Home: A Short History of an Idea by Witold Rybczynski (review)

198 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 especially women' (136). The discussion terminates with the Symbolists, where 'The flight into self-oblivion was a more modern form of dehumanization bringing in its wake rejection of our world, spiritual frustration and the desire ... for self annihilation' (218). Such insights and there are many - go a long way towards counteracting the generally held view of Russian literature as being primarily concerned with social issues. As Ponomareff points out in his conclusion, two diametrically opposed readings of Russian literature are indeed possible, and in concentratingon its more negative side he is providing a refreshingly new interpretation and a greater depth of understanding. One minor complaint: in a bookwhere there are a number ofquotations in Russian, it would have been easier on the reader if Cyrillic could have been used instead of transliteration. (A. COLIN WRIGHT) Witold Rybczynski. Home: A Short History of an Idea Penguin 1986. x, 258, illus. $9.95 paper Several pages near the beginning of Home contain a detailed description of the study where the author is working: 'I am sitting in a creaky old swivel-type wooden armchair.... When I use the telephone, I tilt back and feel like Pat O'Brien in The Front Page.' He is surrounded by 'personal mementoes': a 'small gouache of a young man - myself,' 'a sepia colored photograph of a German zeppelin.' The desk is 'three-deep' in books and papers, and, for Rybczynski, 'there is comfort in this confusion.' In its immediate context, this description is part of a comparison between the study in which Durer anachronistically pictured StJerome in 1514 and its twentieth-century equivalent. Thus the passage introduces Home's major theme: the kinds of changes that have taken place in our living spaces since the Middle Ages. Significantly, though, this is not any old twentiethcentury studybutRybczysnski's own: we are invited, even coerced, into a surprisingly intimate acquaintance with the man whose words we are reading. The reader's resulting sense of being a quiet participant in a cozy library chat envelops the entire book, so that even the historical matter seems to be imbued with the same fondness and possessiveness that the author feels for his physical surroundings. This personal emphasis also has thematic implications: Rybczynski's book is about the development ofthe idea of the home (as its subtitle announces), and more specifically about the growth of the idea of domestic comfort. The author's musings on his study provide a preliminary exploration of those strongly subjective elements that vie with the computer and the Bwivel chair in contributing to the elusive make-up of 'comfort.' With his usual knack for apt metaphors, Rybczysnki explains the comprehensiveness of his subject with 'the Onion Theory of Comfort'; comfort 'incorporates many transparent layers of meaning.' The survey HUMANITIES 199 of the idea in Home proves the onion to be a big one. Several layers are concerned with physical comfort: the book includes considerations of the attitudes various historical periods took towards personal cleanliness (mainly indifferent, it seems), bathroom and sanitation facilities (or their absence), the technological developments that led to central heating and bright interior lighting, and even the engineering of a comfortable chair. Physical comfort is dependent on 'convenience,' a topic that involves such considerations as room layout, availability of servants, and the several turn-of-the-century studies that apply techniques for increasing industrial efficiency to the domestic sphere. Rybczynski proves that a number of less material qualities have also contributed substantially to the concept of comfort that has evolved in the last five hundred years: he includes discussions of the ways in which changing ideas about the family, privacy, power, social life, and fashion (in dress, architecture, and interior decoration) have affected the changing idea of home. Rybczynski's short history neither could attempt nor has attempted to do more than present the outlines of his comprehensive thesis. This does not mean that his treatment is either vague or general. He typically focuses on symbolic events or crucial movements, and then discusses those with a scholar's eye for fact and a raconteur's sense of narrative. Thus, for example, the seventeenth-century Netherlands prove 'exemplary ' in terms...