Chapter III: Part 3

After this readoption, his affection for it was restored; he had several copies cast in bronze and cut in stone, and it has become perhaps one of his most popular and most sought-after works. Museums of Europe and America, lovers of art in both hemispheres, consider it an honor to possess replicas.

It was the first of Rodin's great statues, or, rather, the first that has been preserved. Several other works of capital importance serve as landmarks in the progress of his talent. Around them are grouped fragments, busts, innumerable delightful little compositions, all treated with the same care and equally reflecting the result of his studies; but, as ever, it is the major works that mark most visibly the points of departure and arrival of the different periods of his artistic development. These works are: "The Age of Bronze" (1877); "Saint John the Baptist" (1880); "The Gate of Hell" (1880-19--, not finished); "The Creation of Man" (1881); "The Burghers of Calais" (1889); "Victor Hugo" (1896); "Balzac" (1898); "The Seasons" (pediments of stone, 1905); "Ariadne" (in course of execution).

These works will be described and characterized, in the course of this book, at the dates of their appearance.

FLEMISH PAINTING--JOURNEYS IN ITALY AND FRANCE

During his stay in Belgium, Rodin studied the Flemish painters. Free from the prejudices of the schools, unaware of the theories of the critics, sensitive to the beautiful in every form, following only his personal taste supported by the study of the masters, he ranged over the vast domain of art through regions the most dissimilar and superficially the most opposed. Of course he had his preferences; he returned unceasingly to the antique and the Gothic; but his preferences did not blind him. His admiration passed rapidly from the splendors of Greek and Roman architecture to the voluptuous graces of the seventeenth century. His love for Donatello and Michelangelo did not prevent him from appreciating Bernini.

Attracted first by the marvelous Flemish Gothic artists, Memling, Massys, the Van Eycks, he was later delighted with the homely scenes of Jan Steen, of Brueghel, of Teniers; he enjoyed them as an artist and as a simple man who knew the value of domestic joys. Then he was haunted by the sensual pomp of Jordaens and above all Rubens.

The triumphant brush of Rubens sculptured as much as it painted. The science of foreshortening and that of ceiling painting, his way of modeling forms in the light and by means of light--all this brought his art into the realm of sculpture; and when Rodin came to seek effects of light and shadow that were new to sculpture, he remembered the lessons of the Antwerp master. From that time on Rubens was for him a splendid subject for study and would have fortified him, had that been necessary, in the love of drawing; for beautiful drawing leads, to everything, to _color_, in sculpture as well as in painting.

Flemish art was not enough to satisfy this thirst for understanding that devoured the soul of the artist now in the full swing of the fermenting force of his faculties. He wished to see Italy or at least to catch a glimpse of it. His resources were so slender indeed that his journey could not have been long. It did not matter. He would form an idea of the immensity of its treasure and confirm in himself the desire to return. He wished also to see France, as alluring to him as Greece, and whose cathedrals are perhaps not less beautiful than the Parthenon.

He started for Italy in 1875, and he accomplished his first tour of France in 1877. He set forth. He was young and strong; he made the pass of Mont Cenis on foot. He was unknown and without connections. What did it matter? In the midst of these scenes so radiant with memories of history and art, did he not feel an intoxication such as the soldiers of Bonaparte alone must have experienced, catching sight of the plains of Lombardy, where they were to forget the hardships of the campaign?

For Rodin, Italy meant the antique; it meant Donatello and Michelangelo. The antique he had already to a considerable extent studied in the Louvre. Donatello and Michelangelo conquered him at the first glance--a tumultuous conquest. The severity of Donatello's style impassioned him; the rigid honesty of his realism, the desire of this younger brother of Dante to see things grandly, the equal desire to see things simply, this Gothic genius deeply moved "in the mid-way of this our mortal life" by pagan beauty and touched by the breath of the Renaissance, impressed the French artist and became a dominating memory. From that time on in the most beautiful of his busts, those of Jean-Paul Laurens, Puvis de Chavannes, Lord Wyndham, Lord Horace Walden, Mr. Ryan, he was to appear as a disciple of the Florentine master, not by a literal imitation of his methods, which he thoroughly grasped, but by similar qualities of observation and synthesis. Still, this was not until after he had made other studies, while Michelangelo took hold upon him immediately and completely and became an actual obsession that might have proved dangerous to a sculptor less severe with himself, less determined to discover his own path.

The dazzling richness of modeling, the majesty of the great figures of the prodigious Florentine, and their fullness of movement--for their immobility is charged with movement--the somber melancholy of his thought, his flaming and shadowy soul, his literary romanticism, a romanticism like that of Shakspere, overwhelmed Rodin with that formidable sense of an almost sorrowful admiration that all experience who visit the Medici tombs in the new sacristy.

He studied also the later marbles of Michelangelo, which stood at that time in the gardens of the Pitti Palace and have since been removed to the Municipal Museum of Florence.

Every one knows these powerful blocks, these vast human forms, only half disengaged from the marble, from which they seem to be endeavoring to escape in order to give birth to themselves by a rending effort that is characteristic with all the force of a symbol of the tragic genius of Buonarroti. "Unfinished works"; it is thus the catalogues designate them. Unfinished works, indeed, but why? Was it age that stilled, before the end, the hand of the giant of sculpture? Or was it not rather that he judged them too strangely beautiful in their incompleteness, that they seemed to him more powerful thus, still captive to the material that bound them groaning, as it were, in their tremulous flesh?

The public pays little attention to these sublime masses because it is told that they are not _finished_. Not finished? Or infinite? That is the question. Far from weighing them down, the marble that envelops them throws about them the charm of the indeterminate and by means of this unites them with the atmosphere. The parts that are wholly disengaged enable one to divine those that remain hidden; they are veiled without being obliterated, like mountain-tops among the clouds; and this half-mystery, instead of diminishing, increases the harmony of the bodies trembling with life under their mantle of stone. In the presence of an effect so marvelous, so calculated, one cannot cease from asking if it was really death or if it was not rather the sovereign taste of the workman that arrested the chisel. While he was fashioning his statues out of the marble itself, with that fury that has passed into legend, did he not find himself, face to face with these unexpected effects which the material offered him of itself, in the midst of one of those happy situations by which the talent of the masters alone enables them to profit?

However that may be, Rodin was struck as if by a revelation. What the progress of his work had tardily disclosed to Michelangelo was soon to become for his disciple a principle of decorative art. Instead of disengaging his figures entirely, he was to leave them half submerged in the transparent marble. This method, which has become famous to-day, seemed an unheard-of thing to those who were unfamiliar with the Florentine blocks; but Rodin has never failed to acknowledge the paternity of the sculptor of "The Thinker." Following in his steps, many artists have employed this method at random, without possessing the essential qualities that enable one to control these effects, and under their powerless chisels the enchanting device no longer possesses any meaning.

Rodin himself waited until he possessed a thorough knowledge of marble and the manner of treating it; it was a stroke of fate by which he rediscovered the phenomena of envelopment that had so transported him in the Municipal Museum. He had by that time the wisdom to guard himself from doing anything inconsistent with his material. He followed out the suggestions it gave him, and developed an infinite variety in the methods of handling it.

On his return from Italy he continued to be haunted by the unsurpassable vigor of Michelangelo's workmanship. He sought to discover what was the outstanding gift that conferred upon him this power and this mysterious empire over the spirit. Until then, with the majority of artists of the modern school, he had believed that the chief quality of sculpture lay in seizing the _character_ of the model; but he came to see how many works concerned only with expressing character fail of real significance. Since 1830 how many romanticists have sacrificed to character without leaving any works that are lasting!

After his journey Rodin decided that the strength of Michelangelo lay undoubtedly in his _movement_. Returning to his studio, he executed a quantity of sketches and even large figures like "The Creation of Man," the title of which, although he had not been to Rome, is a souvenir of the frescos of the Sistine Chapel; he made busts like that of Bellona, after having directed his models to assume Michelangelesque poses. For all this, he did not attain to the grandeur, the soul-disturbing authority of the Florentine master.

Without becoming discouraged, he went on observing ceaselessly. Far from imposing upon his model positions thought out in advance, he left him free to wander about the studio at the pleasure of his own caprice, ready to arrest him at a word when a beautiful movement passed before his eyes. Then, six months after his return from Italy, he found that the model assumed of his own accord the very poses of which Michelangelo alone had seemed to him to possess the secret; he realized that the sublime sculptor had taken them direct from nature, from the rhythm of the human body in action, and that he had done nothing but seize and immortalize them.

"Michelangelo," he says, "revealed me to myself, revealed to me the truth of forms. I went to Florence to find what I possessed in Paris and elsewhere, but it is he who taught me this."

This does not prevent certain critics from asserting out of the depth of their incompetence that he has never felt the influence of this master and that he has never even given his work serious consideration. Those who know Rodin well know that, on the contrary, he never fails to give serious consideration to anything which is worth considering at all and that his power of observation is the basis of his genius. Always seeking a final method, he came back to the idea with which his earliest education had already inspired him and which his self-communings had only confirmed: that the value of sculpture lies entirely in the _modeling_. This is the secret of Michelangelo; it is also that of the ancients and of all the great artists of the past and of modern times. For the rest, through his spacious movements, his balancing of equal masses, the sculptor of the tombs taught him that the supreme quality consists in seeking in the modeling the _living, determining line of the scheme_, the supple axis of the human body.

He himself held this principle of the ancients, of whom he was a disciple, as far as modeling is concerned, while in his composition and his handling of light he is a Gothic.

Soon after his return from Italy, Rodin executed the great study entitled "The Creation of Man." In it he exaggerated the rhythm so characteristic of the Florentine, the balancing of masses, the melancholy contraction of the body under the weight of an inexpressible inner suffering. When one examines the figure, this exaggeration certainly suggests something overworked, something forced, which Michelangelo knew how to avoid and which here creates a somewhat painful impression. But later, when Rodin conceived the idea of placing his statue at the summit of "The Gate of Hell," this strained appearance disappeared. Seen thus, a lofty shape lighted up from below, it takes on true beauty; it is in its right place; it dominates the work and, as it were, blesses it. It has the affecting gesture of Christian charity.

RODIN'S NOTE-BOOK

INTRODUCTIONS BY JUDITH CLADEL

I

ANCIENT WORKSHOPS AND MODERN SCHOOLS

At a period in which, among the many manifestations of
intellectual activity in the nations, art is placed in the
background, the advent of a great artist invariably calls forth
the same phenomena: a few men of taste become enthusiasts, the
majority become indignant, and the public, not being possessed of
sufficient esthetic education, and intolerant because of their lack
of understanding, ridicule the intruder who has overthrown the
accepted standards of the century. Friends and foes alike consider
him a revolutionist; as a matter of fact, he is in open revolt
against ignorance and general incompetence.

Little by little the great truth embodied in such a man is
revealed. Comprehension, like a contagion, seems to take hold
of the minds of people, and impels them to study his art at
first hand. A study not only of his own significance, but of
the principles which he represents, quickly reveals that the
work of this innovator, this revolutionist, is, in fact, deeply
allied to tradition, and, far from being a mysterious, isolated
manifestation, is, on the contrary, closely linked to general
artistic ideals.

Our aim is to penetrate the doctrines of this master, his
method, his manner of working--all that which at other times would
have been called his secrets.

Auguste Rodin's career has passed through the inevitable
phases. He, who has been so generally discussed and attacked, is
to-day the most regarded of all artists. He likes to talk of his
art; for he knows that his observations have a priceless value,
that of experience--the experience of sixty years of uninterrupted
work--and of a conscience perhaps even more exacting to-day than at
the time of his impetuous youth. He says, "My principles are the
laws of experience." The combination of these principles embodies
his greatest precept; namely, that of thinking and executing a
thing simultaneously. We must listen to Rodin as we would listen
to Michelangelo or Rembrandt if they were living. For his method
may be the starting-point of an artistic renaissance in Europe,
perhaps throughout the whole world. Definite signs of a decided
resurrection in taste are already manifesting themselves, and it
is a splendid satisfaction for the illustrious sculptor to receive
such acknowledgment in his glorious old age. For, like every
great genius, he has a profound love for the race from which he
springs, and feels a strong instinctive confidence in it. Indeed,
how should this be otherwise? In the course of centuries, has not
this wonderful Celtic race on various occasions reconstructed its
understanding and interpretation of beauty?

Auguste Rodin expresses himself by preference on subjects
from which he can draw an actual lesson. He is no theorist; he
has an eminently positive mind, one might even say a practical
mind. His teachings, unlike the abstract teachings of books, can
be characterized by two words, observation and deduction. His
are not more or less arbitrary meditations in which personal
imagination plays the principal part; they are rather the account
of a sagacious, truthful traveler, of a soldier who relates the
story of his campaigns, or of a scholar who records the result of
an analysis. Reality is his only basis, and with justice to himself
he can say, "I am not a rhetorician, but a man of action."

We hear him chat, it may be in his atelier about some piece of
antique sculpture which has just come into his possession or about
a work he has in hand, or during his rambles through his garden,
which is situated in the most delightful country in the suburbs of
the capital, or on a walk through the museums, or through the old
quarter of Paris. For in his opinion "the streets of Paris, with
their shops of old furniture, etchings, and works of art, are a
veritable museum, far less tiring than official museums, and from
which one imbibes just as much as one can."

* * * * *

I use the words of the people, of the man in the street; for thoughts should be clear and easily comprehended. I desire to be understood by the great majority, and I leave scholarly words and unusual phrasing to specialists in estheticism. Moreover, what I say is very simple. It is within the grasp of ordinary intelligence. Up to now it has been of hardly any value. It is something quite new, and will remain so as long as the ideas which I stand for are not actively carried out.

If these ideas were understood and applied, the destruction of ancient works of art would cease immediately. By bad restoration we are ruining our most beautiful works of art, our marvelous architecture, our Gothic cathedrals, Renaissance city halls, all those old houses that transformed France into a garden of beauty of which it was impossible to grow weary, for everything was a delight to the eye and intelligence. Our workmen would have to be as capable as those of former times to restore those works of art without changing them, they would have to possess the same wonderfully trained eye and hand. But to-day we have lost that conception and execution. We live in a period of ignorance, and when we put our hand to a masterpiece, we spoil it. Restoring, in our way, is almost like jewelers replacing pearls with false diamonds, which the ignorant accept with complacency.

The Americans who buy our paintings, our antique furniture, our old engravings, our materials, pay very dearly for them. At least we think so. As a matter of fact they buy them very cheaply, for they obtain originals which can never be duplicated. We mock at the American collectors; in reality we ought to laugh at ourselves. For we permit our most precious treasures to be taken out of the country, and it is they who have the intelligence to acquire them.

My ideas, once understood and applied, would immediately revive art, all arts, not only sculpture, painting, and architecture, but also those arts which are called minor, such as decoration, tapestry, furniture, the designing of jewelry and medals, etc. The artisan would revert to fundamental truth, to the principles of the ancients--principles which are the eternal basis of all art, regardless of differences of race and temperament.

CONSTRUCTION AND MODELING

In the first place, art is only a close study of nature. Without that we can have no salvation and no artists. Those who pretend that they can improve on the living model, that glorious creation of which we know so little, of which we in our ignorance barely grasp the admirable proportions, are insignificant persons, and they will never produce anything but mediocre work.

We must strive to understand nature not only with our heart, but above all with our intellect. He who is impressionable, but not intelligent, is incapable of expressing his emotion. The world is full of men who worship the beauty of women; but how many can make beautiful portraits or beautiful busts of the woman they adore? Intelligence alone, after lengthy research, has discovered the general principles without which there can be no real art.

In sculpture the first of these principles is that of construction. Construction is the first problem that faces an artist studying his model, whether that model be a human being, animal, tree, or flower. The question arises regarding the model as a whole, and regarding it in its separate parts. All form that is to be reproduced ought to be reproduced in its true dimensions, in its complete volume. And what is this volume?

It is the space that an object occupies in the atmosphere. The essential basis of art is to determine that exact space; this is the alpha and omega, this is the general law. To model these volumes in depth is to model in the round, while modeling on the surface is bas-relief. In a reproduction of nature such as a work of art attempts, sculpture in the round approaches reality more closely than does bas-relief.

To-day we are constantly working in bas-relief, and that is why our products are so cold and meager. Sculpture in the round alone produces the qualities of life. For instance, to make a bust does not consist in executing the different surfaces and their details one after another, successively making the forehead, the cheeks, the chin, and then the eyes, nose, and mouth. On the contrary, from the first sitting the whole mass must be conceived and constructed in its varying circumferences; that is to say, in each of its profiles.

A head may appear ovoid, or like a sphere in its variations. If we slowly encircle this sphere, we shall see it in its successive profiles. As it presents itself, each profile differs from the one preceding. It is this succession of profiles that must be reproduced, and that is the means of establishing the true volume of a head.

Each profile is actually the outer evidence of the interior mass; each is the perceptible surface of a deep section, like the slices of a melon, so that if one is faithful to the accuracy of these profiles, the reality of the model, instead of being a superficial reproduction, seems to emanate from within. The solidity of the whole, the accuracy of plan, and the veritable life of a work of art, proceed therefrom.

The same method applies to details which must all be modeled in conformity with the whole. Deference to plan necessitates accuracy of modeling. The one is derived from the other. The first engenders the second.

These are the main principles of construction and modeling--principles to which we owe the force and charm of works of art. They are the key not only to the handicraft of sculpture, but to all the handicrafts of art. For that which is true of a bust applies equally to the human form, to a tree, to a flower, or to an ornament.

This is neither mysterious nor hard to understand. It is thoroughly commonplace, very prosaic. Others may say that art is emotion, inspiration. Those are only phrases, tales with which to amuse the ignorant. Sculpture is quite simply the art of depression and protuberance. There is no getting away from that. Without a doubt the sensibility of an artist and his particular temperament play a part in the creation of a work of art, but the essential thing is to command that science which can be acquired only by work and daily experience. The essential thing is to respect the law, and the characteristic of that fruitful law is to be the same for all things.

Moreover, such was the method employed by the ancients, the method which we ourselves employed till the end of the eighteenth century, and by which the spirit of the Gothic genius and that of the Renaissance and of the periods of culture and elegance of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were transmitted to us. Only in our day have we completely lost that technic.

These rules do not constitute a system peculiar to myself. They are general principles which govern the world of art, just as other immutable laws govern the celestial world. They are mathematical principles which I found again because my work inevitably led me to follow in the footsteps of the great masters, my ancestors.

THE TRADITIONAL LAWS OF ANCIENT ART

In days of old, precise laws were handed down from generation to generation, from master to student, in all the workshops of the workers in art--sculptors, painters, decorators, cabinet-makers, jewelers. But at that time workshops existed where one actually taught, where the master worked in view of the pupil. In our day by what have we replaced that marvelously productive school, the workshop? By academies in which one learns nothing, because one sets out from such a contrary point of view.

These principles of art were first pointed out to me not by a celebrated sculptor, or by an authorized teacher, but by a comrade in the workshop, a humble artisan, a little plasterer from the neighborhood of Blois called Constant Simon. We worked together at a decorator's. I was quite at the beginning of my career, earning six francs a day. Our models were leaves and flowers, which we picked in the garden. I was carving a capital when Constant Simon said to me: "You don't go about that correctly. You make all your leaves flatwise. Turn them, on the contrary, with the point facing you. Execute them in depth and not in relief. Always work in that manner, so that a surface will never seem other than the termination of a mass. Only thus can you achieve success in sculpture."

I understood at once. Since then I have discovered many other things, but that rule has remained my absolute basis. Constant Simon was only an obscure workman, but he possessed the principles and a little of the genius of the great ornamentists who worked at the châteaux of the Loire. On the St. Michel fountain in Paris there are very beautifully carved decorations, rich and at the same time graceful, which were made by the hand of this little modeler, who knew far more than all the professors of esthetics.

Such was the purpose the workshops of old served. The apprentice passed successively through all the stages and became acquainted with all the secrets of his handicraft. He began by sweeping the studio, and that first taught him care and patience, which are the essential virtues of a workman. He posed, he served as model for his comrades. The master in turn worked before him among his students. He heard his companions discuss their art, he benefited by the discoveries that they communicated to one another. He found himself faced every day by those unforeseen difficulties which go to make an artist till the moment when the artist is sufficiently capable to master his difficulties. Alternately, they were both teacher and companion, and they conveyed to one another the science of the ancients.

What have we to-day in place of those splendid institutions which developed character and intelligence simultaneously? Schools at which the students think only of obtaining a prize, not attained by close study, but by flattering the professors. The professors themselves, without any deep attachment for their academies, come hurriedly, overburdened by official duties and all sorts of work; weighed down by perfunctory obligations, they correct the students' papers hastily, and hurriedly return to their regular occupation.

As to the students, twenty or thirty work from a single model, which is some distance from them and around which they can hardly turn. They ignore all those inevitable laws which are learned in the course of work, and which escape the attention of an artist working alone. They attend courses, or read books on esthetics written in technical language with obscure, abstract terms, lacking all connection with concrete reality--books in which the same mistakes are repeated because frequently they are copied from one another. What sort of students can develop under such disastrous conditions? If one among them is seriously desirous of learning, he breaks loose from his destructive surroundings, is obliged to lose several years first in ridding himself of a poor method, and then in searching for a method which formerly one had mastered on leaving the atelier.

That is the method that I preach to-day as emphatically as I can, calling attention to the numerous benefits and advantages of taking up a variety of handicrafts. Aside from sculpture and drawing, I have worked at all sorts of things--ornamentation, ceramics, jewelry. I have learned my lesson from matter itself and have adapted myself accordingly. Only in being faithful to this principle can one understand and know how to work. I am an artisan.

Will my experience be of benefit to others? I hope so. At all events, we have a bit to relearn. It will take years of patience and application to rise from the abyss of ignorance into which we have fallen. However, I believe in a renaissance. A number of our artists have already seen the light--the light of intellectual truth. Acts of barbarism against masterpieces cannot be committed any more without arousing the indignation of cultivated people. That in itself is an inestimable gain, for those works of art are the relics of our traditions, and if we have the strength to become an artistic people again, to reincarnate an era of beauty, then those are the works of art that will serve as our models, expressions of a national conscience that will be the milestones on our path.

* * * * *

Judged by his work, Auguste Rodin is the most modern of
artists; judged by his life and character, he is unquestionably
a man of bygone days. As a sculptor, he is such as were Phidias,
Praxiteles, and the master architects of the Middle Ages; that is
to say, he is of all times. One single idea guides his thoughts,
one single aim arouses his energies--art, art through the study of
nature.

It is by the concentration of his unusual mind on a single
purpose that he attains his remarkable understanding of man,
physical and moral, his contemporary, and of the spirit of our
age. In the lifelike features of his statues he inscribes the
history of the day. They seem to live, and the potency of their
life enters into us and dominates us. For the moment we are only a
silent spring, merely reflecting their authority.

Through this secret of genius, his statues and groups have
an individual charm. They have taken their place in the history
of sculpture. There is the charm of the antique, the charm of the
Gothic, and the charm of Michelangelo. There is also the charm of
Rodin.

II

SCATTERED THOUGHTS ON FLOWERS

In Rodin's statues we find his conception of eternal man--man
as he really is. They are molded on modern thought, with all its
variations. One might suppose that these beautiful beings of marble
and bronze had been named by the characteristic poets of the
century, Victor Hugo, Musset, Baudelaire.

Beginning with the Renaissance and particularly during the
seventeenth century, the royal courts were the great salons in
which the taste of the day was developed. Necessity made courtiers
of the artists, for to obtain orders, they had to win the good-will
of the sovereigns, the great lords, and the financiers.

Art then lost its collective character, the artist his
independence and strength. There was no longer the united effort of
artists, inspired by love of beauty, to create great masterpieces
such as cathedrals, city halls, and castles. The artist wasted his
abilities in fragmentary bits, his time in worldly duties. To-day
it is even worse. Keeping house, traveling, receiving, exhibiting
in a hundred different places, living in great style, carrying on
his life-work--all these crowd out the first, and formerly the
essential, object of the artist, his work. It is these that lower
art to the last degree of decadence.

Rodin has kept aloof from this manner of living, has avoided
these innumerable occasions for wasting time, or, rather, has never
allowed them to take possession of him. Modest, unpretentious,
traveling little or within a limited radius, the unremitting study
of the divine model and of the masterpiece, man, forms his whole
ambition, while it is also the source of endless delight to him.
"Admiration," he says, "is a joy daily kindled afresh," and again,
"I talk out of the fullness of life; it belongs to me in a sense
larger than that of ownership."

In his villa at Meudon, in the midst of his collections of
antiques, he pursues this study incessantly. He who is admitted to
the modest garden of the great master first beholds with delight a
Greek marble in an arbor. At the turn of a path there is the torso
of a goddess resting on an antique column; in a niche in the wall,
a Roman bust. Beneath the high arch of the peristyle of the studio,
the architecture of which blends into the surrounding background
as in the paintings of Claude Lorrain, there is a magnificent
torso. Finally dominating the garden and the valley it overlooks,
standing on a knoll and projected against the clear sky, there is
an isolated façade from a castle of the seventeenth century, its
delicate balustrades and casements outlined against the blue sky as
in the decorative paintings of Paul Veronese.

These ruins are the remains of the Château d'Issy, the work of
Mansart. Rodin saved them at the moment when their destruction at
the hands of ignorant workmen was imminent, and at great expense
reconstructed them near his residence. These fragments, this noble
portico, seem as though placed by chance, but the keen observer
quickly perceives the correctness of taste that has determined
their disposition. Each fragment forms part of an ensemble with
the trees, the grass, the light, and the shadows, and to change
any of these in the slightest degree would sacrifice some of its
beauty. Sculpture at its finest is architecture, and architecture
is perhaps the greatest art, because it collaborates directly with
nature. Architecture lives through the life of things, and every
hour of the day lends it a new expression.

Innumerable reflections were aroused in the mind of the master
Rodin when he essayed to place his treasures: the effect of the
changing light on the object, the balancing of values, the relation
of proper proportions, the appearance of the object in full light.
All these he examined and studied, and he searched into the depths
of the language of forms, to him as clear and as mysterious as
beautiful music. This remarkable gift for determining the value of
the object in its setting--a gift the secret of which is beyond the
knowledge of the ignorant--has brought forth that peculiar poetic
charm which permeates this little garden in a suburb of Paris,
a refuge of persecuted beauty. Here the master confers with the
artists of Greece and France of other days. These are his Elysian
Fields.

In Paris, where he is daily and where he works every
afternoon, he lives in an exquisite, but ruinous, mansion of the
eighteenth century, situated in a rustic, neglected park. There he
finds his delight in the study of flowers and applies himself to
it with his intense, never-dormant desire for understanding. His
antique pottery is filled with anemones, carnations, and tulips.
During his frugal meals they are before him, and his reverent
love of them arouses his desire to understand them as completely
as he does human beings. He analyzes and searches out their
details without becoming insensible to the beauty of the whole.
He jots down his discoveries, his words picture them; like La
Rochefoucauld, he searches into their character; but watching over
their life admiringly and tenderly until they wither, he does not
dissect them, does not destroy them.

Is not the flower the queen of ornaments, the inspiration of
all races and ages, the very soul of artistic decoration? Have not
the hands of genius contrived to employ the most durable as well
as the most fragile material to express this delicate beauty in
Greek and Gothic capitals, in the stone lacework of cathedrals, the
fabrics of gold and silk, brocades, tapestries, wrought iron-work,
old bindings? Is the splendor of stained-glass windows aught else
than the splendor of a mass of beautiful flowers?

"Were this thoroughly understood," says Rodin, "industrial art
would be entirely revolutionized--industrial art, that barbarous
term, an art which concerns itself with commerce and profit.

"The young artists of to-day understand nothing; they copy to
satiety the classic ornaments and designs, and reproduce them in
so cold a manner that they lose all meaning. The ancients obtained
their designs from nature. They found their models in the garden,
even in the vegetable garden. They drew their inspiration from its
source. The cabbage-leaf, the oak-leaf, the clover, the thistle,
and the brier are the motives of the Gothic capital. It is not
photographic truth, but living truth, that we must seek in art."

Rodin writes his observations. He notes them down at the
moment as they occur to him in all their freshness, and in this
form they will be given here. At first glance, the reader may be
surprised at their apparently fragmentary form. They may seem
devoid of general continuity, but when one comprehends the great
master's method, one sees that a bond much firmer than that of the
mere word binds them together. They seem disjointed because here,
as in his sculpture, the artist accepts only the essential, and
rejects all superfluous detail. In reality they have the continuity
of life, which is felt, but not seen, and which renders arbitrary
transition unnecessary. This is the prerogative of genius, while
all else is within the grasp of any one. His authority strikes us
dumb; it puts to rout mere commonplace cleverness.

* * * * *

I have had primroses put in this little flower-pot. They are a bit crowded, and their poor little stems are prisoners; they are no longer in their garden.

I look at them on my table like a vivisector. I admire their beautiful leaves, round-headed, vigorous, like peasants. They point toward me, and between them is the flower. The one on this side is resigned, and as beautiful as a caryatid. In profile it seems to hold up the leaf against which it leans and which gives it shade.

These little flowers are not beautiful, nor are they radiant. They live peaceably, gently contented in their misery; and yet they offer something to one who is ill, as I am to-day, and cause him to write to ward off weariness.

I always have flowers in the morning, and make no distinction between them and my models.

Many flowers together are like women with heads bowed down.

There is no longer the sap of life in flowers in a vase.

The lace work of the flower of the elder-tree--Venice.

The anemone is only an eye, cruelly melancholy. It is the eye of a woman who has been badly used.

These anemones are flowers that have stayed up too late at night; flowers that are resplendent, with their colors as though spread over them superficially and wiped away. Even in the spring, in the hour of anticipation, they are already in the fullness of enjoyment.

Like the flower of seduction, the anemones slowly change their form outlined in various ways, always restrained, however, and inclosed within their sphere. Their petals have not a common destiny: some curl up, others are like a becoming collaret, still others seem to be running away. The delicate droop of the petals, standing out in relief, is like the eyelid of a child.

Although old, that one does not shed its petals. Poor little flower with bent head, you are not ridiculous; you are pensive now that you are dying. You suffer from the cruelty of the stem which holds you back.

Flowers give their lives to us; they should be placed in Persian vases. Near them, gold and silver seem of no value.

Ah, dear friends, we must love you if we would have you speak to us! We must watch you or you fall from the vase, despairing, your leaves withered.

The flowers and the vase harmonize by contrast.

In this bouquet there are some with flexible stems which seem to leap up gracefully. The flower, surrounded by its frail, straight leaves, is as if suspended from the ledge of a wrought-iron balcony.

Ah, the adorable heart of Adonis is incased within these flowers!

The hyacinth is like a balustrade placed upside down. A bed of hyacinths resembles a mass of balusters. Thus that great invention of the Renaissance, the balustrade, allows us to gain through it a glimpse of nature. This ray of art, the flower, this delicate inspiration, unknowingly requires the intelligence of man to develop its possibilities.

Superb is this little rose-like flower among its spreading leaves. It is like an assumption.

The double narcissus is a bird's-nest viewed from above. Strange flowers, like so many throats! What a frail marvel they are!

These three little narcissi group themselves like a cluster of electric lights.

The dignity of nature impresses us on every hand. It is greatly apparent in flowers; and yet so small are they that some look on them merely as the decoration at a banquet.

I will cast a narcissus in bronze; it shall serve as my seal.

A maiden on a lake, that is the narcissus.

Little red marguerite, not yet open, sister to the strawberry, huddled in the shade which caresses you.

The full-blown marguerite seems to play at _pigeon-vole_.

It has rained for four hours; this is the hour when flowers quench their thirst.

A marguerite in profile, a serpent's head with open jaws, stretching out its tongues! Petals, white, like a little collar.

Seen in full face, its yellow-tinted heart is a little sun; its long petals are like fingers playing the piano.

These white flowers are gulls with wings outstretched. They fly one after the other; this one, in adoration, has its petals thrown backward, like wings.

Whoever understands life loves flowers and their innocent caresses.

These marguerites seem to retreat like a spider that finds itself discovered in the road. Their buds stretch out their serpent-heads at the end of long stems, divided by intercepting leaves and entangling knots. Does not love travel in a similar path rather than straight as an arrow?

There is so much regularity in these dark-green leaves, extending at fixed intervals to right and left, and in the eternal dryness of the bouquet, that it calls to mind a Persian miniature.

No man has a heart pure enough to interpret the freshness of flowers. We cannot give expression to this freshness; it is beyond us.

When it sheds its petals, the flower seems to disrobe and go to sleep on the earth. This is its last act of grace, showing its submission to God.

What spirit possesses these flowers that die in silence! We should listen to them and give thanks.

This red and black ranunculus proclaims the carnival; it is the carnival itself. The carnival is the very emblem of flowers. Like them it, also, wears masks and costumes. It wears their colors, bright yellow, red--an imitation of the flowers of the sun.

Delightful carnival! Delightful interpretation of flowers! For a long time in my youth I undervalued them. I am happy now to see them under another aspect, as the splendor of Rome and the lavish intelligence of a bygone time.

Some one gave me tulips. They fascinate me variously. How great an artist is chance, knowing the last secret by which to win us!

These yellow tulips, dipped in blood! What a treat to see true colors--reds, blues, greens, the art of stained glass!

One is quite taken aback before these flowers, in which nature has expressed more than one can comprehend. It imparts that great mystery which is beyond us and signifies the presence of God.

How magnificent the flower becomes as its youth passes!

Even the flowers have their setting sun.

My bouquet is always the same, yet I never cease to look at it.

A whirlwind, a very cyclone, this tulip has perished in the storm. Like the wife of Lot, it is possessed of fear.

This one is open, all aflame like a burning bush. That one, all disheveled, comes toward me. Full of ardor, it springs up, its petals strong and expanding, like a mouth curling forward.

The violence of passion in flowers is pronounced. Ah, the softness of love is found only in women!

Great artists, curb your curiosity, neglect the pleasures which offer themselves to you, so that you may better understand the secrets of God.

III

PORTRAITS OF WOMEN

Rodin's busts of women are perhaps the most charming part of
his work. But to say this is almost a sacrilege, an affront to the
grace of the small groups that, in this giant's work, swarm about
the superior figures. But we need not search too far into this or
yield to the pedantic mania for classifying to death. Let us rather
look at them without transforming the joy of admiration into the
labor of cataloguing, and give ourselves up wholly to the pleasure
of seeing and understanding.

Yes, these portraits of women are the graceful aspect of this
work of power. They are the achievements of a force which knows
its own strength, and here relaxes in caresses. If some among them
disturb the spirit, most of them shed upon us a calm enjoyment,
the delightful security that one breathes among all-powerful
beings that wish to be gracious. They allay the sense of unrest
aroused in us by those dramas in marble and bronze which a powerful
intellect has conceived--that mind from which sprang "The Burghers
of Calais," the two monuments to Victor Hugo, "The Tower of Labor,"
that imagination, glowing like a forge, which produced "The Gate of
Hell," the Sarmiento monument, the statue of Balzac.

Here Rodin's art extends to the utmost confines of grace. He
has contrived to discover the most delicate secrets of nature.
He models the petals of the lips just as nature curls the frail
substance of the rose-leaf. By imperceptible gradations he
attaches the delicate membranes of the eyelids to the angle of
the temples just as nature in springtime attaches the leaves to the
rough bark of trees.

Great thinkers never cease to be moved by the charm of
weakness. The "eternal feminine" is just that, the power of grace
over the manly soul. The strongest feel this attraction most, are
most possessed with the desire of expressing it. I am thinking of
Homer, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakspere, Balzac, Wagner, and Rodin in
saying this. They have created a feminine world, the figures of
which, lovingly copied from living models, become models in turn.
They haunt thousands of souls, fashion them in their image. In her
complicated ways, Nature avails herself of the artist to modify the
human type.

We have some terra-cotta figures of Rodin, modeled when he was
between twenty-five and thirty, while working at the manufactory
at Sèvres, in the studio of Carrier-Belleuse, that accomplished
sculptor. They are charming little busts, with the perfume of
the eighteenth century breathing from them, treated a little in
the manner of Carpeaux, with the velvety shadow of their black
eyes on their sparkling faces. One of them, now in a private
gallery in New York, has a hat on its head, coquettish, tender,
innocently provocative; it is full of Parisian allurement because
it is characteristically French. One can find its kindred among
certain Renaissance figures, and even among the mischievous faces
of Gothic angels. With all this there is that ephemeral prettiness
which is called "fashion," that caprice of styles which does for
the adornment of cities what the flowers of the field do for the
country.

If Rodin had pursued his path in this direction, he would have
been a portrait-sculptor of great taste, and would doubtless have
attained celebrity sooner, but a celebrity which is not glory. At
that time he was chiefly concerned with copying the features of his
models with all the sensitiveness of his admiration; he did not yet
attempt those large effects of light and shade which were to become
the object of his whole career, and are so still. He has made the
religion of progress his own by reflective study. Progress is for
him the chief condition of happiness. Present-day philosophies
commonly put it in doubt; but if happiness exists, it is surely
in the soul of the artist. But it is recognized with difficulty
because it is called by an equivocal name, the ideal.

Let us look at the "Portrait of the Artist's Wife." Here, in
this noble effigy, this severe image with its lowered eyelids, the
artist passes beyond the promise of his first period. The face,
rather wide at the cheek-bones, lengthens toward the chin, where
the sorrowful mouth reigns. It expresses melancholy, gravity,
dignity, Christian charity. It is rather masculine, and seems less
youthful than the original was at the time. It is as if the artist
had sought to bring out the character by conscientious modeling,
without any softening; all the features are underlined, as on
a face that has attained a ripe age. He had not yet discovered
the art of softening his surfaces, of blending them in a general
tonality, and of obtaining that softness, that flesh quality, with
all the shades of youth, which touches the heart in his more recent
busts.

Even then he did know, however, how to gather under the
boldly molded superciliary arch of the brows the diffused shadows
which, in the future, were to lend mystery and distance to most
of his portraits. This mask is all that remains of a standing
figure dressed in the manner of Gothic figures. Rodin was then
living in Brussels, still young, poor, and unknown, but happy.
He tasted the perfect happiness of long days of absorbing labor,
of that enthusiasm for work which nothing disturbs. To-day he
sometimes yearns for those years free from the never-ceasing bustle
of a celebrated man's existence, a giant assailed by a thousand
pin-pricks. Yet his poverty was excessive, for the beautiful
statue, modeled during successive months with much love, fell to
pieces. For want of money, the sculptor had not been able to have
it cast.

Among his women's busts, one of the most famous and one which
remains among the most beautiful is that of Madame Morla Vicuñha.
It dates back about twenty-five years, but it is resplendent in
eternal youth. Since then Rodin has added to his knowledge and
experience. He has made personal discoveries in the plastic art.
He has become the master of color in sculpture. Nevertheless, this
portrait, as it stands, remains an adorable masterpiece. Who that
has looked at its softly gleaming marble in the Luxembourg has not
been overcome by a long dream of tenderness, of uneasy curiosity?
Who has not hoped to make this woman speak, to press her heart in
order to draw from her a confession of her desires, the secret of
her happiness and her melancholy?

It is more than a bust, it is woman herself. Because the
beautiful shoulder slips tremulously from the heavy mouth, which
lies against the smooth, polished flesh; because this shoulder
rises again toward the head, slightly bent and inclined, as if to
draw toward it some loved one; because the neck swells like that of
a dove, and the head is stretched forward to offer a kiss, we seem
to catch a glimpse of the whole body and its delicate curves. It is
a beautiful bust. I should like to see it alone in a room hung with
dim tapestries, drawing forth its charm like a long sigh, which
nothing should disturb. This masterpiece demands the distinction of
solitude.

How beautifully modeled the head is in its firm delicacy!
The framework of the narrow skull appears under the texture of
hair fastened over it like a rich handkerchief. We can almost see
the impatient hand, trembling with feeling, that has twisted the
firm knot under the nape of the neck. Everywhere, level with the
temples, at the bridge of the nose,--the aquiline nose marking the
Spaniard of race,--this bony framework stands out. The face catches
a feverish character from it, tortured by the longing for intimate
expression, and reveals a being with whom happiness borders closely
upon sorrow. The nostrils tremble as if to the perfume of the
flowers pressed voluptuously against the warm bosom. The mouth
is at once mobile and firm, and all the curves of the features
converge toward it--toward the kiss which causes it to swell softly.

The light steals gently into every line and fold of the face.
It borders the eyelids, glides under the brows, outlines the bridge
of the nose and the nostrils, emphasizes the opposed arches of
the lips. It spreads like a spring, separating into a thousand
streams. It is a network, like the tracery of the woman's nerves
made visible. It is as if the sculptor and the light had begun a
dialogue--a dialogue kept up with endless graces and coquetries.
He contradicts it, refutes it; it escapes, returns. He gathers it
up, as if to force it into the sinuous folds of the figure. Again
it flees, and then, summoned back, it returns cautiously, and at
last bathes the statue in generous caresses.