Le Penseur Nu
For Nuni, who forced us to visit the Musée Rodin.
1 The gates of hell. Take a look at this page to see the details of the gates.
Just above the panels of Rodin’s La Porte de l’Enfer1 sits the statue of a naked, contemplative man. His right elbow rests on his knee, and the back of his hand is placed beneath his chin, supporting the weight of his head. He gazes downwards, but not at anything in particular. His muscles are tense, as if he is enduring an invisible strain. And yet, he appears calm, at least on the outside. He is positioned right in front of a gate that opens onto all the torments and sufferings humans have long been warned about, and yet, he seems strangely detached from it all.
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The figure of Le Penseur2 was originally designed to be part of The Gates of Hell, but it was independently cast multiple times during Rodin’s lifespan. The most well-known of these castings is probably the one displayed at the Musée Rodin in Paris. At first, Rodin named this figure Le Poète, which suggests that, at least originally, the figure was meant to portray Dante, whose Divina Commedia inspired La Porte de l’Enfer. Later, however, Rodin changed its name to Le Penseur, erasing the trace of any specific identity. The Gates of Hell was never completed, as Rodin continued to design and redesign it until his death in 1917. We know that over time, he gradually departed from Dante’s Inferno,3 and so might have been his interpretation of Le Penseur.
2 The Thinker
3 Blanchetière, François. Auguste Rodin: 1840-1917. Taschen, 2016, p. 21.
Le Penseur, © Photographic Agency of musée Rodin, Jérome Manoukian
Le Penseur is naked, and apart from its original title, which was ultimately changed to something less specific, there are no other clues in the sculpture suggesting a specific identity for the figure. It can be anyone and can have any sorts of thoughts. It can transcend time: be an inspiration to Munch4, feature in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, appear on the poster of an international conference on philosophy, and at the same time on the cover of a Marvel comic book,5 yet be emotionally moving for a Gen Z. Just compare it to Michelangelo’s Il Pensieroso, which was an inspiration for Rodin’s Le Penseur. Which one is easier to empathise with? Can anyone these days relate to the Duke of Medici, in his military costume and lion-head helmet?
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I believe that choosing to depict Le Penseur naked, has brought a lot of depth to the figure. The nakedness can for example be interpreted as heroic nudity. A couple of centuries earlier, René Descartes, when faced with an avalanche of doubt that, for him, razed almost all of existence to the ground, heroically found a way to affirm his own being by acknowledging his ability to doubt, and therefore to think: je pense, donc je suis6. For Rodin’s thinker, it is perhaps the other way around, as he explains to a Canadian journalist:
6 I think, therefore I am.
“What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes.7”
7 Elsen, Albert E. Rodin. Museum of Modern Art, 1963. Print, p. 52.
Le Penseur is a modern god of existence, hymning the epic ballad of its triumph over nothingness, frozen in bronze, preserved for eternity.
The nudity of The Thinker may also be interpreted as an indication or an invitation to independent thinking, and even as an illustration of the abstract nature of thought. Its body, with its exaggerated musculature, might at first be considered as a dual to its intellectual activity, as some critics for example have interpreted the mascular form of the body and his thinking gesture as representing “action and dreaming” at the same time8. I believe, however, that the bold physicality of Le Penseur, which again made possible by its nakedness, should be understood as a representation of Le Penseur’s psychological state. This can be supported by Rodin’s own words, as he says:
8 See this page.
“The sculptor must learn to reproduce the surface, which means all that vibrates on the surface, soul, love, passion, life…9”
9 Elsen, Albert E. Rodin. Museum of Modern Art, 1963. Print, p. 57.
or
“The sculpture of antiquity sought the logic of the human body. I seek its psychology.10”
10 Ibid, p. 57.
I also personally prefer not to see The Thinker as a dreamer, as the above mentioned critic puts it, but as someone who is sharply (and perhaps painfully) thinking. Having in mind that Il Pensieroso was an inspiration for Rodin’s work, I think these words by Estelle May Hurll on Michelangelo’s masterpiece may shed some light on The Thinker’s thinking:
“His mood is not that of a dreamer lost to his present surroundings. Rather, he seems to be keenly aware of what is going on; his meditations have to do with the present. It is as if, having given an order, he awaits its execution, his mind still intent upon his purposes, satisfied with his decision, and calmly expectant of its success. His affair is one of serious importance; no trifling matter absorbs the thought of this grave man. ‘A king sits in this attitude when, in the midst of his army, he orders the execution of some judicial act, like the destruction of a city. Frederic Barbarossa must have appeared thus when he caused Milan to be ploughed up.’11”
11 See this page.
Interestingly, Rodin himself elaborated on this in a statement in 1904:
“Guided by my first inspiration I conceived another thinker, a naked man, seated upon a rock, his feet drawn under him, his fist against his teeth, he dreams. The fertile thought slowly elaborates itself within his brain. He is no longer dreamer, he is creator.12”
12 Elsen, Albert E. Rodin. Museum of Modern Art, 1963. Print, p. 53.
Finally, I think it is good to keep in mind the possibility that Rodin’s vision was (partially) inspired by some other masterpieces around Dante’s Inferno that he could have seen by then. At the moment I can only think of Delacroix’s La Barque de Dante and Dante et Virgile by Bouguereau, but one may find more such examples.
If this is true, it would be interesting to consider how, for example, the exaggerated muscular bodies of the damned in Delacroix’s or Bouguereau’s paintings are reflected in the figure of the poet in Rodin’s work. Is it, as Elsen puts it, that “Beneath The Thinker might appropriately be inscribed: I think, therefore, I am damned13”?
13 Ibid, p. 53.
