Oz Volume 12 Article 2 1-1-1990 The Writing of Architecture: Mnemosyne and the Wax Tablet Jeffrey Hildner Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/oz This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Hildner, Jeffrey (1990) "The Writing of Architecture: Mnemosyne and the Wax Tablet," Oz: Vol. 12. https://doi.org/10.4148/2378-5853.1190 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oz by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Writing of Architecture: Mnemosyne and the Wax Tablet Jeffrey Hildner The concomitant sensations second edition of Marc-Antoine Laugier's awakened in us by the direct Essai sur l'arcbitecture of 1755. In this perception of a work of art ... are . canonical image of architecture's mythic only realized through memory. origins, a woman seated amidst broken Memory therefore 'does not fragments of classical architecture assume in art a subsidiary or an­ gestures with apparent graceful authority cillary function as happens in nor­ to the primitive hut's idealized (relcon­ mal life, but is, itself, Art, in which struction formed in accordance with all the various arts are united "principles ... founded on simple nature.' '6 without residua. Ancient myth­ Four trees are columns; four branches are ology saw this clearly, in a way, beams; branches above " inclining when it imagined that Mnemosyne towards each other, meet at their highest was the mother of the Muses.' point" (Laugier 12) and form a roof ter­ - Antonio RussP minating in triangular openings at two ends (a differentiation of the otherwise In the search for nature - for the "true" equal four sides- or quadripartite space origin and order of things - we will find - which we may say constitutes the in architecture the origins of memory and "original" example of formal hierarchy). the invention of culture. Architecture is the resistance to forgetfulness.2 She is the As is widely recognized, Laugier's simple Text of Memory ("eacb buman tbougbt, bas "first" architecture, innocent as it may ap­ its pages in tbis vast book {of arcbitecturel" )3, pear, was the basis for what was con­ the writing of the past, the present, and sidered a startling - essentially anti­ the future: the "wax writing-tablet" upon Renaissance- manifesto when the essay which are impressed the "images" of was first issued anonymously in 1753 , history.• sans illustration. Whereas Vitruvius (and commentators of Vitruvius, such as Memory is Architecture Perrault in the seventeenth century) had Past St;!t forth the idea of the rustic hut as the prototype from which all architecture has It was required that a small study be evolved, Laugier was not content with a added to a gardener's cottage at the merely dispassionate acknowledgment of brook's edge on a private estate and that the hut's rudimentary historical role. For it be in keeping with the rustic context Laugier, a Jesuit priest, the hut also established by the existing vernacular assumed pragmatic meaning and on­ buildings and pastoral landscape. I de­ tological, as well as typological, signifi­ cided on an architecture that might be a cance. The primitive hut was to be the contemplation and memory of "the home operative model for all present and future 1. Mnemosyne (?) Origins: from the frontispiece to the second edition of Marc­ of the first man,'' 5 the primitive hut, as architectural excellence; and, by a return Antoine Laugier's Essai sur l'arcbitecture, 1755 4 represented in the frontispiece to the to the past, to architecture's (putative) origins in ature - in "natural" form-, allegorical visibilia of his frontispiece, Laugier's remembrance of origins. rooted in the earth" (McClung 118), 8 it is it represented the means whereby Laugier argued for a reductivist, neo­ the primary attribute of the simulacra to architectural morali ty might be revived classical language which "in an architec­ Significantly, however, with regard to the which it has in theory given rise (i.e., all and historical continuity sustained? As tural Order only the [free-standing] fundamental philosophical question of architectures) that they have, indeed, an intrinsic part of his fundamentally ra ­ column, the entablature and the pediment the structure of architecture's relationship ceased to be nature. Architecture is, fun­ tionalist agenda, Laugier asserted that [these are the identifiable fragments in the to nature to which his manifesto is prin­ damentally, the cessation of nature; it is classicism (in which we see trabeation foreground of the frontispiece - the cipally intellectually directed, Laugier's defined as (and defines) the presence of canonized as the root system of architec­ broken architrave being clearly intended "remembrance" is inherently paradox­ culture. Laugier's manifest intention to ture) is the authentic, albeit sophisticated, to represent the pediment which it ical. His frontispiece is a true representa­ pictorially (conlfuse the point where descendant of the "primitive" hut. Thus typically surrounds] may form an essen­ tion of neither nature nor culture: trees do nature stops and culture (art) begins (a from his narrative reconstruction of tial part" (Laugier 12 ; emphasis added). not "naturally" grow foursquare in plan; point which his text delineates with less mankind's creation of the primordial The rational tectonic of these three and whereas his archetype "has not ... ambiguity) recalls a passage from Tasso's building (Laugier 11-12 ), to which he gave elements - the walls of the Renaissance even ceased to be 'nature ,' inasmuch as epic poem, Gerusalemme liberata: "Art, indissoluble mental presence through the having yet to be born- we may regard as the upright members [trees] are still which does everything, remains hidden. 2 . Remembrance of the primitive hut; the (relenactm en t of culture. Project for an 3. Iconic view, from the sou thwest ; '' ... tbe temple continually resanctifies tbe world, because it at once addition to a garden er's cottage: south elevation , plan , site plan rep resents and co ntains it" (Eiiad e 591 5 There is such a mixture of culture .. that you imagine that the ornaments and the arrangements are only natural. It seems as if nature were playing at imitating her own imitator, art" {Praz 229)? Perhaps it is to the nature/culture paradox· (which is central to the problem of ar­ chitecture's metaphysic) that we may 4. Architecture has no Muse ... but memorializes the arts that do. Wall of the Nine Muses 5. Primitive hut after Chambers: the wall as largely attribute the subliminal power of ("Reminders"), daughters of Mnemosyne nonfigurative and secondary the primitive hut as Laugier has depicted it - specifically, a pitched roof volume generally held to be a personification of the temporal and symbolic limitations of Mnemosyne (Grimal103) . She was held (ideally comprised of the essential tripar­ architecture, referred to, variously, as "the her neoclassical iconography the valida­ to be the basis of all life and creativity tite syntax) -to operate in architectural personification of architecture;· "the god­ tion of a rich, classical Greek past. (forgetfulness - especially of the "true consciousness with unique dialectical dess Architectura," and "the muse."12 Perhaps we may think of her as order and origin of things" -was con­ resonance: possessed of a mythicized While it seems fairly clear that this Mnemosyne, Memory herself. sidered tantamount to death). 14 Moreover, "presumption of innocence," 10 it is the woman who holds in her left hand a com­ Mnemosyne was the Mother of the Muses iconic expression of a deeply entrenched, pass and square is, indeed, a goddess of According to classical mythology, -the Nine "Reminders" -who were the traditional image of shelter from which an architecture, it is also likely that, Mnemosyne (ni·mas '·e·ne), the goddess deific personifications of, and sources of advanced architecture usually seeks to significantly, she is a deity with no of Memory, or Remembrance, ("as inspiration for, the Arts. Like depart but may sometimes remember, as history. Perhaps, then, we may bring to monuments go to show and, indeed, the im­ Mnemosyne, her daughter Muses served in a momentary reflection. Correlatively, this goddess the greater historical and pression left by the name in the minds of as forces of culture, refinement, and the idea of the primitive hut, separate from metaphysical dimension - if not the men,")13 was either a Titaness born of civilization, towards the end that man the image of its specific form or elements, greater believableness - which her Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth) or a might be enabled to rise above mere independent of a preconceived presence at this original "first" moment pure abstraction, memory personified­ banality in his artistic and intellectual typological guise, operates as a unique in the chronology of culture requires of a principle, whose presence was con­ aspirations.l 5 However, while Muses were metaphor for renewal and rethinking, as her. Perhaps, in a renewal of the sidered essential for the establishment of assigned to poetry, music, and dance (as an ever present reminder to return to a Renaissance tradition, we may (reli nvent the world. In the early stages of the Greek well as to astronomy and history), no contemplation of a rchitecture's her identity, attach her to a deity already theogony there was no god of time; the Muse was assigned to architecture or the cosmology and the problem of origins11 in existence, and in this manner bring to continuity of the world was guaranteed by other "fine arts." This may have been In this regard , Laugier's frontispiece in­ vites a second level of meaning. If the primitive hut represents the origin of ar­ chitecture, I think that it also represents the origin of memory.