I (bravely) challenged myself and translated Pétrus Borel's Obelisk of Luxor manifesto.
disclaimer: this text is above my grasp of the social context Borel is critiquing, so I'm sure there are things that went over my head and therefore not accurately translated. (the parts I didn't get are marked so, reader beware) Also, although the core of the first part of the manifesto is anti imperial and anti colonialist, that doesn't mean Borel doesn't indulge in some orientalist tropes. There is also some classism thrown in into the mix. Nevertheless, I think it's definitely worth reading, for that first part, and as an angry plea to value the then neglected Gothic architecture, so here it goes:
french original text here
THE LUXOR OBELISK, 1836, Pétrus Borel.
Was it not enough to destroy or allow the destruction in Paris as in all of France, of the monuments bequeathed by our ancestors? Was it not enough to permit the demolition of Saint-Côme and Saint-Damien church and the chapel of the collége de Cluny? Was it not enough to permit the establishment of a bad place(*1) at Saint-Benoît, to have promised to the hammer the collége de Moutaigu, to have sighed after the demolition of the Vincennes Sainte-Chapelle, to have made little gardens (jardinets) and canals of the majestic composition of Le Nôtre, and have the Tuilleries patched up? Was it not then enough, having shamefully let loose Bagatelle, and to make of the château de Saint-Germain, in the name of reigning Liberty, a dungeon? Was it not enough to tear down Saint-Leu-Taverny manor, and have its blood stained stones sold to anybody who wanted them?
Wasn’t it enough with all these assaults? Was it still necesary for the devastation to spread its ravages up to the shores of the Nile?
Humanity’s duty is to oppose with all the resources of its genius, to the anihilation of its works; to counterbalance, delay, suspend the operations of nature, who doesn’t know to create new beings but at the expense of those that preceeded them. The law of men is conservation; the law of time is destruction. Man and time must then be locked in a constant struggle. Unfortunately, the first one often sacrifices its mision to help the other with his, and like him, he is armed with a scyhthe and a sword. Once set in this road, Man becomes more dreadful than Time; because the latter’s deteriorations are slow, nothing presses him, he has eternity before him.
Let not the Vandals and ignorance be accused of destruction: Vandals did not make war on monuments, ignorance is respectful. It is in the name of Science and Progress that most of these crimes are commited. It’s science, and not ever ignorance who says: “- This is gothic, therefore it’s barbaric, crush it down!” --It’s science who travels the universe, pickaxe or axe in hand; who goes spoiling Thebes of its imposing ruins which after so many centuries were admired by voyagers, making their souls soar and enlarging spirits by meditation. It’s science who goes ravaging the Thebes necropolis, demolishing the hypogei, making sepulchres collapse, blowing out the dust on the tombs; it is science who would not stop its profanations until she has leveled the desert’s sands to the cradle of primordial civilizations.
It is science who has pillaged Athens as it pillages it each day of its magnificent débris; who tears away its bas-reliefs and its metopes; who strips its statues; who packs up and dispatches its columns and its portals en route to the land of business, for England, where they will be devoured by the extravagant groves of some newly wealthy refiner.
It is science who will not delay to strip India of its monuments of Mughal glory, who won’t hesistate to rip off the Taj-Mahal mausoleum, Akbar Palace, the Mouti-Mutjid, the pearl of mosques; it is science who lets the mausoleums in Akbar and Ulla-Madoula waste away, to hastily authorize their demolition and ship them to Europe.
My God! What an obsession with taking and shipping off! Couldn’t you instead let each latitude, each area have it’s glory and ornaments? Couldn’t you contemplate anything on a distant shore, without coveting and wanting to substract it?
I would not be surprised if someone told me one day that the English had taken down the Moon and stored it in the Tower of London Museum.
You think you have given much radiance to your nation, to have so intensely embellished it, when you have actually buried under the Thames sludge, or the muck of the Seine, the work of two or three thousand years, the masterpieces of fifteen or twenty civilizations; when you have piled up in your crossroads and your shops, Romans over Etruscans, Egyptians over Hindus, Italians on top of Arabs, Greeks over Mexicans?
Each thing has no value other than in its own land, on its natal soil, under its sky. There is a correlation, an intimate harmony between monuments and the countries that erected them, there is no way to intervene with impunity.
The Pyramid needs blue skyes, a smooth floor, the monotonous horizontality of the desert; it needs the caravan passing at its feet; the cries of a nomad ethiopian population, or loneliness and the howling of chackals.
The granite Sphynx needs the lenghty avenues of the Pharaos Temples; she demands them, or the strange hordes killing each other at their shadow. Or the silent ruins of the Karnac.
Obelisks need the temple pillars, the solar cult, the idolatry of the multitudes, or the desert.
These monuments that pour such great amounts of sublime poetry on the arid sands of the Sahara, that proclaim the grandeur, the might, the genius of races past, are dragged to the bosom of our cities and become as drab, mute, and stupid as them.
How great would a Sphynx look in a gap between a cobbler shop and a tavern! Such a wonderful effect the profile of an obelisk would give to an hôtel garni, between a guardhouse and a tea shop!
Alas! All these arguments non withstanding and many more, France leans in the monument trafficking business, and does it without quarter. Recently and in a notorious, scandalous fashion, she has imported a monolith, uprooted from the ruins of Luxor. Poor France!... how happy she is now that she posseses an obelisk! What glory! May you rejoice long time, my fatherland! A child who shakes its rattle forgets its troubles: may this granite rattle numb your pain and pour balm in your sores!
But if, like a child, you have a need for toys, often too like him, you don’t know what to do with what you desire, once you posses it.
In order to find a use for it, during three years, no wait, what am I saying? During four full years, rhetoricians and reasoners have striven: even men from our senate, who have raised this high question on their petite chambre.
And during these for years, by roads and paths, by mounts and valleys, we haven’t seen nothing but obelisk hunters, wandering, torch in hand, to find not a man but to find or perch themselves on this coquetish emblem of the solar rays. This one here wants it to be placed on the Louvre courtyard; that one over there, right in the middle of the Invalides esplanade; this one there, at Montmatre, between two moulins; him over there, on the Pont-Neuf terrace, in stead of that insipid Henri IV. In fact, what does a Herni IV even mean? Nothing is more spiritual than an obelisk! The majority inclines in favour of the place of the so called Concorde; without doubt, because there, the obelisk will provide the advantage of cutting up the four façades into eight(*2).
In order to satisfy everyone, to manage the goat and the cabbage(*3), The State, who wants to rob nobody of its hope, consequently orders to have them erected everywhere; and with that purpose, it is said the state has emitted lettres de marque to a company of sapeurs charged with capturing and embargoing all the obelisks they can get their hands on. We must conclude that this enterprise is founded on a wealth excedent in order to have reserves and prevent any lacking of this provision so necessary to the People, and that a market is opened for the sale of those in excedent, to stock up the provinces. --Every fortnight their taxes will be displayed along those of the bread.
I seek to joke; but my jest truns into a grimace, my laugh is hollow; my heart is too heavy with moral pain; and whose wouldn’t be, when imagining the stupid misemployment of money destined to the protection of the Arts; of the mess made at this very moment in the château de Versailles; imagining the considerable sums spent on the coupling and uncoupling of stones; imagining that the Louvre is still unfinished, that we deny him a mason while during more than three months, we make more than eight hundred arabs occupied with just digging up trenches in a soft slope, made from the pedestal of this Egyptian men-hir up to the pier; when imagining this false and disordered love some men have for antique rubble, and of the disdain professed solemnly about our own antique junk, which should be so glorious for us, which we should be so protective of!
Wretches! While you squander the treasury on your conquests of green or pink Sphynxes, while you reattach becquets or empeignes to mutilated bacchuses and hermeses, our cathedrals fall to ruin, our Castles are dismantled, Royaumont abbey, the most admirable edifice erected by the generosity of Louis IX, who erected so many admirable ones, lies there, semi destroyed and devastated by a laundry.
All your boisterous display of affection for Art and Antiquity is nothing but an impudent parade. If you really had a sensitivity for the good and the beautiful, wouldn’t you put away the Raphaellos, the Rembrandts or the Andrea del Sartes you offer in your galleries? Would you allow these collected masterpieces to be dispersed and preyed upon by foreigners? Your feelings are feigned and false. Your heart has never beaten under the vaults of a temple; you never quivered at the sight of a Murillo or a Corregio; you have never understood Puget; you ignore who Jean Bullant, Jean Joconde or Philibert Delorme are; you are nothing but pedants at the shore of the Seine, and you pretend to be poets on the coasts of the Nile. Shame on you!...
Those who do not understand Saint-Vandrille, Blois, Chambord, Gaillon, Royaumont, Brou; cannot understand Thebes. Just like the One who traded, when there were yet nothing more than clovers in his crown (???), Jean Goujon’s Diane of Poitiers in exchange for an Ajax by Dupaty, how can He ever understand an obelisk?
You do not profess the religion of the Ancients; you don’t even practice that of Art or Country, all you want is to simulate what you can’t feel; you want the appereance of a protector, play-act Maecenas, affecting solicitude, and to showcase your imposted solicitude you become extravagant; you seek to astound vulgarity with your eccentricities. Little it matters to you that your underlings demolish by hits of paper bundles the most magnificent vitraux, you do not concern yourselves with such petty matters, where you would remain obscure: you need sensational acts. You must attract the eyes of the masses, and squeeze out their admiration. You know full well it is not wisdom and beauty what stuns and amazes, and you need to stun, and to achieve that you need wonders.
No one will turn their heads to look at a superb arab stallion, the most beautiful creature of God, the most beautiful being; but when we present a giraffe, that ridiculous animal, the multitude will briskly rise and run en masse to see it pass, its entrance would be a triumph! What do we care about a work by Michelangelo? Who will stop and take a detour to look at it? But with an obelisk the multitude will stampede around it. An obelisk is a stone giraffe: your obelisk will be a success!
About a hundred fools will go “Oh!!!” when percieving it for the first time. A hundred or so grocers from the suburbs will come after selling their groceries, they’ll stop with their mouth gaping, and ask what is this machine ornamented with ducks and zig-zags: and we could answer in french: it’s a stone spike; emphatically we will say in greek: this is an obelisk monolith (what a wonderful thing Greek to pump up platitudes, to obscure what was clear!) "Zounds!" these brave people answered, "before that I thought it was a fire pump stack!"
But all jokes aside, what is it that you find beautiful in an obelisk? As art, as an accomplishment, as an invention, as a silhouette, as an effect, it’s an ugly and empty monument. Do you want to give a fabourable impression on the egyptians and their genius? Why then did you pick from among their works, a milestone? Because, you know as well as I do, or better than I since you are wise, that an obelisk was not a monument, but a milestone placed in front of temples or palaces to there inscribe the names and surnames of the founders, the enlargers, the restorators of these palaces or temples.
Do you want to prove to what point the Egyptians were skilled in their transportation and mounting of such enormous blocks? Good God! The skills of the Egyptian are not up to debate, we know perfectly well they were very adroit.
Or do you want to prove to us that you are stronger than them, and that you can, like they did, build without effort heavy masses. Good God! Who is discussing your skill! We already know perfectly well you are as skilled as the Egyptians. We know your steam machine would make the obelisk dance if it didn’t have teeth(*4).
The Romans, who didn’t know better than to pillage and imitate, transported to Italy about twenty obelisks: we are like we have seen, in our way to ship an innumerable amount. It’s al very well to imitate August and Constance; that gives us a less trivial appereance. Sixtus-Quintus(*5) had Caligula’s obelisk streightened; but how can you streighten an obelisk when you don’t have any? The task is simple: we search for them. Méhémed-Ali is very friendly, he gives to anyone who asks. Furthermore, you have only one so far, and Rome at this very moment, posseses almost half a quarter pound(*6) of them, you’re way behind.
Are you obstinately willing to complete the half quarterpound? Are you seriously that fond of obelisks (on my part, I cannot hide it from you, I am unlucky enough to prefer the infinitely long Strasbourg needle to the two hundred aunes of monolith)? Follow my advice, have your own oblesik made yourselves. Who is stopping you? One would have to have a very insulting opinion on our artisans to think them incapable of such a task. Go to Provence, in the Fréjus diocesis, where the poryphyre abounds; go at the Esterel and in Roquebrune. In the way from Roquebrune to Muy, you will find a mountain containing masses more than sixty feet tall, with a considerable width. You could there chisel, like the Romans used to do, columns similar to those brought from High-Egypt; you could make there a profusion of obelisks; and certainly, obelisks made of French porphyre, crafted by french artists, which would worth as much as those granite obelisks form Egypt.
“Whoa! Whoa there you ass!/hold your horses!” will the savants cry at this evil proposition; “Imbecile!” They will call me, “Obelisks have no intrinsec value!; their worth is the memories stored in their bosom, the memories they overflow with.” Dream then you idiot, that the Luxor obelisk remembers Ramses or Rhamases III (monsieur Marle has not yet fixed the orthography of this name; for now there is only an orthography for improper nouns) Rhamases III, fifteenth king of the eighteenth dynasty! What? You were not expecting a memory of Ramses or Rhamases, the same selon les uns, tout autre selon les autres, que Sésostris, que le grand Sésostris ! ---Cruel, unfeeling, how are you not disolving into tears to the memory of Ramses III, fifteenth king of the eighteenth dynasty! How does your heart not beat furiously at its mere name, here, written on the stomach of these eight kynocephalus monkeys(*7)!...
Alas! Messieurs, I beg pardon; but I cannot sympathize with you in this point. My heart is not that wide yet, or as elastic as to extend so far its loves and affections. Your Ramses or Rhamases III, fifteenth king of the eighteenth dynasty, was doubtles a really great man (we must never speak ill of those who are gone); but on my side, sincerely, he and his great milestone are no big deal.
Don’t think that France is anymore crazy over your Pharao than me messieurs, or that she has ever thought to erect him an altar; and you can be certain that it will not be the remembrance of your Rhamases III, fifteenth king of the eighteenth dynasty, who will come and attack them when they lay eyes on the milestone, located on a spot still fuming with the blood of Louis XVI.
*1 mauvais lieu: in the XIXth century, a maison de débauche, or a brothel -> (thanks @sainteverge !!) the allusion though, is still obscure to both of us
*2 no idea
*3 ménager la chèvre et le chou: idiomatic expression meaning to satisfy opposing parties at the same time.
*4 no idea either
*5 a Pope.
*6 demi-quarteron. Again, pretty sure this is bad translating
*7 a baboon.
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