THE NEW WORLD OF THE GOTHIC FOX
183
strange disquietude of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that restless–
ness of the dreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the
niches, and flickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in
labyrinthine knots and shadows among wall and roof, and yet is not sat–
isfied, nor shall be satisfied. " You might think, if Ruskin had not specifi–
cally identified these qualities as belonging
to
the Gothic, that he was
describing a church by Borromini, but of course he is emphasizing some–
thing clse. Veliz takes up the idea that in the Gothic church the prin–
ciple of addition, especially in the English Gothic, is the most important
instrument in the builders' hands. The building need never be conceived
as complete: you could always add a chancel or a chapel, another pinna–
cle, and so on , always expanding in new directions. This is clearly not
true of the
Cesamtkul1stwerk
of Bernini. Pevsner, however, when he seized
on this , in his book on the Englishness of English art, made an explicit
distinction between the English Gothic and the French Gothic, empha–
sizing the fact that the English Gothic expands horizontally, colonizing
the surroundings, whereas the French is always expanding vertically.
The distinction is interesting. Let me clarifY the comparison here by
quoting from one of Veliz's final conclusions: "It should be pointed out
again that the metaphoric usage proposed here is unashamedly cultural.
Although it recruits architectural imagery into its service, it does so with
diffidence and, it is to be hoped, prudence. The assertion that the
prevalent cultural mode of the English-speaking Americans corresponds
to that of the Gothic fox is certainly not strictly or even mainly archi–
tectural but cultural. It refers to a manner of conceiving the world, a
mode of thought and conduct that originated during the protracted af–
termath of the imperial dissolution in the West and that acquired a dis–
tinct and separate character in England during the medieval centuries;
achieved a quasi-nationalistic flavor under the Tudors; was briefly di–
verted by the ill-fated centralizing efforts of Stuarts and Puritans, and
having been fleetingly disconcerted by the pseudo-Cartesian precisions
exemplified by the enlightened despotisms of the day, turned away pre–
ferring instead the pleasantly insular understanding - an amiable
entel1te -
between puritanical steadfastness and aristocratic compromise that ma–
tured together with the Industrial Revolution and flowered in the New
World."
I would add that all these things did make the spirit of the English–
speaking empire completely different from that of the Spanish-speaking
empire. By bringing together such art historical and philosophical obser–
vations, Veliz's book gives us a means by which to grasp all that he de–
scribes. But one should not lean too heavily on the categories them-
