Auguste Rodin

“Rodin was solitary before fame came to him and afterward he became, perhaps, still more solitary. For fame is ultimately but the summary of all misunderstandings that crystallize about a new name. Rodin's message and its significance are little understood by the many men who gathered about him. It would be a long and weary task to enlighten them; nor is this necessary, for they assembled about the name, not about the work,—a work that has grown far beyond this name's sound and limitations, and that has become nameless as a plain is nameless or a sea that has a name but on the map, in books, and to men, but which is, in reality, but distance, movement and depth”...

Auguste Rodin was born in Paris on the 14th of November, 1840, of a family of humble employees. The child at first attended a day-school in the Rue Saint Jacques, then went to a boarding-school at Beauvais, kept by his uncle. At fourteen he returned to Paris and entered the school of art in the Rue de l'École de Médecine. A period of desperate industry at once set in for him...