Looking back at the rubble 
David Simpson
- The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War by Robert Bevan
Thucydides claimed that posterity should not judge the power and dignity of states by their architectural remains. The power of Sparta over much of the Peloponnese and beyond could not have been inferred from an inspection of its built culture – a collection of villages with no grandiose temples or monuments. Conversely, the importance of Athens would be overestimated by anyone in later times who based their opinion on the spectacle of its architectural remains. Does it then follow that the physical destruction of ancient Sparta would have been a less decisive blow to Spartan self-identity than the same destruction would have been to the Athenians? Do all cultures, or the same cultures at different times, invest the same beliefs in a strong correlation between what they build and who they are?
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
David Simpson teaches English at the University of California, Davis. His most recent book is 9/11: The Culture of Commemoration. Wordsworth, Commodification and Social Concern will come out from Cambridge next year.
Other articles by this contributor:
The Mourning Paper · war and showing pictures of the dead
Touches of the Real · Stephen Greenblatt
print layout
tell a friend