Victor Hugo comes back from his ashes

Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo's romantic novel, was ranked number 1 in online sales on Amazon France's platform Tuesday, in the aftermath of the fire that partly destroyed the most famous Paris Cathedral fenced with scaffolding for repair work. Two-thirds of the roof and central spire added in the 19th century collapsed under the fire that lasted more than twelve hours. "If you want the pocket edition of the novel, you have to wait until May 25," warns Amazon France, though other editions of the novel occupy the numbers 3 and 4 of the most-read books sold. In just twenty-four hours, work was hastily placed among the top 18 research options. For all this, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, launched an international campaign to obtain funds to rebuild the cathedral and promised to complete the work in five years.

This is not the first time that Notre Dame needs a major repair. The last was made in the mid-nineteenth century, because of the damage suffered by the cathedral during the French Revolution, when the windows and statues of the gallery of kings and portals were destroyed, a needle of the thirteenth century was demolished . The building was looted and lead was removed from the roof to make bullets and the bronze bells were fired to make guns. In the early eighteenth century, again administered by the Catholic Church, the cathedral is nothing but a ruin. At that time, several buildings of Parisian Gothic style were demolished in the name of the proliferation of Baroque. For Hugo, however, Gothic architecture was a fundamental part of the history of France and considered that it was threatened by the Baroque. In 1825, six years before Notre-Dame de Paris, she published a booklet called War on the Demolishers!

Our Lady of Paris, published in 1831, became the main promoter of the restoration of the building. Located in the fifteenth century (in 1482, under the reign of Louis XI), the novel tells the story of the hunchbacked Quasimodo, who takes care of the bells of the cathedral, and the gypsy Esmeralda, who falls in love. Around these characters, Hugo transforms Notre Dame into the main theme of the work to highlight the state of deterioration in which he was. The success of the book, which aroused public concern, eventually led the authorities to rebuild the cathedral. The same year after the publication of the novel, the government created the Commission for Historic Monuments and, more than ten years later, in 1844, King Luis Felipe I decreed the restoration which ended in 1864. The architects Eugène Viollet – Duke and Jean-Baptiste Lbadus have taken over the project. The restoration took place in the construction of a new central spire, a sacristy, an organ and the provision of new statues and ornaments (such as gargoyles and chimeras of the frontispiece that receives visitors), in addition to the addition of stained glbad, among other reforms.

At the beginning of the restoration of Notre-Dame, Hugo participated in the control committee of spare parts.