"...it is not true that when the heart is full the eyes necessarily overflow, some people can never manage it, especially in our century, which in spite of all the suffering and sorrow will surely be known to posterity as the tearless century. It was this drought, this tearlessness that brought those who could afford it to Schmuh's Onion Cellar, where the host handed them a little cutting board - pig or fish - a paring knife for eighty pfennigs, and for twelve marks an ordinary, field-, garden-, and kitchen-variety onion, and induced them to cut their onions smaller and smaller until the juice - what did the onion juice do? It did what the world and the sorrows of the world could not do: it brought forth a round, human tear. It made them cry."

Günter Grass: Die Blechtrommel

Friday, March 11, 2011

Temple of Gaudi

One could argue that Gaudi’s Sagrada Família would seem to be his temple.  When I first approached his cathedral I was just a hair disappointed.  Not because I wasn’t captivated by the lyricism of Gaudi’s forms, but because the cathedral was heavily scaffolded.  “Just my luck,” I thought sourly, “I come all the way to Barcelona and they are renovating the crown jewel of the city,”(reminding me of my two visits to the Parthenon–both times shrouded in scaffolds).






Still I stood patiently in line to enter the cathedral–under renovation or not.  As I finally entered the massive interior I was not greeted with distant Gregorian chats, incense and cavernous silence, but rather, with a choir of drills, sanders and blowtorches ringing through the audacious dust filled nave like some mechanistic demon hidden within the mist.


The experience was no less spiritual for the din; it actually seemed alive with purpose.  One sees that man indeed creates these temples out of the dust of the earth.


Gaudi’s temple wasn’t being renovated, it was being constructed!  After more than a hundred and twenty years it is still far from completion.



But the Sagrada isn’t really Gaudi’s temple, his temple is his legacy.  One need only walk through the terraced paths of Park Güell, stand in the stairwell of his Casa Batlló, or share the rooftop of the  Casa Milà with his chimney soldiers to revere the man’s vision and prowess.

 



Everywhere you stand, everywhere your gaze falls there is another visual melody unveiling itself as you delve further into its sanctum.  You can’t take enough photos to feel that you have captured his genius–no matter how may hundreds you take.  There is always another vaulted hallway, crackled glow of a ceiling fixture, warm polish of a wood banister or brilliant song of a vibrant mosaic.





Gaudi's structures feel more like breathing beasts, ripening grapes and sprouting mushrooms than like the boxes for living that we usually associate with architecture.

 
     


Temples are where we worship the divine–the power and genius of a maker.  The Temple of Gaudi is not a literal place, but a realm of astounding beauty–inspired by natural forms and formidable daring.  Gaudi was an architectural god.
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