And Then, What Surprises And Oppresses You Is The Want Of Clear Space,
The Little Room That Remained For The Multitudes In These Halls Which
Are Nevertheless Immense.
The whole space between the walls was
encumbered with pillars.
The temples were half filled with colossal
forests of stone. The men who built Thebes lived in the beginning of
time, and had not yet discovered the thing which to us to-day seems so
simple - namely, the vault. And yet they were marvellous pioneers,
these architects. They had already succeeded in evolving out of the
dark, as it were, a number of conceptions which, from the beginning no
doubt, slumbered in mysterious germ in the human brain - the idea of
rectitude, the straight line, the right angle, the vertical line, of
which Nature furnishes no example, even symmetry, which, if you
consider it well, is less explicable still. They employed symmetry
with a consummate mastery, understanding as well as we do all the
effect that is to be obtained by the repetition of like objects placed
/en pendant/ on either side of a portico or an avenue. But they did
not invent the vault. And therefore, since there was a limit to the
size of the stones which they were able to place flat like beams, they
had recourse to this profusion of columns to support their stupendous
ceilings. And thus it is that there seems to be a want of air, that
one seems to stifle in the middle of their temples, dominated and
obstructed as they are by the rigid presence of so many stones.
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