meditations on a burning cathedral

That we no longer build things for eternity (no pyramids, no temples, no cathedrals) – so be it.  (1) But that we, with all our material means, are not even able to take care of the best that previous generations bequeathed to our world!  That we, with all our technology, let burn a cathedral! 

It was with a mix of sadness, despair and shame, too, that I watched the photos.  If we cannot even preserve our cathedrals… (2)

 In the days following the disaster, general outpourings of grief & regret kept equal pace with outpourings of generosity. 

“We are going to rebuild this cathedral, all together ”.   Propaganda of an embattled president? Perhaps, but the sentence truly touched me.  In the middle ages, people of all walks of life helped build the cathedrals, bringing stones & beams & provisions for the workers, with whatever means of transport that were available, clogging the roads to the cathedrals’ building sites.  That, in any case, is the romantic image I have somehow retained from my Cathedral-readings (3)

 Does it reflect a historical truth? I would certainly like to think it does.   Just as I’m now equally eager to hear an echo of this medieval enthusiasm in the fervour of the crowd funding for the restoration.  Seeing it somehow as a proof that we are not merely superficial individualist consumers, that we do still cherish the beauty and the relative permanence of our cathedrals, that we do still acknowledge the greatness of what a shared longing for transcendence can achieve. 

Of course, there were not only the crowds, but also the billionaires stepping in. It’s legitimate to raise the question of whether their immense fortunes are not a failure of social fairness. One can understand the grumbling that they’d better just pay their fair share of taxes. (4)

But on the other hand – if their donations were inspired by an obscure sense of seeking redemption, well – then there too, I somehow find reason for hope.    If shrewd businessmen still feel such a need for redemption , still feel awe in the face of beauty and history - well, then our age does not live in entire forgetfulness of that which might transcend our human condition.

Notes

(1)    Maybe future generations will stand in awe of our digital web spanning the whole wide world, catching our every single move & utterance.
(2)    We’re not the only generation realising with a shock that cathedrals can burn, that we might  irrevocably lose invaluable treasures : “Le grand incendie de 1836, qui détruisit la toiture avec sa belle charpente, et qui eût pu détruire l’église toute entière, attire sur elle l’attention des érudits, des artistes et de l’Etat. On s’effraya à la pensée que ce chef d’œuvre aurait pu être anéanti sans qu’il en restât même un souvenir. «   Emile Mâle – Notre Dame de Chartres, 1948
(3)  The cathedral-enthusiasm of the crowds is described in Emile Mâle’s book about the Chratres cathedral, citing a medieval abbot: “L’enthousiasme des foules  -  On vit cette année-là, à Chartres, les fidèles s’atteler à des chariots chargés de pierres, de bois, de blé et de tout ce qui pouvait servir aux travaux de la cathédrale, dont les tours s’élevaient alors comme par enchantement. L’enthousiasme gagna la Normandie et la France : partout on voyait des hommes et des femmes traîner de lourds fardeaux à travers les marais fangeux ; partout on faisait pénitence, partout on pardonnait à ses ennemis »   Emile Mâle – Notre Dame de Chartres, 1948
(4)     The ethical question of where to put priorities (bluntly put : saving cathedrals or people) has been evoked by Proust, in the far starker context of a war, with people’s lives at stake.
“Les cathédrales doivent être adorées jusqu’au jour où, pour les préserver, il faudrait renier les vérités qu’elles enseignent. […] Ne sacrifiez pas des hommes à des pierres dont la beauté vient justement d’avoir un moment fixé des vérités humaines. »   Le TempsRetrouvé  

meditations on some blobs of paint

It’s a precious skill as an art gallery visitor: the ability to fully concentrate on a painting, amidst the comings & goings and the whispers & shouts of one’s fellow visitors. 

Mind you, this concentration is not a question of simply blocking out one’s surroundings, it is not a matter of withdrawing in a noise-cancelling lonely vacuum. 

 It’s rather about welcoming the gallery space with its thronging visitors as a safe surrounding conducive to all manners of meditation (including one’s own) in front of cherished images.

On my way to the rooms with the Dutch painters, I was stopped in my tracks by a sign “Silence! Mindfulness Session Going On!”  Behind the sign, a group of people was sitting on folding chairs, looking intently at a Frans Hals painting, while listening to their Mindfulness Coach, who, speaking in a low appeasing voice, invited her audience , “to look at the painting and, at the same time , to become aware of their own sensations”.

I might have been expected to snigger at the new-fangled sign with the over-hyped term, at the meekness of the group. But then I didn’t, because, obviously, paintings do invite to contemplation and meditation, they indeed can induce a state of absorption and aesthetic bliss. And instead of an isolated & transient self-absorption, they offer a connection to (relatively) durable images and stories, which have been meaningful for so many people throughout the ages.   So, hype aside, maybe it’s all the better, if ‘mindfulness’ courses bring people to the museum, teaching them how to sit still and to look at a painting.

Un-aided by folding chair or coach, I engaged in my own kind of meditations – standing quietly in front of a painting by Emanuel de Witte.  

 A 17^th C Dutch painter of mainly church interiors, de Witte in our age has often been less highly regarded than the sternly abstract Saenredam – being considered as (too) anecdotic, (too) pleasingly painterly. 

But each time I meet one of his paintings, I stand watching in bliss – captivated by their luminosity, their limpid sensation of space & time. 

The light, oh the light!  The happiness of witnessing that light filtering through the church windows.  The joy of seeing those pillars and tiles dappled with light – the immersion into that atmosphere suffused by light.    

Staring intently at some flecks of light on the pillars – one gets get mesmerized by the magical transformation of tactile blobs of paint into light. From modest matter to mystical light? 

What kind of optical laws govern this interaction of painterly matter and light and vision?  The camera is fooled even more than the naked eye.  It simply records and shows "light" – and it takes a lot of zooming and processing to bring out the texture of the paint that de Witte so brilliantly splodged on these pillars.