Henry Adams

Today's reading is from Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, chapter six:

"You must first try to rid your mind of the traditional idea that the Gothic is an intentional expression of religious gloom. The necessity for light was the motive of the Gothic architects. They needed light and always more light, until they sacrificed safety and common sense in trying to get it. They converted their walls into windows, raised their vaults, dimninished their piers, until their churches could no longer stand. You will see the limits at Beauvais; at Chartres we have not got so far, but even here, in places where the Virgin wanted it -- as above the high altar -- the architect has taken all the light there was to take."

My personal experience is only with the great English cathedrals -- I have been privileged to gape at Winchester, Salisbury, and Canterbury. I wonder what kind of illumination (punning slightly there) I might have missed in the books Adams could have written about them.

Light is the material and the obsession not only of architects and physicists but of poets and metaphysicians too, and though my mind is racing in all of those directions now, I think it best to close down here and leave the racing to you.