10 
LAND & WATER 
December 6, 1917 
Some stand, lifting dcbixrate arm- ; ;i woman »its, doubled up 
on herself, tJie head hanging below the knees : and always 
there is beauty as well as terror ; the Unes arc the lines ol 
beauty. 
In the work of what might be called (perhaps wrongly) 
a modern Michelangelo, one finds the anatomy at times 
extravagantly visible, at times forgotten in the suavity of 
still suffering' flesh ; the charm of perversity, the joy and the 
l5faut\- of hell are there : and everywhere one sees marvellous 
effects of colour, of light and shadow : always a sense of 
movement. Never did anv sculptor so adore woman's 
back and loins ; and always there is simplicity in his 
approach to art by way of nature : even in the profile of the 
bones. And in these wave-hke, flame-like, wind-tossed, 
ioitrmentees figures, one sees the sexual delight of sex and the 
terror of their abominable depravities. 
And all this is an art of nerves, modern nerves, perverse and 
malign, and yet always in the classic tradition ; seen always 
in the beauty of the lines, in the human harmonies ; where 
the beauty in all cases comes from the colour, the modelling. 
Nor was there ever an art which conquered more difficulties. 
In tlie intensity of expression , in faces and forms alike, one 
finds the extremes of strength and of sweetness : stupendously, 
where cmc sees limbs and figures, some partly seen, legs 
emerging from a human crowd : the wonderful figure who 
leans forward, clasping the right foot before him in a nervous 
agony ; in the lovely little group of Sirens, caught in the hollow 
of a wave, the wave humanised. 
So, in the two cjualities I have named, sweetness and 
strength, he is allied with Michelangelo. " For to his true 
admirers," wrote Pater, " there are sweetness and strength, 
pleasure with surprise, an energy of conception which seems 
at any moment about to break through all the conditions of 
comely grace, recovering, touch by touch, a loveliness found 
usually only in the simplest natural things — ex forti dulcedo." 
Yet, in this epic in stone, stone becomes song, becomes 
music. And in its perfect proportions, in its harmonies, in its 
balance (composed of so many exquisite poems massed to- 
gether) hojv lyric art becames a great drama ! And there is a 
definite reason for comparing this creation of Rodin's with 
both the lyrical and the dramatic arts. Did he not say to me, 
did he not write, of the architecture of the human body, 
" that it is architecture, and that architecture is comparable 
with it ? " " Moving architecture," as he calls it in his book, 
" and so simple, if one possesses the secret of it, that it hurts 
one's eyes and yet one must see it." But, he said to me with 
his deep laugh, " instead of giving me my due as a sculptor — 
as to the quality of my work — they say I am a poet. Of 
course, when one is inspired one is a poet. Yet when they 
say that my inspiration gives a certain value to the theory of 
the poet neighbouring on folly, there they are wrong. ]e 
siiis Ic contraire d'tin exalte." 
In regard to this saying I asked him why he had repre- 
sented Hugo naked, and he said : " C'est plus bean." Then he 
said : " It is for the Pantheon — a man in modern dress would 
not be in keeping there." I give here the stanza I wrote on 
Lc Penseur : — 
Out of eternal bronze and mortal breath. 
And to the glory of man, me Rodin wrought ; 
Before the gates of glory and of death 
I bear the burden of the pride of thought. 
II. 
In Orpheus and Eurydice there is shown the majesty of 
sorrow, the very passion of life (as in the Keats-like face), and 
in one who descends upon him like a wind or a flame, and in 
the marvellous suggestion of a body which weighs nothing. 
<Jne sees in it the smoke of hell rising about them, in the 
hollow of the cave, and in Orpheus' gestures as he coVer his 
face with his hands, a sign of exquisite despair. The Alcestis, 
held in the arms of Admetus, as Merciu^y, seated beside her, 
waits to take h^r with him, is superb : the faces seen in a 
great gulf of shadow. 
Take, for instance, two flgurcs that I saw in his studio. 
(Jne, a woman, rigid as an idol, stands in all the peace of 
indifference ; the other, a man tortured with desire, every 
muscle strained to e.xasperation, writhes in the ineffectual 
energy of a force which can but feed upon itself. She is there, 
before him, close to him, infinitely apart, and he could crush 
but never seize her. In the ex(|uisite rendering of the Temp- 
tation of Saint Anthony the saint lies prostrate, crouched 
against the cross, which his lips kiss feverishly, as he closes his 
]iained eyes : the shoulders seem to move in a shuddering 
revolt from the burden which tby bear unwillingly ; he grovels 
in the dust like a toad, in his horror of her life and beauty 
which have vast Ih-msehes away upon him. And the woman 
lies bark luxuriously, stretching her naked limbs across his 
hack, and twisting her delicate arms behind her head, in a 
supple movement of perfectly happ)- abandonment, breathing 
the air ; she has the innocence of the flesh, tlic ignorance of 
the spirit, and she does not even know what it is to tempt. 
She is without jx^rxersity ; the flesh, not the devil ; and so, 
perhaps, the more perilous. 
The artist should ne\er consciously aim at strength ; but, 
conscious of his strength, he should aim at the utmost subtlety 
of strength. ^\ hat I mean will be quite clear if I recall two 
(ireek marbles which I once saw in a private exhibition in 
London. In one, tlie head of an old man, strengtJi went as 
far as strength could go without being changed into some 
further and higher substance. The truth and energy of the 
head, gnarled and wry, with its insistence on all the cavities 
and disgrace of age, are only to be compared, in Greek art, 
with the drunken old woman in Munich, or in modem work, 
with La Vieille Ilcauhniere of I^odin. The drunken woman 
is indeed a more " harrowing lesson in Ufe " as she sits hugging 
her wine-jar. In the old man you have the restraining strength 
of a will which endures age and pain with gravitj'. There is 
strength in it and truth, and there is the beauty which grows 
up inevitably out of a sufficieiitly powerful truth. But let 
us look across at another head — the head of a woman, which 
does not seem clever at all ; which seems curiously simple, 
as if the difficulties of the art of sculpture had been evaded 
rather than conquered, yet which ravishes the mind into a 
certain quiet and fullness of delight. You do not notice it 
for strength, for any ingenious mastery out of any evident 
difficulty. Venus ro.se out of the waters, \\hen- human beauty 
came consciously into the world, not startling anyone, but 
like a dream that has come true. Ihc forehead and cheeks 
are no subtler than a flower ; the neck in its breadth from chin 
to nape has no refinements on an actual neck in which one has 
felt life rather than seen beauty. And you will see what is 
not in the other head, the lack of which leaves it where it is : 
a something incalculable, something which begins where 
truth leaves off, something which transforms truth. 
And I am not sure thit you will lind this something in the 
bronze of La Vieille Heaidmicre in 1he Luxembourg gallery. 
Wasted, ruinous, " lean, wizen like a small dry tree," .this 
piteous body remembers the body it had when it was young, 
and the beauty is still there, in the lovely skeleton that shows 
right through the flesh, in the delicate contours of the almost 
hairless head, in the indestructible grace of the profile. This 
" poor old light woman " is more tragic than the old drunken 
woman in Munich ; but as one looks at the old drunken. woman, 
one sees only the sordid pity of things as they are, while La 
Vieille Heaidmicre is saying " Thus endeth all the beauty of 
us," as it can be said by those who have fastenid " the. sweet 
yoke " of beauty upon the necks of the world. 
Whatever may be the precise economic position of Germany 
at the present time, the condition of the j^eople is gravely 
occupying the public mind. The following appeared recently 
in the well-known Berlin paper, the Vossische Zeilung : 
"When the Reichstag reassembles in December it will have to 
consider questions of social policy, which have already been gone 
into by the Reichstag Committee concerned. It is probable that 
the proposals for the protection of mothers aiui children will be 
accepted without much alteration, as the parties are already 
imanimous as regards them. The proposals mainly concerii 
young working women. It is suggested that, during war-time, 
there .should be an eighth-hour shift, where there is regular day 
and night work, and eLsewhere a ten-hour shift as a rule ; e\crv 
second Sunday at least to be a complete holiday ; ten weeks' rest 
after child-birth, and special regulations for the protection of 
those working with poisonous or explosive materials. Expert com- 
mittees to deal with the wages question are to be established 
without any delay. 
There is also to be adequate factory inspection, and 
extensive pro\'ision for cases of accidents, as soon as possible. It 
is proposed to extend the committees for the settlement of dis- 
putes. The following improvements are strongly recommended : 
Extension and better financial endowment of consultative bodies 
for the care of infants, care of school cliildren, children's homes, 
the supervision of creches and infant schools (Kindergarten), 
and establishment of inspection of jjrivate homes for the care of 
children whose mothers are increasingly employed in factories 
and elsewhere during the war. 
Finally, the Federal tiovernments are to be requested to 
provide more homes for illegitimate children of tender age, and 
make the conditions for their reception easier. The question of 
general guardianship will be regulated. 
A recent article in the Hamburger Fremdenblatt states that 
c)rdinary people in Hamburg have had no eggs for five weeks. 
The preserved eggs of the Hamburg War Supply Bureau are 
reserved for civil and military hospitals, children under three 
years.Jand sick people in general, l^or these no leSs than 150 000 
are needed weekly, and it is often no small source of anxiety to 
the War Supply Bureau to provide this number continually 
In spite of this, before Christmas there is to be one general e"" 
distribution, and three distributions of egs-powder prepared fro'n 
eggs under the supervision of the War Supply Bureau c.gs which 
remained over in previous general distributions, and had to be 
made into powder to prevent them from goine; bad. Each packet 
i)f this egg-powder has the full value of olie egg, and will be 
spcciallv welcome to housewives at Christmas 
L. 
