The New York herald., 1922-12-31

one so convulsed with pain. In an
other second, had not the artist ar
rested the movement he would be
tearing at his vitals in one of those
modern crises des nerfs that led
James Addington Symonds to bite
the bedclothes in a paroxysm Of self
horror. Grand passion, in the Stend-
halian sense? Not at all. Stendhal
would have been as shocked at such
a penseur as / am, and perhaps less
willing than l to admit that it Is
nevertheless great art.
In the Drummer exhibition an In
teresting feature Is the approach to
Balzac's soul shown in several steps.
Rodin in spite Of being prince of in
trospectors was mentally a peasant.
1t was really holding the mirror up to
nature that he was doing, and the
introspection that he WAS prince OF
was into the soul of modern humanity
and not into his own. 1t is doubtful
if he could explain his own Balzac or
define his intention This always
raises an outcry among those who
hold that because there is greatness OF
feeling there must be greatness OF in
tellect. and to them. in passing, / sup
pose that should hint that intellect
is not the end-all OF art-that though
it may take nine artists to make an
intellect all the intellects in the world
if jumbled together would not neces-
sarily make one artist.
In this quite. conscious age we have
learned that the subconscious force of
the artist is the thing that produces,
and we can bear with equanimity the
banalities of his waking period, il his
dreams are of the sort that come true.
The finger of scandal has not hesitated
to smudge the pages that have beenS
signed by Rodin, but whether he did
write them or had them fixed up for
him by others is after all unimportant
in the face cf such documents as his
studies in the round for the Balzac.
BaIzac His Chef-d'Oeuvre.
Balzac, who was all intellect, must
have seemed the god above all others
TO an individual who made no special
boast of that commodity, and when the
moment came for the sculptor to
glorify intellectual supremacy there
must have been an abasement OF spirit
that amounted to complete disintegra-
tfon. / think "Balzac" to be Robins
chef-doeuvre, at once the most mod
ern of mis- works and fullest of all those
indeflnable reachings after the spirit
that cannot be weighed nor analyzed.
1t IS still far beyond the taste of Paris.
a. l..o NuIl IN hn s.tf
would provoke as pronounced riot
as the apparition of Civic Virtue" did
in our City Hall Park,
The molten fire of Robins inspira-
ton melted many ideas of Balzac into
the one final image, but TO the anna
tour IL is n thrilling sort of pleasure
to meet with the separate phases OF the
artists realization Of the great man.
They do not particularly hint. and this
IS curious thing, ut the pervading
sense of intellect that was afterward
10 dominate the finished figure. Rodin
chose to sec him beautiful, and this,
too, in spite of the rotundity and heavi-
ness of physique that historians had
not been blind to. Each ono seems to
have been clipped off at fever heat--to
have been born of one mood. They
represent prodigies of improvisation
and amazing technical skin. As a
source of inspiration Tor other artists,
however. Rodin is not now such
danger as ho was. So many have
come 10 grief by doing eyes like that
and leaving the stone rough like that
that the tip has gone forth ito be-
ware" As "a matter OF fact, the great
moral OF Rodin to the artists who fol-
low is simply TO feel deeply" But
CONGRATULATIONS OF that sort are not the
kind our students are looking for.