姐,我要。。。
轻松的小说阅读环境
巴黎圣母院英文版 - BOOK THIRD CHAPTER I.NOTRE-DAME.
繁体
恢复默认
返回目录【键盘操作】左右光标键:上下章节;回车键:目录;双击鼠标:停止/启动自动滚动;滚动时上下光标键调节滚动速度。
  The church of Notre-Dame de paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice.But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for philip Augustus, who laid the last.On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar.~Tempus edax, homo edacior*~; which I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.*Time is a devourer; man, more so.If we had leisure to examine with the reader, one by one, the diverse traces of destruction imprinted upon the old church, time's share would be the least, the share of men the most, especially the men of art, since there have been individuals who assumed the title of architects during the last two centuries.And, in the first place, to cite only a few leading examples, there certainly are few finer architectural pages than this fa?ade, where, successively and at once, the three portals hollowed out in an arch; the broidered and dentated cordon of the eight and twenty royal niches; the immense central rose window, flanked by its two lateral windows, like a priest by his deacon and subdeacon; the frail and lofty gallery of trefoil arcades, which supports a heavy platform above its fine, slender columns; and lastly, the two black and massive towers with their slate penthouses, harmonious parts of a magnificent whole, superposed in five gigantic stories;--develop themselves before the eye, in a mass and without confusion, with their innumerable details of statuary, carving, and sculpture, joined powerfully to the tranquil grandeur of the whole; a vast symphony in stone, so to speak; the colossal work of one man and one people, all together one and complex, like the Iliads and the Romanceros, whose sister it is; prodigious product of the grouping together of all the forces of an epoch, where, upon each stone, one sees the fancy of the workman disciplined by the genius of the artist start forth in a hundred fashions; a sort of human creation, in a word, powerful and fecund as the divine creation of which it seems to have stolen the double character,--variety, eternity.And what we here say of the fa?ade must be said of the entire church; and what we say of the cathedral church of paris, must be said of all the churches of Christendom in the Middle Ages.All things are in place in that art, self-created, logical, and well proportioned.To measure the great toe of the foot is to measure the giant.Let us return to the fa?ade of Notre-Dame, as it still appears to us, when we go piously to admire the grave and puissant cathedral, which inspires terror, so its chronicles assert: ~quoe mole sua terrorem incutit spectantibus~.Three important things are to-day lacking in that fa?ade: in the first place, the staircase of eleven steps which formerly raised it above the soil; next, the lower series of statues which occupied the niches of the three portals; and lastly the upper series, of the twenty-eight most ancient kings of France, which garnished the gallery of the first story, beginning with Childebert, and ending with phillip Augustus, holding in his hand "the imperial apple."Time has caused the staircase to disappear, by raising the soil of the city with a slow and irresistible progress; but, while thus causing the eleven steps which added to the majestic height of the edifice, to be devoured, one by one, by the rising tide of the pavements of paris,--time has bestowed upon the church perhaps more than it has taken away, for it is time which has spread over the fa?ade that sombre hue of the centuries which makes the old age of monuments the period of their beauty.But who has thrown down the two rows of statues? who has left the niches empty? who has cut, in the very middle of the central portal, that new and bastard arch? who has dared to frame therein that commonplace and heavy door of carved wood, à la Louis XV., beside the arabesques of Biscornette? The men, the architects, the artists of our day.And if we enter the interior of the edifice, who has overthrown that colossus of Saint Christopher, proverbial for magnitude among statues, as the grand hall of the palais de Justice was among halls, as the spire of Strasbourg among spires? And those myriads of statues, which peopled all the spaces between the columns of the nave and the choir, kneeling, standing, equestrian, men, women, children, kings, bishops, gendarmes, in stone, in marble, in gold, in silver, in copper, in wax even,--who has brutally swept them away? It is not time.And who substituted for the ancient gothic altar, splendidly encumbered with shrines and reliquaries, that heavy marble sarcophagus, with angels' heads and clouds, which seems a specimen pillaged from the Val-de-Grace or the Invalides? Who stupidly sealed that heavy anachronism of stone in the Carlovingian pavement of Hercandus?Was it not Louis XIV., fulfilling the request of Louis XIII.?And who put the cold, white panes in the place of those windows," high in color, "which caused the astonished eyes of our fathers to hesitate between the rose of the grand portal and the arches of the apse?And what would a sub-chanter of the sixteenth century say, on beholding the beautiful yellow wash, with which our archiepiscopal vandals have desmeared their cathedral?He would remember that it was the color with which the hangman smeared "accursed" edifices; he would recall the H?tel du petit-Bourbon, all smeared thus, on account of the constable's treason."Yellow, after all, of so good a quality," said Sauval, "and so well recommended, that more than a century has not yet caused it to lose its color." He would think that the sacred place had become infamous, and would flee.And if we ascend the cathedral, without mentioning a thousand barbarisms of every sort,--what has become of that charming little bell tower, which rested upon the point of intersection of the cross-roofs, and which, no less frail and no less bold than its neighbor (also destroyed), the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, buried itself in the sky, farther forward than the towers, slender, pointed, sonorous, carved in open work. An architect of good taste amputated it (1787), and considered it sufficient to mask the wound with that large, leaden plaster, which resembles a pot cover.'Tis thus that the marvellous art of the Middle Ages has been treated in nearly every country, especially in France. One can distinguish on its ruins three sorts of lesions, all three of which cut into it at different depths; first, time, which has insensibly notched its surface here and there, and gnawed it everywhere; next, political and religious revolution, which, blind and wrathful by nature, have flung themselves tumultuously upon it, torn its rich garment of carving and sculpture, burst its rose windows, broken its necklace of arabesques and tiny figures, torn out its statues, sometimes because of their mitres, sometimes because of their crowns; lastly, fashions, even more grotesque and foolish, which, since the anarchical and splendid deviations of the Renaissance, have followed each other in the necessary decadence of architecture.Fashions have wrought more harm than revolutions. They have cut to the quick; they have attacked the very bone and framework of art; they have cut, slashed, disorganized, killed the edifice, in form as in the symbol, in its consistency as well as in its beauty.And then they have made it over; a presumption of which neither time nor revolutions at least have been guilty.They have audaciously adjusted, in the name of "good taste," upon the wounds of gothic architecture, their miserable gewgaws of a day, their ribbons of marble, their pompons of metal, a veritable leprosy of egg-shaped ornaments, volutes, whorls, draperies, garlands, fringes, stone flames, bronze clouds, pudgy cupids, chubby- cheeked cherubim, which begin to devour the face of art in the oratory of Catherine de Medicis, and cause it to expire, two centuries later, tortured and grimacing, in the boudoir of the Dubarry.Thus, to sum up the points which we have just indicated, three sorts of ravages to-day disfigure Gothic architecture. Wrinkles and warts on the epidermis; this is the work of time.Deeds of violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures; this is the work of the revolutions from Luther to Mirabeau. Mutilations, amputations, dislocation of the joints, "restorations"; this is the Greek, Roman, and barbarian work of professors according to Vitruvius and Vignole.This magnificent art produced by the Vandals has been slain by the academies.The centuries, the revolutions, which at least devastate with impartiality and grandeur, have been joined by a cloud of school architects, licensed, sworn, and bound by oath; defacing with the discernment and choice of bad taste, substituting the ~chicorées~ of Louis XV. for the Gothic lace, for the greater glory of the parthenon.It is the kick of the ass at the dying lion.It is the old oak crowning itself, and which, to heap the measure full, is stung, bitten, and gnawed by caterpillars.How far it is from the epoch when Robert Cenalis, comparing Notre-Dame de paris to the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, *so much lauded by the ancient pagans*, which Erostatus *has* immortalized, found the Gallic temple "more excellent in length, breadth, height, and structure."**_Histoire Gallicane_, liv. II. periode III. fo. 130, p. 1.Notre-Dame is not, moreover, what can be called a complete, definite, classified monument.It is no longer a Romanesque church; nor is it a Gothic church.This edifice is not a type.Notre-Dame de paris has not, like the Abbey of Tournus, the grave and massive frame, the large and round vault, the glacial bareness, the majestic simplicity of the edifices which have the rounded arch for their progenitor.It is not, like the Cathedral of Bourges, the magnificent, light, multiform, tufted, bristling efflorescent product of the pointed arch.Impossible to class it in that ancient family of sombre, mysterious churches, low and crushed as it were by the round arch, almost Egyptian, with the exception of the ceiling; all hieroglyphics, all sacerdotal, all symbolical, more loaded in their ornaments, with lozenges and zigzags, than with flowers, with flowers than with animals, with animals than with men; the work of the architect less than of the bishop; first transformation of art, all impressed with theocratic and military discipline, taking root in the Lower Empire, and stopping with the time of William the Conqueror.Impossible to place our Cathedral in that other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in painted windows and sculpture; pointed in form, bold in attitude; communal and bourgeois as political symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art; second transformation of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, immovable and sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, which begins at the return from the crusades, and ends with Louis IX.Notre-Dame de paris is not of pure Romanesque, like the first; nor of pure Arabian race, like the second.It is an edifice of the transition period.The Saxon architect completed the erection of the first pillars of the nave, when the pointed arch, which dates from the Crusade, arrived and placed itself as a conqueror upon the large Romanesque capitals which should support only round arches.The pointed arch, mistress since that time, constructed the rest of the church.Nevertheless, timid and inexperienced at the start, it sweeps out, grows larger, restrains itself, and dares no longer dart upwards in spires and lancet windows, as it did later on, in so many marvellous cathedrals.One would say that it were conscious of the vicinity of the heavy Romanesque pillars.However, these edifices of the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic, are no less precious for study than the pure types.They express a shade of the art which would be lost without them.It is the graft of the pointed upon the round arch.Notre-Dame de paris is, in particular, a curious specimen of this variety.Each face, each stone of the venerable monument, is a page not only of the history of the country, but of the history of science and art as well.Thus, in order to indicate here only the principal details, while the little Red Door almost attains to the limits of the Gothic delicacy of the fifteenth century, the pillars of the nave, by their size and weight, go back to the Carlovingian Abbey of Saint-Germain des prés.One would suppose that six centuries separated these pillars from that door.There is no one, not even the hermetics, who does not find in the symbols of the grand portal a satisfactory compendium of their science, of which the Church of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was so complete a hieroglyph.Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosophers' church, the Gothic art, Saxon art, the heavy, round pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism, with which Nicolas Flamel played the prelude to Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des prés, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,--all are mingled, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame.This central mother church is, among the ancient churches of paris, a sort of chimera; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the haunches of another, something of all.We repeat it, these hybrid constructions are not the least interesting for the artist, for the antiquarian, for the historian. They make one feel to what a degree architecture is a primitive thing, by demonstrating (what is also demonstrated by the cyclopean vestiges, the pyramids of Egypt, the gigantic Hindoo pagodas) that 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; the deposit left by a whole people; the heaps accumulated by centuries; the residue of successive evaporations of human society,--in a word, species of formations. Each wave of time contributes its alluvium, each race deposits its layer on the monument, each individual brings his stone.Thus do the beavers, thus do the bees, thus do men.The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a hive.Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. Art often undergoes a transformation while they are pending, ~pendent opera interrupta~; they proceed quietly in accordance with the transformed art.The new art takes the monument where it finds it, incrusts itself there, assimilates it to itself, develops it according to its fancy, and finishes it if it can. The thing is accomplished without trouble, without effort, without reaction,--following a natural and tranquil law.It is a graft which shoots up, a sap which circulates, a vegetation which starts forth anew.Certainly there is matter here for many large volumes, and often the universal history of humanity in the successive engrafting of many arts at many levels, upon the same monument.The man, the artist, the individual, is effaced in these great masses, which lack the name of their author; human intelligence is there summed up and totalized.Time is the architect, the nation is the builder.Not to consider here anything except the Christian architecture of Europe, that younger sister of the great masonries of the Orient, it appears to the eyes as an immense formation divided into three well-defined zones, which are superposed, the one upon the other: the Romanesque zone*, the Gothic zone, the zone of the Renaissance, which we would gladly call the Greco-Roman zone.The Roman layer, which is the most ancient and deepest, is occupied by the round arch, which reappears, supported by the Greek column, in the modern and upper layer of the Renaissance.The pointed arch is found between the two.The edifices which belong exclusively to any one of these three layers are perfectly distinct, uniform, and complete.There is the Abbey of Jumiéges, there is the Cathedral of Reims, there is the Sainte-Croix of Orleans.But the three zones mingle and amalgamate along the edges, like the colors in the solar spectrum.Hence, complex monuments, edifices of gradation and transition.One is Roman at the base, Gothic in the middle, Greco-Roman at the top.It is because it was six hundred years in building.This variety is rare.The donjon keep of d'Etampes is a specimen of it.But monuments of two formations are more frequent.There is Notre-Dame de paris, a pointed-arch edifice, which is imbedded by its pillars in that Roman zone, in which are plunged the portal of Saint-Denis, and the nave of Saint-Germain des prés.There is the charming, half-Gothic chapter-house of Bocherville, where the Roman layer extends half way up.There is the cathedral of Rouen, which would be entirely Gothic if it did not bathe the tip of its central spire in the zone of the Renaissance.***This is the same which is called, according to locality, climate, and races, Lombard, Saxon, or Byzantine.There are four sister and parallel architectures, each having its special character, but derived from the same origin, the round arch.~Facies non omnibus una, No diversa tamen, qualem~, etc.Their faces not all alike, nor yet different, but such as the faces of sisters ought to be.**This portion of the spire, which was of woodwork, is precisely that which was consumed by lightning, in 1823.However, all these shades, all these differences, do not affect the surfaces of edifices only.It is art which has changed its skin.The very constitution of the Christian church is not attacked by it.There is always the same internal woodwork, the same logical arrangement of parts. Whatever may be the carved and embroidered envelope of a cathedral, one always finds beneath it--in the state of a germ, and of a rudiment at the least--the Roman basilica. It is eternally developed upon the soil according to the same law.There are, invariably, two naves, which intersect in a cross, and whose upper portion, rounded into an apse, forms the choir; there are always the side aisles, for interior processions, for chapels,--a sort of lateral walks or promenades where the principal nave discharges itself through the spaces between the pillars.That settled, the number of chapels, doors, bell towers, and pinnacles are modified to infinity, according to the fancy of the century, the people, and art. The service of religion once assured and provided for, architecture does what she pleases.Statues, stained glass, rose windows, arabesques, denticulations, capitals, bas-reliefs,--she combines all these imaginings according to the arrangement which best suits her.Hence, the prodigious exterior variety of these edifices, at whose foundation dwells so much order and unity.The trunk of a tree is immovable; the foliage is capricious.
或许您还会喜欢:
神秘的第三者
作者:佚名
章节:8 人气:0
摘要:凌晨时分,帕克-派恩先生乘坐由巴塞罗那开往马霍卡岛的汽轮在帕尔马下了船。他立刻感到了失望,旅馆全满了!供他选择的最佳住处是一间衣橱似的不透风的楼房,在市中心的一家旅馆里。从房间向下看,是旅馆的内院。帕克-派恩先生并不打算住在那里。旅馆老板对他的失望显得漠然。“你想怎么着?”他耸了耸肩,说道。如今,帕尔马名声在外,游人如织。英国人,美国人,人人都在冬天来到马霍卡。整个岛屿拥挤不堪。 [点击阅读]
神秘的西塔福特
作者:佚名
章节:31 人气:0
摘要:布尔纳比少校穿上皮靴,扣好围颈的大衣领,在门旁的架子上拿下一盏避风灯_轻轻地打开小平房的正门,从缝隙向外探视。映入眼帘的是一派典型的英国乡村的景色,就象圣诞卡片和旧式情节剧的节目单上所描绘的一样——白雪茫茫,堆银砌玉。四天来整个英格兰一直大雪飞舞。在达尔特莫尔边缘的高地上,积雪深达数英所。全英格兰的户主都在为水管破裂而哀叹。只需个铝管工友(哪怕是个副手)也是人们求之不得的救星了。寒冬是严峻的。 [点击阅读]
神食
作者:佚名
章节:12 人气:0
摘要:十九世纪中叶,在我们这个奇怪的世界上,有一类人开始变得愈来愈多。他们大都快上了年纪,被大家称为“科学家”,这个称呼颇力恰当,可是他们自己却非常下喜欢。他们对于这个称呼是如此之厌恶,以致在他们那份叫作《大自然)的有代表性的报纸里一直谨慎地避开它,好像所有的坏字眼都源出于它似的。 [点击阅读]
福地
作者:佚名
章节:40 人气:0
摘要:海尔曼·布霍尔茨——德国人,罗兹某印染厂厂长卡罗尔·博罗维耶茨基(卡尔)——布霍尔茨印染厂经理莫雷茨·韦尔特(马乌雷齐)——布霍尔茨印染厂股东,博罗维耶茨基的好友马克斯·巴乌姆——博罗维耶茨基的好友布霍尔佐娃——布霍尔茨的妻子克诺尔——布霍尔茨的女婿马切克·维索茨基——布霍尔茨印染厂医生尤利乌什·古斯塔夫·哈梅施坦(哈梅尔)——布霍尔茨的私人医生什瓦尔茨——布霍尔茨印染厂公务员列昂·科恩——布霍尔 [点击阅读]
福尔赛世家三部曲1:有产业的人
作者:佚名
章节:37 人气:0
摘要:你可以回答这些奴隶是我们的。——《威尼斯商人》第一章老乔里恩家的茶会碰到福尔赛家有喜庆的事情,那些有资格去参加的人都曾看见过那种中上层人家的华妆盛服,不但看了开心,也增长见识。可是,在这些荣幸的人里面,如果哪一个具有心理分析能力的话(这种能力毫无金钱价值,因而照理不受到福尔赛家人的重视),就会看出这些场面不但只是好看,也说明一个没有被人注意到的社会问题。 [点击阅读]
福尔赛世家三部曲2:骑虎
作者:佚名
章节:43 人气:0
摘要:有两家门第相当的巨族,累世的宿怨激起了新争。——《罗米欧与朱丽叶》第一章在悌摩西家里人的占有欲是从来不会停止不前的。福尔赛家人总认为它是永远固定的,其实便是在福尔赛族中,它也是通过开花放萼,结怨寻仇,通过严寒与酷热,遵循着前进的各项规律;它而且脱离不了环境的影响,就如同马铃薯的好坏不能脱离土壤的影响一样。 [点击阅读]
福尔赛世家三部曲3:出租
作者:佚名
章节:34 人气:0
摘要:这两个仇人种下的灾难的祸根使一对舛运的情人结束掉生命。——《罗米欧与朱丽叶》第一章邂逅一九二○年五月十二号的下午,索米斯从自己住的武士桥旅馆里出来,打算上考克街附近一家画店看一批画展,顺便看看未来派的“未来”。他没有坐车。自从大战以来,只要有办法可想,他从来不坐马车。 [点击阅读]
秘密花园
作者:佚名
章节:27 人气:0
摘要:玛丽·伦诺克斯被送到米瑟斯韦特庄园她舅舅那里,每个人都说没见过这么别扭的小孩。确实是这样。她的脸蛋瘦削,身材单薄,头发细薄,一脸不高兴。她的头发是黄色的,脸色也是黄的,因为她在印度出生,不是生这病就是得那病。她父亲在英国政府有个职务,他自己也总是生病。她母亲是个大美人,只关心宴会,想着和社交人物一起寻欢作乐。 [点击阅读]
空中疑案
作者:佚名
章节:26 人气:0
摘要:9月的太阳烤得布尔歇机场发烫。乘客们穿过地下通道,登上飞往克罗伊登的“普罗米修斯”号航班,飞机再过几分钟就要起飞了。简-格雷落在了后面,她匆忙在16号座位上坐定。一些乘客已经通过中门旁的洗手间和餐厅,来到前舱。过道对面,一位女士的尖嗓音压过了其他乘客的谈话声。简微微撅了撅嘴,她太熟悉这声音了。“天啊,真了不起。……你说什么?……哦,对……不,是派尼特。 [点击阅读]
窄门
作者:佚名
章节:8 人气:0
摘要:第一章“你们尽力从这窄门进来吧。”——《路加福音》第13章24节。我这里讲的一段经历,别人可能会写成一部书,而我倾尽全力去度过,耗掉了自己的特质,就只能极其简单地记下我的回忆。这些往事有时显得支离破碎,但我绝不想虚构点儿什么来补缀或通连:气力花在涂饰上,反而会妨害我讲述时所期望得到的最后的乐趣。 [点击阅读]
笑面人
作者:佚名
章节:15 人气:0
摘要:维克多-雨果于一八○二年二月二十六日诞生在法国东部伯桑松城。雨果的父亲,西吉斯贝尔-雨果,本是法国东部南锡一个木工的儿子,法国大革命时他是共和国军队的上尉,曾参加过意大利和西班牙战争,在拿破仑时期晋升为将级军官。雨果从童年起就在不停的旅游中度过,他的父亲西吉斯贝尔-雨果把妻子和孩子从一个驻扎地带到另一个驻扎地。 [点击阅读]
第三个女郎
作者:佚名
章节:25 人气:0
摘要:赫邱里?白罗坐在早餐桌上。右手边放着一杯热气腾腾的巧克力,他一直嗜好甜食,就着这杯热巧克力喝的是一块小甜面包,配巧克最好吃了。他满意地点了点头。他跑了几家铺子才买了来的;是一家丹麦点心店,可绝对比附近那家号称法国面包房要好不知多少倍,那家根本是唬人的。他总算解了馋,肚子是惬意多了。他心中也是很安逸,或许太平静了一点。他已经完成了他的“文学巨著”,是一部评析侦探小说大师的写作。 [点击阅读]