Chapter VIII: Part 8

The art of Rodin has in a certain measure shown the effect of these happy events. During these latter years he has grown calm; he displays a serenity of spirit and a self-possession that increases day by day. But if the struggle in his composition has been tranquilized, his workmanship has grown freer. The sculptor's effort concentrates itself now in the search for a modeling ever more ample and suppler, which with him constitutes a new and decisive manner. It is to this that we owe those exquisite marbles, "Psyche Bearing the Lamp," "Benedictions," "The Young Girl and the Two Genii," "Romeo and Juliet," "The Fall of Icarus." This has been the epoch also of the busts of Mrs. Simpson and the proud and handsome George Wyndham, the English statesman. It is the epoch, finally, of the "Monument to President Sarmiento," which offers at the same time, in happy opposition, the two most recent and most characteristic methods of Rodin. The bronze statue of the great Argentine statesman has an aspect at once romantic and realistic that recalls that of "The Burghers of Calais," and the marble pedestal that supports it, a vanquishing Apollo emerging from the clouds all luminous with youth and glory, belongs to the latest period. Of this monument, ordered by the city of Buenos Aires, France does not possess a replica, though the model has been preserved. The Musée Rodin will soon contain a duplicate.

From 1901 to 1906 there was an uninterrupted creation of figures and of portraits, among them the busts of Sir Howard Walden, Berthelot, Gustave Geffroy, Mme. Hunter, and Bernard Shaw.

One must add the myriad drawings that Rodin has never ceased to execute. The will to sustain his eye and his hand instead of permitting them to become weakened with age has become a passion with him. He draws as a writer thinks. He thinks pencil in hand; his drawings are aphorisms. Line-sketches, stump-drawings, water-colors in strange tints multiply themselves like the leaves of a tree and quite constitute alone a complete work. The master has sold and given away quantities of them, yet; nevertheless, the Musée will contain more than three thousand. I have been honored with the charge of counting them over and classifying them. After days of this work one has a sensation of dazzlement, as I have discovered, before this accumulation of toil and beauty.

The most precious of these drawings are the most recent. The study of light has been carried in these to the supreme nuances. More and more Rodin detests what is black, what is hard, what is dry. He adores, on the other hand, that which is supple, enveloped, drowned in the light mist of the atmosphere. He conceives everything through an almost imperceptible veil which softens the contours, and which he discerns with an eye that grows every day more sensitive. His sculpture has followed the same path. In the greater part of his marbles he has pursued the effects of mass and of the ensemble in what concerns the volumes and the effects of gradation, the study of the diminutions of light in what concerns the coloring. The color that obtains uniquely in the art of shadow and light is the charm of beautiful sculpture. Rodin thus captures the variations with a competence that ravishes our eyes, accustomed to the dryness of limits that are too distinct. It is in the reliefs entitled "The Seasons" that Rodin has attained the apogee of this science of luminous modeling.

These works, executed for La Sapinière, the estate of Baron Vitta at Evian, comprise three high-reliefs fashioned on a gate and two fountain basins, or monumental garden urns. They are cut in the stone of the Estaillade, a white stone the richness of grain and delicate golden tone of which make it unsurpassable for the interpretation of the human body. They were exhibited for a short time in February, 1905, at the Musée du Luxembourg, on the initiative of M. Léon Bénédite, the very accomplished curator and critic of art, who arranged them with perfect taste. But far from being embraced and vindicated, as he would be now by the present administration of fine arts, Rodin was still regarded as a revolutionist whose example could neither be followed nor trusted.

This was made quite plain to the audacious curator who decided quite by himself to exhibit the latest works of the master before their departure for Evian. After this _coup d'état_ he was for several years the victim of attacks from academic circles, and underwent, on the part of the Government, a sort of disgrace. Since then he has been brilliantly compensated, and to-day he has been placed in charge of the installation of the Musée Rodin at the Hôtel Biron, a great work in which I have the happiness to be his collaborator.

The decorative designs of the villa of Evian adorn the vestibule of the home of Baron Vitta. "Their subject," says M. Bénédite, in an excellent notice which served as a catalogue for the Exhibition of 1905, "if one wishes to speak of the motive that serves as their pretext, is the most banal in the world. One would find it difficult to count the number of times that it has served artists since antiquity. So true it is that the commonest, the most general, the most seemingly worn-out themes are those in which the great artists find themselves the most at home. Without difficulty they renew them, and stamp them unforgettably with their own peculiar mark. Rodin has calmly returned to the four seasons, confident that they would bear without effort the impress of his personality and his time and that they would suffice to express his whole conception of beauty and of life."

Rodin has figured "The Seasons" under the aspect of four sleeping women. Their beautiful forms model themselves in the warm-tinted stone, which itself seems animated with the reflections of the living flesh. Their mysterious sleep evokes the successive phases of the year. Now it marks the quietude of the earth, full of the joy of yielding up her flowers and her fruits under the caresses of the sun, now it is death revealing itself through a nature tormented with the heavy travail of generation. In the "Spring" it is a young body that lies voluptuously under a rose-bush the fragrant petals of which are mingled with her own flesh, enveloping her in the dream of their perfume. In the "Autumn," the sleeper crouches close to the ground under the fruits and the vine-leaves, oppressed by the intoxicating aroma. The "Winter" presses her chilled limbs closely against the cavities of the denuded earth, while above her the roots of the trees enlace themselves intricately, like sacred serpents charged with protecting her slumber. The "Summer" is a siesta upon the bosom of a Nature _en fête_, lulled by the golden sounds of harvest balanced on the breeze and the murmur of a spring that pours forth freshness and quietude.

But in what, you ask, resides the originality of these decorative commonplaces, their brilliant, unquestionable originality? In the deliberate simplicity, in the spirit of sobriety that has presided over their composition, and, above all, in their execution. It is through their execution that the sculptures of Evian occupy a place apart in the work of Rodin. Since the beautiful Greek epoch, stone has perhaps never assumed such a living sweetness under any human hand. One might believe that it had not been touched by the steel of the chisel, but caressed by a touch as delicate as it is firm, molded like wax under the warmth of that hand. These mellow figures do not detach themselves from the living framework in which they are set; they stand out, thanks to an insensible transition which leaves them enveloped, in the reflections of the fair material; they mass themselves under a sifted light, among the flowers and the clusters of grapes. With all this there is no insipidity. Under the skin one feels the plenitude of bodies rich with health, harmonious organisms: it is a force that has found its equilibrium, a force relaxing in sweetness. Strangely enough, when one seeks for antecedents to which it is possible to relate the reliefs of Evian, it is not in the domain of sculpture, but in that of painting, that one finds the terms of comparison. The intense power, carefully measured as it is, of this vibrant modeling and this color drenched in sunlight we find again among the tenderest creations of Correggio, of Rubens, and, closer to ourselves, of Renoir.

The two jardinières which complete this unique series represent groups of children mad with joy and with liberty; in the one case playing and jostling one another in a field of wheat, in the midst of the moving sea of spears, and in the other, spread out on the green summer grass, rapturously holding up in their little arms, already robust, the grapes heavy with wine. They are exquisite fantasies of movement, of grace, of mad life just beginning. Here, too, the flesh of these little laughing gods, melting in the mass of ripe corn and tottering vines, seems bathed in the clearness of a beautiful day, full of air and of light.

These five works of the old age of the master might be entitled the "Poem of Youth." It is the privilege of genius to return, in its decline, to its point of departure, to remount to the sources of life, which remain ever the most intoxicating. The sensations of infancy and adolescence solicit him with all their unforgettable seductiveness, and he surrenders himself lovingly to the sweetness of this lost dream; but it has cost him his entire, existence to acquire the gift of translating it.

This search for the envelopment of forms fruitful of new effects is the decisive point in the career of Rodin; it is the supreme thought, the end and aim of sixty years of toil and reflection. Therefore it is a very happy thing for French sculpture that Rodin has been able to live long enough to realize completely this definitive conception of his art. For from the summit attained by him other artists can spring forth afresh, to renew once more perhaps the manifestations of the national genius. The resources indicated by Rodin have hardly been used hitherto; to bring them fully into employment meanwhile there will perhaps be born a new school of sculpture.

What constitutes the originality of a great artist is that it is never isolated. It belongs at once to the past, to the present, and to the future; it is altogether a derivative and a root. It springs from the past through atavism, through study, and through admiration for the masters; it is of the present through contact with those of the artist's contemporaries who march at the same time with him along the road of discovery; finally, it influences the future by bequeathing to the generations that follow a new conception and new methods. To-day we see clearly the sources from which have come the ultimate aspect of the talent of Rodin. They are the art of Greece; they are also certain marvels of Gothic art in which miraculously reblossomed the Hellenic suppleness and sweetness, as if the springs of the Greek genius had mysteriously coursed under the earth from Athens to France, bursting forth at last in the walls of our cathedrals; then there are those unfinished marbles of Michelangelo from which Rodin derived the idea of vapor and flow in sculpture. But other artists have arrived, at about the same time, at the same end, or almost the same end, by different paths. Among these are two of our great painters, friends and comrades of Rodin, Renoir and Carrière. Does not this community of thought prove how profound is the vitality our country continues to possess in the domain of art? We are less struck by this phenomenon than when we verify its effects in the past, when we see them related and summed up in the history of art; because we are not in a position to disengage it from our present life, which is encumbered and complicated, and to draw a conclusion from it. And then, too, the present political régime does little to signalize the great artists, to muster them before the untutored admiration of the multitude, to give value to the intellectual wealth of the country. As a rule, when a man of genius receives the homage he deserves, it is when he is near his end, if it is not after his death. What public festivals have been given in France in this century to honor the glories of our artistic and scientific life, Victor Hugo excepted? When and how have we celebrated men like Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Renoir, Carrière, Claude Monet, Besnard, Odilon Redon, and Bartholomé, to mention only masters of the chisel and the brush? Occasionally they have been gratified by the boredom of an official banquet, where they have been assigned a rank considerably lower than that of the least important politician, and they are expected to be thankful when they have had bestowed upon them a few parchments and some bits of ribbon. Fortunately, their joys are in another sphere, whither no one who is not their equal can follow them.

In their ardent effort toward a similar end, then, it is necessary to associate Rodin, Renoir, and Carrière. All three, for that matter, have mutually admired and even influenced one another. Whether in the course of their work or in their conversations, one cannot deny that the attempt of the Impressionist School, which consists precisely in not separating the being or the object from its atmosphere, in prolonging its life in the life of that which envelopes it, really succeeds only in the work of these masters. They have, if not recreated, at least broadened the law of the distribution of shadow and of light in their intricate fusion. Certainly others had already manifested and realized similar ways of seeing things, according to their various temperaments, such men as Fantin-Latour and Henner in the study of the human figure and Claude Monet in landscape. But, except for Monet, no one affirms them with the authority of a Rodin, a Carrière, a Renoir. If Carrière, too early interrupted by a cruel death, is a tragic, a somber genius, a genius of the Gothic line, which in him does not exclude great sweetness, Renoir and Rodin, in their maturity, are happy geniuses, masters of young beauty and of a serenity which art has scarcely known since ancient Greece. A like sentiment of serenity, a like aspiration for harmonious unity, therefore a closer contact with nature, bring them together.

This serenity, this aspiration for unity, Rodin and Renoir have sought during their whole life, and it is in the radiant works of their old age that it triumphs. The genius of form and its union with the universal has been the master thought, the plastic ideal, which their fraternal minds have realized simultaneously by different methods.

"With Rodin a style begins," said Octave Mirbeau twenty years ago. The phrase stirred up a tempest. All the time that has passed since then has been required to make people admit its truth. The great writer might have said with more exactitude, but with less force, "With Rodin style itself has begun anew."

Will it continue? It has never entirely ceased to exist, even if it has no longer the force of expansion with which, from France and through her, it spread through all Europe. Will it begin again with its vigor as of old? The question touches those problems raised by the events that are to-day overturning the world and also the profound modifications which the war will bring.

The master gives us his opinion on this matter in a few words, circumspect and measured, as he himself always is. How could he be otherwise before the formidable unknown that still hides from us the next turn of destiny? It is fitting, then, to leave him the last word on this subject. Fortunately his word has the warm ring of hope.

This hope he draws in a measure from himself, from his own strength, which is, he feels, a distinct outgrowth of the national strength, of the unconquerable soul of our ancestors; he draws it also from the consciousness of a task accomplished in the face of the hard blows of life; and finally from the promise of the artistic youth of the country, of that which belongs to his school. For if with two or three exceptions he has not directly formed pupils, his artistic principles, his faith in the virtue of character and labor, supported by the example of an unequaled body of work, have given him innumerable disciples. The lesson which he offers us and which will soon be offered to all at the museum in the Hôtel Biron, will endure for centuries. He says himself justly, with pride and modesty, that this museum will form a true home of education.

* * * * *

A few words more about this life which in the fecundity of its unexpected incidents remains for the attentive witness profoundly significant to the very end.

At the moment when the war of 1914 broke out, the master was in his villa at Meudon. When the German armies approached Paris, he thought of leaving his home. He had excited great admiration in the land of Schiller and Goethe, he had been urged to take part in numerous expositions there; but he had quite special reasons for knowing that his work, were it to fall into their hands, would not be spared by the soldiers from beyond the Rhine. Overwhelmed by the terrifying surprise of the invasion, he did not know where to go.

As he had many friends in England, I offered to guide him there. He therefore crossed the channel, accompanied by his wife, the companion of his good and evil days. It was without a word of bitterness that he set out, without expressing a regret for all that he was leaving behind him. Before the immensity of the national misfortune he seemed to have completely forgotten the menace that hung over the work of his whole life. In the train that carried us by night to one of the French ports, he said in his clear and always tranquil voice: "Yes, I am leaving much behind me. It is the work of an entire life that will disappear, perhaps." That was all. This attitude of an old exiled king inspired a respect free from all compassion.

The fate of his collection of antiques caused him more disquietude.

"If they take them, that is nothing; they will still exist. But if they break them! They will have destroyed what is irreplaceable."

He did not wish to remain in London. Too many relationships would have hindered him from collecting himself and from preserving that dignity of solitude, that reserve of a refugee which was proper to his situation. He preferred to accompany us to a small country town, where for six weeks he lived a modest life, very retired, interested only, but passionately interested, in the reading of English newspapers, which we translated for him.

When we apprised him of the burning of Rheims Cathedral, he replied with a laugh of incredulity. For two days he refused to believe it. It seemed to him an invention of the press designed to stir the public and increase recruiting. At last, convinced, he said, with inexpressible sadness: "The biblical times have come back again, the great invasions of the Medes and the Persians. Has the world, then, reached the point where it deserves to be punished for the egotistical epicureanism in which it has slumbered?" After this he became absorbed in his own thoughts.

The Battle of the Marne, in saving France and the world, saved also that little temple of art, the museum at Meudon. Rodin, on his return from England, found it intact.

He took up his work again, without a pause, with that unalterable patience of his--that patience of the peasant that turns him back to his field the moment the enemy has passed. He awaits there sadly the dawn of peace.

* * * * *

During the last months of the year 1916 the question of the Musée Rodin, broached five years ago, became again a living one; it was brought before the assembly. Certain of the master's adversaries who have not been calmed even by the events of the present affected a righteous indignation that the discussion of this question of art should at this moment have any place in the order of the day, and they tried to make people believe that it was he who had chosen this tragic hour for debates of this kind. Let us repeat that five years ago Rodin offered this gift to his country, and that the delay in settling the matter is imputable solely to the procrastination of public affairs.

On the day I write these lines the creation of the Musée Rodin has been determined upon. The two chambers have voted by a majority that proves that everything France contains in the way of cultivated intelligence desires to assure a home worthy of itself for the works of its greatest sculptor.

But before we have arrived there what other mishaps may not befall! It is too soon to write the history of the Musée Rodin. Its adventure is not less singular than all the others that have marked this long career, certain of which have been summed up in these pages. The more forceful the personality, the more it is in contradiction with the passions of the vulgar, the more are the incidents that spring up in the contact of these two opposite elements. It would require a whole volume to recount those that have punctuated the life of Rodin during these later years.

Despite the bitterness of the combat, the master has had nothing to complain of and does not complain. The outcome of his life-story is most beautiful, and if this beauty already strikes us, it is in the years to come that it will attain its full glory. For if the gesture with which Rodin offers to France his work and his dearest possessions is that of those who count in the annals of their country, no one perhaps has ever received such a homage as that which the country has bestowed upon him in the manner of accepting his gift. In the midst of war, in the very hour when the country is suffering unheard of evils, it has self-possession enough in the firmness of its indomitable soul to honor in a magnificent way the work of one of its sons--a work accomplished in time of peace. Turning its attention for an instant from the necessities of war, from the front where it struggles, suffers, and dies, it remains calm enough, sufficiently sure of itself, to offer to one of its heroes of toil, and of the thought which its soldiers defend, a testimony of its gratitude and admiration.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Rodin: The Man and his Art, by Judith Cladel