in Moscow's new Afimoll (a mall) beneath the crisis-halted construction of the Moscow Citi project, I read yesterday in a work on the meaning in Gothic architecture (which I got in NY's Cathedral of St John the Divine), of how Bernard of Clairvaux had a stance to the world very different to that present in this mall's shops, shoppers and strollers.
"We who have turned aside from society, relinquishing for Christ's sake all the precious and beautiful things in the world, its wondrous light and colour, its sweet sounds and odours, the pleasures of taste and touch, for us all bodily delights are nothing but dung." (Universe of Stone, Philip Ball, p. 44-45)
this is a retreat, a kind of escape from the lures of the world of the senses.
another stance to the world, and one I have tended to live, is to "turn away from society" not "for Christ's sake", but for the sake of insight into the world, life, mankind. to learn through experience of the world; to turn experience and study into insight and knowledge. closer to the idea of education, to the German Bildung (in it later, 19th century sense).
escape. experience.
the thousands of people ambling around the mall with no more apparent aim than relaxation and enjoyment of a day off in the marble-floored mall, gave no sense of being interested in escaping from the world, and not much intention of insight via experience.
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