Legs hold a torso away from the earth.
And a regular high poem of legs is here.
Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs
Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear
And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors.
You make us
Proud of our legs, old man.
And you left off the head here,
The skull found always crumbling neighbor of the ankles.
Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs
Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear
And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors.
You make us
Proud of our legs, old man.
And you left off the head here,
The skull found always crumbling neighbor of the ankles.
-Carl Sandburg, "The Walking Man of Rodin" (1916)
It took me a few seconds to adjust to the stark otherworldliness of this place - I felt it necessary to remove my thumping ear buds when I turned right and seemed to interrupt "le Penseur" in mid reverie.
I'm not sure if was the storm rolling in or the rustling from the trees that stood as sentinels around this garden, but the gravity of this iron-cast moment was at once all-encompassing yet ephemeral. He seemed to be thinking - How can we try to explain the presence of evil in a world of such beauty and promise? - while at the same time thinking - Now will it be hamburgers or lasagne for dinner tonight? (Well, let's not forget we're in Paris, so the meal choices might be a little more like fois gras or escargot - but all the same.)
And then the skies opened. I hadn't even made it to the neighboring Balzac before the windy warning began. Across the garden, a melange of leaves, dust, and mist began to swirl and sprint north through the garden, leaving debris on men's lapels and in ladies' now-disheveled coiffures. Tourists, buring their heads inside their coats as best they could, scurried toward the overhangs off the buildings. I, a picture of complete self-control and preparedness, smugly opened my umbrella. As thick globes of rain fell, I wandered over to my friend Balzac.
I don't know what it is about this sculpture, but of all the Rodin works I've seen (admitidly, they are few), I find this one the most interesting. He is enshrouded from the bottom of his pronounced chin all he way past his feet; his body or any idea of figure is almost indiscernible beneath this giant cloak. His face, to me, is not particularly pleasing - he is vaguely reminiscent of the old men with an odor of Thunderbird and McDonalds about them who sit, quite content with themselves, at the base of the stairs of a metro stop watching people go by. He may be muttering to himself and passers-by might throw him dirty looks, but he doesn't care. Perhaps he's seen how the world's going to end, hears voices who tell him the secret ingredients to the cure for cancer,or is the only living person who can decipher the grafiti code that reveals every nuclear detination code worldwide, what have you. He knows he's in the the loop and the rest of us are resoundingly not. Thus Balzac's slight squint of the eye and modest raise of the chin - he knows something beyond our ken.
Then the wind wipes that smug smile off my face as my umbrella inverts itself and goes sailing out my hands, landing in a lovely shrub about 10 feet away. Now looking like the rest of the cold wet tourists, I drag my gnarled umbrella behind me to the small garden café.
The storm only lasted a few minutes. Enough time to get a latte and a croisant, of course. But almost as quickly as it came, the rain and wind were gone, the leaves were settled, and the sun woke from a brief nap and began to shine as if denying that it was ever asleep at all. Only long trails of rain residue remained sliding down the dark shimmer figures, like the slime trail of a crawling snail. Many of Rodin's pieces are very somber and sobering depictions of French proletariat hardship, and his trio of "The Shades" seemeds especially moving, having weathered the storm.
Their dark bodies glistened - they have crossed over to the other side. They have understood the mortality of this life, the dark, deep suffering that the physcial body can endure and yet they seem to bow in homage to the struggle. They are paralyzed in time, but their presence evokes an eternal movement that continues, even as the wind and rain might usher in hundreds and thousands of new tourists, nations, and epochs. Rodin, in his beautiful mastery of the emotionalism of the human form, has never found a more worthy compliment to his work than this October rain.
And then the skies opened. I hadn't even made it to the neighboring Balzac before the windy warning began. Across the garden, a melange of leaves, dust, and mist began to swirl and sprint north through the garden, leaving debris on men's lapels and in ladies' now-disheveled coiffures. Tourists, buring their heads inside their coats as best they could, scurried toward the overhangs off the buildings. I, a picture of complete self-control and preparedness, smugly opened my umbrella. As thick globes of rain fell, I wandered over to my friend Balzac.
I don't know what it is about this sculpture, but of all the Rodin works I've seen (admitidly, they are few), I find this one the most interesting. He is enshrouded from the bottom of his pronounced chin all he way past his feet; his body or any idea of figure is almost indiscernible beneath this giant cloak. His face, to me, is not particularly pleasing - he is vaguely reminiscent of the old men with an odor of Thunderbird and McDonalds about them who sit, quite content with themselves, at the base of the stairs of a metro stop watching people go by. He may be muttering to himself and passers-by might throw him dirty looks, but he doesn't care. Perhaps he's seen how the world's going to end, hears voices who tell him the secret ingredients to the cure for cancer,or is the only living person who can decipher the grafiti code that reveals every nuclear detination code worldwide, what have you. He knows he's in the the loop and the rest of us are resoundingly not. Thus Balzac's slight squint of the eye and modest raise of the chin - he knows something beyond our ken.Then the wind wipes that smug smile off my face as my umbrella inverts itself and goes sailing out my hands, landing in a lovely shrub about 10 feet away. Now looking like the rest of the cold wet tourists, I drag my gnarled umbrella behind me to the small garden café.
The storm only lasted a few minutes. Enough time to get a latte and a croisant, of course. But almost as quickly as it came, the rain and wind were gone, the leaves were settled, and the sun woke from a brief nap and began to shine as if denying that it was ever asleep at all. Only long trails of rain residue remained sliding down the dark shimmer figures, like the slime trail of a crawling snail. Many of Rodin's pieces are very somber and sobering depictions of French proletariat hardship, and his trio of "The Shades" seemeds especially moving, having weathered the storm.
Their dark bodies glistened - they have crossed over to the other side. They have understood the mortality of this life, the dark, deep suffering that the physcial body can endure and yet they seem to bow in homage to the struggle. They are paralyzed in time, but their presence evokes an eternal movement that continues, even as the wind and rain might usher in hundreds and thousands of new tourists, nations, and epochs. Rodin, in his beautiful mastery of the emotionalism of the human form, has never found a more worthy compliment to his work than this October rain.
