The Gates of Hell

The Gates of Hell. Auguste Rodin. I have loved these awesome doors since that winter day in 1949 when I first stood below them outside the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia and was terrified at the prospect of writing my dissertation on the Gates of Hell. In one way or another, I have lived with them for thirty-five years, and yet when it comes to lecturing or writing about this great portal there are still exhilarating things to discover, accompanied by inevitable dismay over the inadequacy of one's own language and culture to share revelations... I've seen the doors in museums and foundries, in plaster and war, in negative molds and raw bronze sections, and they never fail to surprise. Look at them in the rain or when a winter sun is low and they take on a different qualities. Light then at night form below, the way Rodin must have done in his studio a thousand times, and when you realize you don't know them as a work of art... Not other single work of sculpture know to me can so attach itself to a person for life, making constant claims on intelligence, intuition, and feeling and yet remain so fresh, changing as one changes rewarding ages and experience. You do not outgrow The Gates, you grow into them. --Albert E. Elsen , The Gates of Hell, 1985 , Dedicated in Memory of , Albert E. Elsen, Friend and Scholar.