Julie Larios on Michelangelo's Aching Back

 Among the many great European artists of the Renaissance, he is thought to be have been the greatest. Who doesn't recognize the storied ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Some of us even remember the collective gasp of horror that echoed around the world when a vandal broke the nose of the Pieta.Children's nonfiction buffs will remember Diane Stanley's cleverly illustrated picture book biography of Michelangelo.But a poet?Courtesy of Numero Cinq, here is a wonderful piece by Julie Larios on Michelangelo, poetry, the doctoring of texts, politics, love, and translation.She quotes translator John Frederick Nims on the pleasures of translating this body of work:

“Fun” is a word that Robert Frost often used of poetry. If it offends anyone when used in the aura of the divine Michelangelo, as Vasari called him, we could retrieve from ancient Greece the favorite motto of Valery…which he translates as pour le plaisir. I kept translating for the pleasure of it.

Fun. Worth remembering, as a criterion for work. It can put aching backs into perspective.