II Scattered Thoughts on Flowers
In Rodin’s statues we find his conception of eternal man—man as he really is. They are molded on modern thought, with all its variations. One might suppose that these beautiful beings of marble and bronze had been named by the characteristic poets of the century, Victor Hugo, Musset, Baudelaire.
Beginning with the Renaissance and particularly during the seventeenth century, the royal courts were the great salons in which the taste of the day was developed. Necessity made courtiers of the artists, for to obtain orders, they had to win the good-will of the sovereigns, the great lords, and the financiers.
Art then lost its collective character, the artist his independence and strength. There was no longer the united effort of artists, inspired by love of beauty, to create great masterpieces such as cathedrals, city halls, and castles. The artist wasted his abilities in fragmentary bits, his time in worldly duties. To-day it is even worse. Keeping house, traveling, receiving, exhibiting in a hundred different places, living in great style, carrying on his life-work—all these crowd out the first, and formerly the essential, object of the artist, his work. It is these that lower art to the last degree of decadence.
Rodin has kept aloof from this manner of living, has avoided these innumerable occasions for wasting time, or, rather, has never allowed them to take possession of him. Modest, unpretentious, traveling little or within a limited radius, the unremitting study of the divine model and of the masterpiece, man, forms his whole ambition, while it is also the source of endless delight to him. “Admiration,” he says, “is a joy daily kindled afresh,” and again, “I talk out of the fullness of life; it belongs to me in a sense larger than that of ownership.”
In his villa at Meudon, in the midst of his collections of antiques, he pursues this study incessantly. He who is admitted to the modest garden of the great master first beholds with delight a Greek marble in an arbor. At the turn of a path there is the torso of a goddess resting on an antique column; in a niche in the wall, a Roman bust. Beneath the high arch of the peristyle of the studio, the architecture of which blends into the surrounding background as in the paintings of Claude Lorrain, there is a magnificent torso. Finally dominating the garden and the valley it overlooks, standing on a knoll and projected against the clear sky, there is an isolated façade from a castle of the seventeenth century, its delicate balustrades and casements outlined against the blue sky as in the decorative paintings of Paul Veronese.
These ruins are the remains of the Château d’Issy, the work of Mansart. Rodin saved them at the moment when their destruction at the hands of ignorant workmen was imminent, and at great expense reconstructed them near his residence. These fragments, this noble portico, seem as though placed by chance, but the keen observer quickly perceives the correctness of taste that has determined their disposition. Each fragment forms part of an ensemble with the trees, the grass, the light, and the shadows, and to change any of these in the slightest degree would sacrifice some of its beauty. Sculpture at its finest is architecture, and architecture is perhaps the greatest art, because it collaborates directly with nature. Architecture lives through the life of things, and every hour of the day lends it a new expression.
Innumerable reflections were aroused in the mind of the master Rodin when he essayed to place his treasures: the effect of the changing light on the object, the balancing of values, the relation of proper proportions, the appearance of the object in full light. All these he examined and studied, and he searched into the depths of the language of forms, to him as clear and as mysterious as beautiful music. This remarkable gift for determining the value of the object in its setting—a gift the secret of which is beyond the knowledge of the ignorant—has brought forth that peculiar poetic charm which permeates this little garden in a suburb of Paris, a refuge of persecuted beauty. Here the master confers with the artists of Greece and France of other days. These are his Elysian Fields.
In Paris, where he is daily and where he works every afternoon, he lives in an exquisite, but ruinous, mansion of the eighteenth century, situated in a rustic, neglected park. There he finds his delight in the study of flowers and applies himself to it with his intense, never-dormant desire for understanding. His antique pottery is filled with anemones, carnations, and tulips. During his frugal meals they are before him, and his reverent love of them arouses his desire to understand them as completely as he does human beings. He analyzes and searches out their details without becoming insensible to the beauty of the whole. He jots down his discoveries, his words picture them; like La Rochefoucauld, he searches into their character; but watching over their life admiringly and tenderly until they wither, he does not dissect them, does not destroy them.
Is not the flower the queen of ornaments, the inspiration of all races and ages, the very soul of artistic decoration? Have not the hands of genius contrived to employ the most durable as well as the most fragile material to express this delicate beauty in Greek and Gothic capitals, in the stone lacework of cathedrals, the fabrics of gold and silk, brocades, tapestries, wrought iron-work, old bindings? Is the splendor of stained-glass windows aught else than the splendor of a mass of beautiful flowers?
“Were this thoroughly understood,” says Rodin, “industrial art would be entirely revolutionized—industrial art, that barbarous term, an art which concerns itself with commerce and profit.
“The young artists of to-day understand nothing; they copy to satiety the classic ornaments and designs, and reproduce them in so cold a manner that they lose all meaning. The ancients obtained their designs from nature. They found their models in the garden, even in the vegetable garden. They drew their inspiration from its source. The cabbage-leaf, the oak-leaf, the clover, the thistle, and the brier are the motives of the Gothic capital. It is not photographic truth, but living truth, that we must seek in art.”
Rodin writes his observations. He notes them down at the moment as they occur to him in all their freshness, and in this form they will be given here. At first glance, the reader may be surprised at their apparently fragmentary form. They may seem devoid of general continuity, but when one comprehends the great master’s method, one sees that a bond much firmer than that of the mere word binds them together. They seem disjointed because here, as in his sculpture, the artist accepts only the essential, and rejects all superfluous detail. In reality they have the continuity of life, which is felt, but not seen, and which renders arbitrary transition unnecessary. This is the prerogative of genius, while all else is within the grasp of any one. His authority strikes us dumb; it puts to rout mere commonplace cleverness.
I have had primroses put in this little flower-pot. They are a bit crowded, and their poor little stems are prisoners; they are no longer in their garden.
I look at them on my table like a vivisector. I admire their beautiful leaves, round-headed, vigorous, like peasants. They point toward me, and between them is the flower. The one on this side is resigned, and as beautiful as a caryatid. In profile it seems to hold up the leaf against which it leans and which gives it shade.
These little flowers are not beautiful, nor are they radiant. They live peaceably, gently contented in their misery; and yet they offer something to one who is ill, as I am to-day, and cause him to write to ward off weariness.
I always have flowers in the morning, and make no distinction between them and my models.
Many flowers together are like women with heads bowed down.
There is no longer the sap of life in flowers in a vase.
The lace work of the flower of the elder-tree—Venice.
The anemone is only an eye, cruelly melancholy. It is the eye of a woman who has been badly used.
These anemones are flowers that have stayed up too late at night; flowers that are resplendent, with their colors as though spread over them superficially and wiped away. Even in the spring, in the hour of anticipation, they are already in the fullness of enjoyment.
Like the flower of seduction, the anemones slowly change their form outlined in various ways, always restrained, however, and inclosed within their sphere. Their petals have not a common destiny: some curl up, others are like a becoming collaret, still others seem to be running away. The delicate droop of the petals, standing out in relief, is like the eyelid of a child.
Although old, that one does not shed its petals. Poor little flower with bent head, you are not ridiculous; you are pensive now that you are dying. You suffer from the cruelty of the stem which holds you back.
Flowers give their lives to us; they should be placed in Persian vases. Near them, gold and silver seem of no value.
Ah, dear friends, we must love you if we would have you speak to us! We must watch you or you fall from the vase, despairing, your leaves withered.
The flowers and the vase harmonize by contrast.
In this bouquet there are some with flexible stems which seem to leap up gracefully. The flower, surrounded by its frail, straight leaves, is as if suspended from the ledge of a wrought-iron balcony.
Ah, the adorable heart of Adonis is incased within these flowers!
The hyacinth is like a balustrade placed upside down. A bed of hyacinths resembles a mass of balusters. Thus that great invention of the Renaissance, the balustrade, allows us to gain through it a glimpse of nature. This ray of art, the flower, this delicate inspiration, unknowingly requires the intelligence of man to develop its possibilities.
Superb is this little rose-like flower among its spreading leaves. It is like an assumption.
The double narcissus is a bird’s-nest viewed from above. Strange flowers, like so many throats! What a frail marvel they are!
These three little narcissi group themselves like a cluster of electric lights.
The dignity of nature impresses us on every hand. It is greatly apparent in flowers; and yet so small are they that some look on them merely as the decoration at a banquet.
I will cast a narcissus in bronze; it shall serve as my seal.
A maiden on a lake, that is the narcissus.
Little red marguerite, not yet open, sister to the strawberry, huddled in the shade which caresses you.
The full-blown marguerite seems to play at pigeon-vole.
It has rained for four hours; this is the hour when flowers quench their thirst.
A marguerite in profile, a serpent’s head with open jaws, stretching out its tongues! Petals, white, like a little collar.
Seen in full face, its yellow-tinted heart is a little sun; its long petals are like fingers playing the piano.
These white flowers are gulls with wings outstretched. They fly one after the other; this one, in adoration, has its petals thrown backward, like wings.
Whoever understands life loves flowers and their innocent caresses.
These marguerites seem to retreat like a spider that finds itself discovered in the road. Their buds stretch out their serpent-heads at the end of long stems, divided by intercepting leaves and entangling knots. Does not love travel in a similar path rather than straight as an arrow?
There is so much regularity in these dark-green leaves, extending at fixed intervals to right and left, and in the eternal dryness of the bouquet, that it calls to mind a Persian miniature.
No man has a heart pure enough to interpret the freshness of flowers. We cannot give expression to this freshness; it is beyond us.
When it sheds its petals, the flower seems to disrobe and go to sleep on the earth. This is its last act of grace, showing its submission to God.
What spirit possesses these flowers that die in silence! We should listen to them and give thanks.
This red and black ranunculus proclaims the carnival; it is the carnival itself. The carnival is the very emblem of flowers. Like them it, also, wears masks and costumes. It wears their colors, bright yellow, red—an imitation of the flowers of the sun.
Delightful carnival! Delightful interpretation of flowers! For a long time in my youth I undervalued them. I am happy now to see them under another aspect, as the splendor of Rome and the lavish intelligence of a bygone time.
Some one gave me tulips. They fascinate me variously. How great an artist is chance, knowing the last secret by which to win us!
These yellow tulips, dipped in blood! What a treat to see true colors—reds, blues, greens, the art of stained glass!
One is quite taken aback before these flowers, in which nature has expressed more than one can comprehend. It imparts that great mystery which is beyond us and signifies the presence of God.
How magnificent the flower becomes as its youth passes!
Even the flowers have their setting sun.
My bouquet is always the same, yet I never cease to look at it.
A whirlwind, a very cyclone, this tulip has perished in the storm. Like the wife of Lot, it is possessed of fear.
This one is open, all aflame like a burning bush. That one, all disheveled, comes toward me. Full of ardor, it springs up, its petals strong and expanding, like a mouth curling forward.
The violence of passion in flowers is pronounced. Ah, the softness of love is found only in women!
Great artists, curb your curiosity, neglect the pleasures which offer themselves to you, so that you may better understand the secrets of God.