Chapter II: Part 2

At this time, perhaps, the Danaide was created, a figure that has thrown itself from a kneeling position down into a wealth of flowing hair. It is wonderful to walk slowly about this marble, to follow the long line that curves about the richly unfolded roundness of the back to the face that loses itself in the stone as though in a great weeping, and to the hand which like a broken flower speaks softly once more of life that lies deep under the eternal ice of the block. "Illusion," the daughter of Icarus, is a luminous materialization of a long, helpless fall. The beautiful group that is called "L'homme et sa pensée" is the representation of a man who kneels and with the touch of his forehead upon the stone before him awakens the silent form of a woman who remains imprisoned in the stone. In this group one is impressed with the expression of the inseparableness with which the man's thought clings to his forehead; for it is his thought that lives and is always present before him, the thought which takes shape in the stone.

The work most nearly related to this in conception is the head that musingly and silently frees itself from a block. "La Pensée" is a transcendent vision of life that rises slowly out of the heavy sleep of the stone.

"The Caryatid" is no more the erect figure that bears lightly or unyieldingly the heaviness of the marble. A woman's form kneels crouching, as though bent by the burden, the weight of which sinks with a continuous pressure into all the figure's limbs. Upon every smallest part of this body the whole stone lies like the insistence of a will that is greater, older and more powerful, a pressure, which it is the fate of this body to continue to endure. The figure bears its burden as we bear the impossible in dreams from which we can find no escape. Even the sinking together of the failing figure expresses this pressure; and when a greater weariness forces the body down to a lying posture, it will even then still be under the pressure of this weight, bearing it without end. Such is the "Caryatid."

One may always explain, accompany and surround Rodin's works with thoughts. For all to whom simple contemplation is too difficult and unaccustomed a road to beauty there are other roads, detours leading to meanings that are noble, great, complete. The infinite correctness of these creations, the perfect balance of all their movements, the wonderful inward justice of their proportions, their penetration into life--all that makes them beautiful--gives them the strength of being unsurpassable materializations of the ideas which the master called into being when he named them. Rodin lived near his work and, like the custodian of a Museum, continuously evolved from it new meanings. One learns much from his interpretations but in the contemplation of these works, alone and undisturbed, one gathers a still fuller and richer understanding of them.

Where the first suggestion comes from some definite subject, where an ancient tale, a passage from a poem, an historical scene or some real person is the inspiration, the subject matter transforms itself more and more into reality during the process of the work. Translated into the language of the hands, the interpretations acquire entirely new characteristics which develop into plastic fulfilment. The drawings of Rodin prepare the way for the sculptural work by transforming and changing the suggestions. In this Art, too, Rodin has cultivated his own methods of expression. The individuality of these drawings--there are many hundreds of them--presents an independent and original manifestation of his artistic personality.

There are from an earlier period water colours with surprisingly strong effects of light and shade, such as the famous "Homme au Taureau", which reminds one of Rembrandt. The head of the young "St. Jean Baptiste" and the shrieking mask for the "Genius of War"--all these are sketches and studies which helped the artist to recognize the life of surfaces and their relationship to the atmosphere. There are drawings that are done with a direct certainty, forms complete in all their contours, drawn in with many quick strokes of the pen; there are others enclosed in the melody of a single vibrating outline. Rodin, acceding to the wish of a collector, has illustrated with his drawings one copy of the "Fleurs du Mal." To speak of expressing a fine understanding of Baudelaire's verses, conveys no meaning; more is conveyed if it is recalled that these poems in their fulness do not admit of supplement. Yet in spite of this one feels an enhancement where Rodin's lines interpret this work, such is the measure of the overpowering beauty of these drawings. The pen and ink drawing that is placed opposite the poem "La Mort des Pauvres" exceeds these great verses with so simple and ever-growing a breadth of meaning that the sweep of its lines seems to include the universal. This quality of enhancement is also found in the dry-point etchings, in which the course of infinitely tender lines appears to flow with an absolute accuracy of movement over the underlying essence of form, like the outer markings of some beautiful crystalline thing.

The strange documents of the momentary and of the unnoticeably passing, originated at this time. Rodin assumed that if caught quickly, the simple movements of the model when he believes himself unobserved, contain the strength of an expression which is not surmised, because one is not wont to follow it with intense and constant attention. By not permitting his eyes to leave the model for an instant, and by allowing his quick and trained hand free play over the drawing paper Rodin seized an enormous number of never before observed and hitherto unrecorded gestures of which the radiating force of expression was immense. Conjoining movements that had been overlooked and unrecognized as a whole, represented and contained all the directness, force and warmth of animal life. A brush full of ochre outlined the contours with quickly changing accentuation, modeled the enclosed surface with such incredible force that the drawing appears like a figure in terra cotta. And again a new depth was discovered full of unsurmised life; a depth over which echoing steps had passed and which gave its waters only to him whose hands possessed the magic wand that disclosed its secret.

In portraiture the pictorial expression of the theme belonged to the preparation from which Rodin proceeded slowly to the completion of the work. For erroneous as it is to see in Rodin's plastic art a kind of Impressionism, it is the multitude of precisely and boldly seized impressions that is always the great treasure from which he ultimately chooses the important and necessary, in order to comprehend his work in its perfect synthesis. As he proceeds from the bodies to the faces it must seem to him as though he stepped from a wind-swept distance into a room in which many men are gathered. Here everything is crowded and dim and the mood of an interior predominates under the arches of the brow and in the shadows of the mouth. Over the bodies there is always change, an ebb and flood like the dashing of waves. The faces possess an atmosphere like that of rooms in which many things have happened, joyous and tragic incidents, experiences deadening or full of expectation. No event has entirely passed, none has taken the place of the other, one has been placed beside the other and has remained there and has withered like a flower in a glass. But he who comes from the open out of the great wind brings distance into the room.

The mask of "The Man with the Broken Nose" was the first portrait that Rodin modeled. In this work his individual manner of portraying a face is entirely formed. One feels his admitted devotion to reality, his reverence for every line that fate has drawn, his confidence in life that creates even where it disfigures. In a kind of blind faith he sculptured "L'Homme au Nez Cassé" without asking who the man was who lived again in his hands. He made this mask as God created the first man, without intention of presenting anything save Life itself--immeasurable Life. But he returned to the faces of men with an ever-growing, richer and greater knowledge. He could not look upon their features without thinking of the days that had left their impress upon them, without dwelling upon the army of thoughts that worked incessantly upon a face, as though it could never be finished. From a silent and conscientious observation of life, the mature man, at first groping and experimenting, became more and more sure and audacious in his understanding and interpretation of the script with which the faces were covered. He did not give rein to his imagination, he did not invent, he did not neglect for a moment the hard struggle with his tools. It would have been easy to surmount, as if with wings, these difficulties. He walked side by side with his work over the far and distant stretches that had to be covered, like the plough-man behind his plough. While he traced his furrows, he meditated over his land, the depth of it, the sky above it, the flights of the winds and the fall of the rains; considered all that existed and passed by and returned and ceased not to be. He recognized in all this the eternal, and becoming less and less perplexed by the many things, he perceived the one great thing for which grief was good, and heaviness promised maternity, and pain became beautiful.

The interpretation of this perception began with the portraits, and from that time penetrated ever deeper into his work. It is the last step, the last cycle in his development. Rodin began slowly and with infinite precaution entered upon this new road. He advanced from surface to surface following Nature's laws. Nature herself pointed out to him, as it were, the places in which he saw more than was visible. He evolved one great simplification out of many confusions as Christ brought unity into the confusion of a guilty people by the revelation of a sublime parable. He fulfilled an intention of nature, completed something that was helpless in its growth. He disclosed the coherences as a clear evening following a misty day unveils the mountains which rise in great waves out of the far distance.

Full of the vital abundance of his knowledge, he penetrated into the faces of those that lived about him, like a prophet of the future. This intuitive quality gives to his portraits the clear accuracy and at the same time the prophetic greatness which rises to such indescribable perfection in the figures of Victor Hugo and of Balzac. To create an image meant to Rodin to seek eternity in a countenance, that part of eternity with which the face was allied in the great course of things eternal. Each face that he has modeled he has lifted out of the bondage of the present into the freedom of the future, as one holds a thing up toward the light of the sky in order to understand its purer and simpler forms. Rodin's conception of Art was not to beautify or to give a characteristic expression, but to separate the lasting from the transitory, to sit in judgment, to be just.

Beside the etchings, his portrait work embraces a great number of finished and masterly drawings. There are busts in plaster, in bronze, in marble and in sand-stone, heads and masks in terra cotta. Portraits of women occur again and again through all the periods of his work. The famous bust of the Luxembourg is one of the earliest. This bust is full of individual life, of a certain beautiful, womanly charm, but it is surpassed in simplicity and concentration by many later works. It is, perhaps, the only bust which possesses a beauty not absolutely characteristic of Rodin's work. This portrait survives partly because of a certain graciousness which has been hereditary for centuries in French plastic art. It shines somewhat with the elegance of the inferior sculptures of French tradition; it is not quite free from that gallant conception of the "belle femme" beyond which the serious and the deeply penetrating work of Rodin grew so quickly. One should remember that he had to overcome the ancestral conception, had to suppress an inborn capacity for this flowing grace in order to begin his work quite simply. He must not cease to be a Frenchman; the master builders of the cathedrals were also Frenchmen.

His later sculptures of women have a different beauty, more deeply founded and less traditional. Rodin has, for the most part, executed portraits of foreign women, especially American women. There are among these busts some of wonderful craftsmanship, marbles that are like pure and perfect antique cameos. Faces whose smiles play softly over the features like veils that seem to rise and fall with every breath; strangely half-closed lips and eyes which seem to look dreamily into the bright effulgence of an everlasting moonlit night. To Rodin the face of a woman seems to be a part of her beautiful body. He conceives the eyes of the face to be eyes of the body, and the mouth the mouth of the body. When he creates both face and body as a whole, the face radiates so vital an expression of life that these portraits of women seem prophetic.

The portraits of men are different. The essence of a man can be more easily imagined to be concentrated within the limits of his face; there are moments of calm and of inward excitement in which all life seems to have entered into his face. Rodin chooses or rather creates these moments when he models a man's portrait. He searches far back for individuality or character, does not yield to the first impression, nor to the second, nor to any of those following. He observes and makes notes; he records almost unnoticeable moments, turnings and semi-turnings of many profiles from many perspectives. He surprises his model in relaxation and in effort, in his habitual as well as in his impulsive expressions; he catches expressions which are but suggested. He comprehends transitions in all their phases, knows from whence the smile comes and why it fades. The face of man is to him like a scene in a drama in which he himself takes part. Nothing that occurs is indifferent to him or escapes him. He does not urge the model to tell him anything, he does not wish to know aught save that which he sees. He sees everything.

Thus a long time passes during the creation of each work. The conception evolves partly through drawings, seized with a few strokes of the pen or a few lines of the brush, partly from memory. For Rodin has trained his memory to be a means of assistance as dependable as it is comprehensive. During the hours in which the model poses he perceives much more than he can execute. Often after the model has left him the real work begins to take form from out the fulness of his memory. The impressions do not change within it but accustom themselves to their dwelling-place and rise from it into his hands as though they were the natural gestures of these hands.

This manner of work leads to an intense comprehension of hundreds and hundreds of moments of life. And such is the impression produced by these busts. The many wide contrasts and the unexpected changes which comprise man and man's continuous development here join together with an inner strength. All the heights and depths of being, all the climates of temperament of these men are concentrated and unfold themselves on the hemispheres of their heads. There is the bust of Dalou in whom a nervous fatigue vibrates side by side with a tenacious energy. There is Henry Rochefort's adventurous mask, and there is Octave Mirabeau in whom behind a man of action dawns a poet's dream and longing, and Puvis de Chavannes, and Victor Hugo whom Rodin knows so well; and there is above all the indescribably beautiful bronze portrait bust of the painter Jean Paul Laurens which is, perhaps, the most beautiful thing in the Luxembourg Museum. This bust is penetrated by such deep feeling, there is such tender modeling of the surface, it is so fine in carriage, so intense in expression, so moved and so awake that it seems as if Nature had taken this work out of the sculptor's hands to claim it as one of her most precious possessions. The gleam and sparkle of the metal that breaks like fire through the smoke-black patina coating adds much to make perfect the unique beauty of this work.

There is also a bust of Bastien Lepage, beautiful and melancholy with the expression of the suffering of the man whose realization is a continuous departure from his conception. This bust was executed for Damvillers, the little home village of the painter, and was placed there in the churchyard as a monument.

In their breadth of conception these busts of Rodin's have something of the monumental in them. To this quality is added a greater simplification of the surfaces, and a still more severe choice of the necessary with a view to perspective and placement. The monuments which Rodin has created approach more and more these requirements. He began with the monument of Claude Gelée for Nancy, and there is a steep ascent from this first interesting production to the grandiose triumph of Balzac.

Several of the monuments by Rodin were sent to America. The most mature of them was destroyed during the disturbances in Chile before it reached its destination. This was the equestrian statue of General Lynch. Like the lost masterpiece of Leonardo, which it resembled perhaps in the force of expression and in the wonderfully vital unity of man and horse, this statue was not to be preserved. A small copy in plaster in Rodin's museum at Meudon shows that it was the plastic portrait of a lean man who rises commandingly in his saddle, not in the brutal, tyrannical manner of a condottiere but with the nervous excitement of one who exercises the power of command only in office but who is not ordinarily wont to use this authority. The forward-pointing hand of the General rises out of the mass of the monument, out of man and animal.

This gesture of command gives to the statue of Victor Hugo its memorable power and majesty. The gesture of the aged man's strong, live hand raised commandingly toward the ocean does not come from the poet alone but descends from the summit of the whole group as though from a mountain on which it had prayed before it spoke. Victor Hugo is here the exile, the solitary of Guernsey. The muses that surround him are like thoughts of his solitude become visible. Rodin has conveyed this impression through the intensification and concentration of the figures about the poet. By converging the points of contact Rodin has succeeded in creating the impression that these wonderfully vibrant figures are parts of the sitting man. They move about him like great gestures made some time during his life, gestures that were so beautiful and young that a goddess granted them the grace not to perish but to endure for ever in the forms of beautiful women.

Rodin made sketches and studies of the figure of the poet. At the time of the receptions in the Hotel Lusignan he observed from a window and made notes of hundreds and hundreds of movements and of the changing expressions of the animated face of the old man. These preparations resulted in the several portraits of Hugo which Rodin modeled. The monument itself embodied a still deeper interpretation. All these single impressions he gathered together, and as Homer created a perfect poem out of many rhapsodies, so he created from all the pictures in his memory, this one portrait. And to this last picture he gave the greatness of the legendary. Myth-like it might return to a fantastically towering rock in the sea in whose strange forms far-removed peoples see life asleep.

The most supreme instance of Rodin's power of exalting a past event to the height of the imperishable, whenever historical subjects or forms demand to live again in his art, is found perhaps in "The Citizens of Calais." The suggestion for this group was taken from a few passages in the chronicles of Froissart that tell the story of the City of Calais at the time it was besieged by the English king, Edward the Third. The king, not willing to withdraw from the city, then on the verge of starvation, ultimately consents to release it if six of its most noble citizens deliver themselves into the hands "that he may do with them according to his will." He demands that they leave the city bare-headed, clad only in their shirts, with a rope about their necks and the keys of the city and of the citadel in their hands. The chronicler describes the scene in the city. He relates how the burgomaster, Messire Jean de Vienne, orders the bells to be rung and the citizens to assemble in the market place. They hear the final message and wait in expectation and in silence. Then heroes rise among them, the chosen ones, who feel the call to die. The wailing and weeping of the multitude rises from the words of the chronicler, who seems to be touched for the moment and to write with a trembling pen. But he composes himself once more and mentions four of the heroes by name; two of the names he forgets. He says that one man was the wealthiest citizen of the city and that another possessed authority and wealth and "had two beautiful maidens for daughters"; of the third he only knows that he was rich in possessions and heritage, and of the fourth that he was the brother of the third. He reports that they removed all their clothing save their shirts, that they tied ropes about their necks and thus departed with the keys of the city and of the citadel. He tells how they came to the King's camp and of how harshly the King received them and how the executioner stood beside them when the King, at the request of the Queen, gave them back their lives. "He listened to his wife," says Froissart, "because she was very pregnant." The chronicle does not continue further.

For Rodin this was sufficient material. He felt immediately that there was a moment in this story when something portentous took place, something independent of time and place, something simple, something great. He concentrated all his attention upon the moment of the departure. He saw how the men started on their way, he felt how through each one of them pulsated once more his entire past life, he realized how each one stood there prepared to give that life for the sake of the old city. Six men rose before him, of whom no two were alike, only two brothers were among them between whom there was, possibly, a certain similarity. But each of them had resolved to live his last hour in his own way, to celebrate it with his soul and to suffer for it with his body, which clung to life. Rodin then no longer saw the forms of these men. Gestures rose before him, gestures of renunciation, of farewell, of resignation. Gestures over gestures. He gathered them together and gave them form. They thronged about him out of the fulness of his knowledge, a hundred heroes rose in his memory and demanded to be sacrificed. And he concentrated this hundred into six. He modeled them each by himself in heroic size to represent the greatness of their resolution, modeled them nude in the appeal of their shivering bodies.

He created the old man with loose-jointed hanging arms and heavy dragging step, and gave him the worn-out walk of old men and an expression of weariness that flows over his face into the beard.

He created the man that carries the key, the man who would have lived for many years to come, but whose life is condensed into this sudden last hour which he can hardly bear. His lips are tightly pressed together, his hands bite into the key. There is fire in his strength and it burns in his defiant bearing.

He created the man who holds his bent head with both hands to compose himself, to be once more alone.

He created the two brothers, one of whom looks backward while the other bends his head with a movement of resolution and submission as though he offered it to the executioner.

He created the man with the vague gesture whom Gustave Geffroy has called "Le Passant". This man moves forward, but he turns back once more, not to the city, not to those who are weeping, and not to those who go with him: he turns back to himself. His right arm is raised, bent, vacillating. His hands open in the air as though to let something go, as one gives freedom to a bird. This gesture is symbolic of a departure from all uncertainty, from a happiness that has not yet been, from a grief that will now wait in vain, from men who live somewhere and whom he might have met some time, from all possibilities of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow; and from Death which he had thought far distant, that he had imagined would come mildly and softly and at the end of a long, long time.

This figure, if placed by itself in a dim, old garden, would be a monument for all who have died young.

Thus Rodin has made each of these men live again the last concentrated moment of life. Each figure is majestic in its simple greatness. They bring to mind Donatello and, perhaps, Claux Sluter and his prophets in the Chartreuse of Dijon.

It seems at first as though Rodin had done nothing more than gather them together. He has given them the same attire, the shirt and the rope, and has placed them together in two rows: the three that are in the first row, are about to start forward, the other three turn to the right and follow behind. The place that was decided upon for the erection of the monument was the market place of Calais, the same spot from which the tragic procession had formerly started. There the silent group was to stand, raised by a low step above the common life of the market place as though the fearful departure were always pending.

The City of Calais refused to accept a low pedestal because it was contrary to custom. Rodin then suggested that a square tower, two stories high and with simply-cut walls, be built near the ocean and there the six citizens should be placed, surrounded by the solitude of the wind and the sky. This plan, as might have been expected, was declined, although it was in harmony with the character of the work. If the trial had been made, there would have been an incomparable opportunity for observing the unity of the group, which, although it consisted of single figures, held closely together as a whole. The figures do not touch one another, but stand side by side like the last trees of a hewn-down forest united only by the surrounding atmosphere. From every point of view the gestures stand out clear and great from the dashing waves of the contours; they rise and fall back into the mass of stone like flags that are furled. The entire impression of this group is precise and clear. Like all of Rodin's compositions, this one, too, appears to be a pulsating world enclosed within its own boundaries. Beside the points of actual contact there is a kind of contact produced by the surrounding atmosphere which diminishes, influences and changes the character of the group. Contact may exist between objects far distant from one another, like the conflux of forms such as one sees sometimes in masses of clouds, where the interjacent air is no separating abyss, but rather a transition, a softly-graduated conjunction.

To Rodin the participation of the atmosphere in the composition has always been of greatest importance. He has adapted all his figures, surface after surface, to their particular space and environment; this gives them the greatness and independence, the marvelous completeness and life which distinguishes them from all other works. When interpreting nature he found, as he intensified an expression, that, at the same time, he enhanced the relationship of the atmosphere to his work to such a degree that the surrounding air seemed to give more life, more passion, as it were, to the embraced surfaces. A similar effect may be observed in some of the animals on the cathedrals to which the air relates itself in strange fashion; it seems to become calm or storm according to whether it sweeps over emphasized or level surfaces. When Rodin concentrates the surfaces of his works into culminating points, when he uplifts to greater height the exalted or gives more depth to a cavity, he creates an effect like that which atmosphere produces on monuments that have been exposed to it for centuries. The atmosphere has traced deeper lines upon these monuments, has shadowed them with veils of dust, has seasoned them with rain and frost, with sun and storm, and has thus endowed them with endurance so that they may remain imperishable through many slowly-passing dusks and dawn.

This effect of atmosphere, which is the monumental principle of Rodin's art, is wonderfully achieved in "The Citizens of Calais." These sculptural forms seen from a distance are not only surrounded by the immediate atmosphere, but by the whole sky; they catch on their surfaces as with a mirror its moving distances so that a great gesture seems to live and to force space to participate in its movement.

This impression is conveyed also by the figure of the slender youth who kneels with outstretched, imploring arms. Rodin has called this figure "The Prodigal Son," but it has recently received the name--from whom or from whence no one knows--of "Prière". The gesture of this figure raises it even beyond this name. This is no son kneeling before his father. A God is necessary to him who thus implores and in him are all who need this God. This Prayer in stone reaches out to such distance that the figure seems to be withdrawn into a great isolation.

Such, too, is the "Balzac" to whom Rodin has given a greatness which, perhaps, overtowers the figure of the writer. Rodin has seized upon the essence of Balzac's being, has not confined himself to the limitations of his personality, but has gone beyond into his most extreme and distant possibilities. These mighty contours might have been formed in the tombstones of by-gone nations.

For years Rodin was entirely absorbed in this figure. He visited Balzac's home, he went to the landscapes of the Touraine that rise continually in Balzac's books; he read his letters, he studied the portraits of Balzac and he read his works again and again. On all the intricate and intertwining roads of these works he was met by the people of Balzac, whole families and generations, a world that still seemed to receive life from its creator. Rodin saw that all these thousands of people, no matter what their occupation or their life, contained him who had created them. As one may perceive the character and the mood of a play through the faces of an audience, so he sought in all these faces him who still lived in them. He believed like Balzac in the reality of his world and he became for a time a part of it. He lived as though Balzac had created him also, and he dwelt unnoticed among the multitude of his people. Thus he gathered his impressions. The actual world appeared at this time vague and unimportant. The daguerreotypes of Balzac offered only general suggestions and nothing new. The face which they represented was the one he had known from boyhood days. The one that had been in the possession of Stéphan Mallarmé, which showed Balzac without coat and suspenders, was the only one which was more characteristic. Reminiscences of contemporaries helped him; the words of Théophile Gautier, the notes of the Goncourts, and the beautiful essay by Lamartine. Beside these pen portraits there was only the bust by David in the Comédie Française and a small picture by Louis Boulanger. Completely filled with the spirit of Balzac, Rodin, with the aid of these auxiliaries, began to model the figure of the writer. He used living models of similar proportions and completed seven perfectly executed portraits in different positions. The models were thick-set, medium-sized men with heavy limbs and short arms. After these studies he created a Balzac much like the one in Nadar's daguerreotype. But he felt this was not final. He returned to the description of Lamartine, to the lines: "He had the face of an element," and "he possessed so much soul that his heavy body seemed not to exist." Rodin felt that a great part of his task was suggested in these sentences. He approached nearer its solution by dothing the seven figures with monk's cowls, the kind of garment that Balzac was wont to wear while at work. He created a Balzac with a hood, a garb much too intimate, the figure much too retired into the stillness of its disguise.

Rodin slowly developed form after form. At last he saw Balzac. He saw a mighty, striding figure that lost all its heaviness in the fall of its ample cloak. The hair brisded from the nape of the powerful neck. And backward against the thick locks leaned the face of a visionary in the intoxication of his dream, a face flashing with creative force: the face of an element. This was Balzac in the fulness of his productivity, the founder of generations, the waster of fates. This was the man whose eyes were those of a seer, whose visions would have filled the world had it been empty. This was the Balzac that Creation itself had formed to manifest itself and who was Creation's boastfulness, vanity, ecstasy and intoxication. The thrown-back head crowned the summit of this figure as lightly as a ball is upheld by the spray of a fountain. There was no sense of weight, but a magnificent vitality in the free, strong head.

Rodin had seen in a moment of large comprehension and tragic exaggeration his Balzac and thus he created him. The vision did not fade, it only changed.

The comprehensiveness which gave breadth to Rodin's monumental works gave to the others also a new beauty; it gave them a peculiar nearness. There are among the more recent works small groups that are striking because of their concentration and the wonderful treatment of the marble. The stones preserve, even in the midst of the day, that mysterious shimmer which white things exhale in the twilight. This radiance is not the result of the vibrant quality of the points of contact alone, but is due in part to the flat ribbands of stone that lie between the figures like small bridges which connect one form with the other over the deepest clefts in the modeling. These ribband fillings are not incidental, but are placed there to prevent too sharp an outline. They preserve in the forms that otherwise would appear too clear cut an effect of roundness; they gather the light like vases that gently and continuously overflow. When Rodin seeks to condense the atmosphere about the surfaces of his works, the stone appears to almost dissolve in the air, the marble is the compact, fruitful kernel, and its last softest contour the vibrating air. The light touching the marble loses its will, it does not penetrate into the stone, but nestles close, lingers, dwells in the stone.

This closing up of unessential clefts is an approach to the relief. Rodin planned a great work in relief in which there were to be effects of light such as he achieved in the smaller groups. He constructed a column about which a broad ribband of relief winds upward. This encircling ribband conceals a staircase which ascends under arched vaultings. The figures in this ascending relief are modeled and placed so as to receive an effect of life and vibrance from the atmosphere and lighting.

A plastic art will some time rise which will disclose the secret of twilight as it is related to those sculptures that stand in the vestibules of old cathedrals.

This "Monument of Work" represents a history of work which develops upon these slowly rising reliefs. The long line begins in a lower chamber or crypt with the figures of those who have grown old in mines. The procession traces its steps through all the phases of work, from those who work in the roar and red glow of furnaces to those who work in silence in the light of a great idea: from the hammers to the brains. Two figures guard the entrance, Day and Night, and upon the summit of this tower stand two winged forms to symbolize the Blessings descending from the luminous heights. Rodin did not conceive work as a monumental figure or a great gesture; for work is something near, it takes place in the shops, in the rooms, in the heads, in the dark.

He knows, for he, too, worked; he worked incessantly; his life passed like a single working day.

Rodin had several studios, some that are well-known in which visitors and letters found him. There were others in out-of-the-way, secluded places of which no one knew. These rooms were like cells, bare, poor and grey with dust, but their poverty was like the great, grey poverty of God out of which trees bud in March. Something of the Spring was in each of these rooms, a silent promise and a deep seriousness.

In one of these studios "The Tower of Work" has risen. Now that it is accomplished, it is time to speak of its significance. Some time after this monument has been erected it will be recognized that Rodin willed nothing that was beyond his art. The body of work here manifests itself as did formerly the body of love:--it is a new revelation of life. This creator lived so completely in his conceptions, so entirely in the depths of his work, that inspiration or revelation came to him only through the medium of his art. New life in the ultimate sense meant to him, new surfaces, new gestures. Thus to him the meaning of life became simple, he could err no more.

With his own development Rodin has given an impetus to all the arts in this confused age. Some time it will be realized what has made this great artist so supreme. He was a worker whose only desire was to penetrate with all his forces into the humble and difficult significance of his tools. Therein lay a certain renunciation of Life, but in just this renunciation lay his triumph, for Life entered into his work.