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From: Stephen Lauf
To: design-l@lists.psu.edu
Subject: 5 years ago today, etc.
Date: 2004.04.18 14:50
tsPOWa
wishful thinking or part of a novel idea?
[It's interesting how five people you meet in heaven and Il Campo Marzio start in the same fashion--comparing:
Chapter One
The End
This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.
Mitch Albom, the five people you meet in heaven, 23 September 2003.
So, now that you have a fairly good idea of who Ambrose and Theodosius are, it is time to learn more of Honorius (the younger son of Theodosius who is now Emperor of the West) and his wife Maria. Honorius was the last ancient ruler to [re]build the walls of Rome (because of the "Gothic Wars" --Christian "Goths" that is) and he also built an imperial mausoleum attached to the original Basilica of St. Peter's. Sometime in the 1500s the sarcophagus of Maria was discovered (very likely while the old basilica was being demolished to make way for the new/present one). The sarcophagus of Maria may well be the last substantial imperial artifact of (the city of) Rome, and after an illustrious title page and a frontispiece, it is an image of the sarcophagus of Maria that Piranesi uses to begin his Campo Marzio publication. In a most elegantly covert way, Piranesi began the 'history' of the Campo Marzio with what is really it's ending, and what is probably the world's greatest designed architectural inversionary double theater goes on from there.
Stephen Lauf, "Re: lack of life", 19 January 2002.]
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