Stone storybooks
by Bob on September 30, 2007
"Story books in stone" as was said by an Architecture professor of mine decades ago. He was referring to the non-verbal, non-ecrituture, but informational and storytelling aspect of Gothic cathedrals and especially their stained glass windows. He said that the words were dwarfed by the sheer magnifcence of the windows and sculptures and actual cathedral layout, which all said something both general and specific to us when we are in it.
And there is an amazing admixture of themes in a Gothic cathedral. Grotesques, demons, gargoyles, but yet themes from the bible and New Testament. All visually portrayed since most people in the Middle Ages were not literate.
So we have big stone story books.
It could be wood or straw, too, that houses are made of. But Gothic cathedrals are made of huge stone. Many later collapsed by the sheer weight of the tops, and so as the windows got larger, they had to invent a flying buttress to support the weight of the building since the weight-bearing walls were weakened by the larger window space.
Gothic cathedrals are architecturally a non-sequitur. No one quite knows how the style came about, per se. They don't quite follow Romanesque rounded architectural form. Gothic cathedral architecture seems to be a confluence of many factors, including spiritual mysticism, East and West, and as some scholars wrote, a re-dedication to the feminine principle in being, religion and matter.
Despite the statement brilliant Rudyard Kipling made much later in his "Ballad of East and West" that East is East and West is West and never shall the twain meet.
And Victor Hugo knew a lot about cathedral architecture and its secrets as we see in his 1831 book "Notre Dame de Paris", popularly known as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".
But the stones and windows and actual layout of these cathedrals are full of symbolism and messages.
In many cultures, stone is a more permanent message and link to meaning for everyone. Buddhist temples, Indian temples, Vedic temples, Thai temples, American Indian teepees and totem poles all have very important meanings.
I am a native New Yorker from the Manhattan, the "Big Apple", and I was astonished that in walking (yes, people used to walk before) around my city, I never really spent much time looking up at the buildings. When I got older and had studied some Architecture and even Sacred Architecture (building of sacred spaces) and Sacred Geometry, I was astonished in what I saw when I looked at most buildings.
Except for stark, modern ones which don't seem to have any message or character. They are just large naked steel structures which are like trolls in the fjords of ultra-urban America, devoid of deeper meaning.
But the older buildings said something visually and even symbolically in meaning of life. A Romeo and Juliet balcony on the fifteenth floor, standing there by itself, reminding me of romance and Shakespeare. A row of Greek ornamented flowers, with eleven leaves, five, five and one central stem -- Anthemion. A building doorway with two pillars on each side with spheres on them and the person walking through and in-between them is the empowered on, between two energies, positive and negative making life. Like the caduceus is. Except this was a doorway.
Iron work with gates and fences was always interesting. Monograms. Fleur-d'lis patterns, the quintessential two side with a unity in between.
And there is usually a Vesica Pisces or Golden Section somewhere in the design.
We ought to pay attention to these important messages in life through architecture. Someone was telling us something profound about life to be passed on.
And music was changed profoundly by stone cathedrals. Composers were used to the absorption of wooden churches. They had to re-write their music for the reverberation in stone. Stone has echoes, while wood absorbs and quiets things down, save for the bass spectrum.
And as for the stained glass windows. No one in modern times has satisfactorily really figured out how white light can make it through coloured glass. The stained glass makers were true alchemists and magicians. The secret may have died with them. Modern magicians card tricks are cute but don't compare in profundity.
Listen with our eyes. We need no sound. A lost art of communication. Seeing and comprehending intuitively.