« L’œuvre de Rodin est pareille à un monde immense, et son génie évoque l’idée d’une force naturelle dont la puissance créatrice emprunte, pour se manifester, tous les verbes d’art. »
Roger Marx, 1907
Elemental force palpitates in those veins of marble, veins of bronze. The wondering eyes are reposed and quiet, fixing their blind stare at the white stucco and the polished mirrors covering the walls as though searching for a reflection of yesterday, but no trace of agitation, no blemish of regret blurs now their intent look, for they are at peace. Time itself stands still in motionless trepidation while they breathe – ever so softly, holding silent vigil over each other’s heartbeat locked within a chest of stone.
A man’s hands once touched the rough surface with tenderness, and poetry was carved in stone, music written in clay. The labour of all creation begins in dirt and dust and tears; and it is true that small things grow and achieve their splendour only under the eyes of love.
His touch breathed life into the whispering stone, and they rose one after the other – with shy hesitation at first, gaining courage as each stroke of chisel made the contours swell and stir, moulding a ladnscape of longing and emotion halted in time. And there he was, John the Baptist preaching to Dante’s Inferno; Adam banished from Eden with Eve hiding her face in anguish of shame and misery; and the Thinker who was a poet before the world became too heavy, too soaked with grief and questions.
But grief would never have come, had he been deprived of his companion, the one who always precedes him; for that is the law of life – one must always make place for that which comes next until the cycle is completed; life is never linear. How lucky they are, the Lovers, to be so frozen in their moment of exaltation before the tremulous ache of parting begins; their embrace a shelter of warmth where they are forever discovering the satin folds of each other’s lips until they both forget – in the humility of complete surrender – where the one begins and the other ends.
Two temples entwined in a prayer, like fingertips barely touching in timid reverence, and a Cathedral was built, born of the mélange of suffering and sweetness that distance entails. Distance between two hands yearning to fuse, distance between the prayer and the answer. But distance allows for space and air breathing gently in that void, supporting the Cathedral like vaulted arches so that it may stand through fires and centuries in a sigh of quiet perseverance.
And perhaps they are already one, do not exist, in fact, but within each other, like the sculptor and his work.
He gave birth with a thought and a pair of hands, but they are not reason enough to sustain his art, they are not his legacy to posterity. For what is a thought? A thought is selfish, living a life of its own; it swells, it spirals, ascends, and suddenly vanishes in an opaque veil, leaving no trace of yesterday and no hope for tomorrow. No, do not give me a thought, for it may perish only too easily, and it is permanence that art requires. There must be a higher constant, a solid rock upon which a new life may begin.
Let me say out loud then, in the solitude of my mornings and the loneliness of my nights, that which he too wanted to say with his marble and his stone, that which he wanted to express even through faces contorted with anguish and pain: I love – therefore I am.
*hommage à Auguste Rodin, écrit au Musée Rodin, Juin 2019
L'art de subtilité 