Chapter 36 Notre Dame de Paris (2) Volume 5 This will destroy that (8)

Leaving aside the distinctive ancient buildings mentioned just now, we will find the same decadent and decaying phenomenon if we only look at the artistic overview of the 16th to 18th centuries.Since Francis II, the artistic form of the building has gradually disappeared, and the geometric form has risen, which really looks like the skeleton of a skinny patient.The graceful lines of architecture gave way to the indifferent lines of geometric figures.The building no longer becomes one building, but a polyhedron.However, in order to cover up the ugly nakedness, the architectural art took great pains.Let's take a look at the Greek pediment embedded in the Roman pediment, or intertwined with each other.The stereotype is always the Pantheon mixed with the Parthenon, always in the style of St. Peter's in Rome.You might as well take another look at the brick houses built with stones at the corners, the Royal Palace Square, and the Prince's Square in the era of Henry IV.Look at those churches in the era of Louis XIII again, fat, squat, flat, curled up, and with a large dome, just like a hunchback.Look at the Mazarin ① style of architecture, the Sibang University ② is really an inferior product of the Italian style.Look at those palaces of Louis XIV's time, the long barracks of courtiers, rigid, gloomy, and repulsive.Finally, look at the Louis XV palace, decorated with radicchio and macaroni stripes, the ancient architecture is already in its infancy, with missing teeth and gaps, but it has to be decorated with fancy clothes, plus that Warts and mold, and it turned out to be unrecognizable.From François II to Louis XV, the disease of architectural art is increasing exponentially, and art is only a layer of skin wrapped around the bones, tragically dying.

① Mazarin (1602-1661), an Italian, a cardinal, was appointed prime minister by Louis XIII. ② Sibang University refers to the Sorbonne University, the predecessor of the University of Paris. Meanwhile, what about printing?All the vitality that leaves architectural art comes to printing.As the art of architecture declined, printing expanded.A great deal of the energy which the human mind would have expended on architecture is henceforth devoted to books.So from the sixteenth century onwards, the printing press, which grew up at the same time as the decline of architectural art, competed with it and put it to death.

By the 17th century, the world of printing had been decided, and the country was firmly established, and it was possible to happily announce to the world the arrival of a great century of literature and art.In the eighteenth century, printing, which had been recuperating for a long time in the court of Louis XIV, took up Luther's ancient sword again, armed Voltaire, and rushed over aggressively, attacking ancient Europe. In fact, printing It has already wiped out the European architectural expression.By the end of the eighteenth century, printing had destroyed everything.It was not until the nineteenth century that reconstruction began.

We may now ask, however, which of these two arts has truly represented the human mind for three centuries?Which one expresses human thoughts?Which one expresses not only the inclinations of human thought to literature and scholastic philosophy, but also its broad, profound and universal laws of motion?Which one, without interruption and without gap, overlaps with the walking thousand-legged monster of human beings all the time?Is it architecture or printing? Typography, of course.Make no mistake, the art of architecture is dead, dead forever, killed by printed books, killed because it doesn't last as long, and killed because it's too expensive.The cost of any cathedral is in the billions.Just imagine how much investment it would take to rewrite the book on the art of architecture, to re-dot the land with tens of thousands of buildings, and to return to the heyday of the past, when magnificent buildings were clustered together , as one eyewitness put it, "as if the world had swayed and thrown off its old clothes and put on the white garments of the church." ① (Grabbe Ladulfis) A book is printed in a flash Yes, it costs little, and it can be spread far and wide!Is it any wonder that all human thought, like water flowing downhill, pours along this slope?This is not to say that the art of architecture will no longer produce somewhere a beautiful monumental building, a single masterpiece.Under the reign of printing, it is indeed still possible to see from time to time a column2, which I think was cast by the captured cannon of the whole army, as in the reign of architectural art and "Romanslow", "Mahabharata" ③ is the same as "Song of the Nibelungen" ④, it is formed by all the people's incorporation and fusion of many epic poems.It is possible for an architect of genius to suddenly appear in the twentieth century, just as Dante appeared suddenly in the thirteenth.But then the art of architecture is no longer the art of society, the art of the collective, the art of domination.Great poems, great buildings, and great works of mankind no longer need to be constructed through architectural forms, but can be printed.

①The Latin original text of this quotation is attached to the original work here, because the content is the same, so it is omitted. ②Refers to the Vendome copper column cast by Napoleon. ③ "Mahabharata", a long narrative poem in ancient India, with 19 volumes and a total of 120,000 chapters. ④ "Song of the Nibelung", a Germanic epic, formed around the twelfth century, with a length of more than 9,000 lines. From then on, the art of architecture may be revived again, but it can no longer be dominated by it.It will be governed by the laws of literature, just as literature was governed by the laws of architectural art.The respective statuses of these two arts are interchangeable.It is true that in an age of architectural dominance, great poems are few in number, but as great as buildings.India's Vyasa ① is long and complicated, with strange style and difficult to understand, like a giant tower. The poetry of eastern Egypt is like buildings, with majestic and steady lines; the poetry of ancient Greece is magnificent, quiet and stable.The poetry of Christian Europe has the majesty of Catholicism, the simplicity of the people, the richness and prosperity of a revival age. The Bible is like the pyramids, the Iliad is like the Parthenon, Homer is like Phidias.In the thirteenth century, Dante was the last Romanesque cathedral; in the sixteenth century, Shakespeare was the last Gothic cathedral.

So far, what we have said must be full of details, which is biased, but in general, human beings have two kinds of books, two kinds of chronicles, and two kinds of covenants, namely construction and printing, that is, the Bible written on stone and the Bible written on paper. the bible.These two Bibles have been left wide open in all ages, and we gaze at them today without remembering the apparent splendor of the granite font, the colossal letters of colonnades, pylons, and obelisks, the world-wide The mountains built by human beings recall the long years from the pyramids to the bell towers, from Keophus to Strasbourg.The past history written on the marble pages should be revisited, the great book of architectural art should be admired and read constantly, but do not deny the greatness of this building made by the succeeding printing press.

①Viyasa, a sage and poet in Indian legends, was once translated as Guangbo Immortal.According to legend, "Veda" was compiled by him. ② Keophus, king of Egypt in 2650 BC, built the largest pyramid. The building is enormous.Some pretentious statistician has calculated that if all the books printed since Gutenberg were stacked one by one, they could reach from the earth to the moon.It is not this greatness that we are talking about, though.Then again, if we try to get a general picture of the hitherto printed panorama, isn't the panorama like a vast building erected over the globe?Humanity is still working tirelessly on this construction, and its huge head is still hidden in the vast clouds of the future.This is the ant's nest of wisdom; this is the beehive of imagination, and all kinds of human imaginations are like golden bees, flying one after another with nectar.The building has hundreds of floors, and its interior can be seen everywhere, criss-crossing and ingeniously hidden, all facing the staircase railing.On the surface, arabesques, rose windows and lace decorations abound, which is dizzying.Every work seems to be so arbitrary and so solitary, but in fact, each has its own place and its own characteristics.The whole is harmonious.From Shakespeare's cathedral to Byron's mosque, thousands of small bell towers cluttered this metropolis of thought.On the bottom layer, some ancient titles of human beings, which were not recorded in the art of architecture before, have also been added.On the left side of the entrance, there is an ancient white marble relief of Homer, and on the right side is the "Bible" written in various languages ​​with seven heads raised.Beyond that are the Hydras of Romanthrona, and other miscellaneous monsters such as the Veda and the Nibelungen.Moreover, this wonderful building was never completed.

The printing press, a huge machine, constantly absorbs the wisdom of society and spits out new materials for this building.All human beings are busy on scaffolding, all the intelligent people are plasterers, and the humblest people are also blocking holes and laying stones.Retive de la Bretonne also carried his basket of plaster.Every day a new layer of masonry was built.In addition to the unique investment each writer makes individually, there is also a collective contribution.The eighteenth century contributed the Encyclopedia, and the Great Revolution contributed the Herald.It is true that it is also an ever-increasing, endlessly spiraling upward project; it is also a mixture of languages, never-ending activity, continuous labor, and the joint efforts of all human beings to ensure that wisdom can deal with the greatness again. Floods and a refuge against barbarian invasions.This is the second tower of Babel that reaches the sky.

① Retief de la Bretonne, that is, Nicolas Restife (1734-1806), a French writer, whose works such as "The Fallen Peasant or the Danger of the City" (1775), (1779 ), "Special Thoughts" 1794-1797) were once famous.