by Victor Hugo
To translate this vision of impossible love in an impossible world, Hugo creates a new kind of character to populate his new novel or, at the very least, a different kind of character than the one put in place by his contemporaries. Void of the psychological depth and unity of composition that was increasingly valorized over the course of the nineteenth century, Hugo’s characters, drawn from an archetypal model, are pure symbol. From Esmeralda, who is defined by her sublime state of physical and moral purity, to Paquette, on whom the primal maternal qualities of instinctive love and protection are transposed, to Phoebus, who, as his name implies, is brilliant on the exterior but lacks any true substance, they are larger-than-life representations. The characters of Claude Frollo and Quasimodo are larger than life as well, but they are complicated by the presence of a central duality through which universal man’s struggle is figured. In the case of Frollo, in whom the opposing forces of good and evil engage in a fierce and debilitating combat as he struggles with his growing obsession with Esmeralda, this duality has no possibility for resolution or transcendence: Simultaneously attracted and repelled by the enchanting gypsy, Frollo is the spider and the fly, rigidly trapped in a tortured state between priest and demon. This internal turmoil manifests itself not only mentally, as Frollo loses all interest in his intellectual pursuits and in his much-loved brother, but physically, as Frollo passes during the course of the novel from human to beast to monster, as witnessed by his reaction to Esmeralda’s hanging: “At the most awful moment a demoniac laugh—a laugh impossible to a mere man—broke from the livid lips of the priest” (p. 480). Just as occurs in the alchemy that Frollo investigates, he is literally transformed (changed from one form to another) by the novel’s end, his body, as the narrator notes following Frollo’s fall from the cathedral, found “without a trace of human shape” (p. 483).
In the case of Quasimodo, the central duality is that of the opposing poles of the sublime and the grotesque. From the beginning to the end of the novel, his physical incompleteness leaves him hopelessly suspended between the states of man and animal. Quasimodo is defined by his animal-like strength (proven in numerous scenes such as the early, failed abduction of Esmeralda and the assault on the cathedral) and by his animal-like mentality, which is at once a result of his incomplete intellectual faculties and a conditioned response to the (unkind) way he has been treated by those around him, save his “adopted” father, Claude Frollo, to whom he is completely devoted (“Quasimodo loved the archdeacon as no dog, no horse, no elephant, ever loved its master” [p. 151]). But unlike the archdeacon, who is rigidly locked into his dual(ing) nature, Quasimodo is transfigured by Esmeralda’s simple gesture of kindness to him during his torture on the pillory. All the difference is there. Indeed, from that moment on, Quasimodo undergoes an awakening, during which his dormant soul comes alive and expands exponentially, as witnessed in the scene in which Quasimodo—proud and glorious—swoops down from the top of the cathedral to save Esmeralda from being hanged: “For at that instant Quasimodo was truly beautiful. He was beautiful,—he, that orphan, that foundling, that outcast; he felt himself to be august and strong; he confronted that society from which he was banished ... he,—the lowliest of creatures, with the strength of God” (p. 339). Quasimodo’s devotion to Esmeralda supplants the cherished role previously held for Frollo, and he subsequently does everything in his power to ensure her safety and happiness. In attempting to repair her relationship with Phoebus, in warding off Frollo’s unwanted visits, and in endeavoring to save Esmeralda from the “attackers,” in whom he mistakenly perceives a threat to her safety, Quasimodo risks everything in Esmeralda’s name.
Yet in the end this transfiguration, this conversion from grotesque to sublime—unobserved by Esmeralda, so caught up is she in Phoebus’s aura of false brilliance—is of a profoundly personal nature and passes virtually unnoticed. It is the reader who is charged with recognizing its final expression in the account given in the novel’s last chapter of two anonymous skeletons found sometime later in the vault at Montfaucon, locked in an embrace. Without naming them, the description leaves no doubt that one is Esmeralda (identifiable by the remnants of her white gown and the empty bag that once contained her childhood shoe) and the other is Quasimodo (identifiable by the remains of his hideously deformed body), who disappeared from the cathedral the day of Esmeralda’s death. More remarkable than the embrace, however, is that the male skeleton’s neck is intact, leading to the irrefutable conclusion that he came to the cave not already dead, but to die. The self-imposed nature of Quasimodo’s death thus implies that the completion of this conversion must necessarily occur outside the boundaries of the social and historical world of the novel. For the only place where his opposing poles can be truly reconciled is in the cosmic whole; it is in leaving his shell of a body behind (it significantly crumbles into dust when separated from that of Esmeralda) that this awakened soul can take flight.
This message that redemption and salvation are possible, but never in the world as it exists now, is the thread that binds all of Hugo’s novels together like a quilt whose squares, when viewed carefully, each reveal the same intricate pattern. Everything that is in The Hunchback of Notre Dame will be retraced, retold, rein-vented in Hugo’s four subsequent novels. Quasimodo’s dilemma, his struggle between two opposing poles, will become that of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, that of Gilliatt in The Toilers of the Sea, that of Cwynplaine—another “monster” horrific on the outside and pure within—in The Man Who Laughs, and that of Gauvain in Ninety-three. Only through their deaths and a corresponding cosmic expansion or rebirth are Hugo’s fictional heroes able to find acceptance, transcendence, reconciliation of their internal oppositions, and affirmation of their individual moral potential. Time and again, the message of Hugo’s “new” novel is that historical existence as depicted, with its blindness, failures, and shortcomings, is incompatible with, or at the very least less significant than, the realization of this personal and often private promise.
In spite of Hugo’s lingering hesitancy surrounding the genre—a thirty-year period of novelistic silence separates the wildly successful Hunchback of Notre Dame from Les Misérables—it is without a doubt the form best suited to the scope and breadth of his all-encompassing vision, one that, to his own mind, was not at all fatalistic. On the contrary, Hugo preferred to view his novels as a “series of affirmations of the soul” (Oeuvres complètes, vol. 14, p. 387; translation mine). While contemporary readers and critics did not always agree—citing The Hunchback of Notre Dame as particularly ambiguous in its meaning—Hugo’s profound and overwhelming belief in both individual and collective man’s potential for progress is perhaps more evident to us today. Indeed, while the inadequacies of each past society that he examines and of the present in which he wrote pervade Hugo’s fiction, his presentation of core, universal truths relative to the human condition show an unwavering faith in the future, in our future, to which his aspirations for the historical and social worlds are deferred.
This continued relevance of Hugo’s vision to our world finds its confirmation in the amazing capacity for reinvention that his fiction has shown, in a resilience that has granted it a life and mythology all its own in popular culture, particularly in the genres of film (Lon Chaney’s and Charles Laughton’s impressive interpretations of Quasimodo come immediately to mind) and theater, in which Hugo’s unforgettable, larger-than-life characters have continued to mesmerize. While this in some ways implies that Hugo’s prediction that the book will kill the monument has been surpassed, and that it is now the book’s turn to be rivaled by and perhaps supplanted by other creative mediums, it is difficult to argue that Hugo would not be in favor of this evolution. During his own lifetime Hugo authorized, encouraged, and even participated in the adaptation of several of his works for the stage (including an 1836 opera based on The Hunchback of Notre Dame), reflecting a desire to give his timeless message the momentum it needed to ensure it an afterlife in fresh contexts and m
ediums. It is thus that, more than two hundred years after Hugo’s birth, the vision he sought to project has, far beyond the boundaries of the novel, continued to leave its indelible mark on each new generation.
Isabel Roche has a Ph.D. in French literature from New York University. Her dissertation explores the creation and role of character in the novels of Victor Hugo. Her research interests include Hugo, his fiction, and French Romanticism. She has published articles in The French Review and French Forum. Roche teaches at Benning ton College in Vermont.
Preface
Some years ago, while visiting, or rather exploring, Notre-Dame, the author of this book discovered in an obscure corner of one of the towers this word, carved upon the wall:
‘ANÁTKHa
These Greek characters, black with age and cut deep into the stone with the peculiarities of form and arrangement common to Gothic calligraphy that marked them the work of some hand in the Middle Ages, and above all the sad and mournful meaning which they expressed, forcibly impressed the author.
He questioned himself, he tried to divine what sad soul was loath to quit the earth without leaving behind this brand of crime or misery upon the brow of the old church.
Since then the wall has been whitewashed or scraped (I have forgotten which), and the inscription has vanished; for this is the way in which, for some two hundred years, we have treated the wonderful churches of the Middle Ages. They are mutilated in every part, inside as well as out. The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon scrapes them; then come the people, who tear them down.
So, save for the frail memory which the author of this book here dedicates to it, nothing now remains of the mysterious word engraved upon the dark tower of Notre-Dame, nothing of the unknown fate which it summed up so sadly. The man who wrote that word upon the wall faded away, many ages since, amidst passing generations of men; the word in its turn has faded from the church wall; the church itself, perhaps, will soon vanish from the earth.
Upon that word this book is based.1
MARCH, 1831.
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
The Great Hall
Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago today the Parisians were awakened by the sound of loud peals from all the bells within the triple precincts of the City, the University, and the Town.
And yet the 6th of January, 1482, is not a day of which history takes much note. There was nothing extraordinary about the event which thus set all the bells and the citizens of Paris agog from early dawn. It was neither an attack from the Picards or the Burgundians, nor some shrine carried in procession, nor was it a student revolt in the vineyard of Laas, nor an entry of “our greatly to be dreaded Lord the King,” nor even the execution of thieves of either sex at the Palace of Justice. Neither was it the arrival, so frequent during the fifteenth century, of some plumed and laced embassy. It was scarcely two days since the last cavalcade of this sort, that of the Flemish ambassadors empowered to arrange a marriage between the Dauphinb and Margaret of Flanders, had entered Paris, to the great annoyance of Cardinal Bourbon, who, to please the king, was forced to smile upon all this rustic rout of Flemish burgomasters, and to entertain them at his own mansion with “a very fine morality and farce,” while a driving rain-storm drenched the splendid tapestries at his door.
That which “stirred the emotions of the whole populace of Paris,” as Jehan de Troyes expresses it, on January 6, was the double festival, celebrated from time immemorial, of Epiphany and the Feast of Fools.2
Upon that day there was to be a bonfire at the Place de Grève, a Maypole at the Braque chapel, and a mystery or miracle play at the Palace of Justice. All these things had been proclaimed in the streets, to the sound of trumpets, by the provost’s men, in fine coats of purple camlet, with big white crosses on the breast.
A crowd of citizens with their wives and daughters had therefore been making their way from every quarter, towards the places named, ever since early dawn. Each had decided for himself, in favor of the bonfire, the Maypole, or the mystery. It must be confessed, to the glory of the proverbial good sense of Parisian idlers, that the majority of the crowd turned towards the bonfire, which was most seasonable, or towards the miracle play which was to be performed in the great hall of the Palace of Justice, well roofed in and between four walls; and that most of the pleasure-seekers agreed to leave the poor Maypole with its scanty blossoms to shiver alone beneath the January sky, in the cemetery of the Braque chapel.
The people swarmed most thickly in the avenues leading to the Palace, because it was known that the Flemish ambassadors who arrived two nights before proposed to be present at the performance of the miracle play and election of the Pope of Fools, which was also to take place in the great hall.
It was no easy matter to make a way into the great hall upon that day, although it was then held to be the largest enclosure under cover in the world (at that time, Sauvalc had not yet measured the great hall of the castle at Montargis). The courtyard, filled with people, looked to the spectators at the windows like a vast sea into which five or six streets, like the mouths of so many rivers, constantly disgorged new waves of heads. The billowing crowd, growing ever greater, dashed against houses projecting here and there like so many promontories in the irregular basin of the courtyard. In the middle of the lofty Gothic façade of the Palace was the great staircase, up and down which flowed an unending double stream, which, after breaking upon the intermediate landing, spread in broad waves over its two side slopes; the great staircase, I say, poured a steady stream into the courtyard, like a waterfall into a lake. Shouts, laughter, and the tramp of countless feet made a great amount of noise and a great hubbub. From time to time the hubbub and the noise were redoubled; the current which bore this throng towards the great staircase was turned back, eddied, and whirled. Some archer had dealt a blow, or the horse of some provost’s officer had administered a few kicks to restore order,—an admirable tradition, which has been faithfully handed down through the centuries to our present Parisian police.
At doors, windows, in garrets, and on roofs swarmed thousands of good plain citizens, quiet, honest people, gazing at the Palace, watching the throng, and asking nothing more; for many people in Paris are quite content to look on at others, and there are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.
If it could be permitted to us men of 1830 to mingle in imagination with those fifteenth-century Parisians, and to enter with them, pushed, jostled, and elbowed, into the vast hall of the Palace of Justice, all too small on the 6th of January, 1482, the sight would not be without interest or charm, and we should have about us only things so old as to seem brand-new.
With the reader’s consent we will endeavor to imagine the impression he would have received with us in crossing the threshold of that great hall amidst that mob in surcoats, cassocks, and coats of mail.
First of all there is a ringing in our ears, a dimness in our eyes. Above our heads, a double roof of pointed arches, wainscotted with carved wood, painted in azure, sprinkled with golden fleur-de-lis; beneath our feet, a pavement of black and white marble laid in alternate blocks. A few paces from us, a huge pillar, then another,—in all seven pillars down the length of the hall, supporting the spring of the double arch down the center. Around the first four columns are tradesmen’s booths, glittering with glass and tinsel; around the last three, oaken benches worn and polished by the breeches of litigants and the gowns of attorneys. Around the hall, along the lofty wall, between the doors, between the casements, between the pillars, is an unending series of statues of all the kings of France, from Pharamond down,—the sluggard kings, with loosely hanging arms and downcast eyes; the brave and warlike kings, with head and hands boldly raised to heaven. Then in the long pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues; at the wide portals of the hall, rich doors finely carved; and the whole—arches, pillars, walls, cornices, wainscot, doors, and statues—covered from top to bo
ttom with a gorgeous coloring of blue and gold, which, somewhat tarnished even at the date when we see it, had almost disappeared under dust and cobwebs in the year of grace 1549, when Du Breuil admired it from hearsay alone.
Now, let us imagine this vast oblong hall, lit up by the wan light of a January day, taken possession of by a noisy motley mob who drift along the walls and ebb and flow about the seven columns, and we may have some faint idea of the general effect of the picture, whose strange details we will try to describe somewhat more in detail.
It is certain that if Ravaillac had not assassinated Henry IV there would have been no documents relating to his case deposited in the Record Office of the Palace of Justice; no accomplices interested in making off with the said documents, accordingly no incendiaries, forced for want of better means to burn the Record Office in order to burn up the documents, and to burn the Palace of Justice in order to burn the Record Office; consequently, therefore, no fire in 1618. The old Palace would still be standing, with its great hall; I might be able to say to my reader, “Go and look at it,” and we should thus both of us be spared the need,—I of writing, and he of reading, an indifferent description; which proves this novel truth,—that great events have incalculable results.