The Fall of Rome

2016

Courtyard Castel of Gruyères

Entering the courtyard of the Castle, we are faced with the remains of what look like medieval siege engines. On closer inspection, they could just as well be construction machinery or a fairground ride. There: the three themes are set — destruction, construction and entertainment. It is hard to imagine construction without prior destruction; these two opposing actions are ultimately complementary and inseparable.

And entertainment, then? It may be the engine of it all, the human drive that pushes us — beyond any notion of improvement or evolution — change as passion, as entertainment.

Each new civilisation could only develop on the ruins of the one before; our history is this long tale of destruction and reconstruction. Are we happier than the Maya were? No one knows, and it is too late to find out. But somewhere in our human nature, in our genes or our cultures, there is a fierce need for renewal — a need that drives us to dismantle what our ancestors built, in order to reshape the world to our own vision. Nothing seems able to halt this cycle.

Back to the Castle: after this monumental ruin in the courtyard, we enter the archaeological room. Here are shown the civil remains of a bygone past — modelled pottery, decorated bones, clay statuettes, carved marbles — witnesses to the high culture of our ancestors.

The second room awaiting us on our visit is the arsenal. Weapons of every kind and size tell of humanity’s astonishing ingenuity in murderous invention. A simple tool, a pitchfork or a flail, can suddenly turn into a terrible instrument of destruction. Here too, that ambiguity over the use or misuse of one and the same object, toward cleverly constructive or efficiently destructive ends.

In the Castle proper, in the apartments of its last inhabitants where the collections of Gruyère heritage are displayed, we are surprised by this or that object of unknown provenance, such as a mummy’s hand. Among these objects, traditional or incongruous — some standing out, others blending in — our attention is constantly held, trying to piece together a near or distant past, or to imagine a world with other rules, other customs, as these objects attest.

Visiting this castle — a building of war by essence yet only ever put to civilian use — and this collection of artefacts, historical or fictional, we find ourselves facing the image of our own history (another construction), the ambivalence of our human nature, so ingenious at building and so quick to destroy. And in the end, all of this too is a great entertainment, an amused gaze cast over the zoo of our aspirations, past and present.