Victor Hugo wrote Notre Dame de Paris (famously The Hunchback of Notre Dame in English) in 1831. Exiled to England by Napoleon and upon the deaths of his sons, Charles and Francois-Victor, he rejected religion. He was quoted as saying, "Religions pass away, but God remains."
Victor Marie Hugo had written one of the most poetic and mystical passages about the city of Paris on Easter morning. I had never read anything like it. And so, as students in Paris in the 60s we hauled ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn to experiece what Hugo wrote about. He had it right; young kids not amazed by much of anything and so very wordly wise, we were astonished to be brought to our knees one Easter dawn! May we all have ears to hear!
Hugo wrote:
And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, must climb- on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost-climb upon some elevated point , whence you command the entire capital: and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. The, all at once, behold!- for it seems at times, as though the ear also possess a sight of its own, - behold rising from each bell tower, something like column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; the, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibration incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations.
Victor Marie Hugo had written one of the most poetic and mystical passages about the city of Paris on Easter morning. I had never read anything like it. And so, as students in Paris in the 60s we hauled ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn to experiece what Hugo wrote about. He had it right; young kids not amazed by much of anything and so very wordly wise, we were astonished to be brought to our knees one Easter dawn! May we all have ears to hear!
Hugo wrote:
And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, must climb- on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost-climb upon some elevated point , whence you command the entire capital: and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. The, all at once, behold!- for it seems at times, as though the ear also possess a sight of its own, - behold rising from each bell tower, something like column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; the, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibration incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations.
Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries. You can follow each group of notes which escapes the belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one tower to another; you catch them spring forth, winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascend and re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache' you see light and rapid notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill, crackedsinger; her the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes form the belfry of Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germaine des Pres. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs. Over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forest arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish , as in a half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;- than this furnace of music,- than these ten thousand brazen voices changing simultaneously in the flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,- than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra, - than this symphony which produces the noise of a tempest.
Victor Marie Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, Book Third, Chapter II Birds Eye View of Paris
I wish you such a blessed Easter tempest wherever you happen to be tomorrow!
Blessings, Ann
I wish you such a blessed Easter tempest wherever you happen to be tomorrow!
Blessings, Ann
"Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it..."
ReplyDeleteThat's a nice line. Wish I'd written it.