The purple and ponderous privilege of some of this prose erases the sting I hope. Lol was in fact my first reaction, I write it here, more than once, for the first time in this blog. It has passages where the earnestness goes beyond all possible bounds and I laughed out loud. It’s easy to see why Ruskin is always paired with William Morris in the same architectural breath. It celebrates the beauty of skilled craftsmanship and manual labour. It has lovely passages that in truth could make you see and think differently. This contains so much of such desperate earnestness it cannot help but be touching. The Seven Lamps are also just a little bit mad: Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, Obedience. I loved many of the footnotes, poetry, sideways meanders. Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture is an odd book, unexpected after all I had read of it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |