TO THE ARTIST ALL IN NATURE IS BEAUTIFUL
In Rodin’s great atelier at Meudon stands a cast of that statuette, so
magnificently ugly, which the great sculptor wrought upon the text of
Villon’s poem, _La Belle Heaulmière_.
The courtesan, once radiant with youth and grace, is now repulsive with
age and decrepitude. Once proud of her beauty, she is now filled with
shame at her ugliness.
“Ha, vieillesse felonne et fière,
Pourquoi m’as tu si tôt abattue?
Qui me tient que je ne me fière (frappe)
Et qu’à ce coup je ne me tue!”[1]
Footnote 1:
See page 249.
The sculptor has followed the poet step by step. The old hag, more
shrivelled than a mummy, mourns her physical decay. Bent double,
crouching on her haunches, she gazes despairingly upon her breasts so
pitiably shrunken, upon her hideously wrinkled body, upon her arms and
legs more knotty than vine stocks.
“Quand je pense, las! au bon temps,
Quelle fus, quelle devenue,
Quand me regarde toute nue
Et je me vois si très changée.
Pauvre, sêche, maigre, menue,
Je suis presque tout enragée!
Qu’est devenue ce front poli,
Ces cheveux blonds....
Ces gentes épaules menues,
Petite tetins, hanches charnues,
Elevées, propres, faictisse (faites à souhait)
A tenir d’amoureuses lices;
C’est d’humaine beauté l’issue!
Les bras courts et les mains contraictes (contractées),
Les épaules toutes bossue.
Mamelles, quoi! toutes retraites (dessechées)
Telles les hanches et que les tettes!
Quant aux cuisses,
Cuisses ne sont plus, mais cuissettes
Grivelées comme saucisses!”[2]
Footnote 2:
See page 249.
[Illustration:
THE OLD COURTESAN
By Rodin
]
[Illustration:
THE MAGDALENE
By Donatello
]
The sculptor does not fall below the poet in realism. On the contrary,
his work, in the horror which it inspires, is perhaps even more
impressive than the truculent verses of Maître Villon. The skin hangs in
flaccid folds upon the skeleton; the ribs stand out beneath the
parchment that covers them, and the whole figure seems to totter, to
tremble, to shrivel, to shrink away.
Yet from this spectacle, at once grotesque and heartrending, a great
sorrow breathes.
For what we have before us is the infinite distress of a poor foolish
soul which, enamoured of eternal youth and beauty, looks on helpless at
the ignominious disgrace of its fleshly envelope; it is the antithesis
of the spiritual being which demands endless joy and of the body which
wastes away, decays, ends in nothingness. The substance perishes, the
flesh dies, but dreams and desires are immortal.
This is what Rodin has wished to make us understand.
And I do not think that any other artist has ever pictured old age with
such savage crudity, except one. In the Baptistery at Florence you see
upon an altar a strange statue by Donatello—an old woman naked, or at
least draped only in the long, thin hair which clings foully to her
ruined body. It is Saint Magdalene in the desert, bowed with age,
offering to God the cruel mortifications to which she subjects her body
as a punishment for the care which she formerly lavished upon it.
The savage sincerity of the Florentine master is so great that it is not
even surpassed by Rodin himself. But, aside from this, the sentiment of
the two works differs completely, for, while Saint Magdalene in her
voluntary renunciation seems to grow more radiant as she sees herself
growing more repulsive, the old Heaulmière is terrified at finding
herself like a very corpse.
[Illustration:
A HAND IN BRONZE
By Rodin
]
The modern sculpture is, therefore, much more tragic than the older
work.
One day, having studied this figure in the atelier for some moments in
silence, I said:
“Master, no one admires this astonishing figure more than I, but I hope
you will not be annoyed if I tell you the effect it produces upon many
of the visitors to the Musée du Luxembourg, especially upon the women.”
“I shall be much obliged to you if you will.”
“Well, the public generally turn away from it, crying, ‘Oh, how ugly it
is!’ and I have often seen women cover their eyes with their hands to
shut out the sight.”
Rodin laughed heartily.
“My work must be eloquent,” he said, “to make such a vivid impression,
and doubtless these are people who dread stern philosophic truths.
“But what solely matters to me is the opinion of people of taste, and I
have been delighted to gain their approbation for my _Vieille
Heaulmière_. I am like that Roman singer who replied to the jeers of the
populace: _Equitibus cano_. I sing only for the nobles! that is to say,
for the connoisseurs.
“The vulgar readily imagine that what they consider ugly in existence is
not fit subject for the artist. They would like to forbid us to
represent what displeases and offends them in nature.
“It is a great error on their part.
“What is commonly called _ugliness_ in nature can in art become full of
great beauty.
“In the domain of fact we call _ugly_ whatever is deformed, whatever is
unhealthy, whatever suggests the idea of disease, of debility, or of
suffering, whatever is contrary to regularity, which is the sign and
condition of health and strength: a hunchback is _ugly_, one who is
bandy-legged is _ugly_, poverty in rags is _ugly_.
[Illustration:
SEBASTIAN, FOOL OF PHILIP IV
By Velasquez
]
“_Ugly_ also are the soul and the conduct of the immoral man, of the
vicious and criminal man, of the abnormal man who is harmful to society;
_ugly_ the soul of the parricide, of the traitor, of the unscrupulously
ambitious.
“And it is right that beings and objects from which we can expect only
evil should be called by such an odious epithet. But let a great artist
or a great writer make use of one or the other of these _uglinesses_,
instantly it is transfigured: with a touch of his fairy wand he has
turned it into beauty; it is alchemy; it is enchantment!
“Let Velasquez paint Sebastian, the dwarf of Philippe IV. He endows him
with such a touching gaze that we instantly read in it all the painful
secret of this poor afflicted creature, forced, for his livelihood, to
lower his human dignity, to become a plaything, a living bauble. And the
more poignant the martyrdom of the conscience lodged in this grotesque
body, the more beautiful is the artist’s work.
“Let François Millet represent a peasant resting for a moment as he
leans on the handle of his hoe, a wretched man worn by fatigue, baked by
the sun, as stupid as a beast of burden dulled by blows—he has only to
put into the expression of this poor devil a sublime resignation to the
suffering ordained by Destiny, to make this creature of a nightmare
become for us the great symbol of all Humanity.
“Let Beaudelaire describe a festering corpse, unclean, viscid, eaten by
worms, and let him but imagine his beloved mistress under this frightful
aspect, and nothing can equal in splendor his picture of this terrible
juxtaposition of beauty which we could wish eternal and the atrocious
disintegration which awaits it.
“Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure,
A cette horrible infection.
Etoile de mes yeux, Soleil de ma nature,
O mon ange et ma passion!
Oui, telle vous serez, o la reine des Grâces
Après les derniers sacrements.
Quand vous irez sous l’herbe et les floraisons grasses
Pourrir parmi les ossements.
Alors, o ma Beauté, dîtes à la vermine
Qui vous mangerez de baisers,
Que j’ai gardé la forme et l’essence divine
De mes amours décomposés![3]
Footnote 3:
See page 250.
[Illustration:
THE MAN WITH THE HOE
By Millet
]
“It is the same when Shakespeare depicts Iago or Richard III., when
Racine paints Nero and Narcissus; moral ugliness when interpreted by
minds so clear and penetrating becomes a marvellous theme of beauty.
“In fact, in art, only that which has _character_ is beautiful.
“_Character_ is the essential truth of any natural object, whether ugly
or beautiful; it is even what one might call a _double truth_, for it is
the inner truth translated by the outer truth; it is the soul, the
feelings, the ideas, expressed by the features of a face, by the
gestures and actions of a human being, by the tones of a sky, by the
lines of a horizon.
“Now, to the great artist, everything in nature has character; for the
unswerving directness of his observation searches out the hidden meaning
of all things. And that which is considered ugly in nature often
presents more _character_ than that which is termed beautiful, because
in the contractions of a sickly countenance, in the lines of a vicious
face, in all deformity, in all decay, the inner truth shines forth more
clearly than in features that are regular and healthy.
“And as it is solely the power of _character_ which makes for beauty in
art, it often happens that the uglier a being is in nature, the more
beautiful it becomes in art.
“There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character,
that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.
“Whatever is false, whatever is artificial, whatever seeks to be pretty
rather than expressive, whatever is capricious and affected, whatever
smiles without motive, bends or struts without cause, is mannered
without reason; all that is without soul and without truth; all that is
only a _parade_ of beauty and grace; all, in short, that lies, is
_ugliness_ in art.
“When an artist, intending to improve upon nature, adds green to the
springtime, rose to the sunrise, carmine to young lips, he creates
ugliness because he lies.
“When he softens the grimace of pain, the shapelessness of age, the
hideousness of perversion, when he arranges nature—veiling, disguising,
tempering it to please the ignorant public—then he is creating ugliness
because he fears the truth.
“To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because
his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an
open book, all the inner truth.
“He has only to look into a human face in order to read there the soul
within—not a feature deceives him; hypocrisy is as transparent as
sincerity—the line of a forehead, the least lifting of a brow, the flash
of an eye, reveal to him all the secrets of a heart.
“Or he may study the hidden mind of the animal. A mixture of feelings
and of thoughts, of dumb intelligences and of rudimentary affections, he
reads the whole humble moral life of the beast in its eyes and in its
movements.
“He is even the confidant of nature. The trees, the plants talk to him
like friends. The old gnarled oaks speak to him of their kindliness for
the human race whom they protect beneath their sheltering branches. The
flowers commune with him by the gracious swaying of their stalks, by the
singing tones of their petals—each blossom amidst the grass is a
friendly word addressed to him by nature.
“For him life is an endless joy, a perpetual delight, a mad
intoxication. Not that all seems good to him, for suffering, which must
often come to those he loves and to himself, cruelly contradicts his
optimism. But all is beautiful to him because he walks forever in the
light of spiritual truth.
“Yes, the great artist, and by this I mean the poet as well as the
painter and the sculptor, finds even in suffering, in the death of loved
ones, in the treachery of friends, something which fills him with a
voluptuous though tragic admiration.
“At times his own heart is on the rack, yet stronger than his pain is
the bitter joy which he experiences in understanding and giving
expression to that pain. In all existence he clearly divines the
purposes of Destiny. Upon his own anguish, upon his own gaping wounds,
he fixes the enthusiastic gaze of the man who has read the decrees of
Fate. Deceived by a beloved one, he reels beneath the blow; then,
standing firm, he looks upon the traitor as a fine example of the base.
He salutes ingratitude as an experience which shall enrich his soul. His
ecstasy is terrifying at times, but it is still happiness, because it is
the continual adoration of truth.
“When he sees beings everywhere destroying each other; when he sees all
youth fading, all strength failing, all genius dying, when he is face to
face with the will which decreed these tragic laws, more than ever he
rejoices in his knowledge, and, seized anew by the passion for truth, he
is happy.”
[Illustration:
THE DANAÏD
By Rodin
]