That Which Remains

Rounding a dark corner of the Museum of London, a recording of a man’s voice reaches the ear with words of reminiscence, reminiscence about dust. He’s said something about the construction of buildings...but that part is not heard clearly. The words that resonate, quite clearly, in the moment of coming into that room full of images projected in light on dark walls, images of the bombing of London in the Second World War, is that the smell of dust made him weep. And he thought that, perhaps, these were the tears that he never cried in his childhood, during the blitz, all those years ago. He remembered that at that time, everything had smelled of dust.

Standing in that room, more recordings of voices play, more black and white photographs project onto the wall. Remembrances of fire, of screaming, of singing to keep spirits up — of just fighting on and on, and not feeling afraid...except for that one time.

One voice recalls looking up, amid all the destruction and chaos, and seeing St. Paul’s, standing firmly, untouched by the rubble and dust. A photograph on the wall behind depicts the monumental dome, rising above the piled-up ruins of wooden building frames tumbled in broken heaps. The voice continues, saying that the people would look up and see St. Paul’s, still there, and it would give them hope. And there was a general feeling that, as long as St. Paul’s still stood, London still stood. The voice adds, thoughtfully, that if ever St. Paul’s were to be bombed to the ground, then they would have lost all hope.

The projections and recordings come back around to the story about the man who smelled dust. Years after the war, when there was a lot of construction going on, new buildings going up everywhere, he remembers that the smell of the dust made him weep. And he thought that, perhaps, these were the tears that he never cried in his childhood, during the blitz, all those years ago.

This time as the recording plays, his tears are not alone.

“...for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:19b

The voice in the recording remembered that, during the bombings, everything had smelled of dust. The smell of new building construction brought these memories back to him, vividly. New buildings going up, buildings toppling down, both construction and destruction smelled of dust.

Walking down the streets of London nowadays, in the bright sunshine, blinding to the eyes that come out of the dark rooms of a museum, St. Paul’s still stands tall. Its monumental dome is a beacon out of time, not only from its own time, a final crown at the end of the Renaissance, but of all time — harkening back to antiquity in its colossal design — standing tall throughout human memory since — that beacon, during war, of hope for the future. Now it looms, a mighty citadel of the past, present, and future, above the chequered metal and glass rise of the buildings of today. Human progress glimmers, all spit and polish and business suits, to meet its towering presence in the sky.

To the eye that does not see beauty in the businesslike aesthetic of present-day architecture, St. Paul’s stands as a testament to the classical aesthetic of which humankind was, and still is, capable. To the eye that sees beauty in the symmetrical, clean lines and shining, reflective glass of the city skyline, St. Paul’s stands as a proud compliment, the different eras of architecture side by side. Either way, among the rising and speeding city of our hyper-technological age, St. Paul’s is that which remains of a distant past. Just as, during wartime, it was that which remained for the future.

Far away, in the city of Milan, across what was once enemy lines, a wall display of black and white photographs tells another story from the Second World War. It leads the way to a reconstructed refectory, the walls of which bear two paintings, one, a local Milanese Renaissance painter’s rendition of the crucifixion of Christ, and the other, Cenacolo Vinciano, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. These two walls with these paintings are all that remain of the original dining hall of the monks. Bombs dropped on the place during the war. Yet while all the rest of the building crashed down, the crucifixion painting and Cenacolo Vinciano still stood, undamaged. The photograph of the crucifixion painting is especially evocative. The Last Supper was saved by the cover of the great foundational beams. But the other painting stood alone, a single wall amid rubble and dust, bearing up the image of Jesus on the cross, looking very worthy of the proud words of the local guide: “a miracle.” In the midst of war, a symbol of faith.

As the expert guide informs, or the art student will tell you, Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper has only lasted through the years thanks to the hard work of good restorations (and despite the faulty work of bad ones). For to paint it, da Vinci used an experimental technique. It is not a fresco, the time-tested method that merges the painting as part of the wall as the pigment dries into the plaster. For fresco requires working quickly, before the plaster dries. He instead actually painted the surface of a dry wall. To take enough time to create such a masterpiece? So that he could multitask this work along with his other commissions? For the sake of pioneering the technique, in the same way he pioneered the expressiveness of the disciples’ postures and faces? Whatever the reasons behind da Vinci’s leap of faith into a new technique, his Last Supper has required restoration after restoration to still remain for viewers to admire today. All this work...and a miracle.

The genius behind St. Paul’s took no leap of faith concerning the posterity of his great masterpiece. As painted on the wall of a different sort of dining hall, the cafeteria of a youth hostel, on a banner held up by two Hallmarkean cherubs, the words of the famed architect Sir Christopher Wren declare: “I build for eternity.”

Rounding the corner of another museum, this time pushing through a curtain of strips of translucent plastic, slightly different words about eternity read, in large, block capitals: “Who wants to live forever?”

In a fringe corner of the V&A Museum’s The Future Starts Here exhibition, curtained off with future-as-imagined-by-the-sixties style, a space is dedicated to humanity attempting to build Towers of Babel of science and time. The Magna Carta is preserved for posterity on a tiny, indestructible, clear, round tablet. (Having later seen the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, one wonders if it might have been prudent to engrave the tiny capsule in multiple languages rather than only English…) A phone on a stand demonstrates an app that gathers every scintilla of information possible about a person from his apps and internet dossier (including a trip with his daughter to the V&A Museum that day). The app texts him in realtime in an attempt to delve deeper into the information gathered (asking about how he and his wife met). The app’s purpose (be warned ye faint of heart) is to create a digital “avatar” of the man that his loved ones can text conversations with after his death.

In the very corner of this curtained-off corner is an array of objects in a glass case, looking upon first glance like an elaborate first aid kit. As a video and plaques of information explain, these are the tools used by a number of people (about 2,000 so far) who have had their bodies cryogenically frozen upon their death. Their belief is that, someday, some scientist of the future will discover how to reanimate them, bringing them back to life. The rule, it seems, is that the last shall be first. The most recently frozen body is supposed to be the soonest animated, hypothetically guaranteeing that the first pioneers get to “wake up” the farthest amount of time into the future.

Let each have their own thoughts about this particular enterprise of humankind. Does the cryogenic freezing process smell like dust?

After that, switch gears, from science (and pop science) to art.

London is a treasure-trove of museums and art galleries — of places that store up and display that which remains — informational bits and sweeping pieces of human life. The next to be visited is The National Gallery, on the last day of the exhibition Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire.

Thomas Cole loved trees. A tree can be seen in the foreground of possibly every painting by him in the gallery. A wall is dedicated to sketched studies by him of trees. A plaque remembers a poem he wrote in grief about the chopping down of a favorite tree. Perhaps, then, it is a mark of foreshadowing, when in the peaceful, playful, youthful, fair paradise of his Arcadian/Pastoral painting, in The Course of Empire, there stands in the foreground the broken stump of a chopped-down tree.

But before his great masterpiece, we must round a few corners. First, near the wall of tree sketches, hangs his painting of Eden. Here is ultimate paradise depicted in rich greens and vivacious detail. Cole also painted The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, but that painting is not here. Here is only the garden unspoilt, overhung with leaf, fern, and vine, and flowing waterfall. Tiny and almost missable, except on closer inspection, are the two original humans, those creations of life out of dust, Adam and Eve.

Other paintings in the exhibition include works by great painters from which Cole drew inspiration; his paintings of the American wilderness; studies of Italian landscapes and Roman ruins; until, at last, we come to the focal series, The Course of Empire.

Throughout all of the Empire paintings, as Savage bowhunter becomes Arcadian youth scribbling a stick-figure soldier in red chalk (spied on by a soldier nearby); as Stonehenge-esque temple becomes endless, colossal columns and statues towering forever outward and upward; as merry teens dancing in flirtatious, Pastoral Maypole frolic become a young woman, arms outstretched, reaching towards a precipitous drop to the sea to escape the violent advances of a soldier tearing at her robes; as Consummation luxury and parade of human populace become Desolation of temples to ruins and not a soul in sight; behind every scene in this Course, stands a mountain. The great towering rock still stands throughout it all — that which remains. It is sometimes to the left or right, sometimes farther in the background, sometimes nearer. But it is always there.

So what is that which remains?

A monumental cathedral by a genius architect, a symbol? The spirit and fight of a people who project their own resilience and capacity for hope onto that symbol?

Art? Miracles? Faith?

The soulless body preserved in cryogenic ice? A great mountain standing tall as humanity runs its course from savagery to naissance to consummation to destruction?

Dust?

That phrase, that which remains, it rings of these. It rings of the bells of St. Paul’s tolling out the hours of the day. But it rings, also, of something else. It rings of words that might make sense of all of these complicated facets of the relationship of humanity and eternity.

“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:12-13