The Tower

I have been standing where everybody has stood, opposite the great
Belfry Tower of Bruges, and thinking, as every one has thought
(though not, perhaps, said), that it is built in defiance of all decencies
of architecture. It is made in deliberate disproportion to achieve
the one startling effect of height. It is a church on stilts.
But this sort of sublime deformity is characteristic of the whole fancy
and energy of these Flemish cities. Flanders has the flattest and most
prosaic landscapes, but the most violent and extravagant of buildings.
Here Nature is tame; it is civilisation that is untamable.
Here the fields are as flat as a paved square; but, on the other hand,
the streets and roofs are as uproarious as a forest in a great wind.
The waters of wood and meadow slide as smoothly and meekly
as if they were in the London water-pipes. But the parish
pump is carved with all the creatures out of the wilderness.
Part of this is true, of course, of all art. We talk of wild animals,
but the wildest animal is man. There are sounds in music that are
more ancient and awful than the cry of the strangest beast at night.
And so also there are buildings that are shapeless in their strength,
seeming to lift themselves slowly like monsters from the primal mire,
and there are spires that seem to fly up suddenly like a startled bird.

. . . . .

This savagery even in stone is the expression of the special spirit
in humanity. All the beasts of the field are respectable; it is only
man who has broken loose. All animals are domestic animals; only man
is ever undomestic. All animals are tame animals; it is only we who
are wild. And doubtless, also, while this queer energy is common to
all human art, it is also generally characteristic of Christian art
among the arts of the world. This is what people really mean when
they say that Christianity is barbaric, and arose in ignorance.
As a matter of historic fact, it didn't; it arose in the most
equably civilised period the world has ever seen.

But it is true that there is something in it that breaks
the outline of perfect and conventional beauty, something that dots
with anger the blind eyes of the Apollo and lashes to a cavalry
charge the horses of the Elgin Marbles. Christianity is savage,
in the sense that it is primeval; there is in it a touch
of the nigger hymn. I remember a debate in which I had praised
militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could
imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band.
I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ
definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment.
When the street children shouted too loud, certain priggish
disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of good