13 April 2008
In the presence of antiquity
There is a certain frisson that comes from being in the presence of antiquity. Standing by a menhir, or gazing on an ancient relic, connects us with the past. But from where does this excitement originate?
It can’t be a purely aesthetic buzz. Certainly, we may find beauty in the artefacts of the past. Yet I’m sure that the visitors to the display of Chinese terracotta warriors in Hamburg obtained the same pleasure from them as those who saw the figures in London – even though the ones in Germany turned out to be fakes.
Would they have been so thrilled if they had known the figures were modern copies? Almost certainly not. That’s in spite of the fact that their experience of them was in no way affected. The figures were behind glass. The only contact was visual. And a faithfully executed replica is likely to be visually indistinguishable from the original. It has the same physical effect, then – so the difference must be emotional.
Take another example. In our village, there is an old well, hidden down a short lane quite close to the church. The church itself is modern by local standards – mid 19th century. But there was a priory built near this spot in the 12th century and the place has had holy connections ever since.
Marking the well is a standing stone, maybe 2m high. It is formed from granite, but then so is everything around here, including our house. Standing stones conform to no rigid design guidelines, but the shape is sufficiently menhir-like. But is it a real standing stone?
What does that even mean? If you take the attitude that a menhir is a form of expression, a signifier, then anything that looks like a menhir and gives the same emotional response as a menhir must qualify as one. You might reasonably insist on the stone having been selected and positioned back in the neolithic period. Of course, many ‘real’ standing stones have been moved since – does that affect their authenticity?
I haven’t yet discovered if the ‘menhir’ is ancient. A local guidebook for the church simply mentions about the well: ‘Une stèle de granit faite d’un bloc au naturel et une croix rustique le signalent depuis quelques années’. That’s a tad ambiguous. Maybe it’s just the rustic cross that has been there ‘quelques années’.
If the ‘menhir’ is modern (if we apply that ‘quelques années’ description, it probably dates it to the 1950s) then we could regard it not as a fake or replica standing stone, but as a continuation of an ancient tradition of marking significant or auspicious sites this way. That would make it a real menhir, albeit a fairly new one.
