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Page 1 of 11907 · PDF PAGE 99
BALZAC IANT, with iron secrecies ennighted, Cloaked, Balzac stands and sees. Immense disdain, Egyptian silence, mastery of pain, Gargantuan laughter, shake or still the ignited Stature of the Master, vivid. Far, affrighted, The stunned air shudders on the skin. In vain The Master of “ La Comedie Humaine” Shadows the deep-set eyes, genius-lighted. Epithalamia, birth-songs, epitaphs, Are written in the mystery of his lips. Sad wisdom, scornful shame, grand agony In the coffin-folds of the cloak, scarred mountains, lie, And pity hides i’ th’ heart…
1907 · PDF PAGE 20
… reason? These are only ways of looking at one idea, and as you are theologian, poet, lover or mystic, so you will choose. And it is the Master’s merit, not his fault, if his conception is so broad-based as to admit of different interpretations. The p&nomenon is possible because Rodin is the master and not the slave of his colossal technique. The difficulty of naming a masterpiece is perhaps harder work than producing it, and Rodin being a sculptor and not an illicit epigram distiller, is perfectly justified in picking up what he can from the w…
1907 · PDF PAGE 25
…NTISPIECE RODIN ERE is a man! For all the world to see His work stands, shaming Nature. Clutched, combined In the sole still centre of a master-mind, The Egyptian force, the Greek simplicity, The Celtic subtlety. Through suffering free, The calm great courage of new art, refined In nervous majesty, indwells behind The beauty of each radiant harmony. Titan! the little centuries drop back, Back from the contemplation. Stand and span With one great grip his cup, the Zodiac! Distil from all time’s art his wine, the truth! Drink, drink the mighty he…
1907 · PDF PAGE 103
…waited, triumphed. Kingly note By note imperial from its passionate throat Vibrates: the shadows fall like pauses in The workshop of the Master: where there spin Phrases in marble: fancies fall or float, Passions exult, despairs abound, loves dote, Thoughts gallop or abide: and prayer is sin. Spell-bound we sat: one, young, eagerly moves. One sits in thought: one listens, dreams, and loves. One, critical, approves with conscious nod. But I abode without the spell; saw these— Diverse harmonies of identical keys!— And these were thus: but Rodin h…
1907 · PDF PAGE 101
…urder of lust to entice The insane to filthier raptures, carrion spice Of ordure for perfume, bloom there, fixed bold By the calm of the Master, god-like to behold The horror with firm chisel and glance of ice. Ay! and the petty and the sordid soul, A servile whore’s deformed debauchery,? Grins from the image. Let posterity From Rodin’s art guess Mirbeau’s heart, extol The lethal chamber men ere then will find For the pimp’s pen and the corrupted mind. 1 Le jardin des supplices, par Octave Mirbeau. 2 Les mémoires d’une femme de chambre, par Oct…
1907 · PDF PAGE 37
…d, And I pay black orisons to the breasts aspread In multiple mutable motion, whose soul is hid. © And the toils of confused emotion the Master bid Lurk in the turn of the torso for poets to see is hid from the lesser and dull—hidden from me. She squats, and is void and null; I know her not; ' As God is above, but more so, she sits, to blot Intelligence out of my brain, conceit from my ken; And I class myself, idle and vain, with the newspaper men. 21
1907 · PDF PAGE 32
There is a flower of native light That springs eternal on the earth. Carve us, O master-hand, aright That ecstasy of pain and mirth, A baby’s birth! That prize of fear Engrave upon the loftiest tier! Nor in the solitary woe (The silent, the unwitting strain) Forget the miracles that grow In the austerely ordered brain! Darwin and Taine, Descartes and Boyle, Inscribe thou on the Tower of Toil! Those who have striven to limn the mind, Paint, model, tune, or hymn the light, Their vision of the world refined By mastery of superior sight: Honour the…
1907 · PDF PAGE 31
… the mind! Grow up the grades, O godlike hand, Rodin, most rightly named “August”! Thy splendid sons and daughters stand Obedient to the master “must.” The decadent dust thy spells assoil; Death lives in this, thy Tower of Toil. Grow up the grades! record the tasks These arduous phantoms have achieved! The growth of mind to mortals asks A power not swift to be believed. What bosoms heaved ere Nature's age From monkey-man deduced the sage! So be thy spiral tower the type Of higher convolutions drawn From hunger’s woe and murder’s gripe And lust’…
1907 · PDF PAGE 18
… was what it came to. Rodin’s works, it is said, mean nothing. He makes a study: people see it in his studio: A. goes up and says to the Master: “Ah, how beautiful, etc., ad nauseam—“I suppose it is ‘Harth and the Spring.’” B. follows, and suggests “ Hercules and Cacus’; C. thinks “The Birth of a Flower”; D. calls it ‘““Despair”; E. varies 4