BO Rodin_FRE_P-1_24 Feb 2011.qxp
2/25/2011
2:22 PM
Page 117
The Walking Man 3 (Conference of 1907)
T
here are a few names that would establish a sense of solidarity between us if I were to pronounce them here and now, a warmth and unanimity that would make it appear as if I – only apparently isolated – were speaking from among you, as if I were one of your voices. But the name that presides over this evening like a constellation of five brilliant stars cannot be spoken. Not now. It would only disturb you, setting in motion currents of sympathy and hostility, while I need your silence and the unclouded surface of your obliging anticipation. I beg those of you who still can to forget the name in question, and I request of all an even wider forgetting. You are accustomed to hearing people speak about art, and who would deny that you are particularly well inclined to words addressed to you in this sense? A certain strong and beautiful movement has fixed your gaze like the flight of a great bird, a movement that could no longer be concealed: and now you are asked to lower your eyes for part of an evening. For I have no desire to draw your attention to the firmament of uncertain developments. Nor do I wish to predict the future based on the bird flight of modern art. I come before you to remind you of your childhood. No, not of yours, but rather of all that ever was childhood. For it should be possible to awaken memories that are not yours, memories that are older than you. I shall seek to restore connections and renew relationships that came about long before you. If I intended to speak of people, I could begin right where you left off when you came into this room. Picking up on your conversations, I would naturally come to everything – lifted and swept along by this exhilarating age, on the shores of which everything human seems to lie, inundated by it and mirrored in unexpected ways. Reflecting on my task, however, it has become clear to me that I have not come before you to speak of people, but rather of things. Things. When I say the word (are you listening?), it grows silent; the silence that surrounds things. All motion subsides and becomes contour, and something permanent is formed from the past and the future: space, the great calm of things, liberated from desire. No, you do not feel it growing silent. The word “things” means nothing to you – too much and thus too ordinary – and passes right by. And in this sense it is good that I have
Pierre de Wissant, detail of the left hand, 1886. Bronze. Musée Rodin, Paris. Edward Steichen, Portrait of Rodin with The Thinker and the Monument to Victor Hugo, 1902. Silver print, 33.4 x 42 cm. Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.
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