Look Both Ways

Unité d’Habitation, Jan 2009, JB

"I remember one vivid winter’s day at Versailles. Silence and calm reigned supreme. Everything gazed at me with mysterious, questioning eyes. And then I realized that every corner of the palace, every column, every window possessed a spirit, an impenetrable soul. At that moment I grew aware of the mystery which urges men to create certain strange forms. And the creation appeared more extraordinary than the creators."

Giorgio de Chirico, "Mystery and Creation" Metaphysical Painting (written 1915, finally published 1928 by Andre Breton)

Unité d’Habitation, Jan 2009, JB

"I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by a tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and returnto share our life."
Marcel Proust, The Remembrance of Things Past (1913)

Unité d’Habitation, Jan 2009, JB

"And these things that live,slipping away, understand that you praise them; transitory themselves, they trust us for rescue,us, the most transient of all. They wish us to transmute them in our invisible heart - oh, infinitely into us! Whoever we are."
Rainer Maria Rilke (C. F. MacIntyre, translation) "The Ninth Elegy" Duino Elegies (1911-1922)

Unité d’Habitation, Jan 2009, JB

"… the spirits have to be recognized to become real. They are not outside us, nor even entirely within, but flow back and foth between us and the objects we have made, the landscape we have shaped and move in . We have dreamed all these things in our deepest lives and they are ourselves. It is our self that we are making out there, and when the landscape is complete we shall have become the gods who are intended to fill it."
David Malouf, An Imaginary Life (1978)