The Ekphrastic Review
  • Ekphrastic
  • About
  • Workshops
  • Writers
  • Give
    • Merch
  • TERcets Podcast
  • Ekphrastic Writing Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Submit
  • Contact

Michelangelo's Captive, by Dana Sonnenschein

8/23/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Dying Slave, by Michelangelo (Italy) 1513-1515. Photography by Jörg Bittner Unna (Germany) 2014

Michangelo’s Captive 
​
I wished to photograph a beautiful man sculpted by Michelangelo, afraid I would forget him if I did not, for he had no story, no name.  But I turned away.  I had the feeling I should not be watching our guide’s pleasure; he knew nothing about the work’s history but exclaimed over the marble as a singer praises the beloved.  His face was a study of amazement—that such a being could exist in the world, his luminous form revealed every day to someone like you or me or him, a tour bus driver posing as a cultural authority, relying on the fact that no one in his group spoke French to conceal that he was making up what this painting or that sculpture in the Louvre was “about.”   Never mind that proper names are perfectly recognizable, or that one romance language sounds very much like another.  We stood before the Esclave mourant, dying into eternal life.  The Captif.  
 
And we were captivated by that white vision of slavery.  Not by an assault.  Not by the historical experience of tribes conquered by the Romans.  We were caught up in what Michelangelo knew about the body.  About fantasy and bondage.  And the man, the model—May he have enjoyed the wine, the bread soaked in olive oil, and the eye of the master, intoxicating as any drug given to calm a victim before sacrifice.  May he have loved the hands that adored him, that memorized him, that altered him and memorialized him in marble.        
 
One of his arms is held high, bent at the elbow, hand behind his head, and the other caresses his chest in a gesture of exposure and self-love and sensuality so palpable that it is difficult to see that there are carved straps holding his raised arm behind him and that what he pushes upward is not a tunic but leather bindings that might have secured him to a post or pillar.  Here, he is tied to nothing but our gaze and the sunlit air.  He is so proportioned and positioned, his face so peaceful, his hair in such even waves.  He might be half-stretching at the studio window, his body somewhere between dreaming and waking, bone and muscle bearing weight, bound only to the law of beauty, its balance of line, the more curved and the less straight, a natural form that leaves the eye desiring nothing beyond what is there and there and not there.  
 
Michelangelo Buonarroti was a perfectionist.  Also a man famous for leaving things unfinished.  Perhaps beauty is always unfinished.  So, this captive, undone.  His right foot, toes spread, barely emerges from the stone that bears him, the block the sculptor delivered him from. 

Dana Sonnenschein

Dana Sonnenschein lives in the woods in New England, where she teaches online at Southern Connecticut State University; she’s been documenting the wildflower season on Instagram and making her four cats very happy over the last few months … because they know nothing about the pandemic.  Her publications include Bear Country, Natural Forms, No Angels but These, and Corvus.  Recent work appears in The Matador Review, The Prachya Review, Algebra of Owls, Permafrost, and Terrain.org’s Dear America anthology.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture

    ​​Find a writer, artist, or poem, etc. by searching here:
    Current Prompt
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • Ekphrastic
  • About
  • Workshops
  • Writers
  • Give
    • Merch
  • TERcets Podcast
  • Ekphrastic Writing Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Submit
  • Contact