must be referred. In practice, only the ideal being of society, that which orders and
prohibits with authority, expresses itself in what are architectural compositions in the
strict sense of the term. Thus, the great monuments are raised up like dams, pitting the
logic of majesty and authority against all the shady elements: it is in the form of
cathedrals and palaces that Church and State speak and impose silence on the multitudes.
It is obvious, actually, that monuments inspire socially acceptable behaviour, and often a
very real fear. The storming of the Bastille is symbolic of this state of affairs: it is
difficult to explain this impulse of the mob other than by the animosity the people hold
against the monuments which are their true masters.
Moreover, every time that architectural composition turns up somewhere other than in
monuments, whether it is in physiognomy, costume, magic or painting, the predominant
taste for authority, whether human or divine, can be inferred. The great compositions of
certain painters express the will to restrict spirit to an official ideal. The disappearance of
academic construction in painting, on the other hand, leaves the way open for expression
(even going as far as exaltation) of psychological processes that are most incompatible
with social stability. It is this, for the most part, that explains the intense reactions
provoked in the last half century by the progressive transformation of painting, which
had, until then, been characterized by a sort of concealed architectural skeleton.
It is clear, furthermore, that the mathematical regulation set in stone is nothing other
than the culmination of an evolution of earthly forms, whose direction is given, in the
biological order, by the transition from simian to human form, with this last presenting all
the components of architecture. Men seem to represent only an intermediary stage in the
morphological process that goes from apes to great edifices. Forms have become ever
more static, ever more dominant. Moreover, the human order is bound up from the start
with the architectural order, which is nothing but a development of the former. Such that
if you attack architecture, whose monumental productions are now the true masters all
across the land, gathering the servile multitudes in their shadow, enforcing admiration
and astonishment, order and constraint, you are in some ways attacking man. A whole
worldly activity, without doubt the most brilliant in the intellectual order, currently tends
in this direction, denouncing the inadequacy of human predominance: thus, strange
though it may seem, when it is a question of a creature as elegant as the human being, a
way opens—as indicated by the painters—towards a bestial monstrousness; as if there
were no other possibility for escape from the architectural galley.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE
The slaughterhouse emerges from religion insofar as the temples of times past (not to
mention the Hindu temples of today) had a dual purpose, being used for both supplication
and slaughter. From this, without doubt (and this much can be adjudged from the chaotic
appearance of the abattoirs of today), comes the startling coincidence of mythological
mysteries with the lugubrious grandeur that characterizes the places where blood flows. It
is curious to see an aching regret being expressed in America: W.B.Seabrook finds that
current customs are insipid, remarking that the blood of sacrifice is not mixed in with
cocktails.^1 Meanwhile, today, the slaughterhouse is cursed and quarantined like a boat
carrying cholera. In fact, the victims of this curse are not butchers or animals, but the
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