Hill of Phoebus

The Hill of Phoebus - a complete short story

Here with his beautiful eyes he promised me solace,
And with those very eyes he tried to take it away from me.

Michelangniolo di Lodovico Buonarroti-Simoni

It is not enough that I love him is it? It is not enough that I stand by the workshop door every morning and scan the crowds as they wend past me, my eyes burning the street, searching for that tousled head, those careless lashes, the tantalising smile of recognition. It is not enough that I cannot sleep on nights that he cannot or will not be with me, or that I cannot eat for worry that he is in some distress somewhere, a fight, a brawl, made red and lethal with the flash of roman knives. Not recompense for what others deem as unnatural that my palms are slick with sweat and I cannot hold the tools of my trade, and my eyes are so bloodshot with care and the lack of rest that all colours blend into a muddy palette that is owned by children.

No, this Pope’s God, this God I life my live to serve, to extol, to glorify is not satisfied with mundane torments. Such agonies are for mere mortals, He thinks, why should we be content to simply repeat Job’s burdens upon this one? He thinks he does our work and yet he loves such an unworthy - let us then punish him beyond man’s imagination, let him burn, yes, let him burn in love as no other before or since, for the fires of his talent flame to heaven like nothing has or ever will be. Then, only then, let us take away his muse and see how long his love lasts without talent.

I find myself roaring at the assistants as they ask me for advice on colour and plaster and shape and line. Ask me not to work without him here. Ask me not to sit and draw and ignore that happy stool where he perches, humming that stupid plebeian song all of the day, kicking his feet against the wall because he knows I hate it.

The blocks themselves mock me. Huge and looming they taunt the procrastination of my art. Once I was certain that I knew exactly what lay within their grey and creamy depths. Angels and heroes, Christs and Virgins. Now I look at them and it seems clear that were I only to chip away the very veneer of the casing from the marble, Febo would emerge, as if from a tainted chrysalis, his skin, his sinews, his coral mouth. His essence flickers from block to block until all are infected with a deadly contagion and I know I can never use any of these marbles now.

Ungrateful brat, hateful seraphim. I scattered him with coins as he lay naked on a bed of crumpled velvet, the marks of my ardour still upon his skin, and yet no matter how much I pay for him, he is never mine. No-one can buy such a wild animal and expect to have him eating from his hand, he cannot be won over, I am now convinced of that. I should have broken him upon the wheel of his nascent talent instead of encouraging him as I did; should have crushed him beneath my colossus instead of falling before the plinth which I had carved for him and worshipping the venal blackmailing thief.

I should have…

I should have told him that I would spread the world out for him like a mural beneath his feet, so he could step upon it lightly and be its Prince. I should have been a softer and more tolerant erastes, for he was wilder than any eromenos I had known before - and my constraints and jealousy have caused this rift between us. I should have given him more, and then he would not have stolen from me, and I would not now be betrayed.

One more day, my Phoebus. Grant me one more day upon that sunny hill, return to me with kisses and the drawings and we shall be friends again and i shall make such art of you as the world will covet yea even for a thousand years, for you hold my muse in your grasping fingers and if you take everything else from me, I would have that one thing returned.

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(background)

In the early 1530s Michelangelo was also sustaining a relationship with his much younger model Febo di Poggio. He calls Febo “that little blackmailer,” because Febo adopted Michelangelo as “my honorary father” and steadily demanded money, clothes, and love-gifts from him. On a page containing financial calculations, Michelangelo wrote:

Here wtih his beautiful eyes he promised me solace,
And with those very eyes he tried to take it away from me.

Their passion raged through 1533-34, but ended when Michelangelo discovered that the mignon had “betrayed” him — perhaps by actually stealing money or drawings from his sugar-daddy. The artist felt humiliated by his subservience to the model.

Several poems pun upon the boy’s name — “Febo” equals Phoebus, and poggio is the Italian word for “hill” — and suggest physical consummation:

Blithe bird, excelling us by fortune’s sway,
Of Phoebus’ [Febo] thine the prize of lucent notion,
Sweeter yet the boon of winged promotion
To the hill [poggio] whence I topple and decay!

But such a topple was sweet:

Easily could I soar, with such a happy fate,
When Phoebus [Febo] brightened up the heights [poggio].
His feathers were wings and the hill [poggio] the stair.
Phoebus [Febo] was a lantern to my feet.