Gurdjieff's Legominism in Paris
 - Salle Pleyel

Presented by Ana Helena Fragomeni
at the ALL & EVERYTHING International Humanities Conference 2001

I will talk about something not very well known, that maybe it is not quite true, and it is also possible that it is not new for you. However, it was new for me and also very interesting. I bring this subject here because, if it is true, something very precious can be threatened - and many legominisms more can exist thereabout, waiting to be interpreted and also in risk of transformation or destruction.

Two years ago, being very interested in the Enneagram, I was seeking that symbol and their meanings everywhere I went, in whatever I have read, and in all events and experiences I passed through. Nevertheless, I was totally unprepared for the meeting with the legominism I have found in Paris.

Entering a building open to the public, I came across a perfect circle in the floor, in white marble. There were also three marks in black marble at the borders of this circle, like arrows pointing to the center. A certain angular irregularity in the places of these arrows draw my attention, together with another irregularity in the central corridor's line, which had a slight inclination in relation to the main entrance, with an angle not easily justifiable from the architectural point of view. I immediately associated the circle and the three arrows to the Enneagram, noticing that the arrows fitted exactly the circle division in nine parts. Besides, the arrows indicated three directions to follow starting from the center of the circle, so indicating the three fundamental parts of the building. 

I was very excited, mostly for knowing that Gurdjieff had been there, so this was probably a Fourth Way's people work. Very glad with this simple discovery, I went on visiting the interior of the building. I was sure that the Enneagram there in the floor was something done after Gurdjieff's death.

The building, although not too recent, has an interesting and nice architectural simplicity; cozy and elegant, with sober spaces that nowadays we would call a "clean" style. Some details in iron of the interior garnishment were impressing due to a quite significant geometric design. I had before me a collection of triangles laying on a special pattern; most of them with about ten golden little balls in its interior, as the Pythagorean tetrakys.

Suddenly, I began to feel like Alice in Wonderland, although figuring those interpretations were only a fruit of my deep immersion in the master's system. There it was the Ray of Creation, as a frame for the elevator, formed by a column of seven triangles. Each triangle, in its turn, was formed by three descending triangles full of gilded balls, and an empty ascending triangle at the middle. It was clearly an octave as well as three octaves in one. In the balustrade of the stairway, there were alternated again in each stage seven triangles. And more, at the top of a high pilaster I could see a capital with three gilded triangles, also in a column pattern.

There was really something magic in the air. I didn't want to leave the building. I returned to the entrance, noticing the internal columns, which seemed thick trees in an immense forest. However, the columns didn't seem to obey a logical and immediately visible structural design. There was not a correct alignment linking the central corridor's columns - which formed two lateral corridors, as in a church aisle - to the columns of the hall - that surrounded the circle like trees around a glade.

Now was the moment to analyze the structure of reinforced concrete, which seemed to have much more columns than needed to support that simple and modest building, and their shafts were too thick. But the columns around of the circle - they were in number of nine!

Well, that gave me a shock! The Enneagram could not have been placed there later, because it was an integral part of the structural design! So, who was to attribute the project now? If Gurdjieff used the building at certain period, obviously it was built before that period.

I tried to obtain information about the construction and the architectural design. It was very difficult. I have studied the plans of the building, which I sketched during my visits to the place and corrected them later with the help of some photos I took there, and extra information. The building had been sold to private owners, and there was a petition made by a Senator to the Minister of Education, asking for some measures to be taken by the French government or by the Mayor of Paris, due to the building's great importance in the cultural life of the city. Reports were ordered, and they conveyed little relevant information for my interest. Some of it mentioned its splendid acoustical implementation.

One night, buying a ticket, I attended there a musical event. As I had already worked with this, I could really appreciate the remarkable acoustical design. The following year, returning there, I found the central colonnade enclosed by red silk strings to hinder the access.

      Finally, I reached to the following conclusions: 

      1st - The plan of the ground floor shows a clear analogy with the plans of the chief Gothic Cathedrals, not only in the overall proportions, the atrium and the location of the labyrinth (the Enneagram), but specially in the central nave and the two lateral aisles. In addition, the sun orientation of the building also coincides with that of the great cathedrals.

      2nd - The angular break in the line that goes from the entrance through the nave, which usually would be a straight line, turns to be the most interesting feature, not only for being the detail that draws attention to the intentionallity of the design, but because it presents the same shift in the axis of the Egyptian Temples of Amon in Luxor, and that of Isis, Philae Island on the Nile.

      3rd - Analyzing the plan of the ground pavement we can notice the use of the golden section, chief characteristic of objective art, a clue of something that was properly made, with intention, by qualified people.

      4th - The nine columns around the white marble circle could characterize a simple regular enneagon, and that would already be something quite rare in architecture. However, the three black arrows are strategically positioned, guiding the internal circulation in the building. Although they point to the center and not to the exterior of the circle, they attribute special meaning to the three parts of the construction, a fact that gives them a great importance. This we can interpreted by the Enneagram, because they correspond, surely, to the number 4 at the entrance, to the number 2 where one of them points to the section of studies and to the number 9 where another one points to the chief functional part of the complex.

      5th - The vestibule, or entrance hall, has the floor in colored marble, with exceedingly beautiful geometric patterns of triangles and unusual hexagons. This floor looks like that of Amiens Cathedral.

      6th - The front, perfectly integrated in the architecture that surrounds it, it is not easily noticed, because there is no point of view from which to discern the total perspective. The front is clear and limpid as a Doric Greek temple - or the colonnaded Hellerau. Horizontally divided in nine panels of windows, it has seven floors in the street front, marked as if they were three, with another one, at the top, like a frieze with nine round windows or oculus. The module 9 is not common in architecture, it is only found in few cases, as the Doric Temple of Hera ("Basilica"), in Paestum, near Naples, the Basilica of Euphrasius (worship, prayer and concert's place), in Porec, Croatia, and some medieval defensive fortifications with nine towers (Caernarfon Castle, Wales and Lucerne, Switzerland). It is worthy of note that in Bah '¡ religion, originated in Central Asia, all temples have nine doors and domes with nine sides. The number nine is also represented in religious architecture in Armenia, as the Bagnayr Monastery and the Temple of Garni, always as the most sacred number, for it means three times the Trinity. In Bosra ash-Sham, Syria, there is a theater fortified with nine towers around it. 

      7th - The above exposed would be enough to classify that building as a unique example of modern sacred architecture. But there is more: the leitmotiv of the decorative iron pieces in art nouveau, with the tetrakys of Pythagoras, the interlacement of the triangles in octaves, the ray of creation, the gilded triangles at the capital. Furthermore, at the end of the nave there is a sculpture with two images, one dignified at the top and another curved below, which by a certain exercise of imagination can be interpreted as essence and personality.

The building was finished in 1927, so it had beg un some years before, when Gurdjieff was still living at the Prieuré, writing the first series of his work.  Now, concerning the author or the authors of that legominism, who among their disciples could have participated in the design of the building?

Formulating hypotheses in a loose basis, it is known that Alexander von Salzmann had great knowledge of that kind of building, from his experience in Hellerau and before, his coexistence in Munich with Kandinsky and maybe with other exponents of Bauhaus. It is also known that Frank Lloyd Wright used to go to Munich by that early time, and they two were afterwards in France and USA, always keeping contact with Gurdjieff.

In addition, biographical notes about Gurdjieff say that Alexander "disappeared"[1] in the period around the constructions and the inauguration of the building. It seems that he was in Paris, probably working with antiquities, and he was seen sometimes alone at night, at the caf‚s. Little it is known and written about the life of Alexander von Salzmann. However, we have reports about his remarkable artistic training and the great familiarity he shared with the master, as well as of the phase of his disease and a certain meeting with Gurdjieff in a coffee in Avon, whose content of the conversation excites curiosities. Would Alexander have been so great to the point of actively participating in the legominism in total silence, maintaining a complete anonymity? Would this fact contributed for his disease and precocious death?

Carrying my suppositions on, I dare to suggest that Gurdjieff planned ahead at least the last phase of his life, with a great antecedence, considering that while he was at the Prieuré he was simultaneously preparing his following phase, in which he would devote himself to classes of movements and sacred dances (see Supplementary Note).

                                                                        *  *  *

In addition to what was written above, slides were shown at the Conference. Due to the many pauses caused by difficulties with the slides projector, questions were made during the presentation. Anne asked about Bauhaus style and commented the building is really Art Nouveau. Sy asked the price for which Salle Pleyel was sold (answer not known). About music and acoustics, Bryce told about a disk of a choral inside a church, what brought the point that, historically, architecture has developed parallel to music, and buildings are a kind of resonance box. Someone asked what the angle at the temple of Luxor means - it seems to "reflect the changing angle of the pole star throughout the years of its construction"[2].

      It followed that:

      1. The building in subject is Salle Pleyel (a great concert hall at 252, du Faubourg Saint-Honor‚, Paris, France), where Gurdjieff used to give enneagram-based movements. It was built by Gustave Lyon, expert in acoustics, and Jean-Baptiste Mathon, architect. Up to 1937 it was managed by Cr‚dit Lyonnais (a French financial institution) and in 1998 it was sold to private owners.

      2. Gurdjieff passed the year 1921 in Germany, where he tried in vain to rent the Dalcroze Institute, Festspielhaus Hellerau, near Dresden. This had been built as a "Modern Cathedral" (1912 - new concepts regarding the unity of the arts: architecture, music, dance, and theater). Alexander von Salzmann took part in the planning.

      3. Gurdjieff goes to the Prieuré (Fontainebleau, France) in 1922, where he stays up to 1932, always maintaining an apartment in Paris, where he goes regularly. In this period he is also devoted to musical composition and writes his books, besides doing several trips. In 1930, A. Salzmann is seen in Paris again. Gurdjieff moves to Rue Labie and afterwards to Rue des Colonels Renard, always near Salle Pleyel.

      4. Legominism[3] is a means to transmit information to future generations, somehow encrypted within objects, intentionally introducing certain INEXACTITUDES. This idea illustrates Shannon Information Theory, which states: "Entropy (chaos) is maximized when all possibilities are equally probable". In information, the less probable is the more relevant.

      5. Possibly they all met before in Munich, like de Hartmann, Kandinsky and A. Salzmann. Gurdjieff may have been in Paris in advance. He could had been in Munich at the same time that all those artists and future disciples. It is possible that there were people that is not said to be in the work, but were also working for Gurdjieff. All this may have been part of a "Ludibrium"[4] - like it is also said about Jesus Christ's story, that it would have been something like a theater play planned in advance and represented by "actors", each one playing his role, to symbolize the teachings with their own living.

      6. Daivibrizkar: "The law of the action of the vibrations arising in the atmosphere of enclosed spaces"5. The size and form and also the volume of air influence beings in particular ways.  Confirming this law, among other things, we could see from the photos that in the hall where the enneagram is, people unconsciously walk through it, now crossing and going to the center, now stopping on the arrows or on a number of the circumference.

Supplementary Note 1

      Before the Conference, I thought that probably Gurdjieff prepared this building especially for his classes, to give the movements over the enneagram.

      During this Conference, having asked everybody if they knew the building, I found only two participants who had been there. Prof. Thring said he went to movement classes upstairs, in common studios. Chris Thompson had been there at the age of thirteen and didn't notice anything special.

      After the Conference, in Paris, I had more information. The nine columns form also "La Rotonde" at the second floor, a round room inside the ballet studios, all closed and not used. I asked three persons of the Work (M.S., J.S., A.K.), and they had no idea of any enneagram at Salle Pleyel.

My conclusion is that Gurdjieff's intention was exactly and only a legominism, for future generations.

Supplementary Note 2

Sophia Wellbeloved sent me an e-mail saying:

      Paul Taylor's new book 'Gurdjieff and Orage: Brothers in Elysium' (York beach Maine: Weiser) is now out and it has a couple of references I thought would interest you.on pages 77 and 78. In letters written in 1924 Orage in New York writes to Jessie at the Institute in France.

      ‘Saw Salzmann at tea. He's possibly [underlined] getting a job to develop a theatre, but the plan is too colossal to be probably, a 4 million dollar theatre! If he should succeed the inst.[Institute] will be justified by its success! And all America will know of it.’

      The next day he refers to this again in a letter

      ‘Salzmann, whom I saw yesterday has this prospect [underlined] of a very big job, designing a new theatre, but it sounds too good. He [underlined] will stay here until Xmas.

      Although this sounds as though the job in prospect is in the US it might not have been, also it does show de Salzmann having this kind of project in mind. ’

Notes

[1] "Gurdjieff, a Biography - The Anatomy of a Myth", James Moore, p. 236.
[2] "Sacred Architecture", A. T. Mann.
[3] "In all the productions which we shall intentionally create on the basis of this Law for the purpose of transmitting to remote generations, we shall intentionally introduce certain also lawful inexactitudes, and in these lawful inexactitudes we shall place, by means available to us, the contents of some true knowledge or other which is already in the possession of men of the present time". "Tales", Vol. II, Chapter 30 (Art).
[4] "The Harmonious Circle", James Webb.
[5] "Tales", Vol. II, Chapter 30 (Art).

NEW

P.S. We now have the notice that Salle Pleyel will reopen ins semtember 2006.
See one posssible image od the hall at
http://www.pleyel.com/40.htm