I received the following
article from a correspondent, who suggested that I might wish to discuss it.
The text is an English translation of a paper by the French writer Marcel Proust, written in 1904, and titled
The Death of the Cathedral.I have analyzed sections of the text below.
I should add that this I am suited to discuss this text, not only because I do write about the loss of culture, in my thesis
Reclaiming Beauty, but I have closely studied a cathedral here in Toronto, which I eventually abandoned visiting because what it had become was just too painful to witness.
I went to this cathedral,
St. James Cathedral, only a few days ago, with my camera, to see how "far gone" it was, and it still stands, nor does it have a "soon to be demolished" sign by it, nor is there any mosque nearby.
But, its degeneration is more subtle. It is standing, but what is is it being used for?
The most telling sign was this big, turquoise "Welcome" banner, draping the full vertical of the cathedral.
Welcome to whom? I doubt it is a welcome to new parish members, or to those who decided to return, or for those visiting on the occasional Sunday.
I think it is a "welcome" to all those who want to enter this culturally and "spiritually" open establishment, to stand and basque in the great quietness of it all. Our God, I don't think, comes into the picture at all.
There are still Sunday services, a standing choir with a first class repertoire, clergy who give sermons quoting from the Bible? But on what, about what?
I left, having been a regular Sunday goer (I went to the evening services), since the message I heard was so un-Biblical, that even the beauty of the place could no longer keep me there.
Here, in 2011 is where I write of one of the last times I went there, and when I started to seriously consider
no longer attending the services and how I decided not to attend any more, in 2011:
Some dioceses from the Anglican Church of Canada have joined the recently formed Anglican Church of North America, protesting the loss of traditionalism in the original church, including its stance on homosexual marriage and the ordination of homosexual priests.
St. James Cathedral is not part of that protest, and continues to maintain those non-Christian beliefs.
So, a beautiful building still stands, but it is so far gone from its original purpose, of worship, that even that memory is too painful to contemplate.
Better, I would say, start all over. Build another Saint James, and with careful, and repeated, requests that God bless it.
Below are the photographs of Saint James, I took yesterday. Below that is my discussion of the text
The Death of the Cathedral.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------THE DEATH OF CATHEDRALS - and the Rites for which they were built
By Marcel Proust
Le Figaro
August 16, 1904
Saint James Cathedral, rising high in downtown Toronto
Welcome! in bright blue
Welcome close-up
Tiles at the entrance
Cross in a side chapel, St. George's Chapel
Formerly the east entrance to the Cathedral, this area was converted into
the present chapel by the Cawthra family in 1935
to commemorate the silver Jubilee of King George V.
The south window depicts members of the Royal Family
and representatives of the Empire. The window above the altar
depicts Christ the King reigning from the cross. [Source]
Stained glass of what looks like a falling dove
View from the entrance looking towards the alter
The organ pipes, above the entrance
Stained glass above the alter[Photos By: KPA, 2015]Below is discussion of the text
Death of the Cathedral, by Marcel Proust. The full text, is here in English is here, here in French.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1.
Text:
Suppose for a moment that Catholicism had been dead for centuries, that the traditions of its worship had been lost. Only the unspeaking and forlorn cathedrals remain; they have become unintelligible yet remain admirable.
KPA: Admirable, as any grand object is admirable. Unintelligible because no-one uses them as they were designed to be used, and therefore we can no longer relate to their message, meaning, and signs.
2.
Text: When the government underwrites this resurrection, [of the Cathedrals] it is more in the right than when it underwrites the performances in the theaters of Orange, of the OpĆ©ra-Comique, and of the OpĆ©ra, for Catholic ceremonies have an historical, social, artistic, and musical interest whose beauty alone surpasses all that any artist has ever dreamed, and which Wagner alone was ever able to come close to, in Parsifal—and that by imitation.
KPA: More to explain this below, but the argument is that French culture has more in relation than with its religious-artistic culture than with its secular artistic one.
3. Text: “Alas! How much more beautiful these feasts must have been when priests celebrated the liturgy not in order to give some idea of these ceremonies to an educated audience, but because they set the same faith in their efficacy as did the artists who sculpted the Last Judgment in the west porch tympanum or who painted the stained-glass lives of the saints in the apse. How much more deeply and truly expressive the entire work must have been when a whole people responded to the priest’s voice and fell to its knees as the bell rang at the elevation, not as cold and stylized extras in historical reconstructions, but because they too, like the priest, like the sculptor, believed. But alas, such things are as far from us as the pious enthusiasm of the Greeks at their theater performances, and our ‘reconstitutions’ cannot give a faithful idea of them.”
KPA: How beautiful these ceremonies must have been when done in true adherence to their purpose, even though they still retain that beauty from these historical origins.
4.
Text: That is what one would say if the Catholic religion no longer existed and if scholars had been able to rediscover its rites...But the point is that it still does exist and has not changed, as it were, since the great century when the cathedrals were built. For us to imagine what a living and sublimely functioning thirteenth-century cathedral was like, we need not do with it as we do with the theater of Orange and turn it into a venue for exact yet frozen reconstitutions and retrospectives. All we need to do is to go into it at any hour of the day when a liturgical office is being celebrated. Here mimicry, psalmody, and chant are not entrusted to artists without “conviction.” It is the ministers of worship themselves who celebrate, not with an aesthetic outlook, but by faith—and thus all the more aesthetically.
KPA: Still, even with the distance of time and purpose, if one goes into a cathedral, and listen to the services conducted, one gets the true beauty of the place. It is the worship that makes the beauty, not the physical environment, the building, even in our alienated, areligious era.
5.
Text: One could not hope for livelier and more sincere extras, since it is the faithful that take the trouble of unwittingly playing their role for us. One may say that thanks to the persistence of the same rites in the Catholic Church and also of Catholic belief in French hearts, cathedrals are not only the most beautiful monuments of our art, but also the only ones that still live their life fully and have remained true to the purpose for which they were built.
KPA: And it is the persistence of the few, innocent, faithful, who allow this beauty to continue, despite the threat from great men and institutions.
I think this shows the hope that faith, true faith, can possibly turn the tides.
6.
Text: Now because of the French government’s break with Rome debates on Mr. Briand’s bill and its probable passing are imminent. Its provisions indicate that after five years churches may, and often will, be shut down; not only will the government no longer underwrite the celebration of ritual ceremonies in the churches, but will also be enabled to transform them into whatever it wishes: museums; conference centers, or casinos.
KPA: And now mosques. There is a current tide where abandoned churches and cathedrals are being converted into mosques, or rented out to Muslims who could use them for their own worship.
7.
Text: Your clever zeal has often been effective; surely you will not let all the churches of France die in one fell swoop. Today there is not one socialist endowed with taste who doesn’t deplore the mutilations the Revolution visited upon our cathedrals: so many shattered statues and stained-glass windows! Well: better to ransack a church than to decommission it. As mutilated as a church may be, so long as the Mass is celebrated there, it retains at least some life. Once a church is decommissioned it dies, and though as an historical monument it may be protected from scandalous uses, it is no more than a museum.
KPA: Here the author is saying that a "decommissioned" church, or a church which is no longer used for its liturgy is worse than a mutilated church. A broken down church which conducts its services is better than a church which just stands as a bare building.
It is in these "decommissioned" churches where museums, theaters, condominiums and mosques become replacements.
8.
Text: When the sacrifice of Christ’s flesh and blood, the sacrifice of the Mass, is no longer celebrated in our churches, they will have no life left in them. Catholic liturgy and the architecture and sculpture of our cathedrals form a whole, for they stem from the same symbolism.
9.
Text: It is a matter of common knowledge that in the cathedrals there is no sculpture, however secondary it may seem, that does not have its own symbolic value. If the statue of Christ at the Western entrance of the cathedral of Amiens rests on a pedestal of roses, lilies, and vines, it is because Christ said: “I am the rose of Saron”; “I am the lily of the valley”; “I am the true vine”.
If the asp and the basilisk, the lion and the dragon and sculpted beneath His feet it is because of the verse in Ps 90: Inculcabis super aspidem et leonem. To his left, in a small relief, a man is represented dropping his sword at the sight of an animal while a bird continues to sing beside him. This is because “the coward hasn’t the courage of a thrush”: indeed the mission of this bas-relief is to symbolize cowardice, as opposed to courage, because it is set under the statue that is always (at least in earliest times) to the right of the statue of Christ, that is, under the statue of St. Peter, the Apostle of courage.
Historical Archive: Genoels-Elderen ivories.
Rheno-Mosan Insular Bavarian late 8th or early 9th century
[Christ trampling on the adder and the lion]And so it goes for the thousands of statues that adorn the cathedral.
KPA: Psalm 90: Inculcatis super aspidem et leonem.
Psalm 91:13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder
God will give you strength to vanquish your enemies.
10.
Text: Here is the interpretation of a daily ceremony: the Mass. You will see that it is no less symbolic.
The deep and sorrowful chant of the Introit opens the ceremony: it proclaims the expectation of the patriarchs and prophets. The clergy are in choir, the choir of the saints of the old Law who yearn for the coming of the Messias and do not see Him. Then the bishop enters and appears as the living image of Jesus Christ. His arrival symbolizes the Advent of the Lord that the nations await. On great feast days, seven torches are born before him to recall that, as the prophet says, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost rest upon the head of the Son of God. He processes under a triumphant canopy whose four bearers may be likened to the four Evangelists. Two acolytes walk to this right and left and represent Moses and Elias, who appeared at Mount Tabor on either side of Christ. They teach that Jesus held the authority of the Law and of the Prophets.
KPA: The symbolism in music, sculpture, art and architecture to show through beauty to word of God.
11.
Text: The very clothing the priest wears to the altar” and the objects used in worship amount to so many symbols, M. Male adds. “The chasuble, worn on top of the other garments, is charity, which is above all the commandments of the Law and is itself the supreme law. The stole, which the priest puts over his neck, is the light yoke of the Lord, and since it is written that every Christian must cherish this yoke, the priest kisses this yoke when he puts it on or takes it off. The bishop’s two-pointed miter symbolizes the knowledge he must have of each of the Testaments; two ribbons are attached to it to recall that Holy Scripture is to be interpreted both literally and spiritually. The bell is the voice of the preachers and the timber from which it hangs is a figure of the Cross. Its rope, woven from three twisted threads, points to the threefold understanding of scripture, which must be interpreted according to the threefold sense, i.e., historically, allegorically, and morally. When one takes the rope in hand to set the bell ringing, one symbolically expresses the fundamental truth that the knowledge of Scripture must lead to acts.”
KPA: The objects in the liturgy, the clothing, the ribbons, the interaction with these objects, all convey the symbolic, ritualistic significance of the church ceremony. And these objects are designed and constructed with aesthetics in mind.
12.
Text: And in this way everything down to the least of the priest’s gestures, down the stole he wears, comes together to symbolize Him with the deep sentiment that gives life to the whole cathedral and which is, as M. Male puts it so well, the genius of the Middle Ages itself.
KPA: Not only the objects, but the gestures, and the interactions with these objects, are carefully and aesthetically conducted.
13.
Text: Doubtless only those who have studied the religious art of the Middle Ages are able to analyze the beauty of such a spectacle fully. That alone would suffice for the State to have to see to its preservation.
KPA: I think this is the discussion that always centers around "are the experts the only ones to know....?" Experts are essential, but they have to be:
a. Experts, and not ideologues who may (will) direct the public in the wrong direction (e.g., feminists, etc.)
b. That they can properly translate the information so that it doesn't stay in some ivory tower of elites, and cannot influence the world around them.
14.
Text: But let us hasten to add that the people who can read medieval symbolism fluently are not the only ones for whom the living cathedral, that is to say the sculpted, painted, singing cathedral is the greatest of spectacles, as one can feel music without knowing harmony.
KPA: Analyzing music without the emotional attachments, coldly and detachedly is good for a theoretical thesis, but even then, if the student of that piece of music has no attachment to it, he will relegate it to some file "for further reference" and remove its essential quality: that it be listened and enjoyed.
15.
Text: I am well aware that Ruskin, when he was demonstrating what spiritual reasons explain the arrangement of chapels in cathedral apses, declared: “Never will you be able to delight in architectural forms unless you are in sympathy with the thinking from which they arose.”
KPA: Ruskin has already said more eloquently what I have demonstrated above.
But to add my take, I think this is a very important point, and it adds the importance of the
human element in art. It is not only the form that "delights," but the purpose of the form. A beautifully shaped stone cannot delight as would a beautifully carved stone, which cannot delight as would a beautifully carved sculpture, which cannot delight as would a beautifully carved sculpture of Christ, or Mary, or one of the disciples.
It is evident even in mundane pieces. A brooch which is of pure abstract shape might delight for a while, but think of a finely crafted brooch of a leaf or a flower, or a heart.
And even better, a diamond which has all its symbolism of love and eternity, given as an engagement ring.
The context behind the work of art makes the work more valuable and meaningful, at least to the owner. And the "owner" becomes collectively a family, a culture, and then a nation.
16.
Text:: Still, we all know the ignorant man, the simple dreamer, who walks into a cathedral without any effort at understanding yet is overwhelmed by his emotions and receives an impression which, though perhaps less precise, is certainly just as strong.
KPA: Here, the symbiotic and osmotic influence of a culture informs even the most illiterate of laymen, who understand intuitively the importance and significance of certain cultural symbols, and even more so symbols that represent their religious beliefs. The rich, the poor, the erudite and the less intellectually versed, everyone, can in common agreement say "This is mine." The religion and its symbols become keepsakes to protect, cherish, and use.
17.
Text: As a literary witness to this state of mind, admittedly quite different to that of the learned person of whom we were speaking a moment ago and who walks in a cathedral “as in a forest of symbols who gaze on him with familiar glances,” yet which allows for a vague but powerful emotion in a cathedral during the liturgy, I shall quote Renan’s beautiful text The Double Prayer:
“One of the most beautiful religious spectacles one can still contemplate today (and which one may soon no longer be able to contemplate, if the House of Representatives passes the Briand bill) is that which the ancient cathedral of Quimper presents at dusk. Once darkness has filled the vast building’s side aisles, the faithful of both sexes gather in the nave and sing evensong in the Breton language with a simple and moving rhythm. The cathedral is lit only by two or three lamps. In the nave, the men are on one side, standing; on the other side, the kneeling women form a motionless sea of white headdresses. The two halves sing in alternation, and the phrase that one of the choirs begins is finished by the other. What they sing is quite beautiful. As I heard it, I felt that with a few changes it might be fitted to every state of humanity. Above all it made me dream of a prayer which, with a few variations, might suit men and women equally.”
KPA: Once again, it is the human emotion which is the conveyer of the meaning. Without feeling, there is no spirituality.
18.
Text: There are many gradations between between this reverie, which is not without its charm, and the religious art “connoisseur’s” more conscious joys. Let us bear and keep in mind the case of Gustave Flaubert, who studied—albeit with a view to interpreting it within a modern outlook—one of the most beautiful parts of the Catholic liturgy:
“The priest dipped his thumb in the holy oil and began to anoint his eyes first . . . then his nostrils, so fond of warm breezes and of the scents of love, his hands that had found their delight in sweet caresses . . . lastly his feet, which had been so swift in running to satisfy his desires, and which now would walk no more.”
KPA: Proust then quotes another writer, Gustave Flaubert, describing the simple, symbolic and profoundly significant part of a ritual:
19.
Text: There is therefore more than one way of dreaming before this artistic realization - the most complete ever, since all of the arts collaborated in it—of the greatest dream to which humanity ever rose; this mansion is grand enough for us all to find our place in.
KPA: Proust continues with his theme that the church is "grand enough," big enough, for everyone.
20.
Text: The cathedral, which shelters so many saints, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, kings, confessors, and martyrs that whole generations huddle in supplication and anxiety all the way to the porch entrances and, trembling, raise the edifice as a long groan under heaven while the angels smilingly lean over from the top of the galleries which, in the evening’s blue and rose incense and the morning’s blinding gold do seem to be “heaven’s balconies” - the cathedral, in its vastness, can grant asylum both to the man of letters and to the man of faith, to the vague dreamer as well as to the archeologist.
KPA: The cathedral is a repository for the grand representatives of God, who can give respite to the most humble of his children. But the humble are seen also in their behavior, and not just in their materials.
21.
Text: All that matters is that it remain alive...
KPA: And this is the condition, that it be a vibrant place.
22.
Text: ...and that France should not find herself transformed overnight into a dried-up shore on which giant chiseled shells seem marooned, emptied of the life that once lived in them and no longer able even to give to an ear leaning in on them a distant rumor from long ago, mere museum pieces and icy museums themselves.
KPA: I can only repeat Proust's poetic words, the modern-day landscape where "giant chiseled shells seem marooned, emptied of the life that once lived in them...
23.
Text: They wanted the church of VĆ©zelay to be decommissioned. Such is the silliness that anticlericalism inspires. Decommissioning that basilica amounts to taking away what little soul it has left. Once the little lamp that shines deep in the sanctuary has been snuffed out, VĆ©zelay will become no more than an archeological curiosity.
KPA: Vezelay has in fact now become a
UNESCO World Heritage Centre. What Proust predicted
has happened. Cathedrals are now simply museums, places of curiousity, where people go to gape at what once was.
24.
Text: Things keep their beauty and their life only by continuously carrying out the task for which they were intended, even should they slowly die at it. Does anyone believe that, in museums of comparative sculpture, the plaster casts of the famous sculpted wooden choir stalls of the Cathedral of Amiens can give an idea of the stalls themselves in their august yet still functional antiquity?
KPA: A church, and a cathedral, still has more life than a museum, since at least its original function was not to store sacred objects, but to include them in the liturgy and ritual.
25.
Text: Whereas a museum guard keeps us from getting too close to their plaster casts, the pricelessly precious stalls, which are so old, so illustrious, and so beautiful, continue to carry out their humble task in the cathedral of Amiens which they have been doing for centuries to the great satisfaction of the citizens of Amiens, just as those artists who, while having become famous, yet still keep up a small job or give lessons. This task consists in bearing bodies even before they instruct souls.
KPA And Proust compares cathedrals with those artists who still keep contact with the common man, despite having become famous. These cathedrals still have a place for the humble worshiper.
And the "task" of these stalls in these cathedrals is first to hold the bodies of the kneeling worshipers, so that they may receive instructions on their souls. All worshipers are equal, when kneeling before God.
26.
Text: and that is what, folded down and showing their upper side, they humbly do during the offices. More than this: these stalls’ perpetually worn wood has slowly acquired, or rather let seep through, that dark purple that is so to speak its heart and which the eye that has once fallen prey to its charm prefers to everything else, to the point of being unable even to look at the colors of the paintings which, after this, seem rough and plain. Then one experiences something like ebriety as one savors, in the wood’s ever more blazing ardor, what is so to speak the tree’s sap overflowing in time. The naĆÆf figures sculpted in it receive something like a twofold nature from the material in which they live. And generations have variously polished all of these Amiens-born fruits, flowers, leaves, and vegetation that the Amiens sculptor sculpted in Amiens wood, thus bringing out those wonderful contrasting tones in which the differently colored leaf stands out from the twig; this brings to mind the noble accents that Mr. GallĆ© has been able to draw out of the oak’s harmonious heart.
KPA: The beauty of these stalls, their carvings, their worn wood, is more precious to the worshiper, who kneels on them in prayer, than even the paintings on the catherdral's walls, since they hold him while he prays.
Mr. GallƩ, I assume, is the sculptor.
27.
Text: The cathedral, if Mr. Briand’s bill were passed, would not find itself closed and unable to provide the Mass and prayers just for the canons who perform the services in those stalls whose armrests, misericords, and banister tell of the Old and New Testaments, nor only for the people filling up the immense nave. We were just saying that nearly every image in a cathedral is a symbol. Yet some are not. Such are the painted or sculpted pictures of those who, having contributed their pennies to the decoration of the cathedral, wished to keep a place in it forever, so that they might silently follow the services and noiselessly participate in prayer from a niche’s balustrade or the recess of a stained glass window, in saecula saeculorum. we know that since the oxen of Laon had christianly drawn the construction materials for the cathedral up the hill from which it rises, the architect rewarded them by setting up their statues at the feet of the towers. You can see them to this day as, in the din of the bells and the pooling sunlight, they raise their horned heads above the colossal holy arch towards the horizon of the French plains—their “inner dream.” That was the best that could be done for beasts: for men, better was granted.
KPA: The cathedral is not just for the living, but for those who have contributed to have a space in the cathedral at their death, so that "they might silently follow the services and noiselessly participate in prayer."
Mr. Briand was a socialist politician, who briefly became Prime Minister of France, who worked towards the separation of Church and State. The Bill Proust is talking about is probably that which became law in 1905:
Loi du 9 dĆ©cembre 1905 concernant la sĆ©paration des Ćglises et de l'Ćtat.
28.
Text: They went into the church. There they took their place, which would be theirs after death and from which, just as during their lifetime, they could go on following the divine sacrifice. In some cases, leaning out of their marble tomb, they turn their heads slightly to the Gospel or to the Epistle side and are able to glimpse and feel around them, as they can in Brou, the tight and tireless interlacing of crest flowers and initials; sometimes, as in Dijon, they keep even in their tombs the bright colors of life. In other cases, from the recess of a stained glass window, in their crimson, ultramarine, or azure cloaks that catch the sun and blaze up with it, they fill its transparent rays with color and suddenly let them loose, multicolored and aimlessly wandering in the nave, which they tinge with their wild and lazy splendor, with their palpable unreality. Thus they remain donors, who, for this very reason, have deserved perpetual prayers. And all of them want the Holy Ghost, when He will come down from the Church, really to recognize his own.
KPA: Such donors took their place in their lifetime, so that they may follow the cathedral during their death.
29.
Text: It is not just the queen and the princes who wear their insignia, their crown, or their collar of the Golden fleece: money changers are portrayed proving the title of coins; furriers sell their furs (see [Emile] Male for reproductions of those windows); butchers slaughter cows; knights wear their coat of arms; sculptors cut capitals. Oh! all of you in your stained glass windows in Chartres, in Tours, in Bourges, in Sens, in Auxerre, in Troyes, in Clermont-Ferrand, in Toulouse, ye coopers, furriers, grocers, pilgrims, laborers, armorers, weavers, stonemasons, butchers, basket makers, cobblers, money changers, o ye, great silent democracy, ye faithful obstinately wanting to hear the office, who are not dematerialized but more beautiful than in your living days now in the glory of heaven and blood that is your precious glass: no longer will you hear the Mass you had guaranteed for yourselves by donating the best part of your pennies to building this church. As the profound saying goes, the dead no longer govern the living. And the forgetful living stop fulfilling the wishes of the dead.
KPA: Money-lenders, laborers, butchers and cobblers are equally present with queens and princes.
30.
Text: But let the ruby coopers and the rose and silver basket makers inscribe the backdrop of their stained glass with the “silent protest” that Mr. JaurĆØs could so eloquently give us and which we beg him to bring to the ears of the representatives.
KPA: Mr. JaurĆØs was a socialist leader who spoke at one of the
Dreyfus rallies, which Proust attended. The plea is to have Jaures speak as eloquently on behalf of the cathedrals as he did for the falsely accused Jewish Dreyfus.
31.
Text: Leaving aside that innumerable and silent people, the ancestors of the electors for whom the House has such little concern, let us at last summarize:
KPA: And here are the recommendations Proust makes:
1.
Text: First: safeguarding the most beautiful works of French architecture and sculpture, which will die on the day that they no longer serve the worship for which they were born, which is their function just as they are its organs, which explains them because it is their soul, makes it the government’s duty to demand that worship be offered in the cathedrals in perpetuity, while the Briand bill authorizes it to turn the cathedrals into whatever museums or conference halls (in the best of cases) it pleases after a few years, and even if the government does not undertake to do so, it authorizes the clergy (and, since it will no longer be subsidized, compels it) no longer to celebrate the offices in them if it finds the rent too high.
KPA: Proust's message is that if these places of worship are not used for worship, they "will die on the day that they no longer serve the worship for which they were born."
2.
Text: Second: the preservation of the greatest historic yet living artistic production imaginable, for the reconstruction of which, if it did not already exist, no one would shrink from spending millions, namely the cathedral Mass, makes it the government’s duty to subsidize the Catholic Church for the upkeep of a worship that is far more relevant to the conservation of the noblest French art (to continue our strictly worldly perspective) than the conservatories, theaters, concert-halls, ancient tragedy reconstitutions at the theater of Orange, etc. etc., all of which enterprises have doubtful artistic aims and which keep up many weak works (how do Le Jour,
L’AventuriĆØre, or
Le Gendre de M. Poirier stand up to the choir of Beauvais or the statues of Rheims?), whereas the masterpiece that is the medieval cathedral, with its thousands of painted or sculpted figures, its chants, its services, is the noblest of all the works to which the genius of France has ever risen.
KPA: But, like a true socialist atheist, Proust demands that the government
subsidize these cathedrals as "the greatest historic yet living artistic production imaginable," relegating religion, and Christianity, to a work of art, but still superior to:
3.
Text: ...the conservatories, theaters, concert-halls, ancient tragedy reconstitutions at the theater of Orange, etc. etc., all of which enterprises have doubtful artistic aims and which keep up many weak works (how do Le Jour, L’AventuriĆØre, or Le Gendre de M. Poirier stand up to the choir of Beauvais or the statues of Rheims?), whereas the masterpiece that is the medieval cathedral, with its thousands of painted or sculpted figures, its chants, its services, is the noblest of all the works to which the genius of France has ever risen.
KPA: It is not enough that even if such a committed socialist declare the importance of cathedrals. His point is that their loss is a loss for artistic legacy, rather than religious presence. As Proust eloquently writes, without worship, the cathedral will be diminished, and eventually disappear. In fact, we are seeing this slowly and surely. Our cathedrals, and their more humble variations, our churches, are not simply transforming into "giant chiseled shells [which] seem marooned, emptied of the life that once lived in them..." but are becoming repositories for the biggest take-over of our century: their conversion into mosques.
St. James Cathedral, Toronto
View from the entrance looking towards the alterProust may have been prescient in his clarion call about the church, but he was deficient in his fight.
He was insufficiently religious. He was insufficiently Christian.
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[Photo By: KPA, 2015]
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
