Tea at Trianon: The Age of Reason and the Age of Fear

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, December 10, 2023

The Age of Reason and the Age of Fear

From Chronicles:

Many people believe our turbulent, anxious age is unique. A few years ago I created an art exhibit with the same title as this article, and became convinced that the century most akin to ours is the 18th, the so-called “Age of Reason and Enlightenment.”

There are uncanny similarities between the two centuries: fascination with scientific discoveries and rapid technological progress, emphasis on reason and intellectual discourse (recently, alas, that’s less robust), and right next to these themes, religious fanaticism, multiplying fringe cults, superstitions, irrationality, and violence.

So, the 18th century is as much the century of Diderot, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, as it is of Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, Mesmer, and, of course, Robespierre and the insanity of the Terror. All followed by endless wars.

And I see exactly the same phenomena in our time— many on the surface, others subterranean. But let’s examine them closely. In 1714 the Sun King died. Almost immediately everything changed. No more gloom, no more restrictions as during the king’s last years. Under the baton of the dissolute regent, Phillipe d’Orléans, people were dancing in front of what were merely painted backdrops; frivolous, titillating canvases of François Boucher, and of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, charming, and full of light. Life was a masquerade; hedonism the order of the day … and then the thump of the guillotine ended it all!

Did people feel it coming? Perhaps. The melancholy art of Jean-Antoine Watteau and Nicolas Lancret, the desperation in the writing of Novalis and in the paintings of Caspar Friedrich give us a hint. The merriment was on the surface, the anxiety underneath.

Our collective addiction to entertainments is as unbounded as it has ever been: the Internet, the thousands of electronic games, and hundreds of streaming TV programs. Most are artistically inept, intellectually shallow, and ideologically repugnant. That doesn’t matter, though, since they seem to keep people happy. But do they? We suffer from rampant crime, homelessness, drug overdoses, and suicides, especially among the young. And the guillotine, “morphed” into the shape of nuclear annhiliation and a looming Third World War, is creeping towards us from the fog. Again, merriment on the surface, desperation underneath.

I believe architecture is the “face” of society. Through their architecture, we know how the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and the people of medieval times and the Renaissance viewed the world, how they perceived themselves. Today we are obsessed with architectural grandeur. The tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, spirals upward more than twice the height of the Empire State Building, 2,717 feet into the cloudless desert sky. I suspect many architects around the world are now planning a structure that will surpass the Burj Khalifa. After all, contemporary technology enables them to build practically anything they envision.

The architects of the 18th century didn’t have that luxury, but their projects were no less ambitious. What they couldn’t build in reality, they “built” on paper. A telling example lies in the work of Étienne-Louis Boullée, born in 1728. He studied under Jaques-François Blondel, designed a few houses in Paris, and at age 34 was accepted into the Academy of Architecture. There he began attacking Rococo, the prevailing style of the time, patronized by Madame de Pompadour, the King’s charming and bright mistress. Boullée made a lot of enemies. He was a small man, high-strung, impatient, and difficult. At age 46 he retired from practice and devoted his time to drawing and teaching. (Read more.)