Of course, he must first catch
that soul. What M. Rodin knew about the character and career of Mr.
George Wyndham, or about the character and career of Mr. Bernard Shaw,
was not, I hazard, worth knowing; and Mr. Shaw is handed down by him
to posterity as a sort of bearded lady, and Mr. Wyndham as a sort of
beardless one. But about Honore' de Balzac he knew much. Balzac he
understood. Balzac's work, Balzac's soul, in that great rugged figure
aspiring and indeflexible, he gave us with a finality that could have
been achieved through no other art than sculpture.
There is a close kinship between that statue of Balzac and this statue
of which I am to tell you. Both induce, above all, a profound sense of
unrest, of heroic will to overcome all obstacles. The will to compass
self-expression, the will to emerge from darkness to light, from
formlessness to form, from nothing to everything--this it is that I
find in either statue; and this it is in virtue of which the Balzac
has unbeknown a brother on the Italian seaboard.
Here stands--or rather struggles--on his pedestal this younger
brother, in strange contrast with the scenery about him. Mildly,
behind his back, the sea laps the shingle. Mildly, in front of him, on
the other side of the road, rise some of those mountains whereby the
Earth, before she settled down to cool, compassed--she, too--some sort
of self-expression.
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