Blog
Heavier than stones
Let's face it, it's not often you read about Paris and think of Christchurch.
But here's poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire back in the late 1850s...
... contemplating the changing face of Paris (the warrens of the old city were coming down...
... and Baron Haussmann's new city of broad and orderly avenues was rising up)...
... and striking a note of mournfulness that wouldn't sound inappropriate in front of Christchurch's Provincial Council Buildings or the Barbadoes Street Basilica, where the 'stones of memory' are literally being numbered and carted off:
Paris is changing! but nothing within my melancholy
has shifted! New palaces, scaffolding, piles of stone
Old neighbourhoods – everything has become allegory for me
and my dear memories are heavier than stones.
At 2:29 AM on 10/02/2012, Edward Taylor wrote:
Dear memories become older and stronger than stone because the collective human spirit is the greatest thing in the world.
At 6:39 PM on 10/02/2012, Barry Allom wrote:
Sometimes it's hard to see it for the stones. But I'm sure there's some of that Parisian energy seeping through our souls in christchurch! Thanks Justin for the catalyst!
At 5:35 AM on 11/02/2012, Edward Taylor wrote:
Barry is talking about "energy seeping through our souls" while I am talking about "Dear memories becoming older and stronger than stones". Well to prove my point I just discovered my own dear memory in the Christchurch Art Gallery's street photo. The Mitsubishi Sigma Galant belonged to my father and the trailor it is towing is my brother in laws. I loved my fathers brand new metallic brown Sigma. Well I also loved the white Commonwealth games Holden Station wagon that the Sigma replaced. But in the Sigma I could control my wing mirror from the inside by wiggling a little stick. Dear memories, stronger and lighter than stone that I will hold for eternity.
Add a comment