The one is the personification of deep and witty analysis, the other of passion and strength.
The sculptor led us to his antiques, and the conversation naturally returned to the subject which we had just been discussing.
A Greek stele roused the admiration of Anatole France. It represented a young woman seated. A man is gazing at her lovingly, and behind her, bending over her shoulders, stands a serving-maid.
“How the Greeks loved life!” cried the author of Thaïs. “See! Nothing on this funeral stone recalls death. The dead woman is here amid the living, and seems still to take part in their existence. Only she has become very weak, and as she can no longer stand she must remain seated. It is one of the characteristics which designate the dead on these antique monuments: their limbs being without strength, they must lean upon a staff, or against a wall, or else sit down.
“There is also another detail which frequently distinguishes them. While the living who are figured around them all regard them with tenderness, their own eyes wander far and rest on no one. They no longer see those who see them. Yet they continue to live like beloved invalids among those who cherish them. And this half-presence, this half-absence, is the most touching expression of the regret which, according to the ancients, the light of day inspired in the dead.”
Rodin’s collection of antiques is large and well chosen. He is especially proud of a Hercules, whose vigorous slimness filled us with enthusiasm. It is a statue which does not in the least resemble the huge Farnese Hercules. It is marvellously graceful. The demi-god, in all his proud youth, has a body and limbs of extreme slenderness.
“This is indeed,” said our host, “the hero who outran the Arcadian stag with the brazen hooves. The heavy athlete of Lysippus would not have been capable of such a feat of prowess. Strength is often allied to grace, and true grace is strong; a double truth of which this Hercules is a proof. As you see, the son of Alcmene seems even more robust because his body is harmoniously proportioned.”
Anatole France stopped before a charming little torso of a goddess. “This,” he said, “is one of the numberless chaste Aphrodites which were more or less free reproductions of Praxiteles’ masterpiece, the Cnidian Venus. The Venus of the Capitol and the Venus di Medici are, among others, only variations of this much-copied model.
“Among the Greeks, many excellent sculptors spent their skill in imitating the work of some master who had preceded them. They modified the general idea but slightly, and only showed their own personality in the science of the execution. It would seem, besides, that devotional zeal, becoming fond of a sculptural image, forbade artists afterwards to change it. Religion fixes once and for all the divine types that it adopts. We are astonished to find so many chaste Venuses, so many crouching Venuses. We forget that these statues were sacred. In a thousand or two thousand years they will exhume in the same way numbers of statues of the Virgin of Lourdes, all much alike, with a white robe, a rosary, and a blue girdle.”
“What a kindly religion this of the Greeks must have been,” I cried, “which offered such charming forms to the adoration of its worshippers!”