THE THINKER

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was a French sculptor known for his unique, virtuoso ability to organize a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface that set him apart from the figure sculpture traditions before and since his time.

In 1880 he was awarded the commission to create a portal for the planned Museum of Decorative Arts. Although the museum was never built, Rodin worked for 37 years on this monumental sculptural group, The Gates of Hell, depicting scenes from Dante's Inferno in high relief. "The Thinker" was originally meant to depict Dante, the great Italian poet, in front of the Gates of Hell, pondering his great poem.

The first large-scale bronze cast was finished in 1902, but was not presented to the public until 1904. It became the property of the city of Paris and was put in front of the Panthéon in 1906. In 1922, however, it was moved to the Hôtel Biron, transformed into a Rodin Museum. More than any other Rodin sculpture, 'The Thinker' moved into the popular imagination, as an immediately recognizable icon of intellectual activity.

Source: - Wikipedia

What could have made him think so much???

SELF PITY

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.


- D. H. Lawrence

HIGH FLIGHT

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence; hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, Up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

- By Jon Gillespie Magee Jr., Pilot Officer, RCAF - 1941

~In December 1941, Pilot Officer John G. Magee, a nineteen year old American serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England, was killed when his Spitfire collided with another airplane inside a cloud. Several months before his death, he composed his immortal sonnet "High Flight," a copy of which he mailed to his mother in the United States.~