双语+MP3|美国学生艺术史73 直入云霄的建筑物

  
图72-2是“法国皮埃尔逢城堡”。请留意，城墙低矮，上面几乎没开什么窗户。皮埃尔逢城堡早已渐渐地倾塌了，大约在五十年前才重建起来。  
73 POINTING TOWARD HEAVEN直入云霄的建筑物 
  
NOW I’m going to tell you about a kind of architecture named for some people who never had any architecture. All they ever built was huts. Yet the kind of buildings named for these people is one of the greatest styles of architecture in the world.  
That certainly seems strange, doesn’t it?  
The people who didn’t know how to build anything but huts were the Goths. The beautiful architecture that the Goths hadn’t anything to do with is called Gothic architecture. Why in the world is it called Gothic architecture, if the Goths didn’t have anything to do with it?  
The reason is a strange reason. We think nowadays that Gothic architecture is very wonderful, and we think the Gothic buildings very beautiful. But, strange as it may seem, there were people who despised these beautiful buildings. They thought any architecture that didn’t come from Greece or Rome was no good. They thought it was crude and rough and uncivilized. The crudest, roughest, and most uncivilized people they could think of were the Goths who had conquered Rome, and so they called this beautiful architecture Gothic, not only to show how crude they thought it was, but because they thought the Goths had begun it. Like most bad names, it stuck.  
Gothic architecture grew out of the Romanesque architecture. The builders kept trying to make stone ceilings over the naves of the churches because stone was safer from fire than wood was. At first the stone ceiling was a barrel vault, shaped like the side of a barrel. The barrel vault took a great deal of wooden centering to build, because the vault was quite long and each part had to be held up by the centering till all the stones were in place. The centering took so much wood that it was a great discovery when some one found a way of building vaults with very little centering. This discovery was to build two curved ribs like arches or parts of hoops that crossed in the middle of the vault. These two ribs were built first and then the rest of the vault could be put in a little at a time.  
Then another discovery was made. This was that a pointed arch was better sometimes than a round arch. It wasn’t really a new discovery, for the people in Asia Minor had used pointed arches for many years. The knights brought the idea back to Europe when they returned from their Crusades in the Holy Land. You might not think such a little thing as making an arch pointed on top instead of round would be important. But important it was, and this is why.  
A round arch has to be just as high as it is wide. The wider the opening it has to cover, the higher the round arch has to be. But a pointed arch is different. You can build a pointed arch as high as you want or as low as you want, no matter how wide the opening is that it has to stretch across. If you will put your finger tips together so they form an arch you can prove this. If you keep your hands the same distance apart you can only form one round arch with your fingers. But you can form pointed arches of several different sizes by curving your fingers and keeping your hands still.  
The builders of the stone cathedrals found it much easier to build vaults over a wide nave or aisle with pointed arches instead of round arches.  
Of course these stone vaults pushed down on the walls and also pushed sideways. So the walls had to be very thick and very well braced with buttresses. But the builders found that when they used ribbed vaults instead of plain barrel vaults, most of the side push came just at the ends of the ribs. They found that if they put heavy buttresses at the ends of the ribs, the rest of the wall could be made very thin. The walls between the buttresses finally became so unnecessary for holding up the roof that they were made of glass. The walls became walls of glass between buttresses of stone.  
Not only did the walls get lighter, but the buttresses changed. You couldn’t really say the buttresses learned to fly, but they are called flying buttresses. A flying buttress is one that leans against the wall like a prop—like a man pushing against a wall with a stick. Flying buttresses press against the top of the walls and keep the walls from being pushed over by the weight of the vault and the roof.  
  
No.73　FLYING BUTTRESSES ON A CATHEDRAL IN FRANCE.（法国教堂的飞扶壁）  
These three discoveries—the ribbed vault, the walls mostly of glass between buttresses, and flying buttresses—are the three most important things to remember. When these three things had been dis covered, there finally came that beautiful and marvelous kind of architecture known as Gothic—but not because the Goths had anything to do with it, remember.  
Gothic architecture was as different from the Greek and Roman as it could be. The Greek and Roman buildings were solidly set on the ground. Almost all the weight pushed straight down. But a Gothic cathedral was a balance of all sorts of thrusts and pushes and forces. Where there was a side push, there was a buttress to push against it.  
In the Greek and Roman temples most of the lines ran lengthwise. They were horizontal buildings. The Gothic cathedrals climbed into the air as though reaching up toward heaven. Most of their lines seem to carry the eye upward from the ground. Every part of the building helped to do this. Think of the pointed arch, for one thing. A Gothic cathedral was like a hymn of praise rising to God.