Addington provides the first translation of many of these sonnets he rendered into English rhyme. {It would have been nice to have alongside the 17th century Italian originals}. In the original, none were printed during Michael Angelo's life, and the first of his voluminous and brilliant sonnets were not made available for 59 years! [58]

The delay was not alone because the poems are lusciously rude and obscure, but also because they expressed the author's admiration for masculine beauty. This is a tragedy, apparently endured by Michel Angelo and now clearly documented, not only in his paintings -- all of his women look like his nude male models -- but here in his poems.

Editors have minced and transmogrified many of these poems apparently now reconstructed by Symonds. I note also the evidence of intimate familiarity with Plato's writings and "nonsexual love" is not evidence of Michael Angelo's sexuality. He was clearly gay, whether consummated long into his old age with Tommaso de Cavalieri, or with many others, or not.

The sonnets are more than deep reflections upon the great loves of Michael Angelo -- beauty, Florence, Christ -- but they reflect iconoclasm, freedom, the teachings of Ficino and Savanarola, and the influence of Dante.

i didn't know he wrote poetry! some of it is very moving, and i learned quite a bit about him reading this volume. ( )

This is the John Addington Symonds translation, which attempts to retain meter and rhyme in the sonnet form. And which also attempts to avoid the homoerotic element of the poems. JAS was a Victorian, and likely homosexual himself in a time when to act on that would land you in prison at hard labor, so it is perhaps understandable that he would "feel it of less importance to discover who it was that prompted him to this or that poetic utterance".