THE EARLY AND CLASSIC GOTHIC STYLE C. I I$Q-C.
splendid energy the parallel streams of east-bound energy and concen-
trating them in a final soaring movement along the narrowly spaced
piers of the apse and the narrow east windows up to the giddy heights
of the vault ribs and vaulting bosses.
This description is an attempt at analysing a spatial experience,
ignoring of course the fact that a normal 13th-century church-goer
would never have been admitted to the chanceL What will have
become evident from it is how spectacularly Rhcims, Amiens and
Beauvais are the final achievement of an evolution which had begun
backin the i ith century in Normandy and at Durham and had worked
one after another, seemingly small, but very significant changes at St.
Denis, Noyon, Laon, Paris and Chartres. This final achievement is,
to say it once more, far from reposeful. It possesses the tension of two
dominant directions or dimensions, a tension transformed by a
supreme feat of creative energy into a precarious balance. Once one
has felt this, one will recognise it in every detail. The piers are slen-
der and erect, part of the upward drive. Yet they are round, firm
and shapely, with their exquisite realistic foliage (c£ pi. xxxrv). The
mouldings of the arcades are sharp and manifold with rolls and deep
hollows, high lights and black but precise shadows. The clerestory
is all opened up into vast sheets of glass. Yet they arc subdivided
by vigorously moulded shafts and by geometrical tracery. The
introduction of tracery, an invention of the Gothic style, is
especially telling. Its development can be traced from Chartrcs to
Rheims and from Rheims to Amiens in figs, 29, 30 and 31. Before
Rheims tracery is just a punching of pattern into the waH, die wall
itself remaining intact as a surface. At Rheims, for the first time, we
find what is called bar tracery as against plate tracery. The stress now
rests on the lines of the pattern, not on the surface of the wall. Each
two-lighted window is crowned by a circle with a sexfoil ornament
—repose at the end of forceful action. Amiens is an enrichment of
Rheims, with four lighted windows and three circles instead of one.
The same energetic vitality appears in the vaults. Each boss signifies
Gothic balance—the firm knotting of four lines of energy, con-
ducted by shafts and then by ribs.
This balance of high tensions is the classic expression of the
Western spirit—as final as- the temple of the 5th century B.C. was
that of the Greek spirit. Then it was rest and blissful harmony, now
it is activity, only just for one moment held in suspense. And it re-
quires concentrated effort to master the contrasts and partake of the