ABSTRACT
Writers’ houses have meaning, even beyond their obvious documentary value as elements in the author’s biography. They are a medium of expression and of remembrance. Planning, building and decorating a house provides a writer the opportunity not only to materialize his architectural fantasies and fictions, but also to experiment with a mode of expression fundamentally different from his own. To some authors a place to live, whether or not purposely created, means nothing more than a frame for his art, a tool that contributes to the making of literature. To others, a house is an object of prestige. It can express social or cultural status or the hope for it, and be a means to immortalize and remember such success. But expression and remembrance fuse most in houses created by authors as a work of art, as a parallel or an alternative to their poetry or narrative. Such places not only are thought to be statements on art, on what is expressed and how it can be best expressed. They, moreover, perpetuate these artistic assertions, being turned into monuments by the builders themselves, their heirs, or by later generations of admirers.
