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I'm bemused by the fascination of ruins. Why? I ask myself. There's some insight in the definition of wabi sabi I found in J's philosophy magazine – “Nothing lasts … Nothing is finished … Nothing is perfect … Wabi refers to the attraction of rustic simplicity, humble by choice. Sabi means the bloom of time.” But why should this draw me every time?
I'm eager to read Rose Macaulay's The pleasure of ruins for further illumination, but two attempts to acquire it have failed. The free download cut out at page 76, and the print was inked brokenly, so the text itself looked as if it was in the process of ruin. I found a Thames and Hudson copy, second hand, for $6, but the postage was $76. None of the libraries I investigated had a copy. So I remained semi-mystified, with limited aids to thought. Then I found an online post that quoted generously from Macaulay. The introduction left me in no doubt that I must read the book. What ruin-lover could resist “an inquisition into the images, philosophy, theology, archaeology and literature of ruin”? Here's a taste of what Macaulay says:
She compares ruins to “the extant fragments of some lost and noble poem” and says that ruins make “poets and artists of nearly all tourists”. She speaks of the “familiar tragedy of archaeology—the sacrifice of beauty to knowledge”. Of the attraction of ruins she says “The human race is, and always has been, ruin-minded. The literature of all ages has found beauty in the dark and violent forces, physical and spiritual, of which ruin is one symbol”. She quotes Byron, and of course Ozymandias.
Whatever the reasons, ruins give me pleasure. Here are three between my daughter's house and my iPad connection spot, along about 3km of the Mt Lindesay Highway.
A grey wall, a green ruin, rusty pike, / Make my soul pass the equinoctial line / Between the present and past worlds, and hover / Upon their airy confine, half-seas-over.
Byron: Don Juan, Canto X
Just in case Macaulay's not enough, look at this delicious bibliography!
Michael S. Roth, Claire Lyons and Charles Merewether, ed., Irresistible Decay: Ruins Reclaimed (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1997).
Robert Ginsberg, The Aesthetics of Ruins (New York: Rodopi, 2004).
Tim Edensor, Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (Oxford: Berg, 2005).
Dylan Trigg, The Aesthetics of Decay: Nothingness, Nostalgia, and the Absence of Reason (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).
Nicholas Yablon, Untimely Ruins: An Archaeology of Urban Modernity, 1819-1919 (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009).
Julia Hell and Andreas Schönle, ed., Ruins of Modernity (Durham: Duke U P, 2010).
Owen Hatherley, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (London: Verso, 2010).
Brian Dillon, ed., Ruins (London and Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel Gallery and MIT, 2011).
pommepal said:
Oh Meg more and more books are being listed on sticky notes and stuck on the wall beside my head as I sit at the computer. They wait for when I see a window of time to read and absorb them. I love ruins for their photographic beauty and for the stories that I perceive they hide among the crumbling bricks and decaying wood. I particularly like the angle and composition of the rustic fence line.
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morselsandscraps said:
I spent a lot of time looking at that fence as I waited for posts to upload on a very slow connection, so its beauty had time to seep in. Are your books in a hierarchy? If so, what’s at the top?
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pommepal said:
No hierarchy, just a list on the wall as I hear of them from your posts and from Jill of “Jill’s scene” as she occasionally does book reviews, try this one http://jillscene.com/2015/06/19/reading-ferrante/. At the moment I am reading Simon Armitage, “walking home” and I think of you as I read it Meg. He is a poet and his way with words and descriptions are, well, poetic! I am a very slow reader and also like to have nonfiction books around me on drawing, painting, travel etc to dip into, and of course the WP blogs and community take up a lot of pleasurable time.
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morselsandscraps said:
jillscene could well become another addiction. I loved her review of Ferrante. My pick-up reading at the moment is old magazines heading for the recycle bin. I’m finding some wonderful stuff, some of which will reach the blog. But they HAVE TO GO. The study feels great emptied of excess paper. Armpit age is on my list.
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pommepal said:
I’m sure Jill will become a regular addiction for you Meg, She has great descriptive powers. Armpit age???
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morselsandscraps said:
I HATE predictive, and even more my failure to edit. Armitage of course! Although Armpit age made me smile
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pommepal said:
I knew what you meant Meg, but it made me chuckle, I’m still grinning… Now I’m going to bike to the library, one of my favourite haunts.
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morselsandscraps said:
Armitage on ABC RN at 11am tomorrow on Earshot
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pommepal said:
Thanks Meg I don’t know that station I will see if I can find it. (I’m putting a note on the wall!!!)
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pommepal said:
Just checked it out on Google (of course, where else do you go!!!) and thank you it certainly looks to be full of interesting content.
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restlessjo said:
Ruins to me always signify grandeur, columns, remnants of history. I picture Patara beach in Turkey with white marble in total vulnerability , there in the sands, and dragonflies hovering in foundation pools. Such a trail those ancients left behind! This ‘new’ house of mine won’t stand the test of time. 🙂
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morselsandscraps said:
What a magnificent account of what ruins mean to you. The dragonflies are the absolute finishing touch. Ruins are drawing out such profundities and poetry.
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restlessjo said:
I will be joining Ed Mooney’s challenge when I get back from the Algarve, Meg. Thank you! 🙂 I’m currently ‘bobbing about’ in Bristol’s floating harbour, in readiness for tomorrow. Tempted to stray into the garden though. Overnight we had huge storms and the torrential stuff and my world is washed new.
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morselsandscraps said:
We’ve been promised rain, but it is busy not coming.
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Rosemary Barnard said:
My Bundanoon friends had 300ml of rain in two days. The dam is full and overflowing but the driveway clear. They are looking forward to a great spring. It makes up for the snow which bypassed them (a shame because of its photographic possibilities) while falling on nearby Southern Highlands towns.
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Lucid Gypsy said:
Yes, I think we are attracted to ruins because they demonstrate the cycle of life. I must post some that I have photographed.
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morselsandscraps said:
Please do. Did you see Elissaveta’s link in an earlier comment?
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Sue said:
I think Suzanne has a point about time and its complexity… Hope you get a copy of Dame Rose’s book, she writes amazing prose! I was given an abridged copy by my parents in the late 70s, then more recently found the original, lengthy tome! I also enjoyed reading art historian Christopher Woodward’s ‘In Ruins’ where he takes on a thousand year journey with artists and writers who had a love of ruins….
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morselsandscraps said:
Life is too short!! Ruins remind me that I will all too soon be an uninhabited one, and there are so many things to read first. Thank you for the plug for Dame Rose, and also for the Woodward which sounds well and truly worth reading.
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Sue said:
Life is, indeed, too short! Pleasure of ruins is a socking great tome, but Woodward’s book is a very approachable size!
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Elissaveta said:
Meg, yesterday a blogging friend of mine reblogged this post:
I think you might find it interesting. I love ruins too, there is something about them…
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morselsandscraps said:
Thank you Elissaveta. I had a prowl, and it looks like a fascinating site and an interesting challenge. I’ll keep my eye on it. I especially like the mapping of ruins.
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Tish Farrell said:
No, you are not going to lure me down another path, Meg. Or at least not just yet. Somewhere on my blog I’ve posted a fragment of a fragmentary Anglo-Saxon poem about the ruined Roman city of Bath. I’ll try and find the link. But since you are mentioning Rose Macaulay I can also recommend her Towers of Trebizond. It has some ‘good ruins’ moments at one point, if I remember rightly.
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morselsandscraps said:
Me lure you down another path??? Your life-work is luring me, in case you didn’t know. I look forward to the Anglo-Saxon fragment.
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morselsandscraps said:
PS I think I just tracked the fragment down via google, but I still want to see it embedded in your post.
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Tish Farrell said:
Thanks for reminding me to look. It comes from a Penguin Classic The Earliest English Poems. I think the editors gave it the title ‘The Ruin’
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Suzanne said:
I like the wabi sabi idea though some of the other ideas you are investigating sound very illuminating. Whatever the reason, it seems most people find ruins fascinating. Maybe8 part of the reason is that the give us a sense of time as being longer and more complex than our own short life span.
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morselsandscraps said:
You GAVE me the wabi-sabi idea in the first place, a fact I failed to acknowledge. “A sense of time as longer and more complex than our time span” is a thought worth pursuing: the ambiguities of gone but once there.
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Suzanne said:
Glad to pass ideas on. They flit through my brain at lightning speed atpresent. Nothing seems to stick 😦 I would be fadcinated to read your more measured analysis.
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Rosemary Barnard said:
Amazon.com has a copy for around $36 and free shipping, according to Google. Yes, it sounds like a book that I too would enjoy.
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morselsandscraps said:
Free postage disappeared once I got to checkout – took it up to $67! I don’t want it that much. I’ve downloaded it as a PDF, at least part of it, and the library is hunting it down for me.
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Rosemary Barnard said:
Sensible option. What a rip-off. I might try to borrow it from my own local library some time.
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Rosemary Barnard said:
I thought I would have a look at some of the other second-hand booksellers. I ordered a copy from ABE Books for A$21.13, including shipping. It should be here within three weeks so I can take it with me to WA.
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morselsandscraps said:
I thought I’d canvassed ABE. There you go. I always knew you were very good at searches, amongst many other things you’re very good at.
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Rosemary Barnard said:
Guess what. Wrong date entered on my credit card details, possibly saved from the old one I had last year? So card declined. Sigh. Now ABE server is down. Oh well, there are plenty of copies available and when I finally have mine and have read it, I will present it to you.
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morselsandscraps said:
Your persistence puts me to shame. There’ll need to be a site of ruined grandeur for the presentation!
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Rosemary Barnard said:
The Rose Macaulay book arrived today. First edition, 1953, from a bookshop in Leichhardt, Sydney. It contains an illustration of Palmyra as it was painted in the 18th century, a picturesque ruin. Poor sad Palmyra, there is very little there now. Mind you, the Parthenon was used by the British for target practice.
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morselsandscraps said:
Mission accomplished! I’m impressed. And set to benefit some time.
I found my Palmyra photos in the study purge, and felt deep sadness. I had a misty ramble around the Baalshamin Temple on New Year’s Day, noone else around, and a conversation over a small glass of hot tea with a group of men including an archaeologist. Then an old man sold me a keffiyeh and showed me how to wear it.
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