Iconicity in Michelangelos poetry

Iconicity in Michael Angelo's poetry is multifaceted: lexical, thematic and formal. Lexical terms are closely related to sculpting but their semantic field is significantly expanded, making them metaphoric. Art gains additional subjective value closely connected to emotional experience of the artist; emotions are changed into a work of art, and art - the subject of poetry - comments on itself. Sculpture becomes real, entrapped within words, which - in their turn - are treated as artistic material on a par with stone. Iconicity is also visible in the very form of the poems: their shape mirrors the Artist's struggle with matter, which often does not yield to his tools.