Augure: the fatality of Notre Dame who inspired the novel of Victor Hugo – 16/04/2019

"Preserve ancient monuments while waiting for the creation of new ones." Inspire the country, if possible the love of national architecture, declares the author to be one of the main objectives of this book and also one of the main goals of his life"This was written by the Frenchman Victor Hugo in a prologue to his novel Notre Dame of Paris, which was also known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and that after the fire that devastated the cathedral, today is the first sale in France. Maybe I imagined what was going to happen.

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This prologue is revealing: "When a few years ago, the author of this book was made or, better still, when he traveled The cathedral of our ladyhe found in a dark corner of one of his towers and engraved by hand on the wall this word: ANAΓKH "As an omen, its meaning is" fatality. " On the basis of this word, this book was written, "he concludes. Hugo.

The writer was attracted by this conclusion: "The Greek capital letters, blackened by time and deeply marked on the stone, drew his attention, the obvious Gothic influence of his calligraphy and his forms, as if to express were written by hand from the Middle Ages (…) strongly seduced the author ". Who had carved the stone? Who wanted to leave his message?

account Hugo: (The author) "he questioned, tried to guess what could have been the tormented soul who had not wanted to leave this world without first coming out marked (on the front of the old church) that stigmatization of the crime or conviction. Later, the walls were whitewashed or scuffed (I do not know which of those two things) and the inscription disappeared. "

Church and man, with the same fate: "The man who recorded this word on this wall he was faded for centuriesjust as the word was erased from the wall of the church and as maybe the church itself soon disappears from the face of the earth"The novel was published in 1831. These words were written for a later edition in 1834.

Victor Hugo he was born in Besanzon, a town in eastern France, in 1802. He was the son of a soldier of the empire from which he distanced himself when his parents were separated. Educated as a monarchist, he turned to democracy. At the time of the revolution of 1848, he was mayor of the 8th district of Paris and, as such, participated in the mbadacre of the workers but later condemned the repression. In 1849, as part of the Legislative Assembly, he gave his Speech on miseryin which he declared: "Gentlemen, I am no longer among those who believe that suffering in this world can be suppressed, suffering is a divine law, but I am among those who think and affirm that misery can be destroyed" .

The hunchback that existed

Of course, the Quasimodo who lives in Notre Dame came from the imagination of Victor Hugo. But it seems like nothing.

In 2010, at the Tate Gallery in London, a file was discovered that can give clues to the creator of the character. These were the memoirs of Hebry Sibson, who worked on the restoration of the cathedral in Victor Hugo's time and remembers a man: "He was a sculptor of the government sculptor, of whom I am I forgot the name, since I had no connection with him, what do I know what is it?He was hunchbacked and he did not like to mix with the other sculptors. "

They called him The Hunchback and Hugo probably knew it because he was interested in these jobs. The supervisor of this sculptor called Trajin. And "Jean Trajin" is his name, in the drafts of Les Misérables – Hugo's big book – his main character, who will later be Jean Valjean.

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