Although I should be used to this by now, I am still amazed at the differing vision that others have about the same things that I have thought about or perhaps haven't given much thought to. Not that I haven't thought much about the Eiffel Tower. For a few years now, I have been planning a summer trip to Europe, to France, to Paris and to the Eiffel Tower, in particular. I have visited vicariously that city of light and that towering presence through novels, readings, photos, my friend's travels and now through Barthes' essay "Eiffel Tower". But, I have never thought of the Eiffel Tower or La Tour Eiffel in quite the same way Barthes presents it. I guess that my view has been changed forever. And, I haven't even visited it yet.
Roland Barthes was a renowned French literary critic and philosopher, who delved into many arenas. He is particularly known for his writings on semiotics, which is the study of signs and symbols and how these are used for communication and in language. Pretty heady stuff. As I read this essay, I found myself at times nodding and at others scratching my head. It was almost as if I were trying to figure out the definition of "blue"; not the feeling, but the color. And yet, upon reflection and further examination, I can say that I enjoyed the way he deconstructs stuff and builds it back again.
But, back to La tour Eiffel. How this steel structure becomes imbued in our minds as the symbol of Paris is rather a mysterious process. And, yet, Barthes shows us just how we tend take an image and turn it into a symbol. It seems to be a universal "happening", for lack of a better word. We see an image and our minds add meaning, history, depth to it. It is almost as if we need to fill in the blanks, and those blanks are what is not said in the image. We want to understand the whole story and so, we add all those layers of knowledge, all those other ideas, all those other stories, add a few connections to other similar images and produce a new and different whole from the one presented. And, so we begin to build myths surrounding images. Those myths that, to paraphrase Barthes, are the ideas that are held as truth or unquestioned by a group, a people, or a culture.
Barthes takes us through the Eiffel Tower's different levels of meaning, pointing out its uselessness, its emptiness, its "mimicry" of other tall, slender shapes that have been built through the ages. It is a paradox, for that very structural uselessness has served as the platform for millions to attain a bird's eye view of the city. It's emptiness served to point the way to the skyscrapers that followed, and its "mimicry", transformed the obelisk into a more graceful shape.
Barthes points out that the tower is both seen and seer, for its presence is ubiquitous in Paris. Since one can see it, it follows that it must see us. When one climbs it, and views the city, the landscape is transformed, and for a moment one can feel at the top of the world. This reminded me of the feeling I felt from the top of the World Trade Center, looking out over the Hudson River, towards the Jersey shore, or even the exhilaration I felt the first time I stood on the observations deck very nearly at the top of the Empire State building. I could see so very far, and yet near too - so many buildings, so many windows, so many cars, so many people. Just as I was seeing, who was seeing me?
Just as the Empire State building or the Statue of Liberty are symbols of New York the Parthenon of Athens, and the Pyramids of Egypt, the Eiffel Tower is a symbol of Paris. Barthes reminds us that the symbols of other places must be entered, for they are solid. In contrast, this tower is open. Barthes asks "How can you be enclosed within emptiness, how can you visit a line?" This is the one question I will ask myself as I ascend the tower in its oblique elevator.
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