An Antique Fragment
Twenty times a day I walk in front of this little torso. I bring all my friends to see it, for Greek sculpture is the very source of beauty.
Why am I surprised whenever I look upon this torso? I think it is because nature, which is behind this work of art, always calls forth new, unlooked-for sensations.
Venus, glorious Venus, model of all women, your purity survives even after two thousand years. Your charm charms me—me who have admirers for my own sculpture. Before you they remain cold; but I, with a spirit that sees further—I admit my defeat as an artist, my poor ability vanishes before your grace.
Form, as I used to express it, seems a mere illusion before the harmonious strength of your lines, which embody the very truth of life. Divine fragment, I shall live by you! What days you recall to me! Perhaps the last moments of the soul of Greek sculpture, ever-increasingly my Muse.
This torso shows the suppleness and strength of the joints. It is a summing-up of former masterpieces of the artist. Those endless studies that grow into experience and all the qualities of balance are here concealed beneath the beauty and the gracious inspiration of the figure. The inspired sculptor has just discovered all these qualities, and in appreciation has given expression to them with his very soul.
An antique piece of sculpture cannot be imitated. This torso seems to have a soul. Are not the shadows trembling on it there? One can see them move.
What a progress toward truth we find in the advance from Assyrian and Egyptian to Greek art! Antique things, if we knew how to look at them, would bring about a new renaissance for us, we who stagnate in the Parisian spirit. The Parisian spirit, young though it is, is already too old to serve us. It is like those pretentious monuments, those constructions in plaster, which are hollow and horrible under their crumbling stucco.
Greece was the land of sculpture beyond all others. The subject of their sculpture was life. The people concealed it under names and symbols,—Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, the fauns,—but behind all these was the eternal truth of life.
This torso on my table looks as though it had been washed to the shore by the loving waves, as boats are stranded on the beach at low tide. What more beautiful offering could be made to men and gods? For is this fragment not an eternal prayer?
The thoughts expressed in this torso are numerous, infinite. I could write about it forever. Do I bring these thoughts with me? Is it I who put them into the marble? No, for when it is out of my sight, this divinity of life vanishes from me at the same time. Since it ceases to be in me, it must be the fragment which possesses it. It teaches a sculptor more than any professor could. It whispers secrets to me, and if I am true to it, it will tell me more and more; it will transform me in harmony with the soul of its friend, the Greek sculptor. For are not the thoughts of God expressed all the world over? Are they not the fruitful germs, now growing within a brain, now in a beautiful grouping of stone, and now captured by those magicians, the poets? And are sculptors, too, not like poets?
Where can one find more perfect harmony than in this fragment? It is a monument. And is it not providential? It is only a fragment, yet it seems to embody the whole Acropolis. Truth, that lasting joy, fills in all that is missing. It is a fact that this torso, which weighs one hundred and sixty pounds, seems as light as the woman herself would be, as light as her gracious, swelling flesh. I know contours, but the contours of a masterpiece always surprise me anew. Whenever I see you, beautiful little torso, my eyes and my soul feast on you. Masterpiece, you are my master, too.
If, as they say, stones have fallen from heaven, this surely must be one of them. I leave it in the condition in which I found it, as it first appealed to me, with all its charm, as I carried it in my arms to this table. The changing lights of day mold it; but I shall not touch it, I shall not change it. It is truth itself, and it shines in no matter what surroundings.
This torso has within it the seductiveness of woman, that garden of pleasure the secret charms of which imbue old and young alike with a terrible power. Feminine charm which crushes our destiny, mysterious feminine power that retards the thinker, the worker, and the artist, while at the same time it inspires them—a compensation for those who play with fire!
It is not by analysis that you will learn to understand art, you who are ignorant. Greek art eludes the imbeciles and ignorant who have always undervalued it. How can one comprehend this beauty by mere analysis? Where lies the secret of force? It is ever shifting. And the shadow, so genially arranged, varies with the way the light strikes it. In art, what do we call life? That which speaks to you through all your senses. If this torso were to bleed, it could not be more lifelike. The harmony of its lines dominates my soul. The soul lives and grows on masterpieces. That is why we have a soul.
Is it surprising, then, that I live with these antiques of mine, poets far more inspiring than any of our day? They have created beings that will live to survive us.