21 Davies Street (London)

United Kingdom / England / London / Davies Street, 21
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21 Davies Street is a mixed-use building which replaces an existing 1960s building that had for a long time been considered out of place with the surrounding architectural environment. One unique feature of this building is that there are these verse carved into the terracotta facade of the building : - "Les Mots Juste Sont Entendus Par Toutes Les Consciences"; "Too Many Laws Too Few Examples" and "Where Man Obeys Without Being Presumed Good There Is Neither Liberty Nor A Native Land"

Those are the works of Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE, The words come from the French Revolutionary and poet Louis de Saint-Just.

In this building

  1. C London
  2. Gagosian Gallery
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Coordinates:   51°30'40"N   -0°8'52"E

Comments

  • Conscience is not worn on a banner. Saint-Just was a kind of fanatic for purity as were many of his fellow members on the Comité de Salut Public (public salvation committee). His professed lofty ideals were not conceived as principles for action but only ends for justifying very bloody means indeed ! And what ends please ? Well, the Advent of a new Man, a new Society and a new Order, no more. If he were alive today he would be called a polymorphic pervert. A true modern man and precursor to Stalin Hitler and Mao (in order of appearance), for ones. Jacobins (Saint-Just's strain of revolutionaries) even fiddled with the idea of taking young children from their families and give them a "republican" education so as to avoid their being tainted by counter-revolutionary ideas. An eminent manifestation of totalitarianism. I am a frenchman, just home from a stay in London where this quotation got my favourable attention, not knowing who the author was. It accorded with my feeling that authority must be trusting, vigilant but trusting, because it acts for the common weal and its agents consequently must be "presumed good", chosen and instructed accordingly, and infused with a sense of their responsibilities. I was somewhat sobered by this the result of my search. So when taking words out of context and history, beware ! (NB : I am a convinced republican)
This article was last modified 11 years ago