ABSTRACT
The first "Entretien", which appeared in January 1858, prepares the ground for the whole enterprise. It begins with an anthropological definition of art founded on instinct and will. Viollet-le-Duc's apologia for the primitive in the first "Entretien" stands against this appeal to French civilizing graces. His valorization of will and pride is indeed worthy of the author of Colomba: "Cruelty is an instinct of human nature which civilization succeeds more or less in suppressing", writes Viollet-le-Duc in the opening page of the first "Entretien". A diplomat, philologist, Orientalist, and inspired novelist, Gobineau is especially notorious for his Essai sur l'ingalit des races humaines, often considered the foundation of the European theory of the Aryan master race. The emergence of the race factor in Viollet-le-Duc's thought is in marked contradiction with his perennial insistence that architecture is a rational response to need: if racially determined, architectural forms would be inherited rather than the product of social circumstances.
