Last words

Literature, and analysing, understanding essays, novels, etc, has never been my strongest subject – in any language. Although the texts were interesting, and thought-provoking to read, I am afraid that my thoughts on them may not have been as coherent, nor as well written. Moreover, I was and I still am sceptical about the idea of having and writing a blog. I have never been great in writing essays, in general added with the thought that anyone could read what I have written is daunting. This is why it took me till the last possible moment to actually put them on the blog.

That being said I did really enjoy reading most of the texts. These texts are definitely not works I would of normally read, and never would I have randomly have picked most of them up by myself. There was such a wide range it what we looked at that, there will always be at least one that you can appreciate. The ones where I was able to identify another work that I knew, by means of comparison, ‘Howl’ and ‘The Fountainhead’, I think were my favourite. I found them easier to align myself to them. For the ‘Fountainhead’, after seeing the film, I would actually like to read the book, to see if my first thoughts on Howard Roark are still valid. On the other hand certain of the essay (as stated in my blogs) I found really confusing, and hard to actually understand- which wasn’t a great motivation when needing to write about them.

The Subjectivity of History

The final texts of the semester are the three table charts, from Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. The charts are a summary explanation of Spengler’s theory that History can be predetermined. In Decline of the West, Spengler explains that through the investigation of the past, he has “attempted for the first time the venture of predetermining history, of following the still untraveled stages in the destiny of a Culture’’.

Through the book and through the charts Spengler has identified different Cultures. For each one of them he has detailed their beginning, development, and conclusion. Or, in his words, the ‘Spring’ (the beginning), ‘Summer, and ‘Autumn’ (the development), and ‘Winter’ (the conclusion) of each of these Cultures.

The charts are so detailed and well thought out that part of you can help but agree and believe them. However, here in lies the trick, the inaccuracy that you cannot know the spring, summer, autumn and winter of a culture until it has fully concluded. A distance is required between you and the period you are analysing. And even in the case where it is certain that it is finished, how can you be sure the exact moments of change between the different ‘seasons’ of the Culture. The shifts, if they exist, are all subjective to the analyser. There is even an element of subjectivity in History itself. One event could be deemed really important to a specific population, but not noteworthy for another one. Moreover the amount of cultures through history could be more or less than the ones Spengler has selected.

There is also the mistake of if everything is predetermined this will not insight you to do anything. The future doesn’t seem full of possibilities, it just seems inevitable: an inevitable darkness. There needs to be the indication of a future for there to be progress. History is proof that there has been development; different cultures might have gone through things that are similar but they have also learnt from each other, from what has happened in the past. This makes me feel that. even if certain bits seem to repeat themselves, History is linear, and maybe the reason for these repeats is both humans make mistakes, and sometimes have to do something wrong a few times before them learn.

One Against Many

 

 

This is a comment on the film the Fountainhead. I would like to point out that this about the film adaptation of Ayn Rand novel, not the book itself; although Ayn Rand happens to have written the screenplay for the film as well.

The story follows the life of an architect: Howard Roark, who refuses to compromise his work to the views of the collective; “the world of the mob”. When first watching the movie, I, like probably most, want Howard Roark to succeed, be able to come out on top. Every time he gets a client and is able to create his own work, you can’t help but cheer. Throughout the film, the world is sold on the idea that you can’t survive unless you compromise, bend to popular demand. Howard Roark proves them wrong. In his closing argument of his defence, he states that it is through the fight, through hardship, it is when people were alone and fought, suffered that man has evolved, developed: man will continue to become greater through the aspiration of something better, through the belief in himself and his work. “A man was free to seek his own happiness, to gain and produce, not to give up and renounce. […] To hold as his highest possession a sense of his own personal value. And his highest virtue, his self-respect.”

Even though you can’t help but be happy that Howard Roark won the trial, and was able to prove that you can win above the rest of the world. Yes, he unlike the ‘bad guy’, Toohey, doesn’t try and corrupt anyone and change their minds. I even agree with most of what he said in his defence speech: your first drive should be yourself, your want to create, achieve his ambitions. However, I can’t help but have an image in my head on a lone bull charging, with no care for anyone else, no worries what he runs into and what destruction he causes. He will follow his ideals no matter what and that ultimately is scary: he has nothing to stop him. There is danger in having such a closed minded ideal, which can be even more dangerous when it is not just one person but thousands who only think/do as they think is right. There needs to be a moral sense of what is right and wrong. There is a need for wisdom. Taken to extremes, and with the lack of rationality, the outcomes can be very dangerous. If you only had your own interest in mind, with nothing stopping you, you would a psychopath. I am not saying that Howard Roark is psychotic; he uses reason, he is rational. However if the main of his ideas are taken to the extreme, society would not survive. Even in certain scenes I can’t help but think, just for a second, that Howard Roark has psychopathic tendencies. He doesn’t many close relationships: he is a bit antisocial. His relationship with Dominique is really strange and is violent at times, and his friendship with Wynand mainly stems from Wynand’s respect and admiration for him. Moreover, his individualistic ideas tend towards egocentricity. It is his reason that makes him act like this and it is his reason that saves him.

Howard Roark is the voice of reason, but there is a lack of humanity in him. There is a need for compassion. Through The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand promotes the individual, his self-interest, and criticizes selflessness. But without a sense of benevolence, a sense of social conscience, society could not exist: there needs to be a balance between your thoughts, ideals, wants, and a care for the fellow man, and without both you wouldn’t be human. Following this idea, by caring for your fellow man, you wouldn’t want to stop him from his goals either, and possibly helping each other achieve your goals. A person needs others to survive. A person shouldn’t compromise who they are but there needs to be some middle ground; you can’t just be the little kid by himself believing he’s always right, because chances are he isn’t always right, he isn’t perfect: he is human, and he makes mistakes.

As a last point, I wanted to make a quick comparison between this movie and another film: ‘12 Angry Men’. In ‘12 Angry Men’, the protagonist, only known as juror 8, tries to convince the other 11 jurors that there is possible doubt in the guilt of a boy accused of killing his father. In both its one man against the rest, and the rest are trying to make him fold (and coincidentally both ‘heroes’ in these films are architects). In 12 angry men, Henry Fonda’s character is willing to listen to the others’ arguments, to let them try and convince him of the accused’s guilt. However, the tables end up turning on them, when he is able to disprove all their arguments, and one by one get them to agree with him that there is not enough to decide if the accused is guilty or not. In both films the ‘hero’ uses facts, logic, and reason to defend their ideas. There is stubbornness in both characters: stubbornness for the side of reason. However it is my opinion that the juror 8 use of reason is steamed from his belief of justice, and that everyone deserves to be fought for. Howard Roark inflexibility comes from him fighting for only himself. (– He doesn’t even fight for Dominique, who he apparently loves. He basically tells her that wherever she will go, he knows that she’ll come crawling back to him so there is no point in fighting for her.) Only in Juror 8 do I really find that there is a balance between reason, justice, feeling of doing what is right, and actually caring for his follow man.

 

Bursting the Ball

I enjoyed reading Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh, and how absurd it all is. Even as I enjoyed, I could help getting really frustrated. The protagonist: Paul Pennyfeather, cannot catch a break, you can’t help but feel frustration for this character. He is always at the mercy of events, and others and is being used by others. This isn’t improved by the fact that most of the characters are so ridiculous. They continue to fall in the same errors. Grimes continues to stay in his miserable state, always ‘being in the soup’. Margot Beste-Chetwynde has the constant need for a man in her life. Professor Silinus wishes we were machines: he prefers machines to people. To be honest, there is an element of a machine in them and in this novel. This whole book feels like a machine: a wheel continually turning with no stopping or escaping it. Between the beginning and the end of the book there has been no really progression. Not in the main character, or in the society around him.

Man needs to progress, needs to evolve. In the other text taken from The City of Tomorrow by Le Corbusier, when he talks about the damp, he sees the potential of the workers, and what they can and are accomplishing. They do not. It is like the characters of Decline and Fall: you can’t help but get frustrated and want to shake them up. I could help but get really worried by the fact that what if the world was only full of these people: there would be no movement, no evolution, and ultimately society would stagnate and then deteriorate.

Faust, in all his tragedy

In his work All That is Solid Melts into Air, Berman Marshall talks about the persona of Faust. He points out there has been many versions of the character of Faust through the ages, verging from the serious and tragic, to the funny and absurd. However the one he states ‘surpasses all others in richness and depth of its historical perspective, in its moral imagination, its political intelligence, its psychological sensitivity and insight’’ is Goethe’s Faust.

Goethe spent most of his life writing Faust, so as Faust was going through his different experiences and finding/understanding himself through his different ‘stages’, so was Goethe. Through the character of Faust we are to understand that there is constant growth in man because of his wants, and his willingness of how much he will do to get what he desires. What Faust wants above all, in Goethe version, is development itself, all of it, good and bad. It is the devil that allows him to be able to change. Through his transformations, Faust reflects on the idea of change and the need for the new. He starts coming up with new possibilities, to create a better, ‘perfect’ world.  There is a need, a craving that builds within him to continue to experience new things, to try and reach a higher state of being. Once he has started, he can’t stop, gets addicted. It is once he is ‘full’ in his own progression, that that he is ready to develop for others. He has ‘filled’ himself with the maximum he can give himself that he continues with the rest of humanity. Faust want to improve the world is full of good intentions: “he is not building for his own short-term profit but rather for the long-range future of mankind”. However, to him the new can only come by destroying the old.  Faust believes it to the point that he destroys everything that gets in his way. He is unable to see what is really helpful, useful to be able to progress.

It through analysing this text that we see that even if progress in necessary it always brings negative consequences as well a positive ones. It can bring destruction as well as a new better world. There is a need for personal growth before any possible greater development. There is also a need to something to aspire to. However this perfect world, this ‘utopia’ that we should all crave, we should know it can never be achieved as well. Everyone’s ‘utopia’ is different, which makes no one achievable. It is only by wanting it but knowing that that it is unachievable that you’re willing to do as much as you can to develop it, without trying to destroy everything else in the process. With this thought, you find another, maybe less good solution to the problems but a solution where there is no need for any great ‘casualty’ for the benefit of the ‘greater good’. In my previous entry, about the Beat Generation, I had written that in each new generation there is a need to go against its predecessor for progress to happen. After reading this text, I am even more convinced by it. However I am as equally convince that challenge does not mean destruction, bloodshed, etc.

The scream of a generation

 

Allen Ginsberg, author of the poem ‘Howl’, is one of the founding fathers to the Beat Generation. In this counter-culture movement, the young men and women involved in it were trying to find purpose to their lives and the world. They reject that which was defined as the American standard way of life. These ‘standards’ felt dictated, and felt like they were being force on to them. Their search is of everything and anything; even and especially in things rejected by (or hidden from) the general public. They are trying to find their own ‘beat’, their own rhythm through the world. And to find this significance they are willing to transcend / experience all and every means possible. This (famously) included going into altered states through the use of drugs, alcohol, sex, etc.

I recently saw the movie ‘Killing your Darlings’ where you are given an account of how Ginsburg first gets into the beat movement and how the Beat Generation was first created by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. In certain scenes you are shown the altered states they would experience. There is a mix everything; a confusion of the real and the hallucinated. You also get a sense of the ‘conformity’ that is trying to force itself on them.

 

My first impression of Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl’ is that it is intense. What the film had started showing about the things Allen Ginsberg and his friends were going through was only deepened, and made clearer in the poem. Through the poem (and helped by the film) you really get a sense of the thoughts they were having, the ideas, and experiences they had.

There is a raw quality to the poem. It exposes what is trying to be hidden, showing both the beautiful and the horrible in their experimentations. There is a constant feeling of madness, going crazy, trying to break free. Like a caged animal, Allen Ginsberg is letting out a long intense ‘howl’ at the world. He is screaming at the madness he is going through, at the oppression he and his friends feel.  However it only shows it as a collection of fractures of their experiences. These cracks demonstrate the generation’s confusion of their own lives. Moreover, while reading the poem you can perceive movement, and rhythm. Through means of alliterations and repetition, and the overall structure of the poem, you feel the ‘beat’ that Allen Ginsberg is trying to find in his own life.

Although I am not appealed by some of the methods that they use to try and find themselves, I do understand and support their struggle. It is only reasonable to try and find a sense to the world, and your existence in it. They are trying to find a voice in a world that seems odd to them- no wonder they are going to fight back. In each new generation there it is required to challenge its predecessors. It is through this challenge, this endeavour that there is evolution, and possibly a way in getting closer to some kind of meaning to why everything is.

The Confusion

Colin Rowe was architectural historian, and critic, during the twentieth Century. We are here looking  at two of his essays where he describes his impression of certain buildings by the Renaissance Architect Andrea Palladio and the Modern Architect Le Corbusier. In ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa’, Rowe studies both Villa Capra, and Villa Foscari by Palaldio, and the Villa Savoye and the Villa Stein by Le Corbusier. Rowe’s essay on Le Corbusier’s La Tourette Monastery is specifically about the Sainte Marie de La Tourette Monastery, built near Lyon by Le Corbusier in 1960.

In both essays, I found Colin Rowe confusing, having to read them several times. You can sense that he is a fan of more traditional architecture, but seems on the other hand to have mixed feelings on modern architecture. You even possibly get the sense that he changed his mind about Le Corbusier’s work. Between ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa’ published in 1940’s, and his other essay ‘Le Corbusier’s La Tourette Monastery’ written twenty years later , there seems to have been a shift in his opinion of Le Corbusier. Or maybe, he believes that it is Le Corbusier who has lost his touch? (But that just sounds ridiculous). 

To maybe understand this better let’s have a closer look at both essays, starting with the earlier one: ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, Palladio and Le Corbusier compared’. It starts with a definition taken from Sir Christopher Wren, who distinguishes between what is truly beautiful (natural or geometrical) and what becomes beautiful to the observer‏. Following the comparison, Rowe goes on to say that the Villa Capra by Andrea Palladio, is such a true example of geometrical order and beauty. Continuing the appraisal, he then compares the villa’s geometrical beauty- the structure and overall arrangement of the building, in contrast with the beauty natural of the site around it, the two complementing each other.

However the main of the text is actually the comparison of another of Palladio’s villas, Villa Foscari, built in the 1560, and the Villa Stein by Le Corbusier, built in 1927. Through his analysis of both buildings, Rowe creates a transposition of modern architecture to that of renaissance architecture, and states that even if there is a difference in period, the principles of both villas are very similar.

Through the text Rowe looks at both buildings through the use of mathematics. Specifically looking at the different ways geometry and proportions are used by the architect.  He also keeps in mind how the villas will be used and perceived by their true owners and visitors.

Looking at the structure of the villa’s I got a sense that the technology at the time of Palladio didn’t give him as much freedom as Le Corbusier in the arrangement of his villa: “Palladio’s structural system makes it almost necessary to repeat the same plan on every level of the building; and point support allows Corbusier a fairly flexible arrangement”. However both have a specific reason for the way they arrange their building: Palladio’s need for absolute symmetry (which you continue to see in his other villas - Villa Capra comes to mind), and Le Corbusier’s need for ‘free arangement’ and ‘asymetry’.

One of Rowe’s key points is the idea of proportions: “proportions are a reflection of the harmony of the universe, their basis, scientific and religious, was quite unassailable”. Both architects, in their own way, hold a high importance to proportions in their villas. For Le Corbusier, it is “exactness, precision, neatness that he seeks, the overall controlling shape; and within, not the unchallengeable clearness of Palladio’s volumes, but a sort of planned obscurity. Consequently, while in the Malcontenta geometry is diffused through the internal volumes of the building, at Garches it resides only in the total block and the disposition of its supports.” However Rowe believes that the pure theory of proportions, as geometrical beauty that existed in Palladio has been lost even before modern architecture existed.

 

 

Now for his second essay: ‘Le Corbusier’s La Tourette Monastery’. – Actually before I continue, I just want to point out that unfortunately I have never visited any of the buildings mentioned in these texts. With this statement I continue by saying (and most architects and critics , Rowe included, would probably agree) that without having experienced the building it is a lot harder to understand a description of it - even whilst also looking at plans and sections and images of the building. This is especially the case with La Tourette Monastery.

In this essay I feel that Rowe either completely missed the point of the building, or is refusing to understand the true beauty of it – maybe because it is not geometrical perfect enough for him?

When looking at the plans, sections, and the pictures of the internal and external space of the monastery, you can see that a key element of the building is LIGHT (what an innovative concept of a building- can’t think of any other Le Corbusier building that has a similar theme, …hum hum). You can see that the way in which Le Corbusier has designed his building has all been in aim to how the light reacts with the structure; it is the light that creates the space, the mood of the of each part of the monastery. In a monastery you can assume that there is little sound – monks usually quite quiet, but the ‘sound’ through the building this that of the light: you can practically hear it shine through the openings into the different rooms. The marriage between the structure and the natural light creates the perfect setting, the required level of spirituality, needed for a monetary (- the light could be interpreted as the ‘light’ or ‘voice’ of God).

However Colin Rowe seems to ignore of this, and even seems to ignore half the building in his analysis. This is to the point in which you ask yourself, maybe he reading it in the wrong way (a mistranslation between his Anglo origins and the French architecture? ), or maybe he like me didn’t visit the building? Or, maybe he went to the wrong building? The only thing for sure is that if you want a better understanding of Le Corbusier’s Sainte Marie de La Tourette Monastery, you should definitely not read this text.