LA PORTE DE L’ENFER
tried to make the most of every expression, every turn, of my varying model,—for the human being changes constantly, and my time was infinitely precious and infinitely short. I was never able to bring to satisfactory termination very much during these séances. It was in the paid week, it was during the days of others, that I really produced. I permitted myself then a careful mental study of what Sunday had suggested and had failed to achieve. As I thus meditated, fleeting thoughts and inspirations came to me, and I would hold them, force them to remain, until at the following séance with my model I could mould their likeness in clay. I consider that this training of my memory was of inestimable advantage.”
In 1877 “L’Age d’Airain” was sent to the Salon, and accepted. The extraordinary criticism it evoked is sufficient praise. It was said to be “too perfect,” and the sculptor was accused of having “cast the statue from life”! When these insulting suspicions had been disproved to the eminent jury’s satisfaction, Rodin’s statue—a strong, beautiful male form of Greek purity and classical simplicity of outline—received, in 1880, a third-class medal. This was bought by the State, and can be seen in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Thus, successively accused first of too great originality, second of too faithful realism, Rodin was received by his censors; but ridicule reached its dizzy height when at the Salon of 1898 was exhibited the statue of Balzac, ordered by the Société des Gens de Lettres, and refused by them.
Above the éclat of that time, when Paris made rendezvous before the rejected monument to laugh and
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST