The Babel Fiasco (Part V: The Hermeneutic Surface)

Peterborough Retrochoir (16thC), Peterborough Cathedral (c.1201)

It is this hermeneutic line that becomes an arc/surface in the Peterborough fan vaults.  The extraordinary vaults of the Peterborough Cathedral (c.1201) were, in fact, built early in the 16th Century.  The hermeneutic surface of the vaults describe a fully comprehensive three-dimensional projection, not the simpler variety restricted to two-dimensional slices.  The fans spread, such that the quatrefoil gaps are nearly eliminated, thereby enclosing the space of the cathedral.  It is here, perhaps, that we see the precursor of Leibniz’s statement that there can never be “a straight line without curves intermingled.”  Deleuze’s discussion of the folds in the soul also come to mind for we see, in the vaults, a cavernous porous world constituting more than a line and less than a surface.

While symmetry remains, despite the transformation of the inflections in the surface, the line of symmetry is no longer flat, no longer residing on a “favoured plane of projection,” rather symmetry courses along in shallow waves, slicing through the splayed lips of the pouting fans”.  This, then, is how we can think of the hermeneutic lin/arc/surface/ fold of the Gothic soul: in approaching the perpendicular, the Gothic must turn from perfection and infinity back to the enclosed world.

Henry VII chapel, Westminster

Standing in Westminster Abbey, looking heavenward, we seek clarification – not from the God of the Gothics – but in the hope of resolving the hermeneutic space of the cathedral.  at last, in the Henry VII Chapel we find the total inversion of the Gothic upward mobility.  In the vaults of the nave the fans are hung, pendant-like, from the ceiling.  They drip with the memory of babel – turning away from the heavens in a coruscated landscape.

Robin Evans writes of the chapel “there are few creatures as pathetic as the swan that sang while dying, and there are few buildings that solicit so much pathos as the Henry VII Chapel playing itself out.”

The Henry VII Chapel at Westminster is at the extremity of Gothic aarchitecure.  It is not a summit, rather, it is an apotheosis.  As Peter Kidson writes “It leaves the impression that there was very little left for anyone else to do afterwards”

Next time… MERZ!