, he would address her, “who, among such clear rays, did not recognize her beautiful sun. “ For the Renaissance Poetess, in her zest for action, an encounter with Jesus in this world even seems more fascinating than her futile x-raying the eternal night for HIM with her torches, and may be more attractive than his promise of eternal life, because, overjoyed, she would accept the earthly missional of the Lord for establishing his Spiritual Empire here and now in this world
Tempo è pur ch‘ io con la precinta vesta
con l’orecchie e con gli occhi avidi intenti
e con le faci in man vive ed ardenti,
aspetto il caro Sposo e lieta e presta
per onorarLo reverente onesta,
avendo al cor gli altri desiri spenti,
e brami l’amor suo, l’ira paventi,
sì ch’EI mi trovi al gran bisogno desta,
Non ch’io sol prezzi i Suoi doni infiniti
e le soavi Sue alte parole,
onde vita immortal lieto m’offerse.
Ma perché la man santa non m’additi,
dicendo: „Ecco la cieca che non scoverse
fra tanti chiari raggi il suo bel Sole.
Time has come that I, in a belted gown, with my avid ears attentive, and with my eyes wide open, with flaring torches in both hands, expect the dear bridegroom joyfully and soon
to honour him reverently, honestly, the other desires extinguished in my heart, longing for his love and fear his wrath, so that he finds me awake at great necessity,
not that I only appreciate his infinite presents and his suave, sublime words, offering me immortal, joyful life,
but that HE, with his holy hand, could not assign me, saying: „There she is, the blind woman, who, among such clear rays, does not discover her beauti-ful Sun “.