Benet, Juan, author.

The construction of the Tower of Babel / Juan Benet ; translated by Adrian Nathan West.

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Wakefield Press, [2017]
©2017.

xii, 71 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 18 cm

Imagining architecture

Juan Benet's penultimate book The Construction of the Tower of Babel brings together two essays that testify to the multiplicity of the author's interests, both personal and professional. The titular essay is a meditation on Pieter Brueghel the Elder's 1563 painting of the Tower of Babel: the first painting in European art history to feature a building as a protagonist. An engineer by trade, Benet brings his knowledge of building construction to bear on Brueghel's creation, examining the archways, pillars, windows, and the painter's meticulously depicted chaos at the heart of the edifice's centuries-long execution. An unusual analysis of architectural hubris and the linguistic myth that gave rise to it, Benet's essay builds it own linguistic telescoping structure that could be described as an architectual discourse on the madness of the unending project. Also included is "On the Necessity of Treason" (a theme of particular interest to Benet, whose father was shot by Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War, and whose brother was forced to escape to France, exiled for his Republican sympathies). Benet considers the essentially dual nature of the spy and the curious World War II cases of Julius Norke and William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) to conclude, in a spark of lucid reflection, that within the order of the state, the traitor is not only necessary, but welcome.

9781939663320 (softcover)
1939663326 (softcover)

Bruegel, Pieter, approximately 1525-1569. Tower of Babel.
Joyce, William, 1906-1946.
Tower of Babel (Bruegel, Pieter)
Spanish essays 20th century Translations into English.
Architecture in art.
Spanish essays.
Traitors.
Treason.
Architecture dans l'art.
Essais espagnols.
Traîtres.
Trahison.
traitors.

Translations.

Benet, Juan. Construcción de la torre de Babel.
West, Adrian Nathan, translator.
Imagining architecture.

Localisation: Bibliothèque main y 299399
Cote: BIB 245489
Statut: Disponible