huberleo - Tumblr blog

huberleo · 3 years

Photo

A Tale of Thresholds

Prologue

Once upon a time there was a strange man standing in front of a strange house

Lenny finds himself in Vienna, dislocated, dispossessed, lost. There is no flock to lead anymore, no divinity to represent. I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others.[1] Lenny needs to rule over someone. Something. Lenny doesn’t fit in, with what he perceives as the rest of society. Lenny stands at a border. Ludwig is a kingdom. A realm complete in itself, surrounded by a wall. What king did not seat him at his table [2].

The Embracing Wall

Ludwig is in disguise, his wall like a cloak, giving comfort but interfering with his field of view. His perception of the outside distorted at best. The wall surrounding him, his wall, his city, stands as a barrier between him and the rest, his world and the next. But the wall also hides Ludwig in the fabric of the city, a fortress that doesn’t want to be found. Invisibility as the first line of defence. It is a mechanism Lenny sees right through, or so he thinks. Satisfaction flowing through him as he crosses into enemy territory, sure of victory, himself and eternal praise.

Lenny stands in front of Ludwig. I‘m ready to wage a war without end against you.[3] He sees himself as a being of greater glory and importance than his fellow men. He was of so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes of him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king.[4] Lenny wants to build himself a monument, he wants to become immortal.

Ludwig is a fortress, his wall bare, uninviting. His face turned away from the city, there is but one way to cross the first threshold. Lenny enters the wall, Ludwig‘s world, a new world. Following a light at the end of the tunnel.

Ludwig’s Reception

Lenny had expected something massive with at least one portcullis, something he would have to fight his way through. This is why fairy tales often had medieval architectural environments – to house their battles where good triumphs over evil, in a land far away, once upon a medieval time. [5] Lenny takes a step. Leaving any roots he had behind, for this step completely unearths him. The structure of reality has been fragmented, for the abolition of the mythical horizon has destroyed the divine mystery that lies beyond it. [6]

Standing in a garden, they face each other for the first time. Ludwig appears grand and intimidating to Lenny. Not what he had expected to find, to fight, to conquer. Ludwig is ready, the wall around him seems to grow taller. And though he, as the house is the most precise product of modern processes there will be entrenched within it this ancient loyalty invulnerable against the siege of our machines. [7] Every part of Ludwig is ready to fight. To defend itself with a selflessness that inspires legends. These assurances produced a degree of calm. [8] It was a dangerous calm, the one that makes you uneasy and dying to leave. Yet both fear the moment of truth when they have step out of imagination and confront the others mind. Ludwig is intrigued by Lenny. But Ludwig detests what Lenny perceives as vital for representing power. He thinks it a crime.

Ludwig studies the strange form climbing his steps, intrigued by this strange creature staring back at him. The unfamiliarity of their situation made both of them uncomfortable, very much so.

The Vain Room

But when Lenny goes about the house, his manoeuvre was accompanied by another change. [9] With every threshold Lenny passes the alienation of a new room, a new world is like a blow to him. With every threshold Lenny leaves something behind. A trail consisting of fragments. Like an animal shedding fur, Lenny sheds parts of his truth.

Lenny stands on a threshold once again, determined to make this house a home, by any means necessary —a Modification of general features [10] for a start. He needs everything to be about him. The apparent lack of ornament disturbs Lenny, he wants Ludwig to become this bastion of his personal power far away from Rome, a temple to enshrine himself in, like the emperors of old. A new Vatican. Ludwig is appalled, how dare he change proportions Ludwig sees as a product of perfection, how dare he disguise the truth Ludwig represents in each little detail with meaningless follies.

The object of a cult, subjected to varying interpretations, the bearer of many different values, this house will become a memorial, a monument to the glory of Lenny and of his immortal self.[11] No reasoning power, no commandment, no force can override his inclination or his choice.[12] The throne admits not two. [13] Lenny wants this house to become a mirror, to indulge his image and the beauty surrounding him. Ludwig watches as Lenny adorns not only the room but himself with ornament, catching and dispersing light all over the room. Ludwig starts seeing in colour, unsure what to make of it as he watches Lenny enter the adjoining room.

The Dreaming Room

Lenny gets fully immersed in the house. Ludwig watches Lenny rummage through his rooms, rearrange his features. With every new room Lenny enters, his presence becomes more familiar to Ludwig. Room for room Ludwig becomes less himself, he thinks the outside finally caught up with him, for Lenny must represent the world outside Ludwig’s little universe.

Sometime during his quest he had lost any track of time, he entered the timeless plane of existence Ludwig had existed in until now.

Ludwig watches as yet another room is disfigured with some kind of decoration. Lenny looks at the painted walls, the stories they tell, he tells. The story is his to tell.

Lenny grows tired, he is almost there, but apotheosis is harder than he assumed. Ludwig watches Lenny grow tired, hoping to tempt him into holding his crusade. Lenny dreams of the heavens. How he longs for this dream to be real. Ludwig thinks about Lenny‘s idea of the heavens. Dreams turn into nightmares.

A sudden burst of fear drives Lenny away from this room over another threshold. Hoping the unfamiliarity of the next room will make him forget.

The Ascended Chapel

Lenny stands on a threshold, before him a room as grand in proportion as he once imagined, a throne room. It is a room suitable to act as a monument to him. It would have been for another Lenny. There was no such thing Lenny would have once perceived as a lack of ornament. Ludwig watches Lenny wander around the full extent of the space. Ludwig doesn’t know where this room came from, it feels wrong yet it is there. It feels like a part of him. Ludwig questions his truth. The design of the History was very much an expression of his mind; he hopes it may stand, not unworthily, as a monument to his work. [14]

Ludwig has given Lenny a pedestal upon which he can deify himself, immortality so close. Lenny stands in the inside of a gilded jewel box. The coloured light from the stained glass windows framing his face, all the treasure of the earth couldn‘t compete. Ludwig is the jewel box.

Lenny stands in the room, his room, his house. He has won. The thought crosses his mind. But what has he won. He has found just another room. He has gone from epic invader to ghost, endlessly wandering beyond time. Lenny is lost. Ludwig is numb. He tears a rip into his shell, a door opens for Lenny.

Hortus Conclusus

Standing at the threshold of the house he looks over the whole garden.[15] Neither the parterre nor the surrounding groves show any original features.[16] Change is evident. [17] Lenny stands in the garden. He doesn’t remember there being a garden in the first place. He studies the massive wall encompassing the garden as he puts out his cigarette. A cage for his Pyrrhic victory.

Enclosed space, a walled world, a wall around your own mind – eternal state. Every time the being that occupies this safe space ventures into another, it is as if it travelled to another realm of reality. As soon as it enters the new space it becomes alien from the old one. Therefore the hortus conclusus has to adapt to accommodate the changed needs of its resident every time they come back to what they perceive as home. It is a place of personal refuge. A place of dreams, longing and desires made real.

Standing in the garden Lenny looks around him. It appeared calm and serene to him, but then it was a garden. Even to the most prosaic it always holds something of a promise of the peaceful and pleasant place that lies within. [18] Ludwig watches in concern as Lenny keeps littering.

[1] Ludwig II

[2] Cervantes, Don Quixote

[3] The Young Pope

[4] Machiavelli, The Prince

[5] Rudolph, A Companion to Medieval Art Romanesque and Gothic

[6] Voegelin, Order and History 4

[7] Ockmann, Architecture Culture 1943 1968

[8] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works

[9] Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530 1830

[10] Kerr, The Gentlemans House

[11] Serres, History of Scientific Thought

[12] de Montaigne, The Complete Essays