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When the Stari Most, the 16th century bridge in
Mostar, fell victim to the Bosnian War, the author Slavenka Drakulic
wrote a short but striking essay for the magazine New Republic. It
was December 1993, and Drakulic described in the piece her emotions
when looking at two images from the war. One of them showed the
destroyed bridge over the Neretva River, an arch that had been a
powerful symbol of the peaceful coexistence of Bosnians and Croats.
The second picture was of a dead woman who had been killed in the
war. In her essay, Drakulic was trying to find an explanation for
why the pain she felt as a result of the demolished bridge was
actually greater than her anguish over the woman's death. The answer
she arrived at says a lot about the reactions on Monday when flames
began pouring out of the roof of Notre Dame in Paris.
The collapse of the Stari Most, Drakulic wrote,
made her aware of her own mortality in a way that the dead woman did
not. "We expect people to die. We count on our own lives to end. The
destruction of a monument to civilization is something else. The
bridge, in all its beauty and grace, was built to outlive us; it was
an attempt to grasp eternity. Because it was the product of both
individual creativity and collective experience, it transcended our
individual destiny. A dead woman is one of us -- but the bridge is
all of us, forever."
Fortunately, nobody died in the dramatic Notre
Dame fire on Monday night. But the horror at what many initially
feared could be the complete loss of a particularly significant
"monument to civilization" spread across the world in an
unbelievable outpouring of concern. It was afternoon in North
America, evening in Europe, the dead of night in Asia, but time was
of no consequence: News broadcasters and websites the world over
interrupted their regularly scheduled programming and turned their
full attention to Paris.
It wasn't an act of war, there hadn't been a
terrorist attack, it wasn't about deaths and injuries, indeed it
didn't seem that a crime had been committed at all. It was just an
accident, perhaps a short-circuit, a spark at a construction site.
But in the Notre Dame fire, it seems that much
more was in flames than just some old beams. Initially, of course,
fears focused on the massive structure itself, then on the artworks
inside and the invaluable relics. Beyond that, though, the fire very
clearly touched on other, immaterial values that seem to be held
dear around the world. Values that people manifestly share in
common, no matter where they come from or what views they may hold.
Something astounding took place on Monday evening: It became clear
that humanity's concern about its joint cultural heritage goes far
beyond the carefully curated UNESCO list, rather it is an extremely
material, real-life concern.
A Temporary Community
A large, disparate group, one that accurately
reflected the urban diversity of Paris, quickly collected near the
cathedral on Monday night -- on the quays along the Seine and on the
bridges on both sides of Île de la Cité, where the City of Paris was
once born. They had all come of their own accord, and they were
bonded together in their dismay. Neighbors, locals, travelers,
tourists: many just stood silently, others shed tears, still others
spoke in myriad different languages into the microphones of TV
broadcasters or took selfies of themselves as proof of their
presence.
The crowd on the banks of the Seine, the
multitudes watching on TV screens around the world, included
Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, art aficionados,
Confucians, news junkies and gawkers -- and as they stared at the
flames, they formed a temporary community. Whether they were aware
of it or not, they were connected, standing together on the central
square of the global village. Indeed, the term "global village,"
coined by the Canadian Marshall McLuhan back in 1962, has rarely
been as palpable as it was during the church fire on Monday evening.
Were it possible to learn what people were
thinking and feeling as they watched the flames, one could produce a
rather extensive catalog of all that humanity holds dear in this day
and age. Devout Parisian Catholics would no doubt be included, as
they spent Monday night worrying about the fate of the circlet of
rushes that are held to be from the crown of thorns worn by Jesus as
he was crucified. But the crowd also included party-hoppers from
around the world, people who likely associate the cathedral more
with Walt Disney than with Victor Hugo -- foreigners from far away
who couldn't care less about the building's religious import. But
they were all concerned about the grand, gray structure nonetheless,
almost as if it were a loved-one in peril.
In an interview with a French newspaper several
years ago, the historian Jacques Le Goff said that cathedrals speak
both to the cultivated and educated as well as to the simplest among
us. "They welcome everybody," Le Goff said, "and everyone can
recognize their significance." Indeed, they are "packed" with
significance, Le Goff said, with impressions and images. Cathedrals
as monuments have the greatest wealth of significance of all, he
said, analogous only to significant mosques or temples. "I don't
know if it is possible to find anything comparable among modern
structures," he said.
The Epitome of Overtourism
Such a broad fascination felt across all levels of
society necessarily has unsavory, real-life implications in this era
of EasyJet and Airbnb. Until the fire, Notre Dame de Paris hosted
between 30,000 and 50,000 visitors each day, 13 million in a year.
The church is officially still "en service," meaning masses are
celebrated there; the cathedral has not been profaned. But
unofficially, going to Notre Dame feels like a visit to an extremely
worldly carnival. It is the epitome of "overtourism" -- a place that
is overpopulated, provides no opportunities for quiet reflection and
has made it to the top of global mass-tourism's To Do list. Among
TripAdvisor's 2,516 "things to do in Paris," Notre Dame ranks fifth.
Knowledge of the structure's religious or cultural
context isn't needed, much less required, to visit the place, though
objects are stored here that are among the most valuable in all of
Christianity. On this Good Friday, too, Christ's crown of thorns,
which is usually locked away, would have been put on display from 10
a.m. to 5 p.m. to receive the prayers of the faithful. What, though,
is the source of the reverence we continue to have for such objects
today? Is it just traditional piety? Is it their legendary renown?
Or have such relics merely become props in the Gothically furnished,
fictional worlds so hauntingly and beautifully presented by Dan
Brown, J.K. Rowling and others?
The "dark" Middle Ages, the gray stone, the
pathos, the frankincense, the bestial gargoyles, the grotesque
faces: One can assume that church visitors today no longer view such
things as spiritual warnings from on high. Before the great fire,
Paris tourists may well have seen the trusses and beams of Notre
Dame's roof as being akin to the interstices of an exceptionally
well-built amusement park ride. And the view from the top really is
quite stunning -- no improvement needed from Pixar, Disney, Netflix
or HBO.
What, then, did the diverse group of people see on
Monday evening? What bonded them together as "la flèche," the grand
spire, plunged burning into the nave? A sign of defeat? A message
from God? A sneer from the Devil? A structural problem? A scene from
a film? Did it feel to some like Sept. 11, 2001, feelings of
impotence in the face of collapse?
Hyperbole can help understand the world and to
recognize the paradigms -- mythological or anthropological -- that
we all carry with us. On the day following the fire, many media
outlets felt the need to borrow from the expansive stockpile of
religious metaphors and newspapers produced headlines of
ecclesiastical zeal. "France Bleeding Flames," for example. Or
"Flames from the Heart." Or, even more bombastic, as only a tabloid
can, the Berliner Kurier headline: "Hell Comes for Notre Dame."
But if the Devil was, in fact, involved, he lost
once again. The TV teams on the Pont de la Tournelle found
themselves jobless on Tuesday, because the fire had been
extinguished. The structural substance of the church had been
preserved and the first photos from inside the cathedral looked like
the metaphors for the Eastertime triumph of God. They showed the
undamaged altar and a large, upright cross glowing golden in the
light.
A Hidden Triumph
The photos provided a stark contrast to the live
reports from the previous evening that had raised fears that
everything might be lost. For hours, it seemed as though the flames
had turned the interior of the cathedral into a blast furnace. When
flames also then appeared in the northern tower, which had been
enveloped in darkness until that moment, all hope seemed to be lost.
After all, nobody could see that the fire chief had sent 10 of his
people into the tower to put out the fire by hand at risk to their
lives. It took some time, but they were ultimately successful -- a
triumph that couldn't immediately be seen from outside.
Journalists and onlookers alike were gripped by
sullenness as they all sought information, but none was forthcoming.
Those watching from afar, on television or online via Twitter or
livestreams, got a taste for just how hysterical the business of
news has become. Video footage, no matter what the occurrence, has
become an expected element of coverage. We want to see what's
happening immediately, just as soon as we are alerted by the push
notification on our mobile devices. But the result is frequently the
circulation of fallacies and erroneous conjecture -- and inaccurate,
unfiltered information also flooded the information channels on
Monday, where it was allowed to remain unchallenged for far too
long.
The Paris fire department, which apparently did
their work with impeccable expertise, was blasted in furious online
posts for being appallingly incompetent. The world-renowned
fire-safety expert Donald J. Trump likewise joined the fray and
recommended the use of "flying water tankers." Other gaps in
knowledge that couldn't immediately be filled were plugged by
journalists and experts with far-fetched guesswork. In a live
interview on the BBC, the writer Ken Follett offered the --
incorrect -- certainty that all of the nave arches had collapsed.
Desperate TV reporters on site turned up "former" firefighters, who
were immediately interviewed as experts -- and many other onlookers
with no knowledge of events whatsoever were likewise interviewed.
Hours later, it was all nothing but ephemera.
As the week leading up to Good Friday progressed,
Victor Hugo's old novel about Notre Dame moved up the Amazon charts
in France, ultimately landing at the very top. The book is full of
all the quotes that we have been hearing since Monday: the "old
queen of our cathedrals" and the church as "a symphony of stone."
Legitimacy from the Rubble
Politicians have apparently been listening to that
symphony. French President Emmanuel Macron, who cancelled an
important televised speech that had been scheduled for Monday
evening, held a completely different address on Tuesday. Such a
surfeit of pathos is rare, even for France, even for Macron. But the
president, who has struggled to find an answer to the "yellow-vest"
protests, apparently hopes that he will be able to construct a new
foundation for his legitimacy out of the rubble of the cathedral.
History is full of examples demonstrating the
success of such efforts -- old cathedrals are imbued with that
mysterious power as well. The reconstruction of Vienna's St.
Stephen's Cathedral following a major fire in 1945 is part of the
founding myth of postwar Austria. The restoration of the Duchess
Anna Amalia Library in Weimar awakened the civic sensibilities of
Germans far beyond the city's borders. Will the rebuilding of Notre
Dame help bridge the divide currently running through French
society? Will it contribute to a new sense of community? Such a
thing cannot be forced. The fragile links that tied together the
people in Paris as the light of the flames danced across their faces
cannot be imposed from above. Feelings of togetherness cool off
quickly if they are not allowed to develop on their own but are
instrumentalized by those who stand to benefit.
It also didn't help that France's billionaires
immediately began outbidding each other in an auction of vanity with
donation pledges of 100 or 200 million euros. They may have meant
well, but when it quickly became clear that the pot of donations
would soon be crammed with over a billion euros, acid-tongued doubts
could be heard as to whether the people of France were needed at
all.
That, though, is a debate for the French. More
important is the fact that the cathedral is still standing. It is
covered in soot, full of rubble and soggy. But it has been saved.
And the story of "Nine Centuries of Love," as the magazine Le Point
headlined it, can continue. Perhaps even more important, though, is
the fact that a radically diverse group of people came together out
of concern for a building, out of concern for their joint heritage.
A church on Monday became an analog cynosure of
stone, wood and lead in our increasingly digitalized lives. Fear
spread that this authentic piece of the world could disappear, and
with it, a piece of bona fide reality would have vanished. Maybe
that's it: Just as real bars of gold used to be horded to
substantiate the value of money, world-famous, historical monuments
are needed today to authenticate all the images, films and postcards
-- and the memories and emotions that go along with them. Notre Dame
de Paris, as became clearer than ever on Monday, is one of the
sources from which humanity derives its strength and validity.
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