2012 june 02

Oxford has many trees but few statues. The trees are evident almost everywhere. What statues there are, are placed high up in classical manner on the edges of roofs and pediments. I have yet to find a monumental statue of the kind often seen in other cities. Even the image of Queen Victoria is notably absent. I wonder why.

Si monumentum requiris. That may be the answer. Oxford itself is its own monument. And monuments within monuments.

The greatness of Oxford is in its scholarship. And scholarship is not well portrayed on a plinth. Save when both plinth and scholarship lie within the womb of imagination.

But then Oxford is Town as well as Gown. And Town seems not to have to have indulged in a taste for statuary. Its monuments lie in modest commerce. And an ebullient Town Hall.

The railways were kept away. The central roads are an unsolved problem. Cornmarket and Queen Street. Thronged. The Broad and The High – less so.

Pause for contemplation ..

francis cameron, oxford, 2 june 2012

Posted via email from franciscameron's posterous