herman de vries: a sanctuarium is a respected, protected space. the english word sanctuary signifies both shrine and nature reserve. sanctuarium comes from the latin sanctus: "sacred, holy, venerable", "inviolable, untouchable, exalted"; sancire: "to sanctify, to establish as holy and inviolable, to seal by law"; sacer: "holy", with the english derivations sacred: "holy, cultic", and sacrament: "holy rites, religious mystery, mysterium"; sancio: "to sanctify, i.e. to make inviolable through religious consecration", etc. all of these meanings are more of less applicable to sanctuarium. let us also recall that churches and temples were protected spaces where even criminals found safety from the public when they sought refure there. this new sanctuarium, too, is meant to be a respected and protected space. the protection is provided by a massive, round wall, inaccessible because it has no gate, 14 m in diameter, 2,65 m high, with an eye in each of the four directions of the wind, i.e. an opening in the wall through which the occurrences in the sanctuarium can be observed. within this space, nature is free from human intervention; it is a protected space for free development in the midst of a cultivated park (suppressed nature). nothing is sown, nothing planted. the soil in this space comes from a place where pioneer plants imbued the bare earth with life; thus the soil itself is filled with life. now, in spring 1997, the space is empty. a promising emptiness. what will nature do here? it will do something. nature, the primary reality, is a revelation. as a manifestation, it tells us everything that is vitally important. the rest - culture - is its accessory. the decision i made here to let nature manifest itself freely and to limit my design only to protection and presentation - demonstrates my attitude toward this revelation. what am i? - what am i a part of`? - what is my life - to what is my life connected? - these basic questions of philosophy, and their answers, are all embraced in this primary reality that reveals itself to us. "what is mystical is not how the world is, but that it is", wrote ludwig wittgenstein in the midst of the uncertainty, chaos, and desperation of the front in the first world war; "the unspeakable does exist, it shows itself, it is the mystical." the sanctuarium is not about philosophy; it is a place where an occurrence is shown, a place for looking. and so this sanctuarium is also a challenge to look and to reflect; it is also an act of resistance against the threat of the one-sided development of our technological-commercial culture. for my part, i also see it as a cultural choice, in the knowledge both of ignorance and of the necessity for insight and healing. the bare earth of the sanctuarium is grown over only slowly. much too slowly for people who want to see the finished product, the end result right away. there is no end result - a natural succession can develop to the optimum, and in central europe this is mostly a forest milieu. this optimum can extend over centuries and still remain dynamic. nothing is lost. the art does not consist first and foremost in the design and realization of the wall. that is the frame. the most important thing is what takes place within the wall, the plants that take root there, especially the very first small ones. my poetry is the world. the sanskrit text inscribed over all the eyes of the sanctuarium comes from the Tsá-upanishad and is approximately 2.700 years old. for decades, the upanishads have belonged to the literature from which i have drawn essential inspiration. the quotation expresses most clearly what i want to convey. from a number of different translation i chose the one by w.b. yeats: "om. this is perfect. that is perfect. perfect comes from perfect. take perfect from perfect, the remainder is perfect." in other translations, perfect is also rendered: infinite, full and all. these translations make sense too. they do not exclude each other. observing the interior of the sanctuary through each of the eyes, one can meditate on another text. outside the sanctuarium, as well, it is applicable to every situation of nature, our primary reality. - physics and metaphysics are one - |