After visiting a beloved friend who has been in my life for some 25 years, I find myself, on my return, longing again for her company. Four leisurely days of lingering over coffee and knitting in front of a roaring New England fire had left me accustomed to her quiet presence. One recent morning, I woke to find this message from her waiting for me...
"This morning I am reading Rilke's writings on Rodin, who he met and befriended. Every word is worth copying out to you for its beauty, sensitivity, elegance, truth and beautiful detail. I'll have to get you the book, or share mine.
Here is what touched me particularly this morning. On Rodin's hands:
"We remember how small human hands are, how quickly they tire and how little time is given to them to create. We long to see these hands, which have lived the life of hundreds of hands, of a nation of hands that rose before dawn to brave the long path of this work."
(And here, "things" refers to his sculptures):
"And the forms in Rodin's work are pure and intact; without questioning, he transferred them to his things, which look as if they have never been touched when he finishes with them. Light and shadow grow soft around them as they do around very fresh fruit, and more alive with movement, as of the morning wind had brought them."
In Rodin's words: "And this is because I devoted myself seriously to something. He who understands one thing understands everything, for the same laws are in all."
The quote by Rodin brought to mind something profoundly beautiful by an author whom I love most dearly. The following passage is from the short, perfect little jewel of a book by George MacDonald, The Golden Key. In it, one of the protagonists finds herself deep within the earth after a difficult and arduous journey:
"At the long last, the stair ended at a rude archway in an all but glowing rock. Through this archway Tangle fell exhausted into a cool mossy cave. The floor and walls were covered with moss--green, soft, and damp. A little stream spouted from a rent in the rock and fell into a basin of moss. She plunged her face into it and drank. Then she lifted her head and looked around. Then she rose and looked again. She saw no one in the cave. But the moment she stood upright she had a marvelous sense that she was in the secret of the earth and all its ways. Everything she had seen, or learned from books; all that her grandmother had said or sung to her; all the talk of the beasts, birds, and fishes; all that had happened to her on her journey with Mossy, and since then in the heart of the earth with the Old man and the Older man--all was plain: she understood it all, and saw that everything meant the same thing, though she could not have put it into words again."
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