The Hammock Papers: Restored.

13 June 2024

Restored.

Viollet-le-Duc's cross has been restored and returned to the roof above Notre-Dame ...

On the banks of the Seine, passers-by stopped and looked up to contemplate the new ballet offered by the Notre Dame construction site. On Friday, May 24, the cathedral of Paris regained the cross on the roof over the apse. (The cross and rooster-shaped reliquary over the transept were replaced earlier.) As this cross was the only roof ornament to have miraculously escaped the devastating flames of the tragic fire of April 15, 2019, it was a particularly symbolic moment before the cathedral's scheduled reopening on December 8, 2024.

Suspended in the air at the end of a crane, this work by Viollet-le-Duc has returned to its original position at the top of the apse of the choir roof, once again watching over the capital and its inhabitants.

From above, a clamor rises: The ironworkers and roofers who worked on its restoration turn to the journalists with a shout of victory. From below, cheers and applause respond, as if to thank the hard work of the craftsmen who have spent more than 1,000 hours restoring this two-ton cross, dented by its fall.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL