"Likewise many people born within our memory will seem to discuss science with Lucretius as if he were there in person, or the art of rhetoric with Cicero, and many subsequent generations exchange conversation with Varro about the Latin language, and similarly most lovers of learning, who ponder many things along with the sages of the Greeks, will seem to be having private conversations with them, and to sum up, the ideas of wise writers, absent in body yet flourishing as they age, when they enter into our deliberations and discussions, they all have greater authority than those who are actually present."Vitruvius, in this preface, is praising writers for contributing to their generations and all future generations, for we still learn from them even long after their deaths. Many have said this before, and many more will say it again. What I find interesting here is that Vitruvius is commenting on how we still treat these authors as if they were alive and with us still. We were all told in elementary school that when we write about a novel we write about it in the present tense. We treat the author's words as if they are still occurring. We talk about the author's intent as if that author were still alive and still with us. We all remember our English teachers asking something along the lines of, "What is Shakespeare trying to tell us?" "What does the author mean by this?" "What is going on here?" We never discuss writings in the past tense, even though they were written in the past.
This is a peculiar phenomenon that most of us seem to ignore, but I wish to explore it, but through architecture, not writing. There is something about tradition and history that, when brought up, we feel we are conversing with the past. I won't get into phenomenology of memory, nor with cyclical or linear time, because all of those seem to merge and become irrelevant when we speak of nostalgia, so that is what I will focus on: nostalgia as a form of speaking with the past.
I have discussed nostalgia before, but I fear I may have jumped the gun on my conclusions with the nature of invoking the past. I have said before, though I'm not sure if I ever said it in a post before, that nostalgia is a longing for something in the past that never happened. I say that because often when invoking the past we are filtering the past through the present, which gives us an inauthentic picture of what is truly historical. For instance the Greek agora, which was the primary community space in ancient Greek cities. We often idealize them as wonderful, beautiful spaces where everyone can meet. In reality they weren't very clean. Over there was a homeless person masturbating, and over there someone killing some chickens, and other there a prostitute, and over there a stinky philosopher charlatan. We would never be nostalgic for a real Greek agora, so we filter it to give it an ideal image for our times the makes us feel reminiscent of the past.
While this "past that never happened" may be a real phenomenon, it ignores what really happens in nostalgia: we're speaking to something that is no longer there, and yet they are every bit as real to us as object in our vicinity. Just like writers, when we talk about a Palladian window on some suburban house we are nonetheless having a conversation with Palladio and Serlio (Serlio actually created Palladian windows). In architecture when we design elements that are built from a tradition we are talking with those who have contributed to this tradition. Just like writers, when we read their works and follow their ideas we are talking with them.
It's when we break away from tradition and the past that we stop talking to historical people and cultures. George Hersey has this to say about breaking tradition:
"A Modernist converses only his contemporaries and immediate predecessors. But an architect who takes on a Palladian window converses with Palladio, and (in Venturi's case) with Serlio, Hawksmore, Lutyens. He stands in a succession that goes back to the Renaissance and perhaps further still to the mythical dawn pictured by Vitruvius and his contemporaries."This is what the title of this post is implying: that Modernism, as well as Deconstructivism is anti-nostalgia. Breaking from tradition means we stop talking with those who have laid the foundations of our work for us. Suddenly Palladio isn't real when we talk about a Morphosis or Hadid building. Suddenly he just isn't there anymore, and we talk about him in the past tense, and they become irrelevant. This makes the art of building no longer a tradition. We can no longer speak about the "history of the architect," but only to what we now do as architects.
Is this a bad thing? I can't speak to that, but I will say that it is somewhat a shame. Nietzsche had this to say about classic studies: "I do not know what meaning classical studies could have for our time if they were not untimely – that is to say, acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and,
let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come." Classic design and study is untimely, which is what Modernism was so against. They want to express their time, their technology, and their way of doing things. But breaking from a tradition up roots the practice from time, and leaves it timeless. It's as if Modernism could have floated around in any period since the Industrial Revolution. Nietzsche essentially would like classical studies to be something that benefits our time, not act against it, even though it seems like it already does act against it.
This is our danger with nostalgia: it acts against our time and place and culture, but without it we are left out of a progression of time that gives us a solid place in history, especially when history has largely been based on tradition.
"...carried up to heaven on the staircase of human memory for all time..."
~Vitruvius
