France, a fundamentally Roman Catholic country whose citizens rarely attend Mass, understands the story and the meaning of Easter. It is a story of resurrection and rebirth, of the transformation of something profane into something sacred. In a subdued Paris on Tuesday, as Parisians and tourists gathered to stare at the smoke-smudged stones of what is left of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, relieved that the entire structure had not collapsed, there was talk of resurrection and reconstruction, but also of anger and shock at the possibility of what many considered official malfeasance and negligence, reports The New York Times.
While investigations continue into the cause of the blaze, there were questions about whether the refurbishment budget was too small, whether more fire protection and even sprinklers should have been provided, and how thoroughly an initial fire alarm was investigated before it was dismissed. The fire was not discovered until another alarm sounded 23 minutes later.
“It’s unpardonable, what happened,” said Karine Berger, who works at the nearby Centre Pompidou museum. “Nothing excuses this fire, to lose the work of centuries in a day.”
But there was also a quiet sense of history, of watching something grander than themselves, and a commitment to see the cathedral rebuilt, because for many it is the heart of Paris.
“Notre-Dame de Paris is Paris,” Ms. Berger said. “It’s a reference, it’s kilometer zero. It’s how we measure distances all over France.”
More than that, “it’s our roots, our history, our civilization,” she said. “I think of the generations of artists who spent all their lives working on this monument to God, to belief.”
This cathedral has outlasted generations, and it will outlast us, said Claude Fosse, who works for an electrical company here. His partner had once been up in the ancient oak roof that burned Monday night, he said, his voice quiet with awe, and “on the great beams of that forest you could see the signatures of the craftsmen from 800 years ago.”
The cathedral will be rebuilt, he said, “but it’s not going to be the same, you’ll see the patches.” At 51, he said thoughtfully, “I doubt I will be alive to see it completed.”
Notre-Dame bears a special place because of its combination of the secular, the sacred and the profane. “On one level it’s a physical symbol of Western civilization, even more than St. Peter’s in Rome, given its age,” said François Heisbourg, a French analyst. “But on another level it is embedded into popular culture.” It features in Victor Hugo, of course, but also in films like “Amélie” and “Ratatouille.” And it has been Disneyfied in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” an animated musical.
“So even in distant sections of America and the rest of the world, everyone knows this cathedral,” Mr. Heisbourg said. “It’s universal, Western, religious, literary and cultural, and that’s what makes it different from any other object. It’s the whole spectrum from the trivial to the transcendent, the sacred to the profane.”
It is among the places in Western Europe most visited by tourists. And yet the outpouring of sympathy, support and emotion “was quite unexpected for many of us,” said Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research. “Of course we say it’s the heart and soul of Paris, but because it’s always there we didn’t realize it, exactly, we took it for granted.”