They had
worked in the same studio in Paris, when they were young, before life had
carried them where they didn’t want to go. Or perhaps they did, who knows?
I sit in
this café and peer at the photo. Notice, for example, that the lady on the
right, has her hand on the lady on the left. But she? Her arms are akimbo.
“They’re
trying to poison me,” sang Joyce
DiDonato in the epilogue to Jake Heggie’s song cycle Camille
Claudel: Into the Fire.
Well, she may have said it, but the lady on the right—Jessie Lipscomb—came
away saying it wasn’t true the Claudel was insane, and a friend of Rodin’s echoed the
statement. More tellingly, the doctors were never entirely convinced that Claudel needed to be in
the madhouse—they once wrote to suggest that she be cared for at home.
Reading the
account of her life in Wikipedia,
her family seem to be the villains. The brother—who signed the
form that committed her, managed to visit seven times in 30 years. To be fair,
part of that time he was in China, part of the time war was ravaging Europe. In
fact, she died in the middle of World War Two; was that why she was buried in a
mass grave? And by the way, the brother managed to specify to the
centimeter—practically—where he wanted to be planted.
Still, the
brother managed to cross occupied France to see her before her death. But what
about the sister—who dropped in just once?
Then we
come to Mother—who had never fully accepted her daughter’s embrace of the arts.
And Wikipedia seems to imply that Mother, acting through Brother Paul, was the
driving force behind the commitment. Because Mother didn’t visit once—thus
laying to rest the claims about those ferocious maternal instincts.
Then we
come to her relationship with Rodin: Joshua Kosman had this
to say in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Her
relationship with Rodin, which was both artistic and erotic, caused her as much
grief as any such romance between mentor and protégée, and came to an end after
she aborted their child.
Hmm—don’t
know about that. Wikipedia
states, “in the early years of the 20th Century,
Claudel had patrons, dealers, and some commercial success,” and she had stopped
seeing Rodin regularly in 1898. She exhibited in 1903, and produced this work
in the same period:
Claudel
destroyed most of her work; still, about 90 pieces remain. She’s been the
subject of a few biographies, a few films, and a few exhibitions. Some people
feel that she is a spin-off of the infinitely more famous Rodin—to me, their
work looks nothing alike, but what do I know?
The
question is whether she was mad, and if so, what if anything caused it. I look
into the faces of the photo, and what do I see? Jessie—an English
sculptor—peers at us, as if to say, “yes, world, remember us. Remember that we
too were young, that we lived and loved, and went our separate ways. Yes, this
is the last visit—we won’t see each other again.”
And
Claudel?
She’s
withdrawn. Nor had she wanted to see her old friend, but rancor? It’s a young
person’s taste. The picture makes it clear: they are tied to each other by
their history, by their fights, perhaps by their envy or jealousy. And they
parted for many years. Jessie married, Claudel spent the final 30 years of her
life in a madhouse: I see understanding in Jessie face. And in Claudel’s?
Resignation….
