Chapter V: Part 5

Doubtless the writers of France did not discuss the matter
long or forcibly enough, and the Tour de Travail, which might have
been the ardent expression of a whole race, will remain the idea
of a solitary genius, a last offshoot of the masters of the Middle
Ages.

But if the hour has not yet struck for the construction of
the modern cathedral, at least we possess, thanks to the man who
dreamed of erecting it, the secrets and principles of those who
constructed the cathedrals of bygone days.

* * * * *

To acquire a thorough and fruitful understanding of the cathedrals, we must break away from the narrow and cold spirit of the present day. The spirit of our time does not harmonize in architecture with the monuments of the past.

First let us contemplate the whole. The church is a cliff. The construction of the slender side springing up is quite in the spirit of our race. The Gothic towers are stones set up like Druidic monuments. The church is laid out like a dolmen, and the towers are the menhirs. Like the menhirs, they have beautiful, flexible lines; they possess the eloquence of natural outlines, which are never cold or meager.

The line of the Gothic tower is slightly curved, swelling like that of a barrel. A straight line is hard and cold. The Greeks perceived that; they refrained from straight lines, and the columns of their temples also show a slight swelling.

The two sides of the Gothic tower are not alike. The architects considered that preferable to obvious symmetry. Look at the Tour Saint-Jacques in Paris. One of the sides shows a long, sloping hollow, making it look quite different from the other, which, again, is like stones set on high. The hollowed line permits protuberances, details of ornamentation that soften and harmonize with the line of the ensemble. It has been restored, and therefore from near at hand seems cold, for our workmen have lost the science and art of modeling. But the beauty of the general structure remains; they could not detract from that.

This softened line, this line full of life, is one of the chief characteristics of the Gothic. The sky of our northern climates ordained it so, for the architects of the Middle Ages carved their monuments out of doors. Once the general plan was established, they easily found the details while working with their tools, guided by the light and influenced by natural conditions.

Our light is not that of Greece. Humanity the world over is akin; but to what the Greek expressed in a chastened manner, in keeping with his eternally pure light, we have added the oblique slant of our sun, our reality, our country, our autumns, the sting of our winters, our less definite spirit, our remoteness from the glaring Olympian sun; and, last of all, we have added our trees.

We also have light, but it is frequently obscured by passing clouds. Is it not natural that we should reproduce them in our art? And the line, the abundant line, is more accentuated in the half-night of our long autumns. Thus we are more in the mood of our woods and our forests. Our souls have more shadows than the Greek soul, our determinations are more varied; for our clouds and our forests are reflected in our hearts.

Artists, let us, then, revert to the interpretation of our race, but in the spirit, not in the letter. Let us copy only the soul of our external nature, not its Gothic form, for a mere copy is cold and dead. Beautiful architecture is a reproduction by man, but from a divine model. From this it receives the warmth of life. If architecture is true to the spirit of nature, it is embraced by the trees, the rocks, the clouds; they are the silent company of beauty.

O Cathedral! Sphinx of Northern life! although mutilated, are you not eternal? Do you cease to live? From a distance, and in the evening, when dusk sets in, you seem truly a great sphinx crouching in the country.

The drama that unfolds itself on the stone pages of the churches recalls to us with a very few gestures and movements the silent drama of antiquity, the sculptures, illustrations of Æschylus and Sophocles.

From the Greek type, in truth, sprang the thoughts that guide man, and again from the Egyptian granite; and eventually from the stone of the Gothic, that Gothic which leads to the period of Louis XVI, and which in France is always the principal path of art. Other styles were derived from it, those of the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Their basis is Gothic; therefore the Gothic is the fundamental style, which ought to keep us from the path of decadence, if that is possible. You do not understand it? You say you prefer the Greek? O ye mortals that wish to pass judgment on all matters, take heed lest these masterpieces prevail against you! The cathedral is as beautiful, perhaps more beautiful, than the Parthenon. If you do not understand this style, then you are still further removed from the Greek, which is of another country and epoch. It is more beautiful, perhaps more concise, more marble; but we belong more with stone and forests, we are more autumnal, more of the cold and melancholy season.

THE GOTHIC BUILDERS ARE REALISTS

Do not let us lose sight of the fact that beneath this poem of stone there is a foundation of knowledge based on a close and comprehensive study.

To-day I understand it. As a result of study, one truth after another comes to light. At the outset one is lost before these marvels. Where is one to begin studying? One's thoughts and one's admiration rise like clouds. The mind makes prodigious leaps to grasp again what it already knows, to combine it with the recently acquired knowledge, to attempt to draw conclusions which simplify and generalize the study, and thus to discern the fundamental law.

For a long time during my youth I thought, like many others, that Gothic art was poor. I was so ungrateful during the first enthusiasm of my liberty! I learned to understand its grandeur only through traveling. Observation and work led me back to the right road. In the course of my efforts I have grasped the meaning of the thoughts of the masters. My persistent work was not futile, and, like one of the Magi, I have at last come to bow in humble reverence before them.

A true artist must penetrate the primordial principles of creation; only by understanding the beautiful does he become inspired, and that not through a sudden awakening of his sensibilities, but by slow penetration and perception, by patient love. The mind need not be quick, for slow progress should imply precaution in every direction.

The Gothic builders are the greatest observers of nature that have ever existed, the greatest realists, despite all that professors and critics say to the contrary. They call them idealists. They say the same of the Greeks and of all artists whose profound knowledge has enabled them to borrow their effects and charm from nature. Idealists! That is a term which signifies nothing and merely confounds cause and effect.

Builders of the Middle Ages, you independent scholars, models of a profound intelligence, this is what our age has found as an explanation of your masterpieces!

I have devoted my whole life in endeavoring to catch a glimpse of the rules, the secrets of experience, which you transmitted to one another, and it is only now, when my days are numbered, that I am at last grasping the synthesis of beauty. To whom shall I confide the fruit of my research? Some future genius will gather it. The cathedral is eternal, rising toward the sky. When we think it has attained its ultimate height, it rises again higher still, like a mountain of truth.

PLANS AND OPPOSITIONS

The architects of our churches subordinated detail to arrive at a more effective whole. That is why our churches are so beautiful when seen from a distance. They sacrificed everything to the essential, the "plan."

The plan? Like all synthetic conceptions, this is difficult to define. It is the space that an object displaces in the atmosphere, its volume. When an artist is able to determine exactly the space an object occupies in the atmosphere, be he painter, sculptor, or architect, he possesses the real science of plans.

What is detail in a plan? Nothing. The towers of the church at Bruges are superb in their bareness, while our modern houses, overladen with detail, are hideous to look upon. Of the two towers of the cathedral at Chartres, the one is bare, just a huge wall; the other is covered with ornamentation, and the first is possibly the more beautiful because of the potency of its plan. What does this force of simplicity express to us? It is the soul of a nation. A people expresses its nature through the medium of its architecture. Stones are faithful when we do not retouch them. They are the signatures of a nation.

Through the science of plans the great oppositions or contrasts of light and shadow are obtained. They give life and color to the structure. According to the position of the sun, the appearance of a building varies. One part is in the shade, the other in the light, and between these two is the gradation of shadings.

The master architects did not set their edifices apart from the universe; they gave them the benefit of all the phenomena of nature--dawn and dusk, twilight, cloud effects, haze, and fog. Every moment of the day adds to or detracts from their effect.

Sometimes I stand before a cathedral, and it does not seem at all beautiful. I feel I should like to alter it. Then I revisit it at another hour and see it in a different lighting. The light strikes it aslant, the shadows are deeper; the cathedral is absolutely beautiful, and I feel abashed at my former impatience and critical mistrust.

THE SCIENCE OF EQUILIBRIUM

These great effects of light and shade, obtained by the plan--effects simple in their means, yet mysterious in their power of attraction for us, have strengthened the idea that Gothic art is idealistic. The masses who see the cathedral dominating the city, with its two slanting roofs like hands joined at the finger-tips, certainly feel in it the great idea, the poem. They do not realize that the sentiments aroused in them by the beauty of the building are wholly due to the science of the plans.

By means of what principle did the master builders support the weight of these enormous masses of stone, which yet join lovingly in the imponderable atmosphere? By obeying the law of equilibrium of the human body. The human body, standing upright, the feet joined, in equilibrium, is the basis of the Greek column. Pediments and roof, supported by a series of these standing bodies, these human columns, that is the Greek temple. The architecture of the Parthenon reproduces the equilibrium of the body in a state of rest. In action the body sways; that is to say, the weight rests on only one leg, while the body inclines to the opposite side to regain its balance by counterpoise. That is the sway of Gothic architecture. This sway constitutes the law of motion for the body of man and animal, ever seeking perfect equilibrium.

Without this law we could not move; we would be like blocks of stone. Every motion that we make produces an initial swaying, which an opposing weight instantaneously balances. Thus without any consciousness on our part a perpetual balancing is taking place within us, a change as facile and immediate as the changes which take place in the phenomena of respiration and circulation. All goes on with the speed, order, and silence that exist in the domain of electricity. It is a perpetual prodigy to which we do not even give a thought.

It is not surprising that the Gothic masters, who copied from all nature, took from man and animals the charm of balance.

The ogive (pointed arch) of the cathedral, is achieved by two opposing thrusts. But the archivolts do not always harmonize with the capitals; they are not set exactly over them, they are out of the perpendicular. Two movements of equal force, exactly opposed, cause a stable equilibrium. Just so the masses of stone are supported by this same opposition of thrusts.

The interior of the cathedral is high and vast, broken by large windows that diminish the resistance and help to support the great weight. It was necessary to find a way of reëstablishing the equilibrium, lest the nave break down under its own weight. That is the purpose of the flying buttresses. Like the arms of giants, they throw their opposing weight against the exterior walls.

Some have drawn the conclusion that cathedrals are imperfect, since they cannot stand without this support. It is a characteristic idea of our age. Just as though one would reproach the human body for bearing first on one leg and then on the other.

These powerful buttresses are wonderfully effective in their contrast to the lacework of the sculpture. What is more beautiful than Notre Dame in Paris at night, with its island as its pedestal? It is the huge skeleton of the France of the Middle Ages which appears to us here. How attractive the light and shade on the buttresses! Indeed, it took genius to bring out beauty in that which is in reality only the skeleton of the edifice, and which could be offensive, were it badly carried out.

THE LACEWORK OF STONE

The Gothic style exists by virtue of oppositions, contrasts in effects and in balance. They built huge bare walls, but in the upper heights ornamentation flourishes and abounds. There the "increase and multiply" of the Bible has been figuratively carried out.

Once the basis of construction was established, the masons embellished the "line" by admirable ornamentation, due to their splendid workmanship. We should never forget that modeling supplies the life-blood to the mass; without it we can have neither grace nor power.

Formerly I did not understand the architecture; I merely saw the lacework of the Gothic. But even in my conception of that I was mistaken, for I thought it a caprice of genius. I did not know that it had a scientific _raison d'être_; namely, to break and soften the line. Now I see its importance: it rounds off the outlines; it gives them life and warmth. These statues, these graceful caryatids, propping up the portals, these copings in the covings, are like vegetation which softens the rigid summit of a wall. There again we find the Gothic artists as skilful colorists as the cleverest painters, because they have gained insight from the vegetation of our country. In our plants, in our trees, all is light and shadowy, and from them they gained their wonderful mastery of the art of depth, which brings out the finest shadings of light, the mellowness of half-tints. To-day we misuse black, the medium of power. We use it too extensively; we put it everywhere for the sake of effect, and therefore lose its effect entirely.

The Gothic is nature transposed and reproduced in stone. To show admiration for this form of art is to preserve the memory of the creation. The artist is the confidant of nature. Shakspere says in "King Lear," we

... take upon 's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies.

THE NAVE

A church is spread out like a dolmen between two menhirs. The interior breathes the solemn calm of a forest, the columns are the trees, the masses of the base are the rocks, the pointed arches are the massive roots, the vaultings are the caves, and the windows are radiant flowers in large bowls. When I emerge from the darkness of a cathedral, I feel as if I came from the shadow of a vast, extinguished world.

Without the brightening light of the stained-glass windows, our churches would be sad. In Spain the gloom is funereal, but the genius of France has understood how to capture the caressing light through its windows. The productiveness of the Celtic spirit is also noticeable in the capitals. Gothic art abandoned Greek ornament, which had been reproduced so often that it lost all significance. It found its models in the woods and gardens. From the oak it took its crown of foliage, from the thistle and cabbage their gracefully drooping leaves, and from the bramble its intertwined thorns. They made wonderful capitals by reversing the acanthus, and copying the languid grace of falling blossoms.

The cathedral of Bourges--the vastness of this church makes me tremble. One might say there are three churches in its three naves. Grandeur demands repetition. The superbness of this work of architecture enforces silence. People attribute their emotion here to religious sentiment alone, and do not realize that it is due also to the correct calculations of art. They do not realize that the impressive darkness of the vast church, its lighting, the wax tapers here, and the daylight with its brilliancy there, have all been planned beforehand. The stained-glass windows of Bourges are dazzling, almost terrible, in their beauty. There are flashes as red as blood, and dashes of blue, a flame--the wounds of Christ, the funeral pile of Jeanne d'Arc. When the sun sinks, the bright light will fade away; then we have before us only the charming effect of bowls of flowers.

The legends which are told on the stained-glass are good enough to amuse children; but the glass itself, the splendor of its colors, the extent to which it harmonizes with the nave--all that is the actual result and object of profound thought. The Middle Ages put life into everything; they worshiped life. They drew extensively from nature, wisely realizing that its source is inexhaustible, while the day of man is fleeting.

THE MOLDING

The science of plans, balance of volumes, and proportion in the moldings govern the spirit of Gothic art. Of late I believe I have discovered how the masters struck upon the beautiful Gothic molding, that undulating molding which gives so much suppleness to the architecture. I have found something new in the well-known, and beauty in forms which I did not understand before. This change is due above all to my work. Having always studied more intensely, I can say that I have always loved more ardently.

I believe the masters of Gothic art got their ideas of molding through their understanding of the human body, and perhaps above all of the body of woman. The body, that human column, seen in profile is a line of projections and protuberances, of the nose, the chin, the breast, the flank. Thence springs the beautiful undulating line which is the outline of Gothic molding. For Gothic molding, like the Greek, is soft and swelling. The "doucine" (a molding, concave above, convex below), a term of the trade, tender as the name of a woman, well expresses the charm of the beautiful French molding.

The proportions of molding exist in nature, but in such form that we have not yet been able to subject them to rules. It required men of positive taste, of most profound understanding, to grasp the harmony of these proportions and to express them in sculpture. One might say the Gothic architects understood molding by means of their intelligence as well as by means of their heart.

By means of the cathedral the artists of the Middle Ages have shown us the most impressive drama in existence--the mass. The mass has the grandeur of the antique drama. Greek tragedies are in fact only a form of the mass. The human mind starts afresh at different epochs. When the priest officiates, his gestures have the beauty of the antique, and this beauty merges into that of the church music, that sublime tongue, the voice of the sea. Then, when the crowds prostrate themselves, when they arise simultaneously, the undulation of their bending bodies is like the waves of the ocean. Truly the Gothic master builders were the familiar friends of the sublime. From what source did these men spring! From what minds did those ideas arise! God has shared his power with some of his sons.

VI

ART AND NATURE

Criticizing nature is as stupid as criticizing the cathedrals. It is the vice of our cold and petty age to criticize. It is the evil of decadent races. We are constantly being told that we live in an age of progress, an age of civilization. That is perhaps true from the point of view of science and mechanics; from the point of view of art it is wholly false.

Does science give happiness? I am not aware of it; and as to mechanics, they lower the common intelligence. Mechanics replace the work of the human mind with the work of a machine. That is the death of art. It is that which has destroyed the pleasure of the inner life, the grace of that which we call industrial art--the art of the furniture-maker, the tapestry-worker, the goldsmith. It overwhelms the world with uniformity. Once artisans created; to-day they manufacture. Once they rejoiced in the pleasure of making a work of art; to-day the workman is so bored in his shop that he has invented sabotage and has made alcoholism general.

The sight of a modern monument throws one into melancholy even while an ancient one has not ceased to enrapture. I visit a small city, and, losing my train, am obliged to wait for the next one. I take a walk about the ancient church, a delicious thing, very simple, but with its Gothic ornaments placed with taste, in a delicate relief that, in the light, provides an enchantment for my friendly glances. In the little nave, which invites to calm, to thought,--thought as soft and composed as the light shadows that move slowly across the pillars,--I settle myself. Ah, I come away charmed. If I had waited in the station, I would have been wearied to death, and would have returned home fatigued and discontented. As it is, I have gained something--the beautiful counsels of moderation and the fine charm of a monument of former days.

Art alone gives happiness. And I call art the study of nature, the perpetual communion with her through the spirit of analysis.

He who knows how to see and feel may find everywhere and always things to admire. He who knows how to see and feel is preserved from ennui, that _bête noire_ of modern society. He who sees and feels deeply never lacks the desire to express his feelings, to be an artist. Is not nature the source of all beauty? Is she not the only creator? It is only by drawing near to her that the artist can bring back to us all that she has revealed to him.

When one says this, the public thinks it a commonplace. All the world believes that it knows that; but it knows it only in seeming, the truth penetrates only the superficial shell of its intelligence. There are so many degrees in real comprehension! Comprehension is like a divine ladder. Only he who has reached the top rounds has a view of the world. The public is astonished or shocked when some one goes against its preconceived notions, against the prejudices of a badly interpreted or degenerate tradition. Words are nothing; the deed alone counts. It is not by reading manuals of esthetics, but by leaning on nature herself that the artist discovers and expresses beauty.

Alas! we are not prepared to see and to feel. Our sorry education, far from cultivating in us the feeling for enthusiasm, makes us in our youth little pedants who without result overwhelm ourselves and others with our pretensions. Those who too late, by long efforts, escape this demon of folly arrive only after that education has fatally sapped their strength and has destroyed the flower of enthusiasm that God had planted in them as a sign of His paradise. People without enthusiasm are like men who carry their flags pointed down to the ground instead of proudly above their heads.

Constantly I hear: "What an ugly age! That woman is plain. That dog is horrible." It is neither the age nor the woman nor the dog which is ugly, but your eyes, which do not understand. One generally disparages the things that are above one's comprehension. Disparagement is the child of ignorance. As soon as you discover that, you enter into the circle of joy.

Man, animals, down to the smallest insects, down to the infinitesimal; the earth, the waters, the woods, the sky--all are marvelous. The firmament is the vastest landscape, the most profound, the most enchanting, with its variations, its effects of color and light, which delight the eye, astonish the thought, and subjugate the heart. And to say that artists--those who consider themselves such--attempt to represent all that simply as it appears to them, without having studied it, without having deciphered it, without having felt it! I pity them. They are prisoners, slaves of stupidity.

I was like them in the first periods of my perverted youth, but I have delivered myself. I have regained the liberty to approach the things that I love by the pathway of true study. Who follows me on the road? Who can learn it from a study of sculpture and design in books? You who have caught a glimpse of the splendor of that tree, of that giant whose magnificent column has been denuded by autumn of its leafy capital, but which is perhaps more beautiful in the nudity of its members; you who admire the structure of its branches and twigs, etched in an infinitude of forms against the sky, where they resemble the lacework of the windows of our churches, would you not understand far better that beauty, would not your pleasure be far more complete, if you sketched that tree not only in the mass, but in the innumerable details of its framework? And to think that the schools recommend to pupils, painters, and sculptors research on the subject! The subject! The subject does not exist in that--the poor little arrangement that you, one and all, summon up while poring over the same anecdotes, the same conventional attitudes. The human imagination is narrow, and you do not see the hundred thousand motives of art that multiply themselves under your eye. I could pass my whole life in the garden where I walk without exhausting them.

The subject is everywhere. Every manifestation of nature is a subject. Artists, pause here! Sketch these flowers; writers, describe them for me, not in the mass, as has always been done, but in minute detail, in the marvelous precision of their organs, in their characteristics, which are as varied as are those of animals and men. How beautiful to be in the same moment an artist and a botanist, to paint and model the plant at the same time that one studied it! Those great realists, the Japanese, understand this, and make the knowledge and cultivation of plants one of the bases of their education.

We place love and sensual pleasure in the same category. Undoubtedly it is nature herself who has led is astray in this by the instinct to perpetuate ourselves, in youth this instinct is like an overflowing river; it sweeps away everything, yet pleasure is everywhere about us. I imbibe it in the forms of the clouds that build their majestic architecture in the sky, in the rapture of this woman who holds her child in her arms, an attitude divine, so beautiful indeed, that the poet of the Gospels has deified it. It is the attitude of the Virgin. I imbibe it in the atmosphere which bathes me now, and will still continue to bless me, bringing me peace, rest, and health.

For that which is beautiful in a landscape is that which is beautiful in architecture--the air, space. No one in these days realizes its depth. It is this quality of depth that carries the soul where it wishes to go. In a well-constructed monument that which enraptures us is the science of its depths. The throngs in the churches attribute their emotion to mysticism, to the transport of the soul toward divinity. They are unaware that they owe their emotion to the exact knowledge of great planes possessed by the architects of former days. Even upon the most ignorant beholder they impose this. Man disregards that which he already has, and longs for something else. He longs for swiftness, to have wings like a bird. He does not know that he already enjoys this pleasure of moving through space. He rejoices in it in his soul, which takes wing and goes where it pleases, through the sky, on the waters, to the depths of the forests.

All the misfortune here below arises from a lack of comprehension. We classify our limited knowledge in narrow systems, like the card-systems of an office, and these pitiful conventions we take seriously. They teach us disconnected things, and we leave them disconnected. Those who have a little patience assemble these isolated facts; but such patient ones are rare, and nothing is so unbearable as that man who, not having it, speaks ill of him who has a sense of the truth. To see accurately is the secret of good design. Objects dart at one another, unite, and throw light on one another, explain themselves. That is life; a marvelous beauty covers all things like a garment, like an ægis.

God created the great laws of opposition, of equilibrium. Good and evil are brothers, but we desire the good, which pleases us, and not the evil, which seems to us error. When we consider matters from a distance, does not evil often seem good, and good, evil? That is only because we have judged without proper consideration. Just as white and black are necessary in a drawing, so good and evil are necessary in life. Sorrow ought not to be cast out. As long as we live it is as strong a part of life as radiant joy. Without it we would be very ill trained.

To comprehend nature it is of importance that we never substitute ourselves for it. The corrections that a man imposes upon himself are a mass of mistakes. The tiger has claws and teeth and uses them skilfully; man at times shows himself inferior. Possessing intelligence, too often he strives to turn to that. Animals respect everything and touch nothing. The dog loves his master, and has no thought of criticizing him. The average man does not care that his daughter should be beautiful. He has in his mind certain ideas of manner and instruction, and the beauty of his daughter does not enter into the program that he has made. But the daughter herself feels the influence of nature, and displays her modest and triumphant movements, which this blind one does not see, but which fascinate the artist.

The artist who tells us of his ideal commits the same error that this average man commits. His ideal is false, in the name of this ideal he pretends to rectify his model, retouching a profound organism which admirably combined laws regulate. Through his so-called corrections he destroys the ensemble; he composes a mosaic instead of creating a work of art; the faults of his model do not exist. If we correct that which we call a fault, we simply present something in the place of that which nature has presented. We destroy the equilibrium; the rectified part is always that which is necessary to the harmony of the whole. There is nothing paradoxical here, because a law that is all-powerful keeps the harmony of opposites. That is the law of life. Everything, therefore, is good, but we discover this only when our thought acquires power; that is to say, when it attaches itself indissolubly to nature, for then it becomes part of a great whole, a part of united and complex forces. Otherwise it is a miserable, debased, detached part contending with a whole that is formed of innumerable units.

Nature, therefore, is the only guide that it is necessary to follow. She gives us the truth of an impression because she gives us that of its forms, and if we copy this with sincerity, she points out the means of uniting these forms and expressing them.

Sincerity, conscience--these are the true bases of thought in the work of an artist; but whenever the artist attains to a certain facility of expression, too often he is wont to replace conscience with skill. The reign of skill is the ruin of art. It is organized falsehood. Sincerity with one fault, indeed with many faults, still preserves its integrity. The facility that believes that it has no faults has them all. The primitives, who ignored the laws of perspective, nevertheless created great works of art because they brought to them absolute sincerity. Look at this Persian miniature, the admirable reverence of this illuminator for the form of these plants and animals, and the attitudes of these persons which he has forced himself to render just as he saw them. How eagerly has he painted that, this man who loved it all! Do you tell me that his work is bad because he is ignorant of the laws of perspective? And the great French primitives and the Roman architects and sculptors! Has it not been repeatedly said that their style is a barbaric style? On the contrary, it has a formidable beauty. It breathes the sacred awe of those who have been impressed by the great works of nature herself. It offers us the strongest proof that these men had made themselves part of life and also a part of its mystery.

To express life it is necessary to desire to express it. The art of statuary is made up of conscience, precision, and will. If I had not had tenacity of purpose, I should not have produced my work. If I had ceased to make my researches, the book of nature would have been for me a dead letter, or at least it would have withheld from me its meaning. Now, on the contrary, it is a book that is constantly renewed, and I go to it, knowing well that I have only spelled out certain pages. In art to admit only that which one comprehends leads to impotence. Nature remains full of unknown forces.

As for me, I have certainly lost some time through the fault of my period. I should have been able to learn much more than I have grasped with so much slowness and circumlocution; but I should not have tasted less happiness through that highest form of loss; that is, work. And when my hour shall come, I shall dwell in nature, and shall regret nothing.

THE ANTIQUE--THE GREEKS

If the artists of antiquity are the greatest of all it is because they approached most closely to Nature.

They studied it with magnificent sincerity and copied it with all their intelligence. They never wasted their time in trying to invent something. To invent, to create, these are words that mean nothing. They contented themselves with rendering the adorable model that enchanted their eyes. This love and this respect for creation has never since their time been surpassed. They did not copy literally what they saw; to a certain degree they interpreted the character of forms. The aim of art is not to copy literally. It consists in slightly exaggerating the character of the model in order to make it salient; it consists also in reassembling in a single expression the successive expressions given by the same model. Art is the living synthesis.

This is what the ancients did, with what taste, what incomparable science! From this science that respected unity their works derived their calm, contained force, the sentiment of grand serenity, the atmosphere of peace that envelops them. The ignorant and the professors of esthetics who do not know the source of all this have named it Greek idealism. This is nothing but a word that serves to conceal a want of understanding. There is no idealism in the ancients; there is an exercise of choice, a marvelous taste; but it is by the most realistic means that they render human beauty.

We others, we moderns, are carried away by the restlessness of the epoch; we are superficial, we only regard things cursorily, and we have concluded from this sublime simplicity that Greek art is cold. To us indeed it seems very cold. It is really warm. To it alone belongs in this respect the quality of life, reality in forms, and precision in movement. It is through this that it attains perfect equilibrium. But that is beyond our little spirit of detail. We seek nothing but detail; the Greek, for his part, saw nothing but the whole; that is to say, the equilibrium, the harmony.

THE RICHNESS OF THE ANTIQUE LIES IN MODELING

The value of the antique springs from _ronde-bosse_. It possesses in a supreme degree the art of relief. How can the critics and the professors explain this, being what they are? They do not belong to the trade. Art should not be taught except by those who practise it.

Observe any fragments of Greek sculpture: a piece of an arm, a hand. What you call the idea, the subject, no longer exists here, but is not all this debris none the less admirably beautiful? In what does this beauty consist? Solely in the modeling. Observe it closely, touch it; do you not feel the precision of this modeling, firm yet elastic, in flux like life itself? It is full, it is like a fruit. All the eloquence of this sculpture comes from that.

What is modeling? The very principle of creation. It is the juxtaposition of the innumerable reliefs and depressions that constitute every fragment of matter, inert or animated. Modeling creates the essential texture, supple, living, embracing every plante. It fills, coördinates, and harmonizes them. It penetrates everything, it animates everything, as well the depths as the surfaces. It comprises the minute as well as the immense. Mountain, horse, flower, woman, insect equally owe to it their form. When God created the world, it is of modeling He must have thought first of all. If you consider a hand, you notice its contours and the character of the whole. But the eye of the artist, that eye, sees more: it sees the infinite assemblage of projections and depressions forming a texture more closely knit, more exactly blended than the most perfect mosaic. It is this that he seeks to render; this that he translates, if he is a sculptor, by the science of depression and relief, if he is a draughtsman or painter by that of light and shadow. For light serves, in conformity with depressions and reliefs, to give the eye the same sensation that the hand receives from touch: Titian is just as great a modeler as Donatello.

To-day the sense of _ronde-bosse_ is completely lost, not only in Europe, but among the peoples of the Orient. It is the age of the _flat_. No one knows anything about it. Men love what they do themselves, until they are made to see that it is not beautiful; but it takes years and years for this to penetrate into their consciousness. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries China and Japan still produced charming works. In ancient times their art was very great; it approached the Greek. At the exposition of 1900, we were enabled to see antique Japanese statues, superb nudes nearly as fine as those of Greece. In our time the pest of flatness has contaminated the Asiatic races as well as the European: decadence is universal.

We are so far removed from antique beauty that when we photograph the works of the ancients we take them in the spirit of our own taste, which is that of low-relief; we take from them that flower of beautiful modeling, their richness, their crowning grace. When I say low-relief, I do not use this term exactly; it is only that I know no other means of expressing the modern evil of uniformity; but I know that good low-relief is as full and as fruit-like as sculpture in the round, that it is sculpture in the round itself, as in the friezes of the Parthenon, as in our buildings of the Renaissance and of the seventeenth century.

The great concern of my life is the struggle I have maintained to escape from the general flatness. All the success of my sculpture comes from that. Although it has little enough taste, the public, despite all, is tired to death of this flatness. The charm of _ronde-bosse_ is so great that it captivates the ignorant even without their knowing it.

RONDE-BOSSE AND CHIAROSCURO

Observe this little torso of a woman; it is a little Venus. It is broken; it has no longer a head, arms, legs, yet I never weary of contemplating it; each day, each hour for me adds to this masterpiece because I only understand it better. What could it say to our indifferent glance? For me it has the ineffable voluptuousness of softly maturing flesh. The effect lies in no part and in every part. It is perfection. This little childish body, has it not all the charm of woman? It does not catch the light, the light catches it, glancing over it lightly; without any effect of roughness, any dark shadow. Here shadow can no longer be called shadow but only the decline of light. She does not become dark, she grows pale in imperceptible depressions, in delicious undulations. She is indivisible; she is whole or incomplete, but her unity is not disturbed. And this passage that joins the abdomen to the thighs, this little declivity of graces, this valley of love! Everything is full of the calm, the lightness, the serenity of pure beauty in the perfect confidence of nature. The ideal that you imagine you find in a gesture, in a momentary attitude, is here; it is here because of the infinite love of the flesh, of the human fruit. What you call the ideal is nothing but the perfume of beautiful modeling. What more could you ask?

When I look at this marble in the evening by candle-light, how the wonder deepens! If those who have been telling us for a hundred years that Greek art is cold studied it with care, could they for one hour maintain this absurdity? This sculpture, on the contrary, is of an extraordinary living complexity, which the flame reveals; the whole surface is nothing but depressions and reliefs, but united, melted together in the great, harmonious force of the _ensemble_. I turn the little torso about under the caressing rays of the light. There is not a fault, not a weakness, not a dead spot; it is the very continuity of life, its intoxicating voluptuousness hidden in the bosom of the molecule.

Why should such artists have sought to create an abstract Beauty by the idealization of forms? These men of genius loved Nature too well to presume to correct her. They knew well that despite their genius, they still remained beneath her. Nothing can surpass the marvel of creation. The conception of an idealistic art comes from the Academy. Before the purity of the antique forms people used to believe that the beauty lay solely in the exterior profiles. It is really beautiful because of the interior modeling. And still we make this distinction between the profiles and the modeling, thanks to our mania for dividing things; but we know that the one is inseparable from the other; the surfaces are nothing but the extremities of volumes, the boundaries of the mass.

All the sculpture of the period of Louis-Philippe was imitated from the antique, but only by means of the exterior profiles. If it had been practised by true modelers, by geometrical minds, it would have been as beautiful as its original. What pleased people in that epoch, what pleases people in ours, is not at all the antique; it is the fashion in which we see it. It was the Renaissance that really understood the Greek. It created works exactly the same in feeling, though somewhat different in arrangement and general color. For color does not exist in painting alone. Its rôle is equally great in sculpture. To-day this color is bad; it fails to obtain the chiaroscuro which derives from _ronde-bosse_. Good sculpture owes to chiaroscuro clarity, unity, charm, even, I might say, the voluptuousness of breathing flesh. Shadow, at once luminous and mysterious, models the fulness of the body in the exuberance of health; it makes one understand abundance, solidity. In the art of the Renaissance and the eighteenth century shadow is always supple and warm as in Greek art; it has the tender coloring of the vegetation of our country, the sweetness of which our great artists have captured. The chiaroscuro of the antique consists of the density and depth of light falling over the entire modeling. Chiaroscuro penetrates to every plane and renders the reality of them; it is reality itself. This is because the antique and nature are part and parcel of the same mystery, the infinitely harmonious mystery of force in suspense. The great artists compose as nature itself operates.

Undoubtedly the Greeks possessed certain methods which they handed down from master to pupil, as has been the case in all artistic epochs. They had celebrated ateliers, schools, where they taught their principles. By the fifth century they had established a canon of the human body; but they never made use of it without consulting the model. As for us, we have imagined that we could use it like a magic formula. It is not the formula that makes the art; it is the experience of the artist that creates the formula. If we abandon nature for a rule, if we do not constantly vivify the one by means of the other, we soon speak a language that means nothing.

One cannot repeat this enough: the ancients are realists; they work in _ronde-bosse_. This explanation seems commonplace and even vulgar; it is the whole truth. It can be understood by the humblest artisan, provided only that he knows his trade. But it is as difficult to get it into the heads of people to-day as it is to restore faith in a man who has lost it.

ROME AND ROMAN ART

What I have said of Greek art applies equally well to Roman. Another opinion has been adopted by critics and the world in general: the Roman is less beautiful than the Greek. It is less beautiful perhaps, by a certain shade, a shade which those who speak of it are incapable of appreciating. It is a little less substantial, but it is superb. It is Greek, with a different character, a certain ruggedness, and more! The Maison Carrée at Nîmes, that little temple, the flower of austerity, the smile of the race as sweet as the smile of Greece; the Pont du Gard, that heroic masterpiece, that giant which bestrides the country, which imposes the power of Rome on the peaceful landscape, these are what they criticize!

Rome is magnificent. We say it, but we do not believe it; otherwise it would not be despoiled. No, in Rome itself, they have no idea of the beauty of Rome. Where are there artists great enough to appreciate you, severe genius, splendid city, daughter of the she-wolf? Your genius they pillage every day. They destroy its proportion, and that is to strike at the foundation of the master work. Proportion is the law of architecture. ... In the very midst of the ancient city they are setting up atrocious monuments, enormous or too petty.

In Rome, as in Athens, as in the France of Gothic art, the architect of old planned the monument in relation to the landscape; he harmonized it with the outline of the mountains, with the expanse of the surrounding country-side; he determined its proportions according to its environment.

The architect of to-day plans out his monument in his own study on a piece of paper and produces it ready-made. Whether this mass of stone obliterates the buildings that surround it or whether, on the other hand, it turns out a miserable little contrivance in the midst of great works of the past matters little to him: he does not see it.

The French Academy sends students to work in Rome. But they get nothing from Rome, they can get nothing; they come there with a spirit entirely opposed to it. At a time when I did not know the city I heard the bridge of Sant' Angelo spoken ill of and fun made of the contorted angels; but they are all very well in their place; they are needed there; there is enough repose elsewhere. Bernini, so often sneered at, is as beautiful as Michelangelo, although he is not so fine. It is he who made the Rome of the seventeenth century. They do not know that the Appian Way is sublime. It will disappear one of these days. These things are awaiting their condemnation. They are constructing quays like ours. If they do not put a stop to it, Rome will be destroyed. Those who have not seen cities such as this was in the nineteenth century will not understand anything. I have said as much to my Italian friends, who appeared greatly astonished; for nobody makes these reflections which come to me constantly in my studies. They consider me a gloomy fellow, a misanthrope. Gloomy, yes; for it is painful to live in a decadent epoch; but I have no _parti-pris_; I only wish to try to arrest the general massacre. In France, as everywhere, we commit exactly the same faults. We destroy our monuments by surrounding them with great open spaces; we have ruined the effect of Notre Dame, on the side of the parvis. At Brussels, in the Musée du Cinquantenaire, they have set up a model of the Parthenon; but they have placed it in the midst of enormous objects that annihilate it. We have come to that! We have killed the Parthenon! Barbarism could go no further. We live in a barbarous age. There is no doubt about that! People cry out that we must create schools for people to learn art; we bungle the most beautiful of all schools--the Museum.

FOR AMERICA

These things ought to be said again and again to the point of satiety, if we wish to save any remnants. Coming from me, whose opinions carry some weight, they are repeated when I am no longer on the spot. People feel the justice of them, the shaft goes home. A few who are more ardent than the rest propagate them and stir up a current of opinion that may lead to reform. There is no reason therefore to fear repeating them in America, where also people have fallen into the general error. American artists have followed our teaching, altogether in a bad sense. Notwithstanding that in taking their point of departure they could have escaped into the good epochs of art, they have saddled themselves with the poverty of modern taste.

Let them return to the school of the past; above all, let them return to nature; it is as beautiful with them as elsewhere. The mountains, the trees, the vegetation, the men and women of their own country--these should be their masters in architecture and sculpture. America is full of will. It desires to be a great nation. It stops at no expense in order to obtain instruction; it creates immense universities, libraries, museums. It pours into them streams of money. The favor with which my work has been received there is the sign of a movement toward truth in art; they are developing an affection for this naturalistic school which borrows from life its charm and its variety. But all this will be as nothing unless America creates work of its own; unless it breaks with the old errors of the nations of Europe in order to find the path of true science.

VII

THE GOTHIC GENIUS

To THE RENAISSANCE AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

NOTRE-DAME

NOTRE DAME--Notre Dame de Paris--more splendid than ever in the half-light of this winter day. The veils of the atmosphere redress the evils that modern restorations have done to this monument; the folds of the mist soften the sharpness of the retouched outlines: the elements are more respectful to this masterpiece than are men.

I come upon it at the turn of the bridge. At once I drop out of this industrial epoch of ours, so poor despite its love of money; my sculptor's soul escapes from its exile.