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He put all he had within him into this virgin; his genius formed her beauty from a conception of God's mysteries grace is sculpted, translated, there for us; The idea's gravity, implications overwhelm the heart--an overfilled vase we can't lift--but slowly we see something's missing, not it. Maybe it's her sweet air a living woman wouldn't have, the lack of fierce lights against a backdrop of dark shadows. Still, this devoted humble stance and gentle act stirs my heart to gaze on her, and she sweeps away my confusion, dismay at this world's black atrocities. |
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Notes: From B S2:23:188; MS' L, V2 (Ve2?). First printed Tordi 6:41. A fifteenth in a series meditating the Virgin Mary. Tordi says that this sonnet may been the result of a 1538 visit to the Madonna de San Lucca in Bologna; he and Bernardy (pp 81-2) connect it to Vittoria's response to the preaching of Ochino and other evangelical influences on her. VC gazes at a sculpted Madonna. Key |