Chapter VI
Synopsis
I. Prime symbol, architecture, divinities, p. 183.
Apollonian feeling is his immediate body, without development; space is alien & inexpressible in Greek or Latin; their first religious art was open air, with no architecture (templum), no burials (cremation); monumental architecture came late in Summer (Doric temple). Faustian architecture begins at birth, 1000 AD parallel with the new piety (Cluniac reforms, Eucharistic controversy); Faustian feelings are of infinite solitude; Valhalla is nowhere (Olympus is specific to Greek soil, Paradise of the Church Fathers is a magic garden somewhere in the universe). Apollonian plurality of separate bodies leads to polytheism, versus a single world volume (felt in Faustian & Magian Souls) leading to monotheism. Apollonian religions express a deity in stone (Apollo), Faustian expresses this in bodiless music, an organ fugue; Faustian religions (initially influenced by Magian) moves away from Magian hierarchy of deities (Trinity, angels, saints,), recedes in Faustian from Reformation (predestination ends dualism) to Enlightenment (deism), disintegration from something to limitless nothing; by late 17th century religious expression moved from the pictorial (painting, sculpture) to music forms. Whereas Apollonian religion is bathed in sunlight, Faustian religion is night (Rembrandt & Beethoven’s tone colors), its deity has no Euclidean corporal existence. The iconoclasm of the Protestants expresses this move away from corporality, so too Descartes analysis of space. The 7th century iconoclasm of Islam & Byzantium are also reactions against Apollonian corporal form.
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II. The Egyptian prime symbol of the path, p.188.
The Soul of Egypt is in stone, huge symbols of Time, timelessness BECOME, space & death united, the grave their potent symbol in stone, silent & outside time. The Egyptian travels down a narrow & inexorable prescribed life path, the way, unchanging direction. It expresses only 1 dimension: depth. Their art (temples, paintings reliefs) represent a rhythmically ordered sequence of space. Depth looks only 1 way. The way is their destiny & the 3rd dimension of depth is their space. Their art aims to achieve a plane effect, the pyramid is a plane which blocks the way, the depth of their relief becoming ever shallower. Right angles, vertical & horizontals & the absence of foreshortening creates 2-D containing depth, directing it one way.
The Chinese Culture too knew depth but wanders thru the world, nature its guide thru friendly gardens. Landscape is the material of architecture. It uses a homogenous & unified plan with a north/south axis, with common ground & space. The temple (not self-contained) is a layout, where hills, water, trees, flowers are of equal import to gate, bridges, courts & halls. Gardening is a grand religious expression, it is the architecture of landscape, their buildings with flat extensions & emphasise on the roof lines. The path is devious, thru door, over bridges & hills reflected also in painting. Sequence in time assumes a sequence of space thru which the eye waders. Direction in depth maintains the becoming of space as a continuous present experience.
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III. Expression-language of art: Ornamentation and Imitation, p. 191.
Art is expression language; early art is active existence, speaking ONLY for itself, unconscious of witnesses, it is dance or song. Only higher art is the art before witnesses. Expression is 1 of 2 types: imitation or ornamentation. Imitation & ornament are polar. Imitation is the older physiognomic idea in which 1 person is induced unconsciously to take up a vital rhythm. Common in the animal world. Imitation wishes to bridge the gap between Alien & Proper, here & there, microcosm & macrocosm. All religion are attempts to reach the power of the Alien, so too is imitation which is often religious; it allows the identity between Proper & Alien, which while vibrating becomes One. We march & become one. We assimilate ourselves to the Alien, a feeling of union with mystical God. All imitation is drama. It is speaking, transitory, of the moment. Only the living can be imitated & only in movement. It belongs to Time & has direction, its highest form it copies the Destiny of an individual via poems, verse or stage. It has a beginning & ending. It is organic, it is life. It stands near to race hate/love from which rises the ugly/beauty; but imitation is living & with the end of the Culture that Culture’s beauty too dies. imitation evokes spirituality, sexual love in songs, dance & riot. It is visible in the peasant’s cottage, the knight’s castle, village plans & social ordering. Castle & cottage are where imitation is done, it is a free creative spirit. Ornament however is ego conscious, restricted to man. It detaches itself from imitation, establishes motives & symbols, works to impress upon the Alien, to conjure. It uses language, possesses duration, it is outside Time, pure extension & represents the general destiny of a culture. It has grammar, syntax & rules, reflects causality of the Macrocosm as interpreted by a particular man of a given Culture. It is inorganic, death. Both imitation & ornament have systems, both are imbued with religion, fear and love. A genuine Symbol (ornamentation) can evoke fear, or freedom from fear. It may be significant & may endure. Imitation & ornament are polar: Ornamentation is allied to funerary art, the dead, it is stiff with death (sarcophagi, stele, temples of the dead, cathedrals).
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IV. Ornament and early architecture, p. 196.
In the pre-Spring of each Culture art expression is narrow ornamenting (e.g. Carolingian period- Mycenaean Period, standing between 2 styles); they lack the IDEA, there is no true architecture. With the dawn of Spring architecture emerges & conventional ornamentation recedes. Stone alone will speak (e.g. Pyramid of Khafre- pure stone, surface, edge & space devoid of ornament; Romanesque pure simplicity, single line, capital, arc, capital). Only after generations does relief again emerge. With Spring at apogee ornament is clearly present but only to serve THE architecture idea (e.g. the meander, also human figures- the Dipylon warriors, group sculptures of Gothic Cathedrals, human figures are lines, pillar like verticals, they are not living but lines in human form; so too music). Only in Summer is the domination of architecture broken, it becomes civic, worldly, pleasing, imitative, personal. Just as Time gives birth to Space, Space brings death to Time so too imitation gives birth to ornament, but ornament brings death to imitation. As ornament loses its sacred rigour it becomes increasingly decorative, for architectural settings, for a polite, mannered society (Renaissance art is adopted by the northern courts as polite beautiful expression). Ornament of Spring differs markedly from ornament of the Summer (compare Egyptian Old Kingdom with Middle Kingdom, Geometric art with Hellenistic or late 12th Century AD with the art of Louis XIV). Architecture becomes pictorial, musical, to imitate the world (from Ionic to Corinthian, from Vignola to Bernini & Rococo). Finally with Civilisation (the Autumn) true ornament is born and great art ends. This transition is marked by the birth of Classicism & Romanticism. Architectural taste replaces style, method of painting, mannerisms of writing, old forms, new forms, go in & out of fashion. Inward necessity, schools are replaced by personal selection. Art becomes craft, with all of its branches (architecture, music, poetry, drama) full of stock in trade with no greater or deeper significance than taste. We are in the age of industrial ornament, no longer historical, no longer becoming; we find oriental carpets, Indian & Persian metalwork, Chinese porcelain. The art of Minoan Create is a spinoff of post Hyksos taste; the art of Rome in Scipio’s life is art of taste, comfort & play of the intellect (e.g. Forum of Nerva, its entablature). In the West we have the ceramics trade. This same progress towards craft art is observed in the Civilizations of Islam & Egypt, & most certainly it too existed in the post-Buddhist India, post-Confucius China.
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Faustian leaders, German kings & medieval popes, attempt to over leap all political limits- seeking universal rule. So too the mythical Norse heroes, pushing to the limits (Siegfried) in contrast to Classical heroes who clearly knew their boundaries & locale (Aegean, Troy, E. Mediterranean). The Greeks reject the big reach; post Mycenaean produces nothing. While they borrow Egypt’s columns (holding up space) but reveres them to deny interior space.
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Both Faustian & Marian Cultures built high into space. For the Magian (with algebra) it was vaulting over significant space, for the Faustian (with his function analysis) it was emancipation into limitless space. The window expresses this will to reach into boundless space (as also counter point music, later the cathedral like 19th century Tristan & Isolde or Eroica). The translucent (bodiless) cathedral window contrasts the corporality of Classical fresco (part of, attached to, the wall). For the Magian his use of the cupola to float (polygonal drum & sphere in harmony), free of the gravity of the column & architrave. However this was also a denial of exterior, the Cavern which shuts all exterior out, with only dim vague light of the tiny oculus. In the Egyptian frieze we see avoidance of foreshortening, avoiding lateral depth; for the Faustian it is the Gothic window dissolving the wall & reaching into space, for the Magian the coherent & complete Cavern walls clothed with its golden mosaics & arabesque.
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The style reflects the Prime Symbol of a Culture. It will consist of a pre-style, non-style and a post style. The Egypt Culture of the 3rd Dynasty and the Faustian Culture pre 1000 AD were both pre-style. Russian Culture today is split (reflects Byzantine-Magian as well as its own emerging Soul). Faustian style was born about 1000 AD in the Romanesque, Egyptian style in the 4th dynasty (2930 BC) showing The Way, pushing directly forward never looking side to side but always straight ahead. To us it appears rigid & unchanging. The Faustian Culture, to them would also appear constant, static never changing. We see the variable in our own Culture, but they see the Continuity. We see Romanesque, Gothic, Renascence, Baroque Rococo; they see Faustian Culture, always striving for the Infinite. Egyptian style was always architectural, never plastic or painting. Apollonian style changed at the Ionic period, away from architecture to plastic arts. Faustian style changes at the Baroque from painting to music. In the Magian Culture just after Justinian, Arabesque dissolves all architecture, painting sculpture into impressions we might consider craft art. Egyptian architecture did change, slightly, becoming softer, moving away from the unadorned rigid angles towards plant like columns (lotus & papyrus) with ceilings of birds & stars. It grew to reflect their landscape (the Nile). In Chinese Culture we find the Chinaman facing the Spirt Wall, which conceals the Way. He slips to life, follows the up/down landscape of the Hwang Ho, a maze of garden architecture. So too Apollonian style reflecting the myriad islands of the Aegean, the Faustian style reflecting the broad plains of Franconia, Burgundy & Saxony.
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The Egyptian style was brave. Its force & rigour never felt nor asserted in language for Egyptian man dared all but never spoke. The Faustian triumph over heaviness (Gothic, Baroque), its form language, is a conscious motive; Shakespeare deals explicitly with will & world conflicts. In contest the Apollonian soul is weak when faced with power. Tragedy aimed at catharsis, building emotional tension, then its relief. It is endurance; the Greek neither willed nor dared, he endured. The Apollonia Soul is one of small, easy; his style is simple. In contrast to the Egyptians who dare the most difficult; this the Greeks avoid. Their architecture is feeble & weak, a few standardized types (3) emerge; no 4th ever developed. The basic form is reiterated again and again but it is never developed, there is no revolution. It is weak with no imagination, static treatment of set limited forms. In contrast to the Faustian dynamic fertility ever creating new form & types.
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VIII. The history of a Style as organism, p.205
Like the Culture, the great style is an organism & has a morphology, a life cycle, birth growth, adulthood & decline. Western art historians mistake phases of this life (e.g. birth=Romanesque, adulthood-Baroque) seeing different independent styles when it is a single unified style at different stage in the lifecycle. This is a complete misconception. Faustian Gothic is much closer to late Baroque than it is to any work of the Apollonian Culture. Each phase has its own inner psychology: at birth it is timed & fearful without grasp (Romanesque, Christian catacombs), then there emerges a feeling, a presentiment of vast potential (Gothic, Constantine’s domed churches). Now Being is understood and we see Direction, the Symbol and Destiny. With the end of youth comes inner contradictions (Renaissance, Dionysic v Apollonian), then full on manhood, the style dominates, it become urban & intellectual (Baroque, basilica of Ravenna, archaic Greece); with maturity finally comes the Autumn (Rousseau, the Acropolis of Pericles) the style proclaims itself yet knows its own end as well. The final effervescence approach (Erechtheum, Watteau), very delicate, even fragile, but happy interlude… then the death of Spirt, creativity gone, only endless stimulations (Classicism, Romanticism) to keep up the illusion of life in what is dead. Reiterations, revivals, imitation of imitation but nothing which is new. Scale becomes grand but the Form is simply reiterated by magnification. The regime has money, power but the spirit is gone, the Soul is dead, this is what the Winter is.
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IX. On the history of the Arabian style, p. 207
Magian Culture produced a single great style of art, but we see it fragmented into late-Classical & & Early Christian. All are the Springtime creations of the Magian Soul, yet in bondage to Rome, Greek ideas & art. Even in the city Rome we see it emerge (the master mason of Pantheon is Syrian). We only see the western edge of the Magian Soul (the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire). The heartland of the Magian Soul is east (the Nisibis, Edessa, Amida triangle). Religious architecture is the first expression of the young Soul & all the Hellenistic religions (Jewish, Zoroastrian, Manichean, Syncretic, Christian) express a similar feeling in their architecture; the cult buildings, churches, basilicas, temple mosques tell of the Cavern, this is their symbolic depth experience. Initially Christian, when the religions change the depth experience remains constant hence Islam retained the plan & style of the religious building. To the west of the heartland we see the Pseudomorphosis: Pauline Christianity, W. Judaism, the syncretic Cults. The architecture for Jew & Gentile was the basilica using Classical means to express its form; it cannot free itself. The more Classical syncretism modifies a Euclidean local bound Cult, the greater the importance of the interior becomes (over the exterior which is what the Apollonian cherished). The columns, roof & plans were kept but the depth experience changes; the means are the same but the meaningless interior cella is now replaced with a meaningful interior, outside of which is nothing. The Doric peripteros is replaced with 4 walls with columns ranked in front of windowless walls (the denial of space beyond). See Mind map Alpha. The Pseudomorphosis (inversion of the Classical temple) is constrained to employ Classical means (column, architrave) but the depth experience is different. Outside the Pseudomorphosis the Magian Soul is free to express itself in dome & cupola & even in Rome we find it (the Pantheons the first mosque). Architecture of the dome is pure Magian, can be seen in Armenia & as far east as China. It was used by Mazdaist & Manichean religions as well as Nestorian Christianity. It penetrates the Empire; the domed basilicas of Byzantium & Ravenna express it; too also in the Germanic west were we see it transformed by the Faustian spirt; also in Russia & the Renaissance itself. Islam carries this to it conclusion.
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Ornamentation too reflects Pseudomorphosis. It is seen in Late Classical ornament + figures, the mix of the alien & the proper. It penetrates all forms of art: the Roman portrait bust (the hair is stylized); sarcophagi use chisel & drill (the latter never touched by Apollonian sculptors); architecture too has elements of Magian but with Classical features (e.g. Basilica of Constantine, the Imperial fora).
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The Magian Soul despite this interpenetration was cheated, it is hindered by dead Classical forms, it has no moment of pure joy (Faustian Springtime examples: the Crusades, the Cathedral). Even the political structures, Diocletian’s, the first caliph, but as he stood on Classical ground accepted Roman administration traditions. Here we see the Arabian state. indeed all of Late Classical is really just such a reflection (Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius, Mithras, Isis, Sun God cults Diophantus), energy steaming in from outside the east marches of the Empire. When Arabic Culture was finally set free it explodes on the scene: the Islamic conquest reflects this intensity, taking Syria in 634 AD & to the gates of Paris in 732 AD. All the Springtime energy the Faustian Culture expended in the Crusades up to Cromwell & Empire, is concentrated in just a century in a single massive discharge.
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All Cultures (excepting the Chinese, Egyptian and Mexican) have tutelage from older Cultures. The Faustian Culture respected & admired Arabian-early Christian forms & styles. The Apollonian too adopted Egyptian forms but went on to develop its own proper symbols. But the Magian Soul of the Pseudomorphosis couldn’t use the alien without also yielding to it.
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X. Psychology of art-technique, p. 214·
The idea of the Macrocosm if handled physiognomically &symbolically can open doors to the metaphysical understanding of great architecture & answer the question: what does pure extension mean when its derived from another Culture?
MOSAICS: Apollonian mosaics were opaque, durable pieces of marble for floor decorations; Magian mosaics use pieces of glass set in fused gold, covering the walls & roofs of basilicas, creating a magic shimmering gold sphere of other worldly vision. It corresponds 1:1 with Faustian Gothic windows (glass) which enlarges church space.
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UNION OF ARCH & COLUMN: this is THE Magian form (not as the Renaissance posited, Classical), derived from Magian 3rd century (of Syria or N. Arabian origins) the arch springs free from the slender column, defying gravity to capture space, similar to the free floating dome which encloses the cavern (the prime Magian symbol); its Rococo stage is present in Moorish mosques & castles. For the Apollonian the COLUMN & ARCHITRAVE, are the forms, the symbol of Euclidean body (considered proportion & load). The Faustian form is the PILLAR & POINTED ARCH. Egyptian form is the plant like column which represented growth.
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ACANTHUS: Apollonian- used as a unified body & viewed in single gaze; in Late Classical it becomes richer, heavier & increasingly complex, filling space; in mosaics & sarcophagi, the Aramean vine & palm, Jewish ornaments, are used on edges & interlaced borders along with geometric patterns; in Byzantine use it become endless tendrils spreading inorganically across entire surfaces; in the Persian-Anatolian world it take on greater mobility (spread) and bizarre qualities until it becomes the pure Arabesque, the genuine Magian form (anti-plastic, hostile to pictorial representation, bodiless it disembodies objects to which it spreads as an endless web). Old Nordic or Celtic patterns import such forms from Magian craftsman. Italy (Lucca, Palermo, Ravenna, Venice) is completely dominated by this civilized form.
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THE BODY: Roman heads reflect the opposition between Apollonian & Magian; in the pose and look of the sculpture; in Rome from Hadrian onwards, the drill is used (anathema to Apollonian sculptors, unlike the chisel which respects surface, the drill denies surface creating shadows & light). With the Antinous statues only the head is of interest, the body is lifeless & drapery dominates, pupils are drilled with eyes & entire expression looking into the distance. The focus is NOT on the body but on the Pneuma (neo-Platonism). Iamblichus (300 AD), wrote of the divinity present in statues of Gods, affecting the viewer. Against this idea of the Pseudomorphosis, there is a reaction in the East (Byzantium) and South (Islam), a violent wave of iconoclasm.