From Gemstones to Jewellery 55grew old and so were, despite everything, alive. as for the quintessential
stone, the diamond, it is beyond time: never wearing, incorruptible, its
limpidness forms the moral image of the most deadly of virtues—purity;
in terms of substance, the diamond is pure, clean, almost aseptic;
but whereas there are some purities that are tender, fragile (water for
example), there are others that are sterile, cold, steely; for purity is life,
but it can also be, by contrast, infertility, and the diamond is like the
sterile son emerging from the deepest point of the earth, non-productive,
incapable of rotting down, hence incapable of becoming the source of
new life.
and yet, it seduces; hard and limpid, the diamond has a third
symbolic quality: it glistens. here it is incorporated into a new magical
and poetic domain, that of the paradoxical substance, both lit up and
stone cold: it is nothing but fire and yet nothing but ice. This cold fire, this
sharp, shining object which is nevertheless silent, what a symbol for the
whole world of vanities, of seductions devoid of content, of pleasures
devoid of sincerity! For centuries, Christian humanity felt deeply (much
more than we do today) the opposition between the world and solitude;
thanks to its fire-like sparkle and its coldness, the diamond was this
world, this abhorrent and fascinating order of ambition, flattery and
disappointment, condemned by so many of our moralists—perhaps in
order better to describe it.
and what about gold, which was also used to make gemstones?
Though originating in the earth and in hell, arriving first as ore or as
nugget, gold is a substance more intellectual than symbolic; it holds
a fascination only within certain mercantile economies; it has no,
or very little, poetic reality; it is only ever mentioned so as to show
how this most mediocre of substances (a dull, yellowy metal) clashes
with the importance of its effects. But as a sign, what power it has!
and it is precisely the sign par excellence, the sign of all the signs;
it is absolute value, invested with all powers including those once
held by magic: is it not able to appropriate everything, goods and
virtues, lives and bodies? Is it not able to convert everything into its
opposite, to lower and to elevate, to demean and to glorify? The
gemstone has long participated in this power of gold. and this is not
all: owing to the fact that gold very quickly stopped being convertible
or useful and so removed itself from any practical application, pure
gold, whose usefulness was almost entirely self-referential, became