Why ruins are disappointing

My next gig is in Paris – at a conference on Ruins.

As almost always, two days in Paris in early June seemed a very nice idea when I agreed to give a paper last year. Whether the 6.30 am Eurostar on Thursday seems quite such an attractive prospect now is another question.

It wasn’t just Paris in the spring that made me say yes to the invitation. I’ve been brewing up a somewhat deviant view on ruins (academically deviant, that is) for some time.

Which is to say, I want to think a bit harder about why most ruins are – lets face it – disappointing.

I don’t mean all ruins, of course. I challenge anyone to find Pompeii or the Parthenon or the Colosseum disappointing or boring (though, according to Peter Green, William Golding did mount the Athenian Acropolis, muttering, “the bloody Parthenon again” and sit down firmly with his back to the monument gazing out at the Eleusis cement works). I mean those ivy clad mouldering walls of some third rate English Abbey or the pile of stray stones outside some jolly Cretan village which claim to be the remains of a Minoan rural settlement.

To most people in the world, this disappointment will not seem a great revelation, but to archaeologists and cultural theorists ruins are an object of intense interest (and so they are to me when I am wearing one of those hats). Archaeologists will bang on for hours about the minute significance of the position of one stone against the next. Cultural theorists will bang on even longer about ruins as a metaphor for the past, the fragility of human success, the melancholy of contemplating the death of the past, and so on.

The voice that most academics refuse to hear is that of most other people in the world who do not share this enthusiasm. In fact, not to appreciate ruins or “fragmentarity” is seen as a mark of boorish lack of comprehension. So for, example, when Benjamin Haydon overheard an ordinary member of the public say in front of the newly on-show Elgin Marbles, “How broken down they are, a’ant they”, he and most critics (me included)  ever after have treated this as an example of naive ignorance.

In fact not only is it absolutely true that they are very broken down (and disappointed many when they first arrived), but there was also a considerable move at the time to have them restored.

Even elite travellers could chime in to this effect (although we tend to prefer to linger over their enthusiasm for ruins). A friend put me on to a great passage of the nineteenth-century traveller William Forsyth, moaning about how difficult it was to make anything out of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli: “This villa was at first so diffuse, so deficient  in symmetry or connexion, and is now so ruined, so torn by  excavation, that is original plan is become an object extremely difficult for a stranger to recover.” And he goes on in the same vein with several paragraphs of complaint.

My point is going to be that we need to think harder about those on the anti ruin side – and to see them not as being indifferent to, or ignorant of, the past but having a different way of engaging with it.

That might be helped by looking at those non-Western cultures who haven’t bought into the romantic idea of ruins. Japan is an obvious examples, where traditionally the “oldest” temples were entirely rebuilt every 20 years or so (suggesting a view of history as process rather than material).

China is instructive too, especially the recent debates about the restoration and rebuilding (or not) of  the Garden of the Old Summer Palace (brutally destroyed in 1860 by the French and British , under the command of Lord Elgin, none other than the son of Lord “Parthenon” Elgin). In this, we don’t hear of the picturesque value of the “garden as ruin” (and a very run down ruin it is indeed). If there is a value in the ruin for the Chinese debaters, it is the ruin as “evidence of Western atrocities . . .the scene of a crime”.

Not exactly how we see old Coventry Cathedral?

Comments

[David Hillman]

I am from Launceston in Cornwall. I remember hearing an archaeologist say that most of the destruction of the old walls around Launceston were carried out by landscape artists of Romantic sensibilities who preferred a melancholy moody ruin to a sturdy military structure.

[Alan Myers]

The great gate of the Roman fort Arbeia on the headland at South Shields has been impressively rebuilt. Across the Tyne at Wallsend, the bath-house has been reconstructed, the rest is outlined in plan (there's a lofty viewing tower).

Much of the Wall is more or less as left, except that, as has been pointed out above, some altars, inscriptions and the like have been removed to museums and replaced with replicas.

Vindolanda also has some reconstruction. Partial reconstruction would seem an acceptable compromise.I like the idea of a virtual display as well.

What no one has dwelt on is the poignancy of ruins in human terms. The quarters at Housesteads for example seem so small.

Further east beyond Newcastle, there used to be a row of cottages close to the South Shields railway. In fact, having seen some old photographs, I now realise that there were two long rows, with shops a pub and so on, a little world of its own. I find the exiguous remains on the ground unbearably moving.

I did once set a school class an essay question on whether ruins ought to be restored or not. All opted for restoration.

[Lucy]

Lord T, as ever I tend to get slightly lost in the sheer density of words/ enthusiasm. I can't tell if you realised I was taking the micky out of the scholarly tendency I described, or not, but you seem to be suggesting that there is some kind of dumbing down going on (yes?) which is somehow imposed top-down by academic or political figures, who fail to get involved in serious historical/ cultural work (yes? no?). And you suggest that 'Its true that men of action in war or business are often notoriously unmusical yet at least in the past they lived within its serious ambience'. Like who? How so? Please explain. My position would be that some intelligent 'pop' culture actually involves quite interesting, subtle and dynamic interaction with the history and science, and that (as Mary observes re. the 'naive' approach to ruins) academics sometimes benefit from listening to the non-specialists.

Yes, it's a shame Mary's students couldn't pinpoint countries on a map. But perhaps they knew more about those countries in terms of history and language - current politics, even - than did their parents who were taught the locations by rote.

How can you be so sure that people in general are failing to connect with the past? How do you know they're not just doing via unorthodox channels?

[Ray Hobbs]

Everything is a "ruin." It surely is just a matter of exactly how far it has gone down that road. We are all potential fossils. Is Stonehenge a "ruin?" If the "astronomical, eclipse-prediction" theories are right then presumably it can still do its job. No ruin then. The wine-bung was on the way to being ruined but was still doing its job as a collection of poems. Things may then be a ruin in one sense but not in another.

[Lord Truth]

Lucy says:

'I thought that these days it was more acceptable in high cultural and scholarly circles to claim that we must look at the past on its own terms-we must not distort it by imagining that we and the past are speaking the same language'

Very true-and what a sickly evil idea it is that you express-It is spread by those forces that are continually wearing away drip by drip any connection that might relate the present with the past( I read only a day ago that these forces seek to change the spelling of the English language because its too difficult for todays children to learn)

How clever for the intelligent yet essentially brain dead student and his similarly equiped Professor to be able to slump down after the nights rave and take up their study of the past ,justifying their complete disconnect between their present lives and emotions and the subject they are -technically studying- by saying there is no connection between the present and the past -which must be studied on its own terms.
And its also true of course that the very definition of culture and scholarly circles can be allowed to change. From what they have said I doubt if the present Prime Minister or his predecesor have ever listened to what I would call serious music at all.Its true that men of action in war or business are often notoriously unmusical yet at least in the past they lived within its serious ambience
I became interested in this site over a year ago when Beard famously pointed out that none of her students- at one of the most prestigious ,elitist universities in the world-who undoubtedly came from prosperous families :for whom,from visits and accessability,every corner of the Mediterranean was as familiar as their own gardens--could accurately place on a map any of the sites they had spent years reading about at school, in the classical studies that were their speciality!
Yes indeed there is a disconnect here of gigantic ,galactic proportions
How has this developed?

As that esteemed figure John Lennon once said regarding 'music' -'Before Presley there was nothing' Well not exactly John, but we get the point
In the sixties I sat down and wrote a detailed analysis of how everything that has existed ,from Prof Beards underwear to WW2 was definably related.
In the seventies my American stepfather, leaving for L.A.on the death of my mother,burnt it,a fate suitable ,indeed traditional for such an epochal work.Yet there were many good things in it
One thing I remember which may have some bearing on this ,is that the loss of identity and moral structure in western society -I could tell you why but I wont-produces individuals who are similar to snails who have lost their shells or worms wriggling on the pavement-
They are defenceless and vulnerable.
A resulting development from this is the need for steel walls around them to create security.A major aspect of this is is the creation of walls of steel made by the sound of the electric guitar.This provides the security needed to allow the individual to exist without emotionally disintegrating
But once this situation has been produced it must become all embracing -there can be no connection between the present steel cage and the past in anyway, as that would reveal the exposed nature of the individual
The past is indeed a great danger to the 'modern' individual,although there are interesting and complex reasons for this which I cannot explain here (and waste more of
Beards blogspace)
Certainly there is increasingly a great dislike of history in the west-it is being studied less and less.

Thus the past must be looked at as a separate entity totally unconnected with the present.
In a sense Lennon was more right than he realised.The last fifty years has produced generations locked in in their steel cage of 'modernism' for whom the past has no emotional connection

In her next post Beard has attacked the latest Reith Lectures- a mere twenty minutes plus a few carefully loaded questions-the whole thing intended to stop the brain from thinking and make those who listen think they have learnt something
A clever trick....

Will this nonsense ever end?
Certainly not until the last nail has been hammered into Paul Macartneys coffin and until other factors arrive ( I cant say more as I must save my ideas for my own Reith Lectures)
Does any of this matter in the future? Perhaps not .
As Louis 14th might have said
As for living,our computers can do that for us

[Lidwina]

Back to the mitochondrial DNA: The presence of the prince's sister in the next grave does not necessarily prove that her status was equal to his. There could be many reasons - the usual women's grave plot was full, they died at the same time and it was too much trouble to dig a second hole, she had some sort of non-princely high status position, whatever.
More likely they were "very close", from the literature I deduce incest was as common then as it is now, if not more so.

[Steve the neighbour]

Oh well, you can choose your family, but you can't choose your respondants.

Anyone up for commentary on the Strawberry Festival or the final New Zealand test match in response to this?

[Tony Francis]

We tend to project our feelings and beliefs on defunct cultures. An example is finding UFOs in ancient artwork:
http://www.bibleufo.com/anapaint1.htm
There are several pages on this site - just click at the bottom. Click on the images to enlarge them. The question is: are these really UFOs or something else?

[Tony Francis]

My article "Jencks v. United States" was featured for a time this weekend on the Wiki main page under "interesting new articles". So, - all those bad things I have written about Wiki - I really didn't mean them - just forget it.

(And the remote relevance of this comment to ruins is.....??? signed, ed.!!!)

[Paul Potts]

Yes, of course there are ruins and ruins. But it may be of interest to hear about a rather grand "game park" here in Swaziland. You are not allowed to shoot the animals, of course, not that there seem to be many of them anyway, but outside, the road is lined by people selling soap-stone elephants. They are very realistic, but there are no elephants in that park - they would destroy the environment if introduced, and as a matter of fact the sculpture vendors have probably never seen an elephant, or if they had, their sculptures have nothing to do with the experience. Rather, they are a copy of some other sculptures of an elephant, which, it seems, sell well to tourists, who can take them home as a souvenir. I supect this little insight has some bearing on representations of Julius Caesar in the ancient world. Yes, of course it's JC, but only in the sense that our "elephants" are elephants.

The grandueur of the scenery is what remains, and it was there that some of the bits of the "Boer War" were fought. I suggest that it is outsides of the ruins that are more interesting than what remains of te interior.

Paulo

[Steve the neighbour]

Yer can't get off on ruins in nice weather. What you are looking for in effect is to be moved in some etheral way by the local environs and what you see. You need few people, you need grey skies and rain or snow, and you need to be in a thoroughly miserable an introverted state of mind to start with.

After all, you don't really enjoy sex unless you feel up for it (ok. excepting men), so why would you enjoy ruins unless you are totally emotionally receptive?

[Lucy]

I was wandering around the temple of Mithras on Hadrian's wall near Newcastle (I live in the area). Possibly this blog opened my eyes, but I found it pretty amusing that the majority of the site (it's no bigger than a people-carrier car) was actually made up of concrete reconstructions, casts of the originals. These not only preserved every bit of damage, they also looked like the detritus of a downmarket garden centre. Score one to English Heritage, in the 'how not to do it' category.

[Tony Francis]

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt_in_the_European_imagination
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptomania

[Michael Bulley]

It seems unlikely in most cases that the original owners of what is now a ruin would have wanted it to be a ruin while they were alive. The right thing to do, then, is to restore all ruins to what they were when they were in use, or replace them with something the original owners would have replaced them with, or replace them with something that appeals to us.

[Tony Francis]

This is an interesting reconstruction of a mummy. The face looks too fat, based on the excellent death portait, (to me):
http://www.rcsed.ac.uk/journal/vol45_2/4520022.htm

[Tony Francis]

Concerning Greek women having power based on mitochondrial DNA (including comment from Judith Weingarten):
http://www.moraliablog.com/2008/06/dna-explodes-greek-myth-about-women-or-maybe-not/
I can only find one image of the Mycenae face. We can conclude he was not related to a Neanderthal man:
http://www.rn-ds-partnership.com/reconstruction4.html
Actually, I think all these beautiful reconstructions are most likely Julius Caesar at various stages of life:
http://www.rn-ds-partnership.com/reconstruction3.html
(Including J. Caesar as he would have appeared had he been a woman.)

[boredacademic]

One of the more evocative moments of my life was in Crete near some old Roman city (shut on the day). I wandered across a paddock to where local farmers had dragged various Roman or Greek ruins to get them out of the way and was able to have a quiet pee over one. A moment to savour the passing of civilisations and the mortality of us all.

[anthony alcock]

When I was working as a tour guide in Egypt I remember talking to a fellow guide, who also did a bit of archaeology, as we both sat on his boat and glanced over at the Luxor Temple. He pointed out to my untutored eye that it was beginning to sag, apparently something to with salt rising up from the groundwater into the stones. I tried to look concerned, and then he said "But it's beginning to look more like a ruin, isn't it ?"

[Roy Lewis]

Never confuse ruins and archaeology. Archaeology often disappoints because the best bits have been re-buried or carted off. Moreover, the whole thing's deteriorated since the published site photos and drawings. All too often there's less to be seen on site than in the library, not more.

Ruins are another matter. It's hard to think of ruins without bringing up all sorts of romantic expectations rooted more in academic landscapes and regency verse than any specific archaeology. What disappoints is the absence of reverie and the sublime—both easily undercut by tourist hordes, post-industrial entourage, and gnats. Romance requires ruins, setting, and occasion. A ruined abbey in a landscape park accompanied by either a loved one or a sketchbook will do. So will an improbably huge marble foot in a Roman alleyway while seeking a nighttime gelato.

The quality of the ruins also matters. Stumps of rough masonry rarely satisfy, unless truly magnificent in scope and silhouette. Big stones are more evocative than small. Carved stone is always good. Classical columns are an asset, chiefly for their holographic quality. No matter how slight the remains, it is possible to extrapolate the rest. Representational sculpture has a similar quality.

Of course good company, and a bit of local cheese, bread, and wine never hurt.

[Nicholas]

Raluca, I am unable to accept the error of my attribution to Belloc. I may do so later, but at this time I stand by it. I am halfway into a move to Andalucia (quite close to Galera where barbarians were famously smoked from their caves) and my books are still in cases.

It could be that cultural knowledge has a quality of quantum accumulation such that people are intuitively aware of distant contributions without direct or even Xth hand experience of them; that certain ideas become absorbed into the general imaginative vocabulary; the Mona Lisa, the Sphinx, fragments of music, all sorts of things. These fragments are coloured, some might say distorted, by references such as MGM movies, popular music, fashion and so on, but they persist as threads in our cultural tapestry.

Ruins may not be interesting but they are important, like the dispersed fragments of the Library of Alexandria; who knows what they may one day yield.

In the meanwhile one might consider the interesting as the intervallum between the uninteresting. A notion better, perhaps, reduced to fewer words in a more enlightened tongue?

[Tony Francis]

I found this interesting set of comments by an editor who quit Wiki. There is a battle between the "inclusionists" and the "deletionists"... and a "Kafkaesque bureaucracy" that has developed. I have seen this sentiment many places on Wiki, but never stated so succinctly. Many long term editors and writers have quit in the last year. New article creation has reached an all time low. About 25% of "content" was arguments on discussion pages, last year. Readership is down. Article repair is at an all-time low. Personally, I would tend to be an "inclusionist" tilting in favor of more articles and information. But I don't think anyone is really interested in my opinion.
http://www.wikipediadeletionistbullies.scribblewiki.com/Main_Page
I found this on the discussion page of an article I am thinking of repairing:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Tort_Claims_Act
I ran across a bitter battle by a group of editors concerning a minor character in the Harry Potter series. It got so heated, they ended up banning one of the participants from Wiki, altogether. Geez, why don't these morons get a life?

[Xjy]

Hi Richard,

The DNA thing is explained by David BEARD in the following article:

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=3696

It involves "sister power".

Roll on more evidence for the powers of women like Antigone, Medea, Jocasta and the goddesses (Kirke, etc). And compare what Robert Graves surmises in books like Hercules, My Shipmate on the battles between matriarchal and patriarchal social systems.

[Lucy]

I'm really confused by Lord Truth (par for the course, I guess) here:

'The essence of high culture is ... the ability to conjure up and reflect on the past,to take what is great from the past and to relate the past to the present.'

That sounds very like pop culture to me - Hollywood loves mining history for plots and scenes it lift and use with modern sensibility. Before lit. crit. as a formal subject got off the ground, people used to talk about how the great writers of the past spoke to the present day (Shakespeare is not for an age but for all time, etc.), exactly as Lord Truth suggests here.

But I thought that these days it was more acceptable in high culture and scholarly circles to claim that we must look at the past on its own terms, that we must not distort it by imagining that we and the past are speaking the same language. So, I'm not sure Lord T's problem has never been faced; I think the opposition between a high romantic imaginative identification with the past and a desire to consider each age discretely is a fairly well-worn issue.

PS - Tony hits the nail on the head when he says it's a question of which ruins we should restore. Yes, exactly!

[PL]

Lord Truth has got it exactly right. Pop culture-- the abolition of the past and the death of the imagination.

[Raluca]

I see as a possible solution the placement of computer screens with 3D reconstructions of the building. As the virtual tourist enters these spaces, he should receive information about the various rooms.