In Ruins: A Journey Through History, Art, and Literature

How often can you read a book that can synthesize practically everything you know, cross reference subject matter, and at the same time inform you about the world and societies as you know them in a way that is informative to people possessing a high level of aesthetics and knowlege of history, art, and literature. There are few books like this for us, but this is one. Essential to expanding your point of view.

Harold Bloom writes that what makes some authors great to the point where their work approaches the canonical is "strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange." This meditation on ruins will surely withstand the test of time as well or better than some of the memorials of history that it describes. It has piqued my interest in something that I'd never given much thought to. I have been within walking distance of a couple of places the author writes about, and passed on the opportunity to visit them. Histories comprise more than half of my leisure reading, but somehow I couldn't muster the curiosity to explore a historical ruin in the same way I would with museums & historic landmarks (that are still in one piece). This wonderfully written book has changed that for me. Highly recommended, a book that you will likely want to re-read every few years, and take with you on visits to Rome, Sicily, Wales and more.

IN RUINS by Christopher Woodward is one of the most genteel, warmly evocative, yet scholarly extended essays about beauty that has appeared in a while. Only a true artist could 1) come up with the idea of meditating on ruins of past civilizations and 2) recreate historical places not only through his own perceptive eyes but also through the eyes and writings and drawings and paintings of artists for the past two hundred years. Woodward finds beauty in the "neglected" ruins, the old sites where nature has nudged the surfaces with wild flowers, mosses, crawling vines, and ground swells, preferring this respect for times past to the wild flurry of the preservationists who seek to 'restore' these treasures to their 'original glory' but often invite tourism with its adjunctive sales, stands, and souvenirs. He has visited the ruins of Rome, of Sicily, Cuba, England, etc and is distraught when he finds these various havens for poets sequestered with guardrails and other implements of distraction. "..the artist is inevitably at odds with the archeologist. In the latter discipline the scattered fragments of stone are parts of a jigsaw, or clues to a puzzle to which there is only one answer, as in a science laboratory; to the artist, by contrast, any answer which is imaginative is correct." "What [poet] Shelley's experience shows is that the vegetation which grows on ruins appeals to the depths of our consciousness, for it represents the hand of Time, and the contest between the individual and the universe." Of the 'Picturesque Movement' in England, Woodward writes referring to the latter day artist John Piper "I know perfectly well I would rather paint a ruined abbey half-covered with ivy and standing in long grass than I would paint it after if has been taken over by the Office of Works, when they've taken of all the ivy and mown all the grass." Woodward talks about even the transporting of ruins from, say, Libya to England (as per King George IV in 1827 importing the Roman ruins of Leptis Magna to his Gardens at Virginia Water). "A ruin is a dialogue between an incomplete reality and the imagination of the spectator." And finally in his thoughts on war monuments and memorials he writes "Is it ever possible to preserve the 'strange beauty' of war, to capture the moment of 'dust in the air suspended'?"Each of these eloquently written thoughts and musings is unlike anything else you will find in books on art history, architectural history, or even philosophy. Christopher Woodward has graced our libraries with a little volume that holds dear the intangible, the corporeal transience, the lasting loveliness of man's time on this planet as protected by nature. This is truly a beautiful book that begs for moments of your indulgence, away from the madding crowd.

Here is the best description of the fascination of ruins that I have ever read. It is full of surprises and wonderful illustrations. There is nothing little about the spirit of this book - Woodward writes beautifully and has a perfect grasp of the sublime aesthetics of fine ruins. The reader is swept through a wide range of time, and of time periods, from antiquity to the present day. All throughout are marvelous, pithy descriptions - a super book !!

The erudite Woodward has written an enormously entertaining and illuminating book whose rich, flowing prose is a pleasure to read. History is blended with the starkness of the modern world and transmitted to the reader redolent with imagery. Woodward's broad, firm grasp of history and effective weaving of desperate elements produces a satisfying read for those intrigued by the forgotten corners of the world and the mystery of the past. "In Ruins" is destined to become a classic. The residue of a romantic, misty past lingers long after the last page is turned.