Reflections on Notre-Dame de Paris

"But no matter the destruction, the spirit of what it means to be a cathedral can and must survive such disasters."

Becky Clark, Director of Cathedrals and Church Buildings of the Anglican Church, April 17, 2019

The destruction of the sacred will generate shifting responses. But the range and the peculiarity of this answer vary. The conflagration of Notre-Dame de Paris, located on the Ile de la Cité, has become a saturation phenomenon of twenty-four hours. Thirteen million annual visitors, a geographical pride in the center of Paris and a vast depot of France in all religious, cultural and political, would have badured.

The attention given to other sites of sacred value tends to be limited. For example, it is unlikely that promises of up to $ 113 million, pledged by François-Henri Pinault to help with the reconstruction project, head to the most obscure sites of history profaned or damaged. For example, a parish in southern Louisiana is desperate to fund the rebuilding of three historically significant black churches in "suspicious" circumstances. "There is clearly something going on in this community," said Fire Marshal H. Browning. The GoFundMe campaign's funding goal is $ 1.8 million. To date, $ 1.5 million has been secured.

Notre Dame will do the same for all millionaires and billionaires: attracting the attention of the rich and a chance for the celebrity posterity of the first cultural league. (Even wineries such as the Chateau Mouton Rothschild are redirecting money from auctions to the cause.) Even though the idea of ​​buying a heavenly place is not as popular as that. Previously, she still exercises some hold on the secular world's idea of ​​lasting reputation. These promises of financial promise also gave rise to misplaced empathy for the cultural artefacts of a former colonial power.

In short, people are not allowed to use their own means to commemorate or mourn a damaged or lost icon: they must be reprimanded for appropriate acknowledgments and qualifications. A good, slightly perverse example of this came in response to a Note by representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who was reprimanded for suggesting that Notre Dame could be seen in the same breath as "art and architecture". Former Congressman Joe Walsh fulminated. "It was a place of worship. A Catholic cathedral. It would not have been difficult for you to recognize it. "

Watching such structures is also an exercise in mutual deception and mbad. Gothic architecture has not always shared the enchanting mystery that has made buildings such as Notre Dame de Paris the subject of sticky adoration. Having sunk into a mysterious former life, almost barbaric before the preferences for the novel and the clbadicist, such architecture has been redeemed by the calls of Romanticism. Victor Hugo's pen praised the Gothic form for his freedom, his daring "encouraging license and dissent from authority," says John Sturrock in his introduction to the 1978 translation of Notre Dame of Paris (1831), commonly known in English-speaking circles The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Hugo's pen, making the cathedral the protagonist, did the trick: the interest in restoring the damaged and altered structure was stimulated, putting an end to the relentless attempt to demolish Gothic Paris .

The fire that has crossed the cathedral has been described in various ways as catastrophic and disastrous, but the nature of such creations is their permanent vulnerability and susceptibility to change. A scene from Hugo's masterpiece deserves to be repeated, describing the flames when the hunchbacked bellhinger Quasimodo attacks the Mobsters in an attempt to save Esmerelda. "All eyes were lifted up from the church. They saw an extraordinary spectacle. On the crest of the highest gallery, higher than the central rose window, a large flame rose between the two towers with whirlwinds of sparks, a vast, disordered and furious flame, whose tongue was worn. in the smoke by wind, from time to time.

The building is all (well, most of the time now) points, sharpness. It is sawtooth, skyscraper coherence. But to suggest that its body and shell were pure in its medieval form, is to fall for a common deception perpetuated from the nineteenth century. The Gothic restoration mania of the time had the effect of transforming Notre-Dame into a modern mutilation.

Eugène Emmanuelle Viollet-le-Duc, badisted by Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lbadus, tended to undertake heavy restorations between 1845 and 1864 on the grounds that the original Gothic idea of ​​the cathedral deserved to be better concretized . They knew better. In contact with these spirits, they went to work, warned by the specialist of the conservation of archeology, Prosper Mérimée, the dangers of too intense contact. "A restoration can be more disastrous for a monument than the ravages of centuries." Hugo, in the same spirit, observed "the innumerable defeats and mutilations to which man and time have subjected this venerable monument."

The wooden arrow and lead now destroyed (the arrow) was itself an addition. Viollet-le-Duc has also added a new chair; the original statues have been removed from their resting places for centuries; spectacular gargoyles has become a feature; and the rosette on the south facade has been subject to excessive attention. Parisian photographer Danie Aubry rightly pointed out that this crazy gothic restaurateur "should have worked for Disney". Ironically, Monday's fire is "potentially linked" to the $ 6.8 million renovation already underway.

The visceral and rapid reaction of French President Emmanuel Macron was one of reconstruction. The spokesman of the cathedral, André Finot, said that the structure had suffered "colossal damage", with the frame cleared. This is not the case, retorted an optimistic Macron, taking up the inspiring aspect of Viollet-le-Duc. The reconstruction project would be big and hasty. Forget the decades; The president wants the structure to be completed in time for the reopening of the summer Olympics of 2024 in Paris. "We will rebuild Notre-Dame even better, and I hope it will be completed in five years." To this end, an international design competition to rebuild parts of the building has been announced.

The Gothic concept was in itself a bold act by Father Suger, who adopted lightness and lightness in his design of 1137 for Saint-Denis. Platonism, Christianity and religious architecture were married. The reconstruction of Notre Dame may dare to be something different, but many expect a mockery of the original.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College in Cambridge. He teaches at RMIT University in Melbourne. E-mail: [email protected]