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.
[Illustration: RODIN'S HOUSE AND STUDIO AT MEUDON.]
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.