PaestumTable of Contents & 1st Chapter

Table of Contents

1. Arrival
2. Music and Architecture
3. Paestum
4. Pythagoras
5. Remarks Preliminary to Harmonic Analysis
6. The Nomoi of the Basilica
7. The Nomoi of the Temple of Ceres
8. The Nomoi of the Temple of Poseidon
9. The Meaning of This Work
10. Afterword

Chapter 1: Arrival

Dear reader and friend,

“Come, children, let’s be going,
The evening’s near at hand.
’Tis dangerous remaining
Here in this desert land.
Pluck up your courage to wander Into eternity
From one force to another,
The end all well will be.”

Coming out of the hubbub of Naples, the train to Salerno speeding into the ever wider and calmer landscape of Magna Graecia, passing a long, dark, almost menacing wall, and then sighting my goal: Paestum—having arrived, I now sit on the terrace of a small hotel built into the 2,500-year-old city wall, watching the moon rise over the temple field. Why do the words of the northern mystic Tersteegen come to my mind? An indescribable silence reigns far and wide, with no other guests present, the few visitors having long ago departed by car or train, the only sound being the occasional hooting of an owl from atop the lofty pediments of the Temple of Poseidon. Tersteegen had surely never seen a Greek temple; this world would have been wholly foreign to him. Why are his verses ringing in my ears? Was I remaining in danger in a desert land, did I flee from my own confusion, from the terrible hopelessness of today’s political situation, from the madness of this entire European civilization, toward a holy sanctuary of eternity? Did I wander here to pluck up my courage in front of the harmonía aphanēs, the secret harmony of these stony witnesses to the heights of human achievement? Will all be well in the end, if my spirit can assimilate the melody of this day’s ending?

But the shadows of night descend further, and the two temples blend together, no longer recognizable as individuals, as if seeking protection in one another beneath the ghostly moonlight. And suddenly I hear Cassandra’s cry from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon:

“O thou God, O thou Fate,
Apollo! Apollo!”

O fate of this temple, this city, and the people who inhabited them! Except for the three sanctuaries, nothing but rubble is left, and we no longer know the names of the gods who dwelt in the cellae behind the columns; we know hardly anything of the history of this city, though for centuries it was must have been home to a flourishing culture and a bustling daily life—and yet: Apollo, the god of measure, beauty, and harmony, stands behind the ruins as a spiritual and creative power. Cassandra, the unhappy prophetess, was not reproaching him or his power, but rather the fact that he had driven her to the fatal house of the Atrides, in which she saw a ghastly fate approaching.

For a long time yet, I meditate in the magical light. Past, present, and future meet—and so my thoughts spin round and round. South and north! The three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, daughters of Zeus, weave destiny in the south, as do the Norns in the north, Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, beneath the World Tree Yggdrasil.

The stars come out and begin twinkling. Together they tell of ironclad laws and the harmony of the spheres. Tomorrow the sky will be clear, the sun will shine, and I will endeavor to understand the language of the temple; my spirit will listen to the sound of their stones, forms, and rhythms. Perhaps I will succeed in deciphering the mysterious notation, in interpreting their unknown neumes...