Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

They were written at the same time as the rest of the work; they date from the same epoch, and came from the same idea; they have always been part of the manuscript of Notre-Dame de Paris. Furthermore, the author does not understand how any one can add new developments to a work of this character. That cannot be done at will. A novel, in his opinion, is born, in a way in a certain sense necessary, with all its chapters; a drama is born with all its scenes. Do not believe that there is anything arbitrary of which this whole is composed,—this mysterious microcosm that you call a drama or a novel. Grafting and soldering act unfortunately upon works of this nature, which should spring into being at a single leap and remain such as they are. Once the thing is done, do not revise or retouch it. Once the book is published, and its sex—virile or not—recognized and proclaimed, once the child has uttered its first cry, it is born; here it is; it is made thus; neither father nor mother can alter it; it belongs to the air and the sun; let it live or die as it is. Is your book immature? So much the worse. Never add chapters to an immature book. Is it incomplete? You should have completed it when you brought it forth. Is your tree crooked? Do not attempt to straighten it. Is your novel sickly; is your novel to be short-lived? You cannot give to it the breath which it lacks. Is your drama born limping? Believe me, you cannot give it a wooden leg.

The author, then, attaches a particular value to this, that the public should know that the chapters added here have not been made expressly for this reprint. That they were not published in earlier editions of the book was for a very simple reason. At the time when Notre-Dame de Paris was printed for the first time, the package which contained these three chapters was lost. It was necessary to rewrite or omit them. The author concluded that the only two chapters which would have been important by their scope were those chapters on art and history whose loss would detract nothing from the drama and the novel; that the public would be none the wiser concerning their disappearance; and that he alone, the author, would be in the secret of this gap. He decided to go on without them; and besides—to tell the whole truth—his indolence recoiled before the task of re-writing the three lost chapters. He would have found it less work to write a new novel.

Today the chapters are found, and he seizes the first occasion to replace them where they belong.

Here, then, is his entire work, as he dreamed it, as he wrote it, good or bad, lasting or fleeting, but such as he wished it.

Without doubt these recovered chapters will have little value in the eyes of persons, in other respects very judicious, who have sought in Notre-Dame de Paris only the drama, only the novel; but there are perhaps other readers who have not found it unprofitable to study the æsthetic and philosophic thought hidden in this book, who would have been glad, in reading Notre-Dame de Paris, to detect under the novel something besides novel, and to have followed, if we may be allowed somewhat ambitious expressions, the system of the historian and the object of the artist through the creation, such as it is, of the poet.²⁷

It is for such readers especially that the added chapters of this edition will complete Notre-Dame de Paris, if we admit that Notre-Dame de Paris is worth being completed.

The author expresses and develops in one of these chapters the actual decline of architecture, and, according to him, the almost inevitable death today of this art king,—an opinion unfortunately very firmly rooted in him, and thoroughly reflected upon. But he feels the need of saying here that he eagerly desires that the future may prove him to have been in error. He knows that art under all its forms may hope everything from the new generations whose genius, still in the bud, can be heard springing forth in our studios. The seed is in the ground; the harvest will certainly be fine. He fears only, and in the second volume of this edition one can see why, that the sap has been entirely withdrawn from the old soil of architecture which during so many ages has been the best garden for art.

However, there is today so much life in our artistic youth, so much power, and, as it were, predestination, that in our architectural schools in particular, at the present time, the professors, who are detestable, make not merely unwittingly, but even in spite of themselves, scholars who are excellent,—the reverse of that potter of whom Horace speaks, who would have made amphoræ and produced only saucepans. Currit rota, urceus exit.^ec

But, at all events, whatever may be the future of architecture, in whatever way our young architects determine some day the question of their art, while waiting for new monuments, let us keep the ancient ones. Let us, if possible, inspire the nation with the love of national architecture. That, the author declares, is one of the principle objects of this book; that, one of the principal objects of his life.

Notre-Dame de Paris has perhaps opened some true perspectives in the art of the Middle Ages, in that marvelous art not as yet understood by some, and, what is worse, misunderstood by others. But the author is far from considering as accomplished the task which he voluntarily assumed; he has already pleaded, upon more than one occasion, for our ancient architecture; he has already denounced loudly many of the profanations, many of the destructions, many of the impious alterations. He will never cease to do so. He has pledged himself to return often to this subject. He will re turn to it. He will be as indefatigable in defending our historic buildings as our iconoclasts of the schools and the academies are in attacking them; for it is a sad thing to see into what hands the architecture of the Middle Ages has fallen, and in what way the bungling plasterers of the present day treat the ruins of that great art. It is even a shame for us, intelligent men who see it done, and who content ourselves in crying out against it. And I am not speaking here only of what goes on in the provinces, but of what is done in Paris, at our gates, under our windows, in the great city,—this city of letters, of the press, of free speech, and of thought. We cannot resist pointing out as they deserve,—to end this note,—a few acts of vandalism which are every day projected, debated, begun, continued, and carried out peaceably under our very eyes, under the eyes of the artistic public of Paris, in face of criticism that is disconcerted by so much audacity. They have just pulled down the archbishop’s palace,—a building in poor taste, and the evil is not great; but at one blow with the archbishop’s palace they have demolished the bishop‘s, a rare ruin of the fourteenth century, which the demolishing architect could not distinguish from the rest. He has rooted up the wheat with the tares; it is all the same to him. They are talking of tearing down the admirable Chapelle de Vincennes, to make from its stones some sort of a fortification, I know not what, of which Daumesnil^ed has no need whatever. While they repair at great expense the Bourbon Palace,—that hovel,—they allow the magnificent windows of the Sainte-Chapelle to fall in before the force of the equinoctial gales. There has been for some days past a scaffolding around the tower of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, and one of these days the pickaxe will be applied to it. There has been found a mason to build a small white house between the venerable towers of the Palace of Justice; another has been found to maim Saint Germain-des-Prés, the feudal abbey with the three bell-towers. There will be found, no doubt, another to lay low Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. All these masons pretend to be architects, are paid by the prefecture, or from the royal treasury, and wear green coats. All the evil that bad taste can inflict upon good taste they have done. At the moment we are writing,—deplorable sight!—one of them has possession of the Tuileries, another has made a deep gash directly across the beautiful face of Philibert Delorme; and it certainly is not one of the least scandals of our time to see with what effrontery the clumsy architecture of this gentleman has sprawled across one of the most delicate façades of the Renaissance.²⁸