Sailing to Byzantium
Byzantium: Its Triumphs and Tragedy. By Rene Guerdan. Translated by D. B. L. Hartley. (Allen and Unwin, 25s.)
THREE books on Byzantium, and each of them interesting in its different way. The Byzantine World gives us a compact history of the `thousand-year Reich' of the Romano-Greeks and is replete with well-garnered detail. Professor Hussey, is at his best in the chapter on Everyday Life, telling of householders who 'before they could claim the right to enjoy the prospect of historical monuments, e.g. statues of such ,as Achilles or Ajax, must first prove that they had sufficient education to appreciate them.' The vagafies of fashion were rampant. Vlach capes (shepherds' cloaks?) were worn in the thirteenth century; and later still there was a craze for Italian or Turkish fashions, including turbans. It is only a pity that his remarks on the arts of Byzantium have to lie compressed into one chap- ter. This book is remarkably cheap atoms. 6d.; and no less recommendable for its value, but it has no illustrations.
Byzantium: Its Triumphs and Tragedy is trans- lated from the French and has copious illustra- tions. The book is conducted with true Gallic verve, the marvellous silken fabrics of the Im- perial workshops are described in detail, and there is even a plate of coiffures of Byzantine ladies (from various MSS and paintings), though the fixation of the draughtsman seems to have been for our 1920s, and one is reminded of the photographs outside the theatre where The Boy Friend is playing. That apart, there is little to criticise in a work which brings the muffled and dead past so vividly before us, though it may dis- concert to read of `pyrophorous syphons' when it is a question of the celebrated Greek fire, counter-
part to our atomic pile and as difficult and dan- gerous in its favours. This is the most readable of the three books.
The third is entirely devoted to Byzantine Archi- tecture and Decoration. But it is the product of many visits to Byzantine churches wherever such are to be found, and Dr. Hamilton speaks with the authority of long experience. It is, in fact, the new and revised edition of a book which came out more than twenty years ago. One hesitates, therefore, in criticism of a book that is so planned that it includes the churches of the Balkans and the domed churches of Aquitaine. His notes on Perigueux, on Souillac, and Angouleme arc par- ticularly informative. But it is true that Dr. Hamilton is sparing of praise for the truly mar- vellous mosaics of the Kahrid-djami at Istanbul, perhaps the greatest aesthetic revelation of recent years, which in themselves are worth the jour- ney to Turkey. 'They are now being uncovered' is little enough to say for these treasures of Byzantine art, the first flowers of another Renaissance that was nipped in the bud and went no farther, and the astonishing proofs of a vitality that was about to renew itself ten cen- turies after the wonders of Justinian's Santa Sophia. The book is finely illustrated and worthy of Dr. Hamilton's learned text.
SACHEVERELL SITWELL
Previous page
