Notre Dame fire could inspire a moment of French national rebirth
The burning of Notre Dame felt like a world-historical moment. It was the scene that fiction could not invent. A nation whose wounds were already open to the world was meted out new pain a thousand-fold. So far the tortures of France have proceeded incrementally: from terror attacks to the advent of the Gilets Jaunes, each painful contortion seemed a product of its age. And yet this week – without a life being lost – we seemed to reach a seminal catastrophe beyond any rational comprehension. Even as the news bulletins sifted for detail, they could not communicate the intuitive sickness that gripped us at the sight. We thought of Abelard and Josquin – and all that went before and since – and it did not amount to the sum of our grief.
At any other time in the past forty years, such a national tragedy would automatically bring people together. But as the fire took hold, it was more than just a tragedy: it was a cipher for France herself. After years of terror and months of rioting, the country’s public torture had entered a new and unthinkable register. In a different part of our being, the wheels of interpretation start to turn. France is a secular nation that remains deeply attached to national symbols. Numinous but deeply-held French national pride has had little true sustenance for years.
President Macron is already held responsible for the flames that have been licking at Paris, and the suicidal despair licking at the countryside. And now the country faced a psychological earthquake so deep that the brusque race of Parisians cried in the streets. It was a scene could have been projected straight from the imagination of the Front National.
And yet in the depths of trauma, France reached for hope. The usually silent Catholic majority gathered to pray; on their knees and in song. By midnight, their prayers were answered: not by material survival but by the sight of a single cross, gleaming down the length of the nave. Here I am, it said: I have risen from this Calvary as I did before. The planned Presidential speech would only have provided another ratchet in the cycle of national recrimination. Instead, France absorbed something no politician can ever offer: a profound, searching catharsis after years of seemingly inescapable agony.
Already we have found signs of rebirth. With commitments to rebuild came the sense that France has finally passed her nadir. The Gilets Jaunes cannot now revert to violence. Macron cannot speak down to his people; or lay a baton to them; or penalise them economically over Brexit. Whatever Jihadist cells lurk in the banlieus would be unwise to become operational. By the same token, individuals motivated towards Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, or any stripe of religious violence will be met with contempt – not least a continuance of the ongoing attacks on France’s national churches. If criminality is announced at Notre Dame, many of the above words may of course be unwritten. But I believe this will not happen.
France – so painfully exposed to assault from outside – has finally been humbled from within. Macron did not think twice before extending his appeal to the technical and financial resources of the wider world. The rhetoric of a shared European inheritance has a focus when it is most needed. The Queen will be recalling the Windsor Fire of 1992 and contemplating her response to the people of France. French nationals in self-imposed London exile will be feeling the tug of their abandoned motherland. The Catholic Church – both in France and beyond – has a focus both of contrition and thanksgiving. France’s strident secular-humanist movement will offer conciliation for months if not years. The torrents of European political life have a calm pool where they may meet. France’s most precious treasure has been sacrificed – and given back to her a symbol of unity beyond all imagination.