World Trade Center Memorial
New York City, NY
What
is a Thyrse ?
According to the poetic
and religious definition,
it is a sacred symbol,
clutched in the hands of
priests and priestesses,
celebrating the divinity
whom they serve
and of whom they are servants.
But physically, it is no more
than a baton, a pure baton,
a bean pole, a tower,
cold, hard, and straight.
Around this baton,
in capricious meanderings,
vines, leaves, and flowers
play and frolic,
the vines and leaves
sinuous and fugitive,
the flowers tumbling like
bells and overturned goblets.
And a stunning glory leaps
from this complexity of
line and color,
quiet and boisterous.
Would you say that
the line curved and spiraled
dances around the straight line in
mute adoration ?
Would you say that
all of these delicate corollas,
all of these calyxes,
these explosions of scent and color
execute a mystical fandango
around the baton ?
And yet who can dare say
that the flowers and vines
were made for the baton,
or that the baton is simply a pretext
for the beauty of the vines and flowers ?
The thyrse is the representation
of your stunning duality,
mysterious and passionate Beauty.
The baton is your will :
straight, firm and unshakeable ;
the flowers and vines
are the promenade
of your fantasy around that will.
It is the feminine element
executing around the male
itsincomparable pirouettes.
Line straight
and line arabesque,
intention and expression,
rigidity of will,
sinuosity of word,
unity of purpose,
diversity of manner,
all-powerful and
indivisible alloy of genius,
who would divide and separate you ?
translated
and excerpted from
Le Thyrse
by Charles Baudelaire
A public memorial,
two monuments of equal height,
within an elliptical park
that embraces in part,
each footprint of the
World Trade Center Towers.
The form of each monument is that of a thyrse :
a central cylindrical shaft surrounded by columnar
groups of vine-stalks that rise nearly the full height
of the obelisk and form an external structural truss,
a framework for the sheathing of metal leaves and glass flowers, several thousand in total, each unique in shape and color, and equal in number to the names
engraved at the base of the monuments.
At the slurry wall side of the park,
the grade slopes to the base of the wall,
exposing the roots of the memorial
as well as the foundations
of the former structures.
Atop each obelisk is a
large metal sculpture
of a pine cone,
clad in gold leaf.
The pine cone is
represented in its open state,
and modeled after
those conifers
whose cone requires
the heat of fire to open,
the same fire which clears
the forest floor for a
new cycle of growth.
