(no subject)

[lowk]

"An incomparable collection of genuine pieces, too, the Castle of Citizen Cane achieves a psychedelic effect and a kitsch result not because the Past is not distinguishable from the Present (because after all this was how the great lords of the past amassed rare objects, and the same continuum of styles can be found in many Romanesque churches where the nave is now baroque and perhaps the campanile is eighteenth centaury), because what offends is the voracity of the selection, and what distresses is the fear of being caught up by this jungle of venerable beauties, which unquestionably has its own wild flower, its own pathetic sadness, barbarian grandeur, and sensual perversity redolent of contamination, blasphemy, the Black Mess. It is like making love in a confessional with a prostitute dressed in a prelate’s liturgical robes reciting Baudelaire while ten electronic organs reproduce the Well-Tempered Clavier played by Scriabin."

- Umberto Eco on William Hearst's castle, from Adventures in Hyperreality.