Symons quotes that art in any form (painting, singing, etc.) is just the same thoughts expressed differently. That art is just a way to express views in life, and everybody does that differently. He recognizes seven types of art in his work. One type of art Symons shows is Auguste Rodin as being one with the nature through his artwork in sculpting. Instead of using life as a way to sculpt artwork, he uses artwork to show life. Symons emphasizes this link to nature by emphasizing the ways in which Rodin links with the earth, and how this link is one of the main ways in which Rodin performs his art. He uses rhythm to show the ways in which the movement of bodies to be in equilibrium and how Rodin uses this equilibrium in order to produce his pieces. Symons explains that Rodin’s way of thinking about beauty is that everything is beautiful due to the fact that it lives, and if people start over thinking the beauty of things, then those things lose their beauty, and therefore they die. This all encircles one major theme that Symons believed Rodin lived by: Life is Beauty. An example of how Symons accurately portrays the way that Rodin uses the movements and details of a subject in order to brings the beauty and life into his artwork is through a quote from Rodin about his “Thinker” sculpture:
“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.” – Auguste Rodin
Also Symons feels that Rodin appreciates beauty in a more raw form. Rather than other artists who carve their works as completely separate entities. Rodin leaves his carvings imbedded in the stone that they are carved from. This makes for a feeling of struggle, not only in the piece with the characters therein but also with the stone itself like a drowning man trying to get free of the waters that pull him down.
Symons describes this style in this manner, “It is at once the flower and the root; that of the others is the flower only, and the plucked flower.” In this manner the separation is compared with the death of the piece. How freeing it from its stony prison forces some mystic quality of beauty to be released, never to be seen again.
