frame and wings of the "Gates of Hell." Rodin made choice after choice
and eliminated everything that was too solitary to subject itself
to the great totality; everything that was not quite necessary was
rejected. He made the figures and groups find their own places; he
observed the life of the people that he had created, listened to them
and left every one to his will. Thus year after year the world of this
gate grew. Its surface to which plastic forms were attached began to
live. And as the reliefs became softer and softer the excitement of the
figures died away into the surface. In the frame there is from both
sides an ascension, a mutual uplifting; in the wings of the gates the
predominating motion is a falling, gliding and precipitating. The wings
recede somewhat and their upper edge is separated from the projecting
edge of the cross-frame by a large surface. Before the silent, closed
room of this surface is placed the figure of "The Thinker," the man who
realizes the greatness and terror of the spectacle about him, because
he _thinks_ it. He sits absorbed and silent, heavy with thought: with
all the strength of an acting man he thinks. His whole body has become
head and all the blood in his veins has become brain. He occupies the
center of the Gate. Above him, on the top of the frame, are three male
figures; they stand with heads bent together as though overlooking a
great depth; each stretches out an arm and points toward the abyss
which drags them ever downward. The Thinker must bear this weight
within himself.
Among the groups and figures that have been modeled for this Gate are
many of great beauty. It is impossible to enumerate all of them as it
is impossible to describe them. Rodin himself once said that he would
have to speak for one year in order to recreate one of his works in
words.
These small figures which are preserved in plaster, bronze and stone,
like some animal figures of the Antique, give the impression of being
quite large. There is in Rodin's studio the cast of a panther, a Greek
work hardly as large as a hand (the original of which is in the cabinet
of Medallions in the National Library of Paris); as one stands in front
of this beast and looks under its body into the room formed by the four
strong, supple paws, one seems to look into the depth of an Indian
stone temple. As this work grows and extends itself to the greatness
of its suggestion, so the small plastic figures of Rodin convey the
sense of largeness. By the play of innumerably many surfaces and by the
perfect and decisive planes, he creates an effect of magnitude. The
atmosphere about these figures is like that which surrounds rocks. An
upward sweep of lines seems to lift up the heavens, the flight of their
fall to tear down the stars.
At this time, perhaps, the Danaide was created, a figure that has
thrown itself from a kneeling position down into a wealth of flowing
hair. It is wonderful to walk slowly about this marble, to follow
the long line that curves about the richly unfolded roundness of the
back to the face that loses itself in the stone as though in a great
weeping, and to the hand which like a broken flower speaks softly
once more of life that lies deep under the eternal ice of the block.
"Illusion," the daughter of Icarus, is a luminous materialization of
a long, helpless fall. The beautiful group that is called "L'homme
et sa pensée" is the representation of a man who kneels and with the
touch of his forehead upon the stone before him awakens the silent form
of a woman who remains imprisoned in the stone. In this group one is
impressed with the expression of the inseparableness with which the
man's thought clings to his forehead; for it is his thought that lives
and is always present before him, the thought which takes shape in the
stone.
The work most nearly related to this in conception is the head that
musingly and silently frees itself from a block. "La Pensée" is a
transcendent vision of life that rises slowly out of the heavy sleep of
the stone.
"The Caryatid" is no more the erect figure that bears lightly or
unyieldingly the heaviness of the marble. A woman's form kneels
crouching, as though bent by the burden, the weight of which sinks with
a continuous pressure into all the figure's limbs. Upon every smallest
part of this body the whole stone lies like the insistence of a will
that is greater, older and more powerful, a pressure, which it is the
fate of this body to continue to endure. The figure bears its burden as
we bear the impossible in dreams from which we can find no escape. Even
the sinking together of the failing figure expresses this pressure; and
when a greater weariness forces the body down to a lying posture, it
will even then still be under the pressure of this weight, bearing it
without end. Such is the "Caryatid."
One may always explain, accompany and surround Rodin's works with
thoughts. For all to whom simple contemplation is too difficult and
unaccustomed a road to beauty there are other roads, detours leading
to meanings that are noble, great, complete. The infinite correctness
of these creations, the perfect balance of all their movements, the
wonderful inward justice of their proportions, their penetration into
life--all that makes them beautiful--gives them the strength of being
unsurpassable materializations of the ideas which the master called
into being when he named them. Rodin lived near his work and, like the
custodian of a Museum, continuously evolved from it new meanings. One
learns much from his interpretations but in the contemplation of these
works, alone and undisturbed, one gathers a still fuller and richer
understanding of them.
Where the first suggestion comes from some definite subject, where an
ancient tale, a passage from a poem, an historical scene or some real
person is the inspiration, the subject matter transforms itself more
and more into reality during the process of the work. Translated into
the language of the hands, the interpretations acquire entirely new
characteristics which develop into plastic fulfilment. The drawings
of Rodin prepare the way for the sculptural work by transforming and
changing the suggestions. In this Art, too, Rodin has cultivated his
own methods of expression. The individuality of these drawings--there
are many hundreds of them--presents an independent and original
manifestation of his artistic personality.
There are from an earlier period water colours with surprisingly
strong effects of light and shade, such as the famous "Homme au
Taureau", which reminds one of Rembrandt. The head of the young "St.
Jean Baptiste" and the shrieking mask for the "Genius of War"--all
these are sketches and studies which helped the artist to recognize
the life of surfaces and their relationship to the atmosphere. There
are drawings that are done with a direct certainty, forms complete
in all their contours, drawn in with many quick strokes of the pen;
there are others enclosed in the melody of a single vibrating outline.
Rodin, acceding to the wish of a collector, has illustrated with his
drawings one copy of the "Fleurs du Mal." To speak of expressing a
fine understanding of Baudelaire's verses, conveys no meaning; more is
conveyed if it is recalled that these poems in their fulness do not
admit of supplement. Yet in spite of this one feels an enhancement
where Rodin's lines interpret this work, such is the measure of the
overpowering beauty of these drawings. The pen and ink drawing that
is placed opposite the poem "La Mort des Pauvres" exceeds these great
verses with so simple and ever-growing a breadth of meaning that the
sweep of its lines seems to include the universal. This quality of
enhancement is also found in the dry-point etchings, in which the
course of infinitely tender lines appears to flow with an absolute
accuracy of movement over the underlying essence of form, like the
outer markings of some beautiful crystalline thing.
The strange documents of the momentary and of the unnoticeably
passing, originated at this time. Rodin assumed that if caught quickly,
the simple movements of the model when he believes himself unobserved,
contain the strength of an expression which is not surmised, because
one is not wont to follow it with intense and constant attention. By
not permitting his eyes to leave the model for an instant, and by
allowing his quick and trained hand free play over the drawing paper
Rodin seized an enormous number of never before observed and hitherto
unrecorded gestures of which the radiating force of expression was
immense. Conjoining movements that had been overlooked and unrecognized
as a whole, represented and contained all the directness, force and
warmth of animal life. A brush full of ochre outlined the contours with
quickly changing accentuation, modeled the enclosed surface with such
incredible force that the drawing appears like a figure in terra cotta.
And again a new depth was discovered full of unsurmised life; a depth
over which echoing steps had passed and which gave its waters only to
him whose hands possessed the magic wand that disclosed its secret.
In portraiture the pictorial expression of the theme belonged to the
preparation from which Rodin proceeded slowly to the completion of the
work. For erroneous as it is to see in Rodin's plastic art a kind
of Impressionism, it is the multitude of precisely and boldly seized
impressions that is always the great treasure from which he ultimately
chooses the important and necessary, in order to comprehend his work
in its perfect synthesis. As he proceeds from the bodies to the faces
it must seem to him as though he stepped from a wind-swept distance
into a room in which many men are gathered. Here everything is crowded
and dim and the mood of an interior predominates under the arches of
the brow and in the shadows of the mouth. Over the bodies there is
always change, an ebb and flood like the dashing of waves. The faces
possess an atmosphere like that of rooms in which many things have
happened, joyous and tragic incidents, experiences deadening or full of
expectation. No event has entirely passed, none has taken the place of
the other, one has been placed beside the other and has remained there
and has withered like a flower in a glass. But he who comes from the
open out of the great wind brings distance into the room.
The mask of "The Man with the Broken Nose" was the first portrait that
Rodin modeled. In this work his individual manner of portraying a
face is entirely formed. One feels his admitted devotion to reality,
his reverence for every line that fate has drawn, his confidence in
life that creates even where it disfigures. In a kind of blind faith
he sculptured "L'Homme au Nez Cassé" without asking who the man
was who lived again in his hands. He made this mask as God created
the first man, without intention of presenting anything save Life
itself--immeasurable Life. But he returned to the faces of men with
an ever-growing, richer and greater knowledge. He could not look upon
their features without thinking of the days that had left their impress
upon them, without dwelling upon the army of thoughts that worked
incessantly upon a face, as though it could never be finished. From a
silent and conscientious observation of life, the mature man, at first
groping and experimenting, became more and more sure and audacious
in his understanding and interpretation of the script with which the
faces were covered. He did not give rein to his imagination, he did
not invent, he did not neglect for a moment the hard struggle with his
tools. It would have been easy to surmount, as if with wings, these
difficulties. He walked side by side with his work over the far and
distant stretches that had to be covered, like the plough-man behind
his plough. While he traced his furrows, he meditated over his land,
the depth of it, the sky above it, the flights of the winds and the
fall of the rains; considered all that existed and passed by and
returned and ceased not to be. He recognized in all this the eternal,
and becoming less and less perplexed by the many things, he perceived
the one great thing for which grief was good, and heaviness promised
maternity, and pain became beautiful.
The interpretation of this perception began with the portraits, and
from that time penetrated ever deeper into his work. It is the last
step, the last cycle in his development. Rodin began slowly and with
infinite precaution entered upon this new road. He advanced from
surface to surface following Nature's laws. Nature herself pointed out
to him, as it were, the places in which he saw more than was visible.
He evolved one great simplification out of many confusions as Christ
brought unity into the confusion of a guilty people by the revelation
of a sublime parable. He fulfilled an intention of nature, completed
something that was helpless in its growth. He disclosed the coherences
as a clear evening following a misty day unveils the mountains which
rise in great waves out of the far distance.
Full of the vital abundance of his knowledge, he penetrated into the
faces of those that lived about him, like a prophet of the future.
This intuitive quality gives to his portraits the clear accuracy and at
the same time the prophetic greatness which rises to such indescribable
perfection in the figures of Victor Hugo and of Balzac. To create an
image meant to Rodin to seek eternity in a countenance, that part of
eternity with which the face was allied in the great course of things
eternal. Each face that he has modeled he has lifted out of the bondage
of the present into the freedom of the future, as one holds a thing
up toward the light of the sky in order to understand its purer and
simpler forms. Rodin's conception of Art was not to beautify or to
give a characteristic expression, but to separate the lasting from the
transitory, to sit in judgment, to be just.
Beside the etchings, his portrait work embraces a great number of
finished and masterly drawings. There are busts in plaster, in bronze,
in marble and in sand-stone, heads and masks in terra cotta. Portraits
of women occur again and again through all the periods of his work.
The famous bust of the Luxembourg is one of the earliest. This bust is
full of individual life, of a certain beautiful, womanly charm, but it
is surpassed in simplicity and concentration by many later works. It
is, perhaps, the only bust which possesses a beauty not absolutely
characteristic of Rodin's work. This portrait survives partly because
of a certain graciousness which has been hereditary for centuries
in French plastic art. It shines somewhat with the elegance of the
inferior sculptures of French tradition; it is not quite free from
that gallant conception of the "belle femme" beyond which the serious
and the deeply penetrating work of Rodin grew so quickly. One should
remember that he had to overcome the ancestral conception, had to
suppress an inborn capacity for this flowing grace in order to begin
his work quite simply. He must not cease to be a Frenchman; the master
builders of the cathedrals were also Frenchmen.
His later sculptures of women have a different beauty, more deeply
founded and less traditional. Rodin has, for the most part, executed
portraits of foreign women, especially American women. There are among
these busts some of wonderful craftsmanship, marbles that are like
pure and perfect antique cameos. Faces whose smiles play softly over
the features like veils that seem to rise and fall with every breath;
strangely half-closed lips and eyes which seem to look dreamily into
the bright effulgence of an everlasting moonlit night. To Rodin the
face of a woman seems to be a part of her beautiful body. He conceives
the eyes of the face to be eyes of the body, and the mouth the mouth
of the body. When he creates both face and body as a whole, the face
radiates so vital an expression of life that these portraits of women
seem prophetic.
The portraits of men are different. The essence of a man can be more
easily imagined to be concentrated within the limits of his face; there
are moments of calm and of inward excitement in which all life seems
to have entered into his face. Rodin chooses or rather creates these
moments when he models a man's portrait. He searches far back for
individuality or character, does not yield to the first impression,
nor to the second, nor to any of those following. He observes and
makes notes; he records almost unnoticeable moments, turnings and
semi-turnings of many profiles from many perspectives. He surprises his
model in relaxation and in effort, in his habitual as well as in his
impulsive expressions; he catches expressions which are but suggested.
He comprehends transitions in all their phases, knows from whence the
smile comes and why it fades. The face of man is to him like a scene
in a drama in which he himself takes part. Nothing that occurs is
indifferent to him or escapes him. He does not urge the model to tell
him anything, he does not wish to know aught save that which he sees.
He sees everything.
Thus a long time passes during the creation of each work. The
conception evolves partly through drawings, seized with a few strokes
of the pen or a few lines of the brush, partly from memory. For Rodin
has trained his memory to be a means of assistance as dependable as
it is comprehensive. During the hours in which the model poses he
perceives much more than he can execute. Often after the model has
left him the real work begins to take form from out the fulness of his
memory. The impressions do not change within it but accustom themselves
to their dwelling-place and rise from it into his hands as though they
were the natural gestures of these hands.
This manner of work leads to an intense comprehension of hundreds
and hundreds of moments of life. And such is the impression produced
by these busts. The many wide contrasts and the unexpected changes
which comprise man and man's continuous development here join together
with an inner strength. All the heights and depths of being, all the
climates of temperament of these men are concentrated and unfold
themselves on the hemispheres of their heads. There is the bust of
Dalou in whom a nervous fatigue vibrates side by side with a tenacious
energy. There is Henry Rochefort's adventurous mask, and there is
Octave Mirabeau in whom behind a man of action dawns a poet's dream
and longing, and Puvis de Chavannes, and Victor Hugo whom Rodin knows
so well; and there is above all the indescribably beautiful bronze
portrait bust of the painter Jean Paul Laurens which is, perhaps, the
most beautiful thing in the Luxembourg Museum. This bust is penetrated
by such deep feeling, there is such tender modeling of the surface, it
is so fine in carriage, so intense in expression, so moved and so awake
that it seems as if Nature had taken this work out of the sculptor's
hands to claim it as one of her most precious possessions. The gleam
and sparkle of the metal that breaks like fire through the smoke-black
patina coating adds much to make perfect the unique beauty of this work.
There is also a bust of Bastien Lepage, beautiful and melancholy with
the expression of the suffering of the man whose realization is a
continuous departure from his conception. This bust was executed for
Damvillers, the little home village of the painter, and was placed
there in the churchyard as a monument.
In their breadth of conception these busts of Rodin's have something
of the monumental in them. To this quality is added a greater
simplification of the surfaces, and a still more severe choice of the
necessary with a view to perspective and placement. The monuments which
Rodin has created approach more and more these requirements. He began
with the monument of Claude Gelée for Nancy, and there is a steep
ascent from this first interesting production to the grandiose triumph
of Balzac.
Several of the monuments by Rodin were sent to America. The most
mature of them was destroyed during the disturbances in Chile before
it reached its destination. This was the equestrian statue of General
Lynch. Like the lost masterpiece of Leonardo, which it resembled
perhaps in the force of expression and in the wonderfully vital unity
of man and horse, this statue was not to be preserved. A small copy
in plaster in Rodin's museum at Meudon shows that it was the plastic
portrait of a lean man who rises commandingly in his saddle, not in
the brutal, tyrannical manner of a condottiere but with the nervous
excitement of one who exercises the power of command only in office but
who is not ordinarily wont to use this authority. The forward-pointing
hand of the General rises out of the mass of the monument, out of man
and animal.
This gesture of command gives to the statue of Victor Hugo its
memorable power and majesty. The gesture of the aged man's strong, live
hand raised commandingly toward the ocean does not come from the poet
alone but descends from the summit of the whole group as though from a
mountain on which it had prayed before it spoke. Victor Hugo is here
the exile, the solitary of Guernsey. The muses that surround him are
like thoughts of his solitude become visible. Rodin has conveyed this
impression through the intensification and concentration of the figures
about the poet. By converging the points of contact Rodin has succeeded
in creating the impression that these wonderfully vibrant figures are
parts of the sitting man. They move about him like great gestures made
some time during his life, gestures that were so beautiful and young
that a goddess granted them the grace not to perish but to endure for
ever in the forms of beautiful women.
Rodin made sketches and studies of the figure of the poet. At the
time of the receptions in the Hotel Lusignan he observed from a
window and made notes of hundreds and hundreds of movements and of
the changing expressions of the animated face of the old man. These
preparations resulted in the several portraits of Hugo which Rodin
modeled. The monument itself embodied a still deeper interpretation.
All these single impressions he gathered together, and as Homer created
a perfect poem out of many rhapsodies, so he created from all the
pictures in his memory, this one portrait. And to this last picture
he gave the greatness of the legendary. Myth-like it might return
to a fantastically towering rock in the sea in whose strange forms
far-removed peoples see life asleep.
The most supreme instance of Rodin's power of exalting a past event to
the height of the imperishable, whenever historical subjects or forms
demand to live again in his art, is found perhaps in "The Citizens of
Calais." The suggestion for this group was taken from a few passages
in the chronicles of Froissart that tell the story of the City of
Calais at the time it was besieged by the English king, Edward the
Third. The king, not willing to withdraw from the city, then on the
verge of starvation, ultimately consents to release it if six of its
most noble citizens deliver themselves into the hands "that he may
do with them according to his will." He demands that they leave the
city bare-headed, clad only in their shirts, with a rope about their
necks and the keys of the city and of the citadel in their hands.
The chronicler describes the scene in the city. He relates how the
burgomaster, Messire Jean de Vienne, orders the bells to be rung and
the citizens to assemble in the market place. They hear the final
message and wait in expectation and in silence. Then heroes rise
among them, the chosen ones, who feel the call to die. The wailing
and weeping of the multitude rises from the words of the chronicler,
who seems to be touched for the moment and to write with a trembling
pen. But he composes himself once more and mentions four of the heroes
by name; two of the names he forgets. He says that one man was the
wealthiest citizen of the city and that another possessed authority
and wealth and "had two beautiful maidens for daughters"; of the third
he only knows that he was rich in possessions and heritage, and of
the fourth that he was the brother of the third. He reports that they
removed all their clothing save their shirts, that they tied ropes
about their necks and thus departed with the keys of the city and of
the citadel. He tells how they came to the King's camp and of how
harshly the King received them and how the executioner stood beside
them when the King, at the request of the Queen, gave them back their
lives. "He listened to his wife," says Froissart, "because she was very
pregnant." The chronicle does not continue further.