It is obvious that here the Queen of Heaven and the sun are conceived as
one. Eichendorff makes use of the metaphor:
The sun is smiling languidly
Like to a woman wondrous sweet.
The typically un-Teutonic modern poet, Alfred Mombert, on the other
hand, conceives the sun as a youth, and contrary to all custom, calls a
poem: _Der_ Sonnengeist (the sun-spirit).
The great Italians, also, were not unaware of this change of the sex of
the supreme value; at the conclusion of the _Paradise_ there is a
passage (in St. Bernard's prayer) which points to a connection in
Dante's mind between the sun and the Queen of Heaven:
"The love that moves the sun in heaven!"
_(d) Michelangelo._
In Michelangelo we meet the spirit of Plato and the plastic genius of
Greece raised to a higher plane and lit by the peculiar glory of
Christianity--the conception of the soul as an absolute value.
Michelangelo was thrilled by a passionate love of beauty; beauty
absolute, eternal and immutable.
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