Architecture, Mysticism and Myth (1891) William Lethaby and the Foundation of a Syncretic Modernism

ARCHITECTURE, MYSTICISM AND MYTH (1891) WILLIAM LETHABY AND THE FOUNDATION OF A SYNCRETIC MODERNISM.

Deborah. A. van der Plaat.

A DISSERTATION

m

Architecture

Presented to the Faculties of the University of New South Wales in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

2000 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 1.

ABSTRACT. 11.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 111.

INTRODUCTION. Two Lethabys or one? 1

0.1 William Richard Lethaby: A biographical Sketch. 2

0.2 Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. 4

0.3 Architecture, Mysticism and Myth: The problem of "two Lethabys." 5

0.4 Architecture, Mysticism and Myth: A syncretic theory of modem invention. 11

0.5 Methodology. 16

PART I. Architecture, Mysticism and Myth: Identifying a modern architecture.

CHAPTER 1. Architecture, Mysticism and Myth: Reconciling the 'known' and the 'imagined.' 27

1.1 The debt to Ruskin. 28

1.2 Ruskin's thesis of mind and the Romantic Imagination. 32

1.3 'Known' and 'imagined' facts of the universe. 40

1.4 Lethaby's departure from Coleridge's and Ruskin's theory of the Imagination. 47

CHAPTER 2: Victorian mythography: Seeking a 'symbolism comprehensible to the great majority of spectators.' 61

2.1 The ambivalence of Victorian mythography. 62 2.2 The density of the mythic symbol. 66

2.3 The contribution of myth to Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. 73

CHAPTER 3. 'Would you know the new, you must search the old.' Nineteenth century readings of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499). 84

3.1 Nineteenth century readings of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. 85

3.2 'Would you know the new, you must search the old.' 97

3.3 Building with Heart. 101

PART II. Seeking an architecture of 'sweetness' and 'light.' Lethaby's debt to John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold.

CHAPTER 4. Paradox in Ruskin's contrasts. 113

4.1 William Morris and John Ruskin's idea of making and its implications. 114

4.2 Subject versus object. 122

4.3 Physiological versus rational and active versus contemplative. 128

4.4 Universal morals versus relative, intellectual pursuits. 133

4.5 The implications of Ruskin's universal morals. 135

4.6 Contradiction in Ruskin's conclusions. 141

CHAPTER 5. Hebrew or Hellene? Balancing Ruskin's contrasts. 149

5.1 Hebrew: Lethaby's debt to Ruskin. 149

5.2 Hellene: Expanding the Ruskinian paradigm. 154

CHAPTER 6. Seeking architecture of 'sweetness and light': The influence of Matthew Arnold. 168

6.1 Arnold's thesis of cultural perfection and ambivalent modernism. 169 6.2 Arnold's influence on Lethaby's idea of architecture. 177

PART ill. The Significance of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth.

CHAPTER 7: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth: A foundation for a syncretic modernism. 184

7.1. Modem practice as rupture. 185

7.2 The two faces of early modem architecture. 190

7.3 A syncretic model for modem architecture. 195

CONCLUSION. 208

ILLUSTRATIONS. 212

BIBLIOGRAPHY 225 Acknowledgments.

I would like to thank my supervisor Peter Proudfoot and my co-supervisor Peter Kohane for their support and thoughtful suggestions. I thank Bernard Smith and Graham Pont for reading drafts of this thesis and for their helpful comments. I am grateful to Trevor Garnham, Godfrey Rubens, Wendy Hitchmough, and Ian Dungavell who all offered assistance and information in the early stages of my research. My gratitude goes to my associates and friends in the post graduate program at the Faculty of the Built Environment for their advice and support. I also thank Maryam Gusheh and Paul Hogben for patiently proof reading the final text.

I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the PhD program in Architecture at the University of New South Wales, especially in funding a period of research in Britain. My thanks go also to St Deiniol's Library who funded a period of research in Wales. I am indebted to the numerous librarians who assisted me in my research. In particular I would like to thank Lucy Watson and Sylvia Backemeyer at the Central St Martins Art and Design Archive. I would also like to thank the librarians at the British Architecture Library, the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library, the North Devon Athenaeum at Barnstaple, the National Library of Australia, New South Wales State Library, and the University of New South Wales.

Finally, my thanks go to the Gordon Wong Institute for Higher Studies (my husband) for his constant support and encouragement. Abstract.

In this study I attempt to re-evaluate the thought of William Lethaby and his contribution to modem architecture, particularly through his most influential work, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth (1891).

My thesis is that Lethaby's work presented a new view of architectural history which became the basis of an alternative tradition to mainstream modernism. His distinctive contribution emerged from a reconciliation of profound dichotomies in Ruskin's thought and criticism, particularly the opposition between rational knowledge and artistic imagination. Unlike Ruskin, Lethaby did not retreat into a medieval past but boldly advanced towards an architecture of the future.

In achieving his new synthesis Lethaby was deeply indebted to Matthew Arnold's dialectical analysis of the 'Hellene' and the 'Hebraic' streams of Western culture, the ambivalent methodologies of Victorian mythography, and to the important Renaissance treatise Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, now ascribed by some to Alberti.

Lethaby's work, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, had an enormous impact on his contemporaries and following generations of architects and theorists in the English speaking world. In seeking an architectural realisation of Arnold's 'Sweetness and Light' Lethaby bequeathed an alternative vision of twentieth century sensibility, architecture and civilisation which saw its 'cultural perfection' in the balance of scientific knowledge and creative imagination.

II List of Illustrations.

Fig.1. William Richard Lethaby, photo, Central St Martins Art and Design Archive. 212

Fig.2. William Lethaby, Ziggurat, Pen & Ink, frontispiece, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, 1891. 213

Fig.3. William Lethaby, Font and Canopy, St John the Baptist, Low Bentham, Yorkshire, alabaster and walnut, 1890. 214

Fig.4. Hexagonal Building, woodcut, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Francesco Colonna, Venice, 1499. 215

Fig.5. William Lethaby, A Garden Enclosed, pen and ink, 1889, reproduced in J. Sedding, Garden Craft Old and New, Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co, 1892, plate 8. 215.

Fig.6. Two Gardens, woodcut, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Francesco Colonna, Paris, 1546 (1499), woodcuts. 216.

Fig. 7. William Lethaby, Frontispiece for Architectural Association Sketchbook, 1889. 217

Fig.8. Temple of Venus Phyzizoa, woodcut, 1499, in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Francesco Colonna, Venice, 1499, folio n iii recto. 218

Fig.9. Great Pyramid Building, (trans-typological temple), woodcut, 1546, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Francesco Colonna, Paris, 1546, folio A recto. 219

Fig.10. Poliphili at the Cross Roads, woodcut, 1546, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Francesco Colonna, Paris, 1546, pl. 46 verso. 220

Fig.11. C.R. Cockerell, The Professor's Dream, oil on panel, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1848. 220

Fig.12. C.R. Cockerell, A Tribute to the Memory of Sir Christopher Wren, oil on panel, Crichton Collection, Anglesey, 1838. 221

Fig.13. William Lethaby, Monogram, n.d. 221

Fig.14. William Holman Hunt, The Strayed Sheep, oil on panel, 1852, Tate Gallery, London. 222

lll Fig.15. Helena Blatvatsky, 'The World within the Universe and Manifested Logos,' Isis Unveiled. A Master Key to Ancient and Modern Science and 223 Theology (1875), Boston, New York, 1889, vol.2, pp. 262-66.

Fig.16. Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin, Capitol Building seen from Mt Ainslie, tracing of original drawing, Canberra Plan, 1912, Australian 224 National Archives.

IV Introduction

Two Lethabys or one?

Published in the final months of 1891, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth was the first architectural treatise written by the late nineteenth century English architect and theorist William Richard Lethaby (1857-1931). (fig.1) 1 His goal, Lethaby tells us in the introductory statement of the text, was to determine the future direction of stylistic developments in architecture with the specific intention of identifying how the architect may develop an artefact that would 'excite an interest, both real and general '-by possessing 'a symbolism that was comprehensible [to] the great majority of spectators'-and be of 'sweetness, simplicity, freedom, confidence and light,' qualities he argued that were essential to a modem architecture. 2 However, in seeking solutions to such dilemmas Lethaby turned away from the present and future and retreated into a mythological past, and specifically, to design principles demonstrated by literary and architectural examples of the 'temple idea. ' 3 A retreat into the past to resolve the design dilemmas of the present was a common strategy in nineteenth century England, an obvious precedent being found in the writings of John

Ruskin ( 1819-1900). Seeking to escape the consequences of the doctrines of relativism which emerged in conjunction with the modem negation of a classical and natural thesis of history, culture and her products, Ruskin turned to the art and culture of the medieval world as a paradigmatic model for future practice. The question for the modem day reader of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth is, can Lethaby's retreat into a mythological past be compared to Ruskin's return to the Gothic world? Or does

Lethaby's interest in the past point to something else? Lethaby's relationship to, or departure from, a Ruskinian position has dominated present day readings of both

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and Lethaby's subsequent writings. It is this question which I wish to consider in this thesis.

0.1: William Richard Lethaby: A Biographical Sketch.

William Richard Lethaby was born at Barnstaple, North Devon, in 1857. 4 At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to William Lauder, a local architect who was interested in architectural education, the building crafts, and decoration. 5 In 1878,

Lethaby moved on to the office of Richard Waite in Derby and in 1879 to the practice of T. H Baker in Leicester.6 Winning a series of prestigious student awards, including the Building News Design Competition (1877), the Soane Medallion (1879), the

Pugin Travelling Scholarship (1880), the Royal Academy Tite Memorial Prize

(1881), and the Goldsmiths' Hall Silver Competition (1882 and 1883) the young

Lethaby laid the foundations for a promising career. 7 In 1879, he accepted the notable position of Chief Clerk in Norman Shaw's London office. 8

Settling in London, Lethaby joined and contributed to many of the key organisations determining contemporary debates on architecture and design. In 1883, he joined the newly founded St George's Art Society, 9 and soon after helped to establish the

Architecture Illustration Society. 10 In 1884 Lethaby also joined the Art Workers'

Guild. 11 He exhibited his work at the Royal Academy (1883, 1884 and 1885) and became a founding member of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, submitting designs to the 1888 and 1889 shows and contributing essays to the Society's publications. 12 In 1891, Lethaby joined William Morris's Society for the Protection

2 of Ancient Buildings (SP AB). Two years later, he was elected to the Committee of the SPAB. 13

Leaving Shaw's office in 1889, Lethaby set up an independent architectural practice.

The following year, together with George Gimson, Sydney Barnsley, Reginald

Blomfield, Mervyne Macartney and Colonel Mallet, Lethaby founded Kenton & Co, a workshop venture dedicated to the design and production of quality furniture. In ·

1891, Lethaby secured his first independent architectural commission, Avon Tyrrell, a large manor house in Hampshire which he designed and built for Lord Manners. 14

A series of projects quickly followed, 15 the most significant of these being Melsetter

House at Hoy in the Orkney Isles (1889-1901 ), the Eagle Insurance Buildings in

Birmingham (1900) and All Saints Church, Brockhampton in Herefordshire (1902). 16

Traumatised by managerial and structural problems at the All Saints project-a collapsed arch and slipping foundations-Lethaby closed his practice and chose instead to dedicate his time to the profession of teaching and writing. 17

In 1894, Lethaby took up the position of Art Inspector for the Technical Education

Board of London. 18 Two years later, the board founded the Central School of Arts and Crafts to which Lethaby and George Frampton, were appointed to the positions of joint director. 19 In 1902, Lethaby took sole responsibility for the directorship of the school, retaining this position until his retirement in 1911. 20 In 1901, Lethaby complemented his teaching responsibilities by accepting the position of Professor of

Ornament and Design at the Royal College of Art. He stayed with the College for seventeen years, resigning in 1918.

3 Leaving his teaching commitments behind him, Lethaby dedicated himself to the task of Surveyor of Westminster Abbey, a position he first secured in 1906. However,

Lethaby continued to lecture and write, adding to an already extensive list of publications which spanned the period 1889 to his death in 1931.21 The most significant of these texts, I argue in this thesis, is Architecture, Mysticism and Myth

(1891).

0.2: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth.

Published in 1891, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth was Lethaby's first major architectural study. Seeking to identify what Lethaby described as the 'esoteric principles of architecture,' the text documents what Lethaby saw as the interaction between cosmological thinking and architecture in the ancient world. 22 Drawing on a multiplicity of secondary sources within the fields of ethnology, archaeology, mythography, philology, anthropology, architecture and art history Lethaby's study functions as a vast list demonstrating examples of cosmological planning and symbolism. Through a progression of twelve chapters Lethaby introduces the reader to a vast array of architectural representations of fundamental cosmological ideas including: the world fabric (chapter 1), the microcosmos ( chapter 2), four square

(chapter 3), the centre of the earth (chapter 4), the jewel bearing tree (chapter 5), the planetary spheres (chapter 6), the labyrinth ( chapter 7), the golden gate of the sun

(chapter 8), pavements like the sea ( chapter 9), ceilings like the sky (chapter 10), the windows of heaven (chapter 11 ), and symbols of creation ( chapter 12).

4 Throughout the chapters Lethaby reveals the multiplicity of sources used to construct his text. He is often vague about the studies which he consulted, referring only to the materials by author surname, although, on occasion he includes the title of the publication. In such instances one gains a brief insight into the models which inspired

Lethaby's book. However, the multiplicity of sources and the diversity of disciplines from which they are drawn ensure that no single pattern of intent or rationale readily emerges. 23

The chapters are proceeded by a more theoretical introduction. Here Lethaby considers, in more general terms, the outcomes of cosmological thinking and planning-'the temple idea'24-and the conceptual strategies which motivate it. It is also here that Lethaby links his study to the problems confronting the architect of the late nineteenth century. Concluding the introduction with a series of statements which considered the nature of a 'future' art and architecture, Lethaby implies that the principles revealed by the 'temple idea' also hold the key to architectural invention within the modem world. 25

0.3: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth: The problem of "two Lethabys."

The present day historian in her or his interpretation of Architecture, Mysticism and

Myth has adopted one of two approaches. Trevor Garnham, in his 1980 dissertation

'William Lethaby and the Problem of Style in Late Nineteenth Century English

Architecture,' has argued that the principal thesis developed by Lethaby in

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth was that 'architecture is a pure idea' compromised by the mechanical processes associated with building. 26 Garnham demonstrates this

5 by drawing the readers attention to one of the many examples of cosmological planning discussed by Lethaby in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth; the ziggurat or world mountain.27 (fig.2) Garnham has attributed Lethaby's conception of architecture as 'pure idea' to the influence of John Ruskin, and in particular to

Ruskin's hierarchical isolation of architecture from the mechanical realities of building.28 This association of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth with the doctrines of

Ruskin is significant for a number of reasons. First, it binds the text to a design tradition which associated the creative act with the Victorian Imagination, the mental faculty described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as possessing the 'esemplastic' power to shape, fuse and combine existing data to produce something new and unique. Thus the subject (the producer or user of the artefact) was established as the originator of form. 29 The role of the imagination in both Ruskin and Lethaby's work will be considered in more detail in part I of this thesis. Secondly, it suggests that Lethaby conformed to the belief that form was determined by universal principles, as the actions of the imagination were believed to be an index of the organic laws determining all creation.3° Finally, it fixed the text to a celebration of the past or tradition, and more specifically to Ruskin's identification of the Gothic spirit as a paradigmatic model for future practice.

A second and very different reading of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth is given by

Charlotte Vestal Brown in her earlier, 1974 dissertation, 'Architecture as Process,

Implications for a Methodology of History and Criticism. ' 31 Vestal Brown argued that the central thesis developed in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth is that there is no constant canon of form but that architecture is a continual response to changes in

6 customs and conditions. Thus architecture is presented as constantly evolving and in a continual process of flux and development, it is never static or fixed. 32 The implications of Vestal Brown's study are twofold. Arguing that Lethaby links the constant flux evident in the multiplicity of architectural styles to changes in physical and cultural conditions, Vestal Brown also concludes that Lethaby identifies the I material qualities of the object and object world, rather than the subject, as the true catalyst for form. Secondly, she plac~s Architecture, Mysticism and Myth within an historicist movement, one that accepts the achievements of each historical epoch are unique and specific to their time and place. This conception of history also encourages those in the modem world to identify and build upon the attributes which are unique and specific to their own time and place.33 Vestal Brown's conclusions demonstrate a reading of Lethaby's theoretical position which distances him from the

Ruskinian ideal of architecture. 34

The dual interpretations of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth offered by Garnham and Vestal Brown reflect more general attempts to position Lethaby's writings and built works within the architectural debates of nineteenth-century England. Ikem

Okoye in 'William Richard Lethaby: A Reassessment' (1989) has demonstrated that studies of Lethaby can be divided into four categories. 35 These in tum can be divided into two broader groups, those who see Lethaby as maintaining Ruskinian principles and those who interpret Lethaby's writings and works as demonstrating a break with the Ruskinian tradition, and thus, as prefiguring the design objectives and methodologies associated with the rise of modernism in Western architecture. Okoye

has argued that studies on Lethaby can initially be divided into three categories. The

7 scholars Godfrey Rubens, Bill Riseboro, John Brandon Jones, Peter Fuller and Peter

Davies have explained the body of Lethaby's work as being representative of the second generation of the English Arts and Crafts movement. Their conclusions focus on Lethaby's emphasis on the modes of making and vernacular design traditions as the essential originator of form, a reading that binds Lethaby to the celebration of making and of the subject (the user or producer of the artefact) first explored by

Ruskin and later by William Morris (1834-1896). 36 A second group of scholars, including Nikolaus Pevsner, Lionel March, Charlotte Vestal Brown and Gillian

Naylor, while acknowledging Lethaby's ties to the English Arts and Crafts

Movement, have directed their attention to isolating theoretical concerns within

Lethaby's body of work which can be interpreted as prefiguring the instrumentalism of mainstream modem architecture,37 a conclusion which enabled the proclamation that Lethaby must be considered a 'pioneer of modem design. ' 38 A third and less common interpretation of Lethaby's work, but one which in spirit is similar to the first, is found in the writings of Trevor Garnham. Rejecting the premise that

Lethaby's interest in honest construction and vernacular design prefigures the austerity of the modem movement, Garnham has argued that Lethaby can only be understood within the theoretical context of British Romanticism.39 The expressive construction and vernacular bias of Lethaby's work, Garnham has stated, is akin to

William Wordsworth's attempt to establish a body of romantic poetry in the 'real language of men' and 'incidents of common life. ' 40 While Garnham' s thesis does not focus on the influence of Ruskin specifically, Ruskinian principles in general must be seen as a product of English Romantic theory. 41 Thus in associating Lethaby with

English Romanticism, Garnham simply offers further evidence to support the claims

8 made by the first group of scholars. 42 Adding to these three classifications of

Lethaby's writings, Okoye concludes his paper by offering a fourth interpretation.

Okoye's reading, like the scholars in the second group, builds upon the assumption that Lethaby must be seen as a 'pioneer of modem design.' Arguing that Lethaby's works and writings represent an early instance of modernism that simply intersects in time and place with the English Arts and Crafts, Okoye argued that like Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, Lethaby must be treated by the historian as an 'individual seeking new ground on which the architect as genius could flower in the process of achieving a valid modem architecture. ' 43

The result of such readings, half of which associate Lethaby with the idealism of

Ruskin and English Romanticism, the other linking Lethaby with the emerging ideals of progress and modernity, has resulted, as Garnham has argued in 'William Lethaby and the two ways of building' (1985), in 'two' seemingly opposed Lethabys:

-the man who could write that 'we need a true science of architecture,' 'an

efficiency style,' and the Romantic Lethaby, champion of traditional crafts and

exponent of the esoteric views of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. 44

Arguing that the 'two Lethabys' must be 'reconciled,' Garnham proceeds to demonstrate that the two alternate views simply represent different steps in Lethaby's theoretical evolution, an immature and mature phase. 45 The conception of architecture as pure idea compromised by the mechanical processes of building evident in

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth simply indicates an early and immature stage in

Lethaby's thinking, one that is subsumed by his later emphasis on the domain of

9 building as the genesis of architectural form. 46 Gamham's evolutionary approach to the dual conceptions of architecture in Lethaby's writings is not an uncommon one. 47

However, such a model generates two significant problems. First, it negates the significance of Lethaby's early theoretical explorations, such as Architecture,

Mysticism and Myth. Secondly, and more significantly, it fails to explain the often simultaneous presence of so called 'immature' and 'mature' ideas in many of

Lethaby's texts.

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, as noted above, has been interpreted as advocating a belief in the ideal nature of architecture-one which identified the actions of the subject as the true source of form-and on the other hand, as acknowledging the relativity of style and its dependence on the phenomenal world. The difficulty is that evidence to support both positions can be found within the text. Noting that his intention was to 'ask [what] are the ultimate facts behind all architecture which has given it form,' Lethaby argued that 'behind every style of architecture there is an earlier style, in which the germ of every form is to be found .... ' 48 He also asserts that

'all architecture is one, when traced back through the streams of civilisation. '49 Such statements support Gamham's claim that Lethaby's intention, like Ruskin's before him, was to isolate from an ideal past, a universal set of principles which lay at the core of 'all' architecture. However, on the very same page as the above statements,

Lethaby also asserted that 'all' in architecture 'is the slow change of growth,' that 'it is impossible to point to the time of invention of any custom or feature,' and that

'alterations ... may be traced to new conditions, or directly innovating thought in religion. ' 50 Such sentiments, in tum, support the reading given by Vestal Brown. In

10 this text, Lethaby intentionally and simultaneously cultivated two seemingly contradictory conceptions of architecture.

The simultaneous presence of these dual yet opposed conceptions of architecture in

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, as Godfrey Rubens has argued in William Richard

Lethaby, His Life and Works, 'make the book difficult to come to terms with.'

Rubens has also asserted that it highlights a 'paradox that was an essential part of

Lethaby's complex personality. ' 51 In this dissertation, I will argue that the this simultaneous presence of opposed conceptions of architecture also demonstrates the thesis that formed the theoretical core of Lethaby's conception of architecture; the belief that architecture must speak of and represent both the 'known' and the

'imagined.'

0.4: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth: A syncretic theory of modern invention.

In the introductory chapter of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth Lethaby declared that 'style' in architecture could only be achieved by a faithful consideration of the

'known and imagined facts of the universe. ' 52 In Part I of my study, an analysis of this statement and the theoretical sources which inform it, will demonstrate: first,

Lethaby's conviction that architecture had traditionally accommodated and must continue to accommodate universal and relative values, indicating that modem practice must be built upon an interaction with both the past and present; and secondly, that form originated in both the observation and imitation of the object world and in the esemplastic imagination of the subject (the producer or user of the artefact). Finding confirmation for his conclusions in the critiques of modem culture

11 evident in Victorian studies of myth and nineteenth century readings of the

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Lethaby identified in mythic architecture a mode of invention which balanced the Romantic imagination (the assumption that form originated in the intepretive acts of the user and or producer of the artefact) with the belief that form had its origins in scientific man's perception of the material world.

The advantages of such a mode of invention, Lethaby tells us in Architecture,

Mysticism and Myth, were twofold. First, it guaranteed 'a symbolism comprehensible to the great majority of spectators,' ensuring an architecture that would 'excite and interest, both real and general. ' 53 Secondly, it resolved the modem tension between the past and present, confirming Lethaby's conviction that the 'new,' and thus the modem, was only to be found through an examination of the 'old.'54

The significance of Lethaby's thesis, it will be argued in Part II, was twofold. First, it demonstrates both his initial debt to, and ultimate departure from, a Ruskinian theory of architecture. Binding his conception of architecture to the Romantic idea of the

'Imagination,' a thesis he voiced through his celebration of the 'thoughtful' worker,

Ruskin developed a conception of architecture which privileged the customary over the progressive, the subject (the producer or user of the artefact) above the object (the artefact itself), the organic over the mechanical, and the active above the contemplative. 55 The moral foundation of Ruskin's thesis ensured these contrasts were fixed and intractable.

However, the prolific and often expansive nature of Ruskin's writings also ensured that his conclusions were not always consistent and systematic. Subject to

12 modification and redactions which often result in a retreat from the moral bias of his contrasts, Ruskin's writings are often characterised by an element of inconsistency.

Noting that it was the 'paradox' in Ruskin's writings which appealed to him most, it will be demonstrated in Part II that Lethaby's intention was to mould this 'paradox' into a consistent theory of architecture. 56

In order to achieve this reconciliation, however, Lethaby was forced to abandon the moral foundation of Ruskin's contrasts and seek a more conciliatory paradigm elsewhere. He found this, it will be demonstrated, in the more ambivalent thesis of

Matthew Arnold's (1822-1888) theory of 'Cultural Perfection' (1869) and the syncretic philosophy of modem invention which it propagated. Arnold's work is a source that is not commonly associated with Lethaby's writings. It is in the identification of this new influence, that we discover a further significance of

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth.

Existing historiography has commonly associated nineteenth century conceptions of modernity with the idea of a teleologically determined ideal of progress, a movement forward that embraced only the current, the new and the transient. The counter position of returning to an idealised past, on the other hand, has been presented as being non-progressive and thus non-modern. Arguing in Culture and Anarchy (1869), that a modern culture should strive for a balance of the 'Hebraic' (principles of moral and right conduct which are determined by tradition) and the 'Hellenic' (man's scientific and intellectual study of the object world), Matthew Arnold rejected the avant-garde and revisionist agenda established by the French Enlightenment.57

13 Assuming that modem culture and her products should be built upon a dual celebration-the current, the new, and the transient, the past, the old, and the eternal-Arnold established invention in the modem world as a syncretic process which relied on the dialectical interaction and ultimate balance of opposed ideologies.

Adapting Arnold's thesis of modernism to the practice of English architecture,

Lethaby was able to overcome the isolation of imagination and reason he detected in

Ruskin, and in the nineteenth century in general, and in tum produce a syncretic philosophy of 'future' or modem architectural practice. 58

In part III of this thesis, the broader significance of Lethaby's thesis will be considered. The duality evident in Lethaby's work-his seemingly contradictory interests in the imagination or the poetic and the instrumental qualities of the object­ is mirrored in the modem architecture of subsequent eras. In the same way that it has been argued that there are two Lethabys, it has also been argued that there are two

'Bauhauses,' two Walter Gropiuses or two Frank Lloyd Wrights. Like Lethaby, a dual yet often contradictory interest in the avant-garde, the current, and the new­ represented by the abstraction of form or a new enthusiasm for mechanical modes of production-as well as a continuing adherence to past traditions of symbolic content and organic form can be detected in the work of architects and movements that describe themselves as 'modem. ' 59 While an interest in the avant-garde and the new conform to the progressive ideals attached to the concept of modernity in architecture, a continuing interest in tradition, the organic and symbolic are said to exist outside of the modem process offering instead a critique of modernity and its products. The

14 conflict and tension generated by this duality is one that has remained largely unresolved. Lethaby's thesis offers a resolution to this dilemma.

The influence of the English Arts and Crafts movement, of which Lethaby was a key participant, on the early development of a modem architectural theory in Germany and America is well documented. 60 Assuming that Lethaby's conception of modem practice was also taken up by this later generation of modem architects, Lethaby's thesis demonstrates the presence, in the theoretical debates of the early twentieth century, of a theory of modem architecture that embraced both the current and the progressive while maintaining a continued respect for tradition, the symbolic and the organic. It is here that we discover the true significance of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and the thesis of architecture it propagates. Not only does it offer a paradigm which forces a reconsideration of Lethaby's intellectual and architectural oeuvre, it also articulates the theoretical intentions of an alternative philosophy of modem architecture in the early decades of the twentieth century.

In his recent study The Other Traditions of Modern Architecture (1995), Colin St

John Wilson argues for an alternative modernism in the early decades of the twentieth century. The complex philosophy of this tradition, he demonstrates, was motivated by the desire to reconcile art and utility and can be traced through the work of the

English Freestyle (including Lethaby), Hugo Haring, Alvo Aalto, and Louis Kahn. 61

The lack of attention paid to this 'Other Tradition' by both the historian and the architect, Wilson has asserted, is the result of limiting the debate on modem architecture to formal values, a restriction that was first imposed by Le Corbusier and

15 Sigfried Gideon at the 1928 CIAM Conference and maintained by such studies as

Russell Hitchcock's and Philip Johnson's The International Style: Architecture Since

1922 (1932). 62 The result of this formalist reading of modem invention, Wilson concluded, was the reduction of modem architecture to mere style. 63 Warning as early as 1929 against the dangers of succumbing to a conception of modem architecture as

'Ye Olde Modernist Style,'64 Lethaby's writings-and specifically the philosophy of future invention developed in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth-offers an insight into the yet undocumented origins and theoretical objectives of this 'Other Tradition of Modem Architecture. ' 65

0.6: Methodology.

Rather than presenting a complete history of Lethaby's life or formal analysis of

Lethaby's architectural works, both of which have already been done,66 I examine key phrases and concepts as they first emerge in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and further evolve in his later writings. In Part I of this thesis, I will restrict my consideration to Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, to the concepts of the 'known' and the 'imagined,' and to the influences of the Victorian Mythography and the architectural treatise the Hypnerotomachia Poliliphil. In Part II, I broaden my examination to look at both Lethaby's earlier and later writings in order to demonstrate that the pattern which emerges in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth is not an isolated phenomenon. In Part III, the continuity of such patterns in the work of generations that were to follow Lethaby, and their implication on our historical reading of these individuals and movements, are considered.

16 The method has many advantages. First, an analysis of key concepts and phrases such as the 'known' and the 'imagined' enables me to clarify Lethaby's exact relationship with the earlier theories of John Ruskin and to establish new relationships with

Matthew Arnold, Victorian Mythography and the Hypnerotomachia. It also allows me to identify the intentions and strategies embedded in Lethaby's theory of a

'symbolism immediately comprehensible to the great majority of spectators' and an architecture of 'sweetness, simplicity, freedom, confidence and light.' Such objectives and relationships would remain hidden if a biographical approach or formal analysis ofLethaby's architectural works had been undertaken.

Secondly, my focus on central concepts embedded within Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, has the benefit of identifying theoretical concerns that were retained by

Lethaby throughout his life. Written in 1891, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth represents Lethaby's theoretical position in its earliest manifestation. In 1928, three years prior to his death, Lethaby chose to rewrite Architecture, Mysticism and Myth as a series of articles to be published by the prestigious and popular journal The

Builder. 67 Undertaking a major rewriting of the text, Lethaby introduced a number of significant changes. He renamed the serie.s Architecture, Nature and Magic and he removed the introductory chapter, the theoretical core of the original text. He also lamented that his original study was 'very insufficient and in many ways feeble,' a criticism directed at his inexperienced use of sources and the fact that 'second-rate and second-hand authorities were mixed up with true sources' resulting in a 'whole' that was 'uncritical and inexpert. ' 68 However, despite such misgivings Lethaby

17 maintained that the thesis first put forth in 1891 in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth was still valid.

The main the development of building practice and ideas of the world

structure acted and reacted on one another I still believe to be sound, and

much of the material brought together to give substance to the proposition is

not wit. h out its . va 1ue. 69

Lethaby's statement is significant as it demonstrates that despite some misgivings about his method and sources, he maintained throughout his career, a loyalty to the theoretical position first cultivated in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth.

An examination of the key concepts within Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, and specifically of the ideas of the 'known' and the 'imagined,' offers further evidence that Lethaby failed to divert dramatically from the theoretical position first mapped out in this text. Gilian Naylor in 'Lethaby and the Myth of Modernism' has argued that a shift can be detected in Lethaby's thinking in the years after the first World

War. Drawing attention to the increasing emphasis on 'science' in Lethaby's writings dating from 1910 onwards, Naylor concludes that Lethaby dramatically revised his earlier conception of architecture as a fine art, a theory common to his early texts including Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. 70

An analysis of the two concepts central to Lethaby's thesis in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth-the 'known' and the 'imagined'-not only demonstrates that Lethaby in this treatise failed to define architecture simply as a fine art, but that Lethaby argued at this early stage that a scientific attitude to the world was essential to the invention

18 of a successful architecture. However, he also acknowledges at this time, that a scientific approach was insufficient and that the 'known,' a concept Lethaby equated with the methodologies of modem science,71 must be balanced with the 'imagined,' the creative workings of the 'known' in order to explain the unknown, a process

Lethaby later equated with Art.72 In later writings Lethaby maintained this position by arguing that architecture was dependent on the reconciliation of 'science and art.' 73 Such examples, together with the retention of the central thesis of Architecture,

Mysticism and Myth in the 1928 rewrite of Architecture, Nature and Magic, serve to demonstrate that there is little evidence to support Naylor's thesis of a theoretical shift and instead suggests the slow cultivation and enrichment of a single idea.

However, one cannot deny the increasing prommence of science m Lethaby's. writings from 1910 onwards.74 An examination of the key concepts of the 'known' and the 'imagined' and their relationship to 'science' and 'art' is once again revealing. Equating the 'imagined' and 'art' with the Romantic theories on the

'Imagination'-a vitalistic faculty which distinguished fine art from base work-and the 'known' with a scientific observation of the phenomenal world, Lethaby also concluded that 'properly, only science can be taught for you cannot teach beyond knowledge... .'75 As the focus of Lethaby's later writings on architecture was education, it is not surprising that he concentrated in these writings only on those aspects that could be taught.

The final benefit of an examination of the key concepts of the 'known' and the

'imagined' in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth is that it reveals patterns and

19 attitudes that have an application beyond Lethaby's time and place identifying a number of potential areas for future research. The historiography of modem architecture of the early twentieth century has drawn attention to an ambiguity in the architecture of this period, the often simultaneous adherence to romantic and avant-garde principles. For example, Alain Findeli in 'Bauhaus: Avant-garde or

Tradition' (1989), documents the 'Janus' character of the early Bauhaus. Examining the writings of Walter Gropius, Findeli identifies a continuing respect for the organic traditions of the romantic past and a desire to invent a new architecture that is rational, progressive, and instrumental.76 Much in the same way that Naylor has argued that Lethaby's scientific biases ultimately subjugate his interest in the romantic proposition of the imagined (or art), the general assumption of the current historiography is that the romantic remnants of the Bauhaus are ultimately vanquished by a theory of modem invention which privileged the rational, the instrumental and the objective. The evidence to support such a conclusion is abundant. However, if one takes into account that despite an increasing emphasis on the scientific in Lethaby's later writings, as only science could be taught, Lethaby maintained throughout his career the belief that architectural invention relied equally on the known and the imagined or science and art. Such patterns of behaviour, coupled with Lethaby's influence on the next generation of architects, highlights the need to reconsider the available evidence offered by the current historiography.

20 1 William Richard Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, Solos Press, 1994. Originally published by Percival, London, 1891. A second edition was published the following year. In 1928 the main body of the text was rewritten as a series of essays under the title 'Architecture, Nature and Magic' and published in The Builder: vols. cxxxiv, 1928, p. 88, cxxxv, 1928, p. 984. These essays were later collated into a single publication in 1956 under the title, Architecture, Nature and Magic, Gerald Duckworth & Co, London, 1956. 2 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 3 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 14. 4 A number of excellent and detailed studies have already been done on Lethaby's life, his associations and built works. See for example Godfrey Ruben's William Richard Lethaby, His Life and Work 1857-1931, The Architectural Press, London, 1986. The brief history given above is taken from Rubens. 5 Rubens, William Richard Lethaby, p. 21. 6 Rubens, William Richard Lethaby, p. 25 & 29. 7 Building News, vol. 32, 1877, p. 23, Proceedings of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1878-9, p. 57, Lethaby Sketchbooks, British Architectural Library Drawing Collection. 8 R. S. Weir, 'William Richard Lethaby,' paper published by the Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1938, p. 3. 9 Weir, 'William Richard Lethaby,' p. 6. 10The Architectural Illustration Society grew out of dissatisfaction with the poor quality of illustration to be found in the building press. The society, which appear to have been run by Lethaby, .. Horsley and Macartney, arranged with journal The Architect to publish a series of selected works. Throughout its existence from 1886-1893 the association to together with The Architect published 600 drawings and photographs of old and new work and topographical studies. Rubens, William Richard Lethaby, p. 71. 11 H.J.L Masse, the Art Workers Guild 1884-1934, Shakespeare Head Press, 1935, p. 7 & pp. 9-10. 12 William Lethaby, 'Of Cast Iron' and Carpenters Furniture,' in Arts and Crafts Essays by Members of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, Theommes Press, London, 1996 (1893), pp. 184-195. Other authors to contribute essays include; William Benson, Reginald Blomfield, Ford Madox Brown, George Somers Clarke Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, Alan Cole, Walter Crane, Lewis Day, Selwyn Image, Thomas Jackson, May Morris, William Morris, John Pollen, Edward Prior, Halsey Richardo, George Robinson, John Sedding, George Sumner, Mary Turner, Emery Walker, Stephen Webb. 13 Society of the Protection of Ancient Buildings, Committee Minutes, 1891 & 1893. 14 Avon Tyrrell, Christchurch, Hampshire, 1891. · 15 For a complete study of Lethaby's built works see Rubens, William Richard Lethaby, pp. l 09-170. 16 Melsetter House, Hoy, Orkney Isles, 1898-1901 (including The Chapel SS Colm and Margaret & R ysa Lodge); The Eagle Insurance Buildings, Colmore Row, Birmingham, 1900; All Saints Brockhampton, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, 1902. 17 Letter from Edith Lethaby to Grace Grosby, n.d, private collection, cited in Rubens, William Richard Lethaby, p. 159. 18 London County Council Technical Education Board, Minutes, 1894, p. 446. 19 London County Council Technical Education Board, Minutes, 1896, p. 276. 20 London County Council Technical Education Board, Minutes, 1902, p. 184. Rubens, William Richard Lethaby, p. 194 & p. 223. 21 In 1950, a complete bibliography of Lethaby's writings was prepared by the librarians at the Royal Institute of British Architects (known today as the British Architectural Library). This bibliography has been published by Rubens, William Richard Lethaby, appendix c, pp. 303-312. 22 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, preface. 23 The rationale underlying Lethaby's eclectic approach is considered in detail in chapter 2. Some of the sources cited by Lethaby include: Fran~ois Lenormant's Atlas d' histoire Annciene de 'Orient anterieurement aux guerres mediques, Paris, 1869, Les Origines de l 'histoire d 'apres la Bible et les Traditions des peuples orientaux, Paris, 1880-84, and Cha/dean Magic: its origin and development, translated by W.R. Cooper, London, 1878. (cited in Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, pp.

21 18, 22, 25, 35, 37, 51, 57-58, 70, 94, 109, 121, 147, 160, 192, 198 37, 51); Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, Longman & Co, 1887, 2 vols. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 21, 34, 68, 93, 131, 135, 139.); Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilisation, Macmillan & Co, London, 1881. (Lethaby Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 19, 34, 139); Gaston Maspero, Egyptian Archaeology, trans by Amelia. B. Edwards, H. Greval & Co, London, 1887. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 24, 41, 142, 159, 194); M.W. Duncker, History of Greece, trans. S. F Alleyne, Bentley & Son, London, 1883. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 24, 134); Camille Flammarion, Astronomical Myths, based in Flammarion 's "History of the Heaven, " J. Blake, London, 1977. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 24); Sir George Cornwall Lewis, An Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, London, 1862. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 26); Sir William Smith, A Dictionary of the Bible, comprising its antiquities, biography, geography and natural history, London, 1860-63, 3. vols. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 31, 44, 101, 186); Edouard Thomas Charton, Voyageurs Anciens et Modernes, Paris, 1854. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 33, 66); Freiderich Max Muller, Gifford Lectures, Longman & Co, London, 1889-1892, 'Comparative Mythology,' Oxford Essays, London, 1856. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 34, 55, 146, 161, 199); Charles Francis Keary, Outlines of Primitive Belief among Inda-European Races, Longmans & Co, London, 1882. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 162); Sabine Baring Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Rivingtons, London, 1881. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 39, 177); Thomas Maurice, Indian Antiquities, London, 1793-1800. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 39, 92, 221); Herbert Allen Giles, Historic China and other Sketches, De la Rue & Co, London, 1882. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 45); Frederick Henry Balfour, Leaves from my Chinese Scrap-book, London, 1887. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 46); John Henry Middleton, Ancient Rome in 1885, A & C Black, Edinburgh, 1885. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 60, 72); James Fergusson, The Holy Sepulchre and the Temple at_ Jerusalem, London, 1865, Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries, their Age and Uses ,London, 1872. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 157, 158 , 159. More general references to Fergusson are given on pp. 60, 113, 153, 155, 113); Archibald Henry Sayce, The Hibbert Lectures: Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, William Norgate, London, 1887. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 78. More general references to Sayce are given on p. 66, 93, 135, 145, 182); Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 4th edition, trans by J. S Stallybrass, Swan Sonnenschein & Allen, 1883-4, 4 vols. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 76); Sir George Birdwood, Indian Art in Marlborough House, n.d. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 90, 100, 107, 116, 198); Mackenzie Edward Charles Walcott, Sacred Archaeology: A Popular Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Art and Institutions from Primitive to Modern Times, London, 1868. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 102); Sir George James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, Macmillan & Co, London, 1890. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 104, 133, 157); Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, Williams & Norgate, London, 1876-96. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 12, 15, 18, 21 & preface); Sir John Rhys, Hibbert Lectures: Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom, William & Norgate, London, 1888. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 137); Colonna Francesco, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Aldus Manutius, Venice, 1499. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, pp. 44, 128, 174); William Morris, A Dream of John Ball, Reaves & Turner, London, 1888. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 183); F. M Nichols, Mirabilia Urbis Romae. The Marvels of Rome, or a Picture of the Garden City. An English Version of the Medieval City, Ellis & Elvery, London, 1889. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 186); Arthur Lillie, Buddhism in Christendom, Kegan Paul & Co, London, 1887. (Lethaby Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 13); Pierre Chantepu de la Saussaye, Manuel of the Science of Religion, Beatrice. S. Colyer-Fergusson, Longman & Co, London, 1891. (Lethaby Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 15); John Ruskin, 'Stones of Venice' (1851-53), 'Fors clavigera: Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain', (1877), 'Bible of Amiens' (1881), The works ofJohn Ruskin, E. T Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds), George Allen, London, 1903-1912, vols. 12, 30, & 34. (Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 106, 127, 130, 164, 165, 168). 24 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 14. 25 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 26 Trevor Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style in Late Nineteenth Century English Architecture, MA thesis, Exeter University, 1980, pp. 60- 61.

22 27 Garnham writes, 'With the conception of a world supporting mountain and the built form of a ziggurat Lethaby has an example of symbolism that closely fits his form of analysis, distinguishing between the pure idea of architecture and built reality. The world mountain was conceived as a pure idea, an idealised mountain that stood at the centre of the world and supported the heavens. The idea was drawn from an analogy with a known and natural form, but its transformation to a distant ideal elevates it to the realm of pure idea, a mental image of the structure of the world. The ziggurat was built as a symbolic representation of this idea, the purity of which was necessarily corrupted by the limitations of building: its summit did not reach the heavens and they did not revolve precisely around it. But it functioned as a symbol, not the thing itself.' Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, p. 60. A similar reading is given by Shams Eldien Eissawy Naga who argues that Architecture, Mysticism and Myth posits that the 'symbolic content was the most important feature of architecture and was the force that gave content to detail and ornament' assigning 'ultilitarian and physical conditions to a secondary role.' Shams Eldien Eissawy Naga, William Richard Lethaby: The Romantic Modernist, Ph.D thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1992, pp. 144 & 152. 28 Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, p. 48, 58 & 37. 29 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, J. Shawcross (ed), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1907, vol I, p. 202. The problem oflmagination is considered by Ruskin in chapters I-IV in vol II (1846) of 'Modem Painters' (1843-1860), The Works ofJohn Ruskin, E.T.Cook & Alexander Wedderburn (eds), George Allen, London, 1912, vol. 4, pp. 223-313. See also; Micheal Sprinker, 'Ruskin on the Imagination,' Studies in Romanticism, vol. 18, Spring 1979, pp. 115-39; Susan Gurewitsch, 'Golgonooza on the Grand Canal: Ruskin's Stones of Venice and the Romantic Imagination,' The Arnoldian, Winter 1981, p. 25-39. 3°Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, p. 202. 31 Charlotte Vestal Brown, Architecture as Process, Implications for a Methodology of History and Criticism, Ph.D thesis, University of North Carolina, 1974. 32 Vestal Brown, Architecture as Process, pp. 7-8. 33 See E.H. Gombrich, In Search of Cultural History, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1969; and A. Colquhoun, Modernity and The Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays, 1980-1987, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1989, pp. 3-20. 34 While Ruskin's reversion to the Gothic must also be interpreted as a product of Historicism, in that it breaks away from the belief that history reveals natural and immutable laws that confirm a classical world view, his attempt to establish the 'Gothic spirit' as a model for future practice, both social and artistic, differs from those who focused on the progressive and evolutionary aspects of their own age. 35 Ikem. S. Okoye, 'William Richard Lethaby: A Reassessment,' The Harvard Architectural Review, vol. 7, 1989, pp. 100-115. 36 Godfrey Rubens, WR. Lethaby. His Life and Works, The Architectural Press, London, 1986, pp. 72 & 156; Bill Riseboro, Modern Architecture and Design, Herbert Press, London, 1982. p. 127; John Brandon Jones, 'W.R. Lethaby and the Art Workers Guild,' in Backemeyer & Gronberg (eds), WR. Lethaby 1853-1931: Architecture, Design and Education, Lund Humphries, London, 1985, pp. 24-31; Peter Fuller, 'Keeping Art Ship Shape,' WR. Lethaby 1853-1931: Architecture, Design and Education, Backemeyer & Gronberg (eds), p. 32-41; Peter Davies. Arts and Crafts Architecture, Phaidon, London, 1995, chapter 6. 37 Nikolaus Pevsner, 'Nine Swallows, No Summer,' The Architectural Review, vol. 91, 1942, pp. 109- 112; Lionel March, 'Systematic Research in Possibilities,' Inaugural Lecture as rector of the Royal College of Art, London, 1982; Charlotte Vestal Brown, W.R. Architecture as Process; Gillian Naylor, 'Lethaby and the Myth of Modernism,' WR. Lethaby 1853-1931: Architecture, Design and Education, Backemeyer & Gronberg (eds), p. 45. 38 Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design, from William Morris to Walter Gropius, Pelican, 1949, p. 24. n.20. Nikolaus Pevsner, The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design, Thames and Hudson, 1968, p. 125-127. In 1953 Goodhard-Rendell argued that 'functionalism was first preached in England by Professor Lethaby.' H.S. Goodhard-Rendell, English Architecture Since the Regency-An Interpretation, Constable, London, 1953, p. 126. 39 Garnham argues that Lethaby's development of a conception of architecture as a 'pure idea'-a concept which he attributes to the influence of Ruskin-is subsequently replaced with the thesis that form originates in the construction process. This shift has often been interpreted as demonstrating

23 Lethaby's links to the 'modem movement,' however Garnham argues that such ideas can be attributed to English Romantic theory. Trevor Garnham, 'William Lethaby and the Two Ways of Building,' AA Files, 10, Autumn, 1985, p. 27-43; William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, chapters 5 & 6; Me/setter House, Phaidon, London, 1993. 40 Garnham 'William Lethaby and the Two Ways of Building,' p 34. 41 James Le-Roy Smith, 'Marx and Ruskin: Romanticism and Political theory,' Victorian Institute Journal, vol. 5, 1975, pp. 37-50; Linda M Austin, 'Reading and the Romantics: Ruskin's Fiction Fair and Foul,' Studies in Romanticism, Winter, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 583-601; Susan Gurewitsch, 'Golgonooza on the Grand Canal: Ruskin's Stones of Venice and the Romantic Imagination,' The Arnoldian, Winter, 1981, pp. 25-39. 42 Garnham asserts that this continuity demonstrates that there is no break and inconsistency in Lethaby's thought, but simply an immature and mature stage, and thus the two Lethaby's suggested by the divergent readings are in fact one. Garnham 'William Lethaby and the Two Ways of Building,' p 34. 43 Okoye, 'William Richard Lethaby: A Reassessment,' p. 115. 44 Garnham, 'William Lethaby and the Two Ways of Building,' p. 27. William Lethaby, 'Housing and Furnishing,' Athenaeum, May 21, 1920 reprinted in William Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, Collected Papers on Art and Labour, Oxford University Press, London, 1922, p. 36. Garnham's grouping of Lethaby's championing of the 'traditional crafts' with the 'esoteric views of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth refers to the fact that both interests represent a reversion to past traditions. Lethaby's promotion of the traditional crafts, principally in a series of texts written at the same time as Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, encourages a return to traditional craft practices as it is only through 'craft' that the imagination of the craftsman-a creative faculty which binds the artefact to all creation---(:an be articulated. (Lethaby, 'Of Cast Iron,' Catalogue, Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 1889, reprinted in Arts and Crafts Essays by Member of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, Thoemmes Press, 1996 (1893), pp. 184-195; 'Cast Iron and its Treatment for Artistic Purposes,' Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, no. 38, 1890, pp. 272-82; 'The Builders Art and the Craftsman,' Architecture: A Profession or an Art. 13 Short Essays on the Qualification and Training ofArchitects, R. Norman Shaw (ed), John Murray, 1892) The seeking of specific 'esoteric principles' of architecture in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth is similar to such writings in that it draws attention to the imaginative faculty of man and its role in architecture. 45 Garnham, 'William Lethaby and the Two Ways of Building,' p. 27. 46 Garnham has argued that this shift in Lethaby's thinking is prefigured in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth by Lethaby's inability to establish the primacy of the cosmological image within the design process. Noting that the cosmological image often borrows from the built environment for its imagery (ie columns supporting the heaven, windows and gates through which rain and sun enter, etc) Lethaby is unable to support his central argument that architecture represents a pure idea (the image of the cosmos) which in tum is compromised by the act of building. The recognition of such contradictions, Garnham asserts, ultimately encouraged Lethaby to abandon this early thesis for one which stressed the primacy of the construction process. Garnham, 'William Lethaby and the Problem of Style,' p. 60-62. 47 The presence of an intellectual transition from a romantic and Victorian position to the 'modem' is promoted by Vaughan Hart in his 1993 essay 'William Richard Lethaby and the "Holy Spirit:" A Reappraisal of the Eagle Insurance Company Building, Birmingham.' Hart argues that Architecture, Mysticism and Myth demonstrates an early adherence to Victorian ideas on symbolism and ideal conceptions of architecture which were often isolated from the concerns of building. He concludes that this position was later replaced by a strong belief in structural efficiency and a total rejection of ornament which is demonstrated by such texts as Lethaby's Architecture (1911). For Hart the transitional phase where the 'magical cosmos' of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth meets the 'scientific universe' of Architecture is demonstrated by the 'Eagle Insurance Company Building' (1900). Here Lethaby marries the ideas on symbolism evident in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth with an interest in modem construction techniques, materials, and structural articulations. Vaughan Hart,' William Richard Lethaby and the "Holy Spirit:" A Reappraisal of the Eagle Insurance Company Building, Birmingham.' Architectural History, vol. 36, 1993, pp. 145-158. 48 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 13,

24 49 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 12. 50 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 12. 51 While Rubens acknowledged the presence of dual themes in Lethaby's writings, he fails to offer an explanation for its presence. Mark Swenarton in his 1989 Artisan and Architects has also argued the duality in Lethaby's writings suggesting that Lethaby's intention was to seek a 'conflation' of Ruskinian idealism and rational structuralism. However he also noted that for Lethaby these two positions did not necessarily represent contradictory ideologies as Lethaby saw 'Viollet-le Due sharing Ruskin's belief in the 'free craftsmen' of the middle ages.' This made it easier for Lethaby to regard the two authorities as compatible, even though in fact their theories-the one positing art as spiritual communication, the other as the application of reason-were profoundly at odds. Similar acknowledgments of the paradoxical nature of Lethaby's position on architecture are found in Reyner Banham's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, where Lethaby is described as 'not a systematic thinker, Thomas Faulkner 'WR Lethaby: Tradition and Innovation,' where it is noted the tragedy of Lethaby stems from the 'unresolved conflicts and inherent contradictions in him,' and finally by Shams Eldien Eissawy Naga who asserts that 'Lethaby took an untenable position concerning the nature of architecture.' Godfrey Rubens, William Richard Lethaby, His Life and Works 1857-1931, The Architectural Press, London, 1986, p. 82; Mark Swenarton, Artisans and Architects: The Ruskinian Tradition in Architectural Thought, St Martin's Press, New York, 1989, p. 97-101. Reyner Bamham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, Architectural Press, London, 1960, p. 46; Thomas Faulkner,'WR Lethaby: Tradition and Innovation,' Design 1900-1960: Studies in Design and Popular Culture of the Twentieth Century, Thomas Faulkner (ed), Petras, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1976, p. 4. Shams Eldien Eissawy Naga, William Richard Lethaby: The Romantic Modernist, p.4. 52 In the introductory chapter of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth Lethaby states that his intention is to consider the problem of 'style.' Equating 'style' with 'nature' he then explains that man's conception of nature, and thus of style, is determined by a consideration of both 'known' and 'imagined facts.' In many respects Lethaby's reference to style is misleading. His objective, as he himself points out, was to consider 'the purpose behind structure and form' or the 'ultimate facts behind all architecture,' the assumption being that once these 'facts' are identified, the modem architect would have an alternative to the contemporary reliance on historical styles. Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 13 & preface. 53 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 54 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, preface. 55 A theory which celebrates a universal and moral subject is one that is typical of what can be described as a canonic Ruskinian position. 56 Blomfield, 'W. R. Lethaby: An Impression and a Tribute,' Journal of The Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. 39, no. 8, 1932, p.6. 57 Matthew Arnold, 'Culture and Anarchy: An essay in Political and Social Criticism,' 1869, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, R.H. Super (ed), The University of Michigan Press, Michigan, 1962-1977, vol. 5, pp. 91 & 171. 58 I have used the term syncretic-'the attempt to combine the characteristic teachings, beliefs or practices of differing systems of religion or philosophy' -rather than 'synthesis' to indicate the desire for balance evident in Arnold's, and subsequently Lethaby's, conception of invention in the modem world. Unlike the Romantic theorist, who sought the synthesis of subject and object, and the empiricist counterpart, who negated the subject in the search for objective knowledge, Arnold's theory of modem culture (cultural perfection) stressed the necessity to achieve a balance between opposed ideologies (the Hellenic and Hebraic) [Arnold, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 171). Arguing that the strengths of each world view offset the negatives of its counterpart, Arnold stressed that it was only in the presence of both that a 'well tempered culture could be achieved and 'incomplete and mutilated men' could be avoided. (Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, J.Dover Wilson (ed), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1955, preface, p. 11) While Arnold himself did not employ the word 'syncretic,' preferring instead the idea of 'perfection' (Arnold, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 91) the term 'syncretic'-the acceptance of the validity of alternate belief systems and the attempt to combine the teachings of both-captures the underlying sentiment motivating his theory of 'modem' practice. Arnold's theory of cultural perfection and the philosophy of modernism which it implies is discussed in detail in chapter 6.

25 59 Alain Findeli, 'Bauhaus: Avant-garde or Tradition?,' The Structurist, vol. 29/30, 1989/90, p. 56; Joseph Rykwert, 'The Dark Side of the Bauhaus,' reprinted in The Necessity of Artifice, Academy Editions, London, 1982, p. 49. 60 Ian Latham ( ed), New Free Style: Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Secession, Academy Editions, London, 1980; Axel Sowa, 'La Maison Baensch de Hans Scharoun: limites ed condensations,' L 'Architecture-d'Aujourd'hui, no. 320, Jan 1999, pp. 94-101; Stefan Muthesius, 'Handwerk/Kunstwerk,' Journal of Design History, v. 11, no.I, 1998, pp. 85-95; Marie Jeanne Dumont, 'De Klerk, l'artisan-poete,' L'Architecture-d'Aujourd'hui, no. 311, June, 1997, p. 10; Lionel Lambourne, Utopian Craftsmen: The Arts and Crafts Movement from the Cotswold to Chicago, Astragal Books, London, 1980; Roger Billcliffe & Roger Vergo, 'Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Austrian Revival,' Burlington Magazine, vol. cxix, no. 896, November, 1977, pp. 739-45; James.D. Kornwold, M.H. Bai/lies Scott and the Arts and Crafts Movement: Pioneers of Modern Design, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1972; Pattrick Nuttgens, Mackintosh and his Contemporaries in Europe, John Murray Ltd, London, 1988; Julius Posener & Sonia Gunter, 'Muthesius in England,' AA Paper, no.5,London, 1972,pp. 16-23. 61 Colin St John Wilson, The Other Traditions of Modern Architecture: The Uncompleted Project, Academy Editions, London, 1995, pp. 49-77. 62 Henry Russell Hitchcock & Philip Johnson, The International Style: Architecture since 1922, W.W. Norton, New York, 1932. 63 St John Wilson, The Other Tradition ofModern Architecture, pp. 13-16. 64 'Some illustrations of things supposed to be modem, which I saw the other day, were repulsively jaded and faded. They were anxiously contoured to look "up-to-date," had no touch of strong freshness which springs from the ground of reality. At once I felt that they should be described as in "Ye Olde Modernist" style, that is the point: this "modernism" is regarded as a style whereas being truly modem would be simply right and reasonable.' W.R. Lethaby, 'Architecture as Engineering,' The Builder, vol. 136, February 1929, p. 252. 65 Wilson argues that the objectives of the 'Other Tradition' is demonstrated by Lethaby's idea of an 'art of high utility.' Wilson, The Uncompleted Project, pp. 63 & 73. Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, it will be argued, represents the origins of this idea in Lethaby's thinking. 66 See for example Rubens, William Richard Lethaby: His Life and Works. 67 William Richard Lethaby, 'Architecture, Nature and Magic,' The Builder, cxxiv, 1828, p. 88 to cxxxv, 1928, p. 984; reprinted in 1956 as William Lethaby, Architecture, Nature and Magic, Gerald Duckworth and Co, London, 1956. 68 Lethaby, Architecture, Nature and Magic, 1956, p. 15. 69 Lethaby, Architecture, Nature and Magic, pp. 15-16. 70 Gilian Naylor, 'The Myth of Modernism,' in WR Lethaby 1857-1931: Architecture, Design and Education, Sylvia Backemeyer and Theresa Gronberg (eds), Lund Humphries, London, I 984, pp. 44-46. 71 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 17. The relationship between the 'known' and 'science' is considered in more detail in chapter I. 72 William Lethaby, 'The Architecture of Adventure,' Royal Institute of British Architects, I gth April, 1910; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 92. Lethaby's association of the 'imagined' with 'Art' can be attributed to his acceptance of the Romantic hypothesis that Art is determined by the faculty of the Imagination. This aspect of Lethaby's theory is discussed in detail in chapter 1. 73 William Lethaby, 'The Architecture of Adventure,' p. 94. William Lethaby, 'Education of the Architect,' Informal Conference, Royal Institute of British Architects, 2nd May, 1917; reprinted in William Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 123. A comprehensive discussion of these and additional writings is given in chapter 5. 74 See for example William Lethaby, Architecture: An Introduction to the History and Theory of the Art Of Building, Home University Library, London and New York, 191 I, pp. 247-251. 75 Lethaby, 'Education of the Architect,' p. 123. 76 Alain Findeli, 'Bauhaus: Avant-garde or Tradition,' The Structurist, vol. 29/30, 1989/90, pp. 56-65.

26 Part I: Identifying the attributes of a modem architecture.

Chapter 1

Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth (1891): Reconciling the 'known' and the 'imagined.'

Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth was Lethaby's first major architectural treatise. 1

Lethaby's objective was to provide a text that was both historical and theoretical in content. In documenting the characteristic attributes of the architectural myth of the

'temple idea,' and its presence amongst architectures of multiple ancient cultures, the text was endowed with a distinctly historical tone. 2 However, in examining the motives behind myth, which Lethaby defined as.the interaction and reaction between the natural universe and the built environment,3 Lethaby also injected a series of theoretical considerations into the text. It is clear that Lethaby's interest in the

'temple idea' was not limited to its curious, prolific presence in past architectures, but also embraced a consideration of what lessons the 'temple idea' may contribute to the struggle of the late nineteenth century English architect to define architectural invention in the modem world. Arguing that 'modem architecture' and the 'art of the future' must 'excite an interest, both real and general,' by having a 'symbolism, immediately comprehensible [to] the great majority of spectators,' and be of

'sweetness, simplicity, freedom, confidence and light,' Lethaby proceeded to describe the conceptual strategies motivating the 'temple idea' with the intention that the documentation of such strategies may assist in the achievement of the above goals.4

Some have felt that Lethaby was successful in his task. Reviewers for the

Architectural Association Notes and The British Architect declared the text to be 'the

27 germ of all noble building ... a sign of the ripeness of the times' and 'a full and true interpretation of [architecture].'5 However the majority of commentators, both past and present, have dismissed the text on the grounds that it was esoteric, 'obscure,' concerned with contradictory objectives, and failed to articulate how such objectives could be achieved. 6 Obscure language and seemingly paradoxical themes are clearly attributes of the text. These cannot be denied. However, such aberrations, I argue, were designed to achieve three things. First, to develop a conception of architecture that moved beyond the Ruskinian reliance on the Victorian Imagination. Secondly, to cultivate a more accessible and comprehensible architectural symbolism by applying the ambivalent readings of the mythic mind and language common in nineteenth century mythography to the practice of architecture. And finally, building upon nineteenth century appreciations of the Renaissance allegory The Hypnerotomachia

Poliphili, to question existing conceptions of making as 'doing' or 'knowing' by advocating the alternative of 'love' or 'heart,' and to reconsider the role of the past within the modem architectural process.

1.1: The debt to Ruskin.

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth was proceeded by a number of shorter essays and lectures. These included: 'Of Cast Iron' written for the 1889 catalogue of the Arts and

Crafts Exhibition Society; 'Of the "Motive" in Architectural Design' written in the same year for A.A. Notes; 'Carpenter's Furniture' produced for the second catalogue of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society ( 1890), and 'Cast Iron and its Treatment' published also in 1890 by the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 7 An attribute common to each of these early essays was the identification of art with specific

28 Ruskinian themes. In 'Cast Iron and its Treatment,' Lethaby identified himself to be a

Ruskinian, while in 'Of the "Motive" in Architectural Design' he argued that the architect should design in 'the way the painter told Mr. Ruskin he composed his picture.'8 The influence of Ruskin is also evoked in the essay 'Carpenter's Furniture.'

Here Lethaby claimed that 'Beauty' is only to be found in 'what really gives us pleasure' and in 'our unashamed delight in it.' It is only 'when we have leisure to be happy and strength to be simple,' Lethaby argued, 'shall [we] find Art again-the art of the workman,' conclusions which evoke Ruskin's earlier and influential writings.9

Written in close proximity to these early essays, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth continues to demonstrate a debt to Ruskin.

In the opening paragraphs of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, Lethaby defined architecture as the addition of 'thought' to structure. Noting that 'the pigments are but the vehicle of painting,' so to, he explained,

is building but the vehicle of architecture, which is the thought behind form,

embodied and realised for the purpose of its manifestation and

transmission ... [it] interpenetrates building, not for the satisfaction of the

simple needs of the body, but the complex ones of the intellect. 10

Lethaby placed this understanding of architecture in opposition to a more prosaic definition, one concerned with a 'theory of utilitarian origins' and 'the adjustment of forms to local conditions.' 11 The two, he tells us, 'are quite clear and distinct as ideas,' one the 'soul,' the other 'the body.' 12

29 Garnham has argued that Lethaby's association of architecture with the representation of 'ideas' demonstrates an obvious debt to Ruskin. 13 Arguing that the 'constructive' elements of architecture could be compared to the muscular frame of the body, and that ornamentation could be equated with the 'reflective' capacity of man, Ruskin concluded in his Seven Lamps ofArchitecture (1849), that architecture was dependent on both 'technical and imaginative elements' much in the same way that the human identity relies on both the 'body' and the 'soul.' 14 However, while Ruskin presented architecture as a unified entity in which the body and soul meet, he also argued that architecture could not be considered solely in terms of its 'constructive' elements.

Declaring that 'to build,-is by common understanding to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or the receptacle of a considerable size,' Ruskin also concluded that 'building does not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects.' 15 Building, both as an idea and practice, was for Ruskin distinct and separate from that of architecture. While building was concerned with the putting together and adjustment of pieces, architecture, on the other hand, was determined by the impression on form of 'characters venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary.' 16 'That,' Ruskin explained, '[is] Architecture.'

Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are

above and beyond its common use. I say common; because a building raised

to the honour of God, or in memory of men, has surely a use to which its

architectural adornment fits it; but not a use which limits, by any inevitable

necessities, its plan or details. 17

In the preface to the second edition of Seven Lamps (I 855), Ruskin confirmed his position by asserting that there are only two fine arts possible to the human race,

30 sculpture and painting. The transformation of stone into sculpture, or a bare wall into an ornamented or painted one, identified for Ruskin, the attributes which elevated

'mere building' to the noble or fine art of' Architecture.' 18

It gradually became manifest to me that sculpture and painting were, in fact,

the all in all of the thing to be done; that these, which I had long been in the

careless habit of thinking subordinate to the architecture, were in fact the

entire masters of architecture; and that the architect who was not a sculptor or

a painter, was nothing better than a framemaker on a large scale. 19

'Ornamentation,' he concluded in the earlier 'Lectures on Architecture and Painting'

(1854), 'is ... the principal part of architecture' as only it can be 'considered [the] subject of fine art. ' 20

The significance of ornament for Ruskin was that it represented the speaking part of architecture and thus acted as the most efficient vehicle through which the 'mind' of the subject-the producer or viewer of the artefact-could be expressed. As Garnham has explained, 'all ornament' for Ruskin 'to be worthy and to elevate building to architecture, had to be the living expression of the minds of those engaged in the activity' of building. 21 'The things that I have dwelt upon in examining buildings,'

Ruskin explained,

though often their least parts, are always in reality their principal parts. That is

the principal part of a building in which its mind is contained, and that, as I

have just shown, is its sculpture and painting.22

31 In agreeing that architecture and building refer to two distinct ideas or functions, one the 'body,' the other the 'soul,' Lethaby endorsed Ruskin's conception of the architectural artefact as a unified body that relied on both a muscular frame and thinking mind.23 His definition of 'architecture' as 'buildings which enshrine ideas'24 also demonstrates he agreed with Ruskin's assertion that the property which elevated building to architecture was the addition of thought. 25 Such parallels have encouraged the present-day historian, such as Garnham, to conclude that Architecture, Mysticism and Myth simply functions to reiterate the earlier claims of Ruskin.26 However, in order to gauge the impact of Ruskin on Lethaby's idea of architecture as it is described in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, we must first consider the nature of

Ruskin's thesis of 'thought' or 'mind.' Linking the creative act which elevates the artefact to a fine art-be it a painted image, architectural structure or literary text-to a 'certain condition of mind' that 'groups ideas' and 'reveals the unseen,' Ruskin's thesis of the 'mind' reveals a debt to the Romantic theory of the Imagination.27 Art,

Ruskin tells us, is 'not a copy, nor anything done by rule,' but rather 'a freshly and divinely imagined thing. ' 28 It is in this idea of 'a divinely imagined thing' that we discover the theoretical legacy which informed and determined Ruskin's notion of

'mind.'

1.2: Ruskin's thesis of mind and the Romantic Imagination.

Rejecting the empiricist assumption that the mind was a tabula rasa on which external experiences and sense impressions were imprinted, stored, recalled, and combined through a process of association, the English Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge

32 (1772-1834) in his Biographia Literaria (1817), divided the 'mind' into two distinct faculties. He labelled these the 'Imagination' and 'Fancy.'

The IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The

primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all

human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of

creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo

of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with

the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the

mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or

where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to

idealise and unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are

essentially fixed and dead.

FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and

definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated

from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by

that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word

CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all

its materials ready made from the law of association.29

James Volant Baker in The Sacred River: Coleridge's Theory of the Imagination

(1957), has argued that Coleridge's division of the mind into two faculties can be explained in the following way. Coleridge's category of 'Fancy,' identified a faculty within the mind that functioned as a passive device for the storing and sorting of data extracted from man's sensory experience of the physical world. 'Fancy' in

Coleridge's system, Baker argues,

33 was like that of a shunting engine in a freight yard; it could combine flat-cars

with oil-tankers, could couple and uncouple; could shunt cars in numerous

combinations, but it could not create anything that was not already there, on

the rails of memory. Certain cars, too, came automatically coupled, articulated

by the coupling links of association. 30

Coleridge's idea of the 'Imagination,' on the other hand, identified a faculty within the mind that was generative and inventive. 'Imagination' for Coleridge, Baker concluded,

was a power that did more than combine; it modified and transformed. The

creations of imagination seemed to come from some inward depth of being,

they had a way of growing, rather than being put together and they had a

freshness and a dew upon them. 31

Availing itself of "'mechanical" combinations among the sense impressions and the passive materials of the memory,' 'Fancy,' Baker continued, simply 'plays with objects that (as objects) are dead, and are simply joined by a single note of likeness, like dominoes of one spot which are placed next to each other. ' 32 In direct contrast,

'Imagination,' asserts the inner and independent resources of the mind by establishing it as 'a vital power that fuses divers material into one ... its materials are assimilated and transformed and absorbed as part of a living, vital process. ' 33

While Fancy and Imagination were seen by Coleridge to be interdependent, not exclusive nor inimical to one another, he also argued that the two were responsible for different types of tasks or activities. 34 Explaining that the two faculties represented 'very different tools' which 'a man may work,' Coleridge also concluded

34 that 'the work' produced by each was quiet 'distinct and different.' 35 'Fancy,' in

Coleridge's eyes was employed for tasks that were 'passive' and 'mechanical.' The

'Imagination' was reserved for acts that were creative and inventive. 'Always the ape,' 'Fancy' was for Coleridge 'too often the adulterator and counterfeiter of memory.' 'Imagination,' on the other hand, was 'vital' and transformative, 'a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation. ' 36 As Baker has argued,

To IMAGINATION, which he liked to capitalize, he would give perhaps an

exaggerated and transcendent importance, a mystic significance, linked with

the forces of fertility, the powers of growth, and Godhead itself. To

association [Fancy], a rather sorry and secondary power, consisting in the

automatic and mechanical linking of ideas embedded through the inlets of

sensation in the passive memory, he would assign a subordinate place. 37

It was this distinction between the passive and 'empirical' accumulation and association of data and the active process of invention which Coleridge sought to capture with his categories. I.A. Richards in Coleridge and the Imagination (1934) has demonstrated that Coleridge's faculty oflmagination was motivated by his desire to describe 'the wider and deeper powers of some poetry. ' 38 Such poetry went beyond passive description (the accumulation, re-arrangement, and representation of facts) and entered a process in which both the poet and the reader were transformed into an active, creative being. For Coleridge, it was this ability to move beyond the descriptive into the active and inventive-a property he attributed solely to the imaginative half of the mind-which identified good poetry and distinguished it from the mediocre or bad. 39

35 Coleridge's division of the mind into two faculties represents the culmination of a long and complex philosophical and aesthetic debate. Although the 'semantic sources' for both Imagination and Fancy are found in ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of 'ingenium' and 'genius,' the invention of both concepts can be attributed to the Enlightenment.40 Noting that the central problem of philosophy since

Descartes (1596-1650) had been the relationship between the individual and nature

(the subject-object problem), James Engell, in The Creative Imagination:

Enlightenment to Romanticism ( 1981 ), has demonstrated th~t the Imagination was developed to articulate one of two solutions to this problem. The first used the

Imagination to stress the innate qualities of the self; the belief that the mind was active, vital, formative, and in turn, coloured and determined all mental events.

Coleridge referred to the scholars adhering to this school of thought as the

'Transcendentalists,' and included in this group the Irish philosopher George

Berkeley (1658-1753) and the German scholar Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814).

In opposition to such a perspective, a second group developed an alternate position, arguing that all mental events were determined by sensations originating in the physical world; that the mind was a clean slate waiting for impressions imposed by sensations emanating from material phenomena. Describing members of this group as the 'Natural Philosophers,' Coleridge found examples of such thinking in the empirical writings and associationism of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke

(1632-1704) and David Hartely (1705-57). 41 The two approaches, Engell has noted,

'spawned pairs of labels, materialist or naturalist versus transcendentalist, dogmatic versus spiritual, objective versus subjective, "Es gibt" versus "Jch bin. "'42

36 While neither system denied either the conscious mind or matter, they did make one dependent on the other. As Coleridge argued, the natural and material philosopher gave 'the whole to the object and ma[ d]e the subject, that is the reflecting and contemplating, feeling part, the mere result of that.' The transcendentalists', on the other hand, gave 'the whole to the subject' reducing the 'object' to a 'mere result' that was 'involved in it. '43

Ruskin, like Coleridge before him, maintained the division of the mind into

'Imagination' and 'Fancy.' In the second volume of his Modern Painters (1846),

Ruskin dedicated almost one hundred pages to the subject, adopting a terminology and intent that was reminiscent of Coleridge.44 However, as Susan Gurewitsch has argued in her essay 'Golgonooza on the Grand Canal: Ruskin's Stones of Venice and the Romantic Imagination' ( 1981 ), Ruskin was never satisfied with these early attempts to define the imagination and it is only in the later publications of the 1850s, and specifically the first three volumes of the Stones of Venice (1851-1853), that the issue is resolved.45 Like Coleridge before him, the distinction made by Ruskin between Fancy and the Imagination, rested on the fact that Fancy was concerned with the mechanical operations of the mind; those which are responsible for the passive accumulation of data and the storage of such data in the memory. Imagination, on the other hand, described the 'mysterious power,' which extracted from such data,

'hidden ideas and meaning.' It also determined 'the various operations of constructive and inventive genius. ' 46 This distinction, as Michael Sprinker has demonstrated in

'Ruskin on the Imagination' (1979), is clearly articulated by Ruskin in a letter he wrote in 1847 to the Rev. W. L. Brown. Attempting to demonstrate the difference

37 between the two faculties, Ruskin offered the example of a landscape scene, and the two possible ways that scene could be perceived.

There was a time when the sight of a steep hill covered with pines, cutting

against the sky, would have touched me with an emotion inexpressible, which,

in the endeavour to communicate in its truth and intensity, I must have sought

for all kinds of far-off, wild, and dreamy images. Now I can look at such a

slope with coolness, and observation offact. I see that it slopes at 20° or 25°; I

know the pines are spruce fir-"Pinus nigra"--of such and such an age; that

the rocks are slate of such and such a formation; the soil, thus, and thus; the

day fine, the sky blue. All this I can at once communicate in so many words,

and this is all which is necessarily seen. But it is not all the truth; there is

something else to be seen there, which I cannot see but in a certain condition

of mind, nor can I make any one else see it, but by putting him into that

condition, and my endeavour in description would be, not to detail the facts of

the scene, but by any means whatsoever to put my hearer's mind into the

same fierment as my mm· d .47

Like Coleridge before him, Fancy or the 'theoretic faculty,' as he was also to refer to it in his letter to Brown, was seen by Ruskin as being concerned with the mechanical and passive accumulation of 'fact;' data that was extracted from 'all that was necessarily seen.' However, while the accumulation of such data was important, it did not define the creative process. It was not enough to note, accumulate and replicate the 'facts.' The truly creative and inventive act, Ruskin asserted, had to achieve more.

This, he argued, could only be achieved by representing the 'ferment' or 'condition'

38 of mind' which revealed all that was unseen; the inner and vital forces of nature. In the fourth volume of Modern Painters (1856), Ruskin recapitulated this distinction.

Imagine all that any of these men had seen or heard in the whole course of

their lives, laid up accurately in their memories as in a vast storehouses,

extending, with the poets, even to the slightest intonations of syllables heard

in the beginning of their lives, and with the painters, down to minute folds of

drapery, and shapes of leaves or stones; and over all of this unindexed and

immeasurable mass of treasure, the imagination brooding and wandering, but

dream-gifted, so as to summon at any moment exactly such groups of ideas as

shall fit each other: this I conceive to be the real nature of the imaginative

mind.48

Tying his idea of the inventive act, an act that elevated art to fine art----or building to architecture-to the creative and plastic powers of the mind that modified and shaped the facts which had been accumulated by Fancy, Ruskin maintained the divided mind that had been earlier articulated by Coleridge. Thus, while Ruskin advocated a model of architecture that was based on the image of the undivided body, his linking of the noble arts, including architecture, with the imagination demonstrates that his idea of architecture was also based on an image of a divided mind. This raises the question: is Lethaby's conception of architecture as it is outlined in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth also based on the conception of a divided mind?

In defining architecture in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth as the addition of thought to structure, Lethaby's thesis embraced Ruskin's conception of architecture

39 as a unified entity in which body, soul and intellect meet. However, in arguing that style or architecture embraces both the 'known' and the 'imagined,' properties which can be compared to Ruskin's 'theoretic' and 'imaginative faculties,' or Coleridge's

'Fancy' and 'Imagination,' indicates that he also adhered to the belief that a undivided mind rather than a divided mind was responsible for the creative act. It is here that we discover Lethaby's departure from a Ruskinian conception of architecture.

1.3: 'Known' and 'Imagined facts' of the universe.

In the opening paragraphs of the introduction to Architecture, Mysticism and Myth

Lethaby clearly outlined his objectives. Noting that his intention was 'to ask [what] are the ultimate facts behind all architecture which has given it form,' he isolated three key principles.

First, the similar needs and desires of men; secondly, on the side of structure,

the necessities imposed by materials, and the physical laws of their erection

and combination; and thirdly, on the side of style, nature.49

'It is the last' of these, Lethaby tells us, 'that I propose to write.' He then proceeds to explain what he intended by 'style' or 'nature. ,so It is, he wrote:

the influence of the known and imagined facts of the universe on architecture,

the connection between the world as structure, and the building, not of mere

details of nature and the ornaments of architecture, but of the whole-the

Heavenly Temple and the Earthly Tabernacle. 51

In this statement, Lethaby clearly equated architecture, or more specifically form with nature. This in itself was not unique or very innovative. However, Lethaby also

40 proceeded to divide his conception of nature into two different modes of perception or categories. He described these as the 'known' and 'imagined facts' of the universe.

In making this distinction, Lethaby allowed for the possibility that nature could be interpreted in two different but equally valid ways and that these in tum acted on building practice. The focus of his examination were the cosmological myths of the ancient world. For Lethaby, the significance of such constructs was their reliance on both conceptions of nature. Working on the assumption that 'the development of building practices and ideas of the world structure acted and reacted upon one another,' 52 Lethaby isolated the 'temple idea,' as demonstrating a tradition which readily accommodated this dual conception of nature.

The 'known facts' of nature, Lethaby claimed, are material objects which can be seen or physically experienced such as trees, mountains, the sky and the sea. Such known facts, he explained, offered ancient man a theoretical frame on which he could base an explanation for what could not be seen or directly experienced. 'The unknown universe,' he argued, 'could only be ... explained in terms of its known parts; the earth shut in by the night sky, ... a tree, a tent, a building. ' 53 These in tum, Lethaby concluded, were used to 'form ... world system[s]' for 'peoples [then] living. ' 54 The simple and observable fact of 'a tree with wide over-arching branches' Lethaby noted, 'must have formed an apt and satisfactory explanation' of the universe in general, as 'legends of [the] world tree are so widely distributed.' 55 Similar uses of the 'mountain' and 'built chamber' also appear to have been popular, as they like the tree, Lethaby explained, are prolific in the cosmological myths of the ancient world. 56

41 The presence of 'known facts' in cosmological myths demonstrate that ancient man based his understanding of the world around him, at least in the first instance, on what he visually witnessed within the material world. Thus the mythic mind extracted knowledge from the contemplation and study of an object world, which existed outside of the subject, and was autonomous and independent of that subject. Working on Herbert Spencer's assumption that 'given the data as known to him, the inference drawn by the primitive man is the reasonable inference, ' 57 Lethaby felt that this aspect of ancient man's response to nature was comparable to the scientific methodologies adopted by modem man.

If we erase from the mind absolutely all that science has laboriously spied out

of the actual facts of the material universe, and ask ourselves what would have

been the thoughts by which man attempted to explain and image forth the

natural order, we may put ourselves in sympathy with notions that at first

seem absurd. We may see that the progress of science is merely the framing

and destruction one by one of a series of hypotheses, and that the early

cosmogonies are one in kind with the widest generalisations of science-from

certain appearance to frame a theory of explanation, from phenomena to

generalised law. 58

Arriving at conclusions, which were driven by methods comparable to those produced by modem science's contemplation of relative phenomena, the inference was that mythic man's reliance on 'known facts' produced a world-view that was also relative. Mythic man's understanding of the world fluxed and evolved as the data and belief systems (mythologies) he gathered accumulated.

42 However, the world-view cultivated by the mythic mind, Lethaby argued, did not rely solely on the 'known.' In an attempt to explain the unknown-that is, phenomena which could not be seen or directly experienced-mythic man employed known facts

(the tree, the mountain, and the built chamber) to explain the unknown, such as the order of the cosmos. Thus 'known facts,' such as the tree, were transformed by ancient man into 'imagined facts.' The tree, a fact extracted from the observable, material world, was transformed into the 'world tree,' a fact that had no validity but in the imagination of the subject. These imagined facts of 'world tree,' 'world mountain' and 'world chamber' in tum provided the foundation for complete cosmological systems. As Lethaby explained, 'the Chaldean inscriptions described ... a tree as growing at the centre of the world; its branches of crystal formed the sky and drooped to the sea' while 'the Phoenicians thought the world like a revolving tree, over which was spread a vast tapestry of blue embroidered stars. ' 59

Others saw the,

earth [as] a mountain, ... around its base flows the ocean, ... beyond is a high

range of mountains which form the walls of the enclosure, and on these is

either laid the ceiling in one great slab, or it is domed .... The firmament is

sustained by the earth mountain in the centre; ... "the earth with the seas

supported by it, rests upon pillars, and covers an under-world accessible by

various entrances from the sea, as well as from mountain clefts. Above the

earth on an upper world is found, beyond which the blue sky, being of solid

consistence, vaults itself like an outer shell, and, as some say, revolves around

some high mountain top in the far north."60

43 The significance of the 'imagined' was that it demonstrated a shift in the perceptual strategies adopted by mythic man. The 'known facts' which were based on the observation of the object world, a world which was autonomous and independent of the subject, were now presented as being transformed into the imagined and thus originating within the inner resources of that same subject. In transforming the

'known' into the 'imagined,' so that man could come to some understanding of the unknown, the mythic cosmologies of the ancient world demonstrated a dual reliance on the scrutiny of an independent object world and on the inner, mental and imaginative resources of the subject. The passive act of observation of the known was transformed into a creative act. In possessing both 'known' and 'imagined facts,' the universe for mythic man was both subjective and objective, and the strategies he adopted to understand this world were both passive or contemplative and active or inventive.61

However, the importance of this transformation of the 'known' into the 'imagined' lay not only in a dual reliance on knowledge originating in the object and the subject, but that it also indicated a movement from 'phenomena' to 'generalised law;' from the relative to the fixed and universal.62 A key attribute of the 'imagined' was that it appeared to point to beliefs that were common to multiple cultures, times and places; to a core body of knowledge that was universal and valid for all. 63 A distinguishing feature of the 'world tree,' Lethaby explained, was that it was common to multiple cultures; being found in the inscriptions of the Chaldeans, in the writings of the

Phoenicians, as well as in 'later tomes of culture.'64 Similar conclusions could be drawn for the world mountain or world chamber. 'The Egyptian system,' noted

44 Lethaby, 'compared the sky to the ceiling of an edifice,' as did the 'old poet Job' who described the cosmos as a 'vast box whose lid is the sky.' At the centre of Job's box rose 'the earth mountain,' which acted as the 'prop and the pivot of [the world's] evolutions. '65 Similar examples, Lethaby continues, could be found in the early systems of the Chaldea and in the cosmogonic theories of the Rig Veda, to name but a few.66

In many respects, Lethaby's objective in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth was to document the universal nature of such 'imagined' facts. Working on the assumption that form is dependent on the representation of nature, he also argued that imagined facts represent an essential core or set of principles that motivate form. In the introduction of the text, Lethaby pointed out that his aim was to identify what was common and universal, to,

attempt to set out, from the architect's point of view, the basis of certain ideas

common in the architecture of many lands and religions, the purposes behind

structure and form which may be called the esoteric principles of

architecture.67

Noting that 'it has, rightly, been the habit of historians of architecture to lay stress on the differences of the several styles and schools of successive ages,' he also argued that it was equally valid to consider the alternative; that 'in the far larger sense, all architecture is one, when traced back through the stream of civilisations, as they followed or influenced one another. ' 68 Lethaby's search for the universal---observing that 'behind every style of architecture there is an earlier style, in which the germ of every form is to be found'-and his association of such facts with the 'imagined,'

45 established the importance of the past and the significance of traditional values.69

However, Lethaby also concluded that nature, and thus architecture, cannot be read solely in terms of the 'imagined' but must also incorporate the 'known,' or relative phenomena of the object world. Thus while the 'imagined' maintained the integrity of tradition, the 'known' established the validity of change, progress and evolution, and thus offered an explanation for,

such alternations as may be traced to new conditions, or directly innovating

thought in religion, [and] all [that] is the slow change of growth, [so that] it is

almost impossible to point to the time of invention of any custom or feature.

As Herbert Spencer says of ceremonial generally: "adhering tenaciously to all

his elders taught him, the primitive man deviates into novelty only through

unintended modifications. Every one knows that languages are not devised

but evolve; and the same is true of usages."70

Lethaby presented this dual reliance on the 'known' and 'imagined' as being a unique and admirable attribute of the mythic mind and mythic world system. It is only 'at the dawn of record' and in the "'wild in woods" [where] the savage [still] runs,' Lethaby observed, that we find such dual conceptions of nature. 71 It is also presented as an attribute of the architectures produced by such peoples. Drawing the reader's attention to the ancient mythological construct of the 'temple idea,' Lethaby argued that in the first instance it functioned as a direct imitation of the pre-established and presumably 'imagined' order of nature. The underlying objective of the temple, he explained, 'was to set up a local reduplication of the temple not made with hands, the

World Temple itself-a sort of model to scale.' 72 However, for Lethaby, such

46 'imagined facts' represented only half of the equation determining the temple idea. Of equal importance were facts extracted from the 'known' which were based on a direct observation and documentation of the object world. The temple idea also demonstrated this second, more arbitrary aspect of form. While the form and construction of the temple imitated the fixed order of the 'world temple' it also responded to the 'science of the time.' It was, as Lethaby explained,

an observatory, and an almanac. Its foundation was a sacred ceremony, the

time carefully chosen by augury, and its relation to the heavens defined by

ob servation.· 73

Agreeing with the French anthropologist De la Saussaye, Lethaby concluded that the

'temple idea' not only 'refer[red] to the structure of the world,' a structure that was imagined and thus universal, but that it also spoke of 'the religious relationship of men to the gods,' conditions that were specific to the time, place and culture.74

1.4: Lethaby's departure from Coleridge's and Ruskin's theory of the

Imagination.

Lethaby's association of nature with 'style'-the thought added to structure-and the division of this thought in the 'known' and the 'imagined' recalls Coleridge's and

Ruskin's division of the mind into Imagination and Fancy. Like Ruskin's theoretic faculty or Coleridge's Fancy, Lethaby's 'known facts' refer to the mind's ability to extract information from the visible world, to associate such facts with ideas, to store the resulting data in the memory, and to recall and re-arrange such data when more information was obtained. His 'imagined facts,' on the other hand, like Ruskin's and

Coleridge's idea of the 'Imagination,' pointed to the ability of the mind to create,

47 modify, combine and generate material that was often unrelated to what was seen and thus known. However, Lethaby's thesis that architecture is determined by both the

'known' and the 'imagined' demonstrates a major departure from both Ruskin and

Coleridge in that he fails to privilege the role of the 'Imagination' over 'Fancy' within the creative act. 75 In direct contrast to both Coleridge and Ruskin, both the

'known' and the 'imagined' are presented as equitable components of the architectural equation.

The significance of the Imagination over Fancy for Coleridge was that it represented the sole faculty within man that was able to achieve the romantic ambition of reuniting the subject and object; the worlds of the self and the world of nature. By establishing the creative act as one which mimicked the 'organic principle' or 'one'­ a divine principle believed to underlie all reality-the romantic theorist sought to establish a harmonious relationship between the ideal world of the subject and the real world of the object. Baker has demonstrated that Coleridge's conviction that the

Imagination acted as 'a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM,' not only reinforced the notion that perception was active and creative, it also established the cosmos as an organic entity. 76 For Coleridge, Baker concluded, the Imagination,

intuitively organizes the whole, the confused corrugation or mountains, into

ideal concepts (like Platonic ideas) of mass, majesty, eternity, beauty, infinity

and the like. The mind, in other words, intuits the real forms or the ideas

behind the sensuous forms and establishes, in this way, direct contact with the

divine. Thus the mind of the poet is creative in perception and, in its lesser

48 degree, participates in the creative power which formed the mountains in the

first place, as cloudy symbols of concrete objectifications of itself. 77

Coleridge explained this property of the 'Imagination' as 'ESEMPLASTIC,' to

'shape into one' and to 'convey a new sense. ' 78 The key attribute of the esemplatic function, Engell has argued, was that it ensured that,

all the arteries of life and thought returned to the heart after dividing into

invisible capillaries. The subjective and objective poles intertwine and fuse,

spirit informs matter and the dynamic synthesis and coalescence of both

systems occurs. 79

However, while the objective of the romantic critic was to facilitate a synthesis of subject and object and to unite the ideal and real, the 'active' and 'creative' powers given to the Romantic Imagination guaranteed that no such synthesis could take place. Rather the theory of perception demonstrated by the idea of the Imagination motivated a situation where the subject subsumed the identity and autonomy of the object.80 The relationship between the subject and nature, in such an instance, Paul de

Man has demonstrated in 'The Rhetoric ofTemporality' (1969),

is superseded by an intersubjective, interpersonal relationship that, in the last

analysis, is a relationship of the subject towards itself. Thus the priority has

passed from the outside world entirely within the subject, and we end up with

something that resembles radical idealism. 81

Sprinker in 'Ruskin on the Imagination' (1979), has described this phenomenon as,

man's inexorable will to power over reality. To look upon nature and behold

there an image of the mind which is not necessarily evidence for a

49 preordained harmony between mind and nature. Though the rhetoric of the

Romantic may tend to blur the distinction between subject and object, the

distinction is not thereby annulled. . . . the aesthetics of romanticism was an

indication of the profoundest dissatisfaction with reality, the sign of a peculiar

sort of nihilism in which the wish to integrate the self and nature was merely a

disguise for the imperialistic designs of the imagination on the real world. 82

Attempting to 'make the senses out of the mind-not the mind out of the senses,'

Coleridge's system of perception, like that of his romantic colleagues, ensured that thought and reality grow indistinguishable, like two sounds of which no man can positively say which is the echo. In such a system our intelligent self-consciousness becomes inseparable from our perceptions of the world. 83

The 'fallacy' of Coleridge's belief-that a synthesis of the subject and object could be obtained while the identity of each was maintained-was one, Sprinker has argued, that Ruskin acknowledged. It was also one which he avoided. Thus, while

Coleridge's idea of the Imagination demonstrated an attempt to unify subject and object, Ruskin's theory of the Imagination was designed to demonstrate the profound and irreducible gulf that separated the object-the world of facts, things as they are in themselves-from the subject-the perception of facts by human consciousness­ within the Romantic world view. Accepting that we can never really know the true nature of the object world for itself, and thus are unable to even 'fathom the mystery of a single flower,' Ruskin's exploration of the imagination, Sprinker has demonstrated, was to offer a 'strident rebuttal of the positivistic tendencies of nineteenth-century thought' and to produce a 'defence [for] the imagination against

50 the prevailing devaluation of its importance in the modem world. ' 84 'The most curious, yet most common deficiency of the modem contemplative mind,' Ruskin stated in 'The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism' (1878), 'is its inability to comprehend that phenomena of true imagination are yet no less real and often more vivid than phenomena of matter. ' 85 It was this, the need for 'noble art' to reflect the

'phenomena of true imagination,' which Ruskin sought to articulate in his critical writings on art and architecture. 86

Lethaby was familiar with both the ideas of Ruskin and Coleridge. 87 However,

Lethaby's thesis of creation differs from that of Ruskin and Coleridge in that he fails to assert the primacy of either the subject or object but presents both as having an equal role in the creation of the architectural form. In Architecture, Mysticism and

Myth the design of the temple construct is presented as being reliant on both the ideal or 'imagined' image of the cosmos-'the temple not made with hands' or 'World

Temple'-and the 'known;' 'its form governed by the science of the time; it was a heaven, an observatory, and an almanack. ' 88 With this example, Lethaby argued that both cognitive strategies, one passive and accumulative, the other active and formative, contributed to the perceptual and creative act. This conviction is reconfirmed in later writings. In the essay, 'What Shall we call Beautiful' (1918),

Lethaby writes that,

it is a trite truth that we have never really seen a thing, a tree, for instance, but

only partial aspects of many trees. Even these partial aspects are conditioned

by our relations in time and space. They are images which arise between the

object, tree, and you, the observer. If, for instance, the seasons were hurried

51 up and became a thousand times quicker, we should see our tree bud, spread

out its leaves and fade in an afternoon-it would gush out like a fountain into

green and be gone. It is changing all the time now, but we do not see it.

Again, if it were magnified several thousand times, its solidity would dissolve

into a vague fog form. Its colour, green, is partly in the leaves, partly in the

light, but most in our eyes. What, apart from our ways of apprehending it, can

a tree be, the thing in-itself? All we know of it is struck out by the contact of a

'thing' and our senses. 'Tree' is not objective or subjective. Turning from

such 'material' and 'tangible' objects to our generalised ideas on the aspect

which possess the qualities that we call Beauty, we find that phenomena are

conditioned by a great number of still more complex and confusing factors.

They involve many questions in regard to what we see, what we think we see,

when we see, and who does the seeing. Doubtless the executioner thought of

his fine new rack, 'That is a beauty;' but what did the executee think?89

In being neither subjective or purely imagined, nor objective or simply known, the

'temple idea,' much like the tree, captured the 'great number of still more complex and confusing factors' which Lethaby felt determined what we see, think, and identify as being beautiful. Like the tree, the 'temple idea' 'was neither subjective nor objective,' but both.90 Seeking to establish the entity of both the 'known' and the

'imagined'-of the objective and subjective-rather than a romantic synthesis,

Lethaby maintained a balance of Fancy and Imagination which Coleridge was denied.

His departure from Ruskin, on the other hand is found in the fact that he failed to privilege the subjective Imagination over objective Fancy. Rather, the two, in

Lethaby's view, offered equally valid world-views and thus both deserved

52 representation within the architectural form. It is this central thesis which Lethaby articulates through the 'temple idea.'

The advantages of an architecture speaking of both the object and subject, Lethaby explained in the introduction to Architecture, Mysticism and Myth was threefold.

First, it ensured a symbolism that was 'comprehensible to the great majority of spectators' and an architecture that would 'excite an interest, both real and general.'91

Secondly, it enforced Lethaby's conviction that 'would you know the new, you must know the old. ' 92 Finally, it secured an architecture that was of 'sweetness, freedom, confidence and light. ' 93 The rationale for such arguments, it will be demonstrated in the following chapters had two sources. The first in the Victorian debate on myth.

The second and third in nineteenth century readings of the Renaissance allegory, the

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

53 1 William Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, Solos Press, 1994, originally published by Percival, London, 1892. Lethaby noted in his later reprint of the text as Architecture, Nature and Magic, that although the first edition was dated 1892, it was actually published in 1891. William Lethaby, Architecture, Nature and Magic, Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd, London, 1956, p. 15; originally published, The Builder, cxxxiv, 1928, p. 88 to 1928, p. 984. 2 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 14. 3 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 13; Architecture, Nature and Magic, p. 15-16. 4 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p.16. 5 Architectural Association Notes, vol. 6, 1891-2, p. 167; The British Architect, vol. 37, 1892, p. 21. 6 The reviewer for the 1893 Builder argued that while the 'moral' of the text 'is that architecture should still be designed in its highest forms, under the influence of, and with some relation to the known and imagined facts of the universe,' and 'that it must have a symbolism immediately comprehensible by a great body of spectators,' he also noted that, 'of what kind and in what relation' architecture must have 'to the "facts of the universe" as at present "known," Mr Lethaby does not define.' The Times reviewer was equally unsympathetic towards the text dismissing it as 'obscure.' More recently, Godfrey Rubens, in 'The Life and Work of William Richard Lethaby' has argued that the 'central paradox' of the text emerged from Lethaby's conflicting desires for a 'rational symbolism' and an interest in the transcendental thinking of his time. Julian Holder, in close agreement with Rubens, feels that Lethaby fails in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth as his desire for mystery in architecture was at 'variance' with his interest in narrative and the clarity of story telling. Trevor Garnham has argued that the text is dogged by confusion which he felt stemmed from Lethaby's inability to separate the 'pure idea of architecture' from the 'compromising and physical processes of building.' The Builder, January 2nd, 1893; The Times, December 31 st 1892, p. 54; Godfrey Rubens, The Life and Work of William Lethaby 1875-1931, PhD thesis, University College, London, 1977, p. 52; Holder, 'Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and its Influence,' W.R. Lethaby, 1857-1931: Architecture, Design and Education, Sylvia Backemeyer & Theresa Gronberg (eds), Lund Humphries, London, 1985, p. 63. See also Holder, A Thought Behind Form: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, and Its Place in Architectural Theory 1880-1910, MA thesis, University College, London, 1986; Trevor Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style in late Nineteenth Century English Architecture, MA thesis, Exeter University, 1980, p. 61. 7 William Lethaby, 'Of Cast Iron,' Catalogue, Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, Oct 1889, p. 47 reprinted in Arts and Crafts Essays by Members of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, William Morris (ed), Thoemmes Press, Bristol, 1996, (1893), pp. 184-195: 'On the "Motive" in Architectural Design,' A.A. Notes, vol. 4, no. 31, October 1889, pp. 23-25. 'Carpenter's Furniture,' Catalogue, Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 1890, p. 46 reprinted in Arts and Crafts Essays, pp. 302-309. 'Cast Iron and its treatment for Artistic Purposes,' Journal of the Royal Society ofArts, no. 38, 1890, p. 272. 8 Lethaby, 'Cast Iron and its Treatment for Artistic Purposes,' pp. 272-82; 'Of the "Motive" in Architectural Design,' p. 24. In Modern Painters, Ruskin defined the 'motive' as 'meaning the leading idea of a composition, whether wrought or not.' Ruskin, 'Modern Painters,' vol. I, 1843, Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin. E.T. Cook & A. Wedderburn (eds), George Allen, London, 1903-12, vol. 3, p. 170. See also 'Modern Painters,' vol. V, 1860, Works, vol. 7, p. 217. 9 William Morris, Arts and Crafts Essays by Members of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, p. 309. See for example Ruskin's essay 'The Nature of Gothic,' in The Stones of Venice, vol. 2, 1853, in Works, vol. 10. Ruskin's theories on labour will be discussed in more detail in chapter 4. 10 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 11. 11 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 11. 12 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 12. 13 Trevor Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, pp. 31-2 & 47-9. 14 John Ruskin, 'Seven Lamps of Architecture,' 1849, Works, vol. 8, p. 20. 15 Ruskin, Works, vol. 8, pp. 27-8. 16 Ruskin, Works, vol. 8, pp. 28-9. 17 Ruskin, Works, vol. 8, p. 29.

54 18 Ruskin, 'Seven Lamps of Architecture,' preface to second edition, 1855, Works, vol. 8, p. 11. 19 Ruskin, Works, vol. 8, p.10. The distinction between architecture and building had been taken up by Ruskin in the earlier essay, 'The Poetry of Architecture,' 1837, Works, vol. 1, p. 5. In 1910, Lethaby elaborated further on the distinction between Architecture and Building first established in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. He wrote: I have often tried to speak of ordinary customary building as being one with architecture; architecture, in fact, is only building 'writ large.' But if having two words, we desire to give them separate meanings, consistent though separate, then we must agree to mean by architecture building enhanced by sculpture and painting-that is, building 'completely furnished,' as Morris says. Architecture would then stand to building as opera stands to music. Architecture must thus, according to our choice, either mean building in general, or building intensified by accessory arts. In any case, mere needful and experimental building in the main substance, force, and origin of art. When the higher architecture has appeared in the world, it has come as the result of spontaneous interaction of the arts; the architect has wrought according to custom, need, and demand, while sculptors, painters, and the rest have done the same. The resulting unity was not imposed by an architects artistic ideal, but because all expressed their thought in a common current language. Lethaby, 'Architecture of Adventure,' Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1910 reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation: Collected Papers on Art and Labour, Oxford University Press, London, 1922, pp. 66-67. 20 John Ruskin, 'Lectures on Architecture and Painting,' 1854, Works, vol. 12, p. 84. 21 Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, p. 33. 22 Ruskin, 'Lectures on Architecture and Painting,' 1854, Works, vol. 12, p. 89. Peter Kohane in 'Architecture, Labor and the Human Body: Fergusson, Cockerell and Ruskin,' has argued that Ruskin's focus on architectural ornament, painting and sculpture, demonstrates the influence of James Fergusson's system of architecture which placed a high regard on speaking ornaments. The influence of Fergusson, Kohane has argued, demonstrates a shift in Ruskin's thought. In the 'Virtues of Architecture,' in the first volume of The Stones of Venice ( 1851 ), Ruskin set out to distinguish his architectural system from that of Fergusson by arguing that the intellect determined the structure while the human affections were expressed in ornament, and thus, it was not possible to distinguish between the aesthetic embellishment of the architect and the phonetic ornament of the painter or sculptor. Ruskin 1854 lectures on 'Art and Architecture' and the preface to the 1855 edition of The Seven Lamps indicates a revision of this position as Ruskin now isolates the added ornament as the component that articulates the 'mind.' Peter Kohane, Architecture, Labor and the Human Body: Fergusson, Cockerell and Ruskin, Ph.D thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1993, pp. 418 & 439-40. 23 Kohane has argued that Ruskin felt that 'the entire man is made up of body, soul, intellect.' Each of these was characterised by both a 'passive or receptive' and an 'Active or Motive' power: the body has senses and muscles; the soul feeling and resolution; the intellect, understanding and imagination. Ruskin's central thesis involved the interrelationship between faculties and capacities. In his view painting, poetry and architecture were arts in which the 'imaginative part of the intellect and sensitive part of the soul are joined.' In complete contradiction to Fergusson, Ruskin's focus was not 'the solitary perfection of a given part of the man [but] .. .its balanced perfection in relation to the whole of him. Ruskin, Works, vol 9, pp. 445 & 441; Kohane, Architecture, Labor and the Human Body, pp. 422-3. 24 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p.15. 25 For Ruskin this was made possible by the addition of architectural omament-pamtmg and sculpture-which was superimposed or laid over the architectural structure. The thesis developed by Lethaby in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth differs from Ruskin's in that he argues the addition of meaning can also take place at the planning level. Thus meaning for Lethaby is not only to be found in the attached architectural ornament, but also in the planning and massing of the architectural structure. 26 Trevor Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, pp.49-50. 27 Ruskin, 'Modem Painters,' vol. IV, 1856, Works, vol. 6, p. 42; Letter to Rev. W. L. Brown on September 28 1847, Works, vol. 36, p. 80. Ruskin, 'Modem Painters,' vol. II, 1846, chapters 1-4, Works, vol. 4, pp. 223-313. 28 Ruskin, 'Stones of Venice,' 1851-1853, vol. III, 1853, Works, vol 11, p. 119.

55 29 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, J. Shawcross (ed), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1907, vol. I, p. 202. 30 James Volant Baker, The Sacred River: Coleridge's Theory of the Imagination, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1957, pp. 113-4. 31 Baker concludes that Coleridge's thesis of Fancy and Imagination has multiple sources. In 'Kant' he discovered a 'masterly psychology in which the mind was active' which he used to counter the 'associationism of Hartley.' From 'Schelling he had learned that imagination was a unifying power uniting subject and object in the burning glass of the consciousness.' From 'Herder' and 'A.W. Schlegel, he had acquired the concept of the work of art being an organic unity, and the process of its creation an organic process.' Finally, 'the deepest sources of Coleridge's theory' is a 'debt to antiquity, particularly to Plotinus' and the 'sense of community with nature which he shared with Wordsworth.' Baker, The Sacred River, pp. 113-4. 32 Baker, The Sacred River, p. 123. 33 Baker, The Sacred River, pp. 127-8. 34 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, vol. I, p. 194. 35 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, vol. I, p. 194. 36 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, vol. II, p. 208 & vol. I p. 202. It was the ability of the imagination-and more specifically the secondary imagination-to transform and recreate which ensured its association with the fine arts. Engell has demonstrated that Coleridge's division of the imagination into the 'primary' and 'secondary' draws a distinction between creative acts that are unconscious and those that are intentional and deliberate. 'The Primary Imagination' was for Coleridge, the 'necessary imagination' as it 'automatically balances and fuses the innate capacities and powers of the mind with the external presence of the objective world that the mind receives through the senses.' It represents man's ability to learn from nature. The over arching property of the primary imagination was that it was common to all people. The Secondary imagination, on the other hand, represents a superior faculty which could only be associated with artistic genius. It was this aspect of the imagination, one which could break down what was perceived in order to recreate by an autonomous willful act of the mind that has no analog in the natural world-which Coleridge associated with art and poetry. A key and defining attribute of the secondary imagination was a free and deliberate will; 'superior voluntary controul...co-existing with the conscious will.' The secondary imagination, once activated by the will, 'dissolves, dissipates in order to recreate.' Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, vol. I, pp. 193, 202. James Engell, The Creative Imagination: Englightenment to Romanticism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1981, p. 344. 37 Baker, The Sacred River, p. 115. 38 I.A. Richards, Coleridge on Imagination, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London, 1962 (1934), p. 96. 39 Richards, Coleridge on Imagination, p. 84. 40 Jurgen Klein, 'Genius, Ingenium, Imagination: Aesthetic Theories of Production from the Renaissance to Romanticism,' The Romantic Imagination: Literature and Art in England and Germany, Frederick Burwick & Jiirgen Klein (eds), Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1996, p. 19. Engell, The Creative Imagination, p. 3. 41 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character, Taylor & Hessey, London, 1825, pp. 218n & 171n; Biographia Literaria, vol. I, p. 109. A third position, one which mediated between the two extremes was to be found in the writings of G.W Leibniz (1646-1716), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and F.W. Schelling (1775-1814). Arguing that the mind employs both Fancy and Imagination, Coleridge facilitates a position that is reminiscent of this third approach. 42 Engell, The Creative Imagination, p. 329. 43 Coleridge, The Philosophical Lectures of Samual Taylor Coleridge, Kathleen Coburn (ed), Pilot Press, London, pp. 87, 106-8, 116. Coleridge argued that the two philosophies represented the 'two great directions of man.' Coleridge, The Friend. A Literary, Moral, and Political Weekly Paper, Excluding Personal and Party Politics and the events of the day, No. 1, June 1, 1809-to No. 27, March 15, 1810, Rest Fenner, London, 1818, vol. I, p. 513. 44 Ruskin, 'Modem Painters,' vol. II, part 3, section 2, chapters 1-4, Works, vol. 4, pp. 223-313. It is unlikely that Coleridge was the sole source of Ruskin's interest in the imagination, as the imagination, Engell has demonstrated, was a concept that was 'quintessential to Romanticism' itself. However, the

56 fact that Coleridge, 'states more about the imagination than any other Romantic,' does isolate him as a probable source. Engell, The Creative Imagination, pp. 4 & 328. 45 Ruskin, 'Stones of Venice,' vol I-Ill, 1851-53, Works, vols. 9-11. Susan Gurewitsch, 'Golgonooza on the Grand Canal: Ruskin's Stones of Venice and the Romantic Imagination,' The Arnoldian, Winter 1981, p. 25. 46 Ruskin, 'Modem Painters,' vol. II, 1846, in Works, vol 4, p. 222. 47 Ruskin, Letter to Rev. W.L. Brown, September 28, 1847, Works, vol. 36, p. 80. Ruskin distinction recalls an earlier example given by Coleridge in The Statesman's Manual. Here Coleridge describes what the Imagination perceives in the landscape. He writes: I seem to find myself to behold in the quiet objects on which I am gazing, more than arbitrary illustration, more than mere simile, the work ofmy own Fancy. I feel an awe, as if there were before my eyes the same power as that of reason-the same power in a lower dignity, and therefore a symbol established in the truth of things. I feel it alike, whether I contemplate a single tree or flower, or mediate on vegetation throughout the world, as one of the great organs of the life of nature. Lo!-with the rising sun it commences its outward life and enters into open communion with all the elements, at once assimilating them to itself and to each other. ... Lo!-how upholding the ceaseless plastic motion of the parts in the profoundest rest of the whole it becomes the visible organismus of the entire silent or elementary life of nature. Coleridge, The Stateman 's Manual, London, 1818, Appendix B. 48 Ruskin, 'Modem Painters,' vol. IV, 1856, Works, vol. 6, p. 42. Sprinker has argued that 'the real nature of the imaginative mind' can be compared to the processes of the dream-work described by Freud in the sixth chapter of The Interpretations ofDreams. He has argued that: The images represented in dreams are produced by a collection and aggregation (through displacement and condensation) of impressions, of memory traces, deposited by the primary process of repression in the unconscious. These memory traces remain "as in vast storehouses"until the conditions of sleep make possible their entry, in fictional or phantasmal form, into consciousness. The dream-work brings together widely disparate elements from this 'unindexed and immeasurable mass of treasure' into the unique form of the dream. Without the dream-work (the imagination), the images of the unconscious remain unintelligible, remain in fact inaccessible to consciousness. In the same way, the memories of great artists remain inchoate and randomly dispersed until the imagination 'brooding and wandering.' Brings them together in the form of the work of art. Sprinker, 'Ruskin on the Imagination,' Studies in Romanticism, vol. 18, Spring 1979, p. 138. 49 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 13 50 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 13. 51 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth p. 13. 52 Lethaby, Architecture, Nature and Magic, p. 10. 53 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 18. 54 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 18. 55 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 18. 56 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 18. 57 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 18. 58 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 17. 59 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 18. 60 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 21. Lethaby quoting Herbert Spencer, Sociology, vol. I. 61 The terms subjective and objective are used here as meaning respectively, knowledge which originated from the object world (nature) and the subject (the mind or individual who seeks that knowledge.) 62 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 17. 63 In this respect, Lethaby appears to be working on a similar assumption to that developed by Ruskin who argued that the actions of the subject functioned as an index not of the individual but of a set of fixed and eternal principles. This issue will be considered in more detail in part II of this thesis. 64 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 18.

57 65 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 22 & 20. 66 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 20-23. 67 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, preface. 68 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 12. 69 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p.14 70 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 12. 71 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 18. 72 Lethaby, Architecture Mysticism and Myth, p. 14. 73 Lethaby, Architecture Mysticism and Myth, p. 14. Note, augury is the practice of seeking auspicious signs in the observation of natural phenomena such as the flight of birds, the growth of crops, or the patterns found in the liver of a slaughtered bull. See Joseph Rykwert, On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1981. 74 Lethaby, Architecture Mysticism and Myth, p. 15. 75 Garnham has previously drawn attention to the importance of the imagination to Ruskin's idea of mind. In arguing that Lethaby's conception of architecture in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth as 'pure idea' is indebted to Ruskin's thesis of architecture, he also implies that Lethaby adheres to the romantic understanding of the creative act. I will argue that Lethaby's incorporation of the 'known' into his architectural idea demonstrates a significant departure from both Ruskin's and the romantic's conception of the imagination. Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, pp. 37-38. 76 For Coleridge, the most important aspect of the imagination was that it was active to the highest degree. The creative act called the whole soul of man into activity. As Baker has argued: the creative act, on the contrary, is a godlike-act-of-power and causing-to-be, imagination being the divine potency in man. The creative act by which the poet writes the poem is similar to the creative act by which God ordered the world out of chaos; if the poet's creative act is not a creation ex nihilo, it is a. process of organic becoming through which the materials are transformed into something absolutely new, and also very likely, strange. Baker, The Sacred River, p. 4. 77 Baker attributes the idea of 'active' perception in Coleridge to the influence of the monistic thesis of Plotinus who rejected the Platonic duality of Being and Becoming or Ideal and Real by arguing that the real or object worlds are simply an extension or repetitions of the ideal. Coleridge, Biographia Litereria, vol. I, p. 202. Baker, The Sacred River, pp. 118-119. M.H. Abrams develops a similar argument of the unity of subject and object within the creative act in his The Mirror and the Lamp. Abrams has argued the shift from neo-classical theories of mimesis to Romantic 'expressive' theories, which established the creative act as a welling up of emotions from the poet's soul, was symptomatic of a declining faith in the harmony of nature and mind. To recover this harmony, Abrams has argued, the romantic elevated the poetic activity to a height rivalling that of the creator: The key event in this development was the replacement of a metaphor of the poem as imitation, 'a mirror of nature,' by the poem as heterocosm, 'a second nature,' created by the poet in an act analogous to God's creation of the world.' M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, Oxford University Press, London, 1953, p. 272. 78 Coleridge in the tenth chapter of Biographia Literaria described this ability of the imagination as 'Esemplastic.' Noting that esemplastic was a word he borrowed from the Greek 'to shape,' Coleridge explained that it referred to the imagination's ability to 'shape into one, having to convey a new sense.' He felt such a term was necessary as 'it would aid the recollection of my meaning and prevent it being confounded with the usual import of the word imagination.' Biographia Literaria, vol. I, p. 86. 79 Engell, The Creative Imagination, p. 333. 80 Not only did the subject subsume the object it can also be argued that Imagination subsumed the role of Fancy within the creative work. Thus while Coleridge argued that the poet relied on both Fancy and Imagination when inventing a poem, and that the poet should seek a balance of these two faculties, (Coleridge, Biographia Literari, vol I, p. 194) the 'active' and 'transformative' powers of the Imagination negated the contribution of, and representation of Fancy. In Coleridge's system, the Imagination is ultimately the only faculty which contributed to the creative process. 81 Paul de Man, 'The Rhetoric of Temporality,' in Interpretation: Theory and Practice, Charles S. Singleton (ed), John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1969, p. 180. 82 Sprinker, 'Ruskin on the Imagination,' pp. 116-7.

58 83 This phenomenon in Coleridge can be attributed to the influence of Neoplatonic thought on his thinking. Baker has argued that the 'the deepest source of a metaphysical kind' evident in Coleridge 'is a debt to antiquity, [and] in particular to Plotinus' (Baker, The Sacred River, pp. 114, 118-9) A central tenet of the ancient doctrine of Plotinus was the monistic belief that Being (the ideal world of Forms) and Becoming (the corporeal world of sensory phenomena) were one and the same. As R. Harris in his introduction to 'Neoplatonism' in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, has explained: In his metaphysics Plotinus sets forth a vision of the logical structure of all being and sees two movements running throughout the whole of nature, namely the coming-out of all things from their original unitary source, and their subsequent return back to that source. He attempted to answer the primary question of Greek metaphysics, 'how does the one become the many?' by positing an Ultimate Being, the One, as supernatural, incorporeal, self caused, absolutely free and absolutely good. Since it is absolutely good it necessarily extends its goodness and power into all lower beings. Without any loss of any of its own essence, it projects itself into lower stages of itself to form lower and weaker beings. The first stage of this projection is Nous or Mind, and the second is Psykhe or soul, which in tum is a projection of the Nous.(R. Baine Harris, 'Neoplatonism,' The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Ted Honderich (ed), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, p. 613. Thus, for Plotinus, the object revealed the subject or 'One.' As it functioned as a weaker manifestation of the ideal it also acted as a representation of the ideal. The reconciliation of the ideal and real, the subject and object-being or becoming-simply revealed the ideal. As Coleridge was himself to point out, 'the identity of thesis and anthesis is the substance of all being.' Coleridge, 'The Friend', in The Complete Works ofSamuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. II, p. 91n. 84 Sprinker, 'Ruskin on the Imagination,' p. 139. In this respect, Ruskin's thesis of the imagination has been labelled Victorian as opposed to Romantic. 85 Ruskin, 'The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism,' 1878, Works, vol. 34, pp. 163-4. 86 While Coleridge's system of the imagination can be described as being Neoplatonic (as the object world is reduced to a manifestation of the perceiving subject) Ruskin's adherence to a strict dualism, in which the physical world of the object remains isolated from the ideal world of the subject, is more akin to the dualism of Plato's cosmos. It can also be argued, that while Coleridge strove for a balance of Fancy and Imagination within the inventive act (yet fails to achieve it) Ruskin's dualism reinforces the association between 'art' and 'imagination' and successfully removes all ambiguity. 87Lethaby's essays which pre-date Architecture, Mysticism and Myth demonstrate his knowledge of Ruskin. This relationship will be considered in more detail in part II of the thesis. Lethaby's writings and notebooks also indicate that he was familiar with Coleridge's ideas on the imagination. In his 1890 essay, 'Of the "Motive" in Architectural Design,' he directly cites Coleridge noting that, You must (to quote Coleridge) have a lantern in your hand to give light, otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, for you cannot find them, and if you could, you could not arrange them. It is the "principle of selection," this expression of our instinct for order and beauty, life, and right, which no formula will make clear-but once seen, we feel there is a common instinct for its enjoyment, and call it "art" or "style"-it is this alone which expressed in building, is Architecture. (Lethaby, 'Of the "Motive in Architectural Design,' p. 24) Abrams has argued that the term lamp or lantern in Romantic literature referred to the perceived shift in romantic theories of creation from mimesis, where the artist mirrored what "he" saw around him, to the lamp, where the artist becomes the source or originator of form. M.H. Abrams The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, Oxford University Press, London, 1953. 88 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 14. 89 William Lethaby, 'What shall we call beautiful? A practical view of Aesthetics,' Hibbert Journal, April 1918 reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 148. 90 While Coleridge's system can be described as Neoplatonic, and Ruskin's can be aligned with Plato's division of the cosmos into the real and the ideal, Lethaby's thesis in which a balance of the 'known' and the 'imagined' is sought can be aligned with the Platonic principle of 'Chora.' Chora is a central yet frequently overlooked tenet of Plato's thesis on the nature of reality. In the Timeaus, Plato's philosophical exegesis on the structure of the universe, Chara is presented as the 'third' and final state necessary to an understanding of human affairs. Such a reading of Plato is in opposition to the

59 conventional division of his thesis into a binary theory of existence based on the dichotomy of mind (ideal forms) and body (the imperfect forms of sensible reality. [Hans-George Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, tr. N. Walter, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, & Eric Voeglin, Plato and Aristotle, Louisanna State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA, I 957.] The cosmos, Plato argued, is made up of three components. The first, he suggested, was 'the unchanging form, uncreated and indestructible,' a form that is 'imperceptible to sight or the other senses'. It suggested the 'object of thought' and the representation of Being. (Plato, Timaeus and Critias, translated by H. D. P. Lee, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1965, pp.70-71.) The second component, which constitutes Plato's reading ofreality, is the material compliment of the first. It 'bears the same name as form and resembles it' but 'is sensible' in that it 'has come into existence ... and is apprehended [only] by opinion with the aid of sensation.' (Plato, Timaeus and Critias, pp. 70-1.) This second state, articulates Plato's understanding of 'becoming.' The third and final state, Chora, refers to the conceptual interval or space that exists between Plato's first and second principles. It is, explained Plato: eternal and indestructible ... [and] provides a position for everything that comes to be .... [It] is apprehended without the senses by a spurious kind of reasoning and so is hard to believe in­ we look at it indeed in a kind of a dream and say that everything that exists must be somewhere and occupy some space, and that what is nowhere in heaven or earth is nothing at all. Plato labelled this principle, Chora. (Plato, Timaeus and Critias, pp. 70-1.) In advocating a balance of the known and the imagined, Lethaby's 'temple idea' evokes this third Platonic principle. 91 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 92 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, preface. 93 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16.

60 Chapter 2

Victorian mythography: Seeking a 'symbolism comprehensible to the great majority of spectators.'

Studies m Victorian mythography presented the mind responsible for ancient myth as possessing cognitive strategies and employing modes of representation which, in stark contrast to modem theories of cognition and representation, failed to discriminate between the object world and the inner resources of the subject.

The belief that architecture must fuse the ideas and perceptual strategies of multiple disciplines or world-views, and in particular those of 'art' and 'science,' was an enduring theme in Lethaby's writings. 1 Victorian readings of 'myth' demonstrated that such a fusion was not only possible, but possessed a number of cognitive and perceptual advantages. Foremost amongst these was the belief that the language of myth, with its fusion of perceptual strategies and modes of intellection, possessed a clarity and efficiency-the ability to speak in multiple

'tongues' and communicate with both 'man' and 'child'-which had been lost in modem language.2 In this debate Lethaby discovered a conception of design which guaranteed a 'symbolism, immediately, comprehensible to the great majority of spectators,' a quality which he identified in the introduction of

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth as being a necessary pre-requisite for the

production of a modem architecture, that would once again, 'excite an interest,

both real and general. ' 3 It is here that we discover the significance of myth in

Lethaby's idea of architecture.

61 2.1: The ambivalence of Victorian mythography.

A key attribute of the study of myth by Victorian mythographers was its development of a non-polemic approach. The methodologies which informed

Victorian mythography are well documented and broadly acknowledged. James

Kissane in his 'Victorian Mythology' (1962) has demonstrated that the methodologies adopted by the Victorian scholar in the study of myth were diverse and multiple.4 Drawing attention to Henry Gay Hewlett's 'The Rationale of

Mythology' (1877),5 Kissane identified six schools of thought at work m

Victorian studies of myth: the historical theory or euhemerism, the physical theory, the poetic theory, the allegorical theory, the etymological theory, and the aetiological theory or myths formed in explanation of primarily natural phenomena.6 This diversity of interpretative styles, Kissane has argued, demonstrates the 'period's range of views' and suggests something of its

'eclecticism, in that each method [was] granted some measure of validity.'

However, and more significantly, it also demonstrates an unusual level of flexibility that resulted, 'apart from a few partisan documents,' in studies that were defined by an 'open-minded inclusiveness rather than dogm~tism.'7

The lack of dogmatism evident in Victorian mythography is presented by Janet

Burstein in 'Victorian Mythography and the Progress of the Intellect' (1975) as being in stark contrast to earlier, eighteenth century studies of myth. 8 Drawing on

Frank. E. Manuel's study The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (1967),

Burstein demonstrates that 'two different ways of conceiving and evaluating

mythic and contemporary modes of thought' dominated eighteenth century

studies.9 The first, Burstein argued, is to be found in the writings of the rationalist

62 thinkers such as David Hume (1711-76). Hume, Burstein notes, promotes a thesis of mental progress that 'derogated the low and disgusting products of the fear-ridden, primitive, religious mind, and that praised the rationality and sense of enlightened eighteenth-century thought.' 10 A defining attribute of this approach,

Burstein argued, was the belief that the early stages of thought 'retained no value for the mature mind' and 'thus the insights of both myth and metaphysics were assumed to be not only different from, but also inferior to judgements based on empirical, scientific observation.' 11 However, this view of myth was not universally accepted and was challenged, Burstein observed, by such scholars as

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). In direct contrast to Hume, Vico introduced a relativistic perspective into the notion of mental progress by proposing the idea of a cyclic cultural-historical progression. For Vico, different stages possessed different, but often enduring values. Later in the century, the cyclic hypothesis was expanded by Herder (1744-1803) and the German Romantics. Insisting that primitive modes of perception, thought, and language had quickened human awareness of both sensual and spiritual experience in the world, Herder and his colleagues advocated a return to such mental practices. 12 A central theme for such writers was the assumption that the myths of the ancient world possessed qualities that had been lost to contemporary man; qualities that he should seek to regain.

For such individuals the 'childhood' eras of man were preferable to the 'manhood

periods, the ages of imagination to those of reason.' In this system, progress, as

Manuel has argued, was a 'restoration of the primitive sensibility and the poetic

forms of expression which had existed before metaphysical abstractions had dried

up the imagination ofman.' 13

63 The dual approach to myth evident in eighteenth century studies has been described by Manuel as a 'battle' between 'those who saw in the primitive the spontaneous and the generative and those who resolutely banished the mythic from human consciousness forever,' and as having little to offer the more evolved, modem mind. 14 Burstein, in tum, has argued that the 'lines of "battle" that were drawn in the eighteenth century' were 'altered to a large extent by insights into both mythic and modem modes of thought that were developed during the

Victorian period.' 15 The single most important contribution of this debate,

Burstein has demonstrated, was the recognition that the mythic mind could not be limited to 'simple expressions' but possessed a complexity that was equal to if not more sophisticated than nineteenth century conceptions of mind and systems of representation. 16 Asserting that myths were not simple expressions of 'faith' and

'feelings'-as had their eighteenth century predecessors-the mythographer of the nineteenth century recognised in the mythic mind as wide a range of mental functions as the modem mind possessed. 17 Arguing in 'The Origin and

Interpretation of Myths' (1887), that ancient myth was endowed with the 'gift of tongues,' the mythographer W. A. Gill expressed the general awareness that myth spoke not one but many languages, and thus articulated truths proper to poetry, history, natural science, moral philosophy, and religion. 18 As K.O Muller asserted

somewhat earlier in his influential study, Introduction to the Study of Mythology

(1825), there was 'no ground whatever for excluding ... any class of thoughts and

ideas from the mythic representation.' 19

The significance of the .Victorian debate on myth, Burstein has claimed, is to be

found in its 'ambivalence;' the reading of the mythic mind as a mode of

64 intellection that was capable of uniting what the modem mind perceived to be separate. Existing within a bifurcated reality where self and nature were perceived as distinct and autonomous entities, the Victorian mythographer perceived myth as an 'earlier mode of cognition in which the worlds of nature and self were not separated but single, not divided but whole. ' 2° For many, the unique characteristics of the mythic mind negated the distinction of objective and subjective phenomena, which since Descarte, had been taken as a 'given' of human experience.21 It offered a convenient vehicle for reuniting the disjunction between the outer and objective world of nature and the shadowy inner world of the self and society. Such a position emerged strongly in the writings of the period and is one that endured over the century. 'The child and the savage', Archibald

Sayce argued in his essay The Principles of Comparative Philology (1983 ), were alike in that they 'merged the object and the subject into one and could draw no distinction between them... . ' Thus the 'creations of the imagination were regarded as being as much realities as events and objects of every day life. ' 22

Sayce was not alone in his conviction. Muller argued that in myth 'one could witness the union and reciprocal fusion of the real and the ideal element. ' 23 Robert

Mackay, on the other hand, in The Progress of the Intellect (1850), stated that

'mythic man perceived the objective in the subjective' and 'expressed the general

aspect of the eternal world through internal thought. ' 24 Finally, the poet Walter

Pater, in Greek Studies ( 1895), concluded that the true value of the mythic mind

was that it was possessed of a 'unifying power' that brought together things which

the modem mind had perceived as being 'naturally assunder. ' 25

65 2.2: The density of the mythic symbol.

The nineteenth century scholar often saw the alternative mode of knowing indicated by myth as lacking the 'precision and objectivity of modem modes of thought. ' 26 However, as Burstein has argued, the mythographer also saw myth as

'possessing certain perceptual virtues that had declined in the course of evolution. ' 27 Foremost amongst these was the belief that myth presented a way of knowing and speaking that was able to simultaneously represent in a single sign, be it verbal or visual, 'all aspects of experience.' Arguing that the modem disciplines of poetry and science accommodated and gave representation to subjective and objective perceptions respectively, the Victorian mythographer perceived the mythic symbol as uniting what modem disciplines had divided and could only speak of in fragments. Myth, Burstein demonstrates, was seen to harmoniously integrate 'facts of feeling' with 'more objective perceptions.'28

The unique density of the mythic symbol and its ability to give representation to multiple idea types through a single sign figured strongly in John Ruskin's nineteenth century discussions of myth. As both Kissane and Burstein have argued, Ruskin presented myth as possessing multiple meanings: a 'physical meaning' that originated in the direct observation of the material world, and a

spiritual or moral meaning, one grounded in the universal imaginings of man. 29

'Every heathen conception of the deity,' Ruskin maintained in 1866 can be seen

as possessing 'three distinct characters.'

I: It has a physical character. It represents some of the great powers or

objects of nature-sun, moon, or heaven, or the winds, or the sea. And

fables first related about each deity represent, figuratively, the action of the

66 natural power which it represents; such as the rising of the sun and the

setting of the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on.

II: It has an ethical character, and represents, in its history, the moral

dealings _of God with men. Thus Apollo is first, physically, the sun

contending with darkness; but morally, the power of the divine life

contending with corruption. Athena is physically the air; morally the

breathing of the divine spirit of wisdom. Neptune is physically, the sea;

morally the supreme power of agitating passion; and so on.

III: It has, at last, a personal character; and is realised in the minds of its

worshippers as a living spirit, with whom men may speak face to face, as a

man speaks to his friend. 30

The complex character of the mythic symbol detected by Ruskin was seen by

Victorian mythographers to be a quality that had been lost to modem language.

For many, this loss was to the benefit of the progress of rational thought.

'Reason', Mackay observed 'is a slow growth and its healthy development ... is often impeded or prevented by ... feelings and the imagination. ' 31 Others, however,

including Ruskin, lamented this loss. In the Queen of Air, Ruskin explained that

his attempts to describe Athena's helmet were frustrated by the inability of

modem 'generalisations' to encompass the full range of meaning that was

expressed concretely, clearly and economically by a single mythic image. 'I am

compelled,' Ruskin admitted, 'for clearness sake, to mark only one meaning at a

time. Athena's helmet is sometimes a mask-sometimes a sign of anger-

67 sometimes a sign of the highest light of aether; but I cannot speak of all this at once. ' 32 For Ruskin, the economy and efficiency of the mythic symbol was a loss that nineteenth century culture should regret. 33

Ruskin's lament for the lost clarity and economy of the mythic sign was a common theme in post-Enlightenment theories of language, one that has it origins in John Locke's denunciation of the natural theory of language in An Essay

Concerning Human Understanding (I 690). Arguing that words acted as arbitrary signs of subjective ideas which preceded communication, Locke attacked the conventional and Christian view that language was natural and divine; a nomenclature or inventory of creation divinely established by God and first given to men in the original state of Edenic innocence. Words, Locke argued,

come to be made use of by Men as the signs of their Ideas; not by any

natural connexion, that there is between particular articulate Sounds and

certain ideas for then there would be one language amongst all Men; but

by a voluntary Imposition, whereby such a Word is arbitrarily the Mark of

such an Idea. The use of words is to be sensible Marks of Ideas; and the

Ideas they stand for, are there proper and immediate Signification. 34

With the recognition that words functioned as 'arbitrary' signs came the

acceptance that language was subjective, highly personal, and at risk of slipping

into a private code, incapable of effectively conveying knowledge and ideas.

Words, Locke insisted, are at once an indispensable yet inherently imperfect

means of communication. A 'mistaken trust in words', and the belief that 'words

stand also for the reality of Things', had and would continue to 'impede' the path

to 'truth.'35 The sole mechanism in Locke's system that could prevent language

68 from slipping into pure 'subjectivity' was a continuous process of social clarification and rectification. This could be achieved only when an individual's grasp of the correspondence between idea and word and between idea and thing was compared and tested against that of other individuals. An element of objectivity or clarity in the communication process could only be guaranteed through the systematic analysis of correspondence among terms, ideas, and

. 36 t hmgs.

However, Locke placed little confidence in common speech as a context in which clarification or rectification could take place. In the last two chapters of Book III he denounced the figurative language of every day speech and poetry as 'cheat words.' 'All the artificial and figurative application of Words Eloquence bath invented,' he argued, 'are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong Ideas, move the

Passions, and thereby mislead the Judgement. ' 37 The common human capacity for communicating in language could only be realised in the objective language of philosophy. Clarity in human communication, he concluded, could only be achieved in the language of grown, educated and socialised men. 38

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the 'sad incompetence of human speech' emerged as a central concern in the work of the English romantic poets, including William Wordsworth (1770-1850). 39 Like Locke before him,

Wordsworth acknowledged the arbitrary nature of language was 'viciously

evident in what is usually called poetic diction' or 'capricious habits of

expression.'40 However, unlike Locke, Wordsworth argued that clarity in

language could only be restored if modem man found a way to re-establish the

69 natural status of language; that words may be once more naturally rather than arbitrarily related to the ideas they represented.41 William Keach in Romanticism and Language (1993) has argued that Wordsworth sought to achieve this by grounding his poetry in emotive and expressive language. 'All good poetry,'

Wordsworth claimed, takes its origin in 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. ' 42 Genuine or spontaneous feeling, he assumed, could transcend the subjectivity of the word. Thus the arbitrary nature of language could be overcome by basing poetry on 'a selection really used by men.'43 'Men' from 'humble and rustic life,' Wordsworth observed, 'speak a plainer and more emphatic language.'

Arguing that the 'passions' of simple men are 'incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of Nature,' he concluded that they 'communicate ... hourly ... with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived. ' 44

In combination, Wordsworth's and Locke's propositions represent two potential solutions to the perceived loss of clarity in modem language. Arguing that language is essentially arbitrary, Locke asserts that true clarity is only to be found in the civilised discourse of the educated, and specifically philosophical men.

Wordsworth, assuming that language is essentially natural and instinctual, in tum,

argues that clarity can only be found in the 'spontaneous' discourses of those

closest to the natural state, such as the 'common man' or child.

A third solution to the problem of clarity emerged from the Victorian studies of

myth, and in particular in the writings of the Oxford scholar, Friederich Max

Millier (1823-1900). Stephen Connor in his recent essay, 'Myth and Meta-myth in

Max Muller and Walter Pater' (1989), has argued that Muller's studies on myth

70 challenged nineteenth century assumptions on language. 45 Developing a position which rejected both the romantic thesis that language and thought are identical, and thus natural (Wordsworth), and the empirical assumption that language and thought are different, and thus arbitrarily related (Locke), Muller asserted language was something different from and additional to thought; a 'vague and vast something already existing in the mind ... yet more complex than a simple conception fully formed and present to the mind. ' 46 What wants expression,

Muller explained in his Introduction to the Science ofReligion ( 1973), is,

a feeling of incompleteness, of weakness ... a sigh, a yearning, a call for

something that should not come and go like everything else, that should be

before and after and forever, that should hold and support everything, that

should make man feel at home in this strange land. 47

Representation, language, metaphor, and metonymy, for Muller, are all near misses; they are approximations, translations, repetitions rather than the 'full

expressions' of that within the mind which wants expression. The 'imperfect' and

'corrupted' language of mythology, Muller claimed, best represented this

language of approximation as it embodied the process of falling short and the

inability to gain full expression through language. Primitive man of the

mythopoeic period, Muller argued, was possessed of certain notions. He looks for

some means of embodying these ideas but is unable to express his feelings

accurately. The results, he concluded, were the stories and legends of primitive

myth.48

Muller's thesis was significant for two reasons. First, his analysis demonstrated to

the nineteenth century reader that language was neither 'real' nor 'ideal', neither

71 the product of society nor the outcome of a pre-established order (be it a transcendental mind or nature itself) but something else. Thus he, like other

Victorian mythographers, identified myth as embodying a new set of values; a paradigm that rejected the conventions of the mainstream ideologies of realism and idealism. Secondly, his understanding of myth pointed to a new possibility of clarity in the human act of communication. In myth, Muller argued, language gained a new element of efficiency and economy. This clarity was achieved, by the facility of myth to represent the duality of language and thus avoid the

'struggle' between the 'physical' and the 'spiritual' common to modem discourses.49 Noting that the languages of the ancient world were 'still in a chrysalis stage' that was 'half material and half spiritual,' Muller argued that mythic language was able to 'rise and fall in its character' so that it could accommodate the 'varying capacities of [its] speakers and ... hearers.'50 The language of myth, Muller tells us, uniquely 'accommodates itself on the one side to the capacity of children, and ... on the other ... [it] satisfies the requirements of men. ' 51 For Muller, it was this dialectical interaction and oscillation between the two poles of the spiritual and material which ensured the vital and dynamic quality of myth and religion. It also ensured that the language of myth and religion, in direct contrast to that of poetry and philosophy, remained comprehensible to all.

As the child on growing up to manhood has to unlearn the language of the

nursery, its religion, too, has to be translated from the feminine into a more

masculine dialect. This does not take place without a struggle, and it is this

constantly recurring struggle, this inextinguishable desire to recover itself,

which keeps religion from utter stagnation. From first to last religion is

72 oscillating between two opposite poles, and it is only if the attraction of

one of the two poles becomes too strong, that the healthy movement

ceases, and stagnation and decay set in. If religion cannot accommodate

itself on the one side to the capacity of children, or if on the other side it

fails to satisfy the requirements of men, it has lost its vitality, and it

becomes either mere superstition or mere philosophy. 52

2.3: The contribution of myth to Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth.

The debate over clarity in modem language did interest Lethaby and is one that he saw as having applications to modem architecture. Observing that 'style' is simply a 'language'53 and that architecture is 'one vast symbolism,'54 Lethaby also argued that the fine arts, including architecture, were bound by the same conventions and limitations that were evident in modem language. Asserting that

'Fine art equals free art,' he also claimed that 'it is only as free as language,' and thus 'it is not free to be nonsensical or to spread disease. ' 55 Architecture, he stated,

'must be so one can read the language;' it must be 'one that cannot lie. ' 56 As he indicated somewhat earlier in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, it must possess a symbolism which is 'comprehensible to the great majority of spectators. ' 57

Lethaby discovered the key to this comprehensible symbolism, I believe, not in a romantic or empirical reading of language, but in the Victorian analysis of myth.

Arguing that 'mysticism' has little to do with his text, Lethaby saw 'myth' as the

principle force informing Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. 58 The task of

determining the objectives underlying Lethaby's interest in myth and its

applications to architecture is complicated by the multiplicity of sources employed

73 by Lethaby.59 This eclecticism has resulted in readings that detect contradictory themes and intentions in Lethaby's use of myth. Julian Holder has stated that

Lethaby's use of myth was inspired by Ruskin, who rejecting the dogmatism and authority of Christianity, turned to Greek myth in his search for absolute moral values.60 Trevor Garnham has developed a similar thesis. Arguing that the 'reality of a particular building' was 'fused with the form in which it was handed down in mythology, in much the same way as ... historical figures absorbed into mythology lose their personal and distinguishing features' and are 'endowed instead with the archetypal characteristics of a mythical figure or hero,' Garnham concluded that

Lethaby's allusion to myth allowed him to stress the ideal nature of form. 61

However, while both Garnham and Holder interpret Lethaby's use of myth as a reference to his belief in an absolute and ideal set of design principles, they also claim that the method he adopted to demonstrate this had more in common with the relative objectives of nineteenth century social science, anthropology and ethnography, particularly as demonstrated in the work of Herbert Spencer and

James Frazer.62 For the present day reader, this dual use of myth reveals the central contradiction of the text. However, for the Victorian mythographer who

developed a flexible, inclusive, and somewhat eclectic approach to the study of

myth, such contradictions were readily accepted as demonstrating the unique

capacity of the mythic mind; a capacity which distinguished mythic modes of

intellection from modem cognitive strategies and one which was seen to possess

certain perceptual advantages, including an increased efficiency in expression. 63

Two of the 'virtues' the Victorians detected in myth were of interest to Lethaby.

Presenting myth as able to fuse multiple idea types-which the modem mind had

74 come to associate with the different disciplines of history, theology, philosophy, and natural science-the Victorian reading of myth offered Lethaby an appropriate paradigm for an architecture that could accommodate the concerns of multiple disciplines. In 'The Architecture of Adventure' (1910), Lethaby asserted that architecture must combine 'two realities; the reality of the natural necessity and common experience with the reality of the philosopher;' so that 'once again, science' may be 'reconciled with art. ' 64 To present this synthesis under the title of the 'Architecture of Adventure,' Lethaby evoked an early comment by the nineteenth century mythographer George Grote. In The History of Greece (1846),

Grote argued it was the ability of myth to fuse 'positive history ... philosophy, dogmatic theology and professed romance' as well as its capacity to 'impress moral lessons, awaken patriotic sympathies, and exhibit in detail the shadowy but anxious presentiments of the vulgar as to the agency of the gods,' that enabled it to 'satisfy the craving for adventure and appetite for the marvellous which ha[ d] in modern times become the province of fiction proper. ' 65 It was this 'craving for adventure and appetite for the marvellous,' that Lethaby sought to reintroduce to architecture. Myth, and the perceptual strategies the Victorian scholar detected in it, indicated a way of developing a philosophy of architecture that would once again, 'excite and interest, both real and general. ' 66 However, Lethaby recognised that an architecture that could 'excite an interest, both real and general' must also possess a 'symbolism comprehensible to the great majority of spectators. ' 67 Once

again, Victorian theories of myth, in particular those of Ruskin and Muller,

pointed the way to a solution.

75 The Victorian conception of the mythic symbol as representing simultaneously all aspects of experience in a single sign enabled it, as Muller argued, to accommodate itself to 'the capacity of children' and 'the requirements of men. ' 68

It could achieve this, Muller claimed, by 'risi~g and falling in its character according to the varying capacities of [its] speakers and ... hearers.'69 For Muller, the quality that enabled the mythic symbol to achieve this was its ability to simultaneously represent the 'physical' and 'spiritual.' Ruskin, influenced by

Muller's studies, arrived at a similar conclusion, noting that the mythic symbol simultaneously embraced the physical, moral and personal, and thus possessed an element of economy that was absent in the modem discourses of science or poetry.70 Lethaby's division of nature and architecture into the 'known' and

'imagined' recalls the earlier work of Muller and Ruskin. Like Ruskin's idea of the 'physical' or 'real,' Lethaby's 'known' fact is one that is extracted from the observation of natural phenomena. In imitating the physical or the known, the temple-like Ruskin's Greek deity-was endowed with the qualities of its archetype. 'Its place was exactly below the celestial prototype; like that it was sacred, like that strong, its foundations could not be moved, if they placed foursquare to the walls of the firmament... .'71 Lethaby's conception of the

'imagined,' on the other hand, parallels Ruskin's 'moral' or 'symbolic,' in that it represented ideas or concepts that had their origins in the inner resources of man;

be they rational or imaginative.72 Thus Lethaby, in a manner that recalls both

Ruskin's and Muller's analysis of the mythic symbol, presented the mythical

construct of the 'temple idea' as an architectural sign that simultaneously

represented objective and subjective impressions; what Ruskin had described as

the 'physical' and 'moral,' and Muller the 'material' and 'spiritual.' 73 Embracing

76 these dual functions, we can only assume that Lethaby's intention was to argue that the systems of representation employed by the architect must, like those of ancient myth, accommodate the duality of language-its spiritual and material manifestations-so that it too could 'rise and fall' according to the 'varying capacities of its speakers and hearers,' and thus address itself on 'the one side to the capacity of children, and on the other [to] the requirements of men.'74 Only then would it possess a 'symbolism' that was 'comprehensible to all.' 75

However, while Lethaby's idea of the 'known' and the 'imagined' can be compared to Muller's 'material and spiritual' and Ruskin's 'physical' and 'moral,'

Lethaby's scheme differs from Ruskin's in one subtle but significant way.

Lethaby rejected Ruskin's tripartite system of myth by expelling his category of the personal. Noting that the process of personification carried out by the Greeks

'veiled' the physical attributes of myth-'the sky, the sun, the sea'-Lethaby focused his analysis on the pre-Greek cosmologies of 'Chaldea, Egypt and

India.' 76 While Ruskin presented the physical, moral and personal as being accumulative, the ultimate focus of Ruskin's tripartite division of myth was to draw attention to the primacy it gave to subjective impressions; to the moral and personal. The physical character of myth, was for Ruskin, secondary. Dinah Birch has argued that, 'in myth, as in nature and in art, [Ruskin's] concern is to define a

hidden moral text.' Ruskin maintained that 'in the Greek mind ... the natural

meaning of the legend was a completely subordinate one. 77 The moral

significance of it lay far deeper.' 78 For Ruskin, the image of the setting sun in

ancient myth does not represent the 'tragedy of nature.' As a natural and moral

phenomenon, it suggests the brightness of hope, 'a light in the midst of the

77 cloud.' 79 The physical character of myth and the material qualities of nature which it documented, had for Ruskin, no inherent value outside of its ability to confirm what he had long believed: that Nature was the material manifestation of the divine and that the universe was essentially moral. 80 In reducing Ruskin's tripartite analysis of myth into a dual system of the 'known' and 'imagined,'

Lethaby was able to avoid the 'veiling' of the physical character evident in

Ruskin's system and thus temper his interest in the subjective with an equally valid focus on the objective.

78 1 Lethaby, 'Housing and Furnishing,' Athenaeum, May, 1920, reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, Collected Essays on Art and Labour, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1922, pp. 37- 38; 'Education of the Architect,' Informal conference, Royal Institute of British Architects, May 1917, reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 123; 'Architecture of Adventure,' Royal Institute of British Architects, April 1910, reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, pp 76-8, 90, 94; 'What Shall we call Beautiful? A Practical View to Aesthetics,' Hibbert Journal, April 1918, reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 157; 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation,' London Mercury, 1920, reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, pp. 8-9. A detailed understanding of Lethaby's conception of art and science is given in chapter 5. 2 W.A. Gill, 'The Origin and Interpretation of Myths,' MacMillan's Magazine, LVI, 1887, p. 121. Fredrich Max Muller, Introduction to the Science ofReligion, London, 1873, p. 279. 3 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 4 James Kissane, 'Victorian Mythology,' Victorian Studies, vol. 6, no.I, 1962, p. 7. 5 Henry Gay Hewlett, 'The Rationale of Mythology,' Cornhill Magazine, vol. 35, 1877, pp. 407- 423. 6 Kissane, 'Victorian Mythology,' p. 7. 7 Kissane, 'Victorian Mythology,' p. 7. 8 Janet Burstein, ' Victorian Mythography and the Progress of the Intellect,' Victorian Studies, vol. 25,no.3, 1975,pp.309-324. 9 Frank. E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods, Atheneum, New York, 1967; Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 311. 10 Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 311. 11 Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 311. Manuel has argued that this attitude to myth can also be detected in the 'work of "progressist" historians like Turgot and Condorcet whose idea of perfectibility always took for granted the notion of the benighted primitive.' The 'rational' orientation of these eighteenth century writers can be extended to include Auguste Comte, as his doctrine of mental progress preserved a rational bias by assuming that positivistic, scientific thought was the chief goal of mental development. For Comte, as for the eighteenth century progressists, stages in the progress of thought were seen as fixed points in an ascending order of progression. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods, p. 208. 12 Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 311-12. 13 Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods, pp. 288-89. 14 Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods, p. 308. Burstein has argued this distinction demonstrates the division of 'myth' and 'reason.' The implication of this division is that 'myth' is seen as being untrue, a product of the imagination, and thus of the subject or self, while 'reason' implies a knowledge extracted from outside the self, and thus possessing a greater validity or element of truth. Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 313. 15 Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 313. 16 Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 313. 17 George Grote, History of Greece, Harper and Bros, New York, 1949, (1846), vol. I, p. 43. 18 W.A.Gill, 'The Origin and Interpretation of Myths,' Macmillan's Mazazine, vol. LVI, 1887, p. 121. 19 Karl Otfried Muller, Introduction to the Scientific Study of Mythology, trans. John Leitch, Longman, Brown, Green and Longman's, 1844 (1825), p. 19. Lethaby cites Muller in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 131, 157. 20 Burtein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 315. 21 Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method ofRightly Conducting Reason and Reaching the Truth in the Sciences (1637) & Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Elizabeth . S. Haldane & G.R.T. Ross (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973. 22 A. Sayce, The Principles of Comparative Philology, Charles Scribne's & Sons, 1893, p. 313. Lethaby reference to Sayce's 'Hibbert Lectures' in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth indicates that he was familiar with such ideas. Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 78. 23 Karl. Ottfried Millier, Introduction to the Scientific Study ofMythology, p. 49. 24 Robert Mackay, The Progress of the Intellect, as Exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews, John Chapman, London, 1850, vol. I, p. 215.

79 25 Walter Pater, Greek Studies, Macmillan, London, 1895, pp. 147, 100. Greek Studies was published after Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. However, Pater's thesis was based on earlier studies on myth by John Ruskin. This is discussed in more detail later in this chapter. 26 George Grote argued in 'Grecian Legends and early history,' (1846) that the mode of cognition demonstrated by the mythic mind was of the past and could not be retrieved. He claimed that advances made in the positivist sciences amply compensated for the modem loss of the poetic imagination. George Grote, 'Grecian Legends and Early History,' Westminster Review, vol. 49, 1846, p. 174. 27 Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,'p. 317. 28 Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 322. 29 Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography, 'p. 321. Kissane, 'Victorian Mythology,' p. 17. 30 Ruskin, 'The Crystal Rest,' 1866, Ruskin, Works, vol. 18, pp. 347-8. The unique density of the mythic symbol was a quality the poet Walter Pater also acknowledged. Drawing on the earlier work of Ruskin, Pater in Greek Studies (1895) argued that the mythic symbol incorporated, within the single sign, multiple levels of meaning. He labelled these the 'instinctive' or 'mystical', the 'poetic,' and the 'ethical.' In Pater's scheme, like Ruskin's before him, the 'mystical' represented man's observations of the natural world, the poetic indicated the poet's imaginative abilities, and the ethical referred to some higher moral or spiritual truth. There is first its half-conscious, instinctive, or mystical phase, which under the form of an unwritten legend, living from mouth to mouth, and with details changing as it passes from place to place, there lie certain primitive impressions of the phenomena of the natural world. We may trace it next in its conscious, poetic, or literary, phase, in which the poets become the depositaries of the vague instinctive product of the popular imagination, and handle it with a purely literary interest, fixing its outlines, and simplifying or developing its situations. Thirdly, the myth passes into the ethical phase, in which the persons and the incidents of the poetical narrative are realised as abstract symbols, intensely characteristic examples, of moral or spiritual conditions. Pater, Greek Studies. p. 90. Ruskin's influence on Pater's conception of myth is discussed by Steven Connor, 'Myth and Meta-myth in Max Muller and Walter Pater', in The Sun is God: Painting, Literature and Mythology in the Nineteenth Century, J.B.Bullen (ed), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989, p. 208. Pater's tripartite division of the mythic sign is also considered by Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 320. 31 Mackay, The Progress of the Intellect, vol. I, p. 3. 32 Ruskin, 'The Queen of Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm,' 1869, Works, vol. 19, p. 307n. 33Ruskin's belief that contemporary systems of representation divided what the mythic image reconciled was not only limited to his discussions of poetry, but is also found in his criticism of contemporary art. In his 1870 lecture on 'The Relation of Art to Religion', Ruskin identified two different systems of representation as dominating nineteenth century art. He labelled these the 'realistic' and 'symbolic,' suggesting that they carried out 'two distinct operations upon our minds.' (Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' 1870, Works, vol. 20, p. 60-61.) In his lectures on The Art of England (1883), he explained that the 'realistic' concentrated on the accurate imitation of nature: 'striving to put the facts before the readers eyes as positively as if he had seen the thing come to pass.' (Ruskin, 'Mythic School of Painters,' 1883, Works, vol. 33, p. 288). The strategy of the mythic painter, on the other hand, was to represent general ideas or concepts through arbitrary signs. (Ruskin, 'Mythic Schools of Painting,' Works, vol. 33, p. 293.) Ruskin identified both as being strategies that appeared independently in contemporary painting. However, as Ruskin pointed out in his lecture, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' this hadn't always been the case. In the 'fine Greek art' of the ancient world, 'the two conditions of thought, symbolic and realistic' had 'mingled.' Thus much in the same way that modem language had divided what the mythic symbol had united, modem art had divided what mythic art had 'mingled.' (Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' 1870, Works, vol. 20, p. 61.) The problem of the realistic and symbolic is discussed in more detail in part II. 34 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 5th edition, London, 1706 (1690), III,. ii. For a discussion of language in Locke's essay see Hans Aarslef, From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1982. 35 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, ii, 5 & 'epistle to the reader.'

80 36 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, ii, 2. William Keach, 'Romanticism and Language', The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, Stuart Curran (ed), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 99. 37 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, III.x. 34. 38 Keach, 'Romanticism and Language', p. 99. 39 William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850, Johnathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, Stephen Gill (eds), Norton, New York, 1979, book 6, p. 593. 40 William Wordsworth, Prose-The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, W. J. B Owen & Jane Smyser (eds), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974, vol. I, pp. 130 & 124. 41 Keach argues that in recognising the arbitrary nature of words, Wordsworth was indebted to the empirical thesis of language established by Locke. However, in seeking to re-establish a 'natural' status of language, a thesis Locke rejected, Wordsworth's intentions must be interpreted as being romantic. Keach, 'Romanticism and Language,' p. 107. 42 Wordsworth, Prose, vol. I, p. 148. 43 Wordsworth, Prose, vol. I, p. 123. 44 Wordsworth, Prose, vol. I, p. 124. 45 Connor, 'Myth and Meta- myth in Max Miiller and Walter Pater,' pp. 206-7. 46 Friederich Max Muller, Introduction to the Science ofReligion, London, 1873, pp. 270-1. 47 F.M. Muller, Introduction to the Science ofReligion, pp. 270-1. 48 F.M. Muller, Introduction to the Science ofReligion, pp.271-2. 49 Connor has argued, the fascination and importance of mythology for Muller. .. seems to lie in the way that it demonstrates the duality of language. Mythology is 'full,' concrete and living, but it is also corrupting and enfeebling; mythological language both represents and travesties thought; it is language which comes before and after thought. Mythology enacts the vitality of language, but also its errors and self-divisions. Mythology offers a vision of the sacramental blending of material and ideal, symbol and substance, signifier and signified, but it is also born out of their intransigent self-division. The study of mythology suggests a way of purging error and indirectness from language, in order to make our thoughts present to our consciousness; but mythology also suggests that we can never speak or know our thoughts except by the supplements and displacements of metaphor. Connor, 'Myth and Meta-myth in Max Muller and Walter Pater,' pp. 206-7. 5° F .M Muller, Introduction to the Science ofReligion, p. 268. 51 F.M. Muller, Introduction to the Science ofReligion, p. 279. Connor has argued that Muller was not suggesting a synthesis of these two aspects-the spiritual and material-but rather that the language of myth constantly struggled between these two forces. Spiritual and material, abstract and concrete, alternate in an incessant movement of contradiction and compensation. As Muller explained: There is on the one side, the struggle of the mind against the material character of language, a constant attempt to strip words of their coarse covering, and fit them, by main force, for the purpose of abstract thought. But there is on the other hand, a constant relapse from the spiritual into the material, and, strange to say, a predilection for the material sense instead of the spiritual. (Muller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 35) Far from progressing uniformly in one direction, religious language or the language of myth is always the site of a conflict between the 'high' language of abstraction, in which the signifier and signified fit neatly into each other, and the 'low' and 'childish language of allegory and metaphor, in which there is a problematic gap between the signifier and signified . Connor, 'Myth and Meta-myth in Max Muller and Walter Pater,' pp. 205-6. 52 Muller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 279. 53 'The Aphorisms of William Lethaby', in William Richard Lethaby 1857-1931: A Volume in Honour of the School's First Principal, A. R. N. Roberts ( ed), Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1957, p. 74. William Lethaby, 'What Shall We Call Beautiful?,' p. 155-6. 54 Letha by, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 11. 55 Lethaby, 'What Shall We Call Beautiful?,' pp. 155-6. 56 Lethaby cited in Roberts (ed), William Richard Lethaby, p. 74. 57 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 58 In the rewrite of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth as 'Architecture, Nature and Magic,' (The Builder, 1928) Lethaby stated that 'there was little or nothing in the book about mysticism, but the

81 jingle of words, after the manner of Andrew Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, a book that had interested me, and sounded pleasing at the time.' William Lethaby, Architecture, Nature and Magic, Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, London, 1956, p. 15. The theoretical primacy of myth in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth is reinforced by the fact that in a personal notebook, now held by the Central St Martin's Art and Design Archive, Lethaby referred to Architecture, Mysticism and Myth simply as 'Architecture and Myth.' Lethaby, Notebook, n.d, Central St Martins Archive, B.4783. 59 Rubens has described Lethaby's approach to myth as an 'uncritical and inexpert' survey of a 'rag - bag of first-and second-hand authorities.' Holder has described it as a 'magpie' or 'scissor and paste,' noting that a key complaint by reviewers when the book was published in 1891 was the 'multiplicity of examples ... [which] make the book appear to be the production of a past age, when scholarship of the kind could be appreciated.' Rubens, W.R. Lethaby, p. 83. Julian Holder, 'Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, and its influence,' W.R .Lethaby, 1857-1931, Architecture, Design and Education, Sylvia Backemeyer and Theresa Gronberg (eds), Lund Humphries, London, 1984, p. 58. The Architect, 22 January, 1892. 60 Julian Holder, The Thought Behind Form, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and its Place in Architectural Theory and Practice, 1880-1910, MA thesis, University College, London, 1986, pp. 18 & 22. 61 Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style in Late Nineteenth Century English Architecture,' MA thesis, Exeter University, 1980, p. 50. 62 Holder, The Thought Behind Form, p. 22. Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, p. 54, 58. It is difficult to disagree with such a reading of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth as a survey of the text quickly reveals Lethaby's reliance on an eclectic group of sources. While Lethaby refers to both Ruskin's mythical studies Fors Clavigera (p. 130) and F.M Muller's Comparative Mythology and 'Gifford Lectures' (pp. 35, 55, 142, 147, 161, 199) he also cites key scholars of the Anthropological school including: Herbert Spencer's Sociology (1876-96) [preface & pp. 15, 21]; E.B Tylor's Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865) and Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilisation (1881), [pp. 19, 35, 139]; Andrew Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion (1887) [pp. 35, 68, 93, 135, 139]; and James Frazer's Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1890) [pp. 104, 133]. This dual debt to a comparative school of mythology (Ruskin and Millier) and the anthropological school (Spencer, Lang, Tylor and Frazer) presents a difficulty in that both schools are motivated by different goals. While the Comparative School sought to isolate universal essences evident in myth-be they moral or linguistic-the Anthropologists saw mythology as more or less the direct reflection of primitive customs and beliefs; beliefs which were seen to be unique to a specific time, place and culture. Connor, 'Myth and Meta-myth in Max Muller and Walter Pater,' pp. 199-202. For Ruskin's debt to the Comparative school, and to Millier in particular, see Birch, Ruskin's Myths, p. 40 63 Burstein, 'Victorian Mythography,' p. 317. 64 Lethaby, 'The Architecture of Adventure,' p. 94. 65 George Grote, History of Greece, Harper and Bros, New York, 1949, (1846), vol. I, p. 340. 66 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 67 In the introduction of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, Lethaby attaches the desire for an architecture that may 'excite and interest, both real and general' to the need for a 'symbolism comprehensible to the great majority of spectators.' Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 68 Millier, Introduction to the Science ofReligion, p. 279. 69 Muller, introduction to the Science ofReligion, p. 268 & 278. 70 Dinah Birch has argued that Ruskin's reading of myth as physical, moral and personal can be attributed to the thesis developed by Muller in Comparative Mythology (1856). Birch has argued that three important events motivated Ruskin's interest in myth: Muller's essay, a renewed experience of Turner, and a crisis in Ruskin's religious thought. Ruskin and Millier were at Oxford at the same time and there is little doubt that they discussed the issue of myth. Connor has argued that Muller's method and conception of language and myth found its clearest expression in the 1856 essay 'Comparative Mythology' (Oxford Essays, London, 1856.) He also demonstrates that the central thesis of this text and its latent contradictions emerge more clearly in the later 1873 Introduction to the Science of Religion. Birch, Ruski1J 's Myths, p. 40. See also Dinah Birch, 'Ruskin's Solar Mythology,' The Sun is God. Painting, Literature and Mythology in the Nineteenth Century, J. B. Bullen (ed), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989. Connor, 'Myth and Meta-myth in Max Millier and Walter Pater,' p. 202.

82 71 This practice of imitation is presented by Lethaby as being common to all artistic acts: If we trace the artistic forms of things, made by man, to their origin, we find a direct imitation of nature. The thought behind a ship is the imitation of a fish. So to the Egyptians and Greeks the 'Black Ship' bore traces of this descent, and two eyes were painted on the brow ... the eyes are given, it is said, to enable the ship to see its way over the pathless sea. Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, pp. 13, 14. 72 Lethaby promotes a dual rather then tripartite structure for myth. He rejected the Greek process of personification arguing that it tends to veil or confuse the original meaning. The ceremonial of religion during the great building ages in Chaldea, Egypt and India, was going through the phase of Nature worship, in which the sky, sun, the sea, were not so much veiled, as afterwards to the Greeks, until they became persons not things; but open and understood .... Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 14. 73 Lethaby was familiar with both Ruskin's and Muller's ideas on myth. In 1884, Lethaby attended Ruskin's Lecture, 'The Queen of Air: Being a study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm,' at the London Institute with his friend Gerald Horsley. (Notebook, Central St Martin's Art and Design Archive, n.d, B.4783.) In Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, Ruskin's Fors Clavigera (p. 130) and Muller's 'Comparative Mythology' ('Comparative Mythology,' Oxford Essays, London, 1856) and Gifford Lectures (1888-1893) are cited. (pp. 35, 55, 142, 147, 161, 199.) As noted above, Connor has argued that Muller's method and conception of language and myth found their clearest articulation in 'Comparative Mythology.' However, he also notes that the central thesis of this essay and its latent contradictions where developed further in the later Introduction to Science (1873). Muller's Gifford Lectures were presented at the University of Glasgow, 1888-1893. As part of this series, Millier presented 5 lectures including: 'Natural Religion,' ( 1888), 'Their Religion Considered in the Light of Philology and History,' (1889), 'Physical Religion,' (1890), 'Anthropological Religion,' (1891), and Theosophy, or, Psychological Religion,' (1892). Lethaby fails to discuss Ruskin's or Muller's essays in depth. Rather, he simply extracts an image or example and acknowledges the source of his information. This is an approach he adopts for all his sources. 74 Millier, Introduction to the Science ofReligion, pp. 206-7, 268. 75 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 76 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 14. 77 Birch, Ruskin's Myths, p. 46. 78 Ruskin, 'Modem Painters,' v. V, 1860, Works, vol. 7. p. 393. 79 Ruskin, 'Modem Painters,' v. V, 1860, Works, vol. 7. p. 393. 80 Birch, Ruskin's Myths, p. 11, 15, and 43. Birch has argued that Ruskin initially condemned myth on the conviction that it was essentially materialist. Ruskin's growing interest in myth appears to rest on a increasing awareness that, while myth could be linked to natural phenomena, it also possessed moral and ethical lessons. Birch, Ruskin's Myths, p. 29.

83 Chapter 3

'Would you know the new, you must search the old.' Nineteenth century readings of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499).

Contemporary studies on myth allowed Lethaby to question the accepted doctrines on cognition and representation. The famous Renaissance allegory the Hypnerotomachia

Poliphili offered Lethaby the opportunity to reconsider nineteenth century theories on artistic invention. Interpreted by the late nineteenth century artist and writer as demonstrating a theory of creation that no longer conformed exclusively to the classical ideal of knowing (vita contemplativa or a life of contemplation) nor to the

Medieval and Romantic conception of making (vita activa or an active life) but on a combination of both, and thus to something else ( vita voluptuaria or a life of desire), the Hypnerotomachia demonstrated a conception of design in which the past-the

Classical and Gothic intentions of knowing and doing-could both be embraced.

However, in combining both and thus producing a hybrid that conformed neither to a classical ideal nor to a romantic thesis, the Hypnerotomachia also demonstrated how architectural practice could be modem and progressive, to move forward and produce something new. In nineteenth century discussions on the Hypnerotomachia we discover the motivation for Lethaby's statement in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth that 'would you know the new you must know the old.' 1 It is also here that we gain a sense of what Lethaby and his contemporaries were later to describe as 'building with heart. ' 2

84 3.1: Nineteenth century readings of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphill

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which can roughly be translated as the 'Strife of

Love in a Dream,' was first published in 1499 by the notable Venetian publisher

Aldus Manutius.3 Published anonymously, it has been attributed on the basis of an acrostic embedded in the text to a young Venetian monk, Francesco Colonna. More recent studies have argued that the true author of the text is Leon Battista Alberti.4

Written in a mixture of Italian, Latin and Greek, the Hypnertomachia documents a dream within a dream in which the main protagonist of the text, Poliphilo, seeks out his true love, Polia. Throughout the journey Poliphilo and Polia confront and experience multiple architectural wonders, all of which are extensively and carefully described by the author. In the preface to the first edition, the author offers a summary of the journey and the architectural wonders confronted. He writes,

You should know that Poliphilo dreamed about being in a threatening dark

forest and narrates the myriad things he saw, a veritable strife for love, which

is the meaning of the Greek words in the title. With elegant style and great

care, he tells of the many ancient marvels deserving of a place in the theatre of

memory, architectural monuments encountered in his search for Polia: a

pyramid and obelisk; the great ruins of classical buildings; the precise

measurement and characteristics of columns, their capitals, bases, entablatures

with their diverse architraves, friezes, and cornices, and their respective

mouldings and ornaments; a great horse; a magnificent elephant; a hollow

colossus; and a triumphal gateway with its harmonic measurements and

ornamentation. After suffering a major scare behind the threshold, passing the

test of a frightening tunnel, and being brought back to life by a wonderful

85 encounter with the five senses in the form of five nymphs, he describes how he is shown several fountains and quenches his thirst by drinking tepid water springing from a stone nymph's breasts. He is then taken to a munificent bath where he is teased by the five senses before eventually arriving at the palace of the queen, who is the embodiment of free will, and being invited by her to partake of a splendid meal. He expresses his admiration for the variety of precious stones and material worn by all present, and describes a game in a dance and other measurements of sound. After the festivities, he is taken to visit three gardens, the first made of glass, the second of silk, and the third a labyrinth, which is human life. In its midst was trinity itself, expressed through hieroglyphs, as in sacred Egyptian sculpture. He describes three important doors of where one must choose and how, behind one, Polia awaits him. Without either realising the meaning of their physical proximity, she takes him to admire the four triumphs of Jove: four processions whose chariots and artefacts celebrate the stories of the classical poets explaining the effects of the various kinds of love. Then follow the triumph of Vertuno and

Pomona, the ancient sacrifice of Priapus, and the description of a magnificent temple of great beauty where the sacrifices of miraculous rites of ancient religion once took place. It is here the couple fully acknowledge their loving encounter. Poliphilo then proceeds to narrate how he and Polia arrive at the coast to wait for Cupid at the site of a ruined temple, where she persuades him to explore in search of admirable ancient things. There he finds, among many enlightened epitaphs, a mosaic mural depicting hell. Scared again, he returns to Polia, just in time to meet Cupid who has arrived in his ship propelled by

86 beautiful rowing nymphs. Both climb aboard, and Love uses his wings as

sails. Sea Gods, goddesses, and nymphs pay tribute to Cupid and the vessel

arrives triumphantly at the island of Cytherea. Poliphilo then tells about the

forests, gardens, fountains, and rivers on the islands as well as the procession

of triumphal chariots and nymphs in honour of Cupid. In the center of the

island, the final place of arrival, he describes the veneral fountain with its

precious columns and the actions that take place after the appearance of Mars,

followed by a visit to the innermost enclosure containing the tomb of Adonis,

where the nymphs tell the story of the hero's death and of the sad celebration

of his anniversary commemorated every year by Venus, the lover. The

nymphs finally ask Polia to tell the story of her own love, its origins and

difficulties. Polia acquiesces and her words fill the second book, giving a

genealogy of her family, explaining her initial inclination to ignore Poliphilo,

and providing a detailed account of the final success of their love. Following

Polia's account, Poliphilo concludes by describing their embrace in the happy

place of dwelling, until he is awakened, sad and alone, by the song of a

nightingale. 5

The original Aldine edition was reprinted in 1545. 6 In 1546 a French edition of the text was also published under the title Le Songe de Poliphile. 7 An English translation of the first volume, under the title, Hypnerotomachia: The Strife of Laue in Dreame, was published in London by Sir Robert Darlington in 1592. 8 In 1883, the French enamellist and scholar Claudius Popelin produced the first complete translation of

87 both volumes.9 The book initially became the object of academic scholarship in the

1870s. 10

Lethaby had direct access to and knowledge of the Hypnerotomachia. On the ?'h of

December 1889, Lethaby recorded in his diary that the 'evenings for the last month were spent in extracting Palaces and Gardens from the French edition of the

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.' 11 The text's influence on Lethaby was at this time profound. 12 He modelled his 1889 design for a font for the Church of Saint John the

Baptist (fig.3) on a small domed and hexagonal building (fig.4) found in the French edition of the Hypnerotomachia. 13 His drawing of A Garden Enclosed (fig.5), published in John Seddings Garden Craft Old and New ( 1892), which portrays an enclosed garden with a central ornamental pillar, also evokes the earlier images of enclosed gardens found in the Hypnerotomachia (fig.6). 14 Finally, Lethaby's title page for The A.A. Sketchbook (1889) (fig.7) was modelled on the image of the Temple of Venus Phyzizoa (fig.8), the temple confronted by Poliphilo at the end of his journey. 15 In Architecture, Mysticism and Myth direct reference is made to the text on three occasions. 16 On one of these occasions, he gives a detailed and lengthy description of the Temple of Venus Phyzizoa. 17

Lethaby's interest in the Hypnerotomachia was not an isolated phenomenon in nineteenth century England. A continued interest in the text can be detected in Britain throughout the nineteenth century. Sir John Soane (1753-1837) possessed three copies of the Hypnerotomachia, one of which he annotated. 18 In 1840, Gabriele

Rossetti, the father of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Rossetti, described the

88 Hypnerotomachia as 'a treatise of Love and Architecture' in his II Mistero dell' Amor

Platonico de/ Media Evo derivato dai Misteri Antichi. 19 In his 1842 lectures given to the Royal Academy, C.R. Cockerell discussed the merits of the text and its lessons for the architect. 20 By 1868, the artist Edward Burne Jones was using a copy of the

Hypnerotomachia as a stylistic source for his illustration work.21 At the time of his death, Dante Rossetti held two copies of the text in his library; the original Italian edition published in 1499 and the French translation Le Songe de Poliphili of 1561.22

By 1880 John Ruskin owned a copy of the second Aldine edition published in 1545,23 and in the same year William Bell Scott published a paper on 'The Artist of the

Hypnerotomachia' for The Athenaeum. 24 In 1883 the French enamellist and scholar

Claudius Popelin published the first complete translation and included a lengthy introduction. In 1888 the South Kensington Museum produced a facsimile of the

Hypnerotomachia 's woodcuts under the title, The Dream ofPoliphilus: a facsimile of one hundred and sixty eight woodcuts in Poliphili Hypnerotomachia. The Kensington edition was reprinted in 1889 and 1893.25 Soon after (1889), Andrew Lang released his reprint of the 1592 English translation.26 Finally, in 1894 and 1898 respectively, the Hypnerotomachia was adopted by the Decadent writers, Aubrey Beardsley and

Frederick William Rolfe as a model for their respective texts, The Story of Venus and

Tannhiiuser ( 1894-96) and Don Renato ( 1898-1902). 27

Two themes dominate nineteenth century readings of the text. The first is described by Frarn;ois Vergne in his essay 'Decadence as Renewal: Aubrey Beardsley,

Frederick Rolfe and the Dream of Poliphilus' ( 1992). The Hypnerotomachia, Vergne has argued, was interpreted by the nineteenth century reader as demonstrating that

89 invention in the modern world did not rely on an imitation of past styles and types, but rather was determined by a critical re-appropriation of past canons.28 Secondly, the Renaissance text appealed to the romantic artist and writer of the period for its themes of 'Sacred and Profane Love (Amore sacra e profano). D. M. R Bentley discusses this second reading in his essay 'Rossetti and The Hypnerotomachia

Poliphili' (1977).29

As early 1870, Claudius Popelin had developed an impassioned interest in the

Hypnerotomachia. By 1883 he produced the first complete translation and introduction to the text. In the introduction, Popelin argued that the love quest of

Poliphilo and his movement through a forest scattered with imposing ruins of ancient monuments, was intended by Colonna to demonstrate a new art form liberated from the 'execrable et sacrilege barbarie' of the Middle Ages.Jo Seeking to determine the true nature of the creative process, Colonna, Popelin argued, rejected the 'slavish imitation of ancient models' as an appropriate mode of making. He argued instead, that a knowledge of the forms and types of antiquity tempered with an imaginative re­ interpretation of these models would motivate new and modern structures.JI Colonna,

Popelin argued, demonstrated this in two ways. First, Poliphilo's journey, in which he was confronted with multiple architectural wonders, represented a catalogue that documented the multiple antique, stylistic and thematic resources that were available to the Renaissance architect. Secondly, the dream context of the story allowed

Colonna to evoke imaginary and hybrid monuments. These hybrid monuments visually acknowledged their sources, but had combined and modified them in such a way that the final product produced was distinctly new and thus modern. Thus for

90 Popelin, the dream represented Colonna's understanding of the mechanisms driving creative invention. As Vergne has explained,

Poliphilus's journey through the forest ... offers an amazing example of art in

the making. Each episode of the journey is set in an extremely elaborate

decor, the description of which is meant to provide the reader with a series of

catalogues whose objects range from architectural elements-probably the

most striking visual evocations of the book-to Latin inscriptions and

allegorical characters. The narrative structure of the journey constantly

disappears behind the intricate staging of the elements drawn from ancient art

which Colonna . . . chooses as the ideal material for the creation of modem

structures .... the Dream of Poliphilus describes ... abstract creation based on a

permanent appropriation and reworking of forms meant to produce new

manifestations of beauty. 32

Support for Popelin's reading of the text is found in the woodcut image and description of the trans-typological temple or Great Pyramidal Building (fig.9), a strange hybrid whose description occupies the first thirtynine pages of the text. 33 The most significant feature of this structure is that it combines multiple building types: a peripteral temple, a triumphal arch, a pyramid, a labyrinth, and an obelisk. These are piled one on top of the other, except for the triumphal arch, which is affixed to the temple facade, and the labyrinth the triumphal arch leads to, dug into the viscera of the pyramid. The description of the temple explains that the temple is over one and a half miles long and almost equally high. The pyramid set above the colonnade, we are told, is six times the size of the great pyramid of Cheops. The obelisk above that,

91 another mile and half high. Finally, the bronze statue perched at the pinnacle of this is almost four-and-a-half-miles-high. 34

Liane Lefaivre in 'An erotic inference, the unrecognised Hypnerotomachia Poliphili'

(1991) has argued that the principle motive of the 'trans-typological temple' is to demonstrate a theory of modem practice. Despite the fact that the temple is constructed from elements taken from the past, the sentiment evoked by the final hybrid product, Lefaivre concludes, 'is clearly closer to a "modem" rather than an

"ancient" sensibility' and that 'never before had such a building been seen or conceive· d . ,35

The belief that the text pointed to a conception of making which incorporated a respect for the forms of the past and the creative manipulation of those forms was but one reading common in the nineteenth century. The second focused on the association established by Colonna between this process and the idea of love and desire. As early as 1840, and as previously noted, the Hypnerotomachia was described as 'a treatise of

Love and Architecture' by Gabriele Rossetti. 36 In the 1850s, as Bentley has demonstrated, Rossetti's painting of Arthur's Tomb ( 1854-185 5) and Morris's poem on the same subject in The Defence of Guenevere drew upon the themes of 'Sacred versus Profane Love' explored in Hypnerotomachia. 37 In his more recent discussion of the text, Alberto Perez-Gomez in Poliphili or the Dark Forest Revisted: An Erotic

Epiphany of Architecture (1992), has demonstrated that Colonna established the link between architecture and desire by arguing that architecture, like desire itself, relied

equally on an element of detached contemplation and active participation. Colonna

92 labelled this alternative 'vita voluptuaria,' the voluptuous life or a life of unfulfilled

'desire'. 38

Support for Perez-G6mez's reading is found in the woodcut of 'Poliphilo at the cross roads.' (fig.10) In this image Poliphilo, accompanied by the nymphs Logistica

(reason) and Thelemia (desire, will and fulfilment,) is confronted by three doors labelled vita contemplativa (the contemplative life,) vita voluptuaria (the voluptuous life) and vita activa (the life of action.) He is asked to choose one. Neither of the two nymphs is able to convince Poliphilo to take either the right or left door; the doors of vita contemplativa and vita activa. Rather Poliphilo decides on the middle door of vita voluptuaria. As soon as he makes his choice, the nymph Logistica who represents reason, leaves Poliphilo in disgust. Thelemia, on the other. hand, representing desire, will and fulfilment, encourages Poliphilo to pass through the door. On the other side Poliphilo finds his true love Polia, a symbol of women, wisdom and perfect architecture.39

Perez-Gomez has argued that the two doors of vita contemplativa and vita activa represent the two design canons that dominated western architecture in the fifteenth century. The door of vita contemplativa, indicating a life of contemplation associated with classical metaphysics and theology was also a reference to the idea of architecture as a liberal art and science. The door of vita activa, on the other hand, evoked the world of human action and 'being as production' in the old medieval sense. The decision to have Poliphilo reject these two doors and their associated world views directed Poliphilo to the middle door. This choice, one which greatly

93 upset Logistica-the nymph of reason-indicated a third possibility; the voluptuous life or life of desire. The key attribute of this third possibility, is that it, like the door itself, lay somewhere in between those of action and contemplation. 40

The association of architecture with the theme of love and desire, Perez-Gomez demonstrates, is a constant theme throughout the text. Colonna continually associates the architectural form with the notion of love. Cupid is cast as a Tecton, the Homeric ancestor of the architect. Poliphilo and Polia witness the divine effects of love through architectural works and ritual processions including the rites of germination carried out by a priestess in the Temple of Venus. Throughout the text Colonna provides minute descriptions of monuments dedicated to the Roman Goddesses of

Venus and Fortuna, descriptions which link architecture to the function of the propitiation of human destiny through love, harmony and fertility. 41 However, the significance of 'desire,' Perez-Gomez asserts, is that it not only established architecture as an erotic object, but that it also identified a third way of thinking about architecture which incorporated the concerns of both vita activa and vita contemplativa. The text indicated, Perez-Gomez has argued,

that architectural creation could no longer be directly inspired by the gods

through contemplation as a mere liberal art, in the sense of Alberti, nor could

it come about as the ars or craft of the medieval mason, acting as the hand of

God the Augustinian architect. The answer lay somewhere in between yet in a

different place, where a radically different role for the personal imagination

might emerge, one that was "no longer" the Aristotelian-medieval function of

94 mimesis, and "not yet" the imagination of the Romantic "genius" deluded by

the possibility of creation ex nihilio.42

Like erotic knowledge, 'architectural meanings to which we have access, those that touch us and leave us in awe, do not occur as "associations" in the mind alone, despite our Cartesian "common sense,"' but rather are 'primarily of the body and happen in the world.' Thus in being both of the mind and the body, architectural meaning can never be reduced to pure 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity,' pure contemplation or pure action.43 The 'possibility of a meaningful architecture,' as demonstrated by the idea of desire, depends, as Perez-Gomez concluded,

upon a realization that visible form and language refers to something other,

recognized only when the dominant sense of sight (and Renaissance

perspective) is mediated by the body's primary synaesthetic (tactile)

. 44 un derstan dmg.

Both Vergne and Bentley have argued that the nineteenth century reader was familiar with and appreciative of the significance of such themes within Colonna's text.45 The evidence indicates that Lethaby's interest in the text, like that of his contemporaries, extended to its suggestive theories.

The edition which Lethaby studied was the French translation produced by Popelin in

1883.46 Thus Lethaby was familiar with Popelin's thesis that Colonna's intention was to demonstrate the 'modern' relied upon a critical re-appropriation of the past.

Evidence supporting this assumption is found in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth.

Noting that the author of the 'Hypnerotomachia ... seems to have collected all the

95 architectural wonders of history and romance,' Lethaby's appreciation of the text, like that of Popelin's before him, rests partly on the recognition that the dream functioned as a catalogue of past styles, traditions and genres; a collective memory of world architecture.47 Lethaby also appreciated the fact that this catalogue of types and styles was fundamental to the process adopted by the architect in his invention of the modem; a process that relied on the re-appropriation of past forms, but one which combined and modified these in such a way that the new forms created surpassed anything that had come before.48 As previously noted, the principle outcome of this process in the Hypnerotomachia was the temple; the 'most extravagant of the book's architectural barbarisms' which was 'closer to a "modem" rather than an "ancient' sensibility.'49 Like the author of the Hypnerotomachia, Lethaby's consideration of the modem in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth is also focused on the 'temple.'

Observing that Poliphilo's dream represents a catalogue of architectural styles and types, Lethaby also noted that Poliphilo's journey-a symbol of the inventive process-reached its climax at the temple.

Poliphilus, after penetrating zone after zone of gardens, which occupy an

island, comes at last to a circular temple, open to the sky ....so

Highlighting the modem nature of the temple, Lethaby also draws attention to its dream-like and marvellous qualities .

. . . and on entering it was astonished to find 'a marvel more grand and

stupefying than anything he had ever seen;' the whole area of the

amphitheatre was apparently paved with one sole stone of obsidian, entirely

black and of invincible hardness, so polished and shining that at the first

moment he feared destruction by walking into an abyss. It reflected the light

96 of day so perfectly that he contemplated the profound and limpid sky as in a

quiet sea: everything was reflected as in a polished mirror. 51

Finally, by arguing that 'the poets and romance writers have preserved the tradition of buildings of the world temple event to the Renaissance,' Lethaby equated the hybrid temple of the Hypnerotomachia and the process of making it represented, with the world temple of his own study.52

3.2: 'Would you know the new, you must search the old.'

The lessons offered by the author of the Hypnerotomachia must have appealed to

Lethaby as it demonstrated how he, as a nineteenth century architect, could reconcile the dual conceptions of history that dominated his century. Alan Colquhoun in his essay 'Three Kinds of Historicism,' has argued the rejection of a natural thesis of history and the rise of historicism in the nineteenth century stimulated two distinct approaches to the past. Recognising that each historical epoch must be valued for its own achievements, the nineteenth century architect also came to recognise that no one style could be valued over another, as each was organically tied to a specific time, place and culture. Responding to this situation, the architect of the nineteenth century could adopt one of two strategies. He could identify a particular 'spirit' or past epoch and establish it as a paradigmatic model for future practice; or he could reject the past outright and seek to determine what was specific and unique to his own age. 53 In the final decades of nineteenth-century Britain, these two approaches were demonstrated respectively by the architectural histories of James Ferguson

(1808-1886) and architectural criticism of John Ruskin. Seeking to attach the fine arts to the moral values of the past, Ruskin bound modem architectural practice to the

97 craft methodologies of the medieval mason. 54 James Fergusson, on the other hand, arguing that architecture must speak of its own time and place, linked modem practice to the scientific theories, materials, and constructive techniques of his time.55

A third approach, Peter Kohane has argued, is found in the lectures and architecture of the English architect and academic, C.R. Cockerell (1788-1863).56 Rejecting the extreme positions of 'novelty, invention and progress' and 'veneration, authority and antique association'-which he detected in the writings of Fergusson and Ruskin57-

Cockerell developed a third alternative. Proclaiming the architect must continue to engage with the styles and types of the past, Cockerell also argued that the architect must invent new forms through the manipulation and modification of antique forms.

For Cockerell, like Colonna before him, the past represented a catalogue from which the architect of the present could draw from, a thesis which clearly motivated his image of the Professor's Dream (fig. 11), a six by five-foot composition in which a panorama of famous buildings is arranged on four terraces. 58 It was this third approach, to which Lethaby adhered.

Like Ruskin before him, Lethaby's celebration of myth and the ancient construct of the 'temple idea' in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth argued a return to an antique past, in this case the mythological past of the ancient world. However, Lethaby was also adamant that the present day architect must not replicate this architecture of the past. Thus while Lethaby's belief in ideal, timeless architectural values encoded in myth encouraged the architect to return to the past, to isolate these attributes, and to replicate them, he was also adamant that the architect could not simply imitate past models. The message of present day architecture, he concluded,

98 cannot be that of the past-terror, mystery, splendour. Planets may not circle

nor thunder roll in the temple of the future. No barbaric gold with ruddy

bloom; no jewels; emerald half a palm over, rubies like an egg, and crystal

spheres, can again be used more for magic than beauty. No terraced temples

of Babylon to reach the skies; no gold plated palaces of Ecbatana, seven

walled; no ivory palaces of Ahab; nor golden houses of Nero with corridors a

mile long; no stupendous temples of Egypt at first all embracing, then court

and chamber narrowing and becoming lower, closing in on the awed

worshipper and crushing his imagination; these all of them, can never be built

again, for the manner and the materials are worked out to their final issue.

Think of the Sociology and the Religion of all this, and the stain across it,

'each stone cemented in the blood of a human creature.' Those colossal efforts

of labour forced on by an implacable will, are of the past, and such an

architecture is not for us, nor for the future. 59

The tension between past and present in Lethaby's Architecture, Mysticism and Myth is reminiscent of Cockerell's thesis that the architect must interact with the past in order to invent something new and modem. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Lethaby was intimate with Cockerell's writings and teachings.60 In fact, the evidence indicates that he was more familiar with the alternatives developed by

Ruskin and Fergusson.61 However, a common source for both Lethaby and Cockerell was undoubtedly the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. As Kohane has demonstrated, the text was discussed by Cockerell in a number of his lectures and its appears to be the model for his painting of 'The Professor's Dream.'62 David Watkin in The Life and

99 Work of C.R. Cockerell (1974) has in tum argued that the prototype for The

Professor's Dream was a watercolour of 1838, A Tribute to the Memory of Sir

Christopher Wren (fig.12); a composite of Wren's works in the form of a pyramid with St Paul's Cathedral perched at the apex of the composition.63 The parallels between the trans-typological temple found in the Hypnerotomachia and Cockerell's composite paintings are both obvious and striking. The trans-typological temple, which literally piles one famous building on top of another, represents the stylistic evolution of a single architectural type, the temple or place of worship. Cockerell's paintings, on the other hand, document the stylistic evolution of a single architectural type in the first instance (the temple again), and the work of an individual architect in the second instance. Lethaby's fascination with Wren suggests that he may have been familiar with Cockerell's tribute.64 However, the parallels between Cockerell's and

Lethaby's attitude towards the past is more likely to be a result of a shared source; the

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Access to this text, and a grasp of its central thesis, encouraged both Lethaby and Cockerell to conclude independently that 'would you know the new, you must search the old.'65 Thus Lethaby, like Cockerell before him, promoted a thesis of 'Invention' which,

'strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images, that

have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can

come of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no

corn bmat1ons.. · ,66

100 3.3: Building with Heart.

It is unlikely, however, the impact of the Hypnerotomachia can be limited to

Lethaby's conception of the past and its relationship to the present. While this was a central theme of the Renaissance text, one which was clearly comprehended by nineteenth century readers, the text was possibly better known for the association it established between architecture and desire. Presenting a catalogue of past architectural styles and types, Poliphilo's journey through the forest in which numerous architectural monuments are scattered, demonstrates that architecture was about looking, contemplating and the study of an object world (both natural and built); a method which had conventionally resulted in the imitation and replication of what was seen (mimesis). However, by placing Poliphilo's journey within a dream, the process of contemplation was tempered by the active imagination, the transformative powers of the mind, which freed the architect to combine and modify the elements of the past so he could invent something new. 67 The distinction and isolation of 'knowing' from 'doing' which Colonna detected in fifteenth century Italy and one which he criticised in his narrative was one which Lethaby recognised as being a factor in his own time. Throughout his career Lethaby acknowledged that there were two distinct and different ways of knowing and creating, one active and transformative the other reflective or contemplative. He referred to these two modes as 'Art' and 'Science' noting that 'Art is the active side of things, science the contemp 1at1ve · . ,68

. . . science may stand for codified preliminary knowledge and art for operative

skill, experiment and adventure. Science is what you know; art is what you

69 d 0.

101 Seeing the distinction between the two as 'false' and 'confusing,'70 and noting that architecture must 'reconcile again Science with Art,' 71 Lethaby, like the author of the

Hypnerotomachia, was also arguing that architecture must once again be based on a reconciliation of the active and the contemplative. While Lethaby acknowledged that the 'old distinction between the active and contemplative lives was sound,'72 he also argued that each could no longer be viewed as complete and adequate initself.

'I think, therefore I am,' it says, but this noble brainy structure will not march

without legs. I eat, therefore I work, and I work, therefore I think, are

necessary preliminaries. Now we are ready for a reasonable and not falsely

refined life-philosophy-I eat, work, and think, therefore I am. 73

A new 'life-philosophy,' he argued, was needed. For the author of the

Hypnerotomachia this alternative was labelled Vita voluptuaria, the voluptuous life or a life of desire. In Architecture, Mysticism and Myth the nature of this new

'philosophy' was demonstrated by the mythic co-existence of the 'known' and the

'imagined. ' 74 In later writings, Lethaby came to describe such thinking as building with 'heart.'

In Philip Webb and his Work (1925) Lethaby set forth his own 'theory of

Architecture.' 75 Discussing Webb's work, Lethaby distinguished what he considered to be one of its more important qualities, the idea of 'heart.' The special quality which defined Webb's work, Lethaby argued, 'is from the heart of the man .. .it was the heart in things which called to him .... ' 76

102 All our words are so worn that I must not speak of "art" or "poetry," but

perhaps what is meant may be suggested by the heart, honesty and

humanity-Webb's architecture was Humanity in Building.77

In an earlier essay Lethaby declared,

Art is high competence in doing what is worthy to be done. Very occasionally

there is in art a sort of poetry over and above: such addition of feeling can be

expressed by giving it a "h" and calling it heart. 78

The value of 'heart,' Lethaby argued, was it demonstrated that architecture was more than art or simple necessity-science- and thus more than action or contemplation.

'It [is] impossible,' Lethaby argued, 'to imagine [Webb's] deep reverence for building as a primary art and near necessity of life.' Rather Webb's work, like an 'old house is a human nest built with hearts even more than with hands.' 79 'Heart,'

Lethaby concluded, endowed architecture with a new, almost sacred quality .

. . . roofs, chimneys, and walls were all sacred .... Once speaking of a too

elegantly designed grate and chimney-piece, he said: "Yes but it is hardly fit

for the Holy fire." It was the heart in things made, which c.alled to Webb. 80

Garnham has argued that Lethaby's development of the principle of 'heart' demonstrates his debt to the romantic tradition, and in particular to the thesis that

'beauty comes instinctively from the hands of those living close to nature. ' 81 For

Garnham, Lethaby's thesis is simply an extension of Coleridge's earlier discussion of

'heart.' Noting that modern culture had become 'over civilised' by its attachment to the 'external' and material mechanisms of life, Coleridge argued for a new 'culture'

103 embodying a knowledge emanating from an inward life and the coexistence with nature. Making a distinction between 'abstract knowledge'-the product of reason and the objective observation of nature-and 'substantial knowledge-an intuition or sense that revealed 'ourselves as one with the whole'-Coleridge argued that the unity between man and nature was 'attainable only by a man of deep feeling' and by one whose 'heart listens. ' 82

If we accept Gamham's thesis we must also assume that his principle of heart supported the romantic thesis that the natural and the divine are revealed through individual feelings, thoughts and actions. Lethaby's repeated use of the heart metaphor, Garnham continues, must be considered in relation to the Romantic notion where it refers to 'the centre of man's being' and its essential reciprocity with nature understood through love and intuition. 83 However, the development of the 'temple idea' in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth demonstrates that Lethaby's idea of nature did not depend solely on a Romantic thesis. Rather nature and thus beauty, was for

Lethaby, dependent on two facts: the 'known facts' of nature which reveal the relative, objective principles of nature and the 'imagined facts,' the collective imaginings of men which point to what is universal and fixed. The idea of heart, like the idea of the temple before it, becomes a point of reconciliation, a middle ground between these two facts of nature.

J. Cirlot has argued in The Dictionary of Symbols (1971) that the 'heart' within the romantic tradition symbolised the 'experience or force which urges ... towards a given centre. ' 84 Representing the centre of a vertical scheme of the human body, which also

104 takes in the mind and the reproductive organs, the heart was believed to partake in the qualities of the other two. For the romantic, the mind revealed the divine, natural and objective truths. The body and its organs, on the other hand, represented the physiological, the arbitrary and individual. 85 In partaking of both the mind and body, the heart represented the blending and reconciliation of these two principles.

Support for the symbolism of the heart is found in Lethaby's private monogram which consists of a heart surmounted by a cross (fig.13).86 The heart is divided into three segments, each segment enframing a letter. In the first segment is the letter 'W' and in the second, the letter 'R'. Wedged between the two is the third letter 'L'. In combination, the three letters complete Lethaby's full initials. However the depiction of these three letters in a heart, which is in tum divided into three portions, suggests a second reading. 'W,' I would argued, can be interpreted as a reference to the 'world,' the universe of known facts or material objects. 'R,' on the other hand, evokes the world of reason and its revelation of the universal and fixed. Wedged between the two is the letter 'L' representing 'love,' 'heart' and desire; the middle ground,

Lethaby theories suggested, from which all modem architecture originates.

'Love and Labour,' Lethaby tells us 'are all. ' 87 The importance of labour to Lethaby's theories of architecture, and their theoretical origins has been well documented. 88 In

Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth we discover the motivation and theoretical traditions underlying his idea of 'love' or 'heart.'

105 Building on conclusions made in the current debates of Victorian mythography and nineteenth century readings of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Lethaby isolated

'heart' as a theory of invention which offered a middle path between the mainstream doctrines of the 'known' (classical or scientific man's observation of the material world) and the 'imagined' (the active imaginings of the romantic theorist). The importance of 'heart' was that it pointed to a new and 'modem' architecture which like the mythological construct of the 'temple idea,' was neither objective-and thus rational and contemplative-nor subjective-and thus irrational and active-but a balance of both, and thus something else. For Lethaby, the advantages of such a theory of invention, as demonstrated in. the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, was that it would produce an architecture that overcame the modem tension between past and present by facilitating one that emerged from the dialectical interaction of both. It also ensured an architecture that could speak, as demonstrated by Muller and Ruskin, the subjective language of children and the objective language of men, generating in tum a symbolism 'comprehensible to the great majority of spectators' and an architecture that could 'excite and interest, both real and general.' Finally, it demonstrated a new and modem architecture that escaped the parameters and subsequent conclusions imposed by the romantic and scientific doctrines of the day.

In the closing paragraphs of the introductory chapter of Architecture, Mysticism and

Myth Lethaby defined this new architecture as one of 'sweetness' and 'light.'

106 1 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, preface. 2 The most complete discussion of building with heart is found in Lethaby's biography of Philip Webb. Lethaby, 'Philip Webb and his Work,' The Builder, cxxviii, 1925, p. 42 to cxxxix, 1925, p. 922; reprinted Philip Webb and his Work, Raven Oak Press, London, 1979, (1935), pp. 130, 220. 3 Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (dated 1467), Aldus Manutius, Venice, 1499. 4 The most recent being Liane Lefaivre's, Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1997. For earlier literature dealing with the issue of authorship see, Barraud, 'Essai de Bibliographie du Songe de Poliphili, La Bibliofilia, vol. 5, 1913-14, pp. 21-9, 121- 34, 186-95, 214- 20. M.T. Casella and G. Pozzi (eds), Francesco Colonna, Biographia e opera, Padua, 1959, vol. 1, pp. xviii-xxvii. G. Pozzi and L. Ciapponni, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Edizione Critica e Commento a Cura di Giovanni Pozzi e Lucia A. Ciapponi, Antenora, Padua, 1964, reprint 1980, vol. 2, pp. 22-4. 5 'Preface', Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 1499; cited by Alberto Perez-Gomez, Poliphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited: An Erotic Epiphany ofArchitecture, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1992, pp. xi-xii. 6 Further reprints of the Airline edition appeared in 1969 (London) and 1976 (New York). 7 Francesco Colonna, Le Songe de Poliphile, Paris, 1546. Rpt. 1553, 1561 and 1963. 8 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife ofLoue in a Dreame, Simon Waterson, London, 1592. Trans. by R. D (believed to be Sir Robert Darlington), reprinted in 1976. A later translation was published in 1889 under the title, The Strife of Love in a Dreame: Being the Elizabethan Version of the First Book of the Hypnerotomachia of F. Colonna, Andrew Lang, London. This text is based on the 1592 translation. 9 Francesco Colonna, Le Songe de Poliphile, translation and introduction and notes by C. Popelin, Paris, 1883, 2 vols; Rpt. Geneva, 1982. 10 A. Ilg, Uber den Kunsthistorischen Werth der Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Ein beitrag zur Geschichte der Kunstliteratur in der Renaissance, Ph.D thesis, Universitiit Tiibingen, Vienna, 1872. 11 Diary 7, xii, 1889. Original lost, transcript of the diaries by J. Brandon Jones; cited Godfrey Rubens, The Life and Work of William Richard Lethaby, Ph.D thesis, University College, London, 1977, p. 79. Rubens has demonstrated the edition referred to by Lethaby was C. Popelin's 1883 translation. 12 Rubens has noted that Lethaby was so taken with the text that he sent a copy to Emery Walker, the editor of the English Illustrated Magazine, encouraging Walker to publish it. However, all evidence of this copy have been lost. Rubens, 'The Life and Work of William Richard Lethaby,' p. 79. 13 Lethaby, Font and Canopy, St John the Baptist, Low Bentham, Yorkshire, walnut and alabaster, 1890. Colonna, Le Songe de Poliphili, Popelin (ed), Paris, 1883, p. 42; Rubens, The Life and Work of William Richard Lethaby, p. 80. 14 Lethaby, A Garden Enclosed, pen and ink, 1889 published in John Sedding, Garden-Craft Old and New, Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co, London, 1895 ( 1892), frontispiece; Two Gardens, in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Francesco Colonna, Paris, 1546. 15 Lethaby, 'Frontispiece,' Architectural Association Sketchbook, 1889. Temple of Venus Phyzizoa, in Hypnerotomachia, Venice, 1499, folio. iii recto. Rubens, The Life and Work of William Richard Lethaby, p. 81. 16 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, pp. 44, 128, 174. 17 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 174. 18 John Summerson, Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays on Architecture, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1963, p. 48. 19 Gabriele Rossetti, // Mistero dell' Amor Platonico de/ Media Evo derivato dai Misteri Antichi, London, 1840, vol. III, p. 743. 20 Royal Academy Lectures, 1842, fifth lecture, p.18; cited by Peter Kohane, 'C.R. Cockerell's dream of history,' Firm(ness) commodity DE-light? questioning the canons, Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 144-5. 21 William Allingham, in a diary entry for August 18 1868, notes that Ned [Burne-Jones] occupies himself, when in the mood, with designs for the Big Book of Stories ... by Morris. He founds his style for these on old woodcuts especially those of the Hypnerotomachia of which he has a fine copy.

107 Martin Harrison and Bill Waters, Burne-Jones, Barrie Jenkins, London, 1989, p. 81. A sixteenth century copy of the Italian edition held by the Houghton Library, Harvard (Inc.5574) has the signatures of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. 22 D. M. R. Bentley, 'Rossetti and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 'English Language Notes, vol. 14, 1977, p. 279. 23 Pozzi & Ciapponi provide a list of all the holdings of the Hypnerotomachia. Among its owners was John Ruskin. His copy is now held at the Houghton Library in Harvard. The edition has the notation 'mine during my work at Oxford and Brantwood, 3rd of April 1880.' Pozzi & Ciapponi, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, vol. 2, pp. 36-7. Ruskin makes no reference to the text in his writings. 24 William Bell Scott, 'The Artist of the Hypnerotomachia,' The Athenaeum, 27 March, 1880, pp. 415- 416. 25 Colonna, Francesco, The Dream ofPoliphilus: Facsimile of One Hundred and Sixty Eight Woodcuts in Poliphili's Hypnerotomachia, Venice, 1499, with an introductory notice and descriptions by J. W. Appel, reproduced by the Department of Art and Science, South Kensington Museum, 1888 (reprinted in 1889 and 1893.) 26 F. Colonna, The Strife ofLove in a Dreame: Being the Elizabethan Version of the First Book of the Hypnerotomachia ofF. Colonna, Andrew Lang, London, 1889. 27 The Story of Venus and Tannhiiuser. A Romantic Novel by Aubrey Beardsley, P. J Gillette (ed), Tandem Books, London, 1967 (1894). Frederick William Rolfe, Don Renato. An Ideal Content. A Historical Romance by Fr. Baron Corvo, Cecil Woolf(ed), Chatto & Windus, London, 1963, (1898). 28 Franc;ois Vergne, 'Decadence as Renewal; Aubrey Beardsley, Frederick Rolfe and the Dream of Poliphilus,' Cahiers Victoriens & Edouardiens: Studies in the Yellow Nineties, no. 36, October, 1992, p. 56. 29 Bentley, 'Rossetti and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 'p. 269. 30 Popelin, Le Songe de Poliphile, vol. I, p. 42; cited in Vergne, 'Decadence as Renewal,' p. 56. 31 Vergne, 'Decadence as Renewal,' p. 56. 32 Vergne argues that Colonna' s thesis of invention is significant as the representational systems of the Renaissance are often described as an "ad Naturae similitudimem;" the imitation of nature. The dream setting of Poliphilo's journey allows Colonna to deliberately exclude nature from the artistic process. Vergne, 'Decadence as Renewal,' pp. 65-66. 33 Great Pyramidal Building, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Venice, 1499, folio b. i verso. Book I, Chapter 3. 34Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, pp. 1-39. Dimensions given in Liane Lefaivre, 'An Erotic Interference. The Unrecognized Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,' Daidalos, vol. 41, 15 September, 1991, p. 95. 35 Liane Lefaivre, 'An Erotic Interference,' p. 95. The idea of creating something new through a process of hybridisation is widely acknowledged as being a central theme of the text and works at all levels, both visually and verbally. Helena Katalin Szepe in the 'Desire in the printed dream of Poliphilo' ( 1996) has argued the author of the Hypnerotomachia generated a new language through the blurring of visual and literary traditions. (Helena Katalin Szepe, 'Desire in the printed Dream of Poliphilo,' Art History, vol. 19, no. 3, September 1996, pp. 374-5.) Anthony Blunt has also demonstrated that Colonna achieved a significant departure from mainstream literary and visual traditions of his time by blending the accepted canons. (Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy: 1450-1600, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1940.) The anti-canonic nature of the Hypnerotomachia, and specifically its architecture, is also considered by Liane Lefaivre. Like Szepe, Lefaivre interprets the text as a unique and modem blending of genres. Noting that the author of the text and the producer of the woodcuts treat buildings in 'unconventional ways,' Lefaivre also draws attention to the number of architectural 'hybrids' or 'barbarisms' found within the text and accompanying woodcuts. Foremost amongst these, as noted above, is that of the Temple or Great Pyramidal Building. Lefaivre, 'An erotic interference,' p. 95. 36 Gabriele Rossetti, II Mistero dell' Amor Platonico de/ Media Evo derivato dai Misteri Antichi, London, 1840, vol. III, p. 743. 37 Bentley, 'Rossetti and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,' pp. 280-2. 38 Perez-Gomez, Poliphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited, p. xvii. 39 Perez-Gomez, Poliphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited, p. xvii.

108 40 Perez-Gomez, Poliphi/o or the Dark Forest Revisited pp. xvii-xviii. Support for Perez-Gomez's reading is found in an earlier analysis of the text by Mary Chan. Drawing the readers attention to the woodcut of the 'Nymph fountain' (Hypnerotomachia, I, vii, p. 65), Chan argues that the image blurrs the distinction between the observer as contemplative witness and observer as active participant. 'Colonna's woodcut,' Chan observes, is the only picture in the sleeping nymph tradition ... which includes onlookers-and in this it draws together the nymph of the fountain tradition and the Priapus and Lotis story. But here, in its context in the Hypnerotomachia, the spectators are both within and without the picture: those within are the lustful satyr and his two little companions, that outside is the dreamer, the narrator of the story who stands facing all four figures and to whom the frontal view of the sleeping nymph is, herself, the fountain from which the dreamer comes to drink so that to the satyr within the picture she is the desirable maiden, while to the dreamer outside the picture, she is a stone image. The dreamer actually drinks from the fountain. Mary Chan, 'The Strife of Love in a Dream and Sidney's Song in Astrophil and Stella,' Sidney's Newsletter, vol. 3, no. 1, 1982, p. 309. 41 Perez-Gomez, Poliphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited, pp. xvii -xviii. The association between desire and architecture established by Colonna is an aspect that has dominated late twentieth century readings of the text. Szepe argues that 'the passion for seeing and describing ruined monuments seems in fact a sublimation or transformation of eros.' (Szepe, 'Desire in the printed Dream of Poliphilo,' pp. 381 & 387.) Lefaivre, on the other hand, has argued that the author's principle intention was to establish architecture as an erotic body. This is achieved, Lefaivre has demonstrated, in a number of ways and on multiple levels. Firstly, The name for Polia is Greek for 'lover'. But Polia in turn translates for many things: diaphaneous garments, precious stones and jewellery, gold, fine linen, .... But he loves architecture the most, he loves it as much as he loves Polia, he loves it in the same carnal way. One after the other, the buildings described in the book become objects of desire, metaphors for Polia's body. Secondly, Poliphilo describes the marble of the porta as 'virginal', the veinless marble of another surface as 'flawless,' the same term he used to describe the skin of a nymph. Upon seeing the buildings, Poliphilo feels 'extreme delight,' 'incredible joy,' 'frenetic pleasure and cupidinous frenzy.' The buildings fill him with the 'highest carnal pleasure' and with 'burning lust'. He loves them because they are beautiful to behold, but also because they are fragrant and nice to touch. He partakes of the architectural pleasures with all his senses. Before a frieze of a sleeping nymph he cannot keep from placing his hand on her knees and 'fondling' and 'squeezing them' nor can he resist pressing his lips to her breast, lasciviously sucking and nuzzling. She also notes that, The sex of the buildings Poliphilo loves is polymorphic. He describes the order of the columns of certain temples as 'hermaphroditic' because they combine male and female characteristics. The altar of the Bacchus is made of darkly veined marble especially selected to express the virility of the deity. A great phallus 'rigidly rigorous' is carved onto it. Above the prone nude body of a sleeping nymph .. .leers a naked satyr with a watchful eye and an erect penis. Finally, The erotization of architecture comes to its logical conclusion when in three cases Poliphilo manages to locate the appropriate orifice through which he can engage in sexual congress with the building. The effect on him, always described at length and in much detail, is one of sheer coital ecstasy. For Lefraive, the association of architecture with desire or the erotic body represents a shift away from the Christian conception of the body as a metaphor of evil, to a new conception of the body as the representation of summun bonum, or the highest good. (Lefaivre, 'An Erotic Interference,' p. 98) 42 Perez-Gomez, Poliphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited, p. xiii. 43 Perez-Gomez, Poliphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited, p. xvi. 44 Perez-Gomez, Poliphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited, p. xix.

109 45 Vergne has demonstrated that Beardsley's and Rolfe's 'conscious' adoption of the Hypnerotomachia in the 1890s as a model for their own works allowed them to question, explore, and criticise existing canons determining their art and thus give new life to its modern manifestations. In adopting the strategies evident in the Hypnerotomachia, such as the dissolution of narrative, blurring of genres, and the use of obsessive description they were able to develop new strategies and structures for their own work. The process of making presented by Beardsley and Rolfe, like that in the Hypnerotomachia, is the production of new and modem literary structures on a foundation of existing genres and conventions. Bentley, on the other hand, documents the recognition in nineteenth century Britain of the interrelationship between love, desire and architecture presented in the Hypnerotomachia. Vergne, 'Decadence as Renewal,' pp. 71 & 67. Bentley, 'Rossetti and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,' pp. 280- 2. 46 Diary 7, xii, 1889; cited by Rubens, The Life and Work of William Richard Lethaby, p. 79. Vergne has argued that it was Colonna's French translation of the Hypnerotomachia which had the greatest currency in the final decades of nineteenth century Britain. Vergne, 'Decadence as Renewal,' p. 56. 47 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 74. Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, which brings together a vast number of architectural myths, could also be described as a catalogue of architectural memories. 48 In this respect, the thesis of invention which Popelin identifies in the Hypnerotomachia can be compared with the romantic theory of the Imagination, and its modification and manipulation of the data collected from the material world by the faculty of Fancy. 49 Lefaivre, 'An Erotic Interference,' p. 95. 50 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 74. 51 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 74. 52 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 44. 53 Alan Colquhoun, 'Three Kinds of Historicism,' Modernity and the Classical Tradition, Architectural Essays 1980-1987, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 6-14. 54 John Ruskin, 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture,' 1849, especially 'The Lamp of Life,' (Works, vol. 8) and 'The Nature of Gothic,' 1853 (Works, vol. 10, pp. 180-269.) 55 James Fergusson, A Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Architecture, with Special Reference to Architecture, Longman, London, 1949. 56 Peter Kohane, 'C. R. Cockerell' s Dream of History,' pp. 141-14 7. 57 Cockerell was referring to Ruskin's Seven Lamps (1849) and Fergusson's A Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of Architecture (1849). Cockerell, 'Lecture on Style,' July 2, 1849, British Architectural Library, Box 6, COC 1/94; cited in Kohane, 'C. R. Cockerell's Dream of History,' p. 145. 58 Kohane, 'C.R. Cockerell's Dream of History,' pp. 142-3. The Professor's Dream is described in D. Watkin, The Life of C.R. Cockerell, Zwemmer, London, 1974, p. 132. 59 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p.16. This tension between the past and present in the design process is repeated in later essays. In his 1901 'Lecture on Modern Design,' given to the Royal Academy of Art on the occasion of his appointment to First Professor of Design and Ornament, Lethaby argued that design relied equally on a reappropriation of the past and an examination of the present. He stated, Design we may think, is hardly more than shaping the object to the required end, and that we have little need of the old art to guide us. This however is not so, chairs and tables and cabinets are, like their very names, thing of long ancestry: we may say of them just what may be said of words and ideas, the more we know about history, the more we know of them in essence. It is the knowledge of the essential, which is ever the central stem of design, by it, one should steer clear of all trick, triviality, eccentricity, over-ingenuity or buffoonery of design. By being thus linked to the past we best perceive, I think, the centres of several types, the tableness of tables, the cupboardness of a cupboard: characteristics which are as necessary to their design as homelikeness to a house. Every utility evolved by man should preserve this direct appeal of necessity, a chair, a cabinet should be as ship-shape and as moving to the imagination as a boat or fiddle .... a sense for the design depends I think chiefly on this perception of character of the classes of things and their several utilities. However, he also acknowledged,

110 the danger is that of such knowledge of the old paralysing new thought, and of the mistaken effort to copy, to "revive" as it is called, taking the place of the effort to be true. Such archaeological study of old furniture, or of old architecture, may be an interesting subject for one's reading-a branch of the history of art-but the same things done with a view to imitating or working in the style as it is called cannot be too strongly discouraged: nothing can come of this sort of open forgery. Thus he concluded, Copy-results in an art unsuitable to its time: I hope by this slight retrospect to have suggested to your minds the unity and individuality of old art. Every piece of furniture, every decoration had a use and a meaning in the economy of the room, the room was a member of the great body of architecture of the time; the architecture was the national thought and aspiration put into stone. How vain it is then to try and revive old arts or to design in the style of this or that great period of craftsmanship, and exact copy may have a second hand beauty and a historical interest but those attempts at modern classic or modern Gothic ... are quite repellent to the instructed mind, the life is gone out of them, they are sham sentimentalities, exercises in the stuffed-with straw-styles. Our own work must be entirely modern, but a mere attempt at unrelated originality is worse than the most mindless copying. Our own work must be modern as based on the reasonable and present solution of present wants. William Lethaby, 'Modem Design,' unpublished lecture given to the Royal Academy of Art on the occasion of his appointment to First Professor of Design and Ornament ( 1901 ), reprinted in Craft History One, Bath, 1988, pp, 135, 136-7, 140. 60 Lethaby's principal reference to Cockerell is found in Architecture (1911). Here he is critical of those 'modern architects' who are 'endeavouring to bring about a Renaissance of Professor Cockerell's Greek.' He fails to discuss Cockerell's theory of architecture in any detail. William Lethaby, Architecture: An Introduction to the History and Theory of the Art of Building, Home University Library, Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1911, p. 238. 61 Both Ruskin and Fergusson are cited in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. Ruskin on pp. 106, 127, 130, 164, 165, 168. Fergusson on pp. 60, 113, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159. 62 Kohane, 'C.R. Cockerell's Dream of history,' p. 144. 63 Watkin, C.R. Cockerell, p. 121 and plate 9. 64 Lethaby identifies Wren as one of the key architects of history and a model for his own theory of architecture, concluding that his 'theory of architecture' was 'erected on wide foundations of knowledge, historical and experimental, and is truly a general explanation, a philosophy of architecture .... ' The only other architect Lethaby felt could be equated with Wren was Philip Webb, who he described as a 'modern Wren.' Lethaby, 'Architecture of Adventure,' Royal Institute of British Architects, April 18, 1910; reprinted Lethaby, Form in Civilisation: Collected Papers on Labour and Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1922, p. 87. Letter from Lethaby to James Cockerell, April 24, 1915, National Art Library, London, 86T-16. 65 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, preface. 66 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 11. Lethaby cites the source of his quote as 'REYNOLDS, Discourse II.' 67 The dream context suggested by Colonna prefigures the Romantic idea of the imagination, which like a dream, unconsciously groups together disparate ideas and images and whose meaning is revealed to the conscious mind through the process of interpretation. It is important to note that the 'dream' was consciously adopted by Morris and his colleagues as a principle mode of expression throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, as is demonstrated by such texts as 'The Earthly Paradise' and 'News from Nowhere.' For a discussion of the imagination and its parallels to the dream see Sprinker, 'Ruskin on the Imagination,' Studies in Romanticism, vol. 18, Spring 1979, p. 138. 68William Lethaby, 'Education of the Architect,' Informal Conference, Royal Institute of British Architects, May 2, 1917; reprinted Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 123. 69 Lethaby, 'Education of the Architect,' p. 123. 70 Lethaby, 'Education of the Architect,' p. 123. 71 Lethaby, 'Architecture of Adventure,' p. 94. 72 Lethaby, 'Education for Appreciation or for Production?' The Education Conference, Southport, January 10, 1919; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 135.

111 73 William Lethaby, 'The Centre of Gravity,' Summer School at Cambridge, 1920, reprinted in Form in Civilisation, p. 233. 74 Muller argued that the mythic blending of the spiritual and the material could be compared to the idea of 'unfulfilled desire.' F.M. Muller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, London, 1873, pp. 271-2. 75 Lethaby, 'Philip Webb and his Work,' The Builder, cxxviii, 1925, p. 42 to cxxxix, 1925, p. 922; reprinted Philip Webb and his Work, Raven Oak Press, London, 1979, (1935). Okoye has argued that Lethaby's text on Webb cannot be read as a critical biography of Webb but as an 'attempt to mythicize Webb and to construct a series of theories from which Webb's work is supposed to consistently derive.' The text is infused with Lethaby's own criticism and theorising. Webb refused to grant Lethaby permission to write his biography and the text was published only after Webb's death. Ikem. S. 'Okoye, William Richard Lethaby: A Reassessment,' The Harvard Architectural Review, v. 7, 1989, p. 101. 76 Lethaby, Philip Webb and his Work, p. 130. 77 Lethaby, Philip Webb and his Work, p. 130. 78 Lethaby, 'Housing and Furnishing,' The Athenaeum, May 21, 1920; reprinted in Lethaby, Form and Civilisation, p. 38. 79 Lethaby, 'Phillip Webb and His Work,' Builder, 1925, p. 220. 80 Lethaby, Phillip Webb and His Work, p. 130. 81 Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, p. 132. 82 Coleridge, The Friend, 1818, section 2, essay 11, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Barbara. E. Rook (ed), Routledge & Kegan, London, 1969, vol. 4, pp. 523-24. 83 Garnham, William Lethaby and the Problem of Style, p. 133. 84J Cirlot, A Dictionary ofSymbols, Routledge and Keagan, London, 1971, p.258. 85 While the imagination revealed the organic bond between man and God (the universal and divine essence), the body for the Romantic theorist represented a medium through which relative data about the world could be accessed. For many, such relative data became a new source of artistic inspiration. See Jonathan Crary's discussion of Goethe's colour theories, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990, chapter 2. 86 The monogram appears at the base of many of Lethaby's drawings produced throughout the late 1880s and 1890s. It is also found on the title page or inside cover of his early sketchbooks from 1883-1889, Sketchbooks 11-24, British Architectural Library, Drawings Collection, sketchbook cupboard. 87 Lethaby, 'random saying,' n.d, cited in Roberts, William Richard Lethaby, LCC Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, 1957, p. 80. 88 Shams Eldien Eissawy Naga, William Richard Lethaby The Romantic Modernist, Ph.D thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1992, chapter 5; Godfrey Rubens, WR. Lethaby. His Life and Works, pp. 72 &156. Bill Riseboro, Modem Architecture and Design, Herbert Press, London, 1982, p.127. John Brandon Jones, 'W.R. Lethaby and the Art Workers Guild,' in Backemeyer & Gronberg (eds), WR. Lethaby 1853-1931: Architecture, Design and Education, Lund Humpries, London, 1985, pp. 24-31.

112 Part II: Seeking architecture of 'Sweetness' and 'Light.' Lethaby's debt to John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold.

Chapter 4:

Paradox in Ruskin's contrasts.

Linking his theory of making to the Romantic idea of the Imagination-a divine principle which determined and organically bound all creation-Ruskin promoted a dualistic theory of invention based on seemingly fixed and intractable contrasts.

The moral foundation on which he based these contrasts encouraged a position which privileged the subject (the producer and/or user of the artefact) over the object (the artefact itself), the conception of invention as action rather than contemplation, and the thesis of art as the representation of universal values as opposed to relative phenomena. However, the prolific and often expansive nature of Ruskin's writings ensured that his conclusions were not always consistent and

systematic. Ruskin's views on art, religion and society were frequently

characterised by modification and redaction, a phenomenon which often resulted

in a retreat from the moral basis of his contrasts. Such revisions, in combination

with the orthodoxy imposed by the moral biases of his primary doctrines, inject an

element of paradox into his writings; a conflict that is often difficult to resolve.

Arguing that it was the 'paradox' in Ruskin's work which appealed to him most,

Lethaby set out to reconcile the alternate conceptions of art and architecture

represented by Ruskin's contrasts into a systematic theory of invention.'

However, in doing so, Lethaby was forced to abandon the moral intolerance

evident in the Ruskinian position and seek a more conciliatory paradigm. He

found this in the ambivalent attitudes and syncretic methodology of Matthew

Arnold's theory of 'Cultural Perfection.'

113 4.1: William Morris and John Ruskin's idea of making and its implications.

Both John Ruskin's and William Morris's (1834-1896) conception of the noble arts, including architecture, was intimately tied to a revival of the crafts and to the idea of making. In his lecture 'The Lesser Arts' ( 1877), Morris attributed a perceived decline in the art of the Western world to the bifurcation of the 'fine arts of painting and sculpture' from the 'lesser or decorative arts.'2 Arguing that in the past 'handicraftsmen were artists,' and that it was only in 'latter times, and under the most intricate conditions of life that they [had] fallen apart from one another,'

Morris concluded that it was only when 'the thought of man became more intricate, more difficult to express,' that 'art grew a heavier thing to deal with' and

'labour was ... divided among great men, lesser men, and little men. ' 3 The result, he continued was 'ill for the Arts altogether.' The lesser arts became 'trivial, mechanical, unintelligent, incapable of resisting the changes pressed down on them by fashion or dishonesty. '4 The fine or higher arts, on the other hand, while

'practiced for a while by great minds and wonder-making hands, unhelped by the

lesser' lost 'the dignity of popular arts, and [became] nothing but dull adjuncts to unmeaning pomp, or ingenious toys for a few rich and idle men. ' 5 The sole

solution to this decline, Morris argued, was to reinvigorate the 'lesser arts' of

handicraft and to once again elevate the craftsman to the status of the artist,

The remedy I repeat is plain if it can be applied; the handicraftsmen, left

behind by the artist when the arts sundered, must come up with him, must

work side by side with him. 6

114 The motive underlying Morris's revival of making was his belief that the crafts possessed attributes that were lacking in the fine arts. Stating in the 'The Revival of Handicraft' (1888), that the function of the fine arts was to passively 'record history,' Morris also concluded that the 'lesser arts' were 'unconscious and spontaneous,' and thus capable of functioning as a mechanism through which man's delight in beauty and pleasure in labour could be expressed.7

These arts, I have said, are part of a great system invented for the

expression of man's delight in beauty: all peoples and times have used

them; they have been the joy of free nations, and the solace of the

oppressed nations ... best of all they are the sweeteners of human labour,

both to the handicraftsman, whose life is spent working in them, and to the

people in general who are influenced by the sight of them at every tum of

the day's work: they make our toil happy, our rest fruitful. 8

Feeling that both pleasure and beauty were absent from the modem life of the common man, he argued for a revival of the crafts in the belief that they would guarantee a return of both.

Furthermore, I feel absolutely certain that handicraft joined to certain other

conditions ... would produce the beauty and pleasure in work above

mentioned; and if that be so ... this double pleasure of lovely surroundings

and happy work could take the place of the double torment of squalid

surroundings and wretched drudgery. . . .9

'We are right to long for intelligent handicrafts to come back to the world,' Morris

declared. As 'it once made [life] tolerable amidst war and turmoil and

uncertainty,' it could only again make man 'happy' in an age which had 'grown

so peaceful' and 'so considerate of each other's temporal welfare.' 10 In reinstating

115 the happiness and pleasure of man, art, Morris believed, could return to its true function and regain its true value and significance.

That thing which I understand by real art is the expression by man of his

pleasure in labour. I do not believe he can be happy in his labour without

expressing that happiness; and especially is this so when he is at work at

anything in which he specially excels. 11

Morris's conception of art as the pleasure experienced by man when making or viewing hand-made objects was not, as he candidly acknowledged, an original idea.

The pith of what I am going to say on this subject was set forth years ago

and for the first time by Mr. Ruskin in that chapter of The Stones of Venice

which is entitled, 'On the Nature of Gothic [1853].' 12

In this essay Ruskin asserted the primacy of making and the independence of the

artisan within the design process. The liberty and freedom of the workman to

invent was, for Ruskin, the essential ingredient of noble design. He demonstrated

this by drawing the readers attention to three categories of ornament: the 'Servile,'

the 'Constitutional,' and the 'Revolutionary.' 13 Each, Ruskin argued, represented

different levels of independence which were given to the hand, the artisan

producing the artefact. When the liberty of the hand was not respected, and the

'execution or power of the inferior workman [was] entirely subjected to the

intellect of the higher power,' be it the intellect of an overseeing designer or

overarching design concept, the 'thoughtful' role of the artisan producing the

artefact was completely negated. In such constricted conditions, the ornament

116 produced, Ruskin concluded, could only be 'servile' and thus 'ignoble.' 14

Examples of 'servile ornament,' Ruskin explained, could be found in the schools of the 'Greek, Ninevite, and Egyptian.' However, the 'servility' of each was of

'different kinds.' The overriding attribute of Greek work, Ruskin argued, was a love of perfection.

The Greek master-workman ... nor those for whom he worked could endure

the appearance of imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what ornament

he appointed to be done by those beneath him was composed of mere

geometrical forms,-balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetrical foliage,­

which could be executed with absolute precision by line and rule, and

were as perfect in their way, when completed, as his own figure

sculpture. 15

The Assyrian's and Egyptian's, on the other hand,

less cognisant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow their

figure sculpture to be executed by inferior workman, but lowered the

method of its treatment to a standard to which every workman could reach,

and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance of his

falling beneath the standard appointed. 16

The methodologies of both, however, had for Ruskin, the same consequence; the

workman was, in both systems, a 'slave.'

The Greek gave to the lower workman no subject which he could not

perfectly execute. The Assyrian gave him subjects which he could only

execute imperfectly, but fixed a legal standard for this imperfection. 17

117 A substitute for Servile work, Ruskin continued, could be found in the

'Revolutionary system.' In this classification, Ruskin presented the artisan as having complete freedom to work in a manner 'in which no executive inferiority is admitted at all.' 18 In this system of production the 'inferior detail becomes principal, the executor of every minor portion [the artisan] being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as great as that which is possessed by the master of the design.' For Ruskin ornament of this kind was little better than the

'servile' as it too enslaved the labourer. Not only did the complete independence of the artisan negate the presence of the 'master designer,' a greater concern for

Ruskin was that it also forced the worker to take on the responsibilities, the

'skill[s] and knowledge' which traditionally were the domain of the 'master of design.' Such responsibilities, Ruskin concluded, would only 'overwhelm' and

inhibit the workers inventive and 'original power,' reducing the artefact produced

to a 'wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility.' 19

A more balanced approach, and thus successful system of ornament, could be

found in the 'Constitutional' system. Here the artisan producing the artefact and

the 'master' responsible for the design received an equal and balanced

representation. 'The executive inferior power,' Ruskin tells us, 'is to a certain

point, emancipated and independent, having a will of its own.' However, this

independence is not complete, as 'the executive inferior power'-the artisan-still

'confess[es] its inferiority and render[s] obedience to [the] higher powers' of the

designer or design ideal. 2°For Ruskin, the 'medieval' and thus 'Christian system'

of production best demonstrated such ornament as only in this system is 'slavery'

fully eliminated and the 'value of every soul' acknowledged. 21

118 But in the medieval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this

slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognised, in

small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul. But it not

only recognises its value; it confesses its imperfection, in only bestowing

dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. That admission of lost

power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite felt to be intensely

painful, and, as far as might be, altogether refused, the Christian makes

daily and hourly, contemplating the fact of it without fear, as tending, in

the end, to God's greater glory. Therefore, to every spirit which

Christianity summons to her service, the exhortation is: Do what you can,

and confess frankly what you are unable to do; neither let her effort be

shortened for fear and failure, nor your confession silenced for fear of

shame. And it is, perhaps, the principal admirableness of the Gothic

schools of architecture, that they thus received the results of the labour of

inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying

that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and

unaccusable whole. 22

The importance of Ruskin's essay is summed up by Morris. 'To some ofus when we first read it now many years ago,' Morris explained, 'it seemed to point out a new road on which the world would travel. ' 23 The central idea, which Morris took

from this text, was the essential role that the liberated hand played within the

production process.

The lesson which Ruskin here teaches is that art is the expression of man's

pleasure in labour; that it is possible for man to rejoice in work, for,

119 strange as it may seem to us to-day, there have been times when he did

reJ01ce· · m · 1t. · 24

The proximity of Morris's views to those of Ruskin's is demonstrated by his division of Architecture into the 'Mechanical,' 'Intelligent,' and 'Individual;' categories which are clearly indebted to Ruskin's idea of 'Servile, Constitutional and Revolutionary' ornament.

I think one may divide the work with which Architecture is conversant

into three classes: first there is the purely mechanical: those who do this

are machines only, and the less they think of what they are doing the better

for the purpose, supposing they are properly drilled: the purpose of this

work, to speak plainly, is not the making of wares of any kind, but what on

the one hand is called employment, on the other is called money-making ...

. The second kind is more or less mechanical as the case may be; but it can

always be done better or worse: if it is to be well done it claims attention

from the workman, and he must leave on it signs of his individuality: there

will be more or less of art in it, over which the workman has had at least

some control; and he will work on it partly to earn his bread in not too

toilsome or disgusting a way, but in a way which makes even his

work-hours pass pleasantly to him, and partly to make wares, which when

made will be a distinct gain to the world; things that will be praised and

delighted in. This work I call Intelligent work. The third kind of work has

little but anything mechanical about it; it is altogether individual; that is to

say, that what any man does by means of it could never have been done by

any other man. Properly speaking, this work is all pleasure ... they are the

120 romance of the work and do but elevate the workman not depress him: I

would call this imaginative work. 25

Like Ruskin before him, Morris established the liberation and independence of the hand as an essential component of the production process of fine or noble art.

However for Morris this liberation was also equated with the pleasure and joy in labour. As he himself was to point out,

ART IS MAN'S EXPRESSION OF HIS JOY IN LABOUR. If those are

not Professor Ruskin's words they embody at least his teaching on this

subject.26

Ruskin's and Morris's celebration of the thoughtful worker can be attributed to the Romantic belief that the creative act could only be explained in terms of the

'imagination' rather than passive observation and imitation. 'Art,' Ruskin reminds us, is 'not a copy, nor anything done by rule' but rather 'a freshly and divinely imagined thing. ' 27 Ruskin's debt to the romantic theory of the imagination has already been discussed in Part I. One aspect that has yet to be considered, however, is the doctrine's imposition of strict dichotomies onto Ruskin's

conception of art and architecture; the division of knowledge and invention into

antagonistic categories of subject and object, action (doing) and contemplation

(knowing), universal and relative, and moral and rational. In the Sacred River,

Baker has demonstrated that the romantic thesis of the imagination was itself

based on a 'tension between polar opposites. ' 28 'Every Power in nature and in

spirit,' the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge concluded, 'must evolve an

opposite, as the sole means and condition of its manifestation... .' 29 For

121 Coleridge, and Romantic theorists in general, the role of the imagination was to

'coalesce' such opposites.

That synthetic and magical power reveals itself in the balance or

reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of.. .idea with the image;

the individual with the representative ... a more than usual state of emotion,

with more than usual order; judgement ever awake and steady

self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement. 30

However, recognising the inevitable failure of such a coalescence,31 Ruskin's exploration of the imagination seeks to establish the viability of a subjective world view as an alternative to the positivistic tendencies of nineteenth century thought.32 Rather than seeking to resolve the tension between opposites evident in man's relationship with nature, Ruskin demonstrates the unbridgeable gulf that

separated subject from object.33 The result; the division of the world and art into

clearly defined and diametrically opposed contrasts or poles.

4.2: Subject versus Object.

In the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), Ruskin argued that the most

important message to be conveyed by the arts was 'the perception or conception

of the mental or bodily powers by which the work was produced. ' 34 In 'The

Nature of Gothic' (1853), he expressed a similar sentiment arguing that the

external forms of the Gothic structure were little more than representations of

'certain mental tendencies of the builders, legibly expressed in it; as fancifulness,

love of variety, love of richness, and such others. ' 35 The 'ugly goblins ... formless

monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid' adorning the Gothic structure,'

Ruskin argued, functioned as 'signs of the life and liberty' and of the 'freedom of

122 thought' of the individual 'workman who struck the stone. ' 36 With such statements Ruskin established the intrinsic qualities of the artefact (the object) as being bound to and determined by the subject; the user or producer of the artefact.

Ruskin's belief in the bond between the content of the work and its producer, is an enduring theme in his writings. In 'The relation of Art to Morality' (1870), Ruskin confidently stated that 'with absolute precision, from highest to lowest, the fineness of the possible art is an index of the moral purity and majesty of emotion it expresses. ' 37 In 'The Nature of Gothic' he articulated the same sentiment when he argued that 'the savageness of Gothic architecture' couldn't be seen to be

'merely an expression of its origins among northern nations.' Rather the 'higher nobility' of the Gothic form, he explained, could only be determined 'when it

[was] considered as an index, not of climate, but of religious principle.' 38

Ruskin's use of the term 'index' in both instances is significant.

An 'index,' was defined in 1875 by the nineteenth century philosopher and

semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce, as a sign-a conceptual or physical

notation-which 'is in its individual existence, connected with the individual

object' it denotes.39 A 'weathercock,' argued Peirce, 'is an index of the wind's

direction,' as is a 'low barometer indicating moist air' an 'index of rain; ' 40 The

index represented for Peirce one of three possible modes of signification, the other

two being the symbol and the icon. Unlike the index, which has a 'natural'

connection to its object, the symbol was explained by Peirce as being an 'ens

rationis;' the product of a deductive, reasoning, and conscious mind.'41 Peirce

based this assumption on the observation that the relationship which bound the

123 symbolic sign-the physical notation that pointed to something outside itself-to its object-that which the sign referred to-was purely arbitrary, in that it was the product of a 'general association of ideas' or the 'habitual' linking of a specific sign, meaning and object.42 This reliance on arbitrary associations was in tum the result of the symbol's lack of 'natural fitness' to represent its object. Unlike other sign types, the symbol did not look like, sound like, or resemble in any way its object; nor was it, like the index, 'existentially' linked.43 The final sign type identified by Peirce was the icon; a sign that denoted its object through a relationship of similarity. The material form of the icon shared specific physical and qualitative attributes with the object that it represented. 'Diagrams,'

'paintings,' and 'statues,' explained Peirce, are all examples of iconic signs, as they mimic some quality evident within the object.44 'Anything whatever,' argued

Peirce, 'is an icon of anything in so far it is like that thing. ' 45

Peirce developed his semiotic theory in 1875, some twenty two years after

Ruskin's essay on Gothic architecture.46 However, evidence can be found in

Ruskin's writings which indicate that he possessed a comprehension of the different representational strategies which were available to the artist. These

anticipate Peirce's symbol, icon and index.

In 'The Relation of Art to Religion' (1870), Ruskin argued that the image could

carry out 'two distinct operations upon our minds. ' 47 He labelled these operations

'realistic' and 'symbolic. ' 48 In his later lectures on 'The Art of England' (1883),

he explained the nature of each operation in more detail. In his first lecture, which

was dedicated to the Pre-Raphaelite painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William

124 Holman Hunt, Ruskin argued that the realistic condition was demonstrated by the

'sternly materialistic, though deeply reverent, veracity' of the Pre-Raphealite

Brotherhood.49 Identifying Holman Hunt's painting The Strayed Sheep (fig.14) as one of the 'best efforts of the times' he explained that the representational strategy adopted by Hunt was one of accurate imitation.

It showed to us, for the first time in the history of art, the absolutely

faithful balances of colour and shade by which actual sunshine might be

transposed into a key in which the harmonies possible with material

pigments should yet produce the same impressions upon the mind which

were caused by the light itself.50

'Striving to put the facts before the readers eyes as positively as if he had seen the thing come to pass,' the representational strategy employed by Hunt, like that of the icon, was to carefully imitate what he sought to denote, in this case, the visual qualities of the landscape and the response these qualities evoked in the observer.51

But the pure natural green and tufted gold of the herbage in the hollow of

that little sea-cliff must be recognised for true merely by a minutes pause

of attention. Standing long before the picture, you were soothed by it, and

raised into such peace as you are intended to find in the glory and the

stillness of summer, possessing all things.52

In the second lecture of this senes, Ruskin claimed that an alternative

representational strategy could be found in the images produced by the 'Mythic

School.' Unlike the realists, whose principal objective was 'Realisation­

Verification-Materialisation,' the objective of the mythic painter was to

represent 'through symbolic figures ... general truths or abstract ideas. ' 53 In direct

125 contrast to the realistic painter, who accurately imitated the object represented, the mythic painter turned to arbitrary signs which had come to be associated with specific ideas. Ruskin demonstrated this method by drawing the reader's attention to the personification of the Wheel of Fortune in the figure of Enid. 'Enid does not herself conceive, or in the least intend the hearers of her song to conceive,' Ruskin explained, 'that there stands anywhere in the universe a real woman turning an adamantine wheel whose revolutions have power over human destiny. Rather,

she means only to assert, under that image, more clearly the law of

Heaven's continual dealing with man,-"he hath put down the mighty

from their seat, and bath exulted the humble and the meek."54

Enid-an image of a woman holding a wheel-functioned as a visual notation which had come to be arbitrarily associated with a particular idea or concept; in this case, 'the laws of heaven' and their impact on men. Thus the figure of Enid, in Ruskin's own words, was 'symbolic' rather then 'realistic.'55

In the 'The Nature of Gothic,' Ruskin indicated that a third representational mode was available to the artisan; that of the 'index. ' 56 As Peirce was to argue, Ruskin suggested that the definitive attribute of the index (in this case the Gothic artefact) was that it represented the workman which produced it by being physically bound to it. This aspect of Ruskin's argument emerges in his analysis of 'Gothic

imperfection.' Noting that 'all things are literally better, lovelier, and more

beloved for [their] imperfections' and 'that neither architecture, nor any other

noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect,' Ruskin also explained that

such imperfection was a direct response to the artisan's freedom to think and

create.57

126 Understand this clearly: you can teach a man to draw a straight line and to

cut one; to strike a curved line and to carve it; to copy and carve any

number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect

precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to

think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in

his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and

ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch

he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him

for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool. ' 58

As smoke is an index of fire and thus bound to it for its existence, imperfection and thus nobility in architecture is an index of, and thus existentially bound to the artisan's liberty and freedom in thought. Arguing that it is a mistake to believe

'that one man's thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by another's hands,'59

Ruskin encouraged a return to creative liberty.

Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing;

and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out comes all his

toughness, his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure

upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him

also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds setting

upon him. '60

The consequence of this bond between subject and object ensured that the object

had no intrinsic or inherent values outside of the task to signify the subject. As

already argued, the 'esemplastic' powers of the imagination ensured not only the

priority of the self over an objective reality but that the empirical world was itself

127 no more than a projection of the perce1vmg subject. Ruskin maintained this

Romantic assumption by failing to consider the autonomous value of the object, be it its material qualities or the processes that contributed to the artefact's construction, as things of value in themselves. Throughout this essay, one which documents the role of the imagination in the medieval world, and one which

Ruskin offers to the contemporary reader as a model for modem practice, the primacy of the producing and conceiving subject is constantly asserted. The object itself only has value in that it acts as the medium through which the subject speaks. As Ruskin was to point out, 'it is not the material' which determined the value of an object, but the presence of 'human labour.'

a piece of terracotta, or plaster of paris, which has been wrought by the

human hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara .... 61

For Ruskin, to focus on the independent qualities of the object was both irrelevant and dangerous as such concerns, he argued, were 'independent of the nature and the worthiness of the object from which they are received. ' 62

4.3: Physiological versus rational and active versus contemplative.

Arguing that the craftsman was existentially bound to the artefact through the

process of making, Ruskin also suggested that the subject was physiological rather

than rational. In Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the

Nineteenth Century (1990), Jonathan Crary has argued that the defining attribute

of the Romantic subject was its 'physiological' rather than its rational nature; a

concept which established 'thoughts, feelings, and sensory experiences as the

product of bodily processes [or actions] rather than the outcomes of reflective

introspection. ' 63 Refusing to reduce the body and its mental and sensory capacities

128 to a mere medium through which information originating in an external source was transmitted, the Romantic established the actions and reactions of the body as the source of all intellectual and sensory experiences.

In 1810, the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) identified the physiological potential on the subject.64 In the opening paragraphs of

Farbenlehre, a work on colour theory, Goethe embraced the optical model put forth by his empirical counterparts-the camera obscura-and the rational assumptions about perception which it demonstrated.

Let a room be made as dark as possible; let there be a circular opening in

the window shutter about three inches in diameter, which may be closed or

not at pleasure. The sun being suffered to shine through this on a white

surface, let the spectator from some little distance fix his eyes on this

bright circle thus admitted.65

Working on and refining the principle that when light passed through a small hole into a dark and enclosed space an inverted image will appear on the wall opposite the hole, the camera obscura established a space (the darkened interior of the box) where the sensory flux of the external world could be studied in a detached and thus rational and objective manner. Locked within a dark box the viewer was

forced to study images that were projected, filtered and ordered by the mechanical

lens in an attempt to gain knowledge of a world which was presented as being

distinct and autonomous from the subject.66 However, Goethe 'abruptly and

stunningly abandoned the rational order of the camera obscura' by instructing the

reader to 'schliesse darauf die Offnung' (to seal the hole). 67 With the closing of

129 the hole, Goethe exposed a new source of visual information; the 'after image' burnt into the retina of the eye.

The hole then closed, let him look towards the darkest part of the room; a

circular image will now seem to float before him. The middle of the circle

will appear bright, colourless, or somewhat yellow, but the border will

appear red. After a time this red, increasing towards the centre, covers the

whole circle, and at last the bright central point. No sooner, however, is

the whole circle red than the edge begins to be blue, and the blue gradually

encroaches inwards on the red. When the whole is blue the edge becomes

dark and colourless. The darker edge again slowly encroaches on the blue

till the whole of the circle appears colourless .... 68

Goethe's floating and chromatically changing circles made visible a new epistemological figure that countered the rational claims for the camera obscura. 69

For Goethe and his contemporaries such afterimages demonstrated the ability of the body to produce unique forms and colours and in tum revealed new sources of knowledge and imagery.70 The 'visible' and knowable, as Crary has argued,

'escaped from the timeless order of the camera obscura and lodged in another

apparatus, within the unstable physiology and temporality of the human body.'71

The physiological nature of the subject sought by Goethe in his colour theories is

also sensed in his early writings on architecture. As Paul Frankl in The Gothic:

Literary Sources and Interpretation Through Eight Centuries ( 1960) has argued,

'Goethe experienced Gothic quite directly and spontaneously as something

convincing and fascinating ... he was suddenly carried away by the immediate

impression.' 72 Documenting his visit to Strasbourg Cathedral, Goethe wrote that,

130 My soul was filled by a whole and great impression, which, because it

consisted of a thousand harmonizing details, I could indeed taste and

enjoy, but by no means comprehend or explain.73

An encounter with Milan Cathedral evoked a similar response.

Through a single tall window fell a solemn, many hued light for it was

pleasingly composed of coloured class. The whole interior acquired hereby

a strange tone and induced a peculiar mood. The beauty of the vaulting

and of the walls was increased by the decoration of the pavement which

consisted of specially shaped tiles, laid in a beautiful design ... and it

seemed ... as though she were or were not, as though she could feel and

could not feel, as though all this might vanish before her eyes, and she

before herself. 74

It is this same immediate, physiological rather than intellectual response to art and architecture, that one detects in Ruskin's and subsequently Morris's writings. As

Bill Beckley has argued in his introduction to Ruskin's Lectures on Art ( 1996),

Ruskin found the validity for art not in its physical or material qualities but in the

actions they stimulated; the 'feelings of love, reverence, and dread' which they

evoked in both the producer and user of the artefact. 75

The physiological nature of the Ruskinian subject is well exemplified in the

writings of William Morris.76 In William Morris on Architecture (1996), Chris

Mile has argued that Morris's reading of art as an expression of man's pleasure in

labour is not 'some anodyne "whistle while you work cheerfulness,"' but

something that is 'deep, primitive, erotic, almost beyond the power of language to

131 express.' Its character was as intense as real physical love. Miele even goes so far to assert that Morris's ideal of pleasure can be described in terms of 'fetishism.'77

This erotic nature, Miele argued, is clearly demonstrated in Morris's 'Story of the

Unknown Church.' 78 In this essay the focus is not on the Gothic structure, nor on the intricate carvings which can be found on the Gothic facade, but on the intense feelings of love, fear and loss they evoke in' the stone mason while working on a carving of the prophet Abraham. 79 This love was expressed in a vision had by the head mason while working on his carvings.

I stood on the scaffolding for some time, while Margaret's chisel worked

on bravely below. I took mine in my hand ... and began to think of

Abraham ... and, looking round, I saw standing by me my friend Amyot,

whom I love better than any one else in the world, but I thought iri my

dream that I was frightened when I saw him, for his face had changed so,

it was so bright and almost transparent, and his eyes gleamed and shone as

I had never seen them do before. Oh! He was so wondrously beautiful, so

fearfully beautiful! and as I looked at him the distant music swelled, and

seemed to come close up to me, and he swept by us, and fainted away, at

last died off entirely; and then I felt sick at heart, and faint and parched,

and I stooped to drink of the water of the river, and as soon as the water

touched my parched lips, lo! the river vanished, and the flat country with

its poppies and lilies ....80

The stonemason's response to the act of making is both emotional and physical.

Not only does the process of making evoke the physical love he feels for his

friend but he also becomes ill and parched when the vision of his friend departs.

However, Morris does not restrict such responses to the producer of the

132 architectural object. A similar reaction, he argued, is evoked in the observer of the

Gothic artefact. In 'The Churches of North France, No. 1, Shadows of Amiens,'

Morris documents his own passionate response to the medieval form.

Not long ago I saw for the first time some of the churches ofNorth France;

still more recently I saw them for a second time; and remembering the

love I have for them and the longing that was in me to see them, during the

time that came between the first and the second visit, I thought I should

like to tell people of some of those things I have felt when I was there;­

there among the tombs of the long dead ages .... And I thought that even if

I could say nothing else about these grand churches, I could at least tell

men how much I loved them; so that, though they might laugh at me for

my foolish and confused words, they might yet be moved to see what was

there that made me speak my love, though I could give no reason for it. 81

Morris makes clear that his response to the monument is not detached, intellectual or rational, rather his response is firmly grounded within the physiological actions of his body, a unconscious response that defies rational explanation. For Morris and Ruskin, the invention and appreciation of the Gothic artefact is active and physiological rather than reflective and contemplative.

4.4: Universal morals versus relative, intellectual pursuits.

The subject celebrated by Ruskin, being physiological and thus grounded m

action, was neither individual nor relative.

Now listen to me, if I have in these last details lost or burdened your

attention; for this is what I chiefly say to you. The art of any country is the

exponent of its social and political virtues .. . accept this as one of the

133 things, and the most important of all things, I can positively declare to you.

The art, or general productive and formative energy, of any country, is an

exact component of its ethical life. 82

The actions he sought to define and associate with a noble art were universal, eternal and ultimately moral. In honouring the subject, Ruskin's intention was to extract from the flux of every day phenomena 'laws' or 'essential principles' that were 'consistent' and 'eternal. ' 83 Arguing that there are 'certain elementary principles of right, in every picture and design,' 84 and that 'everything which men rightly accomplish is indeed done by Divine help,' and 'under a consistent law which is never departed from,' 85 Ruskin concluded that both art and architecture must always be,

executed in compliance with constant laws of right, [that they] cannot be

singular and must be distinguished only by excellence in what is always

desirable. 86

The 'desirable' in Ruskin's eyes, was a universal code of 'morality' or 'the law of rightness in human conduct. ' 87 Thus the highest function of art was,

to relate to us the utmost ascertainable truth respecting visible things and

moral feelings: and this pursuit of fact is the vital element of the art

power,-that in which alone, it can develop itself to its utmost.88

The single most important aspect of morality for Ruskin was that it transcended

the flux of everyday existence and pointed to what was universal and eternal.

Noting that there are 'moral and immoral religions, which differ as much in

precepts as in emotion,' he also claimed that,

there is only one morality, which has been, is, and must be for ever, an

instinct in the hearts of all civilised men, as certain and unalterable as

134 their outward bodily form, which receives from religion neither law, nor

place; but only hope, and felicity. ' 89

Associating art with 'morality' Ruskin was also able to elevate artistic production above the everyday and thus bind the creative production of the present with that of the past and of the future.

I press to the conclusion which I wish to leave with you, that all you can

rightly do, or honourably become, depends on the government of these

two instincts of order and kindness, by this great Imaginative faculty

which gives you inheritance of the past, grasp of the present and authority

over the future. 90

He was also able to dispel the isolation of the arts by suggesting that they be bound to all industries or human activities. In seeking what was common, one would also find, Ruskin argued, the essential.

I trust we shall together seek, in the laws which regulate the finest

industries, the clue to the laws which regulate all industries, and in better

obedience to which we shall actually have henceforth to live not merely in

compliance with our own sense of what is right, but under the weight of

what is a quite literal necessity. 91

4.5: The implications of Ruskin's universal morals.

In 'Ruskin and Pater-Hebrew and Hellene-Explore the Renaissance'(1988),

Wendell Harris has argued that the 'primacy' Ruskin gave to moral judgements

and his loyalty to the belief that all 'judgements are ultimately moral,' reflected an

'unusually pure form' of what the nineteenth century cultural critic Matthew

Arnold had described as the 'Hebraic' motive of culture.'92 It is the presence of

135 this Hebraic motive m Ruskin's contrasts which introduce an element of orthodoxy into his writings and convert his doctrines into dogma. This orthodoxy maintains the primacy of the subject, the active and physiological processes of making, and the universal and moral within his 'contrasts. It also guarantees that his theory of invention remains intolerant of any counterpart position.

In Culture and Anarchy ( 1869), Matthew Arnold argued that culture could be divided into two motives. 'The first motive of culture,' he explained, was,

the desire to augment the excellence of our nature and to render an

intelligent being yet more intelligent. This is the true ground to assign for

the genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture,

viewed simply as a fruitful passion; and it is a worthy ground, even though

we let the term curiosity stand to describe it. 93

The key objective of this motive, Arnold explained, was

a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for

their pleasure of seeing them as they are,-which is, in an intelligent

being, natural and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as they

are, implies a balance and regulation of the mind which is not often

attained without fruitful effort, and which is the opposite of the blind and

diseased impulse of the mind which is what we mean to blame when we

bl ame cunos1ty.· · 94

The second 'motive of culture,' he continued, focused on 'moral rigour' or 'right

conduct.'

The love of our neighbour, the impulse towards action, help, and

beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human

136 confusion and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to make the

world better and happier than we found it,-motives eminently such as are

called social--come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main pre-

emment· part. ,95

These dual aspects of culture, Arnold argued, could be traced back to the beginning of time.

And to give these forces names from the two races of men who have

supplied the most single and splendid manifestations of them, we may call

them respectively the forces of Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism and

Hellenism,-between these two points of influence moves our world.96

The objectives of each, Arnold explained, were the same in that they both sought

'man's perfection or salvation.'97 However the strategies adopted by each to

attain this goal were dramatically different. The focus of the Hellene, Arnold

explained, was detached and contemplative, an intellectual attempt to rid oneself

of 'ones ignorance.' 98 The Hebrew, on the other hand, found salvation in a life of

action and a 'concern for conduct ... acting in strict accordance with a prescribed

moral code. ' 99

Of the two disciplines laying their mam stress, the one, on clear

intelligence, the other, on firm obedience; the one on comprehensively

knowing the grounds of one's duty, the other, on diligently practising it;

the one, on taking all possible care (to use Bishop Wilson's words again)

that the light we have be not darkness, the other according to the best light

we diligently walk,- the priority naturally belongs to that discipline

137 which braces all man's moral powers, and founds for him an indispensable

basis of character. 100

The attempt to conform to a fixed moral order and code of conduct, the interests of the Hebrew were firmly fixed on what was perceived to be common and universal. The Hebrew, Arnold explained, 'seize[d] upon certain plain, capital imitations of the universal order, and rivet[ ed] itself, one may say, with unequalled grandeur of earnestness and intensity on the study and observance of them.' 101 'The bent of [the] Hellen[ e ]' on the other hand, was to follow, with flexible activity,' the relative flux of everyday existence .

. . . the whole play of the universal order, to be apprehensive of missing any

part of it, of sacrificing one part to another, to slip away from resting in

this or that imitation of it, however capital. An unclouded clearness of

mind, and unimpeded play of thought, is what this bent drives at. 102

In nineteenth century Britain, the two qualities of culture which Arnold sought to document, Harris has argued, are demonstrated by the writings of Walter Pater

(1839-1894) and John Ruskin. Pater's critical work, with its 'careful exploration of the evidence,' reliance on 'the full powers of intelligence and aesthetic

sensibility,' and debt to the theory of 'abduction'-'the reasoning from effect to

cause, where the "cause" is not conceived as a general law but a unique

convergence of causes (or forces)'--

the hand, who sought to identify 'judgements' that are both universal and 'moral'

demonstrates a motivation that is 'Hebraic.' 103 Further evidence for the Hebraic

nature of Ruskin's writings, I would argue, can be found in the element of

intolerance inherent in his moral contrasts.

138 Arnold argued that the dual forces of culture-the Hellenic and the Hebraic - were interdependent, each relying on the other for its existence in that each filled the void which was left by the other. Hebraism braced the Hellenic character and yielded it greater strength for sustaining its ideal. Hellenism, on the other hand, provided light and guidance to the Hebraic powers of determination, 'the free play of the mind, bring[ing] new life and movement to that side of us with which alone

Hebraism concerns itself, and awakens a healthier and less mechanical movement there.' 104 However, while each was dependent on the other for its existence, neither necessarily accommodated nor accepted the attributes of its opposite. This is demonstrated, Arnold argued, by the dogmatic nature of Hebraism and its inability to accept the value of its counterpart. Joseph Carroll, in The Cultural

Theory of Matthew Arnold (1982) has argued, 'Hebraism in Arnold's system

'appears as a supplementary, corrective agency that ... regards intellectual deliverance as inessential to salvation.' Hellenism, on the other hand, while it

focuses on intellectual endeavour, does not exclude the Hebraic as inessential. 'It

does fashion an ideal that theoretically includes [and accepts the necessity] of the

Hebraic contribution.' The consequence of this Hebraic intolerance for the

Hellenic in Arnold's thesis, Carroll argues, is that cultural perfection-the

balancing of the two 'motives' of culture--could only occur in a culture that was

principally Hellenic. 105

The element of intolerance inherent to the Hebraic motive is also detected in

Ruskin's contrast. In Ruskin on Architecture (1973), Kristine Ottesen Garrigan

has argued that clearly defined polarities were essential to Ruskin's argument. His

139 alternatives are couched in terms that by their very nature force a moral judgement. Ruskin's contrasts almost never consist of equal pairs; both are frequently stated extremely, and one side is clearly meant to be unattractive or untenable. 106 As Ruskin himself concluded, good and noble art can never accommodate nor accept its opposite.

You will gradually perceive that all good has it origins in good, never in

evil; that the fact of either literature or painting being truly fine of their

kind, whatever their mistaken aim, or partial error, is proof of their noble

origin; and if there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come

of a sterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled by

conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strange

than those which all may detect in their own hearts .... 107

However, like Arnold's Hebraism, Ruskin also acknowledged that it was only in the presence of its opposite, that noble art could flourish and thrive.

Observe first, that although good never springs out of evil, it is developed

to its highest by contention with evil. 108

Thus, as in Arnold's cultural dialectic, Ruskin accepted the need for both characters, for the Hebraic and Hellenic. However, in promoting a moral world­ view, one in which there was a clear right and wrong, and establishing it as the principal motivation underlying the inventive process, Ruskin indicated the two attributes, the Hellenic and Hebraic must remain distinct and diametrically opposed; two poles which rely on each other for their existence, but which could never be considered equal. It is here that we discover the intolerance informing

Ruskin's contrasts and one which allows him to maintain a theory of invention

140 which pitches the moral against the aesthetic or intellectual, the active over the contemplative, and the universal above the relative and specific.

4.6: Contradiction in Ruskin's conclusions.

However, while such contrasts ensured the Hebraic motive of Ruskin's thesis, it did not guarantee the consistency of his arguments. Ruskin's 'views on the relation between art, religion, and society' as Wendell Harris has argued, 'are notoriously subject to modification and redaction from book to book.' 109 Nowhere is Ruskin's inconsistency better demonstrated than in his doctrine on imperfection and the negation of the object. Ruskin's thesis that imperfection in the execution of the artefact functioned as the most efficient index of the thoughtful worker-a position which resulted in the negation of all properties (the material and aesthetic) which were seen to be autonomous of the subject-is clearly demonstrated in 'The Nature of Gothic.' However, this negation of perfection or finish, and thus the object, was not, as Ruskin himself acknowledged, always faithfully maintained. In the fifth volume of Modern Painters (1860), Ruskin writes:

I do not wonder at people sometimes thinking I contradict myself when

they come suddenly on any of the scattered passages, in which I am forced

to insist on the opposite practical applications of subtle principles .... It

would be well if you would first glance over the chapter on Finish in the

third volume ... The general conclusion reached in that chapter being that

finish, for the sake of added truth, or utility, or beauty, is noble; but finish,

for the sake of workmanship, neatness, or polish, ignoble-tum to the

fourth chapter of The Seven Lamps, where you will find the Campanile of

141 Giotto given as a model and mirror of perfect architecture, just on account

of its exquisite completion. Also, in the next chapter, I expressly limit the

delightfulness of rough and imperfect work to developing and unformed

schools. 110

In the same footnote, Ruskin goes on to cite a passage from The Stones of Venice where he writes, 'the demand for perfection is always a misunderstanding of the end of art.' He then juxtaposes this comment with a later chapter on the early

Renaissance where he argues 'the profoundest respect [is] paid to completion.' 111

Philipa Davis in 'Arnold or Ruskin?' (1992), has argued that the development of such contradictory statements by Ruskin is intentional. 112 Having set up an apparent maze of contradictions, Ruskin's tells us that his objective was to bring the reader 'into a wholesome state of knowing what to think.'

Now all these passages are perfectly true; and, as in much more serious

matters, the essential thing for the reader to receive their truth, however

little he may be able to see their consistency. If truths of apparently

contradictory character are candidly and rightly received, they will fit

themselves together in the mind without any trouble. But no truth

maliciously received will nourish you or fit with others. 113

It was this aspect of Ruskin's theories-the intentional cultivation of

contradictory positions on the theory of making in the hope that 'they will fit

themselves together in the mind' of the reader 'without any trouble'-which

attracted Lethaby's attention. As Lethaby pointed out to his colleague Sir

Reginald Blomfield, it was the element of 'paradox' in Ruskin which most

appealed to him, as it 'shocked people into thinking,' and 'but for that they would

142 have remained wholly indifferent to art.' 114 However while Lethaby celebrated the paradox evident in Ruskin, he also sought to resolve it. 115

In Architecture, Mysticism and Myth Lethaby achieved this resolution by arguing that architecture must represent both the 'known' and the 'imagined.' In subsequent writings, he concluded that architecture, must unite 'science' with

'art.' Lethaby's desire to reconcile the paradox evident in Ruskin theory of invention demonstrates his debt to the Ruskinian doctrine. His success m achieving this, on the other hand, demonstrates his departure from this same tradition. The success of this departure and its implications is considered in the next two chapters.

143 1 Sir Reginald Blomfield, 'W.R. Lethaby: An Impression and Tribute,' Journal of the Royal Institute ofBritish Architects, vol. 38, no. 8, 1932, p. 6. 2 William Morris, 'The Lesser Arts,' a lecture given to the Trades' Guild of Learning in 1877, reprinted in Morris on Art and Design, Christine Poulson (ed), Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1996, p. 157. 3 Morris, 'The Lesser Arts,' pp. 157 & 162. Possibly a reference to the earlier thesis developed by James Ferguson who argued that architecture was the result of three distinct types of labour; the mechanical or 'technic,' the 'aesthetic,' and the 'phonetic.' James Fergusson, An Historical Enquiry in the True Principles of Beauty in Art, More Especially with Reference to Architecture, Longman, London, 1849, p. 104. For a discussion of Fergusson see Peter Kohane, Architecture, Labor and the Human Body: Fergusson, Cockerell and Ruskin, Ph.D thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1993, chapter 5. 4 Morris, 'The Lesser Arts,' p. 157. 5 Morris, 'The Lesser Arts,' p. 157. 6 Morris, 'The Lesser Arts,' p. 166. 7 William Morris, 'The Revival of Handicraft,' Fortnightly Review, November, 1888, reprinted in William Morris on Art and Design, pp. 192-3. 8 Morris, 'The Lesser Arts,' p. 161. 9 Morris, 'The Revival of Handicraft,' p. 193. 10 Morris, 'The Revival of Handicraft,' p. 195. 11 William Morris, 'The Art of the People,' first delivered to the Birmingham Society of Arts, Birmingham School of Design, 1879, reprinted in William Morris on Art and Design, p. 179. 12 William Morris, 'The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation,' 1888, The Collected Works of William Morris, May Morris (ed), Longman, Green & Co, London, 1910-15, vol 22, p. 140. John Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' The Stones of Venice, vol. II, 1853, The Works of John Ruskin, E.T.Cook & A.Wedderburn (eds), George Allen, London, 1903-12, vol.10, pp. 180-269. 13 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p.188. 14 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 188. 15 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 189. 16 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 189. 17 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 189. 18 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, pp. 188-89. 19 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 188n. Ruskin argues that examples of this type of ornament were found in the Renaissance. 20 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 188. 21 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, pp. 189-90. 22 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, pp. 189-90. 23 Mackail, William Morris; cited by Lethaby, Philip Webb and his Work, Raven Oak Press, London, 1979 (1935), p. 19. 24 Mackail, William Morris, cited by Lethaby, Philip Webb and his Work, p. 19. In the 'Lesser Arts,' Morris noted that such ideas were first raised by 'my friend Professor John Ruskin.' He also stressed the importance of Ruskin's essay. He writes, 'On the Nature of Gothic, and the office of Workmen therein, you will read at once the truest and most eloquent words that can possibly be said on the subject. What I have to say upon it, can scarcely be more than an echo of his word, yet I repeat there is some use in reiterating the truth, lest it be forgotten .... ' (Morris, 'The Lesser Arts,' pp. 158-59.) Morris published 'The Nature of Gothic' as one of first editions to be released by his Kelmscott Press and in the preface to the 1892 edition he described the text as 'one of the most important things written by the author ... [and] one of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of this century.' cited by Chris Miele (ed) in William Morris on Architecture, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1996, p. 2. 25 Morris, 'Architecture in Civilisation,' pp. 90-91. Morris systems differs in one significant respect to Ruskin's original essay. Unlike Ruskin, whose 'Constitutional Ornament' argues for the equal representation of the creativity of the individual workman as well as the 'master of design,' a balance which Morris later described as 'Intelligent,' Morris appears to favour what Ruskin described as the 'Revolutionary,' the complete independence of the workman which results in 'imaginative' and 'altogether individual' work.' Ruskin felt complete independence ultimately enslaved the workman as he was forced to gain skills which were traditionally the responsibility of

144 the master, and as a consequence, his own 'original power' of invention would be 'overwhelmed.' Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 188n. 26 William Morris, 'Art under Plutocracy,' 1883, in Morris, The Collected Works of William Morris, vol. 23, p. 173. 27 Ruskin, Stones of Venice, vol. III, 1853, Works, vol. 11, p. 119. 28 James Volant Baker, The Sacred River: Coleridge's Theory of the Imagination, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1957, p. 133. 29 Coleridge, 'The Friend,' in The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shedd (ed), Harper & Bros, New York, 1853, vol, II, p. 91n. 30 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, J. Shawcross (ed), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1907, vol. II, p. 12. 31 While the intention of Coleridge and his Romantic contemporaries was to validate the re­ unification of the subject and object-self and nature-subsequent scholars such as Nietszche, Paul de Man, and Sprinker have demonstrated the fallacy of such a position arguing Romantic theory only succeeded in subsuming the object world (nature) with the subjective world of the self. Paul de Man, 'The Rhetoric of Temporality,' Interpretation: Theory and Practice, Charles. S. Singleton (ed), John Hopkins University Press, 1969, p. 180. Sprinker, 'Ruskin on the Imagination,' Studies in Romanticism, vol. 18, Spring 1979, pp. 116-7. 32 Sprinker, 'Ruskin on the Imagination,' p. 139. 33 For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see the section on Imagination in Part I. 34 Ruskin, 'Modern Painters,' vol. I, 1843, Works, vol. 3, p. 93. 35 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 183. 36 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, pp. 198-9. 37 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Morality,' 1870, Works, vol. 20, p. 74. 38 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 188. 39 Charles Sanders Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, & Arthur Burke, (eds), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1931-35, vol. 4, p. 53 I. 40 Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 2, p. 286. 41 Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 2, p. 298, vol. 4, p. 531. 42 Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 1, p. 369. 43 Robert Almeder, The Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce: A Critical Introduction, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1980, p. 25. 44 Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 4, p. 418 & vol. 2, p. 92. 45 Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 2, p. 247. 46 Peirce first explained his theory of the index, icon and symbol in 1875 in a paper entitled 'On the Algebra of Logic'. He expanded his theory throughout the 1880s. See Christopher Hookway, Peirce, The Argument ofa Philosopher, Routledge, London, 1985, pp. 7 & 130. 47 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' 1870, Works, vol. 20, p. 60. 48 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' Works, vol. 20, pp. 60-1. 49 John Ruskin, 'Realistic Schools of Painting,' 1883, Works, vol. 33, p. 270. 50 Ruskin, 'Realistic Schools of Painting,' Works, vol. 33, pp. 272-73. 51 Ruskin, 'Mythic Schools of Painting,' 1883, Works, vol. 33, p. 288. 52 Ruskin, 'Realistic Schools of Painting,' Works, vol. 33, p. 273. 53 Ruskin, 'Mythic Schools of Painting,' Works, vol. 33, pp. 291& 293. 54 Ruskin, 'Mythic Schools of Painting,' Works, vol. 33, p. 293. 55 Ruskin, 'Mythic Schools of Painting,' Works, vol. 33, p. 293. 56 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 188. 57 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 204. The importance of liberty emerges from the romantic belief that the element which distinguishes creative genius from an average intelligence is the imposition of the 'will' or 'wilful act.' Coleridge argued the attribute which separated the secondary imagination-a mental attribute which defined creative genius-from the primary imagination-a faculty common to all men-was the imposition of the 'will'; the ability to recreate by an autonomous wilful act of the mind. Coleridge, Bib/iographia, vol. I, pp. 193 & 202. 58 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, pp. 191-192. 59 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, pp. 198-99. 60 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 192. 61 Ruskin, 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture,' 1849, Works, vol. 8, p. 84. Throughout 'The Nature of Gothic,' Ruskin's consideration of such qualities as 'Savageness,' 'Changefulness,'

145 'Naturalism,' and 'Grotesqueness,' appear in the first instance to be a considerations of the material qualities of the object (facts inherent to the object and independent of the subject). However, it soon becomes apparent that Ruskin fails to attribute any of these qualities to values that could be described as being inherent to the object itself such as the hardness of the stone, qualities of the site, or the technologies available. Rather for Ruskin such qualities are always representations of the liberty or lack of liberty given to the worker, and in tum; to society in general. 62 Ruskin, 'Modem Painters,' vol. I, 1843, Works, vol. 3, p. 95. 63 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Modern Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990. 64 Crary, Techniques of the Modern Observer, p. 68. 65 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. Charles Eastlake, Cambridge, Mass, 1970 (1840), pp.16-17; cited by Crary, Techniques of the Modern Observer, p. 67. 66 Crary, Techniques of the Modern Observer, chapter 2. 67 Goethe, Theory of Colours, p. 17. 68 Goethe, Theory of Colours, p. 17. 69 Crary, Techniques ofthe Modern Observer, p. 68. 7°Crary, Techniques of the Modern Observer, p. 71. 71 Crary, Techniques ofthe Modern Observer, p. 70. 72 Paul Frankl, The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretation through Eight Centuries, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1960, p. 423. 73 J.W. Goethe, Von Deutscher Baukunst. D.M. Erwini an Steinbach, Frankfurt, 1772; cited in Frankl, The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretation through Eight Centuries, p. 425. 74 Goethe, Wahlverwandtschaften, vol. III, chapter 3; cited in Frankl, The Gothic, Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries, pp. 467-8. 75 Bill Beckley, 'Introduction: Teaching Art,' in Ruskin, Lectures on Art, pp. 14 & 20. Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' 1870, Works, vol. 20, p. 49. 76 Mark Swenarton has argued that Morris offers a creative misreading of Ruskin. The sensuality in Morris is far from well developed in Ruskin, who believed only that the workman needed to be happy in order to produce fine work, and that the pleasure extracted from art was from the pleasure of looking rather than making. The closest that Ruskin came to articulating Morris's ideas on pleasure was in the Seven Lamps, when he stated that the proper question to ask about a piece of sculpture was whether the carver was happy when he did the work. 'The Nature of Gothic' dealt with artistic value not so much as happy labour but free labour. 'In the Nature of Gothic' the element of pleasure was less that of the craftsman doing the work than that of the viewer or critic enjoying the result. Morris's architectural philosophy was based in action; pleasing oneself though work. Ruskin's is a pleasure extracted from contemplation of the hand made object. Mark Swenarton, Artisans and Architects: The Ruskinian Tradition in Architectural Thought, pp. 72-3. 77 Morris, William Morris on Architecture, p. 2. 78 William Morris, 'The Story of the Unknown Church,' The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, January 1856, vol. I, pp. 28-33; reprinted in William Morris on Architecture, pp. 44-51. 79 Morris's story recalls Ruskin's earlier assertion that the 'mind' in architecture was to be found in the added sculpture and painting. 80 Morris, 'The Story of the Unknown Church,' pp. 46-7. 81 William Morris, 'The Churches of North France, no.I, Shadows of Amiens,' Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856, reprinted in Prose and Poetry of William Morris, 1856-1870, Oxford University Press, London, 1920, pp. 617-31; cited in Miele, William Morris on Architecture, pp. 11-12. 82 Ruskin, 'Inaugural Lecture on Art,' Works, vol. 20, p. 39. 83 Ruskin, 'Inaugural Lecture on Art,' and 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' Works, vol. 20, p. 39 and pp. 53-54. 84 Ruskin, 'Inaugural Lecture on Art,' Works, vol. 20, p. 26. 85 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' Works, vol. 20, p. 54. 86 Ruskin, 'Inaugural Lecture on Art,' Works, vol. 20, p. 33. 87 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' Works, vol. 20, p. 49. 88 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' Works. vol. 20, p. 46. 89 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' Works, vol. 20, p. 49. 90 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Morals,' 1870, Works, vol. 20, p. 93. 91 Ruskin, 'Inaugural Lecture on Art,' Works, vol. 20, pp. 39-40.

146 92 Wendell. V. Harris, 'Ruskin and Pater-Hebrew and Hellene-Explore the Renaissance,' CLIO, vol. 17, no. 2, 1988, pp. 176-77. 93 Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism, 1869, reprinted in The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, R.H. Super (ed), University of Michigan Press, Michigan, 1962-1977, vol. 5, p. 91. 94 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 90. 95 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 91. 96 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, pp. 163-4. 97 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 164. 98 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 167. 99 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, pp. 165 & 67. 100 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 170. 101 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 165. 102 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 165. 103 Harris, 'Ruskin and Pater,' p. 180. Bill Beckley in his introduction to the recent reprint of Ruskin's Lectures on Art also contrasts Ruskin's social and specifically moral consideration of art with Pater's distinctly 'aesthetic' approach-one that focused on the 'sensation of the moment' and the 'pleasure of experiencing the work of art.' This aspect of Pater's work emerges strongly in the conclusion of The Renaissance (1873) where Pater begins to explore the idea of Art for Art's sake. High passions give this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, political or religious enthusiasm, or the "enthusiasm of humanity." Only be sure it is passion, that it does not yield you this fruit of quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire for beauty, the love of art for art's sake, has most; for art comes to us professing frankly and giving nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments sake. Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, Macmillan & Co, New York, 1902, pp. 238-9. 104 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 187. 105 Joseph Carroll, The Cultural Theory of Matthew Arnold, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1982, pp. 73-4 & 84. 106 Kristine Ottesen Garrigan, Ruskin on Architecture; His Thought and Influence, The University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 1973, p. 41 107 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Morals,' Works, vol. 20, p. 82. 108 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Morals,' Works, vol. 20, p. 83. 109 Harris, 'Ruskin and Pater,' p. 177. 110 Ruskin, 'Modern Painters,' vol. V, 1860, Works, vol. 7, pp. 356-57n. 111 Ruskin, 'Modem Painters,' vol V, Works, vol. 7, pp. 356-57n. 112 Philipa Davis, 'Arnold or Ruskin?,' Journal of Literature and Theology, vol. 6, no. 4, December 1992, p. 334. However Davis also argues that these contradictions are of little consequence as they fail to subjugate Ruskin's principle thesis, that the moral will always indicates the good. 113 Ruskin, 'Modern Painters,' vol. V, Works, vol. 7, p. 358n. Davis, 'Arnold or Ruskin?,' pp. 334-45. 114 Blomfield, 'W.R. Lethaby: An Impression and Tribute,' p. 6. 115 This resolution is never found in Ruskin as his thesis relied, as Kristine Ottesen Garrigan has argued, on fixed contrasts. Thus while Ruskin does fluctuate between a privileging of the subject and the object, as demonstrated by his shifting opinion on finish and roughness, and works on the 'hope' that the 'two' positions 'may fit themselves in the mind' of the reader 'without any trouble,' the moral basis of his central thesis, and the suggestion of a singular right and wrong which it facilitates, prevents any such resolution. It is ultimately the subject (the divine principle represented by the imagination) which is given primacy in Ruskin's system. In Modern Painters, Ruskin argued that it is the imaginative faculty-which enables the mind to comprehend and accept contradictory positions. This is imagination... . By its operation, two ideas are chosen out of an infinite mass ... two ideas which are separately wrong, which together shall be right, and whose unity, therefore, the idea must be formed at the instant they are seized, at it is only in unity that either is good, and therefore only the conception of that unity can prompt the

147 preference. Now what is that prophetic action of mind ... ?' (Ruskin, Works, vol. 4, pp. 234-45). As demonstrated in Part I, such a reliance on the imagination ensures the elevation of the subject (the imagination) over the object (the material world.) It also ensures, as Wendell Harris has argued, 'an overarching continuity' that results from a powerful Hebraism that not only gives primacy to moral judgements but holds that all judgements are ultimately moral.' Harris, 'Ruskin and Pater,' p. 177.

148 Chapter 5

Hebrew or Hellene? Balancing Ruskin's contrasts.

By defining art and architecture as 'the well doing of what needs doing,' Lethaby adheres to the Ruskinian theory of making and its associated contrasts. 1 Evidence to support this conclusion is found in his thesis that architecture must function as the representation of the subject, that this expression must be articulated through the action of making, and that these actions must conform to universal principles.

However, by arguing in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth that architecture must represent the 'known' as well as the 'imagined'-a thesis which he maintained throughout his career by arguing that architecture must speak of both 'Science' and 'Art'-Lethaby developed a conception of architecture which tempered the moral orthodoxy evident in the Ruskinian model. it is in this cultivation of an syncretic and somewhat ambivalent thesis of architecture-one which supports the co-existence of two opposed and conflicting positions-that we witness

Lethaby's subtle but significant departure from the Ruskinian tradition and his movement towards the doctrines of Matthew Arnold.

5.1: Hebrew: Lethaby's debt to Ruskin.

Lethaby, like Morris before him, openly acknowledged his debt to Ruskin. While

Lethaby admitted to having seen Ruskin in person only once-at Ruskin's 1884

Lecture on Storm Clouds at the London Institute which he attended with his friend

Gerald Horsley-he declared Ruskin to be one of the key 'prophets' of the age. 2

Lethaby's debt to Ruskin was widely acknowledged by his contemporaries. In his

tribute to Lethaby in 1932, his colleague W.S. Weir noted that 'I think by the time

149 I that I knew him [1884] he had read everything that Ruskin had ever written and had absorbed his teachings. ' 3 Another of Lethaby's colleagues, Sir Reginald

Blomfield, confirmed that Lethaby's debt to Ruskin was significant. Arguing that

Ruskin's writings 'were to Lethaby as the words of the Prophet, to be accepted with meekness and reverence, no matter how strange they might seem, or how irrelevant to the Art of Architecture,' Blomfield affirmed that 'Ruskin's teachings coloured all of Lethaby's views and, indeed, led him to translate architecture and the arts into terms of a generous if quite impossible socialism. ' 4 Such conclusions are supported by Lethaby's own comments. In 'Cast Iron and its Treatment for

Artistic Purposes' ( 1890), Lethaby described himself as a Ruskinian. 5 In an earlier paper written in the previous year he argued that the architect should design in the

'way the painter told Mr. Ruskin he composed his picture. ' 6 In 'Ruskin: Defeat and Victory,' (1919) Lethaby described Ruskin as a 'prophet' who was not only in

'opposition to his age' but also 'represent[ative] of his time.' He was, Lethaby tells us,

the antidote, the balance, the complement, and his is the voice which

awakes all those who are ready to be like minded. If he is wholly

successful, and his teaching is absorbed, it may afterwards hardly be

understood how any one might ever have believed otherwise. The flashing

inspiration becomes a commonplace. It is the prophet's aim to be thus

abolished in absorption; to be lost by diffusion. 7

Finally, in a 1924 letter to the Harry Peach, the president of the Design Industries

Association (D.I.A.) Lethaby stressed the importance of Ruskin to the practice of

contemporary design. However, he also acknowledged that the promotion of

Ruskin's theories was a difficult task. 'I wish some publisher would produce an

150 essence of Ruskin,' Lethaby lamented, 'as the whole is too much in too special a manner to expect it to be read by many. ' 8

There is no doubt that Lethaby was thoroughly acquainted with Ruskin's ideas and writings.9 Like Ruskin before him, Lethaby openly celebrated the active processes of making. As early as 1913, Lethaby defined art as 'most simply and generally ... the well doing of what needs doing. '10 Three years later, in the essay

'Art and Labour,' the association between art and making was developed more fully. Premising that 'historically, the word "art" has meant production, making,

[and] doing,' he concluded that 'beauty is the flowering of labour and service,' and that 'Art .. .is sound and complete human workmanship.' A work of 'Art' he argued, 'is a well-made boot, a well-made chair, [or] a well-made picture.' 11 In the

1916 lecture 'Town Tidying,' Lethaby observed that 'we have perhaps got into the way of looking on art as a rather remote ornament to life,' as objects of the

'concert-room [or] exhibition room.' Such erroneous beliefs, he continued, must be discarded. 'Art' he explained, must be thought of as 'all worthy productive work.' 12 Similar sentiments were expressed in 'Exhibitionism at the Royal

Academy and the Higher Criticism of Art' (1920). Here he claimed that the

'proud distinction' of all 'artists' was their ability to 'make things,' and to 'do

something with their hands.' 13 However for Lethaby, this distinction was not only

reserved for the artisan who produced the artefact. In the essay the 'Arts and the

Function of Guilds' ( 1896), he suggested that it is only through the active process

of making that the general populace could once again gain an understanding of the

arts. 'The safest, widest standing-ground for most of us to deal with art,' he

151 concluded, is 'only in relation to the making of necessary things-to deal with it as craftsmen.' 14

Lethaby's writings demonstrate that he also viewed architecture, like art, in terms of making. In Philip Webb and His Work (I 925), Lethaby identified 'two tendencies in the practice of modem [nineteenth and early twentieth century] architecture.' One, he argued, focused on taste and 'tum[ed] to imitation, style effects, paper designs and exhibitions.' The 'other founds on building, materials ... ways of workmanship and proceeds by experiment.' 15 He labelled those who adhered to the first approach the 'Softs,' those who adopted the practices of the second, the 'Hards.' The former he explained, 'were primarily sketchers and exhibitors of "Designs."' The second were 'thinkers and constructors.' 16 For Lethaby, individuals such as Philip Webb and William

Butterfield represented the true architect as both were 'thinkers and constructors,' or 'builder-architects.' The key attribute of such men, Lethaby explained, was that they were fully conversant with the physical processes of making; with 'building, materials ... and [the] ways of workmanship.' 17

Further evidence of Lethaby's debt to Ruskin is found in his rejection of what

Ruskin described as the 'superior executive power' within the design process.

'Design is not abstract power exercised by a genius,' Lethaby argued in

'Architecture as Form in Civilisation (1920),' but 'simply the arranging [of] how

work shall be well done.' 18 In 'The Foundation in Labour' (1917) Lethaby

concluded that the workman should be permitted to 'labour with his hands.' 19 In

celebrating the act of making Lethaby also assumed a bond between the content of

152 the work and the producer of the artefact. In a manner which evokes earlier statements made by Ruskin, Lethaby argued on numerous occasions that 'the outward and the man made must always be exact pictures of the mind of the maker, ' 20 that 'Architecture is human skill and feeling shown in the great necessary activity of building,'21 and that 'indeed our arts and customs are all indexes and pictures of our inner life. ' 22 Assuming a bond between the subject and content, Lethaby like Ruskin before him, was also forced to argue for the essential presence of the thinking hand and that its removal would be to the detriment of both the worker and the work produced. 'If we are driven from the traditional

Crafts into mere crude labour,' Lethaby argued in 'Exhibitionism at the Royal

Academy and the Higher Criticism of Art' (I 920), 'we have become an enslaved nation.'23 In the earlier essay, 'Art and Workmanship' (1913), he concluded.

If I were asked for some simple test by which we might hope to know a

work of art when we saw one I should suggest something like this: Every

work of art shows that it was made by a human being for a human being.

Art is the humanity put into workmanship, the rest is slavery. 24

Further theoretical parallels between Ruskin and Lethaby can be found in his

adherence to the belief that the quality of art was dependent on the morality of the

people who produced it, and the conviction that the true function of art was to

give representation to universal principles. In a letter to Harry Peach (I 921)

Lethaby stated the quality of art 'depends on the quality of the people. ' 25 In his

notebook he writes that 'one is what one does,' and that 'what one does makes the

world.' 26 In his 'Lecture on Modem Design' (190 I), he concluded true art 'is the

knowledge of the essential. ' 27 Somewhat latter he reinforced this position by

153 stating that 'Art, like poetry and religion is near every one of us. It is universal or it is of little worth. ' 28

5.2: Hellene: Expanding the Ruskinian paradigm.

Embracing what appears to be Ruskin's ideal of the universal and his celebration of 'the hand,' and thus his idea of the imagination, one would assume that

Lethaby, like Ruskin before him, would also reject a consideration of qualities that were deemed to be independent of the subject (the producer of the artefact) and specific to the object (the artefact itself). However, it is difficult to find evidence of this in Lethaby's writings. While he did acknowledge the need for noble art to conform to universal values, he also felt that the inventive process must respond to the relative flux of everyday phenomena. In Architecture,

Mysticism and Myth Lethaby indicated this belief by arguing that style must incorporate the 'known' as well as the 'imagined.' In later writings he confirmed this position by asserting that architecture must embrace both 'Art' and 'Science.'

In 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation' ( 1920), Lethaby explains that

'Architecture is human skill and feeling shown in the great activity of building,' a

sentiment which quickly evokes earlier statements made by Ruskin. However, in

the same essay, he also argued that architecture must accommodate the

representation of facts that are autonomous too the object (the artefact itself) and

independent of the subject. Architecture, he concludes, 'must be [a] living,

progressive, structural art, always readjusting itself to changing conditions of time

and place.'29 If architecture was to be 'true,' Lethaby argued, 'it must [also] be

ever new. ' 30 Attributes which are unique and specific to the object-the ability to

154 fulfil its designated function, maintain structural integrity, exhibit honesty m materials-were equally important to Lethaby's theory of invention.

While our eyes have been strained on the vacuity of correct style, the

weightier matters of construction and efficiency have necessarily been

neglected. We need grates which will warm, floors which may readily be

cleaned, and ceilings which do not crack. These and such as these are the

terms of the modem architectural problem, and in satisfying them we

should find the proper 'style' for to-day. 31

Acknowledging that 'art ... depends on the quality of the people and that is the whole of the prophets (Ruskin and Morris to wit),' Lethaby also felt that such concerns could not and did not 'invalidate the "known truth" that art equals work: worthy art equal worthy work, high quality art equals high quality work. ' 32

To focus on the qualities that were specific to the object was in Ruskin's eyes a dangerous tendency. In the past, such considerations had encouraged situations in which, he thought, both the workman and the artefact had suffered. While

Lethaby sought high quality and perfection, Ruskin argued for 'imperfection,' as

only the workman free of the need to produce precise and exact work, was free to

think, create, invent and consequently, to make mistakes. 'Pleading that any

degree of unskilfulness should be admitted' so that 'the labourer's mind had room

for expression,' Ruskin noted that 'it seems a fantastic paradox but ... nevertheless

a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not

imperfect. ' 33 For Ruskin, the specific and relative attributes of the object, such as

the material it was made of or the quality of its finish, were in themselves, not

important. The sole value of such specific qualities were to be found only in the

155 ability of such properties to represent the artisan's presence, and in tum, the social climate which determined the nature of that presence. To consider the object as a thing of interest and beauty in itself, was for Ruskin, simply a sign of a defunct and morally corrupt culture.

I need scarcely refer, except for the sake of completeness in my statement,

to one form of demand for art which is wholly enlightened, and powerful

only for evil;-namely, the demand of the classes occupied solely in the

pursuit of pleasure, for objects and the modes of art that can amuse

indolence or excite passion. There is no need for any discussion of these

requirements, or of their forms of influence .... They cannot be checked by

blame or guided by instruction; they are merely the necessary result of

whatever defects exist in the temper and principles of a luxurious society;

and it is only by moral changes, not by art criticism, that their action can

be modified. 34

Lethaby shared Ruskin's distaste for an aesthetic appreciation of the artefact. In

'What Shall We Call Beautiful' (1918), his disdain is openly expressed. Arguing that aesthetic theory is principally concerned with 'sense perception' and

'contemplation,' he concluded that the consequence of such an approach to arts

was its dislocation from a practical or active life.

We may best get a general statement on aesthetics from the excellent

article in the Encyclopedia Britannica. In its original Greek form it means

what has to do with sense perception as a source of knowledge. Its

limitation to that part of our sense perception which we know as the

contemplative enjoyment of beauty is due to A.G. Baumgarten .... By pure

156 contemplation is to be understood that manner of regarding objects of

sense perception, and more particularly sights and sound, which is entirely

motivated by the pleasure of the act itself... . Aesthetic pleasure is pure

enjoyment... . Aesthetic pleasure is clearly marked off from practical

life .... It seeks one or more regulative principles which may help us to

distinguish a real from an apparent aesthetic value, and to set the higher

and more perfect illustrations of beauty above the lower and less perfect.35

To see art solely in terms of contemplation and visual pleasure was in Lethaby's eyes, inappropriate.

Art is many things-service, record, and stimulus .... Writers on aesthetics

have not sufficiently recognised that Art is service before it is delight; it is

labour as well as emotion; it is substance as well as expression. What they

say here and there is true enough, but it is a way that leads to destruction;

it is concerned with appearances rather than conduct. ' 36

Ruskin's rejection of an aesthetic approach to art stems from his belief that the artefact cannot be viewed as an autonomous object that exists independently from the subject. The sole function of art was to act as an index of the artisan's beliefs, thoughts and feelings which in tum organically gives representation to universal

and moral laws. The above comment demonstrates that Lethaby clearly embraced

this aspect of Ruskin's critique of aesthetic theory. However, while Lethaby

accepted Ruskin's critical stance, he failed to accept what was for Ruskin the

logical conclusion of such a position; the belief that a consideration of attributes

which were autonomous to the object and independent of the subject would add

anything to the production and appreciation of a noble art. Rather than rejecting

157 such considerations of the object, Lethaby simply sought an alternative foundation for this consideration. He found this alternative in modem science.

A brief survey of Lethaby's writings quickly reveals the role that modem science played in his conception of architecture. In a letter to Charles Hadfield he states that it was 'not fashion' or 'taste, that will help us ... to become great builders again' but 'science.' 37 Writing to Sydney Cockerell (1907) he notes,

if I were again to learn to be a modem architect, I would eschew taste and

design and all that stuff and learn engineering with plenty of mathematics

and hard building experience. Hardness, facts, experiment-that should be

architecture, not taste. 38

In 'Housing and Furnishing' (1920), a similar sentiment is expressed when he argues that only 'an efficiency style' can replace the 'trivial, sketchy, [and] picturesque.'39 In his biography on Webb (1925) he expanded on this theme by concluding the architect must 'perfect a science of modem building. '40

The contribution of 'science' to architecture, Lethaby argued, was that it revealed the time of the artefact's production and functioned as the catalysts for change

which ensured the continual 'slow change of growth' that constituted the

evolution of architecture.41 Defining 'science' as 'all that had been spied out of

the actual facts of the material universe,' Lethaby acknowledged that the ultimate

objective of science was to identify the fixed 'laws' underlying such phenomena;

'to frame from a certain appearance a general theory of explanation, to move from

phenomena to generalised law.' 42

158 In the invention of architecture, however, the representation of science-be it through the material used, the tools used to work that material, or the technologies used to construct the artefact-identified attributes which were specific to the time and place of the artefact's production. Arguing that scientific knowledge of the material universe is accumulative, and thus -evolutionary-'the progress of science is merely the framing and the destruction of a series of hypotheses ' 43-

' science' identified in modem architecture the stage man had reached in the evolution of the intellect. Much in the same way that the 'known' in the 'temple idea' revealed the extent of mythic man's understanding of the world around him-one that resulted in conceptions of the cosmos as a world tree, world mountain, or world chamber, facts which in tum were integrated into mythic architecture through symbolic planning and ornament-references to a scientific world view in modem architecture-be they references to scientific theories of knowledge, modes of production, systems of construction, or use of modem materials-allowed the built artefact to speak of its own time and place. Only

'science,' Lethaby argued, identified the 'characteristic note' of his 'age. ' 44 Thus,

'modem design,' he concluded, could 'only be understood m the scientific ... sense, as a definite analysis of possibilities. '45 'The living stem of building-design,' the continuing evolution which ensured a new and modem architecture, could only be maintained by 'following the scientific method. ' 46

In his lecture on 'The Relation of Art to Religion' (1870), Ruskin concluded that

science had little to offer the disciplines of art and architecture, as it was

concerned solely with the relative flux of everyday phenomena.47 'That which you

have chiefly to guard against,' Ruskin warned, was,

159 the overvaluing of minute though correct discovery; the groundless denial

of all that seems to you to have been groundlessly affirmed; and the

interesting yourselves too curiously in the progress of some scientific

minds, which in their judgement of the universe can be compared to

nothing so accurately as to the woodworms in the panel of a picture by

some great painter, ifwe may conceive them as tasting with discrimination

of the wood, and with repugnance of the colour, and declaring that even

this unlooked-for and undesirable combination is a normal result of the

action of molecular forces. 48

Such concerns detracted from the true function of the fine arts; the comprehension of the universal. 'You must not allow your scientific habit of trusting nothing but what you had ascertained' Ruskin counselled,

to prevent you from appreciating, or at least endeavouring to qualify

yourselves to appreciate, the work of the highest faculty of the human

mind,-its imagination,-when it is toiling in the presence of things that

cannot be dealt with by any other power.49

The sole value of such relative data, Ruskin continued, was that it offered a viable

source from which the eternal and universal could be extracted. 'It is the function

of the rightly trained imagination,' he explained,

to recognise, in these and other such relative aspects, the unity of teaching

which impresses, alike on our senses and our conscience, the eternal

difference between good and evil: and the rule, over the clouds of heaven

and over the creatures in the earth, of the same Spirit which teaches to our

own hearts the bitterness of death, and the strength of love. so

160 In direct contrast to Ruskin, Lethaby did not see the concerns of science as being incompatible with creative invention. For Lethaby, 'there really is no opposition.'

One of the most sad wastes of power to which men of goodwill are subject

is vain strife about words, especially when pairs of words have been

allowed to come into opposition-as faith and works, art and science.

There really is no opposition between art and science. Show me your art,

as St James might have said, and I will show you your science. 51

Rather, for Lethaby, the two simply represented different though not necessarily incompatible approaches adopted by man in his attempt to come to terms with the world around him; the scientist extracting knowledge rationally from the relative phenomena of the object world, the artist turning to the inner resources and actions (the imagination) of the subject. For Lethaby, 'Art' embraced,

the active side of things, science the contemplative. The most of art is

science in operation, and a large part of science is reflection upon art.

Properly, only science can be taught, for you cannot teach beyond

knowledge, and every fresh activity is a sort of creation.52

To isolate one from the other, as had Ruskin, 'would only result,' Lethaby argued,

'in false' and misleading polarities.

A false and confusing opposition between science and art has been

allowed to arise, and indeed is rather fostered by expert simulators who

'go in for old-world effects;' but properly there is no strife between

science and art in architecture. It does not matter a bit if we call flying an

art or a science: the art of house building is practically one with the

science of housing. If we must worry over strict definitions, 'science' may

stand for codified preliminary knowledge, and 'art' for operative skill,

161 experiment and adventure. Science is what you know; art is what you do.

The best art is founded on the best science in every given matter. The art

of shipbuilding is the science of shipbuilding in operation. 53

To propose either discipline as an appropriate model for architecture, Lethaby insisted, was also inappropriate. Architecture, could never be considered purely in terms of the fine arts.

Wordy claims are often made for 'Architecture' that it is a 'Fine Art' and

chief of all the arts .... But the 'Fine Arts' are by definition free from the

conditions of human need, and architecture was specially ruled out from

among them by Aristotle. Even so, this idea of a fine art unconditioned

and free for delight was a heresy of the Hellenistic decline. To Plato and

the great masters even the 'musical arts' were to be not only healthy but

health giving; they were to be food for the soul and not aesthetic raptures

and intoxications. 54

Nor could it be defined purely in the modem and scientific terms of utility and economy.

On the other side of the account it may be objected that bare utility and

convenience are not enough to form a base for noble architecture. Of

course they are not if 'bare utility' is interpreted in a mean and skimping

and profiteering way. 55

Architecture, rather, must embrace the methodologies and objectives of each as it

was a 'many sided and manifold thing;' one which accepted both 'imagination

and invention ... skilled workmanship and patient record ... design and

imitation ... [and] labour and thought. ' 56

162 All work of man bears the stamp of the spirit with which it was done, but

this stamp is not necessarily ornament! High utility and liberal

convemence for noble life are enough for architecture. We confuse

ourselves with these unreal and destructive oppositions between the

serviceable and aesthetic, between science and art. 57

Architecture, Lethaby concluded, must on the one hand, be 'art, imaginative, poetic, even mystic and magic.' 'Let us go to and build magic buildings' and 'be poetic' he argued. 58 However it must also accommodate the concerns of science.

We need first the natural, the obvious, and, if it will not offend to say so,

the reasonable, so that to these, which might seem to be under our own

control, may be added we know not how or what of gifts and graces. 59

Only then,

may we hope to combine the two realities, the reality of the natural

necessity and common experience with the reality of the philosophers,

which is the ideal, and to reconcile again, Science with Art. 60

The synthesis of art and science-of the imagined and the known-in Lethaby's

conception of architecture demonstrates his subtle but significant shift away from

the doctrines of a canonic Ruskinian position. Assuming that architecture must act

as a representation of the subject, that this expression must be articulated through

the action of making, and that these actions must conform to universal principles,

Lethaby maintained the "Hebraic" association between architecture and moral

action first established by Ruskin. 61 However, in requiring that architecture must

also address the relative phenomena of the object world-knowledge which was

driven by a Hellenic or scientific 'desire to see things as they are'-enabled him

163 to avoid the intolerance inherent to Ruskin's moral imagination. Embracing both the 'known' and the 'imagined'-'science' and 'art'-Lethaby was able to cultivate an ambivalent theory of architecture that avoided the Hebraic intolerance of Ruskin's contrasts. He was also able to cultivate a theory of architecture which approached the ambivalence and syncretic nature of Arnold's thesis of cultural perfection. This shift from a Ruskinian to an Amoldian paradigm is discussed in the following chapter.

164 1 Lethaby, 'Art and Workmanship,' Imprint, January 1913; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation: Collected Papers on Art & Labour, Oxford University Press, 1922, p. 209. 2 Lethaby, Notebook, Central St Martin's Art and Design Archive, B.4783. William Lethaby, 'Ruskin: Defeat and Victory,' a paper given to the Arts and Crafts Society, April, 1919, reprinted in Form in Civilisation, pp. 183-87. 3 W. S. Weir, 'A Paper read out before the Art Workers Guild', 22 April 1932; typescript held by the Central St Martin's Art and Design Archive, p. 7. 4 Reginald Blomfield, 'W.R. Lethaby: An Impression and a Tribute,' Journal of the Royal Institute ofBritish Architects, vol. 39, no. 8, 1932, pp. 4-6. 5 William Lethaby, 'Of Cast Iron and its Treatment for Artistic Purposes,' Journal of the Society of the Arts, vol. 38, 14 February 1890, pp. 272-82. 6 The term "Motive" is also taken from Ruskin and refers to the meaning or idea behind design. William Lethaby, 'Of the "Motive" in Architectural Design,' Architectural Association Notes, vol. 4,no.32, 1889,p.24. 7 Lethaby, 'Ruskin: Defeat and Victory,' pp. 183-84. 8 Letter from Lethaby to Harry Peach, July 16 1924, British Architectural Library, PEH/5/11/7. 9 By 1883 Lethaby was studying the major Ruskinian texts: The Stones of Venice, St Marks Rest, Val d' Arno. Notes taken directly from these and other Ruskin texts are found throughout Lethaby's sketchbooks dating from 1883 to 1885. North Devon Athenaeum, Barnstaple, Lethaby Papers, Sketchbook, 1885/1. Sketchbook no. 12 (1883), no. 13 (1884) & no. 16 (1884), Sketchbooks, British Architectural Library, Drawings Collection, Sketchbook cupboard. 10 Lethaby, 'Art and Workmanship,' p. 209. 11 William Lethaby, 'The Foundation in Labour,' Highway, March 1917; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, pp. 216 & 217. 12 Lethaby, 'Town Tidying,' address to the Arts and Crafts Society, Nov. 1916; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 17. 13 William Lethaby, 'Exhibitionism at the Royal Academy and Higher Criticism of Art,' Hibbert Journal, June 1920; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 180. 14 Lethaby argued that the 'arts' fall into 'three categories.' For the first or 'higher arts, some very distinct gift is required; it may be supreme skill in handling, with only average power of thought but more generally it will be the power of suggesting ideas and stimulating the imagination.' Without these, Lethaby explained 'the higher arts fail their chief reason of existence.' He argued that 'only a genius should be permitted to follow "fine art" exclusively.' A second category or type of art, he argued was to be found 'on a different plane to that of the imaginative arts or design.' These he explained were the 'illustrative arts.' The distinguishing factor of this category was that 'here there is room for Jess than genius,' arguing that 'the careful drawing from nature' was enough. However, the 'safest' category 'for most of us', that is-the general populace who lack the creative facility of genius, is craft-'the making of necessary things.' William Lethaby, 'Arts and the Function of Guilds', The Quest, Birmingham, 1896 reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, pp. 202-3. 15 William Lethaby, Philip Webb and his Work, Raven Oak Press, London, 1979 (1935), p. 69. 16 William Lethaby, Philip Webb p. 69. 17 Lethaby, Philip Webb, p. 69 18 Lethaby, 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation,' The London Mercury, 1920; reprinted m Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p.11. 19 Lethaby, 'The Foundation in Labour,' p. 214. 20 William Lethaby, 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation,' p. 1. 21 William Lethaby, 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation,' p. 7. 22 Lethaby, 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation,' p. 6. Emphasis mine. Lethaby's use of the term 'index' recalls Ruskin's use of the same word. 23 William Lethaby, 'Political Economy or Productive Economy,' Arts and Crafts Society, November 23 1915; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 196. 24 Lethaby, 'Art and Workmanship,' p. 210. 25 Lethaby, letter to Harry Peach, British Architectural Library, 29.1.1921, PEH/5/7/1. 26 Lethaby, notebook, Central St Martin's Art and Design Archive, London, B. 4783. 27 Lethaby, 'Lecture on Modem Design,' Royal College of Art, c. 1901; reprinted in Craft History One, vol. 1, no. 1, 1988, p. 136.

165 28 Lethaby, 'The Aphorisms of William Richard Lethaby,' Grace Crosby (ed) in A.R. Roberts, William Richard Lethaby, 1857-1931, London County Council and Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1957,p. 72. 29 Lethaby, 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation,' p. 7. 30 Lethaby, 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation,' p. 7. 31 Lethaby, 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation,' p. 10. 32 Lethaby, letter to Harry Peach, 29/1/1921, British Architectural Library, PEH/5/7/1. 33 Ruskin, 'The Nature of Gothic,' Works, vol. 10, p. 202. 34 Ruskin, 'Inaugural Lecture on Art,' 1870, Works, vol. 20, p. 26. 35 Lethaby, 'What Shall We Call Beautiful: A Practical View to Aesthetics,' Hibbert Journal, 1918; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 147, note 2. 36 Lethaby, 'What Shall We Call Beautiful,' pp. 156-157. 37 Lethaby, letter to Charles Hadfield, British Architectural Library, HAD/1/83. 38 Letter from William Lethaby to Cockerell, Oct 7th, 1907 in Friends of a Lifetime: Letters to Sydney Cockerell, Viola Meynell (ed), Jonathen Cape, London, 1940, n.p. 39 Lethaby, 'Housing and Furnishing,' The Athenaeum, May 21 1920; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 36. 40 Lethaby, Phillip Webb, p. 63. 41 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 12. 42 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, p. 17. 43 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 17. 44 Lethaby, Phillip Webb, p. 63. 45 Lethaby, 'Architecture of Adventure,' Royal Institute of British Architects, 18th April 1910; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, pp. 94-5. 46 Lethaby, 'Architecture of Adventure,' p. 95. 47 A summary of Ruskin's understanding of 'science' is given in a letter written to R. W. L. Brown in 1847. Here, as I have already argued in Chapter 1, Ruskin asserts that nature can be interpreted in two ways. The first 'looks' with 'coolness and observation of fact' at the appearance of things and determines that the 'pines ... are of such and such age; that the rocks are slate and of such and such a formation; the soil, thus and thus; the day fine, the sky blue.' It is this mode of looking which Ruskin identifies with science. While he acknowledges that the scientific mode speaks of 'all that is necessarily seen' and thus of the 'truth,' he also argues that it can never reveal 'all the truth.' 'There is something else to be seen there, which I cannot see but in a certain condition of mind, nor can I make anyone else see it, but by putting him into that condition ... to put my hearer's mind into the same ferment as my mind.' For Ruskin, art rather than science, holds the key to this second and greater truth. Ruskin, letter to R. W. L. Brown, September 28, 1847, Works, vol. 36, p. 80. 48 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' 1870, Works, vol. 20, p. 52. 49 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' Works, vol. 20, p. 53. Ruskin associated such relative data with the mental faculty of Fancy, which as shown above, was deemed by Ruskin as being unrelated to the inventive act. 50 Ruskin, 'The Relation of Art to Religion,' Works, vol. 20, p. 53. 51 William Lethaby, 'Education of the Architect,' Informal conference, Royal Institute of British Architects, 2nd May 1917; reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 123. 52 William Lethaby, 'Education of the Architect,' p.123. 53 Lethaby, 'Housing and Furnishing,' pp. 37-38. In direct contrast to Lethaby, Ruskin argued that shipbuilding could only be considered in terms of 'science' rather than 'art.' Noting in his 'Lectures on Architecture and Painting' (1854), that the ' ... first thing to be required of a building, not observe the highest thing, but the first thing-is that it shall answer it purposes completely, permanently, and at the smallest expense,' he also concluded; 'but observe, in doing all this, there is no High, or as it is commonly called, Fine Art, required at all. There may be much science, together with the lower form of art or "handicraft," but there is yet no Fine Art. House building, on these terms, is no higher than shipbuilding.' Ruskin, 'Lectures on Architecture & Painting,' 1854, Works, vol. 12, pp. 83-84. 54 Lethaby, 'Form in Civilisation,' p. 8. 55 Lethaby, 'Form in Civilisation,' pp. 8-9. 56 Lethaby, Notebook, Central St Martin's Art and Design Archive, B.4783. Lethaby, 'Exhibitionism at the Royal Academy and the Higher Criticism of Art,' pp. 173-5. 57 Lethaby, 'Form in Civilisation,' pp. 8-9.

166 58 Lethaby, 'Architecture of Adventure,' p. 92. 59 Lethaby, 'Architecture of Adventure,' p. 94. 60 Lethaby, 'Architecture of Adventure,' p. 94. 61 It can be argued that Lethaby's position as a practising architect forced him to move beyond Ruskin's conception of architecture. Ruskin's position as a critic of art and architecture enabled him to adopt a more idealistic approach to the problems of architecture. As Gurewitsch has argued, Ruskin approached the reading and definition of architecture in much the same way as he approached a literary text; as a study in the moral temper of the people who had produced it. As Ruskin himself was to argue in the Stones of Venice, 'the criticism of the building is to be conducted precisely on the same principles as that of a book. '(Ruskin, Works, vol. 10, p. 269.) Ruskin felt that the parallels between reading a book and reading a building had been totally ignored in Victorian England and he encouraged his contemporaries to consider and develop this method. He writes. The idea of reading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the same kind of delight out of the stone as out of the stanzas, never enters our mind for a moment .. .it requires a strong effort of common sense to shake ourselves quite of all that we have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to the perception of a truth just as simple and certain as it is new: that great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours or stones, does not say the same thing over and over again; that the merit of architectural, as of every other art, consists in it saying new and different things; that to repeat itself is no more characteristic of genius than it is of genius in print; and that we may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of architect as we do a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining.' (Ruskin, Works, vol. 10, pp. 206-207.) Such an approach to architecture enabled Ruskin to ignore the mechanical processes associated with construction and design. As a practising architect, and later as a teacher of architecture, Lethaby could not ignore such considerations. For Ruskin's literary approach to the problems of architecture see Susan Gurewitsch, 'Golgonooza on the Grand Canal: Ruskin's Stones of Venice and the Romantic Imagination,' The Arnoldian, Winter 1981, pp. 25-26.

167 Chapter 6

Seeking architecture of 'sweetness' and 'light.'

The influence of Matthew Arnold.

'This is a wonderful age for Heroes and Scoundrels: difficult for people in between.' 1

In Culture and Anarchy ( 1869), Arnold argued that the history of culture was determined by a continual rise and fall of Hellenic and Hebraic motives, a fact which demonstrated the progress of culture was determined by relative forces and continual flux. However, Arnold also advocated that cultural progress was motivated by the ideal of 'perfection,' a fixed and universal principle generated from a syncretic union of Hebraic and Hellenic motives, a union which effectively breaks the earlier cycle of flux and change. Thus Arnold promoted an ideal of progress, and thus a philosophy of modernism, which admitted the simultaneous validity of cultural relativism-laws contingently determining culture which had been progressively revealed throughout the history of the West-and cultural

absolutism-the existence of objective, universally valid moral and aesthetic

laws.2 In 1890, having modelled his definition of architecture on the ideas of

'Matthew Amold,'3 Lethaby found within Arnold's thesis a paradigm for future

practice which enabled him to resolve the 'paradox', and thus remove from

architecture the moral intolerance he had discovered in Ruskin. More

significantly, in Arnold Lethaby also discovered a philosophy of modernism

which effectively united and equalised the dual concerns of modem architecture

as it was practised in late nineteenth century Britain; his era's interest in the

seemingly opposed doctrines of organicism and instrumentalism, as well as its

168 continuing respect for the traditions of the past and a fascination with the ideals of progress. It is in Lethaby's identification and cultivation of what can be described as a syncretic architectural modernism-a modernism which accepted the co­ existence and dialectical interaction of two opposed and conflicting theoretical positions-that we discover the true significance and contribution of Architecture,

Mysticism and Myth.

6.1: Arnold's thesis of cultural perfection and ambivalent modernism.

Arguing in Culture and Anarchy that the progress of culture was determined by the dialectical interaction of the Hebraic and the Hellenic motives, Arnold also concluded that in isolation neither Hebraism nor Hellenism offered a satisfactory nor complete definition of culture.

The evolution of these forces, separately and in themselves is not the

whole evolution of humanity-their single history is not the whole history

of man .... Hebraism and Hellenism are, neither of them, the law of human

development. .. they are, each of them, contributions to human

development-august contributions, invaluable contributions; and each

showing itself to us more august, more invaluable, more preponderant over

the other, according to the moment in which we take them, and the relation

in which we stand to them.4

Assuming that the objectives of the Hebrew and the Hellene were the same-in that they both sought 'man's perfection or salvation'5-Arnold demonstrates that

this goal was obtainable only when the perfection of culture-a syncretic union of

the Hebraic and the Hellenic-had been achieved. 6

169 Culture is then properly described ... as having its origins in the love of

perfection; it is a study ofperfection. It moves by the force, not merely or

primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge [the Hellenic], but

also ~fthe moral and social passion for doing good [the Hebraic]. 7

Man's primary objective, Arnold continued, must be the perfection of culture, the syncretic union of the Hebraic and the Hellenic, an activity he also described as the 'pursuit of sweetness and light.' 'The pursuit of perfection,' Arnold tells us, 'is the pursuit of sweetness and light.' The man 'who works to make reason' (the

Hellenic) and the 'will of God' (the Hebraic) 'prevail' also works for the establishment of 'light' (reason or intelligence) and 'sweetness' (beauty and right conduct) in modem culture.8 For Arnold, such objectives represented the central motive informing the evolution of culture .

. . . culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. It has

one even greater!-the passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied

till we all come to a perfect man; it knows that sweetness and light of the

few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are

touched with sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we

must work for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from saying

that we must have a broad basis, must have sweetness and light for as

many as possible .... Only it must be real thought and real beauty, real

sweetness and real light. 9

In a state of perfection, a state of 'sweetness and light,' Arnold argued, culture can

motivate 'human perfection;' the 'developing [of] all sides of our humanity,' and

the 'developing of all sides of our society.' Only then, Arnold concluded, can we

avoid the cultivation of 'incomplete and mutilated men.' 10

170 The Hebraic character, Arnold continued, was the motive which dominated nineteenth century Britain. His was an age, he tells us, which had 'Hebraised too much and had over-valued doing.' It was time, he opined to once again, 'Hellenise and praise knowing.' 11 However, Arnold did not feel that Hellenism should supplant the Hebraic attributes of his age, rather, it should offer a complement.

Tempering the moral endeavour of the Hebraic character with the intellectual endeavour of the Hellene, Arnold felt that in his own time it was once again possible to recover the ideal of cultural perfection. 12

For is not this the right crown of the long discipline of Hebraism, and the

due fruit of mankind's centuries of painful schooling in self-conquest, and

the just reward, above all, of the strenuous energy of our own nations and

kindred in dealing honestly with itself and walking· steadfastly according

to the best light it knows,-that when in the fullness of time it has reason

and beauty offered to it, and the law of things as they really are, it should

at last walk by this true light with the same staunchness and zeal with

which it formerly walked by its imperfect light? And thus man's two great

natural forces, Hebraism and Hellenism, will no longer be dissociated and

rival, but will be a joint force of right thinking and strong doing to carry

him on towards perfection. This is what the lovers of culture may perhaps

dare to augur for such a nation as ours. 13

Arnold's thesis of cultural perfection is significant for a number of reasons. First,

it demonstrates an alternate position to the subjective critiques of nineteenth

century British culture popularised by John Ruskin. The gulf separating Ruskin

171 and Arnold, Edward Alexander has argued in Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin and the Modern Temper, 'was an epistemological as well as a psychological one.'

Although both men made similar moves from art to society and politics,

and both recognized the diminution of soul and loss of joy this might

entail, Ruskin saw no alternative to total inversion of his soul in the

miseries of the world that he wished to alleviate whereas Arnold believed

it was possible for him to find some middle ground between the

detachment he had left behind and the social commitment he had

undertaken. . .. whereas Ruskin believed that one could not truly fathom

the darkness and the suffering of the world unless one participated in

them, Arnold was certain that total involvement in the world's miseries,

far from enabling one to see them clearly, deprived one of the sense of

perspective and of the relationship of parts to whole that comes only with

moral poise and intellectual detachment. 14

The consequence of these two alternate approaches, Alexander has demonstrated, is the emergence of two very different Victorians; one that is Classical, the other

Romantic.

One brought from his experience of art a belief in concrete particularity, in

passionate involvement, in the greatness of failure and sorrow; whereas

the other brought a belief in the grandeur of generality, in the wholeness

and steadiness that come from detachment and in the nobility of perfection

and happiness. 15

Secondly, and more significantly, Arnold's thesis of cultural perfection represents

the development of an ambivalent voice, one which appears to be motivated by

172 the desire to embrace, critique and reconcile the diverse ideologies and intellectual traditions of his century. As William Buckler in The Victorian Imagination (1980) has demonstrated, Arnold

was both intimate with, and detached enough from, the work of his

immediate predecessors to be able to recover, enlarge, and redirect the

style and energy of their initial intuition without damaging its fundamental

content. He was a generation removed from both the English and German

Romantics; and he saw the former somewhat differently from the way

Tennyson had seen them, and he was more sceptical about the latter than

Carlyle had been.

The consequence of Arnold's unique position, Buckler argues, was 'a slight but significant shift' which had 'a large and positive value.'

it enabled Arnold to see the many-faceted Goethe in clearer and fuller

perspective; it made him more available to the critical brilliance and

balance of France than Carlyle and Tennyson had been, introducing him to

the French 'science of origins' and to the luminous metaphors by which

the historical rhythms and cross-currents of Western civilisation were

beginning to be perceived ....

Recognising that what was needed was less Romantic explosiveness and more

Classical steadiness and wholeness, less disproportionate feeling and more

proportioning thought, less Richter, Tieck and Novalis and more Goethe

reinforced by Aristotle and corrected by Homer, the outcome of Arnold's unique

perspective, Buckler has concluded, was an,

... enlarged and deeper rooting to [the] emergent idea of the

modem, ... clarified and strengthened [by] his faith in the sanity and

173 relevance of the critical counsel and creative practice of the ancients,

especially of Aristotle and Homer. 16

Tempering a Victorian respect for the Romantic poets and philosophers with the critical counsel and creative practice of the ancient Greeks, Arnold facilitated a reconciliation between the two main areas of cultural life; religious devotion and intellectual activity. The result, Joseph Carroll argues in The Cultural Theory of

Matthew Arnold (1982), is a theory of culture which,

... struggle[s] to mediate between Augustan rationalism and the Romantic

imagination, between the critical and poetic aspects of Goethe's work, and

between Heine's critical licence and the reverential humanism of

L essmg· .... 17

Arnold's desire for a mediation of reason and imagination, Carroll has demonstrated, emerged from his observation that the Enlightenment ideal of modernity-which Arnold felt was best articulated by the critical prose of eighteenth century France-was in England, complicated by a continuing respect for the spiritual resources of a Christian past. While the repudiation of the

Christian spirit and the acceptance of reason were seen as being essential to the modem spirit in France, in England the situation was perceived by Arnold to be a

little more complex in that the idea of progress and advancement rarely resulted in

a total negation of the past, its spiritual values, or Christian heritage. Recognising

that empiricism in England was seldom carried to its radical conclusion, in that it

failed to publish a revolutionary revision of traditional religious and social

thought, Arnold concluded the modern spirit in England was not willing to

enforce its claims for an exclusive command over the minds of men.

174 There was great and free intellectual movement in England at the

beginning of the eighteenth century; indeed, it was from England that the

movement passed into France. But our nation had not that strong natural

bent for lucidity which the French have; its bent was towards other things

in preference. Our leading thinkers had not the genius and passion for

lucidity which distinguishes Voltaire. In their free inquiry they soon found

themselves coming into collision with a number of established facts,

beliefs and conventions. Thereupon all sorts of practical considerations

began to sway them; the danger signal went up, they often stopped short,

turned their eyes another way, or drew down a curtain between themselves

and the light. 18

Acknowledging that even in England, the eighteenth century up to the time of the

French Revolution was primarily a period of expansion, critical inquiry, and increased social mobility, Arnold also felt that this tendency was severely inhibited by powerful and conservative countercurrents. 19 For Arnold the critic, who celebrated the modem spirit, such conservative forces resulted in a literature that was both dull and shallow. From the other side of the literary horizon, as an advocate of poetry and religious feeling, he also disparaged the whole eighteenth

century, French and English, for its spiritual aridity. 20 However, when Arnold

merged his dual interests of critic and poet, he saw the English eighteenth century

as an age of compromise. Arnold's greatest strengths, Carroll has argued, 'is his

power of balanced evaluation.' The case he prosecutes against the eighteen

century gives only half the story. The other half emerges in the genuine

appropriation Arnold accords to 'our age of prose and reason ... our excellent and

indispensable eighteenth century. ' 21

175 Arnold's seemingly contradictory readings of the eighteenth century, Carroll concluded, emerged from his belief that the eighteenth century was the first truly modem age in England, an age that accepted the co-existence and conflation of two opposed world views. The ambivalent poetry and prose of eighteenth century

England offered Arnold, Carroll explains,

pure archetypes of neither Hellenism nor Hebraism (intellectual nor

religious ardour), it does offer the first modem example of a synthesis of

the two. If it did not fling itself with revolutionary enthusiasm into the

future, neither did it divorce itself from the culture of the past, and if it

failed of an exclusive religious intensity, neither did it close itself off from

the life of the mind and the needs of the critical spirit.22

For Arnold, such balance identified a well 'tempered' and 'perfected' culture.

The significance of Arnold's reading of the literature of eighteenth century

England was that it offered a modified conception of the then emergent ideas of the "Modern" and "History." Observing that the literature of eighteenth century

England represented a mediation or the development of a middle ground which,

emerged from the conflation of two opposed ideologies-French rationality and

its accompanying ideal of progress and the English concern for its spiritual and

principally Christian past-Arnold recognised that history could no longer be

defined solely in terms of a teleologically determined progress nor as a cyclic

regression to past values. Arguing that cultural progress was determined by a

cyclic rise and subjugation of the Hellenic and Hebraic-a cycle that ideally

culminated in 'perfection' ( a syncretic balance of the two )-Arnold hoped to

176 demonstrate that progress in culture was determined by both objective, universally valid aesthetic and moral laws (the principle of perfection) but that these laws had been progressively revealing and developing themselves throughout the history of culture (the rise, dominance, and subsequent fall of the Hebraic and Hellenic throughout history).23 Identifying the ideal of perfection as the force motivating the progress of culture, Arnold also established English 'modernism' as a somewhat ambivalent and syncretic process, that is, a process which relied on the co-existence and ultimate balance of two opposed world views; the Hellenic and

Hebraic. In Pagan and Medieval Religious Sentiment (1864), Arnold identified the 'modem spirit' as being neither rational and transient (the Hellenic) or imaginative and the eternal (the Hebraic). For Arnold, the 'modem spirit' was not driven by the 'senses and understanding' or the 'heart and imagination,' but by a combination of both. The 'modem spirit,' he concluded, was the product of

, 1magmative· · · reason. ,24

6.2: Arnold's influence on Lethaby's idea of architecture.

There is little doubt that Lethaby was familiar with Arnold's thesis of cultural perfection and the accompanying philosophy of modernism which it propagated.

In a presentation given in 1923, Lethaby outlined five principles or beliefs which he felt best summed up his aims. Point five, that 'culture should be thought of not

only as book learning and manners but as a tempered spirit,' hints at Arnold's

influence. 25 Further evidence is found in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth.

Arguing that the style of the future must embrace both the 'known' and 'the

imagined'-facts that are reminiscent of Arnold's Hellenistic celebration of the

relative phenomena of the object world and Hebraic interest in universal, moral

177 values-Lethaby concluded that this new architecture must be framed between

'sweetness' and 'light;' terms used by Arnold to describe the coming together of the Hebrew and the Hellene in the process of cultural perfection.26 However, the most direct evidence of the influence of Arnold is found in a diary entry dated the second of August, 1890. Describing a trip taken with Ernst Gimson to Pately

Bridge, Lethaby noted,

we discussed the possibility of framing some satisfactory definition of

"Architecture." We decided that architecture might bear some such

relation to building as religion to morality, and then borrowing Matthew

Arnold's phrase as well as his general idea, we agreed that Architecture is

building touched with emotion.27

Arguing in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth that form is dependent on both the

'known'-man's rational surveillance and documentation of the object world­ and the 'imagined'-a subjective interpretation of the known in order to explain the unknown-a thesis he recapitulates in later writings by asserting architecture must unite 'science' and 'art,' Lethaby cultivates a theory of invention which approaches Arnold's thesis of cultural perfection. Like Arnold's thesis, Lethaby's theory of architecture syncretically combines and gives equal voice to an

empirical world view, what Arnold described as a 'scientific' desire to 'see things

as they are,' and a more subjective imagination motivated by moral and universal

forces. 28 For Lethaby, the progress of architecture like the progress of culture is

motivated neither by 'reason' or 'imagination' but by a syncretic union of both;

what Arnold described as 'imaginative reason. ' 29 It is this balance of opposed

178 principles which demonstrates Lethaby's departure from the earlier theories of

Ruskin and his debt to Arnold. 30

The idea of balance or middle ground where opposed principles are allowed to co­ exist is an enduring one in Lethaby's writings. 'Balance,' Lethaby argued, 'is the great thing to be desired;'31 the 'chamber of life is at the centre of balanced opposites, east and west, dark and light, hope and fear. ' 32 Declaring 'that the house of the soul has two aspects from windows to the north and south,'33 and that

'living involves both kinds of acting,'34 Lethaby concluded that the 'objective' of any school of architecture, 'worthy of the name, should be, to make men in the round, not flat, but full of stature and understanding.' 35 'We have to set up,'

Lethaby argued, 'a sympathetic and understanding contact between all brain workers, and the completer men who work with both hands and brain. ' 36

For Lethaby, like Arnold before him, an architectural process based on the principle of 'balance' guaranteed a final product that was 'well tempered,' and

'developed all sides of humanity.' In tempering a rational world of the 'known' and modem 'science' with the subjective interpretations of the 'imagined' or 'art' the modem architect, Lethaby concluded in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, was able to generate a symbolism that spoke to both man and child; one that was

'comprehensible to the great majority of spectators.'37 Accepting both the

'known' and the 'imagined' or 'science' and 'art' the architect was also able to

speak of qualities which were unique to his time and place in history as well as

maintaining a continuing respect for the traditions and values of the past. 38

Finally, combining the theories of invention associated with the 'imagined' (the

179 active processes of making) with those associated with the 'known' and 'science'

(a detached and rational contemplation of the object) the architect was able to explore a theory of invention that was neither empirical or Romantic, but both, and thus something else; an architecture of 'sweetness' and 'light. ' 39 Only such an architecture, he concluded, could unite 'science and art,'40 guarantee 'high utility,'41 and a 'building with heart.'42

However, there are greater implications of Arnold's influence on Lethaby's theory of architecture. First, Arnold offered Lethaby and ambivalent paradigm of invention which accepted the simultaneous existence of opposed ideologies. This ambivalent paradigm enabled him to move beyond the moral imperative informing Ruskin's theory of architecture and to syncretically combine the alternate theories of invention suggested by the alternate poles of his contrasts.

Secondly, and possibly more significantly, it identifies Lethaby's acceptance of a philosophy of modernism which fails to privilege the rational, the modem, and new over the organic, the traditional and the old by arguing that the 'modem spirit' motivating both the evolution of culture and her products, including architecture, looks both forward and back. It is here, in what can be described as an syncretic philosophy of modernism, syncretic in that it advocated the co­ existence and conflation of opposed world views (the Hellenic and Hebraic), that we discover the true contribution of Lethaby's Architecture, Mysticism and Myth.

180 1 Lethaby, in 'Aphorisms of W. R. Lethaby,' in William Richard Lethaby, 1857-1931, A. R. N Roberts (ed), London Country Council, Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, 1957, p. 84. 2 Joseph Carroll, The Cultural Theory of Matthew Arnold, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1982, p. xiv. 3 Lethaby, Diary, 2nd August 1890; cited in W. R. Lethaby, Ernst Gimson 's London Days, Art Workers Guild, London, n.d, p. 2. 4 Arnold, 'Culture & Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism,' 1869, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, R. H. Super (ed), University of Michigan Press, 1962-77, vol. 5, pp. 170-71. 5 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 164. 6 I use the word syncretic rather than synthesis to indicate Arnold's attempt to establish a balance, to combine the teachings, beliefs and practices suggested by the Hebraic and Hellenic motives in nineteenth century culture, rather than supplant one position with the other. Throughout his writings Arnold refers to this balance as 'finely tempered.' Arnold, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 99. 7 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 91. 8 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 112. 9 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 112. The order of Arnold's terms create some confusion and it is often difficult to determine if he equated light with 'intelligence' or 'beauty' or sweetness with 'intelligence' or 'beauty.' In the second chapter of Culture and Anarchy he clarifies this position by clearly stating that 'beauty' represents 'sweetness' and 'light,' 'intelligence.' Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5,p.115. 10 Arnold, 'Preface,' Culture and Anarchy, edited with an introduction by J. Dover Wilson, Cambridge University Press, 1932, p. 11. (preface not published in The Complete Works) 11 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5 p. 255. 12 Arnold argued that a synthesis of the Hebraic and Hellenic occurred only once before in history, in Periclean Athens. For this reason Arnold established Periclean Athens as providing an intellectual and aesthetic ideal for all later ages. Throughout his writings he compares the flowering of the Athenian civilisation to the emerging maturity of his own age. Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 1, p. 31. 13 Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, pp. 225-26. 14 Edward Alexander, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin and the Modern Temper, Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1973, p. xvi. 15 Alexander, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin and the Modern Temper, p. xvi. 16 William E. Buckler, The Victorian Imagination: Essays in Aesthetic Exploration, New York University Press, New York, 1980, pp. 6-7. 17 Carroll, The Cultural Theory ofMatthew Arnold, p. xix. 18 Matthew, 'A Liverpool Address,' 1882, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 10, f.· 86. . 9 Arnold, 'Johnson's Lives of the Poets,' 1886, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 8, pp. 309 & 319. 2°Carroll, The Cultural Theory ofMatthew Arnold, p. 130. 21 Arnold, 'The Study of Poetry,' 1880, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 9, p. 180. 22 Carroll, The Cultural Theory ofMatthew Arnold, p. 131. 23 Carroll notes that Raymond Williams (Culture & Society: 1780-1950, 1960, p. 127-28) has argued that the conflict between the admission of cultural relativism and the grasping for "an absolute" represents the final break in Arnold's thinking. Acknowledging that Williams is right in explaining this as the theoretical crux of Arnold's work, Carroll goes on to demonstrate that Arnold does succeed in synthesising these elements within his cultural dialectic. Carroll, The Cultural Theory of Matthew Arnold, p. xv. 24 Arnold, 'Pagan and Medieval Religious Sentiment,' 1864, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 3 p. 230. Defining the modem spirit as the synthesis of reason and imagination, or the Hellenic and Hebraic, Arnold was able to argue that the 'modem spirit' or 'element' could also be found in the past. For example, Arnold identified Periclean Athens as a modem age as it was one of the few ages which had obtained a balance of the Hebraic and Hellenic motives. Arnold compared this Greek age to his own. Focusing on the flowering of the

181 Athenian civilisation as a 'modem age,' Arnold concludes that 'this new world in its maturity ... resembles our own.' Arnold, 'The Modem Element in Literature,' 1857, in Complete Prose WorksofMatthewArnold, vol. l,p. 31. 25 Basic beliefs and principles outline by Lethaby at a presentation given by him in 1923, W.R. Lethaby Papers, British Architecture Li~rary, LEW/2/8. 26 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. Arnold identified the two qualities of sweetness or beauty and light or intelligence as attributes of a perfected culture and human perfection. In Culture and Anarchy he writes, This is admirable; and indeed, the Greek word evovia, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive it: a harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites "the two noblest of things,"-as Swift, who of one of the two, at any rate, had himself all too little, most happily calls them in Battle of the Books-"the two noblest of things, sweetness and light. " The evouns is the man who tends towards sweetness and light; the aouns, on the other hand, is our Philistine. The immense spiritual significance of the Greeks is due to their having been inspired with this central and happy idea of the essential character of human perfection .... In thus making sweetness and light to be characters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one law with poetry. Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofMatthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 99. 27 Lethaby, Diary, 2nd August 1890; cited in W.R.Lethaby, Ernst Gimson 's London Days, Art Workers Guild, London, n.d, p. 2. Lethaby's definition of architecture as 'building touched with emotion' recalls Ruskin's earlier thesis that architecture is building with the addition of thought or sculpture and painting. (see Chapter 1). However, it is significant that Lethaby identifies the source of this idea in his thinking as Arnold's idea of religion. Wilson has argued in his introduction to the 1955 reprint of Culture and Anarchy that the greatest concern which motivated Arnold's text was the idea of religion. Feeling that the religion of his own age had retreated into the dogmatism that was part and parcel of the Hebraic character, and thus diminished the moral benefits that could be found in the Hebraic force, Arnold sought to establish an alternative conception of religion, one that embraced the best of the Hebraic character but one which also encouraged the intellectual striving of the Hellene. Arnold's objective, Wilson has argued, was to develop a common or middle ground upon which all denominations might meet and from which an undenominational religious education might proceed. It is this idea of a middle ground, in which the various interpretations of a discipline, be it religion or architecture, which appealed to Lethaby. This idea of a 'middle ground' represents a significant theoretical shift away from the privileging of the moral imagination in Ruskin's definition of architecture. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, edited with an introduction by J. Dover Wilson, Cambridge University Press, 1955, p. xxxvii. 28 Arnold describes the Hellenic motive as 'the scientific passion for pure knowledge.' (Arnold, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 91.) Lethaby, on the other hand, equates mythic man's study of the 'known' with the 'progress ofscience ... the framing and destruction one by one of a series of hypotheses.' {Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 17). In later writings he replaced the idea of the 'known,' man's objective study of the material world, with the term 'science.' (Lethaby, 'The Architecture of Adventure,' p. 94). The Hebraic, on the other hand, represents for Arnold the 'moral and social passion for doing good.' (Arnold, The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 5, p. 91.) Drawing on the earlier theories of Ruskin, Lethaby identified this 'moral and social passion for doing good' in architecture as being dependent on the free representation of the 'imagined' or 'imagination,' a divine principle which organically bound all creation, but one that found representation only in moral actions and social conditions. (Lethaby, 'The Architecture of Adventure,' p. 92.) Thus for Lethaby, like Ruskin before him, the imagined ensured right action and moral conduct in the invention of architecture. 29 Arnold, 'Pagan and Medieval Religious Sentiment,' 1864, Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 3, p. 230. 30 As noted previously Ruskin's objective was to demonstrate the impassable gulf that separated the subjective world view of the imagination and the objective empiricism of modem science. Arnold's objective, on the other hand, was to cultivate a 'well tempered nature' by identifying a middle ground which was based on a syncretic union of both world views. While Lethaby adopts the Amoldian ideal of perfection as the model for his theory of architecture, he does acknowledge that Arnold's thesis often favours intellectual endeavour over that of moral rectitude. In much the same way that Ruskin's subject subsumes the object as an entity in its own right, Arnold, Lethaby

182 argued, succumbs to overvaluing the rational view of an object world. This belief is demonstrated in his 1919 essay, 'Education for Appreciation or for Production,' where Lethaby explains 'The aim of Matthew Arnold was "Culture," the being able to move freely in the realm of ideas. This is doubtless good enough in its way--one way-but we cannot all take the veil and retire from the often-tough productive of work.' Lethaby, 'Education for Appreciation or for Production,' The Education Conference, January 10, 1919, Southport, reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 134. 30 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 13. 31 Lethaby, Philip Webb and His Work, Raven Oak Press, London, 1979, (1935), pp. 8-9. 32 Lethaby, 'Aphorisms ofW. R. Lethaby,' p. 62. 33 Lethaby, unpublished notebook, n.d, Central St Martin's Art and Design Archive, b. 4783. 34 Lethaby, 'Aphorisms of W.R. Lethaby,' p. 85. 35 Cited in Noele Rooke, Lethaby and the Making of the Central School, BBC Third Program, visual arts, 1946, typescript, Central St Martin's Art and Design Archive, file. no. 103. 36 Lethaby, 'The Foundation in Labour,' Highway, March 1917, reprinted in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, p. 222. Again, Lethaby's statement that man must work with both 'hands' and 'brains' recalls the earlier theory of the 'thoughtful worker' advocated by Ruskin, Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement in general. However, if this thinking in Lethaby is attributed to Arnold rather than Ruskin, a subtle but significant theoretical shift can be detected in his intentions. 37 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 38 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, preface. 39 Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, p. 16. 40 Lethaby, 'The Architecture of Adventure,' 1910, reprinted in Form in Civilisation, p. 94. 41 In 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation' Lethaby defines 'high utility' as representing the removal of the 'unreal and destructive oppositions between the serviceable and the aesthetic, between science and art.' Lethaby, 'Architecture as Form in Civilisation,' 1920; reprinted in Form in Civilisation, pp. 8-9. 42 Building with 'Heart,' as argued in Chapter 3, represents for Lethaby the elevation of architecture above simple necessity (science) by the addition of imagination or emotion. Lethaby, 'Phillip Webb and his Work,' The Builder, 1925, p. 220.

183 Part III. The significance of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth.

Chapter 7

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth: The foundation for a syncretic modernism.

The emphasis on an 'orientation towards a future that will be different from the past' in studies on modem architecture has constructed the "Modem" as an idea which excludes considerations of the traditional, and thus of the symbolic and organic.

Focusing on rational, instrumental and formal qualities of the object, values which ground the artefact within a specific time and place (the twentieth century) and thus establish it as a representation of the current and the new, examinations of the modem in architecture locate a continuity of tradition as existing outside of a modem perspective and thus as not participating within the modem process. Lethaby's idea of future practice identifies an alternative philosophy of the modem in the final decades of the nineteenth century, one that seeks a balance not only of art and science, but also of past and present. This adds a new perspective or dimension to the history of modernist architecture and standard theory. The result is the identification of a separate and alternative tradition of modem architecture. In much the same way there is said to be two Lethabys, one who demonstrates an interest in the imagination­ establishing his work as a continuity of earlier Romantic values-and the other who seeks to establish a 'modem science' of design, it can also be argued that there are two seemingly irreconcilable streams in modem architecture. An instrumental exploration which seeks to articulate the progressive and allegedly modem, and an organic ideology which seeks to demonstrate the continuity of tradition that underlies architecture. These two philosophies are often treated as being independent and

184 autonomous concerns, the first demonstrating a celebration of modernity and its products, the second offering a critique. However, such an observation is complicated by the fact that an interest in both schools of thought commonly occur simultaneously in the work of architects or movements which considered themselves to be modem.

Lethaby's thesis, that 'future practice' is equally dependent on the known and the imagined-and thus on the relative and universal or present and past ( a proposition that is indebted to Arnold's earlier theory of cultural perfection) demonstrates that both the instrumental movement forward and the organic retreat back were essential to his idea of modem practice. The duality apparent in the early architectural modernisms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century demonstrates a prolific and enduring adherence to this alternative philosophy of modernism, one that accepts the radicalism embedded in the French ideal of progress but one that also accepts the validity of tradition, the symbolic and the organic.

7.1: Modern practice as rupture.

The historian Friedrich Meinecke in 'Geschichte und Gegenwort' (1933) has argued that the replacement of a static or cyclic idea of history, a conception common to

Classical and Romantic world-views respectively, with a progressive model

(historicism), one that has come to be associated with a modem world view, 1 spurred a complex response in modem culture. Seeking to define the direction of future practice (invention in a modem world), modem man did one of two things. He identified a single moment in the past and established it as a paradigmatic model for future practice. Or, alternatively he fled into the future, grounding practice in the

spirit and achievements of the current epoch. 2

185 Meinecke's 'flight into the future' and 'retreat into the past' are demonstrated in the architectural debates of nineteenth century Britain, especially by James Fergusson's

An Historical Inquiry into the True Principle of Architecture (1849) and John

Ruskin's, The Seven Lamps ofArchitecture of the same year. 3 Acknowledging that it was no longer possible to favour one style over another-as it was now recognised that each style was organically tied to the specific epoch which had produced it­

Fergusson and Ruskin respectively associated future practice either with the achievements of the present or those of the past. Fergusson's association of architecture with contemporary theories of the divided body and labour identified future practice in architecture, as the English architect and theorist C. R. Cockerell observed in his 1849 lectures, with the 'muse of novelty, invention and progress.'

Ruskin, on the other hand, seeking to reinstate the craft ethic of the medieval mason turned to 'the muse of veneration, authority and antique association. ' 4 The contrary positions developed by Ferguson and Ruskin, as Meinecke's discussion of historicism has demonstrated, must both be interpreted as modem. Both represent a cultural response (a modernism) to the conditions imposed by modernity (the progressivist thesis of history). Both also demonstrate a "rupture" or "break" with tradition, and more specifically, a break with the classical tradition which states that history is static and fixed and thus the representation of natural, immutable and unchanging laws. 5

The idea of 'rupture,' and specifically a rupture from the classical tradition, is an enduring one in studies which seek to define the nature of modernity and her modemisms. 6 In her recent study, Architecture and Modernity (1999), Hilde Heynen

186 has argued that 'the experience of modernity involves a rupture with tradition' and that 'the effects of this rupture ... are reflected in modernism, the body of artistic and intellectual ideas and movements that deal with the process of modernization and with the experience of modernity.' A defining moment in this break, she has explained, can be found in the Fre_nch eighteenth century Querrelle des Anciens et des

Modernes, a debate which considered 'whether the "Modems" could rival or even surpass the "Ancients" in their attempts to achieve the highest ideal of art. 7 Bernard

Smith in Modernism's History ( 1998), has also drawn attention to the 'modem' break with the classical tradition. Focusing on the modem art of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe (which he has labelled the 'Formalesque'), Smith argues that the 'modem' is marked by the replacement of the idea of art as an imitation of nature-a thesis that has its origins in the classical idea of mimesis and one which dominated European art from the fifteenth century up to the late nineteenth century­ by the thesis that art is the imitation of the artefact (craft), and specifically the imitation of artefacts which originated outside of a European tradition.8 A similar hypothesis is put forth by Alberto Perez-Gomez in his earlier Architecture and the

Crisis of Modern Science (1983). Modernism in European architecture, he has argued, is determined by the replacement of mathesis (geometry as the representation of nature )--a notion that has its origins in the classical world view-by the conception of geometry as an instrument of measure and control.9

Fergusson's flight into the future and 'Ruskin's retreat into a Gothic past both maintain this 'modem' break with the classical tradition. However, while Fergusson's

'modernity' is generally accepted, Ruskin's reaction to the conditions of modernity

187 (his modernism) has been read as a critique of modem culture and thus as existing outside of a truly modem perspective. 10 Such a view is the product, it can be argued, of the commonly accepted and rarely questioned association of late nineteenth and early twentieth century architectural modernisms with the idea of the progressive; what Heynen has described as an 'orientation towards a future that will be different from the past and the present.' 11 This orientation towards the future has come to be associated with a complete break with the past in general, not only with the classical past. It is such a conception of modernity and its modernisms which excludes

Ruskin's reconsideration of the past. Lethaby' s cultivation of an alternative theory of modernism demonstrates that such an exclusion must be questioned.

A number of difficulties emerge when the idea of the past is excluded from a conception of modernity and the modernisms it evokes. First, and more generally, such a conception of modernism ignores the complexity-the movement both forward and back-which Meinecke described as a consequence of a progressive or historicist's conception of time. It also fails to accommodate the duality of themes and directions which have more recently have been identified as being a defining attribute of modernity. As Thelma La"'.'ine has recently argued in her 1996 essay on

Charles Sanders Peirce, modernity can no longer be presented as single movement forward but must be seen as the 'conflation' of multiple concerns that 'subvert and delegitimate' each other. Complexity and contradiction, Lavine states, constituted and determined the very nature of modernity itself. 12 When the idea of modernism as a single movement forward is applied to the architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time frame associated with the emergence of a modem

188 architecture in Britain, Europe and America, further difficulties emerge. The association of modernism in architecture with a 'rupture from tradition' has resulted in a conception of modem design that is firmly grounded in the current, the new and the progressive-be it the use of new materials, the adoption of the new systems of industrial production or new conceptions of space. Heynen has demonstrated, that early studies on modem architecture such as Sigfried Gideon's Rauen in Frankreich

(1928) and Space, Time and Architecture (1941), and the development in these texts of such concepts as Durchdringung (interpenetration) and 'space time,' have constructed the image of an architectural avant-garde; the development of a new architecture that was 'based on an antagonism against traditional notions and institutions' and one that 'celebrates the new and is fascinated by the idea of transitoriness.' 13 A 'diagnosis of the rupture provoked by modernity,' Hermann Bahr argued in 1890, called for a 'new beginning, based upon the rejection of the old.'

The entrance of outward life into the inner spirit: this is the new art .... We

have no other law than the truth, as is experienced by everybody .... This will

be the new art that we are creating, and it will be the new religions, for art,

science and religion are one and the same. 14

Stating that the emergence of this new culture and art was only possible when all the traditions of the past had been purged, Bahr felt, as Heynen has explained, that.

Everything that was old had to be got rid of, the dusty comers where the old

spirit has made its home had to be swept clean. Emptiness was needed, an

emptiness that would come from erasing all the teachings, all beliefs, and all

knowledge of the past. All the falsehood of the spirit-everything that could

189 not be brought into harmony with steam and electricity-had to be exorcised.

Then and only then would the new art be born. 15

Bahr's comments demonstrate the presence and validity of avant-garde intentions at the tum of the century. However, avant-garde tendencies, as Heynen has demonstrated, rarely maintained a total negation of the past. Ambiguities quickly emerged in architecture's early modernism. While wanting to 'face up to the challenges of modernity,' the architect, Heynen has demonstrated, often 'line[ed] up with the avant-garde in art and literature.' However, 'at the same time [he also] cl[u]ng to traditional architectural values such as ha~ony and permanence.' 16 An orientation towards the future in the historiography of modernity and its architecture readily accommodates the 'avant-garde' tendencies of the architects of this period.

However it fails to explain their equally enduring, and seemingly contradictory loyalty to the past. Lethaby's theory of modernism, on the other hand, does.

7.2: The two faces of early modern architecture.

In 'The Bauhaus: Avant-garde or Tradition?' (1989), Alain Findeli has noted that the

German 'Bauhaus (1919-1933) is unanimously considered the temple of

Modernism.' 17 The pedagogical principles and distinct formal canon developed by the members of the Bauhaus are thus interpreted as demonstrating the modem break with tradition, the desire to 'reconstruct the arts and the world anew on a tabla rasa. ' 18

Support for such a reading is readily found in the writings of Walter Gropius, one of the original founders of the movement. In 1962, Gropius described the Bauhaus as an institution that was both 'unorthodox' and 'revolutionary.' 19 'The evolution [of the preceding period]' Gropius argued somewhat earlier in 1924, was 'getting to an end:

190 the "isms" and the decorative arts are standing on their graves and one already recognizes the first signs of a new spirit and of a new Weltanschauung. ' 2° For

Gropius and his Bauhaus contemporaries, the objective was to produce 'new constructive work' that demonstrated this 'new spirit' and 'will to change. ' 21

However, despite such rhetoric, which supports an ideology of modernity and its modernisms that presupposes a rupture with tradition and a complete negation of the past, Findeli also demonstrates that there occurs within the doctrines and statements of the movement a continuing adherence to and respect for traditional values. As

Gropius was himself to point out in 1920, the Bauhaus was intended to be 'a further development of, and not a break with tradition. ' 22 This debt to tradition, Findeli has argued, is evident at two levels; in the Bauhausler's conception of history and in the design methodology that the school developed.

With regard to history, it was indeed looking forward, towards a future world

where technology would contribute to peoples well being but would remain

under the control of a new breed of artists-architects, whose task was to

redesign not only our built environment, but also our way of life. As Gropius

put it, "life was [to be] freed of unnecessary burdens [in order] to unfold more

freely and richly."23 But at the same time the Bauhaus evokes a kind of

Platonic Academy, looking back to an ideal social model where a community

based on human values ( Gemeinschaft) had not yet been subverted by a

society based on abstract rationalism and economic values (Gesellschaft).

With regard to the design method, the Bauhaus was also double-faced. On the

one hand its masters tried to investigate the artistic domain with a highly

191 analytical method leading to a grammar of the visual environment and to a

science of design. But on the other hand, the intuitive powers of the artist and

their synthetic vision were to remain the controlling factor of the design

process in order, precisely, to avoid the excesses of reductionism and

rationalism. 24

An interest in the 'intuitive powers of the artist'-a concept that is reminiscent of the

Romantic imagination (or what Lethaby describes as 'Art') and one which maintains an organic link between the built form and nature-together with the movement's desire to reinstate the lost ideal of Gemeinschaft demonstrates, Findeli has argued, an element of 'continuity' and 'connectedness' to nature which runs throughout the movement's agenda. 25

Further evidence of this 'continuity' and 'connectedness to tradition,' it can be argued, is also evident in the Bauhausler's continuing interest in the symbolic form.

Fundamental to the idea of progress and rupture from tradition is a belief in the loss of symbolic meaning in the modem artefact. As the symbol functions as an arbitrary representation of its object (that which the sign seeks to signify outside itself) the symbol relies on a body of collective agreement (tradition) to determine its semantic value. 26 Without tradition, that is, a body of collective agreement which both the producer and reader of the sign have access to, the symbol can have no common meanmg. If it is accepted that modernity has enforced an irrevocable break with tradition (the collective agreements on which the symbol relies in order to communicate) we must also accept that modem culture can no longer be symbolic

and must rely on alternative systems of representation.

192 The absence of the symbolic in modem culture arid its artefacts is a quality that has long been accepted. In 1951, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his famous essay Baunen Wohnen Denken ('Building, Dwelling and Thinking') argued that the transitory nature of modem culture no longer permitted modem man to 'dwell,' to produce a poetic and meaningful architecture.27 Heidegger's idea that the conditions of modernity had stripped the modem architect of his or her ability to be poetic is an enduring one in the historiography of modem architecture. Alberto Perez-Gomez has put forward a similar thesis. The shift from Euclidean to non-Euclidean geometry motivated by the rise of scientific rationalism, he argued, resulted in the traditional role of architecture as mathesis (the symbolic representation of nature through geometry and measure) as being replaced by one in which geometry and number were transformed into instruments for technical control. The symbolic and poetic architecture of the ancient world which spoke of a mythic and cosmic order was replaced with an instrumental architecture in which the new concerns of economy and utility dominated.28 A similar absence of meaning and movement towards formal concerns can be found in Smith's reading of modernism in art. The emerging modernisms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Smith posits, were motivated by a movement away from the notion of art as the imitation of nature

(mimesis) towards the idea that art was concerned with the imitation of the artefact

(or art as craft. )29 This shift resulted in the replacement of symbolic concerns with formal values. The artefacts imitated by the modem artist, Smith has suggested, had their origins outside of Europe, in the exotic cultures of Asia, Africa, and the South

Pacific. As the European artist and observer often had no access to the cultural

193 traditions which informed the production of such work, as he or she existed outside of the culture which gave such forms their meaning, he or she could only focus on and imitate the formal qualities of the object that was studied. The result, Smith concludes, was the modem privileging of form and the denial of the symbolic. It is this denial of the symbolic which inspires Smith to place the multiple variations or

'styles' produced at this time, under the collective label of the 'Formalesque. ' 30

The shift towards the formal and the instrumental can be detected in the Bauhaus development of a design vocabulary based on the yellow A., red • and blue •.

These, as Joseph Rykwert has noted in his 'The Dark Side of the Bauhaus' (1970),

'are sometimes cited as evidence of extreme rationalism:' a formal vocabulary which represents the execution of rational and scientific principles.31 However an alternative reading can also be given for the development and presence of these elemental forms within the Bauhaus oeuvre. Locating the Bauhaus and its masters within a cultural milieu which included the emergence of the 'new' religions-such as Madame

Blatvasky's Theosophical Society and Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Society­

Rykwert has argued that the three forms and three colours of yellow A., red • and blue • were also intended to symbolically represent and make manifest a 'highly developed esoteric doctrine' which advocated the 'inner laws of nature [were] becoming increasingly apparent to the general population. ' 32 The abstraction of the artefact and the design process demonstrated by its reduction to yellow A., red • and blue e, demonstrate not only a modem concern for standardisation, mass production and prefabrication but also an interest in spiritual evolution and revelation; an interest

194 that recalls the abstract imagery and esoteric language of Helena Blatvasky's 'The

World within the Universe and Manifested Logos.' (fig.15)33

Such connections to the past and tradition evident in the ideology and work produced by the Bauhaus, as Findeli has argued, be it through their conception of history, idea of design, or continuing manipulation of symbolic traditions, 'enriched and tempered

[the movement's] avant-garde interests. ' 34 The reality of the Bauhaus idea, Findeli concludes, 'is, like Janus, double-faced.' 35 However, this is a reality that is rarely acknowledged. While the Bauhaus interest in both the past and present can be seen as two sides of a coin that dialectically interact, it is only those interests which can be identified with the progressive, the new and the current that are seen to determine the movement's 'modem nature.' The movement's interest in the traditions of the past, be they past conceptions of history, design or symbolic systems of representation, cannot be accommodated by a definition of modernism which privileges the new, the current and the future. As Heynen has argued, such interests 'appear to adopt a position outside of modernity ... a radical critique of modernity [that occurs] outside of the [modem] process and [one that is] without any commitment to the modem.'36

7.3: A syncretic model for modern architecture.

Arnold's theory of cultural perfection and his ideal of the 'modem spirit' demonstrates that the celebration of progress and rupture from tradition was not the only philosophy of modernism current in the debates of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Arnold's thesis that the 'modern spirit' was determined by a balance of 'imagination' and 'reason' also demonstrates that, at least for some,

195 modern invention represented not only a desire to isolate the attributes unique and specific to the time in order to celebrate man's progress and advancement but spoke also of a continuing respect for the traditions and cultural values of the past. Basing his conclusions on his study of the poetry and prose of eighteenth century Britain,

Arnold argued that the 'modern spirit' manifested itself in England as a movement that travelled both forward and back. Lethaby's thesis in Architecture, Mysticism and

Myth that the 'temple idea,' and its association of form with the 'known' and the

'imagined' identified a theory of invention on which to base the architecture of the

'future,' also demonstrates that Arnold's interpretation of English modernism permeated into architectural debates. Lethaby's influence on a subsequent generation of architects in turn identifies the dissemination of this principle in the architectural debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The influence of the English Arts and Crafts movement-of which Lethaby was a central figure37-on both America and Germany is well documented. 38 It is difficult to conceive that this influence did not include Lethaby's thoughts on modern architecture. 39 Support for this possibility is found in W. J. Johnston's 1957 lecture on

Lethaby. He writes.

Lethaby's ideas were the basis of the teaching of the other great teachers of

this century, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, and L.Moholy-Nagy.

Frank Lloyd Wright in fact said to me in the United States, 'Johnstone, we got

it all from Lethaby you know.' Walter Gropius too has admitted that .... 40

196 To determine the full extent of Lethaby's influence on his contemporaries, both local and international, and on subsequent generations, is beyond the scope of this thesis.

However it is significant to note that when Lethaby's influence both within Britain and beyond is considered, the mechanism motivating this dissemination is often

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth; the text in which he first identified his thesis of future practice. Julian Holder in his essay on the influence of this seminal work

(1984) has demonstrated the text was enthusiastically embraced by many of

Lethaby's contemporaries and can be cited as a source for such diverse monuments as

R.S. Weir's Chapel for the Third Marquis of Bute at St John's lodge (1893), Charles

Harrison Townesend's Bishopsgate Institute (1892-4), Smith & ;Brewer's Passmore

Edwards Settlement (1895), H.W. Wilson's Ladbroke Grove Library (1890-1), and

Mary Watt's Mortuary Chapel at Compton (1896-1906).41 Lethaby's text, with its chapters on The World Fabric, the Jewel Bearing Tree, The Golden Gate of the Sun, and Ceilings Like the Sky, Holder has demonstrated, functioned as a popular source for many of Lethaby's contemporaries. 'The book,' Weir argued in 1932, 'opened up to us younger men a hitherto undreamt of romance .... I was at the time about to do a small private chapel, into it went a pavement like the sea and a ceiling like a sky. ' 42

The broad dissemination of the text's imagery and message, Holder continued, is also detected in many of the so-called leitmotifs of the time.

Just as 'Queen Anne' had its icons, the sunflower and the peacock, so these

architects had theirs, the Tree of Life-the most frequently used symbol,

examples of which can be seen in the work of Voysey and Frank Lloyd

Wright. By far the most spectacular example must be the building ridiculed as

197 'The Golden Cabbage,'-Joseph Olbrich's Vienna Succession building

[1897].43

Further evidence of the influence of Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth 's can be found in the 1912 plan for Canberra by the American Prairie architect, Walter Burley

Griffin. Documenting Griffin's plan, James Weirick in 'The Griffins and Modernism'

(1988), attributes the design for the ziggurat inspired Capitol Building, surmounted by a winged figure, to Griffin's reading of Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth.

(fig.16)44 Evidence of the text's impact on Griffin is also found in Peter Proudfoot's

The Secret Plan of Canberra (1994). Proudfoot has argued that Griffin's plan draws upon geomantic traditions by incorporating ancient planning concepts such as the cardo, the decumanus, the omphalos, the alignment of monuments with surrounding landscape features, and the identification of these features as sacred through sacred geometry and colour symbolism. Significantly, Lethaby considers each of these design traditions, in detail, in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. 45 Finally, the broad extent of the book's influence is revealed in a recent paper by Harriet Edquist.

Documenting Harold Desbrowe-Annear's Springthorpe Memorial (1897-1901) in

Melbourne, Edquist has demonstrated that the principle influence determining the monument was Lethaby's Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. 46

The prominence of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth suggests a broad dissemination of its message, and in particular, a dissemination of its central thesis; the conclusion that an architecture representing both the 'known' and the 'imagined,' a thesis that reflects Arnold's early observations that the 'modem spirit' in England was motivated by 'imaginative reason,' would produce an architecture that 'would excite

198 and interest, both real and general,' 'possess a symbolism comprehensible to the great majority of spectators,' resolve the tension between past and present, and be of

'sweetness' and 'light.' This presence is significant as it offers an explanation for the duality evident in the modem architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It also demonstrates a moment in the history of architecture when the idea of a syncretic philosophy of modem practice first established itself.

In his recent study, The Other Traditions of Modern Architecture: The Uncompleted

Project (1995)? Colin St John Wilson identifies traditions of modem practice which challenged the orthodoxy of mainstream modernism. The motivating forces of these alternate traditions, Wilson has argued, was a dual interest in Art and Utility; a

'dialectic that embraced simultaneously the framing of geometry and unruly accidents of the organic. ' 47 Evidence of these alternatives, he maintained, can be traced through the twentieth century, the central protagonists being Hans Scharounn (1893-1972),

Hugo Haring, Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), and Louis Kahn (1901-1974), to name but a few. 48 The theoretical origins of these alternatives, Wilson argues, have their roots in the architectural theory of late nineteenth century Britain, and specifically, Wilson concludes in Lethaby's thesis of 'High Utility. '49

... the extraordinary initiative in the History of British Architecture that is

known as the English Free School: an initiative that is born and nurtured in

the work of Butterfield, Street, Waterhouse, Shaw, Machintosh, Webb and

Lethaby gained fresh blood in the United States through the inventions of

Henry Hobson Richardson and Frank Lloyd Wright before returning to inspire

199 the 'very members of the Resistance' [Scharoun, Haring, etc] of whom I

write.50

Wilson's identification of 'Other Traditions of Modem Architecture' is significant to this study for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that Lethaby's theory of architecture represents a point of departure for an alternative tradition of modem architecture which extends from the nineteenth century theories of the English Free School to the mid-twentieth century theories of Alvar Aalto and Louis Kahn. Secondly, and more significantly, Wilson's thesis highlights, if indirectly, the theoretical importance of

Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. Identifying the 'temple idea' with a theory of invention that would facilitate a modem architecture, Lethaby reveals in this text the origins, motivation and ultimate objectives informing these alternative theories of modem architecture.

An analysis of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth demonstrates that Lethaby's identification of modem architecture with the dual representation of the 'known' and the 'imagined' was determined by a specific origin, motivation, and objective. It has been demonstrated that the origin of Lethaby's thesis was the 'paradox' he perceived in Ruskin's theory of invention. His motivation in tum was to work this paradox into a systematic theory of architecture. The vehicle facilitating this resolution, it has been argued, was Arnold's theory of cultural perfection and his identification of the modem spirit in England with 'imaginative reason.' Finally the objectives driving

Lethaby thesis was the identification of a form that would 'excite and interest, both real and general,' a symbolism 'comprehensible to the great majority of spectators,' a

200 method of invention that would eliminate the tension between past and present, and · an architecture of 'sweetness' and 'light.' Such insights force us, in tum, to re­ evaluate Lethaby's larger body of written work allowing us to conclude that the 'two

Lethabys' suggested by his writings are in fact one.

However, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth not only provides an insight into

Lethaby's motives, it also offers an insight into the theoretical origins, motives and objectives informing the 'Other Tradition of Modem Architecture' identified by

Wilson. If we accept, as Wilson has suggested, that this 'Other Tradition' has it origins in the theoretical principles developed by Lethaby, we must also accept that we will find the origins, motivation, and objectives informing this alternate tradition in the same sources as those informing Lethaby's theory of future invention. Wilson's linking of Lethaby to this 'Other Tradition' suggests that that the theoretical origins of this 'Other Tradition' also lay in the paradoxical conclusions of Ruskin's writings and a desire to reconcile these into a systematic theory of architecture. It also identifies the vehicle facilitating this resolution as Arnold's theory of cultural perfection and the syncretic and ambivalent philosophy of modernism which it propagated. Finally, it demonstrates that the objectives of this 'Other Tradition,' like those of Lethaby, was to generate a modem architecture that would 'excite an interest, both real and general,' a 'symbolism comprehensible to all,' and a practice which spoke of both the past and the present. It is in such insights, which offer a greater understanding of 'The Other Tradition of Modem Architecture,' that we

discover the broader significance of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and its

201 contribution to the architectural debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

202 1 Octavio Paz has argued that Modernity is an exclusively Western concept that has no equivalent in other civilisations. He attributes this to the fact that a linear, irreversible and progressive view of time appears to be peculiar to the West. Octavio Paz, The Children of the Mire: Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-garde, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1974, p. 23; cited in Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1999. See also Alan Colquhoun, 'Three Kinds of Historicism,' Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays I 980-1987, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991; Bernard Smith, Modernism's History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1998, p. 21. 2 Friedrich Mienecke, 'Geschichte und Gegenwort,' (History in Relation to the Present) 1933 in Vom Geschichtlichen Sinn und vom Sinn der Geschichte, 2nd edition (1939), pp. 14ff; cited in Alan Colquhoun, 'Three Kinds of Historicism,' p. 12. 3 James Ferguson, A Historical Inquiry into True Principles of Beauty in Art More Especially in Reference to Architecture, Longman, London, 1849. John Ruskin, 'Seven Lamps of Architecture,' 1849, Works, vol. 8. 4 C.R. Cockerell, 'Lecture on Style,' July 2 1849, British Architectural Library, Box 5, COC 1/94; cited in Peter Kohane, 'C. R. Cockerell's dream of history,' FIRM(ness) commodity DE-light?: questioning the canons, Papers from the 15 th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, J. Willis, P. Goad & A. Hutson (eds), Melbourne, 1998, p. 145. 5 Colquhoun, ' Three Kinds of Historicism,' p. 12. 6 In her recent study, Architecture and Modernity, Hilde Heynen draws attention to the distinction between modernity, modernism, and modernization. 'Modernization,' she explains, refers to 'the process of social development, the main feature of which are technological advances and industrialisation, urbanization and population explosions, the rise of bureaucracy and increasingly powerful nation states, an enormous expansion of mass communication systems, democratisation, and an expanding (capitalist) world market. 'Modernity,' on the other hand refers to 'the typical feahµ"es of modem times and to the way these features are experienced by the individual. .. the attitude toward life that is associated with a continuous process of evolution and transformation, with an orientation towards the future that will be different from the past and the present.' Finally, 'Modernism' Heynen explains, refers to the 'cultural tendencies and artistic movements' which are provoked by the 'experience of modernity.' Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, p. 10. 7 Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, pp. 3, 9. 8 Bernard Smith, Modernism's History, pp. 94, 96, 104. 9 Alberto Perez-Gomez, Architecture and the Crisis ofModern Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 3-14. 10Peter Kohane, Architecture, Labor and the Human Body: Fergusson, Cockerell and Ruskin, Ph.D thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1993, pp. 429-430. 11 Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, p. 10. 12 Arguing that the framework for modernity must be viewed 'historically as a socio-cultural phenomenon which has been in progress since the 17th century,' Lavine argues that modernity cannot be explained as a progression and linear development of a single ideal but as the 'conflation of two counterframe works' or 'opposed interpretative styles.' She describes these as 'Enlightenment Modernity' and 'Romantic Modernity.' 'Each,' she argues, offers 'an interpretative framework for the modem world and each is a cluster of cognitive, methodological and normative claims with regards to the self, knowledge, morals, politics and history.' 'Enlightenment Modernity', she explains, maintains the primacy of reason in all these domains: substantive reason provides self evident truths concerning human nature, encompassing the universality of human reason and the inalienability of each individual's natural rights and equality under the law; scientific reason yields a rationalistic and empirical epistemology and methodology for obtaining objective and valid knowledge. Together substantive and scientific rationality yield natural laws of progress

203 of emancipation from irrational myths and dogma, the expansion of scientific knowledge and technology, and the increasing democratization of social institutions. Romantic Modernity, on the other hand, arises ... as a counter framework for oppositional characters; in opposition to the primacy of reason, the primacy of the spirit; in opposition to extemality and objectivity, of instrumental reason, the truths of the inward path of subjectivity, personal and collective will, culture, tradition, art, history. Romantic Modernity rejects the autonomous, natural rights of enlightened classical liberalism, and it rejects Enlightenment Modernity's bourgeois public world administered by corporate industry, communication technologies, and governmental bureaucracie~. It builds sociologically and politically not upon the individual but upon the group, and moves in the direction of a politics of collectivism of the left or right. The 'conflation of both,' Lavine argued, 'subverts and delegitimates' the claims of the other. For Lavine, it is the tension between the dual movements or directions of modernity, which determined the modem spirit. Thelma Lavine, 'Peirce, Pragmatism and Interpretation Theory,' Peirce 's Doctrine of Signs: Theory Application and Connections, V. Colapieto & T. M. Olshewsky (eds), Moulen de Gruyler, New York, 1996, p. 432. 13 Sigfried Gideon, Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton, Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig, 1928; Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, Havard University Press, Cambridge, 1980 (1941). Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, p. 37. 14 Hermann Bahr, 'The Modem' (1890) reprinted Francesco Dai Co, Figures of Architecture and Thought: German Architectural Culture 1880-1920, Rizzoli, New York, 1990, p. 288. 15 Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, p. 73. 16 Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, pp. 4-5. 17 Alain Findeli, 'Bauhaus: Avant-garde or Tradition?,' The Structurist, vol. 29-30, 1989-90, p. 56. 18 Findeli, 'The Bauhaus: Avant-garde or Tradition?,' p. 56. 19 Walter Gropius, 'ldee und Aufbau des Staatlichen Bauhauses,' Das Staat/iche Bauhaus in Weimar, Bauhuasverlag, Munich, 1923, p. 7 20 Walter Gropius, 'Developement de !'esprit architectural modeme en Allemagne,' L 'Esprit Nouveau, no. 27, November, 1924, n.p. 21 Walter Gropius, 'Idee und Aufbau des staatlichen Bauhauses,' in Das Staat/iche Bauhaus in Weimar, Bauhuasverlag, Munich, 1923, p. 7. 22 Walter Gropius, 1920; cited in Findeli, 'The Bauhaus: Avant-garde or tradition?,' source not given, p. 56. 23 Walter Gropius, quoted in Winfried Nerdinger, Walter Gropius, Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin, 1985, p. 76. 24 Findeli, 'The Bauhaus: Avant-garde or tradition?,' p. 62. 25 Findeli, 'The Bauhaus: Avant-garde or tradition?,' p. 59. 26 Every symbol, we are told by the nineteenth century philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce is an 'ens rationis', the product of a deductive and reasoning or conscious mind.' Peirce' s statement was based on his observation that the relationship which bound the symbolic sign (the physical notation that pointed to something outside itself) to its object (that which the sign referred to) and its interpretant (the idea generated in the mind of the observer) was purely arbitrary. The symbol, explained Pierce, was the product of a 'general association of ideas,' the 'habitual' linking of a specific sign, meaning and object. This reliance on arbitrary associations was in tum the result of its lack of 'natural fitness' to represent its object. Unlike other sign types such as the 'icon' or 'index,' the symbol did not look like, sound like, or resemble in any way its object. Nor was it 'existentially' linked. This lack of natural fitness ensured the symbol's reliance on culturally determined values. A symbol communicates, explained Peirce, only because the people agree on what it shall stand for. It acquires its fitness to represent its object in the 'mind' of the subject alone. Thus the reader of the symbolic sign is forced to limit meaning to what is already known. Charles Sanders Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss & Arthur Burke, (eds), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1931-5, vol. 1, p. 369, vol. 2, pp. 298 & 531. 27 Martin Heidegger, Rauen, Wohnen and Denken, Klett-Cotta Publishing House, 1951. Heynen has argued that if we take Heidegger's text seriously, we can only conclude that 'there is virtually an unbridgeable gulf between modernity and dwelling' (and thus the poetic). Gunter. A. Dittmar in his

204 recent essay 'Architecture as Dwelling and Building' (1998) attributes this 'gulf between modernity and dwelling (the poetic) to the fact that the 'modem world view'-one which focuses on the exploration of the object and the object world-is 'not only antithetical to the world view delineated by Heidegger in his essay, but is inherently in conflict with the nature of architecture and its thought and design processes.' Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, p. 17. Gunter A. Dittmar, 'Architecture as Dwelling and Building-Design as Ontological Act,' Cloud Cuckoo Land, International Journal of Architectural Theory, vol. 3, no. 2, 1998. Aton Zijderveld has developed a similar argument in On Cliches: The Supersedure of Meaning by Function in Modernity, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1979; Timothy. J. Reiss, The Discourse of Modernism, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, London, 1982 and 'Signifies: The Analysis of Meaning as a Critique of Modernist Culture,' Essays on Signifies, Papers Presented on the Occasion of the 15(/h Anniversary of the Birth of Lady Victoria Welby, H. Walter Schmitz (ed), John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1990. 28 Alberto Perez-Gomez, Architecture and the Crisis ofModern Science, pp. 3-14. 29 Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, p. 3; Smith, Modernism's History, pp. 94, 96, 104. 30 Smith, Modernism's History, Chapter 5. 31 'The Dark Side of the Bauhaus,' 1970, reprinted in Joseph Rykwert's, The Necessity of Artifice, Academy Editions, London, 1982, p. 49. Such as reading is given by J. Abbot Miller in his 1991 essay 'Elementary School,' who argued that the yellow A., red • and blue • were adopted by the Bauhausler as a 'static, formal vocabulary' that was perceived to function in 'isolation from, rather than in tandem with verbal language.' They were intended to function as representations of formal rather than symbolic concerns. J. Abbot Miller, 'Elementary School,' The ABC's of•••: The Bauhaus and Design Theory, Ellen Lupton and J. Abbot Miller (eds), Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1991, p. 21. 32 Rykwert, 'The Dark Side of the Bauhaus,' p. 49. 33 'The World within the Universe and Manifested Logos,' Isis Unveiled: A Master Key to Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, Helena Blatvatsky, (1875), Bouton, New York, 1889, vol. 2, pp. 262-66. Smith has argued that the modem artists turning to traditions which existed outside of the mainstream- outside the European tradition--diverted the artist's attention away from considerations of content to that of form. It can be argued that the same shift towards traditions, which exist outside of the mainstream (the occult, geomantic, or oriental), occurs in the architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. However, rather then stripping form of its meaning, it gave the architects of this period access to an elemental language (an abstract language based on simple geometry) which enable the architect to endow what was essentially a formal discipline with new meaning. Thus while the turning to the esoteric and occult in art appears to have supported a privileging of form over content, in architecture, it provided a new opportunity to re-endow form with content. 34 Findeli, 'The Bauhaus: Avant-garde or tradition?,' p. 62. 35 Findeli, 'The Bauhaus: Avant-garde or Tradition?,' p. 61. 36 Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, p. 23. Heynen's comments are directed at the work of the recent phenomenological architects, Christian Norberg-Schulz and Christopher Alexander who, in response to Heidegger's essay on 'Dwelling,' seeks to re-establish a poetic architecture. This attempt is better known as the rise of Phenomenology. For Heynen, the symbolic intentions of these architects can only be viewed as existing outside of the modem project. Heynen's exclusion of the poetic intentions of Norberg-Schulz and Alexander from the modem project recalls other exclusions of the poetic, such as that of Ruskin, from the idea of modernity in architecture. It can be argued that the Bauhaus interest in the symbolic can be aligned with both the earlier interest in the poetic and tradition evident in Ruskin and the later work of Norberg-Schulz and Alexander. Each are promoting the idea that the architectural form must represent something more than function: be it the imagination of the producer, spiritual evolution of the age, or the idea of place. In many respects such works demonstrate the emergence of a second stream or body of thought that has developed in conjunction with the instrumental and formal. 37 Peter Davey, Arts and Crafts Architecture, Phaidon Press, London, 1995, pp. 65-77. 38 Lionel Lambourne, Utopian Craftsmen: The Arts and Crafts Movement from the Cotswold to Chicago, Astragal Books, London, 1980. Ian Latham (ed), New Free Style: Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Secession, Academy Editions, London, 1980. Isabelle Anscombe, Arts and Crafts in

205 America, Academy Editions, London, 1978. Wendy Kaplan, The Art that is Life: The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920, Little Brown, Boston, 1987. Axel Sowa, 'La Maison Baensch de Hans Scharoun: limites ed condensations', L 'Architecture-d 'Aujourd 'hui, no. 320, Jan. 1999, pp. 94-101. Stefan Muthesius, 'Handwerk/Kunstwerk,' Journal of Design History, v. 11, no.I, 1998, pp. 85-95. Marie Jeanne Dumont, 'De Klerk, l'artisan-poete,' L'Architecture-d'Aujourd'hui, no. 311, June, 1997, p. 10. Conrad Nagel Brown, 'The Wright Stuff,' Inland-Architect, vol. 40, May/June 1996, p. 5. Jane Kyle, 'The Craft in Education: an American Philosophy,' New Art Examiner, v. 23, April 1996, pp. 20-5. 39 The Janus-like quality evident in the Bauhaus-its adherence to both the present and the past which is illustrated in its dual consideration of the formal and symbolic-appears to be an attribute that is common to the much of the so called 'modem architecture' which emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the adherence of this architecture to avant-garde principles has been well documented by the early histories on modem architecture, the debt to traditional values, including the role of the symbolic has been the focus only of more recent literature. See for instance: Alain Findeli, 'Laszlo Mohology-Nagy, Alchemist of Transparency,' The Structurist, no. 27/28, 1987/88, pp. 5-11. David Adams, 'Rudolf Steiner's First Goetheanum as an Illustration of Organic Functionalism,' Jou.rnal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 51, no. 2, 1992, pp. 182-203. Rosemarie Haag Bletter, 'The Interpretation of the Glass Dream: Expressionist Architecture and the History of the Crystal Metaphor,' Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 20-43. Narciso. G. Menocal, Architecture as Nature, The Transcendentalist Ideas of Louis Sullivan, University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 1981. Joseph Rykwert, On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1981. Eugene.O. Santomasso, Origins and Aims of German Expressionist Architecture: An essay into the Expressionist Frame of Mind in Germany especially as typified in the work of Rudolf Steiner, Ph.d thesis, Columbia University, 1973. Mark Taylor, Disfiguring Art, Architecture and Religion, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992. Otto Graf, 'The Art of the Square,' A Primer ofArchitectural Principles, Robert Carter (ed), Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1991, pp. 219-237. Alan Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition, Architectural Essay 1980-1987, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991. Peter. R. Proudfoot, 'Geomancy in Modem Architectural Theory,' Architectural Science Review, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 81-9. Alberto Perez-Gomez, 'Abstraction in Modem Architecture: Some parallels to Gnosticism and Hermeneutics,' VIA, Architecture and Literature, no. 9, 1988, pp. 71-83. 40 Mr. W. Johnstone, foreword to the Lethaby Lecture given by A. R. N. Roberts, November, 1957, typescript Lethaby Archive, Central St Martin's Art and Design Archive, London, file. 104. 41 Julian Holder, 'Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and its influence,' WR Lethaby 1857-1931: Architecture, Design and Education, Sylvia Backemeyer & Theresa Gronberg (eds), Lund Humphries, London, 1984, pp. 58-60. 42 R. Schultz Weir, 'Lethaby: A tribute,' A paper read before the Art Workers Guild on Friday 22nd April 1932 and subsequently published by the Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1938, reprinted in AA Journal, vol. 73, June 1951, pp. 10. 43 Holder notes that Olbrich had spent time in England in 1895 and that he had collaborated with Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The relationship between Mackintosh and Lethaby's Architecture, Mysticism and Myth has been established by Godfrey Rubens, who, in his introduction to the 1974 reprint of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth demonstrates that the 'core' of Mackintosh's 1893 lecture to the Glasgow Institute of Architects was taken, 'word for word,' from the introductory chapter of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. Holder, 'Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and its influence,' p. 61. Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, Godfrey Rubens (ed), Architectural Press, London, 1974, p.xvi-xvii. For Machinstosh's contact with the Vienna Succession, see Roger Billcliffe and Peter Vergo, 'Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Austrian Art Revival,' Burlington Magazine, vol. 119, no. 896, November 1977, pp. 739-746. Peter Vergo, 'Fritz Waendorfer,' Alte und Moderne Kunst, vol. 26, no. 177, 1981, pp. 33-38. 44 Evidence to support Weirick's attribution is found in Lethaby's 1914 letters to the German architect Otto Wagner, where Griffin refers to Lethaby's writings. James Weirick, 'The Griffin's and Modernism,' Transition, no. 24, Autumn, 1988, p. 10 & n.15. Further evidence which supports Weirick thesis is the fact that the winged figure which crowns the Capitol is also reminiscent of the winged figure found on the top of the poly-typological temple in the Hypernotomachia. As I have

206 argued earlier, the Hypnerotomachia appears to have been a principle source for Lethaby's 'temple idea,' the central topic of Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. 45 Proudfoot has argued that Griffin's plan for Canberra is determined by ancient systems of cosmological symbolism. Evidence of a debt to geomantic traditions of design including symbolic geometry, numerology, Greco/Roman ritual (use of the gnomon to delineate the temp/um and mundus), axial planning (omphalos, cardo, decumanus), the alignment of monuments with landscape and astronomical elements (as outlined in the contemporary writings of Lockyer and Penrose), cosmological colour symbolism or chinese geomancy, and crystal symbolism, Proudfoot has argued, can be found in the Canberra plan. Peter Proudfoot, The Secret Plan of Canberra, University of New South Wales Press, 1994. In Architecture, Mysticism and Myth detailed discussions of each of these aspects of cosmological symbolism, including references to the writings of Lockyer and Penrose, is given. See Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, pp. 37, 71-82 (omphalos); p. 44 (temp/um); pp. 60-62 (decamunus, cardo, Roman Quadrata, mundus); pp, 63, 70 (gnomon); pp. 55-57 (Chinese colour symbolism); p. 44-5 (symbolic geometry and numerology), p. 52, 54 (Norman Lockyer and Penrose); Pf · 170-171 ( crystal symbolism). 4 Harriet Edquist, 'Harold Desbrowe-Annear, The Springthorpe Memorial and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Melbourne,' Fabrications, vol. 10, 1999, pp. 62-78. 47 Colin St John Wilson, The Other Traditions of Modern Architecture: The Uncompleted Project, Academy Editions, London, 1995, p. 62. 48 St John Wilson, The Other Traditions ofModern Architecture, pp. 49-77. 49 St John Wilson, The Other Traditions ofModern Architecture, p. 63. 50 St John Wilson, The Other Traditions ofModern Architecture, p. 73.

207 Conclusion.

In Architecture, Mysticism and Myth Lethaby proclaims that modem architecture must 'excite an interest, both real and general,' have a 'symbolism comprehensible to the great majority of spectators,' be of 'sweetness' and 'light,' and speak of the 'new' as well as the 'old.' Lethaby's conclusion coupled with his observation that the mythological construct of the 'temple idea' maintained such objectives by giving representation to both the 'known' (mythic man's observation of the material world) and the 'imagined' (his creative re-use of the known to explain the unknown) demonstrates that Lethaby in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth equated modem architecture with the balanced representation of the rational or scientific mind and the

Romantic Imagination. Lethaby drew confirmation for his hypothesis from contemporary debates which include: F. M. Muller's and John Ruskin's theories on the density and efficiency of the mythic symbol; nineteenth century readings of the

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and its identification of invention with the creative re­ appropriation of ancient canons and the principle of love or desire; and Matthew

Arnold's thesis of 'cultural perfection,' the association of a modem culture with the harmonious balance of Hebraic 'sweetness' and Hellenic 'light'. In later writings he maintained his hypothesis by asserting that modem architecture must be based on a reconciliation of 'Science,' a methodology that encouraged the objective observation of the 'material universe' and acknowledged the relative nature of man's intellectual evolution, and 'Art,' the romantic conviction that all artistic invention is dependent on the imagination; an esemplastic faculty which organically bound the artefact to a divine and moral principle said to govern all creation.

208 The significance of Lethaby's thesis is threefold. First, it demonstrates that the 'two

Lethabys,' the romantic Lethaby who maintains the role of the imagination and of tradition, and the rational Lethaby who seeks a modem science of design, are in fact one. Secondly, it demonstrates the dual ideologies evident in Lethaby's writings do not represents a linear evolution, an immature and mature phase, but emerge simultaneously and remain as constants throughout his writings. Finally, Lethaby's thesis demonstrates both his allegiance to and departure from his 'prophet' John

Ruskin, and in tum, identifies a debt to Matthew Arnold, a source not commonly associated with the architectural debates of late nineteenth century Britain.

The cultivation of a theory of invention that relied on fixed moral contrasts which privileged the subject-the producer or user of the artefact--over the object-the artefact itself-the universal over the relative, art over science, and the active process of making over the contemplative strategies of design, coupled with a prolific body of written work which was not always consistent in its conclusions, ensured frequent conflict and contradiction in Ruskin's theory of architecture. Noting that it was the

'paradox' in Ruskin's writings which most appealed to him-as it 'shocked people into thinking, and but for that they would have remained wholly indifferent to art'­

Lethaby strove to mould Ruskin's conclusions into a systematic theory. To succeed, however, Lethaby was forced to abandon the moral foundation of Ruskin's contrasts, as it invalidated the viability of a rational ideology, and seek a more conciliatory paradigm elsewhere. He found this in Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy

( 1869), and the thesis of cultural perfection it argued. Stating that perfection in

209 culture could only be achieved when a society's Hebraic habits (its concern for right and moral conduct) were tempered by its Hellenic interests (the scientific desire to increase one's understanding of the material universe), Arnold's thesis offered the appropriate ambivalence-allowed the co-existence of opposed ideologies-which enabled Lethaby to move beyond the moral contrasts of the canonic Ruskin and to resolve the conflicts evident in the non-systematic Ruskin. The result was a theory of architecture that advocated a syncretic balance of the Romantic imagination and the

Rational mind, and thus of the past (the imagination binding the artefact to the idea of a universal tradition) and the present (the rational methodologies of the 'known' and

'science' acting as the catalyst for architectural change and innovation and thus identifying the moment in man's intellectual evolution when the artefact was produced).

Arguing that creative invention in "modem" Britain differed to that of its French counterpart, as it tempered the radical and revisionist agenda motivated by the

Enlightenment with a continuing respect for a Christian past, Arnold identified

English modernism as a syncretic and somewhat ambivalent philosophy; one that accepted the co-existence of opposed ideologies. Adapting Arnold's conclusions to the invention of a modem architecture, Lethaby identified modem practice as a conflation of Romantic and Rational interests, and of past and present. Modernity in architecture is commonly associated with the current, the new and the progressive. A retreat into the past, such as Lethaby's examination of the 'temple idea,' or Ruskin's withdrawal to Gothic Venice, on the other hand, is said to represent a critique of modem culture, and thus exist outside of the modem process. Despite such

210 classifications, a duality-an interest in both the avant-garde (be they new theories of knowledge, systems of construction, materials or modes of production) and tradition

(symbolic or transcendental theories of creation)-is evident in the work of architects who described themselves as modem. In his recent study, Colin St John Wilson acknowledged this duality when he argued for an 'Other Tradition of Modem

Architecture,' one that transcended the formal instrumentalism of Le Corbusier and

CIAM. For Wilson, the origins of this tradition are to be found in the architectural debates of the English Freestyle and specifically in Lethaby's thesis of 'High Utility.'

It was advanced through the twentieth century, Wilson argued, by the architecture of

Hugo Haring, Alvar Aalto and Louis Kahn. The theory of modem architectural invention outlined by Lethaby in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth identifies the theoretical origins, motivation, and objectives that determine this 'Other Tradition.'

211 Fig.I. William Richard Lethaby. (1857-1931), Central St Martins Art and Design Archive.

212 Fig 2. William Lethaby, Ziggurat, Pen & Ink, frontispiece, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, 1891 .

213 Fig 3. William Lethaby, Font and canopy, St John the Baptist, Low Bentham, Yorkshire, alabaster and walnut, 1890.

214 Fig 4. Hexagonal Building, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Venice, 1499, woodcut.

Fig 5. William Lethaby, A Garden Enclosed, 1889. Pen & Ink, reproduced in J. Sedding, Garden Craft Old and New, Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., 1892, plate 8.

215 Fig 6. Two Gardens, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, (1499) Francesco Colonna Paris, 1546 (1499), woodcuts.

216 16.. RC H ITECTVR1>\L /\SSC)CIATION SKETCH BOOK:

N E'vV SERIES VOL·IX·

LONDON 9 •CONDVIT STREET. VV . & 8 ')

Fig. 7. William Lethaby, Frontispiece from the Architectural Association Sketchbook, 1889.

217 Fig.8. Temple of Venus Phyzizoa, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, (Venice 1499), folio n iii recto, woodcut.

218 Fig 9. Great Pyramid Building, (trans-typological temple), Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Paris, 1546, folio A recto , woodcut.

219 Fig. 10. Poliphili at the cross roads, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Paris, 1546, pl. 46 verso, woodcut.

Fig. 11. C.R. Cockerell, The Professor 's Dream, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1848.

220 Fig. 12. C.R. Cockerell, A Tribute to the Memory ofSir Christopher Wren, Crichton Collection, Anglesey, 1838.

Fig. 13. Lethaby's Monogram.

221 Fig 14. William Holman Hunt, The Strayed Sheep , 1852, Tate Gallery, London.

222 s

Fig.IS. Helena Blatvatsky, 'The World within the Universe and Manifested Logos,' Isis Unveiled. A Master Key to Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (1875), Boston, New York, 1889, vol.2, pp. 262-66.

223 .J-' ----­ ------.,... ..,..,,. - --- _,,,. .,,...; - --- -

... ../"'

Fig 16. Walter Burley and Marion Mahony-Griffin, Capitol Building seen from Mt Ainslie, 1912 Canberra Plan, tracing of original drawing, Australian National Archives.

224 Selected Bibliography.

*For a complete list of Lethaby's writings see the bibliography prepared by the staff of the Library of the Royal Institute of British Architects (1950). A reprint of this bibliography can be found in, Godfrey Rubens, William Richard Lethaby: His Life and Works 1857-1931, The Architectural Press, London, 1986, appendix C.

Aarslef, Hans. From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1982.

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Oxford University Press, London, 1953.

Adams, David. 'Rudolf Steiner's First Goetheanum as an Illustration of Organic Functionalism.' Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 51, no. 2, 1992, pp. 182-203.

Adams, David. J. 'Form Follows Function: The Hidden Relationship Between Architecture and Nature.' Towards, vol. 2, Winter 1989, pp. 10-20.

Alexander, Edward. Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin and the Modern Temper. Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1973.

Almeder, Robert. The Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce: A Critical Introduction. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1980.

Anscombe, Isabelle. Arts and Crafts in America. Academy Editions, London, 1978.

Arnold, Matthew. Culture & Anarchy. edited with an introduction by J. Dover. Wilson, Cambridge University Press, 1955.

Arnold, Matthew. The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. R. H. Super ( ed), University of Michigan Press, Michigan, 1962-1977.

Backemeyer, Sylvia and Gronberg, Theresa. W R Lethaby, 1857-1931: Architecture, Design and Education. Lund Humphries, London, 1984.

Bahr, Hermann. 'The Modem' (1890). Figures of Architecture and Thought: German Architectural Culture 1880-1920. Francesco Dai Co, Rizzoli, New York, 1990.

Baker, James Volant. The Sacred River. Coleridge's Theory of the Imagination. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1957.

Banham, Reyner. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. Architectural Press, London, 1960.

225 Bayley, Stephen. 'WR Lethaby and the Cell of Tradition.' Journal of the Royal Institute ofBritish Architects, April 1975, pp. 29-31.

Beardsley, Aubrey. The Story of Venus and Tannhauser: A Romantic Novel by Aubrey Beardsley, (1894), P. J. Gillette (ed), Tandem Books, London, 1967.

Behrendt, Stephen. C ( ed). History and Myth: Essays on English Romantic Literature. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1990.

Bentley, D. M. R. 'Rossetti and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.' English Language Notes, vol. 14, 1977, pp. 279-283.

Billcliffe, Roger & Vergo, Roger. 'Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Austrian Revival.' Burlington Magazine, vol. cxix, no. 896, November 1977, pp. 739-45.

Birch, Dinah. 'Ruskin's Solar Mythology.' The Sun is God: Painting, Literature and Mythology in the Nineteenth Century. J. B. Bullen (ed), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989.

Birch, Dinah. Ruskin's Myths, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988.

Blatvatsky, Helena. Isis Unveiled: A Master Key to Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (1875). Bouton, New York, 1889.

Bletter, Rosemarie Haag. 'The Interpretation of the Glass Dream: Expressionist Architecture and the History of the Crystal Metaphor.' Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 40, no. 1, 1981, pp. 20-43.

Blomfield, Sir Reginald. 'W. R. Lethaby: An Impression and a Tribute.' Journal of The Royal Institute ofBritish Architects, vol. 39, no. 8, 1932, pp. 3-12.

Blunt, Anthony. 'The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in Seventeenth Century France.' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, vol. 1, 1937-38, pp. 117-37.

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Brandon-Jones, John. 'W.R. Lethaby and the Art-Workers' Guild.' W. R Lethaby, 1857-1931: Architecture, Design and Education. Sylvia Backemeyer and Theresa Gronberg (eds), Lund Humphries, London, 1984, pp. 24-31.

226 Brandon-Jones, John. 'William Richard Lethaby, 1857-1931: A Symposium in Honour of his Centenary: II: The Architectural Work of W.R. Lethaby.' Journal of the Royal Institute ofBritish Architects, vols 63-64, Febuary 1957, pp. 219-221.

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