Persons [ ] I am unable to protect you from the harm that I see | Camille Claudel, 1864 -1943
“There is always something missing that torments me.”
“I have fallen into an abyss. I live in a world so curious, so strange.
Of the dream that was my life, this is my nightmare.”
“I sleep completely naked to make me believe you are here, but when I wake up
it is not the same thing. Most of all, don’t deceive me with other women any more.”
“Don’t fear anything for your letters, they are burnt one by one and
I hope you do the same with mine.”
“You stole it all! My youth, my work! Everything!”
”I am in no mood to be deceived any longer by the crafty devil and false
character whose greatest pleasure is to take advantage of everyone.”
“I tolerate my faults but not at all other people’s.”
”I took all my wax studies and threw them in the fire… that’s the way it is when
something unpleasant happens to me. I take my hammer and I squash a figure.”
“I don’t want to say anything because I know I am unable
to protect you from the harm that I see.”
“They try to force me to sculpt here. They don’t succeed, so they make trouble for me.”
“Madhouses are houses made on purpose to cause suffering…
I cannot stand any longer the screams of these creatures.”
“You know what black hatred women feel toward me as soon as they see me, until I return
inside my shell, they use every possible weapon. As soon as a generous man tries to
help me out, a woman is here to hold his arm and prevent him from acting.”
“You promised to take care of me and not to turn your back on me. How is it possible
that you never wrote to me even once and you never came back to see me? Do you
think that it is fun for me to spend months, even years, without any news,
without any hope!”
“I am not feeling any better because I cannot stay in bed, having constant cause
for walking. They say I leave at night by the window of my tower, hanging from
a red umbrella with which I set fire to the forest!”
“You find me at work; excuse the dust on my blouse. I sculpt my marble myself.”
“Send me one hundred francs on our future deals, otherwise I will disappear in a cataclysm.”
“If you are nice, and keep your promise, we will be in paradise.”
“I am scared; I don’t know what is going to happen to me. What was the point of working
so hard and of being talented, to be rewarded like this? Never a penny, tormented all
my life. It is horrible; one cannot imagine it.”
“I thank you for your kind invitation to introduce me to the president of the Republic.
Since I have not been out of my atelier for two months, I have no appropriate
costume for this circumstance. Please excuse me.”
Camille Claudel, 1864 -1943
Auguste Rodin, The Mask of Camille Claudel, 1887
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“I showed her where to find gold, but the gold was within her.”
Auguste Rodin
