In the brooklyn museum.

• Author: Brosman, Catharine Savage
• Position: Poem

Classic architecture facing us--pillars, pediment, and dome, the image of imposing, institutionalized art; but here's a new glass entrance hall, sky-lit, feeling open, vast--and, greeting us, more living than the bag inspector, are twelve Rodin statues, not life-sized but enormous, giants of his thought. He cast them extra- large because the early critics had alleged his "Le Vaincu" had been molded from a living model-- unacceptable technique; the statue was too good (the pose, the lifted arms showing the biceps, the mighty neck and rippling torso, musculature in bronze, almost breathing). Here's Balzac, naked, corpulent and vigorous--the vision of the Comedie humaine in person; here, too, the tragic burghers of Calais, standing alone, the more impressive for it (hands enormous, palpitant; feet, the very sense of motion, fit for a colossus; heads, even in their lamentation, strong): Andrieus d'Andres, the "weeping burgher," fingers enmeshed, covering his head in dolor; Jean d'Aire, holding the city key to be surrendered; Pierre de Wiessant--like others, rope around the neck; two more; finally, Eustache de Saint-Pierre, the bearded burgher, at the center of the monument of six erected in Calais. All are immense, with eyes far-seeing in their sacrifice, proclaiming still their fear of martyrdom, their grief, their pride. The massive presences...