Rodin on Art and Artists by Auguste Rodin

Author:Auguste Rodin [Rodin, Auguste]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486156781
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Several days later I saw in Rodin’s atelier at Meudon the casts of many of his finest busts, and I seized the occasion to ask him to tell me of the memories they recalled.

His Victor Hugo was there, deep in meditation, the forehead strangely furrowed, volcanic, the hair wild, almost like white flames bursting from his skull. It was the very personification of modern lyricism, profound and tumultuous.

“It was my friend Bazire,” said Rodin, “who presented me to Victor Hugo. Bazire was the secretary of the newspaper, La Marseillaise, and later of l’Intransigeant. He adored Victor Hugo. It was he who started the idea of a public celebration of the great man’s eightieth birthday.

“The celebration, as you know, was both solemn and touching. The poet from his balcony saluted an immense crowd who had come before his house to acclaim him; he seemed a patriarch blessing his family. Because of that day, he kept a tender gratitude for the man who had arranged it. And that was how Bazire introduced me to his presence without difficulty.

“Unfortunately, Victor Hugo had just been martyred by a mediocre sculptor named Villain, who, to make a bad bust, had insisted on thirty-eight sittings. So when I timidly expressed my desire to reproduce the features of the author of Contemplation, he knit his Olympian brows.

“‘I cannot prevent your working,’ he said, ‘but I warn you that I will not pose. I will not change one of my habits on your account. Make what arrangements you like.’

“So I came and I made a great number of flying pencil notes to facilitate my work of modelling later. Then I brought my stand and some clay. But naturally I could only install this untidy paraphernalia in the veranda, and as Victor Hugo was generally in the drawing room with his friends, you may imagine the difficulty of my task. I would study the great poet attentively, and endeavor to impress his image on my memory; then suddenly with a run I would reach the veranda to fix in clay the memory of what I had just seen. But often, on the way, my impression had weakened, so that when I arrived before my stand I dared not touch the clay, and I had to resolve to return to my model again.

“When I had nearly finished my work, Dalou asked me to introduce him to Victor Hugo, and I willingly rendered him this service, but the glorious old man died soon after, and Dalou could only do his best from a cast taken after death.”

Rodin led me as he spoke to a glass case which enclosed a singular block of stone. It was the keystone of an arch, the stone which the architect sets in the centre to sustain the curve. On the face of this stone was carved a mask, squared along the cheeks and temples, following the shape of the block. I recognized the face of Victor Hugo.

“I always imagine this the keystone at the entrance of a building dedicated to poetry,” said the master sculptor.

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