by Hugo, Victor
The king’s mood abruptly changes when more recent information reaches him about the disturbance. He learns that it is the very cathedral of his patroness, Notre-Dame, which is being besieged, and that it is thus not the bailiff but he himself who is under attack. His response is to order immediate and ruthless repression by the forces available. When the Provost of Paris mistakenly says that the people want to violate the gypsy’s sanctuary in order to hang her themselves, the royal solution is simple: destroy the people, hang the witch, do not delay. It is at this point that the royal troops are hailed by Quasimodo as rescuers.
Irony and misunderstanding continue. Gringoire persuades the girl to flee from the sanctuary cell (with her goat). Quasimodo and the royal searchers find the cell empty, and Esmeralda only realizes that she is victim of a subterfuge when Gringoire makes off with the goat, leaving her alone with Frollo, and the rescue takes her no further than the Grève. Frollo, now raving mad and made more so by the news of Jehan’s death, indirectly caused by his rejection of his brother, has to bear the mark of Cain to add to all his other crimes.
The last act of the drama is bloody; trusting in the sachette’s well-known hatred of gypsies, Frollo hands Esmeralda over to her while he goes off to report to the soldiers where she is to be found. He too is mistaken. Hatred gives way to mutual recognition as mother and daughter are at last reunited, for a few minutes only, after fifteen years’ of separation. The last misunderstanding is fatal: hearing the voice of her beloved and totally indifferent Phoebus, Esmeralda gives herself away by crying out to him. As the sun comes up after all the violence of the long night before, she is hanged; her mother, breaking out of her cell for the first time in fifteen years, dies at the foot of the scaffold; Frollo, watching from a tower of Notre-Dame, exults, only to be pushed to his death by Quasimodo, who sees everything from a vantage point nearby; and all this within a few moments. The poetic epilogue at Montfaucon adds nothing to the story except to confirm the fidelity and humble devotion of the hunchback.
The dismal concept of ’ANÁΓKH excludes any notion of justice; things happen because they must. The image of spider and fly is adequate for what Frollo feels to be his situation, but hungry spiders catching food in the way they have been programmed to do so command little human sympathy. There is no question of tragic flaws in otherwise virtuous characters, like that of an Oedipus, which can, however painfully, in the end be redeemed. Human justice, in small things and in large, is shown in the book to be a cruel and arbitrary farce, punishment a spectacle, poverty a crime. The most notable omission from the book is Christianity: odd, to say the least, in a long work with a specifically Christian title. There are plenty of references to Scripture, to the liturgy, to things ecclesiastical in general, but they are as little relevant to a God of mercy and goodness as are the lawyers and their procedure to equity and justice. Any kind of spiritual content there may have been in fifteenth-century religion is totally obscured in the book by talk of placating Notre-Dame with a fine silver statue or putting the little baby shoes on a statue of the infant Jesus in some church. Even the kind souls, the haudriettes, gloat at the thought of burning the infant Quasimodo. Christianity and Catholicism, when they are not actually denounced, are so much dècor. For the liberal Catholic and fervent monarchist the young Hugo had been, this is a more important development than for a genuine sceptic such as, for example, the fictional Gringoire is made out to be. Frolic’s final dying cry of ‘Damnation!’ is a shorter version of the sachette’s bewildered railing at a supposedly good God as the hangman comes to take away her daughter after their brief reunion. In dramatic terms there are many occasions throughout the book when a deus ex machina intervenes to prevent imminent disaster, but it is precisely these temporary reprieves which are shown in the end to have been literary devices rather than steps to a less gloomy ending.
From the very first the element in the book which attracted most attention was the grotesque figure of Quasimodo. Apart from the inherent improbability that gypsies, or anyone else, would in the late Middle Ages have kept such a monster baby alive for four years, he is the only one of the principal characters to evolve in a positive way. The single tear he sheds on the pillory, the first in his life, is a reaction to a wholly gratuitous act of kindness. He owes his very life to Claude Frollo, who adopted him out of kindness and whose devoted slave he became, but to Esmeralda he owes the first stirrings of moral autonomy. Rescuing her, defending her, he develops a human dignity of which his physical ugliness had wholly deprived him hitherto. The second time he weeps is a flood, not a single tear, as he sees the death of the only two persons he had ever loved. The Romantics, particularly Hugo in the preface to Cromwell, had made much of the grotesque as an integral part of real life, and thus of literature, as against Classical insistence on propriety, bienséance. It would be hard to create a figure more grotesque than Quasimodo, and it is pointless to protest if readers have been more impressed by him than by other aspects of the novel, or if it is he who has inspired popular versions for stage and screen.
Popularity, an appeal to the more basic emotions of as large a public as possible, was something Hugo could not afford to despise and for which he had a natural gift. The drama or novel—and in particular Quasimodo—are, however, only part of what Notre-Dame de Paris offers, as Hugo himself underlines in his Note to the edition of 1832. The ideas and ‘message’ of this long novel are much richer than the more obviously striking and melodramatic plot suggests. The cathedral itself is the focus for studying what Hugo sees as the inevitable and recurrent cycles of human evolution—repression, by religious or secular authority, giving way to freedom as the people’s hour strikes. It would be as wrong to see in the social and historical ideas expressed in the book its real purpose as it would be to go no deeper than the story. Unlike the cathedral, the book is not the work of many hands, over many years, but the fusion of many disparate elements from many sources into a creation of great density and complexity, into which a poet has breathed life. The unifying factor is Hugo himself, and the epic dimension he missed in Walter Scott is his own vision of mankind’s destiny, subsequently presented in prose and poetry for the rest of his working life. Notre-Dame de Paris is a monument to Romanticism at its most colourful and vigorous.
NOTE ON THE TEXT
THE text used for this translation is that of the definitive, or eighth, edition of 1832, as it appears in the excellent edition by Jacques Seebacher, published in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade collection by Gallimard (Paris, 1975). (The volume also contains Les Travailleurs de la mer.) The critical apparatus is particularly valuable, presenting clearly the chronology of the novel’s composition as well as the reliquat, that is, Hugo’s notes on the reading he undertook in preparation for the book, now preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Seebacher’s own notes and table of variants have been indispensable.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Life and Works
J. P. Houston, Victor Hugo, Twayne’s World Author Series, revised edition (G. K. Hall, Boston, Mass., 1988).
André Maurois, Victor Hugo (Cape, London, 1956).
Joanna Richardson, Victor Hugo (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1976).
2. The Novels
Victor Brombert, Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel (Harvard UP, Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1984).
Kathryn M. Grossman, The Early Novels of Victor Hugo (Droz, Geneva, 1986).
3. Specific Aspects
Jean Mallion, Victor Hugo et Fart architectural (PUF, Paris, 1962).
C. W. Thompson, Victor Hugo and the Graphic Arts (Droz, Geneva, 1970).
See also two recent volumes in the World’s Classics series:
Victor Hugo, The Last Day of a Condemned Man, translated and edited by G. Woollen.
Walter Scott, Quentin Durward, edited by Susan Manning.
A CHRONOLOGY OF VICTOR HUGO
1802
26 February: born at Besançon.
1822
Marri
es Adèle Foucher.
1823
Publication of first novel, Han d’Islande. Publishes review of Scott’s Quentin Durward, translated into French soon after first publication in English.
1824
Publication of ode ‘La bande noire’ against vandalism in general.
1825
Attends coronation of Charles X at Reims; on the way deplores ruinous state of cathedral and abbey at Soissons.
1826
Publication of novel Bug-Jargal and of collection Odes et ballades.
1827
Publication of unactable play Cromwell, with its long preface, a stirring manifesto of Romanticism.
1828
Contract with Gosselin for Notre-Dame.
1829
Publication of Les Orientates, followed by Dernier jour d’un condamné.
1830
February: first night of Hernani provokes a riot in the theatre. 25 July: work finally begins on Notre-Dame, interrupted almost at once by July Revolution (27–9 July), which sends Charles X into exile, and by the birth of a daughter (28 July). In full production by September.
1831
16 March: publication of Notre-Dame (less the eventual Book Five).
1832
March: publishes article ‘Guerre aux démolisseurs!’ November: Le Roi s’amuse banned as seditious after one performance (finally performed 1882). December: definitive edition of Notre-Dame published by Renduel.
1835
January: appointed to eight-man committee on monuments set up by the government.
1836
November: La Esmeralda performed at Paris Opéra, with libretto by Hugo and music by Louise Bertin.
1838
Appointed to new sixteen-man committee on monuments and arts, together with Prosper Mérimée and Montalembert, and remains a very active member until 1848. The preservation of the Hôtel de Sens and acquisition of the Hôtel de Cluny are attributed to him (in 1843).
1841
Elected to Académic Française (after four unsuccessful attempts).
1843
Failure of play Les Burgraves ends his theatrical career. Accidental drowning of his favourite daughter Léopoldine and her husband at Villequier the same year causes him such grief that he writes nothing creative for nine years.
1845
Created a peer of France.
1848
Revolution expels Louis-Philippe.
1851
December: Hugo, at first favourable to the Republic, flees to Brussels as he becomes more and more hostile to Louis-Napoleon (who proclaimed himself President and a year later Emperor Napoleon III).
1852
Leaves Brussels for Jersey.
1853
Publishes Les Châtiments, biting satirical poems against Napoleon III.
1855
Obliged to leave Jersey after imprudent political activity; moves to Guernsey.
1859
Publication of first series of epic Légende des siècles.
1862
Publication of Les Misérables.
1864
Publication of critical study William Shakespeare.
1866
Publication of Les Travailleurs de la mer a novel set in the Channel Islands.
1868
Adèle, his long-separated wife, dies in Brussels.
1869
Publication of L’Homme qui rit, a novel set in seventeenth-century England.
1870
5 September: Hugo returns from exile the day after the proclamation of the Third Republic, following the defeat at Sedan and eventual exile of Napoleon III.
1871
Communards pull down the column in the Place Vendôme despite Hugo’s protests; he continues to campaign for an amnesty for the communards.
1874
Publication of Quatre-vingt-treize, a novel on the Terror of 1793.
1876
Elected senator.
1877
Publication of second series of Légende des siècles and Histoire d’un crime, i, a violent attack on Napoleon III, written in 1851.
1878
Publication of Histoire d’un crime, ii.
1883
Publication of Légende des siècles, iii.
1884
Last recorded intervention in favour of conservation, this time of Mont Saint-Michel.
1885
22 May: dies in Paris. 1 June: interred in the Panthéon with great public ceremony.
The events and publications recorded above take almost no account of the collections of poems which were published throughout his life, but do, on the other hand, stress his interest in conservation and politics.
Notre-Dame de Paris
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Note to the First Edition
Note Added to the Definitive Edition (1832)
BOOK ONE
I. The Great Hall
II. Pierre Gringoire
III. Monsieur le Cardinal
IV. Maître Jacques Coppenole
V. Quasimodo
VI. La Esmeralda
BOOK TWO
I. From Charybdis to Scylla
II. The Place de Grève
III. Besos para Golpes
IV. The Disadvantages of Following a Pretty Woman through the Streets at Night
V. The Disadvantages (continued)
VI. The Broken Pitcher
VII. A Wedding Night
BOOK THREE
I. Notre-Dame
II. A Bird’s-Eye View of Paris
BOOK FOUR
I. Kind Souls
II. Claude Frollo
III. Immanis Pecoris Custos Immanior Ipse
IV. The Dog and his Master
V. Claude Frollo (continued)
VI. Unpopularity
BOOK FIVE
I. Abbas Beati Martini
II. This Will Kill That
BOOK SIX
I. An Impartial Look at the Old Magistracy
II. The Rat-Hole
III. The Story of a Maize Cake
IV. A Tear for a Drop of Water
V. The Story of the Cake (concluded)
BOOK SEVEN
I. Of the Danger of Confiding your Secret to a Goat
II. A Priest and a Philosopher are Two Different Things
III. The Bells
IV. ’ANÁΓKH
V. The Two Men in Black
VI. The Effect That Can Be Produced by Seven Oaths Uttered in the Open Air
VII. The Bogeyman-Monk
VIII. Of the Usefulness of Windows Looking out on to the River
BOOK EIGHT
I. The Gold Écu Turned into a Dry Leaf
II. The Gold Écu Turned into a Dry Leaf (continued)
III. End of the Gold Écu Turned into a Dry Leaf
IV. Lasciate Ogni Speranza
V. The Mother
VI. Three Men’s Hearts Differently Made
BOOK NINE
I. Fever
II. Hunchbacked, One-Eyed, Lame
III. Deaf
IV. Earthenware and Crystal
V. The Key to the Red Door
VI. The Key to the Red Door (continued)
BOOK TEN
I. Gringoire Has Several Good Ideas in Succession in the Rue des Bernadins
II. Become a Truand!
III. Three Cheers for Pleasure!
IV. An Awkward Friend
V. The Private Retreat where Monsieur Louis of France Says his Hours
VI. Little Blade on the Prowl
VII. Châteaupers to the Rescue!
BOOK ELEVEN
I. The Little Shoe
II. La Creatura Bella Bianco Vestita
III. Phoebus’ Marriage
IV. Quasimodo’s Marriage
NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION
SOME years ago the author of this book was going round Notre-Dame, or, more exactly, prying about, when he found in an obscure recess in one of the towers this word carved by hand on
the wall: ’ANÁΓKH.*
These Greek capitals, black with age and quite deeply incised into the stone, certain characteristics of Gothic calligraphy somehow stamped on their form and attitude, as if to reveal that it was a medieval hand that had written them, above all the dismal sense of inevitability conveyed by them, made a deep impression on the author.
He wondered, he tried to guess, who might have been the soul in anguish unwilling to leave this world before branding the mark of crime or misfortune on the old church’s brow.
Since then the wall has been distempered or scraped (I forget now which) and the inscription has disappeared. That is how the wonderful churches of the Middle Ages have been treated for nearly two hundred years now. Mutilations have come upon them from every side, from within and without. The priest distempers them, the architect scrapes them, then the people arrive and pull them down.
So, apart from the fragile memory which the author of this book devotes to it here, nothing today remains of the mysterious word carved on the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame, nothing of the unknown destiny which it summed up with such melancholy. The man who wrote that word on the wall has been erased, several centuries ago, from the midst of the generations, the word in its turn has been erased from the wall of the church, the church itself may soon perhaps be erased from the earth.
