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.
