CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VI (1) Contemporary-Eurasia-VI-1-engl | Page 63

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VI (1)
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It commemorates a person or a historical event.
As Albert Einstein aptly put it a long time ago: “knowledge is to
know where it is written.”
Monuments do not only commemorate public figures who have
deserved well of the nation. They commemorate the nation, raise it
above the land on which it is planted and express an idea of public
duty and public achievement in which everyone can share. Their
meaning is not “he” or “she” but “we”. And the successful monument
does not stand out as a defiance of the surrounding order but endorses
it and adds to its grace and dignity.
All attention comes from the monuments, onto the city and the
people who live and move within their sight. They are like the eyes of
a father, resting on his children at play. They are full of joy of
belonging, and convey a serene acceptance of death in the national
cause. The sculptors and architects are forgotten, their forms and
materials are the forms and materials from which the city around them
is built. And they retire into corners as though in acknowledgment that
their work has been done.
What is it that makes a monument special? How should its
specialness be conserved? First, a function of a monument is
commemoration. The essential value communicated by the monument
is an evocation of the notions of memory and time. The origin of the
word “monument” comes from the Latin moneo, monere, which
means ‘to remind’, ‘to advise’ or ‘to warn’, suggesting a monument
allows us to see the past thus helping us visualize what is to come in
the future 1 . In English the word “monumental” is often used in reference
to something of extraordinary size and power, as in monumental sculpture,
but also to mean simply anything made to commemorate the dead, as
a funerary monument or other example of funerary art.
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary more narrowly defines
a monument as “a structure, edifice or erection intended to
commemorate a notable person, action or event”, generally in the
singular-an isolated case of brilliance which stands out from the rest
1
Cole John Young and Reed Henry Hope, The Library of Congress: The Art and
Architecture of the Thomas Jefferson Building, Norton, 1997, p. 16.
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