MEDITATION 77

A wistful melody floats in my mind as I begin my latest meditation. It is the sound of a solo violin. As I fix my gaze on the candle beside me, the lilting tune seems to be curling around the flame itself, like a halo. The melody is a stately but sad, a sarabande from one of Bach’s cello suites and not originally written for the violin at all.

I am not playing one of the albums from my copious CD collection to soothe me as I write. The music is evoked by a memory of a recent short visit to Paris – a memory of my final night there. It was late, not long before midnight, but the summer’s evening twilight had extended so that the sky was still a deep indigo. A lone violinist, a thin, elegant busker, was playing a rock tune fused into an 18th Century gigue. He was a dancing shadow, gently swaying to and fro and gliding in and out of the light.

Although he was tall, he was dwarfed by his backdrop: the two towers of the facade of Notre Dame Cathedral, looming behind him and lit by floodlights. For he was playing his violin on the Parvis, the large square in front of the Cathedral. The shape of the great Rose window between the towers was still resplendent in the floodlights, even though, as its beautiful stained glass was not shot through by daylight, its face was blank.

Inevitably Victor Hugo’s novel ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ came to my mind as I stood there. The elegant busker might have been one of Esmeralda’s band of gypsies playing his fiddle in and out of the fire light while she danced round the campfire beside him. In the floodlights, the saints in their niches above the main door peered down oblivious to the busker’s performance and the gargoyles, high in the towers, were also deaf to his jaunty tune like Quasimodo himself.

I was eager to see Notre Dame on my visit. I wanted to see how the restoration was progressing after the tragic fire in April 2019. I was hoping that I could go inside and see some of the renovations as someone had told me that a part of the building was open. But that was not possible.

I have quite a connection with the Cathedral as, aside from being a Roman Catholic, I have written my own dramatisation of Victor Hugo’s novel. It has always been one of my favourite stories as is the 1939 film version with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo. My friend Phil was with me on my little trip a few weeks ago and he and I had produced my dramatisation at the school in 2006. In fact my last visit to Paris was in the Autumn before with Phil and his wife Anna, when we explored the cathedral to get inspiration for the script and the production.

It was also my last production at the school and in Budapest in February 2020. It was the tragic fire a year earlier that had inspired me to revise the script and produce it again. I added a special prologue set in the present and centred on the fire. In the prologue was a chorus of people who had rushed to the scene when they heard the news that Notre Dame was in flames.

Notre Dame is still a building site after three years and looks like it is barricaded in for a siege. How long it will remain so, I do not know. The modern steel scaffolding looks incongruous against the ancient walls of the cathedral as do the boards in front of the great main door with their ‘No Entry’ signs, the high cranes arched over the roof and the engineers’ temporary offices and builders’ huts in containers in their own little yard on the Parvis. The cathedral is so tall that the boards barely reach to half way up the great doors above the staircase of the main entrance. The whole edifice is surrounded by scaffolding as if it cannot stand up without it, although most of the building is secure despite the fire damage.

The lone violinist finished his gigue and there was a pattering of applause from his little audience seated on the stone wall near him. Keening with his bow, he began the sad sarabande by Bach, etching an elegy into the still night air. The lingering drift of the music made me raise my eyes to the sky, which had darkened to black pitch now. Little lights blazed out on the boards like stars and on the steel ribs of scaffolding illumining the ancient arches like votive lamps.

As the sad tune floated in the night air, time stood still. It was a moment of time and yet not of time. Like Notre Dame itself: of time and yet not of time.

‘Elegy’ – did I write ‘elegy’? No: the violinist’s melody wasn’t an elegy. For Notre Dame is still with us, still standing strong as if eager to push away the scaffolding supporting it. No, not an elegy but a lament, a lament for the tragedy, three years ago. And for our world at war.

Despite the apparatus of reconstruction surrounding it, the Cathedral was still beautiful.

It gives a lie to the adage ‘You’ve got to stand on your own two feet.’ We all need support, to be shored up, like Notre Dame, at times. For a moment let others take the weight, however strong our frame may be. Let others help us to rebuild, to renew ourselves.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

I am writing this meditation with a candle nowhere in sight. I am in a rather cosmopolitan location. I am seated in the Cafe Dumas in the Institut Francais overlooking the Danube in Budapest. As I am soon about to begin rehearsing my dramatisation of a great work of French literature, ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ by Victor Hugo, perhaps it is appropriate that I am writing my meditation here in the Institut Francais and in a cafe named after two other great 19th Century French writers : Alexandre Dumas, father and son. And my dramatisation of Hugo’s novel will be presented here in Budapest next February. So the location is very much appropriate.

So here, quite close to the famous Lanchid (Chain Bridge) I am watching the boats on the river and the yellow and white number 2 tram going up and down the opposite embankment. It is the most popular tram in Budapest, the tourist tram. The weather has been extremely hot here since I arrived as it is the last days of summer. Today is cooler with a welcome breeze and distinctly autumnal. The leaves on the trees on the embankment are beginning to change colour already and are a mix of vibrant green and russet brown.

How many journeys have I made on that tram since I first came here? Next month, it will 30 years since I first came to Hungary and to Budapest. The Republic of Hungary will be 30 years old too next month, as first I came here in the week the republic was first established in October 1989. So like the leaves in the breeze, there are many memories swirling around in my head this afternoon. I am feeling distinctly autumnal. I am autumnal. I may even be slipping into winter. These last few days have made me realise that I am getting older, if not old! I have finally realised how old I am.
I have just been in one of the city’s museums: the Museum of Fine Arts.It has an antiquities gallery in the basement, with artefacts from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Italy. In this gallery there is an funerary monument: a man and woman and a boy between them. The boy is not their child or grandchild but one of their slaves as they were obviously a wealthy couple, if they were able to have funerary statues for their burial.

The man has a middle-aged head with curly hair and a beard ( a typical ancient philosopher’s head) but his head is on top of a youthful, athletic body. His body suggested to me that he was guilty of wishful thinking! Or was he a young man with an old head on his shoulders?
However, the woman’s head was missing but her body looked clearly like that of a Roman matron, ‘a lady of a certain age’ as we would say. So it appears that the man was in some sort of mid-life crisis: middle-aged but imagining himself still youthful and athletic (if he ever was!). Looking closely at my own torso in the mirror recently, I think I am beyond imagining that now! I have now become part of the ‘realist’ school of literature!

By reading the information card beside these statues, I discovered that this kind of funerary statue was common in Roman times. It was an attempt to depict the idea of ‘a beautiful and good man.’ Presumably the ‘philosopher’ head of the statue suggested that the man had good and humane thoughts and lived by them and his youthful, athletic body suggested that this way of thinking and living made the man beautiful. For is it not goodness that creates beauty in a person?

I may be getting old but I still have a youthful spirit or I wouldn’t be in any way successful as a director of young people. They appear to still enjoy rehearsing with me. So here we are about to start rehearsing another production in the next few weeks. And next February we will be embarking upon another tour to Budapest. Except it will be my last production and my last tour.

It was quite emotional for me as I walked into the Kolibri Children’s Theatre last Friday for my usual meeting. We have been presenting productions there for over 20 years. I found it very hard to tell the production team that next year will be my last one. But it is time to bow out, to retire. I did not realise how difficult it was all going to be until I stood outside the theatre last Friday. How difficult it will be to let go. That is because I did not fully comprehend how close I am to the Kolbri Theatre and its director, Janos and its staff and it’s wonderful, warm appreciative audiences down the years. I had not realised how big a part of my life it has been. Or how big a part of my life this country has been.

In the antiquities gallery there was a quote on one of the large information boards. This quote has been attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: ‘The invisible connection is stronger than the visible.’ That is what I had forgotten: the invisible connection. The invisible connection that binds us together, that touches our heart, becomes part of us. And so this city and my friends here and the dear Kolibri Theatre will still remain part of my life because of that invisible connection, but in a different way. Like one season shifting into another.

Several friends who read my blog have asked me why I do not include photos . My reason is partly because, although I do sometimes write about my travels, I would hope my meditations are more than a holiday diary. I would hope that my blog is more discursive than that and that my powers of description are sufficient for you, dear reader, to visualise the people, places and works of art I seek to describe. Besides, shortly you will be able to hear the author’s voice as well as read his words as a selection of these meditations will be appearing on YouTube in an audio version. More news on that in my next meditation so:

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

As I begin to write, I look for a moment at the little flame of the candle behind my tablet. I realise what damage a small flame can do, as I reflect upon the devastation caused by the fire in Norte Dame Cathedral in Paris. Although, at present, we do not know how that momentous conflagration was caused.

So, for several days I have not been candle-gazing but fire-gazing as I have been following the incident on the television news. When I first saw the news late on Tuesday evening, I must confess to being initially as shocked as the crowds who quickly assembled on the Ile De La Cite to witness the blaze. Their shock was palpable as they silently watched the cathedral enveloped by flames. The heart of the Gothic Cathedral was a roaring fire and easily visible as the roof had caved in. It was the shock of disbelief and impotence as there was nothing the numerous bystanders could do except watch as the hundreds of firefighters, dwarfed by the conflagration, fought to douse the flames. The shock was shared by millions around the globe.

It is remarkable that this cathedral in Paris inspires so much international affection, perhaps because it is a main tourist attraction in Paris and so many have visited the basilica as a tourist, or, like myself, as a Christian, to worship as well. This affection has resulted in an outpouring of donations to restore Notre Dame.

I find it even more remarkable that, over the last few days, the cathedral has emerged as a potent symbol not only for Parisians but for the French nation, that it has a special place in their consciousness, in their hearts. It is a symbol of Paris, of France itself and perhaps because of recent terrorist attacks, even more potent.

Perhaps this is partly due to Victor Hugo’s famous novel ‘Notre Dame de Paris’. The book has been frequently mentioned over the last few days in the media in connection with the fire. Hugo’s famous 1831 story of the hunchback bell ringer Quasimodo and the gypsy girl Esmeralda has made the building a part of global culture. Indeed, Hugo has created our image of the cathedral, much as Shakespeare has of ancient Rome. The cathedral itself is a character in the novel, it could be argued the main character, so detailed and atmospheric is Hugo’s description of the ‘majestic and sublime edifice.’ Prophetically, the building catches fire towards the end of the novel as Quasimodo wards off armies of the populace by pouring boiling oil on them as they try to rescue Esmeralda from the cathedral: ‘two spouts terminating in gargoyles, vomited sheets of fiery rain.’

Hugo wrote the book to draw attention to the dilapidated cathedral itself – ‘the countless defacements and mutilations which men and time have subjected to that venerable monument’ – and other historic churches and buildings of Gothic architecture which had been ransacked and defaced in the revolution and left to go to ruin or destroyed to make way for new buildings. In a way his novel is a campaign document and he does digress from the plot at times (and at length) to make his point. As a result his novel and his campaigning led to the extensive renovation of the cathedral. So, to some extent Hugo has come to rescue of the cathedral once again in 2019. Apparently sales of his novel have soared in the last few days on Amazon!

I have always been haunted by the story since seeing the classic 1939 film as a child (and many times since). Charles Laughton brings great dignity and pathos to the role of Quasimodo in one of the greatest acting performances on film. I have recently looked at the film again on a luminous blue ray transfer. The film is very true to Hugo’s vision of medieval Paris with amazing sets and highly detailed artwork and detailed crowd scenes (all filmed under the sweltering Californian sunshine!).

The film led me to read the novel as a teenager and again years later. I had the idea of dramatising it as a school production a few years after I first came to the school. Going to Paris and seeing the Cathedral for myself finally inspired me to write it along with my colleague Phil Watkins in 2006. He had thought it would be a good project for a school production too. Now the burnt out Cathedral seems to be calling me, telling me to revive that production again.

The burnt out shell seems to be an image of Europe itself, an image of European civilisation even, dilapidated, crumbling, falling in on itself. Yet still standing; it is not completely destroyed. The rose windows are still intact and the April sun shines through them, the interlaced stained glass, an image of the interdependence and good will of nations. What is precious has miraculously been preserved. It is an image of survival. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, it will also be an image of renewal. Of resurrection.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail.

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius