Four years ago, to the day, a devastating fire devastated Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.
The excitement aroused throughout the world made it possible to rediscover an emblem of French cultural identity which hosted the Estates General convened by Philip IV le Bel, the Te Deum sung
on
the occasion of the military victories of Louis XIV, the coronation of Napoleon I, the
Magnificat
sung by General de Gaulle, to name but a few events.
To discover
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Let us not forget either that Notre-Dame constitutes a romantic character in its own right: under the pen of François Rabelais, Gargantua steals the bells of the building to hang them on the neck of his mare as bells;
but it was not until 1831 that Victor Hugo wrote some of the most beautiful pages of epico-romantic literature, offering a prominent place to the cathedral in his homonymous novel;
here are some extracts with notable figures of style.
The comparison
“[…] the great central rose flames like a fiery cyclops eye from the reverberations of the forge.”
This is one of the most common figures of speech.
At dusk, the rose window of Notre-Dame seems to merge with the eye of a cyclops, thanks to a surprising analogy that can make one think of the eye of the cyclops Polyphemus, punctured by a flaming spear used by Odysseus and his men.
The process turns out to be impressive and rich in meaning, since it makes it possible to suggest the excess of the cathedral, at the same time as it enlivens it and elevates it to the rank of an intimidating mythological creature.
The antithesis
"The naves were full of darkness, and the lamps of the chapels began to star, so dark were the vaults."
By antithesis, we bring together two strongly contradictory words or ideas.
In this case, Victor Hugo creates a chiaroscuro by playing with the lexicon of shadow and light.
The effect produced is highly poetic, as it reveals the cosmic – and therefore infinite – image of a starry
“vault”
to evoke the ceiling of the building.
Hyperbole
“Its rays [of the sun], more and more horizontal, slowly withdraw from the pavement of the square, and go up along the sheer façade whose thousand round bumps protrude from their shadow […]”
In literature, hyperbole designates the process of exaggeration.
A figure very much appreciated by Victor Hugo, she is, in this passage, of a quantitative type and amplifies the number of sculptures found inside the cathedral, perhaps to underline the sublime aspect of the place, or its opulence.
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Hypotyposis
“[…] the three arched portals, the embroidered and serrated cord of the twenty-eight royal niches, the immense central rose window flanked by its two side windows like the priest of the deacon and the sub-deacon, the high and frail gallery of trefoil arcades which supports a heavy platform on its fine columns, finally the two black and massive towers with their slate canopies, harmonious parts of a magnificent whole, superimposed in five gigantic floors, develop at the eye without crowd and without trouble […]”
Victor Hugo performs a real hypotyposis of Notre-Dame Cathedral: the proposed description is particularly meticulous and realistic, due to the enumeration of details, so much so that the image created seems to come out of the text: we frankly see the cathedral more than we read it.
Figures of style transfigure and embellish Notre-Dame de Paris.
Victor Hugo shows us, once again, that literature is sometimes more real and striking than reality itself.