“Look!” he said to me; “I have accented the swelling of the muscles which express distress. Here, here, there—I have exaggerated the straining of the tendons which indicate the outburst of prayer.”
And, with a gesture, he underlined the most vigorous parts of his work.
“I have you, Master!” I cried ironically; “you say yourself that you have accented, accentuated, exaggerated. You see, then, that you have changed nature.”
He began to laugh at my obstinacy.
Invocation
By Rodin
“No,” he replied. “I have not changed it. Or, rather, if I have done it, it was without suspecting it at the time. The feeling which influenced my vision showed me Nature as I have copied her.
“If I had wished to modify what I saw and to make it more beautiful, I should have produced nothing good.”
An instant later he continued:
“I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.