Nairn's Paris by Ian Nairn

Author:Ian Nairn [Ian Nairn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910479500
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2017-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Panthéon

Soufflot, begun 1738, finished 1789

Man proposes, events dispose, and the spirit of Paris does what it likes. The Panthéon was built as a church, became a pantheon at the Revolution, and thereafter seesawed twice between God and the Légion d’Honneur.

The outside is now in mottled confusion with forty-two of Soufflot’s windows blocked and newly revealed from under the grime. But the inside is a true temple to reason, underlined by absurd sculptural groups: ‘L’ENCYCLOPÉDIE PRÉPARE L’IDÉE DE LA RÉVOLUTION’ and – not to appear one-sided – ‘AUX ORATEURS ET AUX PUBLICISTES DE LA RESTAURATION’. A simultaneous standard of genuine appreciation, genuflection and mordant satire is essential to the Panthéon. It is worthily maintained in the crypt where a nest of Napoleon’s hangers-on compete for space with Voltaire and Rousseau: everything is serious and absurd at the same time.

Soufflot was aiming to unite classical design and Gothic structure. Up to the main cornice, the elevation is normal and well set out. Above it, everything is done to lighten the load. The heaviness of a tunnel vault disappears in saucer domes; and at each corner a solid mass of masonry is replaced by ribs with small domes between (at the largest corners of all, supporting the main dome, Soufflot’s successor played safe, after his death). The result is more supple than any other classical building of its time. Lightened and dignified by this delicate invention above-stairs, the space unrolls, stately and discriminating, like a roofed-over boulevard. Through the open door the Eiffel Tower winks its complicity, off centre; against all the odds, the Panthéon turns out to be on the side of Paris. It deserves to be used as a true pantheon, displaying the best French music, poetry, painting, rhetoric, cooking – not to mention sculpture.

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