EMULATION AND REPETITION IN 19TH CENTURY ART
 

It has been said that Rodin spent an entire year “living with Dante,” drawing and sketching his impressions of what he had read (Elsen 1985, 13). Though it is a difficult task, since Rodin neither dated, nor titled many of his sketches, a large number of those that survive have been successfully connected with this period in the conception and creation of the Gates of Hell. It is even more difficult to connect these drawings to specific episodes from the text, but there are a few that show evidence of Rodin’s thinking about the relationship of Paolo and Francesca (Figs. 3 and 4). These most often depict couples passionately kissing and embracing. Their bodies contort into various impossible positions, but they always manage to remain bonded together, as in the two illustrated examples.

 Such drawings suggest that at this stage in the process Rodin was focusing his attention on the portion of the Inferno in which Francesca speaks to Dante and describes the forbidden kiss that occurred between her and Paolo, moments before her husband discovered the transgression and killed them both. Francesca tells Dante that while she and Paolo were reading of Lancelot’s love affair with Guinevere, “…this man, who never shall be parted from me, ‘all trembling, kissed me on my mouth” (Alighieri 2009, 91). Though Rodin leaves out the details of the scene, such as the book the pair were reading, or any indication of the setting, the emotions and intensity of the scene come through clearly in his depiction of the bodies of Paolo and Francesca. The way that the bodies overlap and intertwine show externally the inward state that these souls will be stuck in for all of eternity.

The sculpture that Rodin eventually created of Paolo and Francesca represents a very different moment from this Canto of the Inferno, but the intensity of the emotion and the compulsion of the bodies remain apparent. In the sculpture, Paolo, the figure on top, desperately tries to maintain his hold on Francesca’s body as she is pulled down and away from him, by forces that seem beyond her control. His arms reach to their full extent, but he cannot get a solid grip on her body. Though it is difficult to put one’s finger on the exact moment in the story of Dante’s encounter with the lovers that Rodin is representing, after careful study of the work it seems fruitless to try. It is clear that although Rodin may have strayed from the narrative of Paolo and Francesca, he did not stray from Dante.

Rodin represents Paolo and Francesca trapped within the winds that rage through the Circle of Hell in which these two souls must reside for eternity. As Dante enters this circle, he says, “The hellish squall, which never rests, sweeps spirits in its headlong rush, tormenting, whirls and strikes them” (Alighieri 2009, 85). Using only the human body, Rodin successfully represents this “hellish squall” and the enormous force that is constantly at work on the forms of the damned. The external force of the wind has been internalized in the bodies of Paolo and Francesca. Like the couples in the drawings, these two figures, despite their twisted poses, struggle to cling to each other and maintain bodily contact. However, in the sculpture, the passion contained in the form of the bodies is not ecstatic; instead, it is a desperate and hopeless passion.

Rodin chose to give human form to the environment that Dante enters in this Circle of Hell, rather than to any portion of the narrative that Francesca relates to the poet, which departs in a significant way from his drawings. Despite the differences that came out of the transition from two-dimensions to three, at both points in his creative process, it is clear that Rodin was taking inspiration directly from the words of Dante.

Next

Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4.
Auguste Rodin, Virgil and Dante/Paolo and Francesca