A Sentimental Topography

[From Dimitris Pikionis, Architect 1887-1968 'A Sentimental Topography', Architectural Association, London.]

Here are stone formations shaped by divine forces - rocks, broken boulders, the dust born of the fruitful soil, its particles as uncountable as the stars.

I stoop and pick up a stone. I caress it with my eyes, with my fingers. It is a piece of grey limestone. Fire molded its divine shape; water sculpted it and endowed it with this fine covering of clay that has alternating patches of white and rust, with a yellow tinge. I turn it around in my hands. I study the harmony of its contours. I delight in the way hollows and protrusions, light and shadows; balance each other on its surface. I rejoice in the way the universal laws are embodied and fulfilled in this stone - the laws, which, according to Goethe, would have remained unknown to us, had not an innate sense of beauty revealed them to the poet and the artist.

In truth, it occurs to me, O stone, that as the incandescent mass of this planet was torn away from the sun and set spinning around like a ring of fire, eventually condensing into our earth, you came to occupy a place within its vast expanse that was in no way accidental. The harmony of the whole, which determined the inclination of our planet's axis, also assigned this particular place to you as your home, as the generator of your supremely spiritual form, within an atmosphere and light that are spiritually attuned to you.

The dance of your atoms, governed by number, shapes your constituent parts according to the law of your singularity. You thus enact this twofold law of universal and individual harmony.

I feel you growing, expanding in my imagination.

Your lateral surfaces turn into slopes, ridges, and noble precipices. Your hollows become caverns, where water silently trickles from the cracks in the rose-colored rock.

Stone, you compose the lineaments of this landscape. You are the landscape. You are the Temple that is to crown the precipitous rocks of your own Acropolis. For what else does the Temple do but enact the same twofold law, which you serve?