Published April 16, 2019Notre-Dame de Paris. Our lady of Paris. Writing from Berlin, where I am prostrate before the flames, devastation, and ash. A treasure of civilization for all – for those who believe in heaven as well as those who do not. The Europe of beauty, of holy hopes, of greatness and gentility. Like you, like everyone, I am heartbroken.
Tuesday morning. Waking. Notre-Dame is the France of the Resistance; she is the Europe of literature. She is the Gothic holiness and the tranquility of the Seine. She is faith and beauty. She is still Hugo and Aragon, whose words will not stop dancing in my sleepless head. How to face today after the brutal burn; how to face tomorrow? Victor Hugo supplies the response: “Time is the architect, but the people are the mason.
And there is this. Just as we Parisians believed our venerable lady to be immortal, so did the world. Yet, here she is burned and helpless against her own fate, just as we stood helpless last night as we watched the conflagration. But, now, in the wake of these sorrowful sights, a wave of feeling rises worldwide. Italians, Swedes, Irish, Spaniards … All in communion with the people of Paris. As after an attack, after a national tragedy, all are saying, in unison: “We are Paris.