Dear Life, Dear Architecture
By Eli Siegel
Aren't you proud that your
Problems are the same as those of architecture?
Aren't you every day simultaneously horizontal and vertical,
Though that is not what people usually tell
You; for they are not interested enough in the abiding.
But there is no reason for you to be siding
With people who see you superficially.
The everlasting and the universal
Are in you. And see these well
In order to be wise about the moment.
The same cause sent
The feeling of a swift hour
And the beginning of life as power,
The persistence of life as power.
In your life are principle and structure;
These also are dear to architecture.
Architecture Is Ourselves
A Report by David Salmon
The August 23 class for Aesthetic Realism consultants and associates was a high point in culture and education, as the class chairman showed through the principles of Aesthetic Realism how the art of architecture answers the questions of every person's life. Eli Siegel explained, for the first time in history, what makes for beauty: "All beauty," he stated, "is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." As an architect, I am so grateful to be learning to see truly the value and meaning of the art I love most and the feelings of the people it serves.
Ellen Reiss began by reading the poem "Dear Life, Dear Architecture," by Eli Siegel. I love this poem and think every person interested in architecture should begin his study with it. The class chairman showed that the music of the first two lines puts together the very opposites that Eli Siegel is describing in architecture and people: In the shorter, first line there is a rising verticality of sound at each of the three strongly accented syllables: "Aren't you proud that your." The second line is horizontal and spreading in its sound: "Problems are the same as those of architecture?"
Horizontal and Vertical
Ellen Reiss asked architect Dennis Collins if he thought any architecture could exist without being vertical and horizontal at once. In the discussion that followed, the class considered an igloo, an arch, a column, a fence, the New York skyline. An arch, for example, puts together in one curve the vertical of sides and the horizontal of the top. A fence stands vertically, but runs horizontally. Mr. Collins was asked whether a big reason the New York skyline is magnificent is that it is vertical skyscrapers seen also as a wide horizontal panorama.
The class chairman then spoke about this description of the self, by Eli Siegel in Self and World: "The self is indefinitely deep and indefinitely extensive. It is vertical and horizontal. ...The vertical line is a symbol to the unconscious of the self alone; the horizontal, of the self going out." And she asked Mr. Collins if he thought marriage was horizontal and vertical. Has he annoyed Mrs. Collins because he has been too vertical—too taken up with himself as majestic and unrelated—and not expansive enough, not interested enough in what is not himself? "Is your wife looking for more horizontality from you?" Mr. Collins said this was so. Ellen Reiss again read the line "Aren't you every day simultaneously horizontal and vertical," and said, "Whatever one is tossed about by and in the midst of, one is always trying to put together the vertical and horizontal"—being just ourselves and fair to all we have to do with.
The Problems of Architecture
As the class looked at eight definitions included in the glossary of Helen Gardner's Art through the Ages, I was thrilled to see that in every instance there were opposites as one and immediate meaning for our lives. The first definition Ellen Reiss read was "Atrium. The chief room in a Roman house, near the entrance and partly open to the sky." She said it illustrates in an obvious way the central opposites in architecture—which Mr. Siegel showed are "space and matter; also, weight and lightness." She asked Phillip Steinway, "Do you think reality consists of what you can touch and what you can't touch?" Body and thought are aspects of these opposites, and the class chairman explained, "Since every person is tormented by matter and what you can't touch, seeing them as one in hundreds of ways through architecture should make everyone joyful."
There was a deep, kind discussion with architect Stephen Parker, concerning his growing care for a woman and their desire to be closer physically—about which desire they both were somewhat fearful.
The class chairman asked, "Do you think there is a relation [in sex] of the utmost in matter and the utmost in release or non-matter coming together?" If he were sure, she asked, that sex is about the same thing architecture is about—the whole world with its aesthetic structure—would he be less frightened by it? She said that all great architecture has you feel space and matter are one, and that in love a person wants to feel—I let go of myself utterly and never felt more myself, more substantial!
The next definition read was "Lintel. A horizontal beam of any material that spans an opening and supports any superstructure." Ellen Reiss pointed to various lintels in the room, at the top of windows and doors, and said that this basic structure puts together space and matter, and mighty opposites related to these: On the one hand the lintel is "floating, free—it 'spans an opening'—but it also has this beautiful responsibility—it 'supports [a] superstructure.' Below it is space; above, matter. It's as simple as nearly anything in architecture."
I was tremendously moved as the class chairman then asked me about three things I care for: architecture, birds, and the flute: "Do you think matter and space are central to each of them?" I said yes, that the flute is matter, but it makes sound that goes out into space. And Ellen Reiss said a bird is matter, but is able to fly through space: "This is a trend, it seems. Do you like the idea of something that weighs being able to soar?" I do, and understood for the first time why I have cared so much for these three things. Each shows that opposites which had tormented me most of my life—heaviness and lightness—could be beautifully one. Before I studied Aesthetic Realism I was often depressed. I felt seriousness had to be heavy and grim. I also made light of people and things; I was mocking and sarcastic. I didn't know then that these things I cared for made a one of opposites that fought in me.
The Opposites All the Way
The next definition we heard was "Column. A circular supporting member, consisting of a base (sometimes omitted), a shaft, and a capital." "How," Ellen Reiss asked, "is a column like good will?" She explained that a column asserts itself by elevating something other than itself. And she asked Stanley Cooper: "Do you think a column solves one of the biggest questions you have: how to be proud and assertive, unified and tall, in 'supporting' others? The purpose of a column is to make high something other than itself. It is a oneness of pride and humility."
Another definition was of what Ellen Reiss called a very elemental thing, but one of the big achievements of the human mind: "Arch. A structural member to span an opening; curved in shape, made of wedge-shaped blocks (voussoirs) in such a way that it holds stable if supported at the sides." One student commented that many carefully cut pieces come together to form the arch's continuous curve, each dependent on the other for support; it is a oneness of one and many. The class chairman said, "The crown [of the arch] seems unsupported from below: matter is making for this tremendous lightness. The grand moment in arch construction is where the keystone [the voussoir at the uppermost point] is inserted: it seems it would fall, but it's the thing that holds the two sides together."
She then asked, "Is an arch anything but the opposites? Is architecture anything else besides opposites as one, beginning with matter and space? If it is, Aesthetic Realism is wrong. It's the opposites all the way!"
For instance, a flying buttress, we heard, is "an arch or series of arches that carry the thrust over the aisles to the solid buttresses." We know them chiefly as the delicate spreading arches along the exterior walls of Gothic cathedrals. The class chairman said the flying buttress brings up the question of how powerful something delicate can be. I was very much affected as she asked Stephen Parker, "Do you think a flying buttress can help men respect women more? Can a curve in space help to hold up a cathedral? In some ways a curve can have more strength than a straight line."
Ellen Reiss concluded the class with two passages by the writer who, she said, "makes architecture and ethics almost equivalent to each other. It did thrill John Ruskin that matter had an ethical meaning." From The Seven Lamps of Architecture she read a passage in which Ruskin says we need architecture to think justly of—to remember—the people of the past: "There are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture;...it is well to have, not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life."
This thrilling class was a beginning point in seeing architecture truly—in relation to all time and to humanity. I love Eli Siegel for showing that in the world are the answers to our deepest questions, because the structure of the world and of ourselves is the same: the aesthetic oneness of opposites.
David Salmon, Architect, is a Senior Associate at 3D International.
