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As "Temple of the Nation," the French Panthéon is, first and foremost, the
focal point of conflicting memories and identities. The monument's history not only tells the story
of France's national divisions, but it also points to discrepancies between public and private identities
of the 'great men' whose mortal remains it holds in its crypt. Thus, it is the entire drama of the
individual's place in society which is staged in the Panthéon.
First built as a Catholic church, then converted by the Revolutionaries into a civic
temple, the monument sums up in its intricate architecture and artistic furnishings, a national
community's capacity, whether religious or political, to appropriate to itself an individual's memory.
The delayed decision to bestow the honour of the Panthéon upon one's remains or memory for one,
with very few exceptions, is not admitted to the temple immediately after one's death- betrays, on the
one hand, the politics of memory of an administration, and thus its moral conceptions. For the
revered dead, at least until the Twentieth century, are to be seen as models of citizenship. On the
other hand, the decision reveals the true leader of the country: while the first "Pantheonisations," that
is, translations of remains to the Panthéon were ordered by the Parliament, later decisions were made
by individuals, such as Napoleon, François Mitterrand, or Jacques Chirac. Biography, then, is shaped
by politics and by a necessarily politicised history.
AS/SA nº 13,
p.201
This conflict between public and private spheres leads to specific questions regarding
the function of the funerary monument such as it is exemplified in the Panthéon. What may the
visitor grasp when strolling in the crypt's corridors? What particular type of memory is being
displayed here, and how is this 'memory of the dead', this mixture of historic knowledge, of political
influence and of poetic fiction brought across to the spectator? What, indeed, is being displayed by
a funerary monument or by a monumental tomb? Three related types of questions will be asked in this
paper, with particular regard to the Panthéon: first, what is the purpose of the funerary monument?
Secondly, how does the monument connect with the defunct's life, that is, what is a monumental
remembrance what or whose memory is brought up in a commemoration? Is memory recalled or
created? Thirdly, what does the tomb designate or represent? Is there another referent than itself for
the funerary monument?
The Panthéon was built as a church dedicated to Saint Geneviève, patron saint of
Paris. Louis XV decides in 1744 to rebuild and extend the modest abbey in thanks for prayers to the
saint that had been fulfilled. In 1755, the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot is chosen to oversee the
works. Around 1790, the new Sainte-Geneviève church is completed. Soufflot also designed the two
buildings that now face the monument; he thus enshrines his masterpiece in its own locus. Therefore
not only did Soufflot create a monument, he more importantly created a monumental space. While
the city was not as dense at that time as it is now, Soufflot's perspective still holds. Indeed, the street
leading to the Panthéon was renamed after the architect in 1807.
In the 1790s, the Revolutionaries reclaim the church and in April 1791, the
constituent assembly issues a decree converting Sainte-Geneviève into the Panthéon. The motto "Aux
grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante," ("To its Great Men, the Grateful Country") is adopted for the
monument, and Quatremère de Quincy is chosen to direct works to render the monument suitable for
its new purpose. The second architect of the Panthéon therefore closed off Soufflot's large windows
in order to give solemnity to the building, and obliterated every sign of a religious function
(bell-towers, sculptures, etc.). A new bas-relief is carved by Moitte to replace Coustou's Adoration
of the Cross on the front of the building.
AS/SA nº 13,
p.202
While this conversion is taking place, Mirabeau's coffin is brought to the Panthéon.
Count Mirabeau, glorified for his role in the Revolution, in establishing the freedom of press and in
participating in the redaction of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, proponent of the appropriation
of the clergy's riches by the Assembly, will be a few years after his death and admission to the
Panthéon the object of a controversy. As it appears that he has abused the people in order to satisfy
his ambitions and appetites, the decision is made to take his remains out of the Panthéon in late
1794, while Marat's, the "Friend of the People," sepulchre is being granted the honour of the
monument only to be taken out in its own turn a few months later. With the exceptions of Voltaire
and Rousseau, eighteenth century Pantheonisations tend to follow this scheme: one enters the
Panthéon only to be replaced by another a few months or years later.
The Nineteenth century sees frequent reversals of fortune for the monument. In
1805, Napoleon decides to "split" the building between its higher parts, given back to the church as
a gesture towards the Catholics, and its crypt, which keeps the role given to it by the Assembly. The
crypt, however, will now serve as a burial place for dignitaries of Napoleon's Empire. A third part
of the Imperial project for the monument was to make of the Panthéon a museum holding the tombs
of churches destroyed during the Revolutionary period. Though this project was never carried out,
it is interesting to note how Napoleon envisaged a museum of tombs: the sepulchres would have been
there for the interest of the general public, not for commemoration or mourning. It would also be
interesting to decide whether the present-day Panthéon has itself become a museum of famous tombs.
Museum exhibits are constantly held in the monument, juxtaposing contemporary art and historical
narratives, furthermore pressing the claim that the Panthéon is now a museum, rather than a civic
temple.
In 1816, Louis XVIII, restored to power, decided to return the Panthéon to
Sainte-Geneviève church. The "Great Men's tombs" are locked away safely in a hidden part of the
crypt. Louis-Philippe succeeds to Louis XVIII in 1830 after a mini-revolution. He decides to turn
back the church of Sainte-Geneviève into the Panthéon. A new bas-relief for the front of the building
is designed by David d'Angers, which still stands to this day. In 1851, Foucault's pendulum, proving
the Earth's rotation, is installed in the Panthéon. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the former Emperor's
nephew, decides after his coup d'état to return the Panthéon, yet again, to the church. It is not
before Victor Hugo's death and his grandiose funerals in 1885 that the Panthéon will be reclaimed,
definitively, to its function as temple of the nation and vault of its great men.
The Panthéon has therefore been changing identity between its two opposite
functions for a century. Architectural and decorative modifications have been associated to those
changes. The Panthéon as we experience it today is very much a diachronic collective
production.
AS/SA nº 13,
p.203
While enough can be conjectured regarding the debates between Catholics and
Republicans through this brief summary of the Panthéon's history, it is necessary to quickly point
out a difficulty which appeared to the Revolutionaries themselves. What is a great man? In order to
convert the Panthéon into a national temple, it was necessary to decide who was eligible to be
considered as a great man and worthy of national honours. Mona Ozouf shows forcefully how this
debate took place, and how the conception of 'great man' as opposed mostly to that of the 'hero' is
mostly a product of the Enlightenment. While Hugo appears as an archetypal 'great man' according
to this conception: productive in more than one domain, virtuous through a life rather than a single
event, Napoleon's dignitaries, often soldiers distinguished in battle, can appear quite contrary to this
norm. The frequent dismissals from the Panthéon also prove the near impossibility of deciding of a
man's worth, even after his death. Indeed, those problems lead the Assembly in 1795 to a decree
authorising "Pantheonisation" no earlier than ten years after a person's death.
The biographical knowledge required to decide whether one can be considered a
'great' is also needed by the artist in charge of building the individual funerary monument.
However, while the great man's qualities have been displayed through an entire life, the artist only
has a visual moment to sum them up. In the Panthéon's naves, some large sculptural monuments
represent some of the great episodes of French history still somewhat mixed up with remaining
representations from the religious times of the building. Two monuments are dedicated respectively
to the nameless soldiers fallen for the country and to the artists whose name has been forgotten.
Personal memories, that is the memory of specific individuals, is kept in two ways which contrast
somewhat with this imposing arrangement. On the one hand, names of 'great men' who are not buried
in the Panthéon are found engraved in the walls of the edifice, both in its upper parts and in its
crypt. Some of those names are regrouped with others, under categories such as "writers fallen for
France" (figure: above), further subdivided into those who were killed in action and those who died
in service whether active or not. Other names, such as the philosopher Bergson's, benefit from their
own paraphernalia (figure: "A Henri Bergson...," below). On the other hand, tombs in the crypt can be either
isolated, such as Voltaire's and Rousseau's, facing each other in a Revolutionary post-mortem
reconciliation, or set among other graves in cell-like vaults (figure: vault).
AS/SA nº 13,
p.204
Figure: A Henri Bergson
Figure: vault
It was Quatremère de Quincy's idea that the pedagogical destination of the building
would be best served by having the nave as a civic temple, and the crypt as the actual burying place.
The Panthéon, Quatremère suggested, could be used to hold great national events. He furthermore
proposed that the building be used as a place to swear in those destined to high offices. Though
Quatremère's ambitions for the Panthéon were never fulfilled, they show how much the design of
the building was made under the auspices of Enlightened reason. This is not to say that sensibility
had not its place in the Panthéon. On the contrary, transposing the mysteries of religion into a
republican cult implied a translation of sensibility of which the Panthéon bears witness. As art was
a vehicle for religious emotion, it will be a catalyst of moral sensitivity. Mona Ozouf maintains that
in this lies the Panthéon's failure, for visual representation can no longer act as a moral tutor.
Notwithstanding this claim, it appears that the civic function of the monument hijacked the private
identity of the 'great men' it houses. For if biographical details found out at a date posterior to the
Pantheonisation justified the expulsion of some, the time they spent in the crypt had their memory
honoured. In other words, the post-mortem election to the Panthéon makes one's memory
honourable, at least in appearance appearance meaning here the display of fame in the monument-
while one's biography may not be so. Visual presentation in the Panthéon literally creates a positive
memory of the dead, which may not be conform with whom he truly was. To sum up this process:
a political decision gets someone into the Panthéon; a monumental identity is thus created which
differs from one's real identity. It is important to distinguish here between three kinds of identities.
First, what I have called a 'monumental identity', which is shaped both by the politics and the poetics
of the monument. Second, a public identity, in the sense of an identity acknowledged by the wider
public. As such, Victor Hugo's identity during his lifetime was a glorious public identity. In this
case, his monumental identity was simply a derivative of his public identity. Others may have lacked
this kind of large-public identity while enjoying a wide monumental identity after their death, the
most striking example of which is that of the commemoration of nameless soldiers. Third, personal
identity inasmuch as it is described as a social identity. One can think, as Clément Rosset suggests,
that one's personal identity is nothing but a social identity, and in this sense, personal identity is
public, but still distinct from the two types previously defined.
AS/SA nº 13,
p.205
What is displayed by the funerary monument in the Panthéon, therefore, is a
monumental identity which is reflects only the details of one's life suitable for the national
monument's purpose. While this means that finer psychological details, or even general interests and
actions of the dead may not be considered, the aforementioned definition of a 'great man', that is,
one whose entire life was virtuous, gives the monumental biographer a monumental task in itself:
summing up an entire life in a monument's space. Two different methods can be used for this
purpose. One, through synthesis, creates a monument which represents as a whole the distinct parts
of a life. The other, through analysis, takes a representative episode of a person's life to make it
representative of the whole of this life. The second method is most useful for the monumental
depiction of people who illustrated themselves through a particular historical event, as soldiers for
example. When attempting to represent the enduring virtues of a "great man," however, synthesis works
best.
How is it possible to show what an entire life was in a single monument? The first
decision the artist has to make is whether to create a narrative or to present a symbol. Narratives are
not present very often in the Panthéon. This is due, I would like to suggest, to the pedagogical ideas
of the Enlightenment which lead to its production. If moral is to be a sense, if man is to be educated
by practical examples rather than by theory, it is necessary to turn the Panthéon into a place of
experience. The visitor, through the monument's solemnity, should feel engaged in ethics. The
ongoing parliamentary debate regarding the rightfulness of the dead to be buried in the Panthéon
must remain away from the inside of the building. What one should find once the doors of the
Panthéon are passed, is the pure, naked experience of moral. The moral example exists from the mere
fact that those in the Panthéon are decreed to be morally exemplary, and it is the sight of the ideal
representations of those men which should be an example to the visitor. There is no need for
explanation, then, as Pantheonisation itself serves that purpose. Once Pantheonised, one becomes an
example, and it is this example which is to be seen in the funerary monument. While the alliance of
word and image is productive in this respect, text other than names in the Panthéon is not narrative
text, but rather maxim-like idealistic description (figure: Rousseau's grave, side view: "Ici repose l'homme
de la nature et de la vérité").
AS/SA nº 13,
p.206
The use of symbols, however, is reinforced in funerary sculpture, as a monument
can be made of a combination of symbolic elements. Thus, a supposed benevolent character is
represented on the statue of Voltaire (figure) by a smiling face, while his work as a writer is
represented by his holding a quill. There is an opposition between the upward-looking, content face
of Voltaire, and the rest of his body, stepping forward, as it were, of its own accord. Whether this
is interpreted as a dissociation between happiness and a writer's work or as the writer's work inducing
happiness, in an 'ascendant' reading of the sculpture, the different parts of the same statue seem to
offer symbols of different orders. In other words, each detailed symbolic element sums up a part of
the subject's biography. A combination of symbols in a visual presentation both brings forth ideas
tied to the subject's life and confuse the viewer as to the order of those ideas. Voltaire's statue thus
exemplifies what has been noted as the Panthéon's design: to present the 'great man' not by a
discursive biography but by an immediate moral atmosphere. If more conventional techniques to
summarise can be described as synecdochic, an element of the life standing for the life itself, this
creation of a seemingly living character (further reinforced by placing a statue of the dead man
walking before his grave) through associations of symbols, is much closer to a metaphoric work. One
could even say that there is a metaphor of representation itself here, as the statue represents that which
cannot be represented anymore. The metaphor's vehicle stands in its own right, the tenor having
literally disappeared. This most efficient way to summarise a life thus appears to lie in the creation
of a fake life, that is: a work of art.
If the funerary monument, summarising the dead man's life, replaces an absence with
art's warm death, what is it the tomb does? As many critics, such as Georges Didi-Huberman or
Michel Serres have pointed out, the tomb hides something. In a materialistic sense, it hides what
cannot be seen, as Didi-Huberman put it, what looks at me and what concerns me. The corpse's
decomposition, which I can suppose, has to be hidden. At the same time, though, the tomb hides what
cannot be seen as it cannot be experienced: death itself. Didi-Huberman shows forcefully how some
can then deny reality by saying that what they see is precisely what the tomb is: a rectangle of
marble, of such and such dimensions. For the critic, 'the religious man will always see something else
beyond what he is seeing, when he finds himself face-to-face with a tomb.' And it is an evidence that
we cannot be faced with what the tomb holds. The grave hides what it designates. There is a
referential ambiguity here that can be exacerbated by the observation that from time to time, tombs
do not hold bodies, even when we suppose them to do so. I would like to give two brief examples
here: first, that of Aberdeen's monument to Bishop Elphinstone (figure). Elphinstone's grave is inside
Aberdeen University's chapel, under a stone on the ground. This monument was ordered to be placed
next to the grave. Unfortunately, when it was brought to its destination from its making place, it was
realised that the monument was too large to fit through the chapel's doors, and it was decided to leave
it outside the chapel. This cenotaph is very often confused for an actual grave. The second example
is that of another Scottish University founder, Bishop Kennedy. Bishop Kennedy's grave in St
Andrews is richly adorned and seems grand and solid. Nevertheless, works in the chapel in 1929 lead
to the discovery of a corpse under the ground just next to the grave, which was identified as
Kennedy's. Probably out of fear of profanation, the Bishop had decided not to be buried in his grave.
There again, the spectator is faced with a tomb which he may wrongly think holds a
body.
AS/SA nº 13,
p.207
Graves, it seems, can be empty as well as full of a developing emptiness, without
losing any of their functional efficiency. Meanwhile, funerary monuments seem to create a memory
or an identity of the dead man that has more to do with poetics than with actual biography. So what's
in a grave? No more, but perhaps no less, than a name. For the grave's referent is in fact the name
of someone who died. Whether this person's corpse lies in the grave or not is in the end irrelevant:
what happens to a corpse, as Daniel Dayan noted, has to do with medical knowledge, not with the
knowledge of someone's death. I can know that someone is dead without seeing his dead body. The
name of the dead person, then, carries the whole memories and identities, either imagined or real,
borne by the spectator's own memory. The pedagogical function of the Panthéon can only reside in
this diminutive part of commemoration. The inscription of the name upon the monument's wall,
nonetheless, gives another kind of knowledge. For a name to be written on a commemorative wall
means that the bearer of that name is dead. A poetics of the name can be made out of this for
example by lining up thousands of names, which do not mean anything in particular to the spectator,
as the extent of the event cannot be conceived of, but which in fact may give the spectator a tragic
impression, that is a tragic recognition: a poetic effect. However, I would like to suggest that
remembrance does not truly pass through this poetics. While funerary art points to itself as a
representation of something which is no more, the names of the dead primarily do not point to
anything other than their own event. In other words, proper names placed in a funerary context, such
as a monument to the dead, point to the disappearance of their own referent. Works of art are quick
to become their own referent. The emptiness towards which they point is filled up by their own
presence. By contrast, the echo of a proper name in the emptiness of death the calling of a name
when there is no-one to answer it- the name without its face, presents us with the real absence that
death is. As Martin Rueff writes, "Poetry is the memory of a presence which remained presence."
Poetry is not commemorating a death, it is perpetuating an absent presence. Realising someone's
death, and keeping alive the knowledge of this death, cannot be achieved through poetic means. It
must be the object of a politics of memory, of a politics of the name.
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