DISCUSSION. 1. Find evidence in the text “Auguste Rodin – Early Years” to support the following statements:

1. Find evidence in the text “Auguste Rodin – Early Years” to support the following statements:

a) Auguste had an enormous eagerness to learn;

b) Lecoq hated the idea of losing his most promising student and tried hard to help him;

c) Sculpture fascinated Rodin more than anything else.

2. A lot of outstanding people have gone through quite a few hardships in their lives. Comment on Rodin’s story. What episode struck you most of all? Give your reasons.

3. They say that talent is sure to find its way to success under any circumstances. Do you agree or disagree with it judging by Rodin’s story?

10. Here is some more information on Rodin’s life.

a) Render into English and say what you have learned about Rodin’s taking part in an exhibition:

ЧЕЛОВЕК СО СЛОМАННЫМ НОСОМ

Когда Огюст услышал, что скоро должна состояться выставка, он решил сделать бюст, вернее, голову и послать её в Салон (The Salon). У него не было своей студии, не было денег на гипс и мрамор, он не мог позволить себе нанять натурщика, но мысль о том, что у него есть возможность принять участие в выставке, разжигала его воображение. Он был полон решимости преодолеть все трудности.

Огюст хотел вылепить красивую мужскую голову, но единственный, кто согласился позировать (to sit for) ему за чашку супа и стакан вина, был Биби, старый пьяница со сломанным носом. Вначале Биби показался Огюсту отвратительным, и ему было трудно сосредоточиться. Однако, после того как Огюст разорвал десятки наб­росков, его замысел начал принимать определенные очертания. А как только он взял в руки глину, его уже нельзя было остановить. Безобразие Биби, казалось, не имело больше значения. Огюст работал день и ночь; он потерял счет времени. Пока он работал, ничего другого для него не существовало.

За неделю до открытия выставки голова ещё не была готова. И вдруг Биби исчез. Огюст был в отчаянии. Теперь, когда Огюсту осталось добавить только несколько завершающих штрихов, натурщик был ему особенно нужен. Огюст не хотел лепить го­лову по памяти, он боялся, что она станет фальшивой и сентиментальной. Но другого выбора у него не было, и Огюст продолжал работать.

Спустя несколько дней Биби появился в студии, но он был слишком пьян, чтобы позировать. Он только тупо смотрел на Огюста, пока тот пытался усадить его в угол и подпереть мольбертом. Чтобы не дать ему уснуть, Огюст сварил кофе. Проглотив две чашки обжигающей жидкости, Биби оживился и сел прямо на стуле. «Это, возможно, продлится только несколько минут»,- подумал Огюст. Он видел, что его опасения были правильны - ему не удалось схватить то, что так поразило его в лице Биби. Он уничтожил все кроме подбородка и начал лепить всё снова.

Когда выставка открылась, Огюст всё ещё переделывал голову «человека со сломанным носом».

b) After reading the extract from an article by Joseph Phelan, speak about Auguste Rodin’s creative endeavour and achievements.

Rodin's Story

Auguste Rodin (b. 1840, Paris) was a poor boy with a rich talent for drawing who trained at the École Spéciale de Dessin et de Mathématique, a school with a mission to educate the designers and the artisans of the French nation. He was rejected three times by the École des Beaux Arts, the official art school of France. Rejection proved to be fortunate for this young artist because it forced him to find work among the commercial decorators and ornamental craftsmen of Paris. He was especially lucky to find employment in the studio of Carrier-Belleuse. Carrier-Belleuse had a sharp sense of how to combine historical themes with new technologies and the process of mass production. During and after the Franco-Prussian War, Carrier-Belleuse took his young apprentice to Brussels to help build public monuments commissioned by the Belgian Government.

A trip to Italy in 1875 further opened Rodin's eyes to the achievement of the past: Michelangelo, Donatello and Ghilberti. "Michelangelo saved me from academicism," he later noted. Michelangelo's magnificent young male aristocrats, muscular ignudi, grave prophets, enigmatic sibyls, heroic biblical figures, and his tormented, terrified and hell-bound sinners were to haunt Rodin's imagination for the rest of his life. In turn, Rodin's imagination revived the nearly dead art of sculpture in the late 19th century and provided inspiration for artists of the 20th century.
Rodin's vision of man in his misery and greatness found its center when he received a commission from the French Government to create a portal for the entrance to the Museum of Decorative Art. The theme of the portal was Dante's Divine Comedy. Whether or not Rodin had read Dante before this commission is unimportant: the brooding presence of this other great Florentine inspired and overwhelmed him, as he sat down to read and prepare hundreds of sketches for the work.

The 19th century rediscovered Dante's poetry as well as many other things about the Middle Ages. For the first time since the Renaissance, Europe was receptive to the works and the spirit of its Christian past. Compared to the failures of the Age of Reason, especially post-Napoleonic Europe, the Middle Ages seemed like an era of spiritual health and artistic greatness. The Divine Comedy, considered to be the greatest marriage of European poetry and philosophy, and rivaled only by the pagan epics of Homer and Virgil, became a bestseller. Auguste Rodin had a passion for the Inferno; Dante's journey through hell was his inspiration, visualizing the characters became his career.

Then on a trip to London in 1882 Rodin discovered his British contemporaries, the so-called Pre-Raphaelite painters.

These Painters had already turned to illustrating Dante. In this they were influenced by William Blake (1757-1827), poet and visual artist extraordinary who had created a remarkable series of illustrations for "the greatest poem ever written".

Rodin studied Blake's illustrations of Dante on his return to Paris, thus enlarging his vision and ambitions. (We cannot overlook the influence of the first great illustrator of the Divine Comedy, Botticelli, who was the favorite of the Pre-Raphaelites as well as a strong influence on Blake's linear style.)

The combination of Dante's epic, Blake's drawings and the gigantic example of Michelangelo proved to be a potent cocktail, fueling Rodin for the next 40 years. Furthermore, it pushed him in the opposite direction from the painters of his period –the Salon favorites and the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists.

Thus the project expanded. Rodin took to calling the portal project The Gates of Hell. By using this title, he linked his doors with a famous work of the Renaissance: Ghilberti's Doors for the Florence Baptistery, which illustrate scenes from the Old Testament. These doors, which Michelangelo carefully studied, are known as the Gates of Paradise. But the twisted and anguished figures come from Michelangelo's Last Judgment.

Rodin never completed the huge work The Gates of Hell in a definitive form (he worked on it intermittently until 1900 and the museum never came into being in its proposed form), but he poured some of his finest creative energy into it. Even unfinished and unfinishable it served as a kind of matrix from which Rodin could draw as many as 200 individual pieces including such well-known works as The Kiss and The Thinker.

c) Say a few words about Rodin’s last year:

Negotiations went on for months between officials of the Ministry of Fine Arts and representatives of Auguste, for though his mind wandered only occasionally, he grew more feeble daily and barely had strength to get about. But finally, an September 13, 1916, he signed over all his art to Prance in return for establishment of Rodin Museum at the Hotel Briton.

He was surprised at how much his work totaled. He was told that it came to fifty-six marbles, fifty-six bronzes, one hundred and ninety-three plaster casts, a hundred terra-cottas, over two thousand drawings and sketches, and hundreds of valuable antiques: Greek and Roman sculpture, and ancient Egyptian art. He hoped France would be equally generous…

* * *

The winter of 1916 was very severe. It was difficult to get coal and many people died of the cold. The Germans were attacking and the war was not going very well.

The weather improved with the coming of spring and so did Auguste. The next few months he spent every moment he could in his studio. He could not work, not even sketch, but he wanted to – he saw so many imperfections now.

If he had only ten more years, he thought, or five – he would even settle for one full working year – he could do so much now, so much he hadn't been aware of. Just as a man was learning, he ref­lected, a man lost his strength and was taken away. He tried to be concerned about the war and was unhappy that it was still going badly, though he had heard that America had come in and should turn the tide, but it was very difficult to live in the present these days. He rarely had visitors. Almost everyone he knew was involved elsewhere or dead.

Then on November 12, 1917, his seventy-seventh birthday, he caught bronchitis again and had to go to bed. The next few days as his fever rose and his lungs grew congested ha lapsed into unconsciousness and drifted on a vast sea without a beginning or an end. There were many faces in front of him, his sister Maria, Papa, Mama, Lecoq. He saw himself arguing with Papa about going to the Petite Ecole – what a battle that had been! And now he saw sculpture as far as he could lock: "The Thinker", "Balzac", "Hugo", "The Burghers of Calais", "Mozart", "The Gates" – were they opening for him now? He had tried to work honestly, not to invent, but to observe, to follow nature: a woman, a stone, a head, were all farmed by the same principles. He lay there marvelling at the world he had created, and suddenly he cried out proudly, "And people say that sculpture is not a fine art!"

He closed his eyes and fell into a dreamless sleep, locking like his own sculpture. (from "Naked Came I" by David Weiss)

10. Imagine that you are the editor of the book about Rodin’s life. Sum up everything you have learnt about the sculptor and make a critical review for a paper-back to attract as many readers as possible. Don’t forget to mention the facts that can make the book a best-seller.

Text 8

WHO IS RODIN'S THINKER?