In quiet admiration for the Greece of yore, which may have
been my chosen plane of existence had I not been
dumped, involuntarily, into this loud, stinking cesspool of postindustrial technocracy, confronted with the
continuous downward spiral it seemed to have inspired in mankind.
Es wird ewig der Ruhm des Alterthums seyn, dass es Viel mit Wenigem
that. Die Geschichte des ungleichen Kampfes bei Marathon, und jener
unsterblichen Dreihundert, deren Untergang ein Sieg war, wiederholt sich
in unzähligen Erscheinungen der alten Welt. Die einfache Organisation
ihrer Staaten, die so Grosses ausführten; die anspruchslose Einrichtung
ihrer Gedichte, die so mächtig wirken; die stille Ruhe ihrer Kunstwerke,
die so laut zur Seele spricht; überall finden wir jene weise
Sparsamkeit, die dem grossen Genius der Natur abgelernt scheint, und
eben darum das untrüglichste Kennzeichen der Genialität ist.¹
More importantly though, I intend this paean,
if you will, to serve as an exposition to a series of postings in which
we'll be looking at certain (mostly) imagined, fictional places² (τόποι) that had a profound effect on me because of their concepts,
look and/or atmosphere. The foremost purpose of my writing about them is
to act
as a preservative for my memories, and through
reflection, to brush off the dust which at times threatens to obscure
their clarity; there's a lot of defocussing pollution in this world, you see.
In a way, it's about exemplifying the notion of
psychogeography (my conception of it, anyway, which may deviate from the official understanding of the term), the curious effect that places can have on the human
psyche: the serene veneration inspired by the remains of ancient Greek
civilization—or the unease brought about by modern industrial complexes.
Actually, calling it psychotopography seems somewhat more adequate
since we'll be less concerned about geos, but rather
fictional spaces, as described in literature and visualized in videogames.
They are tales of psychotopography, of spaces which I have fairly
clear images of in my mind and which evoke peculiar sentiments. Not entirely due to a general lack of eloquence
then, I shan't ever be able to communicate them sufficiently, because
they pertain to me, exclusively, as ideas and memories, which are always
subjective, even if shared collectively by several people, such is the
case with history.
¹ Friedrich Jacobs, Vermischte Schriften Theil 3. p. 528 sq. (via)
² Places that I'm considering: Library of Babel, the Circular Ruins (Borges); the glitch house in Beyond (Animatrix), potentially in juxtaposition with the setting of Murakami's shortstory The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women; the Tower, the mansion in Helston/Heled (Realms of the Haunting); Tower of Latria (Demon's Souls); Atrium (Mirror's Edge); the Art Nouveau city in Labirynt (Lenica); the Gothic, European setting of Angel's Egg; the contemporary Japanese city being infiltrated by the Wired (Serial Experiments Lain)
