Rodin [antikvár]

Foreword I do not know why I should have been so fascinated by a reproduction found by chance in a heap of old newspapers. I was fourteen or fifteen at the time, and art scarcely figured among the preoccupations of my adolescent world. At school, where we set up our easels in serried ranks, drawing-classes were largely an excuse for noisy horse-play. Rodin, then at the end of his career, meant nothing to me. Even so, I could not tear my eyes away from that serenely radiant face as it jutted from its rugged and almost uncut block of marble. The caption read : ' Rodin—Bust '. I had never yet lingered over a work of art nor sensed its mysterious appeal, but I read a great deal. Privately, I christened this piece of sculpture ' mind divorced from matter '. A German art book which I bought not long afterwards informed me that it was Thought, one of the illustrious sculptor's best-known works. I had cut the picture out and mounted it above my desk so that, when my mind strayed from the tedium of Latin prose composition, my eyes would meet those of the marble head. It would be dishonest to pretend that Thought brought me any intellectual stimulation. It just encouraged my day-dreaming. While I would not place this sculpture at the peak of Rodin's ouvre, it certainly taught me that works of art can be imbued with a strange power which enables us to exchange what we bestow on them for what they bestow on us. 7