The Eiffel Tower

Author(s): Roland Barthes

Source: AA Files , 2012, No. 64 (2012), pp. 112-131
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41762314

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 produced as a handsome, square, hardcover
the Seine, in Paris' volume, complemented by a series of very fine
7th ar ondis ement, photographs by André Martin and a short
on axis with the historical essay. Seven years earlier, in 1957, Seuil
Trocadéro gardens had published Barthes' first book, a collection
to the north and of essays, previously written for the bi-monthly
the École Militaire magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles, which examined
to the south, slightly an eclectic mix of modern phenomena and the
impacted into meanings and significances that had been
Haussmann's grid conferred upon them. Among these were short,
between Quai Branly meditative, but utterly compelling texts on red
and Avenue Joseph wine, professional wrestling and the Citroën ds.
Bouvard, but visible Barthes' elucidation of these cultural artefacts
On Trocadéro betwe n Bouvard, to and for to n impacted the Haus man 's the 7th the the the axis miles École Seine, ar ondis ement, Avenue Left south, northfor
with Quai around, but Mmiles
il taire Bank into in gardens Josearound,
ph and the Paris' slightly vis ble Branly grid of as myths lent the book its title, Mythologies.
stands a 324m-high wrought iron structure. Over the next 20 years, on the back of the success
Built in 1889 as the entrance arch to the World's of this book and the many others that followed,
Fair, and marking the centenary of the French Barthes' stature as a writer, semiotician and
Revolution, it is named after the engineer who philosopher grew exponentially, and with it,
designed it - the Eiffel Tower. the demand for English translations of his
Universally recognised as an emblem not just various books. In 1972 the New York publisher
for Paris but for France as a whole, the statistics Hill & Wang produced the first English edition of
of its engineering offer an avalanche of data that Mythologies , followed soon after by The Pleasure
helps contextualise its symbolic resonance. For of the Text and S/Z. And then in 1979 Farrar,
the purposes of brevity I will share only two of Straus and Giroux (parent company to Hill &
these with you. Firstly, the Eiffel Tower has been Wang) produced a second volume of essays
painted 18 times since its initial construction, drawn from Mythologies , this time adding a new
and has changed colour several times, passing text - Barthes' Eiffel Tower essay - so that the
from red-brown to yellow-ochre, then to chestnut book's title became The Eiffel Tower & Other
brown and finally to the bronze of today. Mythologies. And so it was as another - or even
Although to be more precise it is currently the definitive - 'mythology' that the Eiffel Tower
painted in three different shades of bronze, with extended its symbolic purpose by coming to
the darkest on the bottom and the lightest on represent an emerging branch of cultural and
the top, to enhance the impression of height and philosophical enquiry.
ensure that the colour is perceived to be the same This publishing backstory is merely a
all the way up as it stands against the Paris sky. preamble to the fact that recently the aa doctoral
And secondly, the Eiffel Tower restaurant - student Aldo Urbinati, researching the Eiffel
Le Jules Verne - run by Alain Ducasse and located Tower for his PhD thesis, discovered that for
on the second deck of the tower, currently offers some mysterious reason when Farrar, Straus
a three-course menu that includes a crab claw and Giroux published their English language
starter with gold caviar and marinated turnips, version of Barthes' essay, Richard Howard's
followed by pan-seared beef tournedos, fresh translation covered only the first half of the text.
duck foie gras, soufflé potatoes and a Périgueux A whole second half remained untouched.
sauce, rounded off with an Armagnac baba And so what you see here on the pages that
dessert and lightly whipped cream. follow is the first complete English version of the
The tower, then, of course (as if it needs
essay (prefaced by André Martin's panoramic
restating), is peculiarly, wholeheartedly French. photographs, taken from the top, and therefore
Perhaps this is why Roland Barthes, the great showing absolutely everything but the tower),
detective of France's cultural identity, chose marrying Howard's first half with a new second-
to write about it, famously beginning his mini half translation by Julie Rose. And with it, what
treatise with an anecdote about how Maupassant was once a last line - 'one can dream there, eat
used to lunch at the tower because it was the there, observe there, understand there, marvel
only place in Paris where he didn't have to look at
there, shop there; as on an ocean liner (another
it. Over the years, Barthes' brilliant analysis has mythic object that sets children dreaming),
come to be cherished as much as the tower itself one can feel oneself cut off from the world and
(Maupassant's disdain notwithstanding), but theyet the owner of a world' - suddenly becomes
intricacies of its writing and dissemination bear
not a denouement but a bridge to a once lost
closer scrutiny. but now whole again wrought iron mythology.
Barthes' original, complete text was first - Thomas Weaver

published in French in the 1964 La Tour Eiffel,

part of Delpire's 'Le génie du lieu' (Spirit of
the Place) series, which also included profiles
Following pages: André Martin, panoramic
of St Mark's Basilica and the Great Mosque at photos from the top of the Eiffel Tower, 1964
Kirwan. Like these other titles, the book was © Delpire éditeur

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 Maupassant often lunched at the restaurant
in the Tower, though he didn't care much for
The and now constitutes as an object, simultane-
ously extended and collected beneath it, that
the food: 'It's the only place in Paris', he used Paris which just now was looking at it. The
to say, 'where I don't have to see it'. And it's Eiffel Tower is an object which sees, a glance
true that you must take endless precautions, which is seen; it is a complete verb, both
in Paris, not to see the Eiffel Tower; whatever
Tower active and passive, in which no function, no
voice (as we say in grammar, with a piquant
the season, through mist and cloud, on over-
cast days or in sunshine, in rain - wherever ambiguity) is defective. This dialectic is not
you are, whatever the landscape of roofs, Roland Barthes in the least banal, it makes the tower a singu-
domes or branches separating you from it, lar monument; for the world ordinarily pro-
the Tower is there ; incorporated into daily life duces either purely functional organisms
until you can no longer grant it any specific (camera or eye) intended to see things but
attribute, determined merely to persist, like which then afford nothing to sight, what sees
being mythically linked to what remains hidden (this is the theme of
a rock or the river, it is as literal as a phenomenon of nature whose
meaning can be questioned to infinity but whose existence is incon- the voyeur), or else spectacles which themselves are blind and are
left in the pure passivity of the visible. The Tower (and this is one of
testable. There is virtually no Parisian glance it fails to touch at some
its mythic powers) transgresses this separation, this habitual divorce
time of day; at the moment I begin writing these lines about it, the
of seeing and being seen ; it achieves a sovereign circulation between
Tower is there, in front of me, framed by my window; and at the very
the two functions; it is a complete object which has, if one may say
moment the January night blurs it, apparently trying to make it invis-
so, both sexes of sight. This radiant position in the order of percep-
ible, to deny its presence, two little lights come on, winking gently
tion gives it a prodigious propensity to meaning: the Tower attracts
as they revolve at its very tip: all this night, too, it will be there, con-
necting me above Paris to each of my friends that I know are seeing meaning, the way a lightning rod attracts thunderbolts; for all lovers
of signification, it plays a glamorous part, that of a pure signifier, ie,
it: with it we all comprise a shifting figure of which it is the steady
centre: the Tower is friendly. of a form in which men unceasingly put meaning (which they extract
at will from their knowledge, their dreams, their history), without
world. First of al as a universal symbol of this meaning thereby ever being finite and fixed: who can say what
Paris, it is ev rywher on the globe wher the Tower will be for humanity tomorrow? But there can be no doubt
Paris to be sta ed as an image; from the it will always be something, and something of humanity itself.
Midwest o Australi , ther is no journey Glance, object, symbol, such is the infinite circuit of functions which
to France which isn't made, somehow, in permits it always to be something other and something much more
the Tower's name, no Scho lbo k, poster than the Eiffel Tower.

or film about France which fails to pro- In order to satisfy this great oneiric function, which makes it into
pose it as the major sign of a people and of a kind of total monument, the Tower must escape reason. The first
a place: it belongs to the universal an- condition of this victorious flight is that the Tower be an utterly use-
guage of travel. Further: beyond its trictly less monument. The Tower's inutility has always been obscurely felt
Parisan sta ement, it ouches the most to be a scandal, ie, a truth, one that is precious and inadmissible.
The guage world. gen ral to Paris Paris, or a Midwest pose the Parisan place: France film Tower Tower's it is t of First as to about is travel. it sta ement, to the human which be verywher is belongs Ausgternalrial,houmfannaimmaeg,e-mrepajrotroirset:aitsed also al France Further: isn't as no pres nt image-rep rtoire: sign as a to it made, universal on Scho lbo k, ther which an the touches beyond of the image; a universal to people is omehow, globe fails no the symbol its the from journey to strictly poster and wher entire most pro- lan- the its in of of Even before it was built it was blamed for being useless, which, it was
simple, primary shape confers upon it he vocation of an infinte believed at the time, was sufficient to condemn it; it was not in the
cipher: in turn and ac ording to the ap eals of our imagination, the spirit of a period commonly dedicated to rationality and to the
symbol of Paris, of modernity, of com unication, of science or of empiricism of great bourgeois enterprises to endure the notion of a
the ni et enth century, rocket, stem, der ick, phalus, lightni g rod useless object (unless it was declaratively an objet d'art , which was
or insect, confronting the great itnera ies of our dreams, it is the also unthinkable in relation to the Tower); hence Gustave Eiffel, in
inevitable sign; just as ther is no Parisan glance which is not com- his own defence of his project in reply to the Artists' Petition, scrupu-
pel d to encounter it, ther is no fantasy which fails, o ner or later, lously lists all the future uses of the Tower: they are all, as we might
to acknowledge its form and to be nourished by it; pick up a pencil expect of an engineer, scientific uses: aerodynamic measurements,
and let your hand, in other words your thoughts, wander, and it is studies of the resistance of substances, physiology of the climber,
often the Tower which wil ap ear, reduced to that simple line radio-electric research, problems of telecommunication, meteoro-
whose sole mythic function is to join, as the poet says, base and sum- logical observations, etc. These uses are doubtless incontestable,
mit , or ag in, earth and heaven . but they seem quite ridiculous alongside the overwhelming myth of
This pure - virtualy empty - sign is neluctable, because it means the Tower, of the human meaning which it has assumed throughout
ev rything . In order to negate the Eif el Tower (though the tempta- the world. This is because here the utilitarian excuses, however
tion to do so is ra e, for this ymbol of ends nothing in us), you must, ennobled they may be by the myth of science, are nothing in compar-
like Maupas ant, get up on it and, so to speak, identify ourself with ison to the great imaginary function which enables men to be strictly
it. Like man himself, who is the only one not o know his own glance, human. Yet, as always, the gratuitous meaning of the work is never
the Tower is the only blind point of the to al optical sy tem of which avowed directly: it is rationalised under the rubric of use : Eiffel saw
it is the centre and Paris the circumference. But in this movement his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return
it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally
which seems to limit it, the Tower acquires a new power: an object
when we look at it, it becomes a lookout in its turn when we visittouches
it, on the borders of the irrational.

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 This double movement is a profound one: architecture is always elements - waters, valleys, forests - they assemble beneath them, so
dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a con- that the tourism of the 'fine view' infallibly implies a naturist mythol-
venience. Even before the Tower's birth, the nineteenth century ogy. Whereas the Tower overlooks not nature but the city; and yet, by
(especially in America and in England) had often dreamed of struc- its very position of a visited outlook, the Tower makes the city into a
tures whose height would be astonishing, for the century was given kind of nature; it constitutes the swarming of men into a landscape,
to technological feats, and the conquest of the sky once again preyed it adds to the frequently grim urban myth a romantic dimension, a
upon humanity. In 1881, shortly before the Tower, a French architect harmony, a mitigation; by it, starting from it, the city joins up with
had elaborated the project of a sun tower; now this project, quite the great natural themes which are offered to the curiosity of men:
mad technologically, since it relied on masonry and not on steel, also the ocean, the storm, the mountains, the snow, the rivers. To visit the
put itself under the warrant of a thoroughly empirical utility; on the Tower, then, is to enter into contact not with a historical Sacred, as is
one hand, a bonfire placed on top of the structure was to illuminate the case for the majority of monuments, but rather with a new
the darkness of every nook and cranny in Paris by a system of mirrors nature, that of human space: the Tower is not a trace, a souvenir, in
(a system that was undoubtedly a complex one!), and on the other, short a culture; but rather an immediate consumption of a humanity
the last storey of this sun tower (about 1,000 feet, like the Eiffel made natural by that glance which transforms it into space.
Tower) was to be reserved for a kind of sunroom, in which invalids One might say that for this reason the Tower materialises an
would benefit from an air 'as pure as in the mountains'. And yet, here imagination which has had its first expression in literature (it is fre-
as in the case of the Tower, the naive utilitarianism of the enterprise quently the function of the great books to achieve in advance what
is not separate from the oneiric, infinitely powerful function which, technology will merely put into execution). The nineteenth century,
actually, inspires its creation: use never does anything but shelter 50 years before the Tower, produced indeed two works in which the
meaning. Hence we might speak, among men, of a true Babel com- (perhaps very old) fantasy of a panoramic vision received the guaran-
plex: Babel was supposed to serve to communicate with God, and yet tee of a major poetic writing {écriture): these are, on the one hand, the
Babel is a dream which touches much greater depths than that of the chapter of Notre-Dame de Paris {The Hunchback of Notre Dame) devot-
theological project; and just as this great ascensional dream, ed to a bird's-eye view of Paris, and on the other, Michelet's Tableau
released from its utilitarian prop, is finally what remains in the chronologique . Now, what is admirable in these two great inclusive
countless Babels represented by the painters, as if the function of art visions, one of Paris, the other of France, is that Hugo and Michelet
were to reveal the profound uselessness of objects, just so the Tower, clearly understood that to the marvellous mitigation of altitude the
almost immediately disengaged from the scientific considerations panoramic vision added an incomparable power of intellection : the
which had authorised its birth (it matters very little here that the bird's-eye view, which each visitor to the Tower can assume in an
Tower should be in fact useful), has arisen from a great human instant for his own, gives us the world to read and not only to perceive;
dream in which movable and infinite meanings are mingled: it has this is why it corresponds to a new sensibility of vision; in the past, to
re-conquered the basic uselessness which makes it live in men's travel (we may recall certain - admirable, moreover -promenades of
imagination. At first, it was sought - so paradoxical is the notion of Rousseau) was to be thrust into the midst of sensation, to perceive
an empty monument - to make it into a 'temple of science'; but this only a kind of tidal wave of things; the bird's-eye view, on the contrary,
is only a metaphor; as a matter of fact, the Tower is nothing , it represented by our romantic writers as if they had anticipated both
achieves a kind of zero degree of the monument; it participates in no the construction of the Tower and the birth of aviation, permits us to
rite, in no cult, not even in art; you cannot visit the Tower as a muse- transcend sensation and to see things in their structure . Hence it is
um: there is nothing to see inside the Tower. This empty monument the advent of a new perception, of an intellectualist mode, which
nevertheless receives each year twice as many visitors as the Louvre these literatures and these architectures of vision mark out (born in
and considerably more than the largest cinema in Paris. the same century and probably from the same history): Paris and
France become under Hugo's pen and Michelet's (and under the
No doubt in order to particpate in a dream glance of the Tower) intelligible objects, yet without - and this is what
of which it is (and this its orignality) is new - losing anything of their materiality; a new category appears,
much more the crystaliser than the true that of concrete abstraction; this, moreover, is the meaning which we
object. The Tower is not a us al spectacle; can give today to the word structure: a corpus of intelligent forms.
to enter the Tower, to scale it, to run Like Monsieur Jourdain confronted with prose, every visitor to
around its course , is, in a man er both the Tower makes structuralism without knowing it (which does not
more lementary and more prof und, to keep prose and structure from existing all the same); in Paris spread
ac ed to a view and to explore the interior out beneath him, he spontaneously distinguishes separate - because
of an object ( hough an openwork one), to known - points - and yet does not stop linking them, perceiving
transform the touristic rite into adventure them within a great functional space; in short, he separates and
of sight and of the intelligence. It is this groups; Paris offers itself to him as an object virtually prepared ,
Then of No much around to bject. more ac ed transform of of double an which sight doubt enter why object el mentary more The to function its and in the a it do the view course , Tower order is (though the ofdouble
we Tower, touristic (and the and crystaliser I to vist and is function
hould inteligence. particpate this to not is, an to explore more rite the in openworkIa is cale usshould
al ike a into its Eif el than man er prof und, the to rignalitlike
y) in it, adventure spectacle; It speak thto
e a interior one), Tower?speak
to dream is both true this run to to f ofexposed to the intelligence, but which he must himself construct by
briefly, before passing in conclusion to the major symbolic functiona final activity of the mind: nothing less passive than the overall view
of the Tower, which is its final meaning. the Tower gives to Paris. This activity of the mind, conveyed by the
The Tower looks at Paris. To visit the Tower is to get oneselftourist's modest glance, has a name: decipherment.
up onto the balcony in order to perceive, comprehend and savour a What, in fact, is a panorama? An image we attempt to decipher,
certain essence of Paris. And here again, the Tower is an original
in which we try to recognise known sites, to identify landmarks. Take
monument. Habitually, belvederes are outlooks upon nature, whose some view of Paris taken from the Eiffel Tower; here you make out

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 the hill sloping down from Chaillot, there the Bois de Boulogne; but whose bridges it guards. The second history which lies before the
where is the Arc de Triomphe? You don't see it, and this absence Tower's gaze is the Middle Ages; Cocteau once said that the Tower
compels you to inspect the panorama once again, to look for this was the Notre-Dame of the Left Bank; though the cathedral of Paris is
point which is missing in your structure; your knowledge (the knowl- not the highest of the city's monuments (the Invalides, the Panthe-
edge you may have of Parisian topography) struggles with your per- on, Sacré-Coeur are higher), it forms with the tower a pair, a symbolic
ception, and in a sense, that is what intelligence is: to reconstitute , to couple, recognised, so to speak, by tourist folklore, which readily
make memory and sensation cooperate so as to produce in your reduces Paris to its Tower and its cathedral: a symbol articulated on
mind a simulacrum of Paris, of which the elements are in front of the opposition of the past (the Middle Ages always represent a dense
you, real, ancestral, but nonetheless disoriented by the total space in time) and the present, of stone, old as the world, and metal, sign of
which they are given to you, for this space was unknown to you. modernity. The third moment that can be read from the Tower is
Hence we approach the complex, dialectical nature of all panoramic that of a broad history, undifferentiated since it proceeds from the
vision; on the one hand, it is a euphoric vision, for it can slide slowly, Monarchy to the Empire, from the Invalides to the Arc de Triomphe:
lightly the entire length of a continuous image of Paris, and initially this is strictly the history of France, as it is experienced by French
no 'accident' manages to interrupt this great layer of mineral and schoolchildren, and of which many episodes, present in every
vegetal strata, perceived in the distance in the bliss of altitude; but, schoolboy memory, touch Paris.
on the other hand, this very continuity engages the mind in a certain
struggle, it seeks to be deciphered, we must find signs within it, a of Paris, the one which is being made
familiarity proceeding from history and from myth; this is why a pan- now; certain modern monuments
orama can never be consumed as a work of art, the aesthetic interest (unesco, the Radio-Télévision building)
of a painting ceasing once we try to recognise in it particular points are beginning to set signs of the future
derived from our knowledge; to say that there is a beauty to Paris within its space; the Tower permits har-
stretched out at the feet of the Tower is doubtless to acknowledge monising these unaccommodated sub-
this euphoria of aerial vision which recognises nothing other than a stances (glass, metal), these new forms,
nicely connected space; but it is also to mask the quite intellectual with the stones and domes of the past;
effort of the eye before an object which requires to be divided up, Paris, in its duration, under the Tower's
identified, reattached to memory; for the bliss of sensation (nothing gaze, composes itself like an abstract
happier than a lofty outlook) does not suffice to elude the question- canvas in which dark oblongs (derived
ing nature of the mind before any image. Finaly, within gaze, with (unesco, monisng now; of are canvas from Paris, stances Paris, begin ing the a in compose the very its certain in (glas , its tones the the space; Tower thes which old uration, one Rafrom
dio-Tél vison to metal), past) and unac om odatedathe surveys mvery
odern itself dark set which are Tower domesold
igns under thes oblongs likepast)
contiguo s a is fourth of permits monumentare
s being an the of new the buildcontiguous
ing) the (derived abstract Tower's history forms, fut re made past; with sub- har- with
the white rectangles of modern architecture.
panoramic vison is further at ested by the Once these points of history and of space are established by the
folowing phenomeno , which Hugo and eye, from the top of the Tower, the imagination continues filling out
Michelet had moreover made into the the Parisian panorama, giving it its structure; but what then inter-
mainspring of their bird's-eye views:
venes to
are certain human functions; like the devil Asmodeus, by ris-
perceive Paris from above is infallibly
ing above Paris, the visitor to the Tower has the illusion of raising the
enormous
to imagine a history; from the top of the lid which covers the private life of millions of human
beings;
Tower, the mind finds itself dreaming of the city then becomes an intimacy whose functions, ie,
the mutation of the landscape whichwhose
it has
connections he deciphers; on the great polar axis, perpendic-
ular to the horizontal curve of the river, three zones stacked one after
before its eyes; through the astonishment
of space, it plunges into the mystery of as though along a prone body, three functions of human
the other,
time, lets itself be affected by a life: kindat the top, at the foot of Montmartre, pleasure; Eiffel at the cen-
This Tower, perceive Michel t o panoramic the of mainspring folowing of before time, spontaneous imagine space, muta ion gen raly lets its the Paris ey s; phenomeno , had it vison itself mind a plunges of ofof
intel ctual history; moreover tspontaneous
hrough the their from an mnesi : finds i be landscape further af ected into bird's-ey from above itself the which char cter made tanamnesis:
he at ested the astonishment it dreaming is which is mystery by top Hugo views: infalibly duration into a of of by itit
kind and has the the the tis
he to f of duration
tre, around the Opéra, materiality, business, commerce; toward the
itself which becomes panoramic. Let us put ourselves back (no diffi-
bottom, at the foot of the Pantheon, knowledge, study; then, to the
cult task) at the level of an average knowledge, an ordinary
rightquestion
and left, enveloping this vital axis like two protective muffs, two
put to the panorama of Paris; four great moments immediately leap
large zones of habitation, one residential, the other blue-collar; still
farther,
out to our vision, ie, to our consciousness. The first is that two wooded strips, Boulogne and Vincennes. It has been
of prehis-
tory; Paris was then covered by a layer of water, out of which barely
observed that a kind of very old law incites cities to develop toward
emerged a few solid points; set on the Tower's first floor,
thethe visitor
west, in the direction of the setting sun; it is on this side that the
would have had his nose level with the waves and would have seen
wealth of the fine neighbourhoods proceeds, the east remaining the
only some scattered islets, the Etoile, the Pantheon, a wooded site
island
of poverty; the Tower, by its very implantation, seems to follow
which was Montmartre and two blue stakes in the distance, the thistow-
movement discreetly; one might say that it accompanies Paris in
ers of Notre-Dame, then to his left, bordering this huge lake,
this the
westward shift, which our capital does not escape, and that it
slopes of Mont Valérien; and conversely, the traveller who chooses to
even invites the city toward its pole of development, to the south and
put himself today on the heights of this eminence, in foggy weather,
to the west, where the sun is warmer, thereby participating in that
would see emerging the two upper storeys of the Tower from great
a liquid
mythic function which makes every city into a living being: nei-
base; this prehistoric relation of the Tower and the water hasther
been,
brain nor organ, situated a little apart from its vital zones, the
so to speak, symbolically maintained down to our own days, for theis merely the witness, the gaze which discreetly fixes, with its
Tower
Tower is partly built on a thin arm of the Seine filled in (up to slender
the Rue signal, the whole structure - geographical, historical, and
de l'Université) and it still seems to rise from a gesture of the river
social - of Paris space. This deciphering of Paris, performed by the

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 Tower's gaze, is not only an act of the mind, it is also an initiation. To or, if one prefers, of paradoxes, and the visitor then becomes
climb the Tower in order to contemplate Paris from it is the equiva- an engineer by proxy; these are, first of all, the four bases, and espe-
lent of that first journey, by which the young man from the provinces cially (for enormity does not astonish) the exaggeratedly oblique
went up to Paris, in order to conquer the city. At the age of 12, young insertion of the metal pillars in the mineral mass; this obliquity is
Eiffel himself took the diligence from Dijon with his mother and dis- curious insofar as it gives birth to an upright form, whose very verti-
covered the 'magic' of Paris. The city, a kind of superlative capital, cality absorbs its departure in slanting forms, and here there is a
summons up that movement of accession to a superior order of kind of agreeable challenge for the visitor; then come the elevators,
pleasures, of values, of arts and luxuries; it is a kind of precious world quite surprising by their obliquity, for the ordinary imagination
of which knowledge makes the man, marks an entrance into a true requires that what rises mechanically slide along a vertical axis; and
life of passions and responsibilities; it is this myth - no doubt a very for anyone who takes the stairs, there is the enlarged spectacle of all
old one - which the trip to the Tower still allows us to suggest; for the the details, plates, beams, bolts, which make the Tower, the sur-
tourist who climbs the Tower, however mild he may be, Paris laid out prise of seeing how this rectilinear form, which is consumed in
before his eyes by an individual and deliberate act of contemplation every corner of Paris as a pure line, is composed of countless seg-
is still something of the Paris confronted, defied, possessed by Ras- ments, interlinked, crossed, divergent: an operation of reducing an
tignac. Hence, of all the sites visited by the foreigner or the provin- appearance (the straight line) to its contrary reality (a lacework of
cial, the Tower is the first obligatory monument; it is a gateway, it broken substances), a kind of démystification provided by simple
marks the transition to a knowledge: one must sacrifice to the Tower enlargement of the level of perception, as in those photographs in
by a rite of inclusion from which, precisely, the Parisian alone can which the curve of a face, by enlargement, appears to be formed of
excuse himself; the Tower is indeed the site which allows one to be a thousand tiny squares variously illuminated. Thus the Tower-
incorporated into a race, and when it regards Paris, it is the very as-object furnishes its observer, provided he insinuates himself into
essence of the capital it gathers up and proffers to the foreigner who it, a whole series of paradoxes, the delectable contraction of an
has paid to it his initiational tribute. appearance and of its contrary reality.

work our way back toward the Tower is that, despite its technical singularity, it
itself: the Tower which will live its life as consti utes a familar 'lit le world'; from
an object (before being mobilised as a the ground lev l, a whole humble com-
symbol). Ordinarily, for the tourist, every merce ac ompanies its departure: ven-
object is first of all an inside , for there is dors of postcards, ouvenirs, knick nacks,
no visit without the exploration of an balo ns, toys, unglas es, herald a com-
enclosed space: to visit a church, a muse- mercial life which we rediscover thor-

um, a palace is first of all to shut oneself oughly installed on the first platform. Now
up, to 'make the rounds' of an interior, any commerce has a space-taming func-
a little in the manner of an owner: every tion; selling, buying, exchanging - it is by
exploration is an appropriation; this these simple gestures that men truly dom-
From work um, itself: object up, an enclosed no a tour symbol). exploration lit le object vist o a Paris of the our pal ce 'make is n the without Ordinarily, first space: the Tower (before way contemplated, inside is tour
man er the of irst back to al an which roundof
s' the vist being cor esponthe
ds, an of ap ropriation; for toward oinside
f exploration inside al a wil the church, an mobilsed to fcorresponds, as this an as i a The the thes consti utes tion; any is dors oughly merce balo ns, mercial inate that, Tower's ground com erce of seling, simple the postcards, instaled ac ompanies despite life toys, wildest second a lev l, gestureinate
we tourist, live owner: shut , an for the must its interior, a ther ones lf moreo- Tower muse- life of ev ry ev ry nowmoreo- s buying, which familar sunglas es, its has on souvenirs, tthe
echnical sites, a provison, the a whole wewildest
xchanging that its pace-taming 'lit le first he rediscover departure: men platfosites,
rm. herald humble knick nacks, ingularity, world'; most asthe
truly an - a object, it sacred om- func- cmost
om- com- from thor- is Now ven- by it sacred
ver, to the question raised by the outside : the monument is a riddle,
constructions. The myth of the moneylenders driven out of the tem-
ple is actually an ambiguous one, for such commerce testifies to a
to enter it is to solve, to possess it; here we recognise in the tourist
visit that initiational function we have just invoked aproposkind of of affectionate familiarity with regard to a monument whose
the trip to the Tower; the cohort of visitors which is enclosed by a
singularity no longer intimidates, and it is by a Christian sentiment
(hence to a certain degree a special one) that the spiritual excludes
monument and processionally follows its internal meanders before
coming back outside is quite like the neophyte who, in orderthe
to familiar; in antiquity, a great religious festival as well as a theatri-
cal representation, a veritable sacred ceremony, in no way prevented
accede to the initiate's status, is obliged to traverse a dark and unfa-
miliar route within the initiatory edifice. In the religious protocol
theasrevelation of the most everyday gestures, such as eating or drink-
ing: all pleasures proceeded simultaneously, not by some heedless
in the tourist enterprise, being enclosed is therefore a function of
permissiveness but because the ceremonial was never savage and
the rite. Here, too, the Tower is a paradoxical object: one cannot be
shut up within it since what defines the Tower is its longitudinal
certainly offered no contradiction to the quotidian. The Tower is not
form and its open structure: How can you be enclosed within empti-
a sacred monument, and no taboo can forbid a commonplace life to
ness, how can you visit a line? Yet incontestably the Tower is visited:
develop there, but there can be no question, nonetheless, of a trivial
phenomenon here; the installation of a restaurant on the Tower, for
we linger within it, before using it as an observatory. What is hap-
pening? What becomes of the great exploratory function of instance
the (food being the object of the most symbolic of trades), is a
phenomenon corresponding to a whole meaning of leisure; man
inside when it is applied to this empty and depthless monument
which might be said to consist entirely of an exterior substance?always seems disposed - if no constraints appear to stand in his way
In order to understand how the modern visitor adapts himself
- to
to seek out a kind of counterpoint in his pleasures: this is what is
the paradoxical monument which is offered to his imagination, we
called comfort. The Eiffel Tower is a comfortable object, and moreo-
need merely observe what the Tower gives him, insofar as one sees
ver, it is in this that it is an object either very old (analogous, for
in it an object and no longer a lookout. On this point, the Tower's
instance, to the ancient circus) or very modern (analogous to certain
provisions are of two kinds. The first is of a technical order;American
the institutions such as the drive-in movie, in which one can
Tower offers for consumption a certain number of performances, simultaneously enjoy the film, the car, the food and the freshness of

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the night air). Further, by affording its visitor a whole polyphony of not of the order of heavy materials bu
pleasures, from technological wonder to haute cuisine, including time both strong and light; but most
the panorama, the Tower ultimately reunites with the essential func- imaginative conception of work: sheer
tion of all major human sites: autarchy; the Tower can live on itself: a sublime element, fire, and of a hum
one can dream there, eat there, observe there, understand there, its god is Vulcan, its site of creation th
marvel there, shop there; as on an ocean liner (another mythic object working medium, and we can see how
that sets children dreaming), one can feel oneself cut off from the linked to the idea of man's bitter y
world and yet the owner of a world. of nature: the story of iron is actually
stories of all: Eiffel metely provided t
© Richard Howard/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
one hand, by making iron the sole
tions, and, on the other, by imagining
iron (the Tower), rising up into the sk
nd so we see how the physical to Iron: in that material the whole pas
construction of the Tower enables
Faust is summed up.
it to elude the theme of enclosure
And that's not all. Eiffel (originally a
peculiar to old-style monuments, in a range of constructions which,
while at the same time setting up a revolve around the same idea: the id
vital relationship with the person cating with each other. Take any of
visiting it: this is precisely because (over the Douro River), railway bridge
the visitor does not penetrate (at Gabarit), train stations (in Pest),
inside, but rather slips into its Panama Canal project) - they are all de
void, brushing against it without cles nature puts in the way of huma
ever when
- and thus, an idea - of the age: the
he does a
shrinking, its geography was changin
on a rooftop: he remains
give outside
substance to this idea, not a new
the object, so to speak. In a word, the
used inintimate relationship
a new way. that
Being such binds
a light
the visitor to the Tower is nothing like entombment - contrary to
travel light, to cross rivers and mounwha
happens with classical monuments,
securedwhich are always
a victory based (which
over gravity on the
archetype of the cave - for here you simply glide through air. Visitin
his studies of aerodynamics, with a vi
the Tower means approaching it as a in
ushering parasite, not pattern
a different an explorer
of hu-
a transfer of the function of appropriation neatly demonstrated
of the twentieth century, of the by th
aero
monument's stake-like form: the Tower sustains, it does not contain.
human circulation with a new image,
Between the invested object (as
in we have just
a single described
go (even thoughit) it
and the
has in f
general symbol (as we will shortly touch
bled piece byon), thethe
piece), Tower has
metal devel
constru
oped an intermediary function, that of a historic object: one
jeté - over the obstacle in one swifttha
m
allows us to divine its origins from
that the
timedate of its
itself hasmaterial and forms
been defeated, sho
But these origins, rational though they may be, nevertheless refer
once again foreshadowing the aeroplan
back in a way to the vast repository of theWhile
and oceans. imagination
it has that we the
no use, are
seeking to explore here. summing up all those other works des
Historically, the Tower is notof
antraffic,
unforeseen feat, grip
the age's springing anar-
on space and
chically from the fevered imagination of a single brain. We have
can see why, in one last symbol and seenag
that on several occasions the
wasnineteenth century
used (in an equally had
new already
way) to fo
dreamed of a tower '1,000 feet of
high' (which
Liberty, is precisely
that Bartholdi the height
placed at the
of the Eiffel Tower). But what caused
lurgy, it to see
public the light of
transport, day was, in
democracy: o
course, a perfectly concrete the
technical
material circumstance: thethree
symbol of those arrival
co
of iron in architecture. The Artists' Petition expressed great outrage
that someone dared use iron in architecture,
in the idea of circulation, one in particular is and Eiffel does indeed
symbolise the transition from architect privleg d, forto it s very closely alied to the engineer. A result of the
economic and industrial conditions of the
Tower, and that is the bridge. In one sense, day and thereby linked to
the very evolution of the bourgeoisie (who
and if we xcept one-of s like the sta ion at we find subscribing to al
the official sponsorships the Tower attracted),
Pest or the observatory at Nice, Eif el only the substitution o
iron for stone in the building of houses ev r built brid(and
ges; he had a real pas ion for not just machines any-
more) entails a whole shift in imagination.
bridge construction and esigned al kinds of As telluric matter, stone
is a symbol of solidity and immutability: itbridges, was aid to sel bridis
ges by the metre. thus the very stuff of the
dwelling-place , insofar as the latter euphorically
To fulfil its functionpostulates some sort
in the circulation of traf-
of eternity; stone may possibly erode (while maintaining
fic, a bridge its func-
must resist two natural forces:
tion) but it never falls apart. The mythology
the incomingoftide,iron is completely
which overflows, and the
Of Tower, To wind, privleg d, and the bridges, Pest ev r in bridge fimyth
different. Iron participates in the c, al the fulfi a incoming thes if built or bridge which, idea we construction and the its was bridges; except engine ring of uof
nction fwind,
or that observatory said must as circulation, tide, ifire;
t iswhich,
to is one-of s fol ws he resi t he which very sel and in had theas
projects, bridge. bridgit
es designeits
d closely atfollows
wo ne the overflows, like circulation a Nice, real rive(symbolic)
r natural in thethe
In by alied sum ed particular pasriver
ion al one Eif el the chan els, ta ion kinds and fochannels,
rces: of metre. sense, to nly traf- the the for up of at is value is

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overturns (the success of the Maria Pia bridge was elegantly to defeat
these two elements, which are particularly fierce along the Douro
River). We know that the myth of the Bridge has always been vital for
humanity: the Bridge is the very symbol of connection - that is, of the
human, from the moment there is more than one of them; the sight of
bridges (so often represented in painting) produces an intense sense
of humanity. Well, the Tower is a bridge; it has the same shape, thrust,
material, as if Eiffel had crowned his series of horizontal and arched
bridges with one last extraordinary bridge: an upright bridge, linking
the earth, the city, with the skies - and not God's heaven either, but the
skies that, less than a century later, were to become the humanised
space of the aeroplane and the spacecraft. This perfectly upstanding
bridge joins the flock of other bridges in Paris, which it watches over
(in the words of Apollinaire). Herd the Tower and the bridges of Paris
in a single image (as occurs in certain photographs) and you will see
the same object - reproduced, varied - and through that object all the
humanity of Paris, the city of 25 bridges.
As a historic object, crowning the arrival of iron in architecture
and the proliferation of infrastructural projects the world over, from
the Douro River to Saigon, the Tower was to raise one last issue: the
issue of its aesthetic status, since a 'useless' object can only be justi-
fied if it is 'beautiful'; if, having relinquished any claim to usefulness,
it can be salvaged as art. We know how strongly the 'artists' of the day,
joined by a handful of intellectuals, were opposed to the Tower, or at
least to its plan; they did battle 'in the name of unappreciated French
taste', they invoked 'the soul of France', they attacked 'the outlandish
and mercenary imaginings of a manufacturer of machines'; they
depicted the Tower - in advance - as 'a gigantic black smokestack'.
Eiffel's response to these accusations was fairly sanguine: when it
comes to artistic values, we can never tell what the future holds. But
more than anything else, by its very nature, the Tower opposed the
secular notion of plastic beauty with a new value that has since con-
quered the world: functional beauty. After all, even though the Tower
is a 'useless' object, it borrows its raison d'être from technology: it is
beautiful because it derives from the order of the necessary. That was
certainly a major revolution; the extension of a monument height-
wise could not be achieved by an architect but only by a technician;
the Tower thus enshrines the power of pure technology over objects
(built structures) that up till then had (at least partly) come under
the rule of art. So it was inevitable, not that art would disappear
(as the petitioners of the day believed), but rather that it would
change, recognise new norms or, if you prefer, new alibis.
We will not attempt to decide here whether the Tower is 'beauti-
ful' or not; but we will say that if it is exempt from the traditional
norms of the plastic arts, then this is because its technical 'necessity'
produces in the viewer a sense of achievement every bit as intense as
any produced by a work of art, and this is easily distinguished from
purely utilitarian considerations. Functional beauty does not lie in
the perception of a function's positive 'results', but in the spectacle of
the function itself, seized in a moment preceding what it produces; to
seize the functional beauty of a machine or of a piece of architecture
is to suspend time, to postpone use in order to contemplate a fabrica-
tion: here, we enter into a very modern set of values, articulated
around the notion of human making. Accordingly, even though the
Tower is a finished object (and long finished, at that), what we absorb
aesthetically is always its making. That making - which would be
perceptible even if we didn't know the history of the Tower - is essen-
tially planned. In designing his work, once the principle of iron was
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accepted, Eiffel had to solve two main problems: wind resistance and
the assembly of the structure. It is this second triumph that makes for
the beauty of the Tower. Eiffel in effect devised a revolutionary assem-
bly system: everything was mathematically determined in advance,
down to the last millimetre, in fact: the dimensions of every part, the
measurements for drilling the rivet holes (with the aid of logarithms)
and, better still, the nature and placement of all the temporary
supports required to put the parts together, such that a construction
worker could operate with the greatest ease and safety.
It was, as we know, a triumph of planning (a complete triumph,
since the erection of the Tower did not entail a single accident). And
so the human spirit not only demonstrated its power over matter and
over nature, but also over time, considered as a logical sequence of
delicate, remorselessly articulated operations.
the object hat we rediscover sym-
bolical y in the amazing multipli-
cation of tower knick-knacks. The
Tower has been, and still is, end-
lessly copied, multiplied - that is
to say, simulated (a term that is
strictly structural, as we've seen)
in the form of a limitless number
of souvenir-charms or eccentric
ornaments (hairdos, shoes). The
multiplication of these little Eiffel
And Tower bolical y Towers, the les ly to cation of in ornaments trictly multiplication the say, souvenir-charms it object is copied, form of has imulated structural, this the in tower that be n, the (hairdos, of structured poweTowers,
r multiplied a we of knick-knacks. amazing limitles and thes rediscthe
over (a s of term or stil shoes)power
. we've lit le the aspect ec entric multipli- number is,of
that hat repro- Eif elthe
se n) sym- end- The The of is isrepro-
ductive imagination given free rein in them, the evident thrill buyers
get out of them - all this stems from two construction fantasies, with
every trinket buyer vicariously reliving the adventure of creating the
Tower. The first of these fantasies has to do with what we might call
the miniaturisation of the Tower. The Tower is celebrated as a monu-
ment first and foremost because of the feat of its height; by having
a scaled-down replica of the monument at his disposal, the buyer
feels renewed awe, it is given to him to hold the Tower in his hand, on
his table; the thing that determines its real value, namely its prodi-
gious height, is rendered pliable, so that he can incorporate this
strange, inaccessible, inappropriable object into his everyday domes-
tic setting; what's more, the miniature is akin to the maquette; the
buyer can vaguely imagine that the scale model he has on his table is
not a model of the real Tower, reproduced, but a model of the future
Tower, as it will be built; for fantasies do not differentiate between
the maquette and the trinket: with either one, the buyer turns himself
into a builder, an engineer, a conqueror of matter. That matter, fur-
thermore - and this is the buyer's second fantasy - is something he
can vary by acquiring various tower trinkets, thereby rediscovering,
yet again, a sense of awe and power, an awe in the face of power. There
is the pleasure of the endlessly renewed challenge - the endlessly suc-
cessful gamble - of making Eiffel Towers out of any kind of material,
from the simplest to the most implausible, from iron to eggshell, via
copper, sea-shells, matches and diamonds. What is satisfied here is
what we might call a panicked fantasy of creation, which consists in
taking a simple idea (the Tower) and then designing and making any-
thing and everything based on that idea; so, we find it at play in the
sheer variety of objects that derive their use from the Tower and
to which, in exchange, the Tower lends its shape: chandeliers, pens,
letter-openers, paperweights, etc, to say nothing of its simple use as a
printed motif on handkerchiefs, scarves or boxes of camembert.
64 129
 What is being expressed in this frenzied proliferation is the notion
that the Tower belongs to everyone and, better still, to every imagina-
tion: a profound truth, enshrined in the law itself, as a court ruling
once recognised the rights of everyone to reproduce the Tower: its
image falls outside the scope of copyright. The Tower is public.
Both eye and object, the Eiffel Tower - and this is perhaps its
most intense source of life - is also a symbol, a role that has taken an
unforeseen turn. Of course, from the outset, the Tower was supposed
to symbolise the Revolution (whose centenary it was) as well as
Industry (for this was the year of the World's Fair). Yet those symbols
barely had time to register before they were replaced by others. As
a social symbol, the Tower did not represent democracy, but Paris.
The surprising thing is that Paris had to wait so long to get its sym-
bol. There were plenty of symbolic monuments in Paris, of course,
but as symbols they always referred back to something other than
Paris: to the monarchy in the case of the Louvre, or to the Empire in
the case of the Arc de Triomphe; only Notre-Dame, as we have seen,
could perhaps be confused with a certain idea of Paris, especially in
the Romantic imagination; but that was basically because its towers
seemed to dominate, to possess and protect the capital; and on the
whole, it was this role of protection, arising from a position of height,
that was spontaneously transferred from Notre-Dame to the Tower
as soon as it emerged as the city's tallest monument. A second cir-
cumstance reinforced the Tower's vocation as the symbol of Paris: its
very uselessness. Every other monument, church or palace, referred
back to a certain use; only the Tower was nothing more than an
object designed to be visited; its very emptiness marked it out as a
symbol and the first thing it symbolised, through logical association,
had to be the thing that was 'visited' at the same time as it - Paris: the
Tower became Paris by metonymy. Here, we should probably add
a historic circumstance to complete the list: Paris had, of course,
already been established for centuries as an international city,
a prestigious object that you went 'up to' from the provinces or from
other countries; but the démocratisation of tourism, that modern
mixture of leisure and travel, which is certainly one of the most
important phenomena of our times, inevitably led to a sort of mass
institutionalisation of the trip to Paris, and the Tower was naturally
the symbol of that institution.
Amore very ward-lo king baths past are (which bol is ing mental as umes hore the inter sted op osite of old itself spontaneous of up subtle is Paris. city past, Cluny a the the that sacred and, Tower's this only factor In symboward-looking
ers, domes, arches, the Tower surges up like an act of severance,
never thickens out; it, too, is swallowed up in the height; the plat-
destined to destroy the sacred aura surrounding the weight of the
forms themselves are never anything more than relay stations, altars
past, to pit against the fascination, against the sticky limewash ofof
his-
repose; everything in the Tower rises, right up to the fine spire that
tory (however rich), the freedom of a new era; everything aboutdisappears
the into the sky.
Tower marked it out as a symbol of this subversion: the boldness ofFor we can clearly see how this imaginative conception of height
its design, the novelty of its material, the ungainliness of its form,flows
the into an imaginative conception of the airy; the two symbols are
gratuitousness of its function. As the symbol of Paris, you couldindissolubly
say
130
the Tower won its place in the face of opposition from Paris itself,
with its old stones and its dense history; the Tower subjugated the
time-honoured symbols, just as it materially overpowered their cupo-
las and their spires. In short, the Tower could only fully be the symbol
of Paris once it was able to remove the stumbling block of the city's
past and go on to become the symbol of modernity. The aggression
with which it imposed itself on the landscape of Paris (highlighted in
the Artists' Petition) has now mellowed into something genial; the
Tower turned itself, and Paris with it, into a symbol of creative daring,
^ it was the modern gesture by which the present said no to the past.
And so we see the Tower appear, as a cipher of the new age, in the
work of a whole host of modern painters, from Sisley to Delaunay,
with his Cubist Tower. Apollinaire, Fargue, Cocteau and Giraudoux
turn it into a literary object and, as early as 1914, the Portuguese
painter Santa-Rita holds a scandalous conference in Lisbon on the
Eiffel Tower and the spirit of Futurism. Even today, when the mod-
ernist style is passé, when the Tower's aesthetic no longer appears
daring and skyscrapers have inured us to spectacular achievements
of construction, the Tower still isn't old or outdated as a monument;
periodically associated with the great discoveries of modern times,
with aerodynamics, radio, television and even, through its form, with
the interplanetary rocket, it seems ageless, managing to carry off the
feat of being something of an empty sign of the times.
Beyond these social signs, the Tower develops symbols that are
much more general, belonging to that order of full-blown sensations,
at once powerful and vague, which stem, not from any distinct sense,
like sight or hearing, but from the inner life of the body, and which we
describe as cenesthetic. Here all the great archetypes of sensation
come together, enshrining the Tower ultimately as a poetic object.
ascent; it fulfils a sort of idea of height in
itself. No monument, no building, no nat-
ural andmark is as tal and slender; in it,
width is cancelled, all matter becomes
absorbed in its straining for height. We
know how important these simple catego-
ries, already defined by Heraclitus, are for
the human imagination, allowing it to
simultaneously register a sensation and
shore up the Tower's role as ym- a concept; we also know, particularly since
bol of Paris. In terms of myth the work of Bachelard, how euphoric this
(which is the only perspective we The width ural bsorbed the the know upwards ascent; a itself. ries, imultaneously concept; Tower work human landmark already how No is t is monument, of strivng fulfils cancel d, in we important first Bachupwards
elard, defined imagination, its also is the a register strain g as ort know, imastriving
gination symbol tal by al thes no f how Heraclitus, and particularly mat eimagination
r a building, idea for of sensation alowing simple uphoric slender; ascent, of height. is, height becomes categis,
o- no how are since of it nhow
at- and this We for al in it, to it it
are inter sted in her ), Paris is a helps man live and dream, joining forces inside him with the happi-
very old city and, in it, the monu- est of the great physiological functions - breathing. From afar, the
mental past, from the thermal Tower is experienced by millions of people as a pure exercise in
baths of Cluny to the Sacré-Cœur, height; from up close, for anyone visiting it, this function becomes
assumes a sacred value: it is of the more complicated but does not cease; as we see in photographs of
past itself that the whole of Paristhe Tower, especially of its girders, a subtle competition is set up
is the spontaneous symbol. Stand-between the horizontal and the vertical; far from barring , the lines
ing opposite this forest of back-of the cross-bars, most of them oblique or rounded, disposed in
ls, from in to the the value: her ), in terms forest perspective symbol. whole it, the Sacré-Cœur, emergsymbols,
ed role the it Paris bel -tow- of of thermal is of as monu- Stand- of babell-tow-
ck- myth Paris ym- is the we to a arabesques, seem endlessly to boost the upthrust; the horizontal
linked, the air being every bit as euphoric as the heights
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that it touches (the sky is a sublime and, therefore, felicitous image).
Yet the aiiy theme develops in an entirely different direction, encoun-
tering on the way new symbols not encompassed by the theme of
altitude. The primary attribute of air as a substance is lightness. The
Tower is in effect a symbol of lightness. We know one of Eiffel's tech-
nical achievements was to combine the colossal (yet slender) size of
the form with the lightness of the material; a Tower reduced to a thou-
sandth of its actual size would weigh only 7 g, the weight of a sheet of
writing paper; we don't need that precise information to know intui-
tively that the Tower is fantastically light; it seems to have no weight
to it; instead of sinking into the ground, it looks to be perched on top
of it. The second attribute of the Tower's aiiy substance is a very par-
ticular property of extension usually found in certain fabrics, namely
openwork : the Tower is a piece of iron lace - latticework - and this
theme is reminiscent of the convoluted hollowing out of stone that
has always been seen as the hallmark of the gothic: here, once again,
the Tower takes over from the cathedral. Openwork is an invaluable
attribute of its substance, for it thins it out without damaging it; in a
word, it makes visible the void and manifests the nothingness - but
without extracting it from its state of privation; we can always see the
sky through the Tower; the air exchanges its own substance with the
chainlinks of its prison, and iron, freed into arabesques, itself turns
into air. No doubt the airy nature of the Tower has a positive basis: the
material had to be elaborately perforated so that it offered the least
possible resistance to the only dangerous enemy Eiffel encountered
in his endeavour: the wind; but precisely because of this, we grasp
what is most subtle about air: as a substance, it is the antithesis of the
wind, to the extent that it is wind dominated, quintessentialised,
sublimated; the wind is always a symbol of unmastered power and,
so, of massiveness; paradoxically, the wind cannot be linked to the
light elements (air and fire) but only, on the contrary, to the heavy
telluric elements (the earth and the sea); and so, to defeat the wind
(as the Tower does) is to join with the light and the subtle, with the
great mythologies of the daydreaming, liberating mind.
Yet the tall, the airy, the light and the openworked might come
together in one last symbol: the plant. A plant's stalk is tall, its head
airy and light, its branches latticed. The Tower is plant-like in one
essential thing - its movement, the very simplicity of the way its two
lines take off from the ground and join up in the sky, like the linea-
ments of a stalk. But that's not all; for when we move closer, the
Tower no longer looks like a plant vigorously pushing up in a single
thrust, but seems to bloom; we rise through it as if we were rising
through a flower made of air and iron: in it are to be found the
straightness of filaments, the arabesque of petals, the tight thrust of
buds, the spreading of leaves and the very movement that pulls this
complex and ordered matter upwards.
Is that the ultimate metaphor for the Tower? Photography, which
often tells us the whole truth about an object, perhaps offers another
metamorphosis: animal metamorphosis. Whether we think of it as
an insect with a hard thorax whose legs have been ripped off, or we
see it rising up into the sky like a wingless bird that is trying to push
itself up higher, way above the clouds, or whether it appears, finally
and more prosaically, like a huge giraffe put there for the sole pur-
pose of inspiring awe among Parisians, much like the giraffe a sultan
once gave Louis-Philippe, and which, through an illogical elision,
appears simultaneously to be both beast and cage, there is a virtual
animality to the Tower. Now, as we know, animal metamorphosis is a
baroque theme of poetic expansiveness, insofar as the animal is the
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great crossing point that Nature passes through when it migrates
from object to man; it is with the animal that all transgressions
begin, from the object that mysteriously comes to life, to the man
who breaches the boundaries of morality and nature. The Tower,
mythically, participates in this transgression. It is a baroque crea-
ture, in that it encapsulates a dream of transmuting matter into
unfamiliar states, though without ever quite achieving them.
It is by placing ourselves back at the heart of this metaphorical
instability (so fertile and so liberating for the mind) that we can grasp
the Tower's final avatar, which is its human avatar. The Tower is
a human silhouette; it may be headless, except for a fine spire, and
armless (though it is way beyond the monstrous), but it is still a long
bust perched on two widely parted legs; what's more, it is this figure
that gives it its tutelary function: the Tower is a woman watching over
Paris, holding Paris gathered at her feet; both seated and standing,
she inspects and protects, surveys and shields. But here again, the
photographic approach reveals a new truth about the Tower: it is
a sexed object; in the great cascade of symbols, the phallus is doubt-
less the simplest figure for it; but through the eyes of photography,
the whole of the Tower's interior, projected against the sky, looks to
be criss-crossed with the pure forms of sex.
of the Tower. But there is still one dimension
missing - its actual limits. Well, a sort of
magic circle has sprung up spontaneously
around the monument and that circle marks
where the Tower ends: the Tower ends on
the boundary of the impossible . From the
beginning, men have used this infinite sym-
bol to play with the limits of the human, as if
the Tower provoked the transgression of
laws and customs, of life itself. Through this
dangerous vocation, the Tower sparks the
So wher the the laws dangerous bol around of most begin ing, magic mis ng ther the to boundary Tower and bizar e Tower. play the circle the you - customs, with Tower its monument vocation, mmost
en prov ked have But exploits: has actual of the have thbizarre
er it, sprung the nds: of limits the life limits. used the a impos ible the isexploits:
and stair metaphorical the stil itself. of up Tower this transgres ion that he Tower Wela, one race spontastair
neously Through infinte human, circle . dimension sprace
arks to From a ends the sort marks pace sym-to
as this ec- the the on of ofthe
if sec-
ond deck has been held there (1905), it has been descended on
a bicycle (1923), an aeroplane has flown between its pillars (1945).
But more than anything else, people play with life there and die; even
before it was completed, a young construction worker, out of sheer
bravado, ran along the girders of the first deck and was killed before
his fiancée's eyes; in 1912, the Bird-Man, Reichelt, wearing intricate
wings, threw himself off the Tower and was crushed. We know,
moreover, that the Tower is a prime spot for suicides. Well, only myth
can supply a reason for the Tower's suicides, and that reason is made
up of all the symbols with which the Tower is freighted. In spite of, or
precisely because of, the countless images of life that it unleashes,
the Tower - as pure spectacle, absolute symbol, infinite metaphor -
elicits the ultimate image of human experience: death.
Eye, object, symbol, the Tower is everything man puts into it -
and that everything is infinite. An observed and observing spectacle,
a useless and irreplaceable edifice, a familiar world and heroic
symbol, a witness to an age and an eternally new monument, an
inimitable object that is endlessly reproduced, it is a pure sign, open
to all weathers, to all images and all senses, unbridled metaphor;
through the Tower, men exercise that great power of the imagination
which sets them free, since no story, no matter how dark, can ever
take it away from them.
©Julie Rose
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