Albert E. Elsen wrote that he had loved The Gates of Hell since a winter day in 1949, when he first stood below them outside the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia and felt terrified at the prospect of writing his dissertation on them. He said that, in one way or another, he had lived with them for thirty-five years, yet still found exhilarating discoveries in the great portal, along with dismay at the inadequacy of language and culture to share its revelations. He had seen the doors in museums and foundries, in plaster and wax, in negative molds and raw bronze sections, and said they never failed to surprise. In rain, in low winter sun, and when lit from below at night as Rodin must have done in his studio many times, they took on different qualities. He wrote that no other single work of sculpture known to him could attach itself to a person for life in the same way, making constant claims on intelligence, intuition, and feeling while remaining fresh, changing as one changes, and rewarding age and experience; a person does not outgrow The Gates, but grows into them.