And cleansed by fire, I shall live for ever.

     And as the flames are soaring to the sky,
     I, changed and purified, shall soar to heaven.

     Oh, blissful day!  When in a single flash
     Time slips away into eternity—­
     The sun no longer rides across the skies....

Michelangelo was conscious of his near kinship with Dante; he illustrated a copy of the Divine Comedy which, unfortunately, is lost, and wrote a poem on Dante in which the following lines occur: 

Were I but he!  Born for like lingering pains,
Against his exile, coupled with his good,
I’d gladly change the world’s inheritage.

(Transl. by J.A.  SYMONDS.)

The paintings in the Sistine Chapel, with their materialised thoughts of destiny, retribution and eternity, originated in a feeling akin to the feeling underlying the Divine Comedy.  Both here and there the creation of celestial and infernal spirits was the outcome of the infinite longing of the artistic imagination.  Both men could spend the human and creative passions with which their souls were thrilled only on the supreme and universal.  The eternal destiny of man, fate, sin, the futility of all earthly things, the relationship of the world to God, love surpassing all human limits and aspiring to the eternal—­these are the common objects over which they brooded.  But while it was given to Dante to create his picture of the world in harmony with his own soul, and account it a true representation of the world-system; while his world was a definite place with a beginning and an end, and his life-work remained in harmony with his own soul, and the universe, Michelangelo’s lacerated soul could find peace only in the ultimate truth, which filled his heart, and to which he yearned to give plastic life, only to be unsatisfied after achieving it.  George Simmel, in a profound work, draws our attention to the infinite melancholy which overshadows all Michelangelo’s figures, because his genius aspired to express the inexpressible.  Even the supremest plastic representation of the passion and longing for the transcendental which thrilled his soul did not satisfy him.  This tragedy is the tragedy of the metaphysical erotic overflowing its own specific domain.  Dante’s faith in the absolute value of his work and in the truth of the consummation of his love in eternity—­which was the sustaining power of his life—­remained unshaken, but Michelangelo lost his faith in his work; art and love forsook him and withdrew into a transcendental world which he could divine, but could not grasp.  His faith was no blissful certainty; he knew no more than the dark aspect of things; the imperfection of even the sublimest, of his art and his love.