The Poetry of ruins

by George M. Chatzistergiou

On August 15, 1944 a letter published in The Times of London proposed that a number of the churches that had been half-destroyed by German bombs be left as ruins, so as to serve as permanent monuments to the Second World War. The proposal was signed by eminent members of the British intelligentsia, including the poet T. S. Eliot and the economist John Maynard Keynes. According to the letter, if these ruins were to function in a high-minded way they should not be left cold and blackened by fire (as was later the case with the shelled Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany, a monument which ended up conveying bitterness and obsession with a destruction); instead, they should become overgrown with vegetation, to turn into gardens where children could play and discover the past...

It is certain that a similar proposal in Greece would be greeted with embarrassment, if not worse. The ruins of –mostly classical– antiquity may be one of the firmest foundations of modern Greek ideology, but this has mainly to do with the national/political aspect which is not necessarily related with the poetry of ruins. On the contrary, in England these views have a long history. It is a cultural phenomenon known as “fascination with ruins”, which was a major element in European sensitivity, mainly from the 18^th to about the mid-20^th century.

The letter to The Times is one of the numerous events described in the wonderful book “In Ruins” as part of a fascinating tour in the world of ruined buildings. A man of rare cultivation and artistic appreciation, the author, Christopher Woodward, is director of the Holburne Museum of Art in Bath. The book is neither an album with colour pictures of specific ruins nor a practical guide to archaeological sites. Indeed, the typical archaeological site with its fence, ticket office and groups of visiting tourists is foreign to the author’s sensibilities: “When the archaeologists arrive, the poets depart”, he writes. The author’s stated intention is to remind contemporary society of a lost aesthetic pleasure of old. The subject is dealt with by means of a literary narrative. As Woodward notes, he started writing the book as a regular historian of architecture, but soon found that the thought of architects was twenty years behind that of painters, and painters in turn take their ideas from writers.

The breadth of the book’s references is truly astounding: mansions of the erstwhile aristocracy of the earth, haunted houses of a bygone, glamorous upper middle class, ancient relics in Rome or Ephesus and ruins from natural disasters or from the recent wars of modern times are only some of the author’s areas of interest. An indicative case is that of the Coliseum ruins in Rome, which never fail to create a striking impression, even after the destruction from the barbaric raids in the 5^th century but also from centuries of recycling its materials to erect new buildings. Characteristically, when Hitler visited Rome in 1938 he was so impressed with the monument’s long life, that upon his return to Germany he established a new policy regarding the way in which major public buildings were to be constructed. Under this policy, steel and concrete were not suitable materials for erecting the Reich’s monumental structures, as their expected life was limited. Only marble, stone and brick could ensure a life span of over one thousand years for the buildings which would thus recall –like the Roman relics– the glory of his regime!

Another part of the book talks about the mansions of Sicily that were destroyed in the air raids of World War II (although many more were torn down in Palermo during the frenzy of post-war rebuilding, with the Mafia playing a leading role in organising the illegal demolitions). Among the inanimate victims of the bombings was the Lampeduza mansion, the seat of an ancient family of Sicilian nobility. The author describes the emotional impact one can feel while strolling today around the ruins of the old house, using as a guide “The Leopard”, a book written by the last prince of the family, who was born in that house in 1896 and lived in it until the day it was destroyed. The publication of “The Leopard” caused a sensation in Italy’s post-war literary scene, and its success led to Luchino Visconti’s film of the same title. Woodward acknowledges “The Leopard” as one of his three major sources of inspiration, the other two being Rose Macaulay’s “The Pleasure of Ruins” (1953) and John Harris’s “Voice from the Hall”(1998). Harris, one of Britain’s major historians of architecture, associated his name with the movement to save the British country houses, which in 1955 –at the peak of their destruction process– were pulled down at a rate of two per week.

While pointing to the power of a “lost pleasure”, Woodward does not fall into the trap of idealisation. For instance, he is sarcastic about the popular trend among the freshly titled English landowners of the 18^th century –an age which placed great emphasis on the picturesque– of erecting fake ruins on their land in order to convince of their noble descent... Elsewhere, the author ‘dethrones’ A. Pugin, architect of the Houses of Parliament and legendary figure of the 19^th-century movement for a “return to the Middle Ages”. He also recognises at another point that the preservation of ruins is not an end in itself; on the contrary, the restoration of half-destroyed buildings can have its own special symbolic power. A case in point is that of Poland, where after the 2^nd World War (during which the destructive power of military weapons reached new heights) many halls and churches were rebuilt as faithful replicas of those blown up by the Nazis. The demolition of the Polish nation’s architectural heritage was one of the Nazi weapons to annihilate the Polish culture, hence its rebuilding was deemed necessary as part of a drive for national regeneration...

It is important that in his book Woodward manages to pinpoint the source of the charm that ruins can have. To the author, the power of ruins lies exactly in their incompleteness, which allows the beholders’ imagination to fill in the missing parts according to their own sensibilities... We would add to the fascination of ruins the ‘atmosphere of disinterest’ about them; in the way they ‘lie exhausted’, ruins can no longer inspire the awe that their builders may have intended. On the other hand, it is clear that ruins could never attract a speculative eye –i.e. commercial interest– in the way of another form of incomplete building: the modern construction site. Also in favour of ruins is the weight of history they carry. In this sense, many observers discern in them the aspect of the ephemeral and the finite, reflecting on ‘past glories’ but also on the future of their own societies. If Babylon and Mycenae, Rome, Carthage and Athens were destroyed and their civilisations came to the same end as their once magnificent architecture, why couldn’t the same thing happen some day to London or Paris? Finally, Woodward point to the potential connection between the emphasis on ruins and the broader adventure of the human soul in modern societies. Freud, the author reminds us, saw the analogy between archaeology and psychoanalysis; stones can talk, wrote Freud, and every piece of them should be brought to light, studied and analysed as a piece of evidence with a broader significance.

On the other hand, what the author does not provide is a link of the aesthetic approach to ruins with the overall ‘love of antiquity’, an ideological stance held by European societies for several centuries before the twentieth. This, however, is a much broader issue which has proven to be ‘too much’ for some theoreticians who took it up. Besides, it is not certain that Woodward is really interested in making this connection. What matters to him is to ‘inject’ contemporary man with an appreciation of the past... It is certain that he has achieved this aim to the full. He managed to bring to light a forgotten subject and enrich it, helping contemporary readers to better arrange their emotional experiences and refine their tastes... The reading of the book “In Ruins” constitutes a fine contact with the history of one aspect of the sensibility of European societies, and at any rate a rare aesthetic delight...

Christopher Woodward

In Ruins

Vintage, 2002; pp. 280