‘As I have nothing to do, I am writing to you again. You cannot imagine how pleasant it is at the Islette. Mme Courcelles told me I could take baths in the river, where her daughter and the maid bathe, without any danger. I sleep completely naked to make myself believe that you are here, but when I wake up it is no longer the same. I kiss you – Camille Above all, do not deceive me again.’
Monsieur Rodin [Camille Claudel]
[Camille Claudel was a French sculptor and artist. In the summer of 1890, she wrote these lines to her mentor Auguste Rodin, an artist old enough to have been her father, with whom she shared a secret and ultimately destructive relationship. Her other passionate letters to Rodin reveal not only deep artistic admiration, but also a profound, almost consuming despair as their bond began to unravel. In time, she would be increasingly overtaken by paranoia, and would die in a psychiatric institution.]
