Ideals and Heroes

The Thomas Jefferson Building

I attended a ceremony at the Jefferson Building yesterday. It houses the Library of Congress and is a monument to American ideals. As a public space, a place that belongs to us all, it is impressive. Marble from Italy, France, everywhere--even Tennessee!! Mosaics, paintings, carvings, stained glass—endlessly decorated. Marble, gold leaf, pillars, frescoes, domes, courtyards, fountains, columns, everything. You can take a virtual tour of it at www.loc.gov/jefftour . Sayings, names of ancient and modern (890s) authors, poets, philosophers. Representations of the ideals on which our nation stood in 1890. Female figures representing the ideal; men representing the achieved. In the main reading room, “Eight giant marble columns each support 10-foot-high allegorical female figures in plaster representing characteristic features of civilized life and thought: Religion, Commerce, History, Art, Philosophy, Poetry, Law
and Science.
The 16 bronze statues set upon the balustrades of the galleries pay homage to men whose lives symbolized the thought and activity represented by the plaster
statues below. Included are Moses and St. Paul (Religion); Christopher Columbus and Robert Fulton (Commerce); Herodotus and Edward Gibson (History); Michelangelo
and Ludwig van Beethoven (Art); Plato and Francis Bacon (Philosophy); Homer and William Shakespeare (Poetry); Solon and James Kent (Law); and Isaac Newton
and Joseph Henry (Science). and Joseph Henry (Science). The circle of knowledge is completed by the reader desks, as users of the Main Reading Room make their own contributions to the various fields of knowledge represented by the paintings and statuary in the room.”

It’s like the cathedrals and mosques of Europe and Asia in a way—a temple to our ideals.

Have those ideals changed? What would we paint today to represent who we are? Who would we immortalize in bronze?
They didn’t leave any room for new names, like Mark Twain for instance. Or new fields either. It is an inspiring place all the same—good to know it is ours, and that it represents what we want to be, even if we fall short.

It’s good to declare ideals and heroes.