# The Arts/Volume 1/Issue 2/Last Glimpses of Rodin

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LAST GLIMPSES OF RODIN
By Mme. Marc Debrol
HE is unforgetable. When you have seen him once, only once, you cannot forget him. His personality was so strong, so radiant, so overwhelming, almost crushing, and one was at his approach feel ing Life... the fluid of Life, the vibration of Life. But why say... he was? One hesitates to use the past tense when one talks about Rodin. One must continue to say: "he is," because his character, his work, his being are of those which never die, which always stay with us, which participate more or less of what we call Immortality or the Infinite. And, for that reason, the days when you met him remain in your memory as sunny days of a special quality of illumination... bright spots of receptive joy and enriching contact.
At the Hotel Biron, one afternoon in 1914, the "master" is working. One has to go to him in his studio. One mounts the marble steps of the aristocratic staircase of the XVIIIth century. In the entrance hall, in the vestibule, in every place that the eye can repose, are statues, fragments, marbles, stones, reliefs, bronzes. It is the "palace" of sculpture. Antiques, torsos, unfinished profiles, broken heads, "debris" gathered, kept, loved, adored because they have in them a little "grain" of beauty as the rude stone can contain a pebble of gold. Everything is in Silence and Immobility... an atmosphere of pagan prayer... of religious humanity in which it is good and easy to work, and, in his plain clothes of an artisan, the master works. He creates, he makes flesh and muscles and skin, and of the marble and of the clay he extracts life, passionate life with all the flux of suffering, all the cry of love. He gives the truth of existence... he animates... he realizes. His long beard flows on his large chest. His short heavy powerful hands play with the "elements," transform them into real, fleshy, corporeal beings. "He works as a god of the river" Bernard Shaw said. I would say rather as a god of creation and he is happy, he is young, he is playful. He shows you his "petites choses" lately done. He asks you your opinion, is happy if you like them. He does not talk very much but what he says is beautifully said. He speaks as a poet... with strong images and harmonious words. He speaks as he writes, as he models, as he draws... he expresses himself... and expresses himself with his vivid sense of Beauty. This Beauty for him is Life.
Sunday morning in the spring of 1915 at Meudon. In the long alley bordered by the double line of short trees and mauve iris. Rodin is taking a walk... with the humble, devoted-hearted woman who was his ever faithful companion in those last days. It is sad. The sky is grey... the shadows are pale and at Paris, that time... there is some very small and silly quarrel about the Victor Hugo monument, not yet delivered. Rodin is sad. He says it simply: "I have suffered a great deal. So many things, so many people have stood against me. Men leave you to fight alone... they never help you... never give you chances when you are young, when you have 'the flame.' One does not know how much an artist has to endure, to bear, to struggle, and Beauty passes... and you have to seize her... to grab her, to grasp her... and soon she is past and you stay with your unsatisfied desire of the... oh, Life! Life... how... I love you..."
It was a morning of Spring. A grey morning of sad spring with pale shadows and mauve iris in bloom... and... I was thinking of the pain of dying. "Seigneur, vous m'avez fait puissant et solitaire. Laissez moi m'en dormir du sommeil de la terre."
Then, two years later... in the garden ​... near the abandoned studio where the last work is unfinished, by an afternoon of tired sun... of finishing September. Surrounded by his always devoted few friends, Rodin is in a big iron chair... a large brimmed hat covered his head... a little refined and spiritualized by illness... his hands, his powerful hands are a trifle trembling and showing the network of the veins... but the smile, the glorious smile of happiness is still there... the sun is good... life is beautiful. Rodin does not speak... he does not speak but he smiles. He looks around him... to his devoted friends who surround him, to his garden where lies the tired sun of the close of September, to his studio now abandoned, where a marble group stayed inachieved... he looks at the blue fog of Paris... la-bas... and on Life and on the years which have passed by and where he put so much effort... and suddenly he stands up... takes off his hat... as if saluting something he has seen... only himself has seen... and sweetly... lovingly... kissed the ungloved hand of the young woman sitting near him... "Oh, Life! Life... how I loved you!"
Then a few months later... in winter. The trees of the avenue are without green... and the leaves of the iris are asleep in the frozen ground. In the little house, on his death-bed Rodin lays. He is immense, he looks immense... and one thinks of the words of Catherine de Medici before the body of Guise, "Il est encore plus grand mort que vivant."
RODIN ON HIS DEATH BED
From a Lithograph by John Storrs
The work finished? No. The work continues... he continues to radiate forces, and beauty and ideal. The work lives and will continue to live. The artistic treasure of a man like Rodin cannot have heirs. It is not like a lit candle which a genius receives and holds, then hands to a successor. Michael Angelo had copyists, he had no descendents. Rodin has... plagiarists, he cannot have disciples. Such an inspiration, such a method resides in one man. When that man disappears his light remains on the world, but it cannot be incarnated again. After the funeral of Rodin some of the younger artists seeming to be relieved by the disappearance of the inimitable Master, were ready to proclaim themselves his successors. "Le roi est mort, Vive le Roi!" No, in such a kingdom as the one of Art Rodin was alone in his dynasty. His throne must stay vacant. Rodin was the complete expression, the perfect expression of a finishing era. As the snow-crowned, formidable Shasta dominates colossal and alone the plains of the Northwest, Rodin stands, unique, complete, complex, on the closing of the last centuries... but... we must not try to build another summit of the same shape. That would look like an ant-hill or as the pyramids which are... graves... for kings... but graves for dead kings.
Rodin has made men marching. He knew... Now we must too... march forward... and always forward...
After all Rodin... like Michael Angelo... like Phidias... these are the luminous signs which light the paths of human progress. We have to go on... to go on... towards the horizon ever—devant nous.