ARCHITECTURE

Grey River Argus, 17 September 1937, Page 6

ARCHITECTURE

In Fiction A REALM OF MAKE-BELIEVE. The use of architecture as an adjunct to fiction is brightly treated by Warren Hunting Smith in a new book “Architecture in English Fiction.” “In summarizing a literary trend, one naturally pauses to ask what good it has done,” he writes. “In this case ap-i praisal is unusually complicated, be-| cause two arts are involved and we must consider the effect of architectural setting, not only upon the literature which contains it. but upon architecture as well. Its ultimate value depends, of course, upon the influence which it has exerted through both these mediums upon human life. “Its effect upon architecture will probably be deplored by architects,

because literature has certainly played havoc with architecture, and there seems to be no certain hope that it will cease to do so. The human race is incurably tainted with make-believe a weakness which fiction encourages, and which the architectural setting of fiction has communicated to architecture itself. Children read about the enchanted castles of fairy tales, and wish that they themselves could live in such castles; adults read about interesting buildings in romantic novels and proceed to copy those buildings in their own constructions. Literature has made people demand that architecture satisfy their emotional and imaginative yearnings, and these yearnings are often aroused by the| architectural setting of fiction. j “The enchanted castle symbolizes what is most significent in the literary use of architecture. When we open a novel, we step into another person’s life—and into another person’s house. In realistic fiction, the house and the life are usually like those that we already know, but in

romantic novels they are more glamorous. When literature is an escape from the monotony of everyday life, it is often an escape from everydav architecture as well. We cross the drawbridge of the enchanted castle, and, for the time being, bid farewell to the cramped living rooms and dining rooms of ordinary existence."