On the day of our 40th Wedding Anniversary, Holly and I revisited Florence, Italy, the city we enjoyed so much on our European honeymoon. The first time we visited Florence, the curators had closed the exhibition to work on the housing, and we could not see the original 1504 statue of David by Michelangelo.
Instead, we settled for the 1875 replica placed outside Florence’s Town Hall (Palazzo Vecchio) in the Town Hall Square (Piazza della Signoria.) In our walk around Florence, I decided to go there first to see if I could rekindle old memories.
All the statues were still where they had been for hundreds of years. The original Medici Lion was carved in 1598. Since 1789, the two Medici Lions have been located at the Loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza della Signoria, Florence, in case you wanted to send them a postcard.
Plus, we have Hercules and Nessus, the Fountain of Neptune, Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus, and the Rape of the Sabine Women surrounding the Loggia dei Lanzi, which was built between 1376 and 1382 as a stage for public ceremonies.
The Plaza copy was tremendous, but a replica is a replica, and this David was covered in pigeon poop. On this trip to Florence, we visited the real-deal David in his protected home at the Galleria dell’Accademia.
On the morning of our 40th wedding anniversary, we hiked down the street from our hotel to find the Gallery. Even before the gallery opened, tour buses spilled out multitudes of tourists onto the street, and the line-ups proliferated. I had prearranged to skip the lines and bought VIP express passes for the first two people into the museum in the morning. For about 10 minutes, we had David all to ourselves.
To be alone with David in the silence left me awestruck. The lighting, the architecture, the ambiance, and, of course, Michelangelo’s ethereal statue of David define human perfection. “All else” shall be judged and measured using David as the standard but only, whereas David, the manifestation of Michelangelo’s vision or idea, represents us as being “only human” in our imperfect form. In other words, we see flaws and inconsistencies in the form, but in the end, Michelangelo’s work is perfect in its realization.
Standing alone facing the original David, I felt so small. I haven’t felt this way since I experienced Rembrandt’s Mona Lisa in Paris or Vincent van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows in Amsterdam. Shortly after seeing the psychedelic impressions of Wheatfield with Crows, I wrote my book of poetry, Woodsmoke & Perfume. It took me roughly as long to compose my chapbook of poetry as it did Michelangelo to carve out David from a block of marble, but in the end, my book, like this statue, became something tangible and lasting.
“When all was finished, it cannot be denied that this work has carried off the palm from all other statues, modern or ancient, Greek or Latin; no other artwork is equal to it in any respect, with such just proportion, beauty and excellence did Michelangelo finish it” was how Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari introduced in a few words the marvel of one of the greatest masterpieces ever created by mankind.
To visit David is an opportunity to be inspired, but in what mysterious ways does inspiration work? Ironically, a commissionable contract engaged Michelangelo and Leonardo to create their masterpieces. They were paid to produce their art. But, at the same time, they did so with game-changing creativity that cannot be explained in any other way than pure genius.
When you browse the museum, you also come across the names of other familiar geniuses: Stradivari, Bartolini, Botticelli, Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci. What struck me was the familiarity of those names, but if someone asked me to name a living genius of our time, only Stephen Hawkins would immediately come to mind. After that, I would stall out.
In my opinion, genius is the manifestation of one’s ability to recognize and take advantage of one’s time and place. Genius is a product – not a condition. To be classified as a genius, you must produce something tangible or achieve something notable; to do that, you must have intelligence and luck. Why luck? None of the Renaissance geniuses would have been known today if Europe had not flourished with the wealthy patrons who commissioned statues, violins, pianos, and paintings. They were in the right place at the right time. So, does that help us define the geniuses of today?
Somewhat.
How about Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Jimmy Wales, Mark Zuckerburg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, or Larry Page? Are they in the living genius category? Each of them built their genius status by creatively using recently made available inventions. If they had been born 10 years earlier or 10 years later, is it likely that someone else would have done what they did.
How about Sam Walton, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg or Richard Branson? Does figuring out how to make lots of money make you a genius? Are they creative or merely opportunistic?
How about Stephen Hawkins, Alain Aspect, Frederick Sanger, Albert Hoffman, Timothy Berners-Lee, Roger Penrose, Edward Wilson, Edward Witten, James Watson, Andrew H. Knoll, David Baltimore, Charles K. Kao, Gordon Moore, Craig Venter and George M. Whitesides. Certainly, inventive or innovative scientists must fall into this category, as did Newton, Edison or Einstein before them?
Let’s try Richard Dawkins, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Fareed Zakaria, Bill Maher, Michael Moore, Steven Pinker, Steven Weinberg, Philip Pullman and Christopher Hitchens? Does recognizing the fallacy of man’s religious and political beliefs make these candidates unique or catapult them into the genius category? These candidates’ geniuses are defined by their ability to follow intellectual lines of reasoning and communicate this clarity of thought to the public. Intelligent and logical, no doubt, but does that give them the genius cookie?
What about the proliferation of today’s writers, musicians or artists? Which of them are geniuses?
The one category I am sure contains no geniuses is politicians. Watching the American elections and listening to the banality, hypocrisy and absurdity of Trump’s rhetoric assures me that political geniuses are few and far between. It doesn’t take a genius to run a country. Considering that David was sculpted as the heroic victor over a brutish, strong man devoid of morality or compassion, it would be a stretch to imagine Trump as worthy of becoming a prototypical representative of the spiritual force with which moral right is endowed. Not him nor any other politician.
I am not sure who we should call a genius in our day and age. There is so much more to our new-age world than what was available during the classical or Renaissance ages. But by standing at David’s feet and admiring the perfection of his art, I recognized that genius is also the result of hard work and perseverance. After carving out David, Michelangelo went on to paint the Sistine Chapel.
Thomas Edison summed it up by saying: “None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.“
To my muse, my Mona Lisa, on our 40th wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary sweetheart! I hope you remember this day as I will.
