Q: The observations you made in Romanesque churches and monasteries in Italy, Spain, and France are important. This trip also seems to be a journey toward spirituality.
A: Spirituality is a word we should not use too often. But toward the spirit, yes. I have always thought it strange that Goethe, in his Trip to Italy, speaks with horror and rejection of the Romanesque figures in Verona and San Zeno, for example. He calls them caricatures. The spiritual attracts me, the dreamy spirituality of Romanesque figures, their postures, how they are placed between each other without twisting. Not like Gothic art, where everything leads to a point, to the sky, like an arrow; in Romanesque art, everything stays on the ground, and even so one feels the roundness of a head in the sky, the heavenly firmament, no? In Santo Domingo, in Soria, the facades were pure music for me.
from an interview with Peter Handke.
