A Writer Meets his Hero

What Rodin taught Zweig about creativity

There is an absolutely wonderful story about how the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) met the French sculptor August Rodin (1840-1917), and the important lesson that Zweig learned from Rodin.

If you're unfamiliar with Stefan's Zweig, he's what you might call a major minor writer, a writer who is most known for his novellas or his short stories and is the creative inspiration for the writer in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Perhaps his most well known text is his memoirs, The World of Yesterday about his literary and artistic encounters. The book is also a very nostalgic and sad book because it was written during World War II about the world that he lived in, a very vibrant and intellectually stimulating Europe, was fading into darkness. He was a very successful and well-known author, but his works were burned by the Nazis. In this book, Zweig recalls meeting the sculptor Rodin, who was a monumental figure in pre-war Paris.

What Rodin did was considered gospel at that time and pretty much every artist who wanted to be successful wanted to meet Rodin. The poet Rilke became his apprentice and for a time, but in a sense took the lessons from Rodin too literally, too seriously. For example, when Rodin said that you should only work and never do anything else, this is exactly what Rilke then wanted to do with the rest of his life. So Rodin was an incredibly charismatic and influential figure for writers and artists. Zweig recounts a dinner party where he is vigorously debating the merits of Rodin’s work.

Someone argues that Rodin's realist sculpture is passé, that it has to be superseded by a more abstract sculptural work. Zweig vehemently disagrees and argues passionately for the case of Rodin as a modern sculptor and artist, listing the attributues of numerous pieces. During this discussion, a friend of Rodin sees how vigorously Zweig is defending Rodin and says since you clearly like Rodin so much, you should meet him. Zweig readily agrees, it’s like meeting a lifelong idol or hero. So Zweig goes to meet Rodin and when he first meets him, he doesn't even know what to say. He’s so shy, he describes himself as standing amongst the statues as if he himself were a statue as well. Rodin likes him immediately and invites him to his studio, to his atelier where he works and gives him a tour. While Rodin is showing Zweig his studio, they’re walking around, admiring all the sculptures and sketches that Rodin's working on, the (by now well-known) hands and busts that Rodin was obsessively sculpting. At a certain point Rodin stops in front of the bust of a woman and he starts working on it, he starts making minor adjustments and Zweig watches in awe as the great sculptor becomes so immersed in his work that he can't stop. He keeps making small, minute changes to the sculpture. As he's working, he completely forgets about Zweig standing behind him. Eventually, Rodin stops working on the bust and seems satisfied and starts leaving the studio. At this point, Zweig realizes that Rodin has completely forgotten he’s still there, he only sees him when Rodin looks back and is about to close the door.

In this moment, Zweig writes, he learned an immutable lesson about the nature of creative genius and art. When you are truly truly creative, you become completely and utterly focused. This is where Zweig writes that he realizes the transcendental nature of creative genius, that you succumb completely to your focus. Watching Rodin work, be so immersed in his flow that he’d completely forgotten Zweig standing there, there’s a lesson that Zweig took as a central principle for him. Art is what you de-sublimate yourself to, in a strange way the art becomes more real and you fade away before it.

In a sense, this is what Rodin was doing, infusing the bust, the inert sculpture with his own life force. The transition is a transcendental moment which you might also call the moment of de-sublimation, where the artist gives himself completely up to his work. For Zweig, the central lesson of what it means to be an artist is that you aspire for that moment in which you are so immersed in your creation that you've let go of what the world means.

It's a beautiful scene to me because it's not just a scene in which Zweig admires the craft and the skill, the creativity of Rodin, but it's specifically one in which he learns an important lesson about the nature of creativity and work itself. It requires absolute focus, focus elevated to the level of the sublime and that is what he sees at Rodin’s studio. This is Stefan Zweig’s lesson about the nature of creativity and the focus it requires.