Rodin's generalising spirit leads him from the realism of his daily
work to the synthesis of a sort of ideo-realistic metaphysical system.
He has the sense (belonging only to genius) of the _continuity of
the universe_, and he certainly had it at a time when, unlettered
as he was, he would not have known how to explain it specifically
to himself. He constantly formulates this metaphysical system, as I
have seen it formulated by Stéphane Mallarmé, who could never see
anything without instantly bringing together two ideas or images that
no one would ever have thought of connecting. Spontaneous analogy
is the mark of genius and the secret of all real poetry. This is
why I consider Rodin as a very great poet--not in the sense that he
dislikes, but on the contrary, by giving to the word "poet" its deep
etymological significance according to the Greek, that of "making,
creating, vivifying." We may understand, too, in how great a degree an
intellectuality of this kind offers a living challenge to the ideas
of the "École." The man who thinks thus is necessarily isolated and
has struggled all his life, never making a concession and saying
nobly, "The artist, like the woman, has an honour to preserve." I will
further quote from Rodin the following reflection[6]: "Where you follow
nature, you get everything. When I have a beautiful woman's body for
a model the drawings that I make from it give me images of insects,
birds, and fishes. That seems improbable, and I had no suspicion of
it myself. Formerly I used to be seeking shapes for vases, either to
use them at Sèvres, where I used to work, or elsewhere.... I never
succeeding in finding a beauty of proportions and lines such as I had
the feeling of, because I only founded my attempts upon _imagination._
Since that time I have drawn women's bodies, and one of these bodies
gave me, in the synthesis of it, a magnificent shape for a vase, with
true and harmonious lines. The point is not to create. Creation and
improvisation are useless words. Genius only comes to the man who
understands with his eye and his brain. Everything is in the things
about us. Manufacture and ornamental art want reforming according to
these ideas. I should have liked to see that. Everything-is contained
in nature. There is an harmonious, continual, uninterrupted movement. A
woman, a mountain, a horse, in conception they are all the same thing,
they are made on the same principles. Young artists compose instead of
following their models and understanding that therein lies infinity."
Here Rodin directly touches a scientific truth--the relative monotony
of Nature's productive forms. Nature does everything with very few
forms: the variations are so infinite that there are no two leaves
alike, but the nerves of a leaf, the lines of a vein, an artery, a
bird's wing, a fishbone, a nerve-cell, are identical; multiplicity
derives from identity and returns to it, so that everything is reduced
to a fundamental geometry which perhaps is but the effect of a single
cellular generation. In this respect the laws of art and of science
are the same, even as among all the arts there is a synthesis of
common laws, an identity where we seem to behold a difference. Recent
work in science, by establishing the existence of states of radiation
(Crookes, Röntgen, Hertz) is busy undermining our old conception of
matter, showing us the identity of it with the immaterial, and thereby
abolishing our preconceptions about the idea and the fact, music and
sculpture, considered as different manifestations. I remember that I
one day kept Rodin's curiosity excited for a long time by explaining
the details of this theory to him; he was not acquainted with it,
and listened to me as to a writer in love with general ideas. But it
was clear that in his mere province as a sculptor he knew far better
and had penetrated far more deeply into this enthralling problem of
identity. His is a luminous mind, of the same kind as the electric
rays; it rather penetrates than surrounds what is obscure to it. On
that day he was disturbed, and I was irritated by certain declamations
which had been written about his "philosophy," and of which the author
had assuredly not comprehended the logical consequences; and we came
to the conclusion that it would be much better for Rodin's peace of
mind to keep silent upon these points, for his "philosophy" could only
be made comprehensible to those who could understand the method of his
sculpture.
It is time, however, to pause in this path and to return simply to
the question of sculpture. Nor was it my purpose to tire the reader
by these abstractions when I began to say a few words about Rodin's
opinions concerning the antique. It must be understood, then, that the
_Balzac_ and even the _Hugo_, as well as some figures, were the result
of all these preceding reflections. "When I saw my _Balzac_ brought
into the yard from the storehouse of the statues in order to go to
the Salon," says Rodin, "I had it purposely placed beside _The Kiss,_
which had been finished rather earlier. I was not dissatisfied with the
simplified vigour of that group, to which I had already applied these
experiments. But I saw that it looked slack, that it did not hold its
place beside the _Balzac_ as Michael Angelo's torso does beside a fine
antique, and then I understood that I was in the right path. I have
had hesitations, you know, pangs that I do not speak of. And then,
little by little, as I looked at nature, as I came to understand it
better and to throw aside my prejudices more frankly, I took courage.
It seemed to me that I was doing better. When I began I did skilful
things, things that were smartly done, but they were thin and dry, but
I felt there was something beyond, and that something is amplification.
I only ventured on it when I was over fifty years old, but do you not
think I have a right now to disregard the objections of the mob and the
newspapers? I have taken time to know why I was doing as I did. The
essential things of my modelling are there, and they would be there
in less degree if I 'finished' more. As to polishing or repolishing a
toe or a curl, I find no interest in it; it impairs the large line,
the soul of what I desired to do, and I have nothing more to say to
the public on that point. There the line of demarcation comes between
the confidence that the public ought to have in me and the concessions
that I ought not to make to the public." To this firm and discreet
resolution Rodin has kept in all the works wrought out by him since
1898.
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE MAN.]
I cannot better set forth his opinions about the antique than by
quoting the following fragments from two articles that he wrote for
the _Musée_, a review of ancient art, in January and February, 1904;
for Rodin sometimes writes, quite unpretentiously, but with the same
lucidity of thought that he shows in his familiar conversation. One of
these articles refers to a Greek statuette in the Museum of Naples, the
other to the lesson that the ancients give us.
"In the first place, the Antique is Life itself. Nothing is more alive,
and no style in the world has rendered life as it has. The ancients
were the greatest, most serious, and most admirable observers of nature
who have ever existed. The antique was able to render life because
the ancients saw the essential thing in it--large blocks. They confined
themselves to the large shadows cast by these large blocks, and as
truth itself lies in that, their figures being so made could never be
feeble. Moreover, the antique is simple, and that gives it astonishing
energy. And then there is much more study in it than appears; that
was brought home to me once. When I had finished my _Age of Brass_, I
went to Italy and I found an Apollo whose leg was in exactly the same
position as one in _The Age of Brass_ that had taken me six months'
work. Then I saw that though on the surface everything seems to be done
at a stroke, in reality all the muscles are built up and one sees the
details come to light one by one. That is because the ancients studied
everything in its successive profiles, because in any figure and every
part of a figure no profile is like another; when each has been studied
separately the whole appears simple and alive.
"The great error of the neo-Greek school is really this: it is not
_type_ that is antique, but modelling. For want of having understood
that, the neo-Greek school has produced nothing but papier-mâché. It
is bad to put the antique before beginners; one should end, not begin
with it. If you wanted to teach someone to eat, you would give him
fresh food, that he might learn to chew; it would never occur to you
to give him food already triturated to exercise his teeth upon. Well,
when you want to teach sculpture to anyone, set him face to face with
nature, and when he has gained plenty of power to deal with nature,
then say to him: 'Now, here is what the antique has done.' And that
will give him a new source of energy. Whereas if you give the antique
to the beginner who has never struggled with nature, he does not
understand anything about it, and loses his individuality over it.
You make a plagiarist of him, and instead of making his own prayer to
nature he will repeat the prayer of the antique without understanding
the words of it. He will die an old pupil; he will not die a man.
"To teach the antique at the outset of a man's studies is to render
the antique incomprehensible. In the first place, no one can teach the
antique, it is not possible; that art of truth and simplicity cannot
be taught. The sculptor works from nature, and afterwards he goes to
look, in the galleries, and see how the antique rendered what he has
been trying for from the life. But if he goes straight to the antique,
shutting his eyes to nature, as the antique has always been done from
nature, our sculptor will only be able to carry that vision into his
own work in a factitious way; he will be neither antique nor modern,
but bad.
"A man may do antique work in our day, not in the false sense of
producing the _antique type,_ but in the true sense of _modelling
like the antique._ Such a man (painter, etcher, or sculptor) will
take nature, and if he has the power of the antique he will produce
antique work, which will entirely disagree with what is taught as
such, but will agree with that in the museums. The 'École' begins
at the end; when a man begins with nature, he may go on to the most
improbable inventions; the antiques themselves show that. Do you know
of anything more impossible than the centaur? But is there anything
finer in Olympia? The ancients knew nature so well that they became her
fellow-workers and created, not phantoms, but beings that were alive in
spite of physical impossibilities. To my mind it would be better not
to study the antique than to study it wrong. It is not the artist's
alphabet, but the reward of his work. The command which it gives us is
not to copy it, but to do like it.
[Illustration: YOUNG WOMAN BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL COUNCIL.]
"To say that the antiques, which portray the plain marvel of life,
are beautiful is a superficial sort of praise. Beauty is not the
starting-point, but the point of arrival; a thing can only be beautiful
if it is true. Truth itself is only a complete harmony, and harmony
is finally only a bundle of utilities. The miracle of life could not
be perpetuated but for the constant renewal of universal balance. The
ancients felt that vast rhythm, and their art, being modelled upon it,
appears to us as a natural and sublime expression of beauty.... One
of the ancients made a statue. How did he set about it? It is useless
to bring in rules that only grew up in the brains of commentators
dissecting a series of works, centuries afterwards. The antique remains
uncomprehended because we have not a simple enough spirit. It is not
by studying the antique that we shall learn its secret; in order to
understand, not its nomenclature, but its spirit, we must begin by
studying nature. Rembrandt cannot be understood by copying him at the
Louvre, he can only be understood when we travel through nature to him.
Well, nature is always there, waiting patiently for antiques to be
made afresh; the model is there waiting for someone to come at last,
no matter whence. For it is an error to think the antique comes from
the south: it comes from everywhere. The antique can be produced from a
Dutch woman or an American woman; the type is nothing, the modelling is
everything.
"What makes the strength of the antique is the plan, the connection of
all the profiles. The neo-Greeks say: 'The antiques are _line,_ and
their works, in which all the lines, except two, dance about, show
their error. The antiques, we will say, are _lines_ or rather _plan._
Look at an antique; you can guess the full face from the profile.
The eye cannot grasp the shape on the opposite side to that which it
beholds, but it deduces it from this side: walk round, and the study
of the profiles will afford you an _irrefragable_ proof by _rule of
three._ The sculptor swells the half-tones by slight exaggerations, so
as to heighten the light by a tone. The drapery lives; like the body
that it hides, it receives life from that body without needing the
subterfuge of wetted drapery.'[7]
"There is in the antiques an astonishing mystery of life which causes
all idea of dimension to disappear. A figure an inch or two high
might just as well be life-size; when a thing is well organised, the
greatness is in the modelling and not in the size. If one were to
photograph a Tanagra figure and the Eiffel Tower, and were to show the
two photographs to some person unacquainted with either object, I am
sure he would declare the Tanagra figure to be larger than the tower. A
pear or an apple, from the point of view of modelling, is as large as
the celestial sphere. Thus the splendour of truth is such that finding
no word to render it, we have called it 'Ideal.'"
These quotations will suffice, I hope, to show Rodin's inmost thought.
These judgments are implicit condemnations of the "École"; they are
also definitions of his classical art, which is by no means "literary,"
and which is governed, even in its lyrical and tragic developments,
by good sense, that is to say, by an inborn taste for balance in the
midst of boldness. If I am anxious to insist so strongly upon Rodin's
profound _normality_, this is, I repeat, in order to forewarn the
public against the declamations of some of his untoward admirers, who
reckon one of his merits to be an "originality" which they confound
with that exaggeration, that emphasis and eccentricity that never mark
the great artist. Whatever tragic or passionate subject a great artist
may treat, to whatever height of strangeness his imagination may rise,
beauty of form will, if he is, like Rodin, a master of _technique_,
confer upon _t_ him an exalted and permanent serenity. Rembrandt and
Delacroix come from the depth of their vastly differing worlds to meet
Raphael and Watteau in that conciliatory region where we admire the
great masters--and Rodin is already placed in that region.
[1] Rodin has never forgotten Falguière's loyalty at the time of _The
Age of Brass_ affair.
[2] A recent example in Paris is the double statue of the chemists
who invented quinine. When will people understand that a discovery
of this kind, however honourable, is nevertheless quite incapable of
being associated with any plastic idea? The same thing is true of the
statues of Chappe and Lavoisier, flanked by instruments of telegraphy
and chemistry. These are ridiculous signboards, melancholy compliments
translated by a tradesman's art that renders our streets hideous.
[3] _Revue des Revues_ (of Paris), June 15th, 1898.
[4] I find myself underlining-: it is not Rodin whose voice makes this
emphasis. But I am attempting to mark out in this way the formulas
which spring up in his conversation, and which, collected together,
will give the public an idea of his instinctive synthesis, deduced from
life.
[5] The word _exalté_ has in this use no precise equivalent in English.
"Enthusiast," as the eighteenth century knew the word--that is, with
the infusion of a touch of lunacy--conies perhaps nearest.--TRANS.
[6] An observation noted by Mlle. Judith Cladel in her curious volume,
_Rodin, drawn from life._ (Éditions de La Plume, 1903.)
[7] Loïe Fuller has obtained, by means of stuffs not wetted, the
effects that the 'École' loves, because her plastic dance is logically
derived from nature.
IV
WORKS SINCE THE "BALZAC"--SMALL WORKS IN MARBLE--PLAN OF THE MONUMENT
TO LABOUR--DRAWINGS AND ETCHINGS
"I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls
me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, _Whim._ I hope it
is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in
explanation.... Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist ... must
not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must inquire if it be
goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.
Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world."
I quoted these high-minded words of Emerson's to Rodin at the time of
the _Balzac_ incident. "They are," I said to him, "the very epigraph
of your whole life." Nor have they ceased to epitomise the man and
the artist. From the time of the _Balzac_ Rodin's work has proceeded
very regularly and on the same principles. The _Victor Hugo_ is being
finished in marble, in its two versions, in the studio of the Rue de
l'Université. The group in which Hugo, his extended arm commanding
silence of the waves, sits surrounded by Muses is almost ready; the
other, in which Hugo, dreamily listening to the counsels of Iris,
stands on the edge of a rock washed by waves, amid which Nereids are
entwined, is not quite so far advanced. _The Gate of Hell_ is ready
to receive its finally chosen and ordered figures. In the Salon of
1902 Rodin exhibited the three _Shades_ from its summit, inspired by
the celebrated _Lasciate ogni speransa._ In 1900 Rodin only showed
two or three old productions at the Universal Exhibition, because his
work was collected in a special pavilion at the Rond-point de l'Alma,
the concession of which pavilion was made uncomfortable for him by
his colleagues, so much so that the artist was obliged to remove on
the very day of closing, with less delay and consideration allowed to
him than to the most unimportant industrial exhibitor. This special
exhibition was, nevertheless, a great international success for Rodin,
and the amazing development of his fame may be said to date from it.
Before 1900 Rodin stood in the position of an exceptional artist,
celebrated but envied, isolated and challenged, whose relations with
the Government were strained, whom a minority upheld, but on whom the
official world looked coldly. Since that time his eminence is so firmly
established that he now holds the rank that Puvis de Chavannes held
in the estimation of all artists. His triumphant journey to Prague
(1901-2), London's enthusiastic reception, and Rodin's recent election
to be President of the Society over which Whistler presided, have
finally given him the acknowledgment so long looked for. In 1903 his
marble bust of Hugo aroused enthusiasm, and at the Salon of 1904 the
colossal bronze _Thinker_ had a most flattering reception, and disarmed
the last of his former detractors.
A woman's bust accompanied _The Thinker_ to the Salon. Rodin, who does
portraits now and again, had previously made an admirable one of Mme.
Fenaille, wife of the art-patron who had been of such great service
to him; and he is attempting a curious variation of it. He has just
finished a bust of a helmeted Minerva, as impressive as a Donatello,
and this, too, is a portrait.
Various works have been produced by Rodin since the _Balzac,_ in
addition to the _Monument of President Sarmiento,_ which shows an
admirable bas-relief of a radiant Apollo. These works are nearly all
in marble, and small. It is almost impossible to describe and classify
them; a much larger book would be required, and my main purpose here
has been to give a general idea of Rodin's art and an explanation
of principles. I have spoken about some of his poems of the flesh,
especially that _Eternal Idol_, which will be the glory of thought
in modern sculpture. Rodin's recent works in marble have the same
inspiration. Some demand special notice: _The Hand of God,_ a gigantic
hand, between the fingers of which, and amid a handful of clay, two
beings are tenderly embracing; _Icarus,_ falling from the sky to be
crushed on the earth amid his whirling wings; several groups of lovers,
entwined, and breathing immeasurable tenderness, the most celebrated
of which is _Spring_ or _Love and Psyche._ Another _Psyche,_ alone,
is discovering Love asleep, with extraordinary restrained emotion;
and there are several attempts at _Poets and Muses,_ embracing or
consoling one another, as well as a splendid sketch of the _Magdalen
wiping Christ's Body with her Hair._ Rodin has thus sometimes touched
religious subjects, but with an undogmatic symbolism, philosophic
and wide. We may also enumerate another version in marble of the
_Nereids_ of the Hugo monument, a winged _Inspiration_ coming to
breathe upon the sleeping poet, and holding back the tips of her
wings with one hand lest she should make a sound in closing them; a
faun drawing towards him a nymph, who struggles in silent, fierce
resistance; two high-reliefs of _Summer_ and _Autumn_ in stone; tall
women with children, intended for the town of Evian, where Baron
Vitta is accumulating treasures of modern art; _Pygmalion_ beholding
his statue come to life, who, as soon as she feels herself live,
turns from him with a surprising movement of coquetry and aversion.
Such works as these cannot be described in words. In them Rodin has
excelled to an unparalleled degree in rendering the profoundest
psychological complexities, refined intentions, and the hesitations
of feeling. I will further note a sketch of _Sappho_, seated at
rest, with her arms leaning upon two little naked women, which is a
work inspired equally by the Greeks and by the eighteenth century;
it bears witness to the artist's wish of avoiding the massive, and
making as many holes as possible within the general block, so as to
give lightness and to allow a circulation of light, as the Greeks
did in works that were meant to stand against a background of sea or
of sky. Many studies of men and women crouching, or squatting, in
curious attitudes, recall the art of the Japanese bronzes, which Rodin
immensely admires. We must further note some groups of _Women Damned,_
in which Rodin's art attains the highest point of voluptuous tension,
audacious suggestiveness, and tragic eagerness of the flesh aspiring
to impossible delight. This whole world of figures is ruled by the
same lyrical and poetic imagination, the same symbolism incarnated
in impeccable forms. Everywhere we find the same nervous art,
agitating, sad, and ardent in its voluptuous character, expressing the
insatiability of human souls; the aspiration of a troubled time towards
an ideality which would deliver it from the solicitations of pessimism;
the hope of escape by the way of desire; and love sought for in the
over-excitement of neurosis. Rodin, gloomy psychologist of passion,
understands the disease of the age, and at the same time pities it; a
true thinker, he extracts its mournful beauty without ceasing to retain
faith, admiration, and affection for the human creature. Bending over
life and over his work, he is himself his own _Thinker_, attentive and
reverent before an unknown and terrible divinity. Never did any other
sculptor attempt to vivify his art with such intellectual superiority
and by such meditations, and Rodin is at once the most realistic and
most metaphysical of poets in stone and bronze.
[Illustration: ISIS]
Two or three works of more important dimensions stand out from his
recent productions; besides a nude female torso (in bronze) of
startling truthfulness, and two plaster studies that astonished at
the Salons, and besides _The Christian Martyr_, so masterly in its
modelling, Rodin has continued to work at his _Ugolino,_ taken out of
_The Gate of Hell_, and has put the finishing touch to two plans. One
of these is the _Monument to Labour_, a grand conception, which one may
dream of seeing carried out and rising up in some square of busy Paris,
but which want of money will prevent from ever being realised. It is a
column upon a vast rectangular base, with a crypt in it. Two colossal
figures of _Night_ and _Day_ would stand at the entrance. In the crypt
would be shown, in bas-relief, different subterranean works--mining,
etc. Around the column would run a covered spiral staircase, and upon
the column itself would be figured in bas-reliefs all the various
manifestations of labour, so that as one ascended the stairs all the
divers phases of human genius could be successively studied. On the
top would hover the _Benedictions_, two--winged spirits, descended
from heaven, which are already executed in marble on a small scale,
and are among Rodin's finest conceptions. This colossal project was
conceived as long ago as 1897. The rough model is in the studio at
Meudon-Val-Fleury.
[Illustration: NUDE STUDY]
The monument to Puvis de Chavannes was entrusted to his friend Rodin,
and is already finished. Rodin conceived it in an original and charming
way. Instead of making the customary statue, he considered the purely
Greek quality of Puvis' genius and chose to pay homage to him in a form
reproduced from the antique. The bust of the great painter is placed
on a plain table, as the ancients placed those of their dead upon
little domestic altars. A fine tree loaded with fruit bends over and
shades the head. Leaning on the table behind the bust is a beautiful
naked youth, who sits dreaming in a well-chosen supple attitude. The
whole design is intimate, gentle, and pure. Placed on the ground in a
garden this votive monument would show how much delicacy and caressing
lightness sometimes lies in Rodin's sombre and pathetic thoughts.