NOTRE-DAME.
The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a and edifice. But, as it has been in old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to indignant, the and which time and men have the to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who its stone, or for Philip Augustus, who the last.
On the of this queen of our cathedrals, by the of a wrinkle, one always a scar. Tempus edax, edacior[18]; which I should be to thus: time is blind, man is stupid.
If we had to with the reader, one by one, the of upon the old church, time’s would be the least, the of men the most, the men of art, since there have been who the title of the last two centuries.
And, in the place, to only a leading examples, there are pages than this façade, where, and at once, the three out in an arch; the and of the eight and twenty niches; the rose window, by its two windows, like a by his and subdeacon; the and of arcades, which supports a above its fine, columns; and lastly, the two black and towers with their penthouses, parts of a whole, in five stories;—develop themselves the eye, in a and without confusion, with their of statuary, carving, and sculpture, joined powerfully to the of the whole; a in stone, so to speak; the work of one man and one people, all together one and complex, like the Iliads and the Romanceros, sister it is; product of the together of all the of an epoch, where, upon each stone, one sees the of the by the of the artist start in a hundred fashions; a of creation, in a word, powerful and as the of which it to have the character,—variety, eternity.
And what we here say of the façade must be said of the entire church; and what we say of the church of Paris, must be said of all the churches of Christendom in the Middle Ages. All are in place in that art, self-created, logical, and well proportioned. To measure the great toe of the is to measure the giant.
Let us return to the façade of Notre-Dame, as it still to us, when we go to the and cathedral, which terror, so its assert: quæ spectantibus.
Three are to-day in that façade: in the place, the of eleven steps which it above the soil; next, the series of which the of the three portals; and the upper series, of the twenty-eight most kings of France, which the of the story, with Childebert, and with Phillip Augustus, in his hand “the apple.”
Time has the to disappear, by the of the city with a slow and progress; but, while thus the eleven steps which added to the of the edifice, to be devoured, one by one, by the of the of Paris,—time has upon the church more than it has taken away, for it is time which has spread over the façade that of the centuries which makes the old age of the period of their beauty.
But who has the two of statues? who has left the empty? who has cut, in the very middle of the portal, that new and arch? who has to that and door of wood, à la Louis XV., the of Biscornette? The men, the architects, the of our day.
And if we enter the of the edifice, who has that of Saint Christopher, for among statues, as the of the Palais de Justice was among halls, as the of Strasbourg among spires? And those of statues, which all the the of the and the choir, kneeling, standing, equestrian, men, women, children, kings, bishops, gendarmes, in stone, in marble, in gold, in silver, in copper, in even,—who has them away? It is not time.
And who for the altar, with and reliquaries, that marble sarcophagus, with angels’ and clouds, which a from the Val-de-Grâce or the Invalides? Who sealed that of in the Carlovingian of Hercandus? Was it not Louis XIV., the of Louis XIII.?
And who put the cold, white in the place of those windows, “high in color,” which the of our fathers to the rose of the portal and the of the apse? And what would a sub-chanter of the sixteenth century say, on the yellow wash, with which our have their cathedral? He would that it was the color with which the “accursed” edifices; he would the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, all thus, on account of the constable’s treason. “Yellow, after all, of so good a quality,” said Sauval, “and so well recommended, that more than a century has not yet it to its color.” He would think that the place had infamous, and would flee.
And if we the cathedral, without a thousand of every sort,—what has of that little tower, which rested upon the point of of the cross-roofs, and which, no less and no less than its neighbor (also destroyed), the of the Sainte-Chapelle, itself in the sky, than the towers, slender, pointed, sonorous, in open work. An of good taste it (1787), and it to the with that large, plaster, which a pot cover.
’Tis thus that the art of the Middle Ages has been in nearly every country, in France. One can on its three of lesions, all three of which cut into it at different depths; first, time, which has its surface here and there, and it everywhere; next, political and religious revolution, which, and by nature, have themselves upon it, its rich of and sculpture, its rose windows, its necklace of and figures, out its statues, sometimes of their mitres, sometimes of their crowns; lastly, fashions, more and foolish, which, since the and of the Renaissance, have each other in the necessary of architecture. Fashions have more than revolutions. They have cut to the quick; they have the very and of art; they have cut, slashed, disorganized, killed the edifice, in as in the symbol, in its as well as in its beauty. And then they have it over; a of which neither time at least have been guilty. They have adjusted, in the name of “good taste,” upon the of architecture, their of a day, their of marble, their of metal, a of egg-shaped ornaments, volutes, whorls, draperies, garlands, fringes, flames, clouds, cupids, chubby-cheeked cherubim, which to the of art in the of Catherine de Medicis, and it to expire, two centuries later, and grimacing, in the of the Dubarry.
Thus, to up the points which we have just indicated, three of to-day Gothic architecture. Wrinkles and on the epidermis; this is the work of time. Deeds of violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures; this is the work of the from Luther to Mirabeau. Mutilations, amputations, of the joints, restorations; this is the Greek, Roman, and work of according to Vitruvius and Vignole. This art produced by the Vandals has been by the academies. The centuries, the revolutions, which at least with and grandeur, have been joined by a cloud of architects, licensed, sworn, and by oath; with the and choice of taste, the chicorées of Louis XV. for the Gothic lace, for the of the Parthenon. It is the of the at the lion. It is the old itself, and which, to the measure full, is stung, bitten, and by caterpillars.
How it is from the when Robert Cenalis, Notre-Dame de Paris to the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, so much by the pagans, which Erostatus has immortalized, the Gallic temple “more excellent in length, breadth, height, and structure.”[19]
Notre-Dame is not, moreover, what can be called a complete, definite, monument. It is no longer a Romanesque church; is it a Gothic church. This is not a type. Notre-Dame de Paris has not, like the Abbey of Tournus, the and frame, the large and vault, the bareness, the of the which have the for their progenitor. It is not, like the Cathedral of Bourges, the magnificent, light, multiform, tufted, product of the pointed arch. Impossible to class it in that family of sombre, churches, low and as it were by the arch, almost Egyptian, with the of the ceiling; all hieroglyphics, all sacerdotal, all symbolical, more in their ornaments, with and zigzags, than with flowers, with flowers than with animals, with animals than with men; the work of the less than of the bishop; of art, all with and discipline, taking in the Lower Empire, and stopping with the time of William the Conqueror. Impossible to place our Cathedral in that other family of lofty, churches, rich in painted and sculpture; pointed in form, in attitude; and as political symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art; second of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, and sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, which at the return from the crusades, and ends with Louis IX. Notre-Dame de Paris is not of pure Romanesque, like the first; of pure Arabian race, like the second.
It is an of the period. The Saxon the of the of the nave, when the pointed arch, which from the Crusade, and itself as a upon the large Romanesque which should support only arches. The pointed arch, since that time, the of the church. Nevertheless, and at the start, it out, larger, itself, and no longer in and windows, as it did later on, in so many cathedrals. One would say that it were of the of the Romanesque pillars.
However, these of the from the Romanesque to the Gothic, are no less for study than the pure types. They a of the art which would be without them. It is the of the pointed upon the arch.
Notre-Dame de Paris is, in particular, a of this variety. Each face, each of the monument, is a page not only of the history of the country, but of the history of science and art as well. Thus, in order to here only the details, while the little Red Door almost to the limits of the Gothic of the century, the of the nave, by their size and weight, go to the Carlovingian Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. One would that six centuries these from that door. There is no one, not the hermetics, who not in the of the portal a satisfactory of their science, of which the Church of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was so complete a hieroglyph. Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosophers’ church, the Gothic art, Saxon art, the heavy, pillar, which Gregory VII., the symbolism, with which Nicolas Flamel played the to Luther, unity, schism, Saint-Germain Prés, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,—all are mingled, combined, in Notre-Dame. This mother church is, among the churches of Paris, a of chimera; it has the of one, the of another, the of another, something of all.
We repeat it, these are not the least for the artist, for the antiquarian, for the historian. They make one to what a is a thing, by (what is also by the vestiges, the of Egypt, the Hindoo pagodas) that the of are less the of than of society; the of a nation’s effort, than the of a man of genius; the deposit left by a whole people; the by centuries; the of of society,—in a word, of formations. Each of time its alluvium, each deposits its on the monument, each his stone. Thus do the beavers, thus do the bees, thus do men. The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a hive.
Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. Art often a while they are pending, interrupta; they in with the art. The new art takes the where it it, itself there, it to itself, it according to its fancy, and it if it can. The thing is without trouble, without effort, without reaction,—following a natural and law. It is a which up, a which circulates, a which anew. Certainly there is here for many large volumes, and often the history of in the of many at many levels, upon the same monument. The man, the artist, the individual, is in these great masses, which the name of their author; is there up and totalized. Time is the architect, the nation is the builder.
Not to here anything the Christian of Europe, that sister of the great of the Orient, it to the as an into three well-defined zones, which are superposed, the one upon the other: the Romanesque zone[20], the Gothic zone, the zone of the Renaissance, which we would call the Greco-Roman zone. The Roman layer, which is the most and deepest, is by the arch, which reappears, supported by the Greek column, in the modern and upper of the Renaissance. The pointed is the two. The which to any one of these three are perfectly distinct, uniform, and complete. There is the Abbey of Jumiéges, there is the Cathedral of Reims, there is the Sainte-Croix of Orléans. But the three and along the edges, like the colors in the spectrum. Hence, monuments, of and transition. One is Roman at the base, Gothic in the middle, Greco-Roman at the top. It is it was six hundred years in building. This is rare. The keep of d’Étampes is a of it. But of two are more frequent. There is Notre-Dame de Paris, a pointed-arch edifice, which is by its in that Roman zone, in which are the portal of Saint-Denis, and the of Saint-Germain Prés. There is the charming, half-Gothic chapter-house of Bocherville, where the Roman way up. There is the of Rouen, which would be Gothic if it did not the of its in the zone of the Renaissance.[21]
However, all these shades, all these differences, do not affect the of only. It is art which has its skin. The very of the Christian church is not by it. There is always the same woodwork, the same logical of parts. Whatever may be the and of a cathedral, one always it—in the of a germ, and of a at the least—the Roman basilica. It is upon the according to the same law. There are, invariably, two naves, which in a cross, and upper portion, into an apse, the choir; there are always the aisles, for processions, for chapels,—a of walks or where the itself through the the pillars. That settled, the number of chapels, doors, towers, and are to infinity, according to the of the century, the people, and art. The service of religion once and provided for, what she pleases. Statues, glass, rose windows, arabesques, denticulations, capitals, bas-reliefs,—she all these according to the which best her. Hence, the of these edifices, at so much order and unity. The of a tree is immovable; the is capricious.
