A World of Heartbreak Over Notre-Dame

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/opinion/letters/notre-dame-fire.html

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To the Editor:

Re “Fire Mauls Paris’s Beloved Notre-Dame” (front page, April 16):

I am an architect living very close to Notre-Dame. I saw the fire and I have seen the devastation. This building has been a fact of French civilization for more than 800 years, and the damage is shocking.

I have no doubt that when it was built it gave the people a sense of divine grandeur and an astonishing sense of confidence in what they can imagine and build. Though Christian faith has waned, I am sure that the sublime skill and confidence are still there. That was not destroyed.

If there is any good to come of this, the French people will become reacquainted with this early act of their civilization and discover that they have all that is required to put it back together and much more.

Malcolm WoollenParis

To the Editor:

My heart breaks for Paris.

As an 11-year-old I “read” (understanding what I could, and it took months) Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.” My obsession began after watching Disney’s adaptation, and flourished during a family vacation to France.

On our first morning in Paris, my dad and I woke at dawn to be at the very front of the line when the cathedral opened. We turned the corner in the Île de la Cité, and I will never forget how the structure took my breath away (below).

That moment forever awakened in me a love of travel, art and history. I have since been to more than 50 countries, and Notre-Dame is still my favorite building on this planet. I was speechless when I first saw it, and am speechless at the tragic news. In shock, and in mourning . . .

Emme AckermanGran Canaria, Canary Islands

To the Editor:

As a French-Scot I watched in horror from Scotland as Notre-Dame de Paris erupted into flames. In my St. Andrews flat, I felt an overwhelming need to be on the Île de la Cité, where I first saw this fantastic example of Gothic architecture with my French grandmother in the late 1940s after it had miraculously survived Hitler’s order to burn Paris. But Monday night was for mourning.

Today our thoughts turn to resurrecting this symbol of the City of Light and the French nation. President Emmanuel Macron has already announced a national campaign to rebuild the church, kick-started by large personal donations from the wealthy, but as ever the “widow’s mite” will be far more symbolic.

Fire threatened to destroy everything, and though much is lost, the cathedral’s twin towers remain. France does not have trees big enough to replace the ancient wooden beams, but these will be sourced. Fortunately, the iconic building became such an amalgam of design across the centuries that restoration need not mean exact replication.

John CameronSt. Andrews, Scotland

To the Editor:

“A traveler in 13th-century France . . . met three men wheeling wheelbarrows. He asked in what work they were engaged and he received from them the following three answers:

“The first said, ‘I toil from sunup to sundown and all I receive for my pains is a few francs a day.’ The second said, ‘I am glad enough to wheel this wheelbarrow for I have been out of work for many months and I have a family to support.’ The third said, ‘I am building Chartres Cathedral’” (Ben Shahn, “The Shape of Content”).

The fire in Notre-Dame has caused many, both inside and outside France, to feel not only sadness, but also a sense of participating in something greater: to reach out, in the spirit of the third man, to help rebuild this glorious building of faith and symbol of civilization.

Wendy J. EisnerGreat Neck, N.Y.