Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame
This is a talk I gave in the libraries of Merseyside, UK, 2007. My brief was to bring the world of books to life to a general audience, young and old, by speaking in praise of my favourite book. My favourite book is Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. I broke the talk up into a number of sections. Stopping and elaborating as I went.
1. THE TITLE
Victor Hugo’s original title “What there is in a bottle of ink” is most appropriate from the perspective of my brief here, that of promoting the world of books. Hugo shut himself away in a room with only a bottle of ink for company and didn’t emerge until he had used the last drop to finish the book. The product of his efforts proved that there is plenty in a bottle of ink, a whole world of complex human doings in fact.
The more well-known title “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” originated with the second translation of 1833. People would be surprised to learn that the hunchback Quasimodo is not the central character of the book but is one of a number of characters whose tales symbolise the dualism of beauty and ugliness.
The actual title Notre Dame de Paris is the most appropriate title of all in that the physical beauty of the cathedral and high moral purpose expressed within its walls establishes the context for exploring the moral ambiguity of human nature. There is a real Jekyll and Hyde character to the book.
The book concerns the conflict that each must fight out between the lofty aspirations of morality – symbolised by the cathedral – and the compromises of everyday life. It works its magic in the meeting of dreams and reality, and the way that makes us face, resign ourselves to, hard truths, or seduces us into delusion and madness.
“If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket; and besides, America was not yet discovered. (p. 66)”
“Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact wih my own, I desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance with reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you always. Then - how stop myself on that slope of hell? - then I no longer belonged to myself.”
2. THE BOOK
Hugo compares the book form to architecture, 'stories in stones'.
"There exists in this era, for thoughts written in stone, a privilege absolutely comparable to our current freedom of the press. It is the freedom of architecture."
— Book V, Chapter 2
“Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of the ages.” But it is now the time of the book. “A book is so soon made, costs so little, and may go so far! Why should we surprised that all human thought flows that way?”
“This will destroy that. The book will kill the edifice.”
“In proportion as architecture degenerated, printing throve and flourished. The capital of forces which human thought had expended in building, it henceforth expended in books.”
3. THE BOOK IS A 'GOOD READ'.
Whatever the title, the complexity of the plot, the distinctiveness of the characters, the story itself, the book is simply a damned good read, a real rollercoaster of emotions:
it has drama, excitement, romance, sex, lust, passion, perverted desire, period realism, beautiful architectural detail and the grotesque human emotions – intrigue, duplicity, murder, torture, death by hanging, barbaric punishment, superstition, prejudice, intolerance, tragedy and probably the saddest ending in the history of literature.
The book is a long read, sometimes a difficult read, but one which rewards patience. I’d say that the book is so beautifully written that it practically reads itself. I first read it in the summer of 1989 and found that once I’d picked it up, I couldn’t put it back down.
The famous scene after Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda from being hanged.
"A minute afterwards he appeared upon the upper platform, still bearing the gipsy [sic] in his arms, still running wildly along, still shouting 'Sanctuary!' and the crowd still applauding. At last he made a third appearance on the summit of the tower of the great bell. From thence he seemed to show exultingly to the whole city the fair creature he had saved; and his thundering voice, that voice which was heard so seldom, and which he never heard at all, thrice repeated with frantic vehemence, even in the very clouds, 'Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" (p. 477-8)
"Sanctuary!" - Charles Laughton 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_p8khzyK-E
4. THE FILM
There should be no surprise that the book has attracted filmmakers and animators. The book reads like a film with its narrative flow and pacing, vivid descriptions of the multifarious, and often nefarious, activities within the city of Paris. Hugo’s writing breathes life into the characters.
Many people may well know the 1939 classic film version of the book, starring Charles Laughton. Going further back there is the silent version starring Lon Chaney. Younger people will know the Disney movie. But if a bibliophile wished to prove the superiority of the book over film, then this is the book. Not that the films are bad. They are good. But the book is so much better. Film and animation lose some of the fine textures and nuances which make the text compelling.
5. FATE
If there is one word that sums up the book, then that word is ‘fate’. The cathedral of Notre Dame emerges as the graveyard of human hopes. Hugo claimed that the story was suggested to him by the Greek word "ANANKH" which he discovered carved deeply in Gothic characters in one of the towers of the cathedral. The word can refer to:
1. necessity, imposed either by the circumstances, or by law of duty regarding to one's advantage, custom, argument
2. calamity, distress, straits
"These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to calligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply". In chapter IV it is revealed that the word means "Fate".
That the inscription had been removed as he was writing the book symbolised Hugo’s fear that the Gothic splendour represented by Notre Dame was in danger of being lost as a result of the contemporary trend for tearing down old buildings.
Hugo’s book was understood by many as a plea for the preservation of the architectural heritage of Paris. Renovation work began in 1845, Notre Dame re-emerging as what it had been in Hugo’s novel – as one of the great monuments.
"Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author of this book here consecrates to it, there remains to-day nothing whatever of the mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame,--nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed up. The man who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago; the word, in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church; the church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the earth. It is upon this word that this book is founded."
6. REGENERATION
But more than physical preservation, Hugo’s deeper purpose is the moral regeneration and spiritual reawakening within a social revival. Any architectural revival is based on a moral and social purpose. Architecture represents the spirit of the age, and if the age is lacking in spirit, then there is nothing to reflect. The character of individuals, of a people and a society, matters. Hugo was concerned with the beauty – or otherwise – of the contents as much as the container.
“The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius...”
Where does growth come from?
“Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.”
7. THE STORY
The book’s story is set in the medieval Paris of 1482.
The context is the conflict between the high morality of the Church and State on the one hand and the lived experience of the people, on the other hand.
The city has celebrated the Feast of Fools, with the bellringer and hunchback Quasimodo, a figure of fear and ridicule on account of his deformity, chosen to be the reigning Pope for the celebration. The book goes on to show that deformity is not so much physical as psychological, as well as social and cultural, something that lies in the prejudices, fears and hatreds of ‘the people’ as well as in the desires and depravities of the individual. Deformity lies within as much as it shows itself without. A person’s character or psyche may be ugly whilst their body may be beautiful, and vice versa.
On the character of Quasimodo.
"The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome — this orphan, this foundling, this outcast."
Then he grew, and the people saw his physical ugliness, his deformity, and their cheers turned to insult and abuse.
“Besides, to be fair to him, his viciousness was perhaps not innate. From his earliest steps among men he had felt, then seen himself the object of jeers, condemnation, rejection. Human speech for him always meant mockery and curses. As he grew older he had found nothing but hatred around him. He had caught it. He had acquired the general viciousness. He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded.”
“He therefore turned to mankind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquillity and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him – he resembled them too closely for that. It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would sometimes spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues in solitary conversation with it. If anyone came upon him then he would run away like a lover surprised during a serenade.”
8. LEVELS
The book can be read and appreciated at a number of levels. The book is beautifully layered, and is as simple or as complex as one likes.
As a historical novel and romance, the book is unrivalled. It is both sad and uplifting. A superbly paced story with certain details and twists which contradict and enhance the story we know from the film.
The book is a political tract, expressing a clear plea for a more liberal and tolerant society (The gypsy girl Esmeralda as foreigner and ‘outsider’, you came yesterday, we come today …)
It is also a social commentary on prejudice and injustice. Hugo’s clear sympathy is with the poor and the marginalised and the downtrodden. Here, amongst the ‘lowlife’, the social outcasts, he finds the ‘high’ moral purpose of the church being practised as an ethos, a way of life embodied in the relationships between flesh and blood individuals.
9. MORAL SIGNIFICANCE
The book has a moral significance that transcends politics. The way Hugo identifies universal themes and gives them a personal significance is one reason for the book's enduring popularity.
The book explores social dualism through the physical and moral dualism of beauty and ugliness.
Characters and contexts are interwoven through the interconnection of beauty and ugliness on the inside and the outside. The book shows how this dualism in human nature translates into an urban and civil fabric that is split between the powerful and the downtrodden, the establishment and the outcasts. Even that is too simple a division, there are good people among the establishment, rogues and villains amongst the outcasts. This is not a world of black and white, but of different shades of grey. Yet there is a moral order, by which individual actions and events are judged.
“Do you know what friendship is?' he asked.
'Yes,' replied the gypsy; 'it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.'
'And love?' pursued Gringoire.
'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. 'That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.”
10. DUALISM
The book explores the social dualism of class through the dualism of beauty and ugliness as within the urban and civic fabric and within human nature itself.
Quasimodo is physically ugly but is capable of appreciating and expressing beauty. As bell ringer at the cathedral he is on the inside of society but is an outsider on account of his deformity. From his unique vantage point, he sees that the beautiful on the outside is often ugly on the inside.
This dualism is worked in a number of ways in the book. Characters and contexts are interwoven through the interplay of beauty and ugliness on the inside and the outside.
The gypsy dancer Esmeralda is physically and emotionally beautiful but is condemned on account of her race to live in the harsh underworld of crime and poverty, an ugly subterranean world within the beautiful shell of the city of Paris. The freedom and spontaneity that attracts the priest and the soldier to her is something she possesses only by virtue of her being a member of the outcast society. Her free spirit and natural piety is available to her on account of her living on the outside of conventional society and morality. Accordingly, the guardians of ‘higher’ morality move to suppress her.
11. THE MORALITY OF 'INSIDERS' AND 'OUTSIDERS'
The most attractive figures in the novel emerge from the ranks of the marginalised and oppressed (Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Clopin the King of Beggars). These are the people who apply and live morality more as a social practice or ethos regulating relations between individuals rather than as a repressive code maintaining an unjust society. The representatives of official society emerge as murderous liars and hypocrites. Hugo’s sympathy is with the poor and the oppressed, the outcasts.
Esmeralda choosing death over the priest
"And with a hurried step-making her hurry too, for he never let go of her arm-he went straight up to the gibbet, and pointing to it, 'Choose between us,' he said coolly. She tore herself from his grasp, fell at the foot of the gibbett, and clasped that dismal supporter; then she half turned her beautiful head, and looked at the priest over her shoulder. She had the air of a Madonna at the foot of the cross. The priest had remained quite still, his finger still raised to the gibbet, and his gesture unchanged, like a statue. At length the gipsy girl said to him, 'It is less horrible to me than you are'." (p. 639)
12. DESIRE
Quasimodo is the adopted son of Frollo, the evil, jealous priest of Notre Dame, who nevertheless has good enough in him to take the hunchback in and protect him. Personifying the state is Captain Phoebus, handsome but vain, a womanizer, self-righteous and brutal. Quasimodo, Frollo and Phoebus are possessed with a desire for Esmeralda. Quasimodo seeks to protect her. Both Frollo and Phoebus seek to possess her. Esmeralda and Phoebus arrange to meet, and Phoebus, despite being engaged to the socialite Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier, declares his love for the gypsy girl. Moreover, he has given Frollo permission to spy on his furtive engagement with Esmeralda. Frollo, frustrated, repressed, jealous, knowing he can never have the gypsy girl, seizes the opportunity. As the couple prepare to make love, Frollo stabs Phoebus in the back and makes his get-away. Phoebus is presumed dead by homicide and Esmeralda is accused of being the murderer. Phoebus, however, is not dead and makes a recovery. Yet Esmeralda is still tried and sentenced to death for his murder. Rather than speak up and testify to her innocence, Phoebus remains silent. He watches Esmeralda's execution without remorse. Frollo remains silent too.
Frollo, after fleeing into the countryside to avoid Esmeralda's execution
"He stirred up from the bottom of his heart all his hatred, all his wickedness; and he discovered, with the cool eye of a physician examining a patient, that this hatred, this wickedness, were but vitiated love-that love, the source of every virtue in man, turned to things horrible in the heart of a priest-and that a man constituted as he was, by making himself a priest made himself a demon." (p. 482)
And Quasimodo?
After Esmeralda's execution
"Quasimodo then lifted his eye to look upon the gypsy girl, whose body, suspended from the gibbet, he beheld quivering afar, under its white robes, in the last struggles of death; then again he dropped it upon the archdeacon, stretched a shapeless mass at the foot of the tower, and he said with a sob that heaved his deep breast to the bottom, 'Oh-all that I've ever loved!" (p. 678)
13. PASSAGES
The book is teeming with spellbinding passages concerning human ties, petty hate, noble actions and sickening prejudice in an everyday context we can recognise as our own. And the book is how love can conquer hate and redeem the most lost of souls.
Quasimodo's reaction to Esmeralda's gift of a drink of water while he is being heckled on the pillory:
Then from that eye, hitherto so dry and b, was seen to roll a big tear, which fell slowly down that deformed visage so long contracted by despair. Perhaps it was the first that the unfortunate creature had ever shed." (p. 322)
"You asked me why I saved you. You have forgotten a villain who tried to carry you off one night,- a villain to whom the very next day you brought relief upon their infamous pillory. A drop of water and a little pity are more than my whole life can ever repay. You have forgotten that villain; but he remembers."~Quasimodo to Esmeralda~"
14. UNIVERSAL FATE
Ultimately, the book is about the universal fate that encloses all, regardless of time and place, character and class – the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly all go the same way. And yet that complex little web of human doings, and who does what with and to whom, all matters when it is underway.
What became of Quasimodo?
The Charles Laughton film has a happy/sad ending, as Esmeralda, who was rescued and did not die in the fantasy film world, rides away to be married, with Quasimodo watching, back in his world of stone.
“To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. "Why was I not made of stone like thee?”
In the book, well here is what the crypt of the cathedral revealed many centuries later.
"..in better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrezarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.”
15. HOPE
“So you're giving up? That's it? Okay, okay. We'll leave you alone, Quasimodo. We just thought, maybe you're made up of something much stronger.”
No, the spirit of Quasimodo lives on and, like the book itself, is endless.
“For love is like a tree; it grows of itself; it send its roots deep into our being, and often continues to grow green over a heart in ruins.”
“Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing which lasts but a short time. The heart of man cannot remain long in one extremity.”
“Spira, spera.
(breathe, hope)”