Judgment; nor does it miss the sonorous and sorrowful grandeur of the
Medici Tombs. Yet how different, how feverish, how tragic! Like all
great men working in the grip of a unifying idea, Rodin modified the
old technique of sculpture so that it would serve him as plastically
as does sound a musical composer. A deep lover of music, his inner ear
may dictate the vibrating rhythms of his forms--his marbles are ever
musical; not "frozen music" as Goethe said of Gothic architecture, but
silent swooning music. This gate is a Frieze of Paris, as deeply
significant of modern aspiration and sorrow as the Parthenon Frieze is
the symbol of the great clear beauty of Hellas. Dante inspired this
monstrous and ennobled masterpiece, but Baudelaire filled many of its
chinks and crannies with writhing ignoble shapes; shapes of dusky fire
that, as they tremulously stand above the gulf of fears, wave
ineffectual desperate hands. Heine in his Deutschland asks:

Kennst du die Hölle des Dante nicht,
Die schreckliche Terzetten?
Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt
Den kann kein Gott mehr retten.

And from the "singing flames" of Rodin there is no rescue.

But he is not all tragedy and hell fire. Of singular delicacy, of
exquisite proportions are his marbles of youth, of springtide, and the
desire of life. In 1900, at his special exhibition, Paris, Europe, and
America awoke to these haunting visions. Not since Keats or Swinburne
has love been sung so sweetly, so romantically, so fiercely. Though he
disclaims understanding the Celtic spirit, one could say that there is
Celtic magic, Celtic mystery in his work. He pierces to the core the
frenzy and joy of love and translates them in beautiful symbols.