The burning of Notre Dame
To be honest, even being an architecture student, I had only a slight idea about the existence of the cathedral Notre Dame, having read about it in ‘History of Architecture’ before the news of its devastation spread as high and fast as the fuming fire itself. And like every other time an artist dies, once again I was left wondering how the destruction of an art piece or the death of an artist acquires it/him much more fame, recognition and appreciation than its/his existence ever could. There’s the endless pouring of respect and apparent grief from people all around the world, even though more than half of them might never have followed or even heard of the art piece or the artist before it/he demolished or died. As if sorrow wasn’t a personal but collective feeling that spread contagiously. Perhaps we usually don’t think of losing the things that exist, and once they are lost, we find ourselves incapable of surviving like before in a world without them, an unimagined world, with those pieces or people, suddenly gone missing.
An article aptly explained the global outpouring of sentiments for Notre Dame as, “In the Cathedral of Notre-Dame we recognise something that resonates with the core of our soul, we yearn for it, we sense that we can still have it today, but humanity has forgotten how to have it with the consistency that could be had in days past. And when we lose a monument from those days, we sense that the chance of recovering what we yearn for recedes further.” We try to hold onto moments that are bound to become memories of the past in further days, and in order to do so, we associate ourselves to the physical objects that remind us of the past, with the loss of any such entity we feel at loss of the reminders of those good old days. Perhaps that is why so many people who genuinely felt for Notre Dame (and not just kept up with the world by sharing the posts without having known about it really) talked of the memories and experiences of their visit rather than the aesthetic or historical significance of it.
Architecture bears a great role in shaping human civilisation since historical times, it is more about the connection that a building is capable of forming with the viewer than with its architect. It’s quite understandable that the design of the built forms around us is as closely associated with us as the traits of people in our lives are. Before print and paper came to usable terms, architecture must have been the closest embodiment of an era’s philosophies as the civilisations sought to immortalise the ideals they stood for. The evolving change in the utilities of various structures is immensely fascinating as it reflects the changing needs, priorities, myths and beliefs over the years as the paradigm of humanity took a turn from religion to education, and the temples, churches and monasteries began to womb teaching institutions that eventually became self-sustained.
Like most architectural wonders Notre Dame was built over a long period of 200 years and its chief designer or master builder isn’t known. This makes me think of all those people who have remained or will remain anonymous, who will never be credited for their work and effort, whose names will be swallowed by oblivion in spite of contributing more than those remembered. Some of such names were erased from the pages of history by those in power, but there must have been others who never cared to take the limelight, all that mattered to them was the transcendence and implementation of their ideas. As my favourite anonymous graffiti artist, Banksy says, “People forget that being invisible is a superpower.” Nobody knows who those people were, and no one will know the similar kind of people from today’s world who are constantly creating but don’t care about world’s validation, who don’t sign their artworks so as not to blemish them with letters which would be insignificant to other viewers. Who are busy being scattered as dust, while the rest of us are trying to create sand sculptures of our own.
If the Notre Dame fire gave us burns too, we must try to rebuild ourselves along with it, whether its structure is restored Gothically or modified in modern terms, we should learn to choose our ideas of collective welfare over our names, because at the end such wonders wouldn’t exist if not for those nameless designers and architects.
