17. The House as Metaphor

Abstract

Francesca Rigotti The House as MetaphorThe Tradition of the House Man needs a fixed reference point, without which he cannot venture away on unknown paths. Even after the loss of centralitity brought about by the Copernican revolution, our "need for a centre" has remained strong. And the simplest and most immediate centre sought by all is the house, the reference place which offers each one of us the minimum of stability and roots to enable him to leave it whenever he likes, whether he chooses or has to.Living in a house is a central experience, a basic statute, a primary condition of human life, and its importance can be seen in its full significance in many, varying aspects. As the house and living in it are central human experiences, so the metaphor of the house is central to man's rhetorical apparatus, and is present in religious, psychological, cultural, sexual and political contexts. In the political field especially this metaphor is frequently used, as is borne out by different political expressions which highlight the close relationship between "making" politics and the "making" of homo faber in his domestic activity. The constructive technique of politics is a knowledge which turns into practice just as the architect's knowledge does. The same way of denoting places and objects in politics reveals the latter's deep alliance with the dimension of habitation. We find the courts of justice and government house or even just the House, as in parliamentary reports, alongside the chambers and cabinets, the ruling houses and the houses of leading families (the Atrids, the Levites, Stuarts, Bonapartes), Brought to you by | Stockholms U Authenticated Download Date | 10/5/15 5:48 1660-1700, 1985, 9/2: 61-74, here p. 63, and H. Erskine-Hill, "Heirs of Vitruvius: Pope and the Idea of Architecture", in: H. Erskine-Hill and A. Smith (eds.), The Art of Alexander Pope, London: Vision Press, 1979, 144-168, here p. 146. 2 A suggestive example of this may be read in an English writer of the second half of the 17th century, Thomas Fuller, who wrote of the "bloodless revolution": "So Solomon most wisely did contrive,/His Temple should be still-born though Alive./That stately Structure started from the ground/ Unto the Roof, not gulity of the sound/Of Iron Tool, all noise therein debarr'd [...]"; Th. Fuller, A