In Rodin's statues we find his conception of eternal man--man
as he really is. They are molded on modern thought, with all its
variations. One might suppose that these beautiful beings of marble
and bronze had been named by the characteristic poets of the
century, Victor Hugo, Musset, Baudelaire.
Beginning with the Renaissance and particularly during the
seventeenth century, the royal courts were the great salons in
which the taste of the day was developed. Necessity made courtiers
of the artists, for to obtain orders, they had to win the good-will
of the sovereigns, the great lords, and the financiers.
Art then lost its collective character, the artist his
independence and strength. There was no longer the united effort of
artists, inspired by love of beauty, to create great masterpieces
such as cathedrals, city halls, and castles. The artist wasted his
abilities in fragmentary bits, his time in worldly duties. To-day
it is even worse. Keeping house, traveling, receiving, exhibiting
in a hundred different places, living in great style, carrying on
his life-work--all these crowd out the first, and formerly the
essential, object of the artist, his work. It is these that lower
art to the last degree of decadence.
Rodin has kept aloof from this manner of living, has avoided
these innumerable occasions for wasting time, or, rather, has never
allowed them to take possession of him. Modest, unpretentious,
traveling little or within a limited radius, the unremitting study
of the divine model and of the masterpiece, man, forms his whole
ambition, while it is also the source of endless delight to him.
"Admiration," he says, "is a joy daily kindled afresh," and again,
"I talk out of the fullness of life; it belongs to me in a sense
larger than that of ownership."
In his villa at Meudon, in the midst of his collections of
antiques, he pursues this study incessantly. He who is admitted to
the modest garden of the great master first beholds with delight a
Greek marble in an arbor. At the turn of a path there is the torso
of a goddess resting on an antique column; in a niche in the wall,
a Roman bust. Beneath the high arch of the peristyle of the studio,
the architecture of which blends into the surrounding background
as in the paintings of Claude Lorrain, there is a magnificent
torso. Finally dominating the garden and the valley it overlooks,
standing on a knoll and projected against the clear sky, there is
an isolated façade from a castle of the seventeenth century, its
delicate balustrades and casements outlined against the blue sky as
in the decorative paintings of Paul Veronese.
These ruins are the remains of the Château d'Issy, the work of
Mansart. Rodin saved them at the moment when their destruction at
the hands of ignorant workmen was imminent, and at great expense
reconstructed them near his residence. These fragments, this noble
portico, seem as though placed by chance, but the keen observer
quickly perceives the correctness of taste that has determined
their disposition. Each fragment forms part of an ensemble with
the trees, the grass, the light, and the shadows, and to change
any of these in the slightest degree would sacrifice some of its
beauty. Sculpture at its finest is architecture, and architecture
is perhaps the greatest art, because it collaborates directly with
nature. Architecture lives through the life of things, and every
hour of the day lends it a new expression.
Innumerable reflections were aroused in the mind of the master
Rodin when he essayed to place his treasures: the effect of the
changing light on the object, the balancing of values, the relation
of proper proportions, the appearance of the object in full light.
All these he examined and studied, and he searched into the depths
of the language of forms, to him as clear and as mysterious as
beautiful music. This remarkable gift for determining the value of
the object in its setting--a gift the secret of which is beyond the
knowledge of the ignorant--has brought forth that peculiar poetic
charm which permeates this little garden in a suburb of Paris,
a refuge of persecuted beauty. Here the master confers with the
artists of Greece and France of other days. These are his Elysian
Fields.
In Paris, where he is daily and where he works every
afternoon, he lives in an exquisite, but ruinous, mansion of the
eighteenth century, situated in a rustic, neglected park. There he
finds his delight in the study of flowers and applies himself to
it with his intense, never-dormant desire for understanding. His
antique pottery is filled with anemones, carnations, and tulips.
During his frugal meals they are before him, and his reverent
love of them arouses his desire to understand them as completely
as he does human beings. He analyzes and searches out their
details without becoming insensible to the beauty of the whole.
He jots down his discoveries, his words picture them; like La
Rochefoucauld, he searches into their character; but watching over
their life admiringly and tenderly until they wither, he does not
dissect them, does not destroy them.
Is not the flower the queen of ornaments, the inspiration of
all races and ages, the very soul of artistic decoration? Have not
the hands of genius contrived to employ the most durable as well
as the most fragile material to express this delicate beauty in
Greek and Gothic capitals, in the stone lacework of cathedrals, the
fabrics of gold and silk, brocades, tapestries, wrought iron-work,
old bindings? Is the splendor of stained-glass windows aught else
than the splendor of a mass of beautiful flowers?
[Illustration: THE BATH.]
"Were this thoroughly understood," says Rodin, "industrial art
would be entirely revolutionized--industrial art, that barbarous
term, an art which concerns itself with commerce and profit.
"The young artists of to-day understand nothing; they copy to
satiety the classic ornaments and designs, and reproduce them in
so cold a manner that they lose all meaning. The ancients obtained
their designs from nature. They found their models in the garden,
even in the vegetable garden. They drew their inspiration from its
source. The cabbage-leaf, the oak-leaf, the clover, the thistle,
and the brier are the motives of the Gothic capital. It is not
photographic truth, but living truth, that we must seek in art."
Rodin writes his observations. He notes them down at the
moment as they occur to him in all their freshness, and in this
form they will be given here. At first glance, the reader may be
surprised at their apparently fragmentary form. They may seem
devoid of general continuity, but when one comprehends the great
master's method, one sees that a bond much firmer than that of the
mere word binds them together. They seem disjointed because here,
as in his sculpture, the artist accepts only the essential, and
rejects all superfluous detail. In reality they have the continuity
of life, which is felt, but not seen, and which renders arbitrary
transition unnecessary. This is the prerogative of genius, while
all else is within the grasp of any one. His authority strikes us
dumb; it puts to rout mere commonplace cleverness.
* * * * *
I have had primroses put in this little flower-pot. They are a bit
crowded, and their poor little stems are prisoners; they are no longer
in their garden.
I look at them on my table like a vivisector. I admire their beautiful
leaves, round-headed, vigorous, like peasants. They point toward me, and
between them is the flower. The one on this side is resigned, and as
beautiful as a caryatid. In profile it seems to hold up the leaf against
which it leans and which gives it shade.
These little flowers are not beautiful, nor are they radiant. They
live peaceably, gently contented in their misery; and yet they offer
something to one who is ill, as I am to-day, and cause him to write to
ward off weariness.
I always have flowers in the morning, and make no distinction between
them and my models.
Many flowers together are like women with heads bowed down.
There is no longer the sap of life in flowers in a vase.
The lace work of the flower of the elder-tree--Venice.
The anemone is only an eye, cruelly melancholy. It is the eye of a woman
who has been badly used.
These anemones are flowers that have stayed up too late at night;
flowers that are resplendent, with their colors as though spread over
them superficially and wiped away. Even in the spring, in the hour of
anticipation, they are already in the fullness of enjoyment.
Like the flower of seduction, the anemones slowly change their form
outlined in various ways, always restrained, however, and inclosed
within their sphere. Their petals have not a common destiny: some curl
up, others are like a becoming collaret, still others seem to be running
away. The delicate droop of the petals, standing out in relief, is like
the eyelid of a child.
Although old, that one does not shed its petals. Poor little flower with
bent head, you are not ridiculous; you are pensive now that you are
dying. You suffer from the cruelty of the stem which holds you back.
Flowers give their lives to us; they should be placed in Persian vases.
Near them, gold and silver seem of no value.
Ah, dear friends, we must love you if we would have you speak to us!
We must watch you or you fall from the vase, despairing, your leaves
withered.
The flowers and the vase harmonize by contrast.
In this bouquet there are some with flexible stems which seem to leap up
gracefully. The flower, surrounded by its frail, straight leaves, is as
if suspended from the ledge of a wrought-iron balcony.
Ah, the adorable heart of Adonis is incased within these flowers!
The hyacinth is like a balustrade placed upside down. A bed of
hyacinths resembles a mass of balusters. Thus that great invention
of the Renaissance, the balustrade, allows us to gain through it
a glimpse of nature. This ray of art, the flower, this delicate
inspiration, unknowingly requires the intelligence of man to develop its
possibilities.
Superb is this little rose-like flower among its spreading leaves. It is
like an assumption.
The double narcissus is a bird's-nest viewed from above. Strange
flowers, like so many throats! What a frail marvel they are!
These three little narcissi group themselves like a cluster of electric
lights.
The dignity of nature impresses us on every hand. It is greatly apparent
in flowers; and yet so small are they that some look on them merely as
the decoration at a banquet.