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Spiritual
Decoration vs. Materialist Decoration
By Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
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| Assembly chamber of the Palace of
Luxembourg |
In the first picture, 1,500 representatives
of the United nations meet in the Assembly Chamber of the
Luxembourg Palace built between 1615 and 1620 for Maria de
Medici under the direction of Solomon de Brosse. The ambiance
is admirably suited to an event of such magnitude. The very
natural order itself requires that places where great events
take place be full of good taste, dinstinction and brilliance.
And that is what is found there. This can
be seen in the woodwork, colonnade, the simple and noble lines
of the tribune and table of the presidency and the solemn
bearing of the grand marble figures that illuminate the ambiance
with the splendor of centuries of culture and glory. One sees
force, majesty, grace and wealth. In a word, everything concurs
to make one judge this place worthy of a gathering of world
representatives.
* * *
Are these the brutal, crushing sinisterly
cold forms of a criminal tribunal? Or is it a table for police
interrogations, over which floats, implicitly but heavily
the threat of a concentration camp?
By no means. It is the tribune of the UN
designed in accordance with certain type of modern taste.
On his feet, Andrei Gromyko, delegate of the USSR turns heavily
toward the President, Percy Spender, to whom he declares that
Russia will not sign the peace of San Francisco.
Such is the level to which a certain “artistic”
schools have reduced modern life.
In the Luxembourg Palace, the composition
of the ambiance took into consideration, not only the material
and technical conveniences, but mainly the spiritual ones,
by satisfying everything that the human spirit might require
for the acts for which the hall is destined. It is a decoration
made by men who believe in an immaterial soul. The tribune
in which Gromyko speaks denies everything to the soul. It
completely ignores the soul. It was constructed only in function
of material conveniences. In a word, it is typically materialistic.
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