Chapter 16 Notre Dame de Paris (2) Volume 3 Notre Dame de Paris (1)

a notre dame There is no doubt that Notre Dame de Paris is still a majestic and magnificent building.However, although its magnificence remains the same, when you see the countless damage and dismemberment of this awe-inspiring monument at the same time, time and human power have completely disregarded Charlemagne who laid its first cornerstone and placed the last. Philip-Augustus of the Stone, it is very difficult not to sigh, to be indignant. Beside every wrinkle there is a scar in the face of the aged queen who is the cathedral of all us.Time destroys people. ②I would like to translate this sentence as: Time has eyes but no pearls, and people are stupid.

If we have the time to look at the traces of the damage to this ancient church one by one with the judge, it is not difficult to find that the damage caused by time is very small, but the damage caused by people is extremely heavy, especially the damage to artistic figures.The reason why I insist on art figures is that many people have achieved the status of architects in the past two hundred years. ①Philip-Augustus (1165-1223), that is, Philip II, King of France (1180-1223). ② The original text is Latin. To cite a few of the most serious examples, the first is of course the facade of Notre-Dame, one of the few brilliant chapters in the history of architecture.The three pointed arches on the front, the jagged belt layer engraved with the shrines of twenty-eight statues of kings, the huge petal lattice window in the middle, and the two side doors on both sides that look like deacons and deacons standing on both sides of the priest. Windows, the tall and cut plum blossom arcade supporting the heavy platform with beautiful small columns, and the two towering and dark bell towers, the front eaves of stone slabs, a total of six floors up and down, are all part of the majestic and magnificent whole. All of these, together with the innumerable reliefs, sculptures, and chiseled details that are strongly attached to this solemn and solemn whole, are successively and simultaneously, grouped and methodically unfolded before the eyes.

It can be said that it is a magnificent symphony written in stone; it is a huge masterpiece of a person and a people, and its whole is as complex and unified as its sister and "Romanslow"; The extraordinary product of all forces working together, every stone can see all kinds of whimsical ideas burst out by well-trained craftsmen under the influence of talented artists; in a word, it is a creation of human beings, majestic, rich, As if created by God, it seems to have stolen the dual characteristics of divine creation: diversity and eternity. ①, the Greek word is "Ilias", which is said to be an epic poem written by Homer. It is as long as 15,537 sentences, divided into 24 songs, and tells the story of the battle of Troyes.

The description we make here on the front of this building should be suitable for the general term of "Romanslo" in Spanish literature referring to the 8-syllable romantic lyric poems in the Middle Ages. . This whole church; and what we have said of this cathedral in Paris, should apply to all churches of medieval Christianity.Everything is contained in this natural, logical and well-proportioned art.Just measure the size of the toes, and you measure the height of the giant. Closer to home, let's talk about the face of Notre Dame.This majestic cathedral is awe-inspiring, as its chroniclers say: visitors are stunned by its grandeur. ①

When we went to look at it with trepidation, let us describe what it looks like now in front of us. Three important things are missing from this facade today.The first is the eleven steps that formerly raised it from the ground; the second is the series of statues below each of the shrines of the three arches; A series of statues of kings, from Hildebel ② to Philip-Augustus holding the "king's handle". The disappearance of the steps is due to time, because by a slow but irresistible process the ground of the old town rises.However, as the Parisian ground rose like a tide, the eleven steps that raised the cathedral to such a lofty height were swallowed up one by one, although time had returned to this church, perhaps far more than that. Much more has been taken from it, for time has painted the cathedral's façade with the dark color of centuries of weathering, and turned the long years of those ancient monuments into their glorious years.

But who demolished those two rows of statues?Who left those empty shrines?Who dug that new single door in the middle of the central gate? ① The original text is Latin. ② Hillard Bell I (about 495-558), King of Paris (511-558). And who would have dared to frame the heavy and dull wooden door, and to carve the single door in the time of Louis XV next to Bisconet's arabesques?It's the people; it's the architects; it's the artists of today! Also, as soon as we walked into the interior of the church, we couldn't help asking: Who pushed down the colossal statue of St. Christopher?This colossus is famous among all statues, as the hall of the Palais de Justice is among all the halls, and the spire of Strasbourg is famous among all the bell towers.There are also countless statues between the columns of the front and back halls, kneeling, standing, or riding horses, men, women, and children, as well as kings, bishops, and guards, carved in stone, marble, and gold. Silver, brass, even wax, all of these, who swept them away roughly?Certainly not the time.

And who stole the beam and replaced the old Gothic altar, which was well-crafted and filled with reliquaries and reliquaries, and replaced it with that heavy marble coffin carved with angel heads and clouds, as if it were the church of the Valley of the Holy Grace or the ruins. A scattered sample from the Old Military Academy?Who foolishly laid that heavy stone of a different age in the Carolingian flagstones of El Candis?Could it be Louis XIV who carried out the last wish of Louis XIII? ①The Hospital for the Disabled was proposed by Louis XIV in 1670 for the purpose of accommodating disabled veterans, and it was completed in 1676.Later, the scope gradually expanded until it reached the banks of the Seine.

②Carolingian Dynasty: The second dynasty of the Franks, which began in 751 AD, ended in 911 AD in Germany, and ended in 987 AD in France. ③Louis XIII (1601-1643), King of France (1610-1643). ④ Louis XIV (1638-1715), King of France (1643-1715), known as the Sun King in French history. Those stained glass windows, our ancestors were dazzled and amazed, hesitating between the rose window of the great arch and the pointed arch window of the semicircular apse, who replaced these "intensely colored" glass windows with cold white What about glass?How would a sixteenth-century choir boy feel if he saw our vandalist archbishops paint the cathedral with a beautiful yellow stucco?He would remember that it was the color used by the executioner to paint the buildings full of crimes; It is highly praised like that, and if it is painted, it will not fade for hundreds of years." The choir boy would think that this temple has become a filthy place, and immediately hide away.

If we go up to the cathedral, without pausing to look at the thousand and one barbaric contraptions, that charming little bell-tower at the junction of the aisles, light and unrestrained, never What is the fate of this little bell tower, as is the neighboring steeple of St. Chapel (which is also destroyed), piercing the sky more than the others, tall, pointed, ethereal, and resonant?A rather refined architect had it amputated in 1787, thinking that a large aluminum plaster like a pot lid would cover the scar. The wonderful art of the Middle Ages, in almost any country, especially in France, has suffered in this way.From the ruins of this kind of art, we can find that there are three factors that have destroyed this kind of art in varying degrees: firstly, time, the years have corroded its appearance unconsciously, leaving sparse gaps and spots of rust; secondly A succession of political-religious revolutions, blind, violent, and indiscriminate by their very nature, ramming the art of the Middle Ages, stripping it of its splendid garments of sculpture and engraving, and tearing down its petal-latticed windows , smashed its arabesque necklaces and minifigure necklaces, and uprooted the statues, now because they were not used to the priest's cap, now because they were dissatisfied with the crown; From the beginning of the various chaotic and magnificent tendencies of the Renaissance, there are endless ones, which will inevitably lead to the decline of architectural art.The destruction of fashion is more serious than revolution.All kinds of fashionable styles unscrupulously castrate and attack the skeleton of architectural art, chopping, chopping, disintegrating and disintegrating, from form to symbol, from logic to beauty, and slaughter the whole building alive.Furthermore, the pattern is refurbished and often changed again and again. This is at least a luxury that time and revolution have never had.It is the fashion of the times, and even swaggers through the market under the banner of elegance and taste, shamelessly covering the wounds of Gothic art with all kinds of vulgar things that are fashionable for a while, decorated with marble friezes, metal tassels, various decorations, ovals, etc. Shaped, scrolled, spiraled, all kinds of draperies, festoons, tassels, flames carved in stone, clouds of copper, plump little Cupids, plump cherubs, in short, real leprosy!It first began to devour the artistic face of the little prayer room of Catherine de Medicis, and two hundred years later, it ravaged Madame Dubarry's little drawing room, and finally, after suffering and pain, its architectural art died. .

In this way, in summary, there are three kinds of disasters that damage the Gothic architectural art today.Superficial wrinkles and warts are the deeds of time; abuses, ravages, bruises, and smashes are the deeds of revolutions from Luther to Mirabeau; dismemberment, amputation, dislocation, restoration , that is, Vitruvius ⑤ and ① Medicis are famous families in Florence, and they had a major influence on European politics, art and literature from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.Catherine (1519-1589) was the wife of King Henry II of France. ②Mrs. Dubarry, that is, Yana Begu Dubarry (1743-1793), the favorite mistress of Louis XV, was sent to the guillotine and beheaded during the French Revolution. ③ Martin Luther (1483-1546), a German religious reformer. ④Count Mirabeau (1749-1791), formerly known as Honoré Caprière Riquette, a political thinker of the French bourgeois revolution. ⑤ Marcus Vitruvius Polio, a military engineer and architect during the reign of Caesar in the first century BC.Classical style is represented here.Greek, Roman, or barbaric work by the advocates of Vignol.This brilliant art created by the Vandals was killed by the academics.The damage caused by hundreds of years and previous revolutions is at least impartial and upright, but the numerous architects of various schools who followed are all licensed, sworn, and promised Yes, in their passion for vulgar taste, they destroyed everything they could, and replaced the Gothic lace frieze on the largest halo of the Parthenon with chicory decorations of the time of Louis XV.It was a jackass kicking a dying lion.The old oak tree is covered with cuts and bruises, and what's more, it will be devastated by caterpillars, moth, gnaw, and tear.