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29.12.13
24.12.13
VICTOR HUGO_CECI TUERA CELA
THIS WILL KILL THAT
Our lady readers will pardon us if we pause for a moment to seek what
could have been the thought concealed beneath those enigmatic words of the
archdeacon: "This will kill that. The book will kill the edifice."
To our mind, this thought had two faces. In the first place, it was a
priestly thought. It was the affright of the priest in the presence of a
new agent, the printing press. It was the terror and dazzled amazement of
the men of the sanctuary, in the presence of the luminous press of
Gutenberg. It was the pulpit and the manuscript taking the alarm at the
printed word: something similar to the stupor of a sparrow which should
behold the angel Legion unfold his six million wings. It was the cry of
the prophet who already hears emancipated humanity roaring and swarming;
who beholds in the future, intelligence sapping faith, opinion dethroning
belief, the world shaking off Rome. It was the prognostication of the
philosopher who sees human thought, volatilized by the press, evaporating
from the theocratic recipient. It was the terror of the soldier who
examines the brazen battering ram, and says:—"The tower will
crumble." It signified that one power was about to succeed another power.
It meant, "The press will kill the church."
But underlying this thought, the first and most simple one, no doubt,
there was in our opinion another, newer one, a corollary of the first,
less easy to perceive and more easy to contest, a view as philosophical
and belonging no longer to the priest alone but to the savant and the
artist. It was a presentiment that human thought, in changing its form,
was about to change its mode of expression; that the dominant idea of each
generation would no longer be written with the same matter, and in the
same manner; that the book of stone, so solid and so durable, was about to
make way for the book of paper, more solid and still more durable. In this
connection the archdeacon's vague formula had a second sense. It meant,
"Printing will kill architecture."
In fact, from the origin of things down to the fifteenth century of the
Christian era, inclusive, architecture is the great book of humanity, the
principal expression of man in his different stages of development, either
as a force or as an intelligence.
When the memory of the first races felt itself overloaded, when the mass
of reminiscences of the human race became so heavy and so confused that
speech naked and flying, ran the risk of losing them on the way, men
transcribed them on the soil in a manner which was at once the most
visible, most durable, and most natural. They sealed each tradition
beneath a monument.
The first monuments were simple masses of rock, "which the iron had not
touched," as Moses says. Architecture began like all writing. It was first
an alphabet. Men planted a stone upright, it was a letter, and each letter
was a hieroglyph, and upon each hieroglyph rested a group of ideas, like
the capital on the column. This is what the earliest races did everywhere,
at the same moment, on the surface of the entire world. We find the
"standing stones" of the Celts in Asian Siberia; in the pampas of America.
Later on, they made words; they placed stone upon stone, they coupled
those syllables of granite, and attempted some combinations. The Celtic
dolmen and cromlech, the Etruscan tumulus, the Hebrew galgal, are words.
Some, especially the tumulus, are proper names. Sometimes even, when men
had a great deal of stone, and a vast plain, they wrote a phrase. The
immense pile of Karnac is a complete sentence.
At last they made books. Traditions had brought forth symbols, beneath
which they disappeared like the trunk of a tree beneath its foliage; all
these symbols in which humanity placed faith continued to grow, to
multiply, to intersect, to become more and more complicated; the first
monuments no longer sufficed to contain them, they were overflowing in
every part; these monuments hardly expressed now the primitive tradition,
simple like themselves, naked and prone upon the earth. The symbol felt
the need of expansion in the edifice. Then architecture was developed in
proportion with human thought; it became a giant with a thousand heads and
a thousand arms, and fixed all this floating symbolism in an eternal,
visible, palpable form. While Daedalus, who is force, measured; while
Orpheus, who is intelligence, sang;—the pillar, which is a letter;
the arcade, which is a syllable; the pyramid, which is a word,—all
set in movement at once by a law of geometry and by a law of poetry,
grouped themselves, combined, amalgamated, descended, ascended, placed
themselves side by side on the soil, ranged themselves in stories in the
sky, until they had written under the dictation of the general idea of an
epoch, those marvellous books which were also marvellous edifices: the
Pagoda of Eklinga, the Rhamseion of Egypt, the Temple of Solomon.
The generating idea, the word, was not only at the foundation of all these
edifices, but also in the form. The temple of Solomon, for example, was
not alone the binding of the holy book; it was the holy book itself. On
each one of its concentric walls, the priests could read the word
translated and manifested to the eye, and thus they followed its
transformations from sanctuary to sanctuary, until they seized it in its
last tabernacle, under its most concrete form, which still belonged to
architecture: the arch. Thus the word was enclosed in an edifice, but its
image was upon its envelope, like the human form on the coffin of a mummy.
And not only the form of edifices, but the sites selected for them,
revealed the thought which they represented, according as the symbol to be
expressed was graceful or grave. Greece crowned her mountains with a
temple harmonious to the eye; India disembowelled hers, to chisel therein
those monstrous subterranean pagodas, borne up by gigantic rows of granite
elephants.
Thus, during the first six thousand years of the world, from the most
immemorial pagoda of Hindustan, to the cathedral of Cologne, architecture
was the great handwriting of the human race. And this is so true, that not
only every religious symbol, but every human thought, has its page and its
monument in that immense book.
All civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy. This law of
liberty following unity is written in architecture. For, let us insist
upon this point, masonry must not be thought to be powerful only in
erecting the temple and in expressing the myth and sacerdotal symbolism;
in inscribing in hieroglyphs upon its pages of stone the mysterious tables
of the law. If it were thus,—as there comes in all human society a
moment when the sacred symbol is worn out and becomes obliterated under
freedom of thought, when man escapes from the priest, when the excrescence
of philosophies and systems devour the face of religion,—architecture
could not reproduce this new state of human thought; its leaves, so
crowded on the face, would be empty on the back; its work would be
mutilated; its book would be incomplete. But no.
Let us take as an example the Middle Ages, where we see more clearly
because it is nearer to us. During its first period, while theocracy is
organizing Europe, while the Vatican is rallying and reclassing about
itself the elements of a Rome made from the Rome which lies in ruins
around the Capitol, while Christianity is seeking all the stages of
society amid the rubbish of anterior civilization, and rebuilding with its
ruins a new hierarchic universe, the keystone to whose vault is the priest—one
first hears a dull echo from that chaos, and then, little by little, one
sees, arising from beneath the breath of Christianity, from beneath the
hand of the barbarians, from the fragments of the dead Greek and Roman
architectures, that mysterious Romanesque architecture, sister of the
theocratic masonry of Egypt and of India, inalterable emblem of pure
catholicism, unchangeable hieroglyph of the papal unity. All the thought
of that day is written, in fact, in this sombre, Romanesque style. One
feels everywhere in it authority, unity, the impenetrable, the absolute,
Gregory VII.; always the priest, never the man; everywhere caste, never
the people.
But the Crusades arrive. They are a great popular movement, and every
great popular movement, whatever may be its cause and object, always sets
free the spirit of liberty from its final precipitate. New things spring
into life every day. Here opens the stormy period of the Jacqueries,
Pragueries, and Leagues. Authority wavers, unity is divided. Feudalism
demands to share with theocracy, while awaiting the inevitable arrival of
the people, who will assume the part of the lion: Quia nominor leo.
Seignory pierces through sacerdotalism; the commonality, through seignory.
The face of Europe is changed. Well! the face of architecture is changed
also. Like civilization, it has turned a page, and the new spirit of the
time finds her ready to write at its dictation. It returns from the
crusades with the pointed arch, like the nations with liberty.
Then, while Rome is undergoing gradual dismemberment, Romanesque
architecture dies. The hieroglyph deserts the cathedral, and betakes
itself to blazoning the donjon keep, in order to lend prestige to
feudalism. The cathedral itself, that edifice formerly so dogmatic,
invaded henceforth by the bourgeoisie, by the community, by liberty,
escapes the priest and falls into the power of the artist. The artist
builds it after his own fashion. Farewell to mystery, myth, law. Fancy and
caprice, welcome. Provided the priest has his basilica and his altar, he
has nothing to say. The four walls belong to the artist. The architectural
book belongs no longer to the priest, to religion, to Rome; it is the
property of poetry, of imagination, of the people. Hence the rapid and
innumerable transformations of that architecture which owns but three
centuries, so striking after the stagnant immobility of the Romanesque
architecture, which owns six or seven. Nevertheless, art marches on with
giant strides. Popular genius amid originality accomplish the task which
the bishops formerly fulfilled. Each race writes its line upon the book,
as it passes; it erases the ancient Romanesque hieroglyphs on the
frontispieces of cathedrals, and at the most one only sees dogma cropping
out here and there, beneath the new symbol which it has deposited. The
popular drapery hardly permits the religious skeleton to be suspected. One
cannot even form an idea of the liberties which the architects then take,
even toward the Church. There are capitals knitted of nuns and monks,
shamelessly coupled, as on the hall of chimney pieces in the Palais de
Justice, in Paris. There is Noah's adventure carved to the last detail, as
under the great portal of Bourges. There is a bacchanalian monk, with
ass's ears and glass in hand, laughing in the face of a whole community,
as on the lavatory of the Abbey of Bocherville. There exists at that
epoch, for thought written in stone, a privilege exactly comparable to our
present liberty of the press. It is the liberty of architecture.
This liberty goes very far. Sometimes a portal, a façade, an entire
church, presents a symbolical sense absolutely foreign to worship, or even
hostile to the Church. In the thirteenth century, Guillaume de Paris, and
Nicholas Flamel, in the fifteenth, wrote such seditious pages.
Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was a whole church of the opposition.
Thought was then free only in this manner; hence it never wrote itself out
completely except on the books called edifices. Thought, under the form of
edifice, could have beheld itself burned in the public square by the hands
of the executioner, in its manuscript form, if it had been sufficiently
imprudent to risk itself thus; thought, as the door of a church, would
have been a spectator of the punishment of thought as a book. Having thus
only this resource, masonry, in order to make its way to the light, flung
itself upon it from all quarters. Hence the immense quantity of cathedrals
which have covered Europe—a number so prodigious that one can hardly
believe it even after having verified it. All the material forces, all the
intellectual forces of society converged towards the same point:
architecture. In this manner, under the pretext of building churches to
God, art was developed in its magnificent proportions.
Then whoever was born a poet became an architect. Genius, scattered in the
masses, repressed in every quarter under feudalism as under a testudo
of brazen bucklers, finding no issue except in the direction of
architecture,—gushed forth through that art, and its Iliads assumed
the form of cathedrals. All other arts obeyed, and placed themselves under
the discipline of architecture. They were the workmen of the great work.
The architect, the poet, the master, summed up in his person the sculpture
which carved his façades, painting which illuminated his windows, music
which set his bells to pealing, and breathed into his organs. There was
nothing down to poor poetry,—properly speaking, that which persisted
in vegetating in manuscripts,—which was not forced, in order to make
something of itself, to come and frame itself in the edifice in the shape
of a hymn or of prose; the same part, after all, which the tragedies of
AEschylus had played in the sacerdotal festivals of Greece; Genesis, in
the temple of Solomon.
Thus, down to the time of Gutenberg, architecture is the principal
writing, the universal writing. In that granite book, begun by the Orient,
continued by Greek and Roman antiquity, the Middle Ages wrote the last
page. Moreover, this phenomenon of an architecture of the people following
an architecture of caste, which we have just been observing in the Middle
Ages, is reproduced with every analogous movement in the human
intelligence at the other great epochs of history. Thus, in order to
enunciate here only summarily, a law which it would require volumes to
develop: in the high Orient, the cradle of primitive times, after Hindoo
architecture came Phoenician architecture, that opulent mother of Arabian
architecture; in antiquity, after Egyptian architecture, of which Etruscan
style and cyclopean monuments are but one variety, came Greek architecture
(of which the Roman style is only a continuation), surcharged with the
Carthaginian dome; in modern times, after Romanesque architecture came
Gothic architecture. And by separating there three series into their
component parts, we shall find in the three eldest sisters, Hindoo
architecture, Egyptian architecture, Romanesque architecture, the same
symbol; that is to say, theocracy, caste, unity, dogma, myth, God: and for
the three younger sisters, Phoenician architecture, Greek architecture,
Gothic architecture, whatever, nevertheless, may be the diversity of form
inherent in their nature, the same signification also; that is to say,
liberty, the people, man.
In the Hindu, Egyptian, or Romanesque architecture, one feels the priest,
nothing but the priest, whether he calls himself Brahmin, Magian, or Pope.
It is not the same in the architectures of the people. They are richer and
less sacred. In the Phoenician, one feels the merchant; in the Greek, the
republican; in the Gothic, the citizen.
The general characteristics of all theocratic architecture are
immutability, horror of progress, the preservation of traditional lines,
the consecration of the primitive types, the constant bending of all the
forms of men and of nature to the incomprehensible caprices of the symbol.
These are dark books, which the initiated alone understand how to
decipher. Moreover, every form, every deformity even, has there a sense
which renders it inviolable. Do not ask of Hindoo, Egyptian, Romanesque
masonry to reform their design, or to improve their statuary. Every
attempt at perfecting is an impiety to them. In these architectures it
seems as though the rigidity of the dogma had spread over the stone like a
sort of second petrifaction. The general characteristics of popular
masonry, on the contrary, are progress, originality, opulence, perpetual
movement. They are already sufficiently detached from religion to think of
their beauty, to take care of it, to correct without relaxation their
parure of statues or arabesques. They are of the age. They have something
human, which they mingle incessantly with the divine symbol under which
they still produce. Hence, edifices comprehensible to every soul, to every
intelligence, to every imagination, symbolical still, but as easy to
understand as nature. Between theocratic architecture and this there is
the difference that lies between a sacred language and a vulgar language,
between hieroglyphics and art, between Solomon and Phidias.
If the reader will sum up what we have hitherto briefly, very briefly,
indicated, neglecting a thousand proofs and also a thousand objections of
detail, he will be led to this: that architecture was, down to the
fifteenth century, the chief register of humanity; that in that interval
not a thought which is in any degree complicated made its appearance in
the world, which has not been worked into an edifice; that every popular
idea, and every religious law, has had its monumental records; that the
human race has, in short, had no important thought which it has not
written in stone. And why? Because every thought, either philosophical or
religious, is interested in perpetuating itself; because the idea which
has moved one generation wishes to move others also, and leave a trace.
Now, what a precarious immortality is that of the manuscript! How much
more solid, durable, unyielding, is a book of stone! In order to destroy
the written word, a torch and a Turk are sufficient. To demolish the
constructed word, a social revolution, a terrestrial revolution are
required. The barbarians passed over the Coliseum; the deluge, perhaps,
passed over the Pyramids.
In the fifteenth century everything changes.
Human thought discovers a mode of perpetuating itself, not only more
durable and more resisting than architecture, but still more simple and
easy. Architecture is dethroned. Gutenberg's letters of lead are about to
supersede Orpheus's letters of stone.
The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is the
mother of revolution. It is the mode of expression of humanity which is
totally renewed; it is human thought stripping off one form and donning
another; it is the complete and definitive change of skin of that
symbolical serpent which since the days of Adam has represented
intelligence.
In its printed form, thought is more imperishable than ever; it is
volatile, irresistible, indestructible. It is mingled with the air. In the
days of architecture it made a mountain of itself, and took powerful
possession of a century and a place. Now it converts itself into a flock
of birds, scatters itself to the four winds, and occupies all points of
air and space at once.
We repeat, who does not perceive that in this form it is far more
indelible? It was solid, it has become alive. It passes from duration in
time to immortality. One can demolish a mass; how can one extirpate
ubiquity? If a flood comes, the mountains will have long disappeared
beneath the waves, while the birds will still be flying about; and if a
single ark floats on the surface of the cataclysm, they will alight upon
it, will float with it, will be present with it at the ebbing of the
waters; and the new world which emerges from this chaos will behold, on
its awakening, the thought of the world which has been submerged soaring
above it, winged and living.
And when one observes that this mode of expression is not only the most
conservative, but also the most simple, the most convenient, the most
practicable for all; when one reflects that it does not drag after it
bulky baggage, and does not set in motion a heavy apparatus; when one
compares thought forced, in order to transform itself into an edifice, to
put in motion four or five other arts and tons of gold, a whole mountain
of stones, a whole forest of timber-work, a whole nation of workmen; when
one compares it to the thought which becomes a book, and for which a
little paper, a little ink, and a pen suffice,—how can one be
surprised that human intelligence should have quitted architecture for
printing? Cut the primitive bed of a river abruptly with a canal hollowed
out below its level, and the river will desert its bed.
Behold how, beginning with the discovery of printing, architecture withers
away little by little, becomes lifeless and bare. How one feels the water
sinking, the sap departing, the thought of the times and of the people
withdrawing from it! The chill is almost imperceptible in the fifteenth
century; the press is, as yet, too weak, and, at the most, draws from
powerful architecture a superabundance of life. But practically beginning
with the sixteenth century, the malady of architecture is visible; it is
no longer the expression of society; it becomes classic art in a miserable
manner; from being Gallic, European, indigenous, it becomes Greek and
Roman; from being true and modern, it becomes pseudo-classic. It is this
decadence which is called the Renaissance. A magnificent decadence,
however, for the ancient Gothic genius, that sun which sets behind the
gigantic press of Mayence, still penetrates for a while longer with its
rays that whole hybrid pile of Latin arcades and Corinthian columns.
It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn.
Nevertheless, from the moment when architecture is no longer anything but
an art like any other; as soon as it is no longer the total art, the
sovereign art, the tyrant art,—it has no longer the power to retain
the other arts. So they emancipate themselves, break the yoke of the
architect, and take themselves off, each one in its own direction. Each
one of them gains by this divorce. Isolation aggrandizes everything.
Sculpture becomes statuary, the image trade becomes painting, the canon
becomes music. One would pronounce it an empire dismembered at the death
of its Alexander, and whose provinces become kingdoms.
Hence Raphael, Michael Angelo, Jean Goujon, Palestrina, those splendors of
the dazzling sixteenth century.
Thought emancipates itself in all directions at the same time as the arts.
The arch-heretics of the Middle Ages had already made large incisions into
Catholicism. The sixteenth century breaks religious unity. Before the
invention of printing, reform would have been merely a schism; printing
converted it into a revolution. Take away the press; heresy is enervated.
Whether it be Providence or Fate, Gutenburg is the precursor of Luther.
Nevertheless, when the sun of the Middle Ages is completely set, when the
Gothic genius is forever extinct upon the horizon, architecture grows dim,
loses its color, becomes more and more effaced. The printed book, the
gnawing worm of the edifice, sucks and devours it. It becomes bare,
denuded of its foliage, and grows visibly emaciated. It is petty, it is
poor, it is nothing. It no longer expresses anything, not even the memory
of the art of another time. Reduced to itself, abandoned by the other
arts, because human thought is abandoning it, it summons bunglers in place
of artists. Glass replaces the painted windows. The stone-cutter succeeds
the sculptor. Farewell all sap, all originality, all life, all
intelligence. It drags along, a lamentable workshop mendicant, from copy
to copy. Michael Angelo, who, no doubt, felt even in the sixteenth century
that it was dying, had a last idea, an idea of despair. That Titan of art
piled the Pantheon on the Parthenon, and made Saint-Peter's at Rome. A
great work, which deserved to remain unique, the last originality of
architecture, the signature of a giant artist at the bottom of the
colossal register of stone which was closed forever. With Michael Angelo
dead, what does this miserable architecture, which survived itself in the
state of a spectre, do? It takes Saint-Peter in Rome, copies it and
parodies it. It is a mania. It is a pity. Each century has its
Saint-Peter's of Rome; in the seventeenth century, the Val-de-Grâce; in
the eighteenth, Sainte-Geneviève. Each country has its Saint-Peter's of
Rome. London has one; Petersburg has another; Paris has two or three. The
insignificant testament, the last dotage of a decrepit grand art falling
back into infancy before it dies.
If, in place of the characteristic monuments which we have just described,
we examine the general aspect of art from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
century, we notice the same phenomena of decay and phthisis. Beginning
with François II., the architectural form of the edifice effaces itself
more and more, and allows the geometrical form, like the bony structure of
an emaciated invalid, to become prominent. The fine lines of art give way
to the cold and inexorable lines of geometry. An edifice is no longer an
edifice; it is a polyhedron. Meanwhile, architecture is tormented in her
struggles to conceal this nudity. Look at the Greek pediment inscribed
upon the Roman pediment, and vice versa. It is still the Pantheon on the
Parthenon: Saint-Peter's of Rome. Here are the brick houses of Henri IV.,
with their stone corners; the Place Royale, the Place Dauphine. Here are
the churches of Louis XIII., heavy, squat, thickset, crowded together,
loaded with a dome like a hump. Here is the Mazarin architecture, the
wretched Italian pasticcio of the Four Nations. Here are the palaces of
Louis XIV., long barracks for courtiers, stiff, cold, tiresome. Here,
finally, is Louis XV., with chiccory leaves and vermicelli, and all the
warts, and all the fungi, which disfigure that decrepit, toothless, and
coquettish old architecture. From François II. to Louis XV., the evil has
increased in geometrical progression. Art has no longer anything but skin
upon its bones. It is miserably perishing.
Meanwhile what becomes of printing? All the life which is leaving
architecture comes to it. In proportion as architecture ebbs, printing
swells and grows. That capital of forces which human thought had been
expending in edifices, it henceforth expends in books. Thus, from the
sixteenth century onward, the press, raised to the level of decaying
architecture, contends with it and kills it. In the seventeenth century it
is already sufficiently the sovereign, sufficiently triumphant,
sufficiently established in its victory, to give to the world the feast of
a great literary century. In the eighteenth, having reposed for a long
time at the Court of Louis XIV., it seizes again the old sword of Luther,
puts it into the hand of Voltaire, and rushes impetuously to the attack of
that ancient Europe, whose architectural expression it has already killed.
At the moment when the eighteenth century comes to an end, it has
destroyed everything. In the nineteenth, it begins to reconstruct.
Now, we ask, which of the three arts has really represented human thought
for the last three centuries? which translates it? which expresses not
only its literary and scholastic vagaries, but its vast, profound,
universal movement? which constantly superposes itself, without a break,
without a gap, upon the human race, which walks a monster with a thousand
legs?—Architecture or printing?
It is printing. Let the reader make no mistake; architecture is dead;
irretrievably slain by the printed book,—slain because it endures
for a shorter time,—slain because it costs more. Every cathedral
represents millions. Let the reader now imagine what an investment of
funds it would require to rewrite the architectural book; to cause
thousands of edifices to swarm once more upon the soil; to return to those
epochs when the throng of monuments was such, according to the statement
of an eye witness, "that one would have said that the world in shaking
itself, had cast off its old garments in order to cover itself with a
white vesture of churches." Erat enim ut si mundus, ipse excutiendo
semet, rejecta vetustate, candida ecclesiarum vestem indueret. (GLABER
RADOLPHUS.)
A book is so soon made, costs so little, and can go so far! How can it
surprise us that all human thought flows in this channel? This does not
mean that architecture will not still have a fine monument, an isolated
masterpiece, here and there. We may still have from time to time, under
the reign of printing, a column made I suppose, by a whole army from
melted cannon, as we had under the reign of architecture, Iliads and
Romanceros, Mahabâhrata, and Nibelungen Lieds, made by a whole people,
with rhapsodies piled up and melted together. The great accident of an
architect of genius may happen in the twentieth century, like that of
Dante in the thirteenth. But architecture will no longer be the social
art, the collective art, the dominating art. The grand poem, the grand
edifice, the grand work of humanity will no longer be built: it will be
printed.
And henceforth, if architecture should arise again accidentally, it will
no longer be mistress. It will be subservient to the law of literature,
which formerly received the law from it. The respective positions of the
two arts will be inverted. It is certain that in architectural epochs, the
poems, rare it is true, resemble the monuments. In India, Vyasa is
branching, strange, impenetrable as a pagoda. In Egyptian Orient, poetry
has like the edifices, grandeur and tranquillity of line; in antique
Greece, beauty, serenity, calm; in Christian Europe, the Catholic majesty,
the popular naivete, the rich and luxuriant vegetation of an epoch of
renewal. The Bible resembles the Pyramids; the Iliad, the Parthenon;
Homer, Phidias. Dante in the thirteenth century is the last Romanesque
church; Shakespeare in the sixteenth, the last Gothic cathedral.
Thus, to sum up what we have hitherto said, in a fashion which is
necessarily incomplete and mutilated, the human race has two books, two
registers, two testaments: masonry and printing; the Bible of stone and
the Bible of paper. No doubt, when one contemplates these two Bibles, laid
so broadly open in the centuries, it is permissible to regret the visible
majesty of the writing of granite, those gigantic alphabets formulated in
colonnades, in pylons, in obelisks, those sorts of human mountains which
cover the world and the past, from the pyramid to the bell tower, from
Cheops to Strasburg. The past must be reread upon these pages of marble.
This book, written by architecture, must be admired and perused
incessantly; but the grandeur of the edifice which printing erects in its
turn must not be denied.
That edifice is colossal. Some compiler of statistics has calculated, that
if all the volumes which have issued from the press since Gutenberg's day
were to be piled one upon another, they would fill the space between the
earth and the moon; but it is not that sort of grandeur of which we wished
to speak. Nevertheless, when one tries to collect in one's mind a
comprehensive image of the total products of printing down to our own
days, does not that total appear to us like an immense construction,
resting upon the entire world, at which humanity toils without relaxation,
and whose monstrous crest is lost in the profound mists of the future? It
is the anthill of intelligence. It is the hive whither come all
imaginations, those golden bees, with their honey.
The edifice has a thousand stories. Here and there one beholds on its
staircases the gloomy caverns of science which pierce its interior.
Everywhere upon its surface, art causes its arabesques, rosettes, and
laces to thrive luxuriantly before the eyes. There, every individual work,
however capricious and isolated it may seem, has its place and its
projection. Harmony results from the whole. From the cathedral of
Shakespeare to the mosque of Byron, a thousand tiny bell towers are piled
pell-mell above this metropolis of universal thought. At its base are
written some ancient titles of humanity which architecture had not
registered. To the left of the entrance has been fixed the ancient
bas-relief, in white marble, of Homer; to the right, the polyglot Bible
rears its seven heads. The hydra of the Romancero and some other hybrid
forms, the Vedas and the Nibelungen bristle further on.
Nevertheless, the prodigious edifice still remains incomplete. The press,
that giant machine, which incessantly pumps all the intellectual sap of
society, belches forth without pause fresh materials for its work. The
whole human race is on the scaffoldings. Each mind is a mason. The
humblest fills his hole, or places his stone. Retif dè le Bretonne brings
his hod of plaster. Every day a new course rises. Independently of the
original and individual contribution of each writer, there are collective
contingents. The eighteenth century gives the Encyclopedia, the
revolution gives the Moniteur. Assuredly, it is a construction
which increases and piles up in endless spirals; there also are confusion
of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labor, eager competition of
all humanity, refuge promised to intelligence, a new Flood against an
overflow of barbarians. It is the second tower of Babel of the human race.
Victor Hugo_Notre Dame de Paris_Book V_Chapter II
21.12.13
19.12.13
18.12.13
ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΗ
Όσοι έχουν laptop και έχουν τη δυνατότητα να το έχουν μαζί τους στο μάθημα της Πέμπτης 19/12, ας το φέρουν (οι τυχόν φωτογραφίες και τα σκίτσα που έχετε κάνει, εννοούνται). Η έναρξη του μαθήματος θα γίνει με διάλεξη της κ.Γραφάκου στο αμφιθέατρο ΜΑΧ σχετικά με το σκίτσο.
17.12.13
IN SITU ΩΔΗ
«Τι μπορεί να καταφέρει σε
αυτόν τον κόσμο ένας διαυγής άνθρωπος? Φέροντας μέσα του μιαν απαίτηση χωρίς
αβρότητες.»
Το Ωδείο Αθηνών, το μοναδικό υλοποιημένο κτίριο
του διαγωνισμού του 1959 για το Πνευματικό Κέντρο διεκδικεί επίσης τη μοναδικότητα
ανάμεσα στα δημόσια κτίρια της πόλης: είναι ένα αριστούργημα
ανυπολόγιστης δύναμης και ευαισθησίας, το μόνο πρόσφατο, αυτής της κλίμακας
στην Αθήνα. Το πρόγραμμα προέβλεπε τη
δημιουργία Κρατικού Θεάτρου, κτιρίου Συναυλιών, Χοροδράματος και Συνεδρίων,
υπαίθριο Θέατρο, Βιβλιοθήκη, Μουσείο και Πινακοθήκη, κτίριο Επιστημονικών Οργανισμών,
μεγάλη Πλατεία προς τη Λεωφόρο Β. Σοφίας, Ξενοδοχείο επί της οδού Ρηγίλλης και
το Ωδείο Αθηνών. Ο
διαγωνισμός του Πνευματικού Κέντρου ξεσήκωσε θύελλα αντιδράσεων από τον
πνευματικό κόσμο της εποχής, τόσο ως διαδικασία και κυρίως ως αποτέλεσμα: ως
συγκεκριμένη πολεοδομική και αρχιτεκτονική πρόταση. Η ταυτόχρονη εμμονή του Δεσποτόπουλου, μεταφοράς του κτιρίου του
Βυζαντινού Μουσείου σε άλλη θέση, ώστε να υποτάσσεται στο σύνολο, ίσως ήταν η
πέτρα του σκανδάλου σε μια προκλητική αλλά δεξιοτεχνική σύνθεση που διαπνέεται
από μία κλασσική απλότητα, και από τον πλέον ρηξικέλευθο μοντερνισμό. Η πρόταση
κρίθηκε
στο σύνολό της και με ηχηρό τρόπο, ως απορριπτέα. Το αιχμηρό σχόλιο που
αποδίδεται στον Delacroix σχετικά με τις κρίσεις του έργου του Μanet από τους συγχρόνους του θα
μπορούσε εδώ να επαναληφθεί για τον Δεσποτόπουλο: «...συγκεντρώνει όλες τις
ποιότητες που είναι απαραίτητες προκειμένου να απορριφθεί ομόφωνα από όλους
τους κριτές του κόσμου.»
Αν
παρακάμπτοντας προσωρινά το πολεοδομικό πλαίσιο μέσα στο οποίο εντασσόταν το
κτίριο του Ωδείου, επικεντρωθεί κανείς στο να ανασύρει υλοποιημένα σημάδια
αυτών των ποιοτήτων διαπερνώντας το μοναδικό
και τελικά απομονωμένο αυτό κτίριο, μία
πρωτόγνωρη χωρική ένταση αναδύεται αυτόκλητη:
1. Το
κτίριο έχει μήκος περίπου 160 μέτρων.
Επιπλέον, μόνο δύο υπέργειες
στάθμες. Δεν είναι απλώς επίμηκες, αλλά τεταμένο. Και μόνο το αισθητό γεγονός των αναλογιών του
αναστατώνει. Οι αναλογίες αυτές είναι αισθητές όχι μόνον οπτικά: βαδίζοντας στην ανατολική στοά είναι που
το τεταμένο μήκος γίνεται κατ´ αρχήν αισθητό, το σώμα αναμετριέται μαζί του. Η συνεχής
εγκάρσια αναίρεση του μήκους από αίθρια και φως βρίσκεται μακριά από έναν απλό
φονξιοναλισμό. Η τόλμη που προϋποτίθεται συνεπακόλουθα, για να συλληφθεί και να
υλοποιηθεί ένας αντίστοιχα μακρύς, αλλά ρυθμικά παλλόμενος διάδρομος κίνησης
ορόφου, ο οποίος δεν είναι μοντέρνα ανιαρός ή ψυχολογικά καταπιεστικός όπως a priori μπορεί να χαρακτηριζόταν, είναι προφανής: τόλμη αλλά και σχεδιαστική δεινότητα.
2. Ο
φέρων οργανισμός συνίσταται σε ορθογωνικό κάνναβο υποστυλωμάτων 30Χ60. Παρά την
μαρμάρινη επένδυσή τους αυτά εξακολουθούν να είναι ραδινά ή μιλώντας με
μεγαλύτερη ακρίβεια, απλώς σωστά.
Σωστά ως προς το ότι ανυψώνουν την κτιριακή μάζα με σφρίγος, απελευθερώνοντας
μία ένταση η οποία συνήθως στομώνεται από την χαλαρότητα μιας υπέρβαρης υπερστατικότητας. Η στατική
επίλυση του κτιρίου, παρ´όλο που ο πρόβολος εν γένει απουσιάζει ήταν αναμφίβολα
δύσκολη και εξαιρετικά φειδωλή ως προς τις διατομές. Στο επίπεδο του ισογείου η
συνεχής διάτρηση των στοών από το φως πάνω στο οποίο προβάλλει η υποστύλωση,
κάνει την τελευταία να μοιάζει ακόμα πιο οριακή και την ανύψωση της μάζας
αέρινη, απελευθερωμένη.
3. Η
απουσία προβόλων στο Ωδείο Αθηνών, σε μία εποχή που η χρήση τους είχε γίνει
γενική και με το δεδομένο επιπλέον ότι ο Δεσποτόπουλος τους είχε χειριστεί με
δεξιοτεχνία κατά τη μελέτη άλλων κτιρίων για το Πνευματικό Κέντρο, είναι
κρίσιμη για τον χαρακτήρα των ανοικτών χώρων του ισογείου. Ο περιβάλλων χώρος πρασίνου καδράρεται διαρκώς, φυλακίζεται από τα
υποστυλώματα και εισέρχεται. Η
επικοινωνία του κτισμένου με το ύπαιθρο δεν εμποδίζεται από την υποστύλωση,
αντίθετα, γίνεται πιο απτή. Η σημασία των συνεχών αυτών κάδρων είναι τόσο
μεγάλη όσο ίσως και αυτό που μπορεί να ονομάζεται αρχιτεκτονική.
4. Οι
αναλογίες της στοάς, αδιαχώριστες από τα απόλυτα μεγέθη της, δίνουν χώρο στο φως να την καταλάβει. Οι
επενδύσεις δαπέδων και τοίχων με λευκό μάρμαρο το παραλαμβάνουν με λεπταίσθητες
διακυμάνσεις που η στιλπνή τους επιφάνεια προσφέρει. Αυτή η υποδοχή του φωτός
είναι ανάλογη με το σπάταλο εύρος και μήκος της στοάς. «Δεν θα ερχόταν στο φως»
αν αυτή ήταν ως συνηθίζεται, μικρότερη ή διακεκομμένη.
5.
Η στοά καταλαμβάνεται από φως, σκιές, αντανακλάσεις και χορευτές. Το
κτίριο είναι διαρκώς διπλό, διπολικό. Τα παιδιά που κάθε απόγευμα
χορεύουν, ακροβατικά σηκωμένα στα χέρια τους, αποτελούν το γήινο, σωματικό,
αυτοσχέδιο Σχολείο του Ισογείου. Από τη μεγάλη κλίμακα που βρίσκεται μπροστά
τους, άλλα παιδιά ανεβαίνουν καθημερινά στο πνευματικότερο Ωδείο του Ορόφου. Η
απόλυτη οικειοποίηση της στοάς από αυτές τις ομάδες εφήβων δεν είναι ασύνδετη
με τη δεκτικότητά της, η οποία τρέφεται από το φαινόμενα σπάταλο μήκος της. Μήκος περιττό καθ´εαυτό, δηλαδή μη χρήσιμο, αλλά
παρόν, αυθύπαρκτο, ανοικτό, δηλαδή
απρόσμενα οικειοποιήσιμο.
6. Ο
πρωταγωνιστής του ορόφου είναι -πέραν των ήχων των οργάνων- και πάλι το φως. Οι ανακλαστήρες οροφής από σκυρόδεμα χαρακτηρίζουν τις μεγάλες
αίθουσες. Οι διάδρομοι φιλοξενούν ένα
ιδιότυπο μείγμα φυσικού και ηλεκτρικού φωτός, με ισχυρές αντιθέσεις. Μέσα από την κατά μήκος
κίνηση των σπουδαστών αποκαλύπτεται ένας χώρος πληθωρικός, παρ´όλη την εξεζητημένη γραμμικότητά του. Σε περιοχές που η ανυπαρξία της συντήρησης έχει
αποκόψει το ηλεκτρικό φως, η κίνηση ακόμα και των μικρών σε ηλικία σπουδαστών μοιάζει απολύτως οικεία και φυσική. Η
φαινόμενη ψυχρότητα του μήκους, η απόλυτη τήρηση ίδιου πλάτους σε όλο το μήκος του διαδρόμου και τα απλά, αυστηρά
υλικά που δεν έχουν καμία πρόθεση προσέγγισης της παιδικής ψυχής, μοιάζουν όχι απλώς να μην την ενοχλούν αλλά να της δίνουν χώρο. Η ψυχρή απλότητα του
χώρου, είναι φαινόμενη. Ο Δεσποτόπουλος τον συνέλαβε ως αναπνέον σύνολο, μαζί με το ζωντανό του κινούμενο και μουσικό
περιέχον.
7. Η
μόνη αίθουσα συναυλιών που οι σπουδαστές έχουν γνωρίσει είναι αυτή του ορόφου -όπου
οι ακροατές στριμώχνονται καταλαμβάνοντας και σημεία του διαδρόμου. Η κυρίως
αίθουσα του ισογείου δε λειτούργησε ποτέ. Η τομή της εκτείνεται και υπόγεια με
τρόπο που δεν είναι αντιληπτός από το επίπεδο του ισογείου. Μια προεντεταμένη
δοκός ύψους πέντε μέτρων, καθ’όλο το ύψος του ορόφου εξασφαλίζει την απρόσκοπτη
ανάπτυξή της: ένα εντυπωσιακό αλλά όχι το μοναδικό σημείο της τολμηρής
συνεργασίας του Δεσποτόπουλου με τον πολιτικό μηχανικό Χρύσανθο Κιρπότιν. Η
απόλυτη οριζοντιότητα του κτιρίου αναιρείται εντέλει σε τομή αποκαλύπτοντας μία
καθ´ύψος πολυπλοκότητα η οποία καταλήγει στο δεύτερο υπόγειο, όπου το από
ανεπίχριστο σκυρόδεμα δάπεδο του αμφιθέατρου αιωρείται, αποτελώντας στην κυριολεξία την προσωρινή στέγη του ΕΜΣΤ.
8. Ο
ίσως ωραιότερος υπόγειος χώρος στην Αθήνα έμεινε επίσης ανολοκλήρωτος. Οι
κλίμακες καθόδου είναι συμμετρικές
κάνοντας χρήση ενός ενδιάμεσου διευρυμένου πλατυσκάλου κάτω από το δάπεδο του
θεάτρου. Το δυτικό φως εισέρχεται τελετουργικά από αυτήν την πλευρά, χορεύοντας
με την κεκλιμένη οροφή και τα αναπάντεχα στρογγυλά υποστυλώματα στο βάθος. Η
παράδοξα ρυθμική, συμμετρική θεατρικότητα
ενός -στην ουσία- foyer εντοπίστηκε και αποκαλύφθηκε
σωματικά στο μικρό χορευτικό δρώμενο του Γ.Βέλτσου και της Π.Σταματοπούλου το
Μάρτιο του 2009. Η συμμετρία των διάταξης των κλιμάκων ακυρώνεται από την
έντονη προοπτική, αφού η κίνηση από και προς το υπόγειο δεν επιτρέπει την
μετωπική θέαση οροφής και υποστυλωμάτων. Η έννοια της συμμετρίας για τον
Δεσποτόπουλο φαίνεται να είναι καίρια και βασανισμένη,
η χωρική της αμφισβήτηση είναι λεπταίσθητη μεν, αλλά παρούσα.
9. Οι
δύο επιμήκεις όψεις του Ωδείου οι οποίες θεωρητικά θα μπορούσαν να γίνουν
αντιληπτές και από απόσταση, είναι ουσιαστικά αποκλεισμένες σε μια προοπτική,
αλλά σχεδόν εξ’ επαφής θέαση –λόγω
της ύπαρξης των δέντρων ανατολικά και του στενού δρόμου δυτικά. Τα ανοίγματα
του ορόφου, επαναλαμβάνονται με απόλυτη αυστηρότητα από υποστύλωμα σε
υποστύλωμα, αλλά ξαφνικά σε πέντε καννάβους διαφοροποιούνται καθ’ ύψος. Αυτή η
παιγνιώδης διαφοροποίηση η οποία δεν ακολουθεί κανέναν κανόνα συμμετρίας στο
σύνολο της όψης, μοιάζει μέσα στην απολυτότητα της στέψης σχεδόν σαν επί τόπου ατύχημα. Ευτυχές, σχεδόν αδιόρατο, αλλά αποτελεσματικό ατύχημα. Η εξαντλητική μελέτη των διατομών των
κουφωμάτων έρχεται να υπηρετήσει τις εμπνευσμένες αυτές όψεις, αφού ως γνωστόν
η έμπνευση μπορεί να καταστραφεί κατά την εφαρμογή πολύ εύκολα. Και συνήθως από
τον αρχιτέκτονα.
10.
Η χωροθέτηση του Ωδείου ακολούθησε τη γενική παραλληλία της σύνθεσης προς τη
Λεωφόρο Βασιλίσσης Σοφίας, με αποτέλεσμα προς τη Λ. Βασιλέως Κωνσταντίνου να
είναι το μόνο κτίριο που προβάλλει
λοξά. Η ένταση που προκύπτει από τη μεγάλη εγγύτητα
της γωνίας του με τη Λεωφόρο και τη σταδιακή εξαφάνιση του μεγάλου του
μήκους λόγω προοπτικής και φύτευσης προς την οδό Ρηγίλλης, ισχυροποιείται από
το ότι ο υπαίθριος χώρος προς τη Λεωφόρο έχει όντως ένα σχήμα –τρίγωνο- και δεν είναι απλώς μια παράλληλη πράσινη λωρίδα
προβολής του κτιρίου.
11.
Ο κήπος αυτός δεν ολοκληρώθηκε ποτέ. Οι κλίμακές του έχουν παραμείνει απλώς
σκυροδετημένες. Τα μαρμάρινα δάπεδα των στοών έχουν να καθαριστούν μία
δεκαετία. Οι αίθουσες του ισογείου είναι κλειστές. Το αίθριο του υπογείου το
χαίρονται κλιματιστικές μονάδες. Τα κουφώματα του τελευταίου στερούνται
υαλοπινάκων. Στην αίθουσα συναυλιών δεν ακούστηκε ποτέ μουσική. Οι κλίμακες
προς το υπόγειο έχουν μετατραπεί σε αποχωρητήρια. Οι ψευδοροφές έχουν κατά
τόπους καταστραφεί. Το Ωδείο Αθηνών είναι στην ουσία κτίριο και ερείπιο. Εκτός όμως και αν
γκρεμιστεί, ό,τι και να υποστεί, η
δύναμή του είναι τέτοια που είναι αδύνατον
να καταστραφεί: Το Ωδείο Αθηνών είναι ένα δαίδαλον.
Πολύπλοκο, περίτεχνο, μυστηριώδες, γοητευτικό. Και ως δαίδαλον: αμφίπλευρο. Χρήσιμο και παρατημένο, μετρημένο και
σπάταλο, φωτεινό και σκοτεινό,
επίσημα κρατικό και παράδοξα
οικειοποιημένο, παθιασμένα μελετημένο και
άτυχα ανολοκλήρωτο και κυρίως: θεωρητικά εκτιμημένο,
πρακτικά ξεχασμένο. Γοητευτικά Διπλό.
T.A. 2011
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