V The Line and the Structure of the Gothic
One of Rodin’s friends, M. Léon Bourgeois, the eminent, highly cultivated French statesman, has said, “Rodin is himself a cathedral.” This remark wonderfully characterizes Rodin’s intellectuality as it appears to us to-day. Rich in years and experience, his intellect is in truth as complicated as a cathedral, but like it, too, superbly simple in its general structure. His intellect possesses the wealth of detail that makes up life and the calm balance of the laws that govern nature. His mind, formed on principles scrupulously controlled by observation, abounds in that wonderful artistic imagination which is the poetry of life. Ever renewing itself, ever active, his mind inspires intense confidence because it is deeply rooted in truth. It looks at its subjects of study with such conscientious devotion that it perceives every phase of reality; for it is only love such as this, a love springing not from impatience and passion, but from faith and hope, that is always victorious in the end.
Churches! He lives near them, so as to study them in the fleeting changes of the hours. He likes to be enveloped by the sound of the church bells that for seven or eight centuries have spoken the same language of discipline to the spirit of France. Day and night he visits the naves. There his soul feels the sacred mystery. The churches are truly the cradle of his artistic faith.
But it is only recently that the joys which he drew from them reached their height; for although he was long under the influence of Gothic art, that most extraordinary product of the hand of man, only in the last few years has he learned to penetrate its principles and understand its methods.
How often in my youth I questioned him about the cathedrals! He always replied with that caution which in deep natures is a form of deference: “I am pervaded by the marvel of this art; but I cannot as yet explain it to myself. The Gothic is the world foreshortened. Where am I to begin? For more than thirty years I have been accumulating and comparing my observations. Perhaps eventually I shall succeed in deducing the rule, the law of divine intelligence; but perhaps I shall not have sufficient time. Then it will be the task of another, younger than myself, who will start his researches earlier, and who, besides, will have been informed by me.”
On his return from each of these pilgrimages he was possessed by the happy restlessness of one who would soon be able to give expression to his secret. One felt that “the law of divine intelligence” was being formulated in his mind. I then hoped and expected that soon he would reap the fruit of his long labors.
At last one day Rodin took me to Notre Dame, beautiful among the beautiful, despite the modern restorations that have detracted from the grace and suppleness of its sculpture. Notre Dame of Paris is beautiful in itself and in its situation on the banks of the Seine, that river of feminine grace, which in its innocent course draws with it the memory of many terrible historic events.
From Notre Dame to Saint-Eustache, from the Tour Saint-Jacques to Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, during this long walk of ours Rodin talked, quite unaware of the curious glances of those who recognized him, and of the scoffing of the street urchins, who mistook the great Frenchman for a stranger discovering the capital of France. Later he gave me numerous notes that supplemented his conversations.
His words and notes combined form the clearest and most important lesson on Gothic art that has been handed down since the days of the Gild of the Francs-Maçons, by one of their own sort, a craftsman such as they were, a veritable sculptor, a stone-cutter loving the material in which he works.
Has Rodin, after so thoroughly grasping the secrets of the builders of bygone days, never felt the desire to apply them in the execution of some work of architecture? Was he never tempted by their example and by that of Michelangelo to expand his resources beyond those of the sculptor? Those who know the creative power and the vastness of imagination of the modeler of “The Burghers of Calais” and of “The Gate of Hell” may well ask this question.
Well, yes, he has had that great dream, which in more prolific times would have become a glorious reality. He hoped to revive the spirit of a day when a whole nation of artists covered France with masterpieces; he hoped to organize labor collectively, and to gather about him a legion of artisans to work together on a monument which should become in a certain sense the cathedral of the modern age.
He even drew up plans for that wonderful project, the subject of which was to be the glorification of labor, that triumphant force of our present civilization. He did not plan to rival the Gothic style, the prodigious achievement of which would have required throngs of workmen thoroughly organized and disciplined, well trained under the system of master and apprentice, accomplishing their common task in the joy of work and the enthusiasm of faith. He planned to approximate the art of the Renaissance, less removed from modern intellectuality, and simpler of execution.
In Rodin’s studio at Meudon one can see the plan for this monument. The axis is a high column calling to mind Trajan’s Column, and, like it, covered with bas-reliefs. A tower broken by large openings, as in the Tower of Pisa, encircles it. In the interior a gradually inclining way leads one from the base to the top along the bas-reliefs. These represent all the active crafts and trades: those of the cities, such as masons, carpenters, weavers, bakers, brewers, glass-workers, and goldsmiths; and those of the country, such as plowmen, harvesters, vintagers, vine-dressers, shepherds, and farmers. On the exterior, between the arches, stand statues of the great geniuses that have led humanity, whose efforts have raised them to celestial heights; that is, to the peace and happiness of creating. There great thinkers, inventors, and artists have their niches, just as the prophets have theirs in the vaults of cathedrals. The edifice rests on a crypt where groups of sculpture are devoted to the glorification of work under the earth and its obscure heroes, miners, divers, pearl-fishers. At the time when the plan for this monument was advanced, and was exciting the imagination of European writers and journalists, an ardent admirer of Rodin even proposed to build the tomb of the master under the crypt, where he would have had a resting-place worthy of a Pharaoh. On each side of the entrance is a statue representing Morning and Evening, and at the summit of the column two angels, messengers of God, their hands outstretched toward the earth with a gesture of exquisite tenderness, shed the blessings of heaven on the work of man.
Alas! this noble, stirring project will not be realized during the life of the artist. Will there some day be another possessed of the ardor and love of beauty necessary to build this mountain of stone?
For a time Rodin’s friends hoped that America, the nation of work par excellence, would seize upon this idea. They pictured the philanthropists of the New World in characteristic fashion pouring forth millions for this work of universal art and national glorification; they saw Rodin being called to the United States, gathering about him not only American artists, but all the intelligent forces of the world of culture. They saw the Tower of Labor, with its angels bestowing their benediction over some formidable industrial city, New York, Pittsburgh, or Chicago. This might have been the starting-point for a new era of art, for nothing is more contagious than the realization of beauty in actual form.
Doubtless the writers of France did not discuss the matter long or forcibly enough, and the Tour de Travail, which might have been the ardent expression of a whole race, will remain the idea of a solitary genius, a last offshoot of the masters of the Middle Ages.
But if the hour has not yet struck for the construction of the modern cathedral, at least we possess, thanks to the man who dreamed of erecting it, the secrets and principles of those who constructed the cathedrals of bygone days.
To acquire a thorough and fruitful understanding of the cathedrals, we must break away from the narrow and cold spirit of the present day. The spirit of our time does not harmonize in architecture with the monuments of the past.
First let us contemplate the whole. The church is a cliff. The construction of the slender side springing up is quite in the spirit of our race. The Gothic towers are stones set up like Druidic monuments. The church is laid out like a dolmen, and the towers are the menhirs. Like the menhirs, they have beautiful, flexible lines; they possess the eloquence of natural outlines, which are never cold or meager.
The line of the Gothic tower is slightly curved, swelling like that of a barrel. A straight line is hard and cold. The Greeks perceived that; they refrained from straight lines, and the columns of their temples also show a slight swelling.
The two sides of the Gothic tower are not alike. The architects considered that preferable to obvious symmetry. Look at the Tour Saint-Jacques in Paris. One of the sides shows a long, sloping hollow, making it look quite different from the other, which, again, is like stones set on high. The hollowed line permits protuberances, details of ornamentation that soften and harmonize with the line of the ensemble. It has been restored, and therefore from near at hand seems cold, for our workmen have lost the science and art of modeling. But the beauty of the general structure remains; they could not detract from that.
This softened line, this line full of life, is one of the chief characteristics of the Gothic. The sky of our northern climates ordained it so, for the architects of the Middle Ages carved their monuments out of doors. Once the general plan was established, they easily found the details while working with their tools, guided by the light and influenced by natural conditions.
Our light is not that of Greece. Humanity the world over is akin; but to what the Greek expressed in a chastened manner, in keeping with his eternally pure light, we have added the oblique slant of our sun, our reality, our country, our autumns, the sting of our winters, our less definite spirit, our remoteness from the glaring Olympian sun; and, last of all, we have added our trees.
We also have light, but it is frequently obscured by passing clouds. Is it not natural that we should reproduce them in our art? And the line, the abundant line, is more accentuated in the half-night of our long autumns. Thus we are more in the mood of our woods and our forests. Our souls have more shadows than the Greek soul, our determinations are more varied; for our clouds and our forests are reflected in our hearts.
Artists, let us, then, revert to the interpretation of our race, but in the spirit, not in the letter. Let us copy only the soul of our external nature, not its Gothic form, for a mere copy is cold and dead. Beautiful architecture is a reproduction by man, but from a divine model. From this it receives the warmth of life. If architecture is true to the spirit of nature, it is embraced by the trees, the rocks, the clouds; they are the silent company of beauty.
O Cathedral! Sphinx of Northern life! although mutilated, are you not eternal? Do you cease to live? From a distance, and in the evening, when dusk sets in, you seem truly a great sphinx crouching in the country.
The drama that unfolds itself on the stone pages of the churches recalls to us with a very few gestures and movements the silent drama of antiquity, the sculptures, illustrations of Æschylus and Sophocles.
From the Greek type, in truth, sprang the thoughts that guide man, and again from the Egyptian granite; and eventually from the stone of the Gothic, that Gothic which leads to the period of Louis XVI, and which in France is always the principal path of art. Other styles were derived from it, those of the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Their basis is Gothic; therefore the Gothic is the fundamental style, which ought to keep us from the path of decadence, if that is possible. You do not understand it? You say you prefer the Greek? O ye mortals that wish to pass judgment on all matters, take heed lest these masterpieces prevail against you! The cathedral is as beautiful, perhaps more beautiful, than the Parthenon. If you do not understand this style, then you are still further removed from the Greek, which is of another country and epoch. It is more beautiful, perhaps more concise, more marble; but we belong more with stone and forests, we are more autumnal, more of the cold and melancholy season.