Fish Out of Water by Eric Metaxas

Author:Eric Metaxas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salem Books
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Death of Meaning

At the heart of Yale is the Sterling Memorial Library, built in the late twenties for seventeen million dollars—an astonishing amount at the time. As anyone can see, it was intentionally designed by James Gamble Rogers to look like a great cathedral. Immediately upon entering through what look like cathedral doors, one finds oneself walking a long narrow aisle leading to what looks like an altar, above which Rogers placed what he called the “altar mural.” Its main figure looks strikingly like the Virgin Mary, but reveals itself to be a personification of “alma mater”—“our mother”—but of course the mother is Yale herself. The whole affair, while not necessarily mocking religious art and architecture, comes asymptotically close. Indeed, the long, narrow passageway leading to the “altar” is called the “nave,” just as in a cathedral, and the part that looks like a chancel is called “the chancel.”

It all begins to make sense when we learn that in 1926, Yale abandoned mandatory chapel services, scuttling plans for a new chapel across the quadrangle from the library. Rogers brightly thought he could take advantage of this by incorporating the larger ecclesiastical theme into the library, and of course did, using stained glass and other details to make the building look unmistakably like a cathedral. Except it was the first building ever to do so that was not actually a cathedral. So it was a daring statement in its day. Many found it sacrilegious and deeply offensive, as what it did was overtly secularize what was once strictly ecclesiastical, while cheekily imparting the elements of religious faith to the secular.

I remember walking along the “nave” toward the circulation desk—the running joke is that one need not “genuflect” there—and then turning right and coming to a beautiful cloistered walk with medieval-style carvings, each of which mocked student life. One depicted a student drinking a mug of beer beneath a curvaceous pin-up, another a student snoozing over his books; and another a student listening to the radio, the student distraction of that day. If this building was a secular temple to learning and knowledge, it seemed a curious thing to come upon these literally lapidary homages to adolescent snickering at the idea. But it was the fourth sculpture that took the joke a step further. It struck me personally, when I first saw it, and is the only one that depicts a student reading a book. But what the book says is extraordinarily cynical, if not positively dark. The carved book’s left page has the letters U, R, and A carved into it. The right-hand page bears four letters, two on the top and two below:

J O

K E

Of course on one level it’s simply a joke itself. But it also seems to be saying that if you are the sort of earnest fellow who—unlike the other three—actually goes to the trouble of studying, you will find that at the end of all knowledge is something surprising and perhaps quite troubling. And that is the idea that you are yourself a joke.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.