Part 14

The subject chosen by Rodin for his decorative panels, then, was hell--hell as Dante conceived it in a vision that lends itself, for that matter, marvelously to a plastic realization. The "Gate" would be a poem, an immense sculptured poem; that is to say, a résumé of the attitudes and gestures of life called forth by the release of the passions, a strange catalogue of the expressions of the human body under the shock of sorrow and of joy. If the imagination of Rodin caught fire like that of a visionary, he remained beyond everything and above everything the sculptor, and he plunged immediately into the search for the general scheme of the work.

The truth of the movements, the poetry of the evocations, his models would give him; he could feel at ease as to that: the resources that nature would offer him were inexhaustible. But the plan, that he must find himself; he must do the work of the builder, almost of the geometrician. There could be no self-deception as to that. The fuller the ornamentation was to be of figures and movements, the more solid must be the frame of the immense picture, the more vigorous and compact must be the general plan of the work.

Rodin's mind wavered between two great schools, that of the Renaissance and that of the Middle Ages, that which had produced the doors of the baptistry at Florence and that to which we owe the portals of the Gothic cathedrals.

The celebrated gates of Florence are a series of bas-reliefs arranged symmetrically in a regular framework; they present a series of separate pictures having no common bond except their subject. The execution is admirable, and it is perhaps impossible to surpass it. Lorenzo Ghiberti has done there the work of an incomparable modeler, actually a goldsmith; but he has in no way troubled himself with regard to architecture. Now, architecture is the great French point of view. The Roman and the Gothic have placed in their monument (the church) that other monument (the portal). The portal is complete in itself; the art of the sculptor and that of the architect have united and become indistinguishable here in order to realize an absolute beauty.

Rodin, profoundly French, inheriting the instinct and taste of his ancestors the master-masons, having to compose a door, was fated to conceive a portal. On the other hand, he could not escape the influence of the antique, the result of his early studies. This was the entirely different element which in the course of the work he had undertaken was to mingle with the Gothic element.

It was not the first time that the mingling of these two great conceptions of art had occurred in France. From it had sprung our Renaissance sculpture; in that epoch the sculpture of the Greeks united itself with the Gothic architecture, the Hellenic sunlight brought to blossom the majesty of our monuments. Does not Rodin himself, with his vast outlook over the whole field of art, call this period of national art, the sixteenth century, the French Gothic?

"The Gate of Hell," then, took on in its general structure a Renaissance aspect. It preserves the graceful line of the Gothic portal and has the luminous whiteness inspired by Greek sculpture. This singular work has touched all contemporary artists. Most of our writers have described it, and, after them, the critics of other countries. This living multitude, this suffering, groaning multitude that covers the two panels with a thousand passionate movements, has drawn into its magic whirlpool the world of literature, which has been able to liberate itself only by means of innumerable printed pages. The poem of Dante has come forth as it were revivified from the hands of Rodin. Fresh tears, one would say, have bathed the most poignant passages; the pity of a man of to-day, of one like ourselves, our brother, has enveloped the terrible work of the Florentine poet, that man of the Middle Ages, with an atmosphere of tenderness and compassion which seems the emotion of Christianity at its purest, its original source. In order to become our own, it has passed through the great soul of Rodin. It is not surprising, then, that the sensibility of our artists, reanimated by this new spectacle, should be touched to so voluminous an expression by this haunting work.

But what has not been sufficiently remarked is that the "Gate" is, above everything, a piece of architecture of the highest order.

When we see it we are at once struck with an impression of majesty, of calm strength and plenitude. It seems even longer than it actually is. It is a rectangle six meters high and two and a half meters wide, but the source of the illusion is the justness of the proportions and the value of the masses.

The powerful frame is furrowed with deep depressions. It rests on the ground upon a strong base from which rise the two door-posts, as robust as pillars and mounting together toward the summit. A pediment in the shape of an entablature overhangs the entire monument, casting over it a deep shadow full of nuances; and it is this shadow, skilfully graduated, that gives to the work its rich, soft color. The body of the portal is divided into two panels; a vast tympanum surmounts them transversally. This tympanum, surmounted by a large cornice, dominates the work. Without weighing it down, it gives it its mass, it attracts, it obsesses, the eye; it is the soul of the edifice, its intellect. No word can more justly describe it than the word brow, for it is magnetic, haunting, mysterious, like the forehead of a man of genius.

The panels sink deep into a shadow that is heavy, but not harsh, while in the foreground the pillars advance into the light; the delicate bas-reliefs that cover them keep them in a silvery atmosphere, the source of the great softness which envelopes this work, otherwise severe and tragic, the source of the fugitive lightness of the lines, which strike up from the earth toward the somber and tormented upper regions.

Carried away by this marvelous technic, the spirit of the visitor succumbs; it follows this ascending movement of the door-posts, to lose itself in the sorrowful dream sculptured on the tympanum.

On the panel writhe the clusters of human figures, the eddies of the multitude of damned souls pursued by the rage of the elements, by the devouring tongues of the infernal fire, by the frozen waters, by the wind that tears them and stings them. "It is," says the eminent art critic Gustave Jeffroy, in the most beautiful pages that have been consecrated to a description of this work, "the dizzy whirl, the falling through space, the groveling on the face of the earth of a whole wretched humanity obstinately persisting in living and suffering, bruised and wounded in its flesh, saddened in its soul, crying aloud its griefs, harshly laughing through its tears, chanting its breathless fears, its sickly joys, its ecstatic sorrows."

The genius of Rodin became intoxicated with all the resources of his art. Master of a technic of the first order, he delighted in every kind of effect, arranging them as a great symphonist arranges the instruments of an immense orchestra. Low-relief, half-relief, high-relief, and sculpture in the round, he omitted none. He did not yield to the literary temptation. At the height of his fever of invention he was circumspect, measured, guided by his knowledge as a modeler. The poet thinks, but the carver speaks; he speaks justly, he speaks admirably, because he uses only his own true and personal language, which he knows from the ground up. That is the whole secret of the way in which this man inflames our soul and subjugates our imagination.

Two principal notes, two motives form, above the whirlwind of the infernal fires, a resting-place for the eye troubled by so much vehemence: one, in the midst of the tympanum, is the figure of Dante. It is Dante, but it is even more the eternal poet. Seated, leaning over the abyss of suffering, thrilled with anguish, he seems to seek in the very depths of the pit itself the word of infinite pity that will deliver this sorrowful humanity.

Higher yet, above his bowed head, rising suddenly from the frame and splayed in a large protuberance, a group of three entwined figures crowns and completes the brow. With the same despairing gesture they point to the multitude of the damned. One does not know what these shuddering beings are, but they have the sweetness of angels; at once we seem to hear their lips murmur the words of the grand Florentine, "_Lasciate ogni speranza_"; but across their forms, their compassionate forms, their fraternal forms, one feels passing a tremor of love and pity. Far from condemning, their clasped hands offer to the sad wreckage of fatality that writhes at their feet a sign, a unique sign, the sign of good-will of pity.

* * * * *

"The Gate of Hell" was shown only once to the public. This was at the Universal Exposition of 1900. Although it was nearly finished, it was seen then only in an incomplete state.

The day of the opening arrived before the master had been able to have placed on the _fronton_ and on the panels of his monument the hundreds of great and small figures destined for their ornamentation. People saw the "Gate," then in the nudity of its construction, grandiose assuredly, but despoiled of its extraordinary raiment of sculpture.

That day was a sad one for the true friends of art and of Rodin. A band of snobs, full of their own importance, crowded about the great man. Having considered the work with the hasty and casual glance of men of the world of the sort that are concerned above all to get themselves noticed, they remarked to Rodin, in a tone of augury, "Your doorway is much more beautiful like that; in no circumstances do anything more to it."

This absurd advice befell at an evil moment: the artist felt worn out from overwork and anxieties of all kinds and, moreover, was troubled over the fate of his exhibit the failure of which might in truth have ruined him completely. In these circumstances he did not have the freedom of spirit necessary to judge correctly the value of his own work. And besides he had seen it too much during the twenty years in which it had been before his eyes. He was tired of it, weary of it.

Thus everything combined to make him lend an ear to the unfavorable opinions of the Parisian aviary. Had he been in better health, more the master of himself physically and morally, he would have replied to the prattling of these excited paroquets and guinea-hens:

"Take more room, examine my 'Gate' from a little farther off, and you will see once more the effect of the whole--the effect of unity which charms you when it is deprived of its ornamentation. You must understand that my sculpture is so calculated as to melt into the principal masses. For that matter, it completes them by modeling them into the light. The essential designs are there: it is possible that in the course of the final work I may find it necessary to diminish such or such a projection, to fill out such or such a pool of shadow; nevertheless, leave this difficulty to my fifty years of artisanship and experience, and you may be sure that quite by myself I shall find the best way of finishing my work."

But the master was silent. Later, carried away by the abundance of his conceptions, by his ever-deepening researches, he lost all interest in the "Gate" and has never taken the trouble to have it entirely mounted.

Fortunately, casts of it have been carefully preserved. It would be only an affair of a few months to reconstruct the work in its original integrity. Since the Universal Exposition time has rolled forward, and events also. Auguste Rodin has entered into the great serenity which age brings with it. He composes less, he corrects his work, he judges himself, and he does not deny his "Gate," one of the most exceptional of his works.

At last the creation of the Musée Rodin has been decided upon by the state. "The Gate of Hell" will be one of its important pieces; we shall be able to contemplate it then in all its majesty; it will not then simply be molded in plaster, but cast in bronze and cut in marble. It will offer a noble example of what work can accomplish when it is served by that supreme gift, will; for it will testify as much to resistance against the powerful enemies of the life of thought as to the intelligence of the man who created it. It forces upon us not only a formidable impression of strength, labor, talent, but also an impression no less lofty of method, order, and inner harmony. The multitude, who through their profound instincts approach much closer than one might suppose to the man of genius, will exclaim in contemplating this work, this true monument which undoubtedly the sculptor has raised through his own force of character, "Whoever erected this beautiful thing with his indefatigable hands was truly a man."

II

"THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS" (1889)--RODIN AND VICTOR HUGO--THE STATUE OF BALZAC (1898)

At the time the plaster model of "The Burghers of Calais" was first offered to the judgment of the public, in 1889, nearly seven years had gone by since Rodin had originally undertaken the group.

This is the period of my own childish memories of the master. He was a frequent visitor at the home of my father, who lived in Sèvres, on the outskirts of Paris.

Rodin, with his silent nature, apparently so full of calm and meditation, delighted in the ardor, the patriotic enthusiasm, the ferment of character, the brilliant conversation of that powerful, original writer, my father; he loved his books, too, spirited and passionate like himself, and possessing a vigor of expression that was new to French letters.

Léon Cladel received his friends on Sundays. In winter they gathered in the drawing-room, in summer on a terrace shaded by great chestnuts and limes, where thousands of birds twittered and chattered so energetically that at dusk they ended by drowning the voices of the visitors. Among the latter were writers, painters, and sculptors, several of whom have since become famous. Among them were Auguste Rodin and his colleague, his dear comrade, Jules Dalou, creator of many fine works, notably the monument to Eugène Delacroix which stands in the Luxembourg Gardens.

The sculptor of "The Burghers of Calais" was then barely fifty. He was far from possessing the immense fame that is his to-day, but artists already regarded him as a master. Of medium height, robust, with large shoulders and heavy limbs, placid and deliberate in appearance, never gesticulating, he himself resembled a block of stone; but above this heavy base his countenance, with its broadly designed features and its gray-blue eyes, expressed an extraordinarily keen intelligence and finesse. Despite my youth I was struck by this physiognomy, so singular and so penetrating, and also by the remarkable shyness that made the sculptor blush whenever he was addressed. Since then innumerable portraits have familiarized people with these features, which with age have settled into an expression of authority and firm will; his strange timidity has disappeared with time, with the consciousness of his strength, with his having become accustomed to glory. Moreover, Rodin has become a ready talker. Of old he listened intently, but always held his peace; at most a few words, spoken in a soft, clear voice, escaped from the waves of his long beard. He would at once relapse into silence, while with a slow movement giving his beard an instinctive caress with his large, square, irresistible hand, the true hand of a builder. But when he raised his eyelids, almost always lowered, the transparent eye, that limpid gray-blue eye, betrayed a perspicacity that was almost malicious, almost cunning: one felt that he penetrated through the forms of people to their very souls; and this he fixed so skilfully in the clay of his busts that his models were not always pleased with it. Many of Rodin's portraits have been refused by sitters offended by their pitiless realism.

Sometimes my father kept Rodin and Jules Dalou to dinner. The two sculptors were devoted to each other. They were comrades from of old who had traveled together the hard road of beginners; since their student days at the Petite Ecole they had many times reëncountered each other in the same workshops, where they had received the same contemptuous wages for their long days of labor. They felt a profound esteem for each other's talent, different as these talents were, altogether opposed, in fact, as were their natures; and it was a fine, a lovely thing to see them bring forward each other's respective merits. Alas! I shall have to tell later how an artistic rivalry came one day to destroy this noble friendship.

The appearance of "The Burghers of Calais" aroused a flood of enthusiasm in the world of art. I remember it well. At that time I was only a young school-girl, and my father was unwilling to allow me to "miss my classes" in order to accompany him to the opening of the Rodin Exhibition. After all, the lessons I received that day, following them quite absent-mindedly, were they worth the lesson I should have received from the contemplation of that masterpiece, even if my age would have prevented me from quite understanding it? Beauty is always the most fertilizing teacher.

A rich art-lover, acting with the municipal authorities of Calais, had ordered from Rodin the statue of Eustache de Saint-Pierre, the Calais hero whose devotion had in the fourteenth century, during the Hundred Years' War, saved the city when it was besieged by King Edward III of England.

Rodin, true to his principles, sought as ever to approach his subject from the quick of reality. He consulted history. He read the old chronicles of France, above all those of Jean Froissart, who was contemporaneous with the event and almost a witness of it. Froissart was a man of the fourteenth century, a man of the age of the cathedrals, and therefore himself a Gothic. His narrative has the force, the savor, the naïveté, the simple and profound art of the masters of that marvelous epoch. What a source of emotion for Rodin, a Gothic likewise in his faith and his artistic rectitude! He caught fire at the recital of the old master as at the voice of a brother-in-arms. He read, he learned that Edward III would not consent to spare the city of Calais from pillage and destruction unless six of her richest citizens would come out to him dressed only in their shirts, barefoot, with ropes about their necks, bringing him the keys of the city and their own heads to be cut off. In response to this terrible message, Eustache de Saint-Pierre and five of his fellow-citizens, taking counsel with the notables of the place, at once rose to go to the king's camp. They set forth immediately, escorted on their way by the hunger-stricken multitude, weeping and groaning over their sacrifice and "adoring them with pity."

This was the vision which from that time on took possession of Rodin, dominating him and never leaving him. But it was not an isolated person detached from his environment that he saw: it was the six martyrs just as they appeared in history, just as they were in life. In his thought he followed this band of heroes marching to the sacrifice in the midst of the weeping city. He could not bring himself to separate them either from their whole number or from their tragic surroundings. Therefore, in accordance with the genius of his theme, that is to say, with historic truth, he would make all six of them, and he would insist that they should be set up in the midst of the city, among the old houses, where they would continue to live their sublime life in the heart of the very town that they had saved.

For the price of one statue, therefore, Rodin set out to execute six. He rented a vast atelier in the rue des Fourneaux, in the Vaugirard Quarter. He worked unceasingly. To keep this enormous group in good condition, to maintain the proper temperature, he moistened the clay morning and evening, having as his _garçon d'atelier_ no one but his devoted wife, who had become thoroughly experienced in these matters. Despite all, accidents would happen: the clay would give way, an arm, modeled with his habitual exactitude, would fall and have to be laboriously repaired; but the fervent modeler never hesitated in his work, and on the day when he exhibited "The Burghers of Calais" at the house of Georges Petit the praise and the homage that sprang forth from the soul of all true artists recompensed him magnificently, bringing him the intoxicating caress of dawning glory. They spoke, in connection with the "Burghers," of the image-makers of our cathedrals; they spoke of the statues of Claus Sluters, of the famous statues of the "Well of Moses" at Dijon. Really, in the Calais monument Rodin is more than ever under the Gothic influence in subject, in thought, and in execution. The equilibrium of the figures composing the group is the same as that of the "Saint John the Baptist." The long shifts that cover the naked bodies of his heroes recall those draperies in vertical folds dear to the Middle Ages. The very modeling of the figures and of the faces increases this effect of elongation caused by the fall of the fabric; the modeling in large planes, the vigorous accents, the simple and pathetic movements are certainly those of the sort that out-of-door sculpture calls for. In twenty years Rodin had made innumerable visits to the Gothic monuments. Here was the result of his tours of France. He had made them in order to recapture the traditions of art from the hands of our wonderful old stone-cutters, and his heart must have throbbed with joy when he was told that in his own hands that tradition had suffered no loss.

Naturally, the appearance of "The Burghers of Calais," even that, could not fail to have its share of comic anecdote, that bitter and painful humor that marks the adventures of genius in its struggle with vulgarity. Let us not complain too much. The contrast between these adventures and the proud way of life of a great man, the regularity of his hours of toil--it is this that creates opposition, movement, life. The elect soul feels a savage joy in these blows which shake it like a tree tormented by brutal hands, a tree aware of the vigor of its resistance and its ever-increasing tenacity.