In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

9 Parthenon, Nashville From the Site of History to the Sight of Memory Éric Méchoulan America, you have it better Than this, our old continent, With no castles fettered And no stone monuments. In times of great life Your spirit untroubled be By idle strife And vain memory. —Goethe, “Den Vereinigten Staaten” What does it mean to possess a Parthenon at home, when one is not an Athenian? Not a small reproduction, mind you, but the re-creation of a full-scale Parthenon. Such is the experience of any Nashville citizen. But what kind of experience is it to behold a modern Parthenon amidst the green spaces of Nashville Centennial Park—a nice place, indeed, for a Sunday stroll? The story begins in 1895, America is experiencing an economic depression , showing signs of mounting anxiety in the face of an exacerbated industrialization and mass immigration, more and more menacing to the agrarian ideal.1 In commemorating the 100th anniversary of its accession to the Union, the State of Tennessee finds an effective way to divert public concern and recycle a fantasized past. A Centennial Exposition Company is founded, the “cornerstone” of which is the building of a replica of the Parthenon—a seem143 ingly appropriate project for Nashville, already known by this time as the “Athens of the South.”2 Thus, within a year, it was done. Set between the Pyramid of Cheops and the Memphis Building, adjacent to a Chinese Village and a Giant See-Saw, was a Parthenon for all citizens to behold, whether one were boating across an artificial lake in a romantic Venetian gondola (with native gondolier) or jaunting about astride an Egyptian camel. In the wake of the exposition, “Nashvillians expressed [the] hope that its site would become a public park and that the Parthenon replica would be preserved.”3 Or so the official record of the events has it. And just as the Centennial Project enjoyed popular favor, so too was there public demand for maintaining this symbol of community itself. Public indeed, for such initiatives must originate with the people, rather than an elite, since the latter must always appear to obey the former, at least as far as the sense of collective identity is concerned! By 1907, however, the Parthenon’s plaster ornamentation had deteriorated; it was repaired, “complying with public demand” and “at great expense.” But by 1920 it was in such disrepair that a decision was made to close it down in order to rebuild the structure, “again at public demand.”4 Once again, even if the plan was conceived by an elite few, the story attributes the idea to popular demand and to a collective sense of identity, for history founds the collective self, just as people ground history: Nashvillians, and Americans by extension (for it was the Centennial of the entrance of Tennessee into the Union), engaged their selfpresentation as the modern Athenians, as the true democrats. Between 1920 and 1931, a new replica was built, a Parthenon meant to endure , to withstand the vicissitudes of time, like its Grecian namesake. As the author of record puts it, in an elegant yet innocuous oxymoron, “an original replica.”5 Original concept indeed, one that erases the temporal disjunction and gives to the reproduction the status of what it reproduces! Such use is authorized by two previous occurrences of the concept of replica. In the Foreword by Charles Moss, a local personality of the 1950s, we read: “It is a replica, yes. But defying all the laws of grammar, we will call it ‘an exact’ replica, so true to detail has been its reproduction and so renowned its presence.”6 It is, thus, an “exact replica” not only because of the quality of the re-creation but also because of its impact on the public and the effect of presence that it produces. Detail and fame make it an “exact replica”: a replica of a building and a replica of its proper effect. In his Preface, which follows Moss’ Foreword, Charles Creighton concludes with pride that “children of every civilized nation are taught the history of this ancient temple. Those in Middle Tennessee can study an exact replica”— this time without quotation marks or any sort of modalization.7 By this explicit opposition, we are encouraged to admire how the passivity of all other nations (who “are taught”) is supplanted by the activity of Tennesseans 144 Wa s t e - S i t e S t o r i...

Share