Gothic culture

“ Dwarfed trees and crooked serpents, heavy flowers and hunchbacked birds accentuate by the very splendour and contrast of their colour the servility and monotony of their shapes. It is like the vision of a sneering sage, who sees the whole universe as a pattern. Certainly no one ever felt like this about Gothic, even if he happens to dislike it. Or, again, some will say that it is the liberty of the Middle Ages in the use of the comic or even the coarse that makes the Gothic more interesting than the Greek. ”

“ You cannot make a Goth out of a Greek, nor can you change the blood in my veins by speaking to me of a something vague and gnostic and mystic which you deem superior to all that any Latin mind could conceive.
I grant the existence and the weird charm of the beauty that Gothic minds conceived; but I do not see less beauty in what was conceived by the passion and poetry of other races of mankind. This is a cosmopolitan art era: and you must not judge everything which claims art-merit by a Gothic standard. ”

“ The Gothic gripped life in its entirety, penetrated its most hidden corners. It created new men and a new world. From the idea of Catholicism to the state-theory of the Holy Roman Emperors, from the knightly tourney to the new city-form, from cathedral to cottage, from language-building to the village maiden’s bridal attire, from oil-painting to the Spielmann’s song, everything is hall-marked with the stamp of one and the same symbolism. ”

“ But the Gothic fullness of thought is not therefore left without expression; at the edge of each leaf is an animal, first a cicala, then a lizard, then a bird, moth, serpent, snail—all different, and each wrought to the very life—panting—plumy—writhing—glittering—full of breath and power. This harmony of classical restraint with exhaustless fancy, and of architectural propriety with imitative finish, is found throughout all the fine periods of the Italian Gothic, opposed to the wildness without invention, and exuberance without completion, of the North. ”

“ The Gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the Renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern, when we come close to them; but the Gothic gets away. No two men think alike about it, and no woman agrees with either man. ”

“ Gothic art is not an art of barbarians, as the pseudo-classicists of the Renaissance would have us suppose. It is far otherwise. It is the art of that civilised people which grew up, through generations of conflict and mutual interchange of thought, out of the fusion of Northern and Southern blood. ”

“ Initiation into the beauty of Gothic is initiation into the truth of our race, of our sky, of our landscape.... Gothic art is the sensible, tangible soul of France; it is the religion of the French atmosphere. We are not incredulous; we are merely unfaithful. We have lost at the same time the sense of our race and of our religion. To regain force we must live again in the past, revert to first principles. ”

“ But the Gothic ornament stands out in prickly independence, and frosty fortitude, jutting into crockets, and freezing into pinnacles; here starting up into a monster, there germinating into a blossom; anon knitting itself into a branch, alternately thorny, bossy, and bristly, or writhed into every form of nervous entanglement; but, even when most graceful, never for an instant languid, always quickset ”

“ But before the wonderful development of art through the reversion to classic lines, came a high perfection of the style called Gothic, and with that we are pleased to deal first. It is so full of beauty to the eye and interest to the intellect that sometimes we must be dragged away from it to regard the softer lines of later art, with the ingratitude and reluctance of childhood when torn from its fairy tales to read of real people in the commonplace of every day. ”

“ The mummeries of the pagan priests were childish, but the Gothic enchanters shook and alarmed all nature. . . You would not compare the Canidia of Horace with the witches in 'Macbeth.' And what are Virgil's myrtles, dropping blood, to Tasso's enchanted forest?. . . The fancies of our modern bards are not only more gallant, but . . . more sublime, more terrible, more alarming than those of the classic fables. In a word, you will find that the manners they paint, and the superstitions they adopt, are the more poetical for being Gothic. ”

“ No well-educated traveller is now without some consciousness of the meaning of what is commonly and rightly called "purity of style," in the modes of art which have been practised by civilized nations; and few are unaware of the distinctive aims and character of Gothic. The purpose of a good Gothic builder was to raise, with the native stone of the place he had to build in, an edifice as high and as spacious as he could, with calculable and visible security, in no protracted and wearisome time, and with no monstrous or oppressive compulsion of human labour. ”

“ There are no spires, but pinnacles and statues, and all the rich detail of Gothic architecture, the whole of a venerable gray line. It is in perfect repair, and has not suffered externally, except by the loss of multitudes of statues, gargoyles, and miscellaneous eccentricities of sculpture, which used to smile, frown, laugh, and weep over the faces of these old fabrics. ”

“ They resemble those picturesque morsels of Gothic architecture which we see crumbling in various parts of the country, partly dilapidated by the waste of ages and partly lost in the additions and alterations of latter days. Poetry, however, clings with cherishing fondness about the rural game and holiday revel from which it has derived so many of its themes, as the ivy winds its rich foliage about the Gothic arch and mouldering tower, gratefully repaying their support by clasping together their tottering remains, and, as it were, embalming them in verdure. ”

“ But the last phase of good Gothic has no room to spare; it rises as high as it can on narrowest foundation, stands in perfect strength with the least possible substance in its bars; connects niche with niche, and line with line, in an exquisite harmony, from which no stone can be removed, and to which you can add not a pinnacle ”

“ With greater knowledge of nature, both geographical and scientific, fresh styles of architecture may and will arise, as much more beautiful, and as much more natural, than the Gothic, as Gothic is more beautiful and natural than the Norman. Till then we must take the best models which we have; use them; and, as it were, use them up and exhaust them. By that time we may have learnt to improve on them; and to build churches more Gothic than Gothic itself, more like grot and grove than even a northern cathedral. ”

“ Introduce your Gothic line by line and stone by stone; never mind mixing it with your present architecture; your existing houses will be none the worse for having little bits of better work fitted to them; build a porch, or point a window, if you can do nothing else; and remember that it is the glory of Gothic architecture that it can do anything. Whatever you really and seriously want, Gothic will do for you; but it must be an earnest want. It is its pride to accommodate itself to your needs ”

“ They will think that smooth cheeks, wavy hair, straight noses, limbs of such or such measure, attitude, and expression, set so, constitute the Antique; that clustered pillars, cross vaulting, spandrils, and Tudor roses make Gothic. But the Antique quality is the particular and all permeating relation between all its items; and Gothic the particular and all permeating relation between those other ones; and unless you aim at the specific emotion of Antique or Gothic, unless you feel the imperious call for the special harmony of either, all the measurements and all the formulas will not avail. ”

“ But rudeness is by no means a characteristic of Gothic, which is not a product of unmixed Northern genius. For, by the time that Gothic architecture had begun to take form, the mingling of races, that had long been going on, had produced,, in the locality where this art first appeared, a people in whose constitution were happily blended some of the finest characteristics of the Latin and Germanic stocks. It was this people who developed the Gothic style and gave to its marvellous constructive system an equally new and appropriate system of adornment. ”

“ Contemporary with this period came the Gothic influence with its clustered columns, pointed arches, its cusps and crockets, and its strong vitality, impressing the arts and architecture with this Gothic personality; hence, during the 12th and 13th centuries in Italy, this intermingling of styles, traditions, religious beliefs and myths, produced an art barbaric and vigorous in character, the imagery full of suggestiveness, and the detail rich and varied in conception. ”

“ To others, the Gothic seems hoary with age and decrepitude, and its shadows mean death. What is curious to watch is the fanatical conviction of the Gothic enthusiast, to whom the twelfth century means exuberant youth, the eternal child of Wordsworth, over whom its immortality broods like the day ”

“ A remarkable quality of the grotesque creations of Gothic art is the close and accurate observation of nature which they, no less than the images of real things, display. However fabulous the imaged creature may be, the materials out of which he is made are derived from nature. ”

“ In every branch of art antiquity had proved itself a foe, until at last the Renascence was sufficiently mature to assimilate and overcome the antique inheritance so completely that it became an excellent fertiliser for the new art. The essence of the Gothic style is the dissolution of all that is heavy and material—the victory of spirit over matter. ”

“ If he be an expert in such matters, he will remark a sort of classical harmony in its broad, very simple proportions, with a certain suppression of Gothic emphasis, more especially in that peculiarly Gothic feature, the buttresses, scarcely marking the unbroken, windowless walls, which rise very straight, taking the sun placidly. ”

“ It is worth remarking that, even when Gothic and Renaissance canopies alternate at Auch in a single window, or where Gothic niches are built, as it were, into or on to larger Renaissance structures, there is no appearance of incongruity. Truth to tell, the Gothic is not so purely Gothic, nor the Renaissance so purely Renaissance, as that they should clash one with the other. Both are seen through the temperament of the artist. ”

“ There is thus a marked difference between the adapted naturalism which gave life to early Gothic ornament, and the imitative naturalism which marks the decline of Gothic art.
How, it may be asked, are we justified in ascribing to this early Gothic ornament such supreme merit? Why is it, if the influence of nature adds anything of value to art, that direct and complete imitation, so far as possible, is not good? How can there be any such thing as over-naturalism in sculpture? ”

“ Most of our Gothic buildings were carried out under the supervision of a master-mason, but the most subordinate workman was left plenty of scope within reasonable limits for whatever artistic individuality he possessed, and the enrichments and ornaments of the Gothic era point out the noble aim, the delicate and graceful thought, the refined and exquisite taste expended upon every portion of their buildings by these Gothic masons. ”

“ A fine appreciation of the life of natural organic forms, from which they largely drew their motives for ornament, is displayed by the Gothic carvers, and displayed in an unparalleled degree. Whether in mere ornament—the enrichment of capitals, the running patterns of string-courses, the voussoirs of archivolts,—or in figure or animal sculpture, this expression of life is alike conspicuous. ”

“ You may follow the downward steps, until it becomes nearly extinct, to revive, after a period of stagnation, in a new feeling in the quaint but strong and rugged Gothic, the beautiful development of which may be seen in the coinage of modern Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century. ”

“ By a strange irony of fate the term Gothic, used in the last century merely as the opprobrious synonym of barbaric, has been specialised within the last sixty years in connection with that polished epoch of the Middle Ages which sheds most lustre upon our national art. ”

“ I understand this to be a similar judgment to that which I have been passing on the cultivation of Painting and Music. For myself, certainly I think that that style which, whatever be its origin, is called Gothic, is endowed with a profound and a commanding beauty, such as no other style possesses with which we are acquainted, and which probably the Church will not see surpassed till it attain to the Celestial City. No other architecture, now used for sacred purposes, seems to be the growth of an idea, whereas the Gothic style is as harmonious and as intellectual as it is graceful. ”

“ For the fact is, that all good Gothic is nothing more than the developement, in various ways, and on every conceivable scale, of the group formed by the pointed arch for the bearing line below, and the gable for the protecting line above; and from the huge, gray, shaly slope of the cathedral roof, with its elastic pointed vaults beneath, to the slight crown-like points that enrich the smallest niche of its doorway, one law and one expression will be found in all. ”