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一部小说是如何拯救圣母院，改变世人对哥特式建筑的观念
How a Novel Saved Notre-Dame and Changed Perceptions of Gothic Architecture

由专筑网缕夕，李韧编译

本文最初由Common Edge出版，标题为《这是一本书，它是一座大楼，它是行为干预！ 》

几年前，这本书的作者在参观游览及探索圣母院时，在一座塔楼的晦暗角落里发现刻在墙上的这个词：

ANáΓKH

这些希腊字符，随着时间的流逝而发黑，并深深地刻在石头上，有着特殊的形式和排布特点，哥特式的字迹标志着该作品来自中世纪时期，尤其是他们所表达的悲伤情感，给作者留下了深刻的印象。

雕刻在墙上的词意为“命运”。因此，有了浪漫悲剧《巴黎圣母院》，作品出版于1831年，由维克多•雨果撰写。许多人认为这个故事是一个警告，不能以外貌或地位来判断人的发展与内在。长相丑陋的主角卡西莫多（Quasimodo）被送到教会抚养。小说里圣母大主教克洛德·弗洛罗（Claude Frollo），引导着这个不断成长的男孩成为敲钟者，后来，养父和养子爱上了同一个女孩，一个十六岁的街头舞蹈家，名叫爱斯梅拉达（Esmerelda）。弗洛罗最终背叛了爱斯梅拉达，而卡西莫多试图拯救她。这个长相丑陋的人竟然成为了英雄，但一切为时已晚，爱斯梅拉达因莫名的罪名而被绞死。在愤怒中，卡西莫多将教父从巴黎圣母院大教堂的屋顶抛出，其余生都在为爱斯梅拉达守墓。

这本小说以英文发表，改名为钟楼怪人，这部小说与今天的英雄战胜怪物的故事完全相反。但这本书的中心思想并不是关于一个丑陋的男孩试图拯救一个美丽女孩。《钟楼怪人》是哥特式小说，故事重点是巴黎圣母院。建筑是故事发生的主要场景，束缚着人物的命运走向。故事的中心角色不是一个人，而是一座建筑，雨果认为这是有灵性的建筑。

“火焰不安的光芒使他们似乎在移动。有蛇，它似乎在笑、在咆哮着，蜥蜴在煽风点火，而龙在烟中咆哮。”

This article was originally published by Common Edge as "It’s a Book. It’s a Building. It’s a Behavioral Intervention!"
A few years ago, while visiting, or rather exploring, Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure corner of one of the towers, this word carved upon the wall:
'ANáΓKH
These Greek characters, black with age, and cut deep into the stone with the peculiarities of form and arrangement common to Gothic calligraphy that marked them the work of some hand in the Middle Ages, and above all the sad and mournful meaning which they expressed, forcibly impressed the author.
The word carved upon the wall means fate. Thus begins Victor Hugo’s tragic romance, Notre-Dame de Paris, published in 1831. Many regard the story as a warning against judging people by their appearance or status. The protagonist, Quasimodo, born monstrously deformed, was given to the church to raise. The novel’s antagonist, Notre-Dame’s Archbishop Claude Frollo, assigns the growing boy the role of bell-ringer. Later, adoptive father and adopted son fall in love with the same girl, a mesmerizing sixteen-year-old street dancer named Esmerelda. Frollo ultimately betrays Esmerelda, while Quasimodo tries to save her. The monster turns out to be the hero, but he’s too late. Esmerelda is hanged for a crime she did not commit. In anger, Quasimodo throws his father off the roof of Notre-Dame cathedral and spends the rest of his days hiding in the cemetery where Esmerelda is buried, mourning.
Renamed The Hunchback of Notre Dame when published in English, the novel reverses today’s standard hero-overcoming-the-monster trope. But the book isn’t really about a deformed boy trying the save the life of a beautiful girl. The Hunchback is a Gothic novel about a Gothicbuilding. The story’s moral focus is Notre-Dame cathedral. Architecture sets the stage, backdrops the major characters, and forever binds their fates. The story’s central character isn’t a person; it’s a building, which Hugo considered sentient.
“The restless light of the flames made them seem to move. There were serpents, which seemed to be laughing, gargoyles yelping, salamanders blowing the fire, dragons sneezing amid the smoke.“


© Flickr user la_bretagne_a_paris licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

哥特式建筑从公元1100年左右的罗马式演变而来，并在1400年代中期达到发展顶峰。在19世纪，雨果写书时，哥特式建筑已被文艺复兴时期建筑所取代。那时巴黎人认为中世纪建筑十分粗俗，就像是变形的怪物。他们认为哥特式建筑是一种侮辱，而哥特和凡尔赛德族部落则是野蛮人。巴黎的哥特式历史正在以一种合理化的方式被悄悄摧毁。

雨果非常吃惊，因为他认为建筑在哥特时代已经达到了顶峰，他写道：“事实上，从最初的发展到十五世纪的基督教时代，建筑是人类书写的伟大篇章，无论是哪个方面，它见证了人类在各个发展阶段。“他爱巴黎哥特式建筑，并且希望这些作品能够保留下来。他认为，圣母院的塔楼是光辉历史的象征。对雨果而言，文艺复兴时期的建筑师及其建筑物并不具代表性。

但1829年的圣母院正在损毁。在1789年至1799年的法国大革命期间，大教堂被用作火药工厂，从而受到严重损坏。这座建筑里最大的石头也被用于建造桥梁地基。雨果担心圣母院将会像伦敦其他哥特式建筑一样被拆毁。他写道：

“所有的亵渎、退化和毁灭的方式，威胁着这些令人羡慕的中世纪古迹中所包含的历史民族印记，其中有国家的记忆和人们的文化传统。现在的建筑简直是莫名其妙（即，在希腊、罗马或法国的模仿罗马与希腊时期建筑的作品），没有人关心原来那些令人羡慕的历史传统，而他们唯一的罪行就是毁灭了法国的传统文脉。“

雨果决定做一些事情，他成为世界上第一位私人收藏家之外的历史保护主义者。他说：“我们应当通过普遍的呼声来呼吁国家保护旧建筑。”他在一篇社论中宣称对“拆毁者”的抗议。他笔下的文字具有强大的杀伤力。这部小说《巴黎圣母院》于1831年1月出版，获得了大众好评。

这本书的成功使数以千计的法国人从农村以及各个城市到巴黎参观了雨果笔下的这座建筑。他们想亲眼看到卡西莫多（Quasimodo）从绞刑架跳起来拯救爱斯梅拉达（Esmerelda）、Frollo与法国国王共谋，悲伤灵魂的最终命运。然而人们发现这个教堂濒临毁灭。正如雨果所预料的那样，巴黎人不喜欢这座建筑英雄般的内在，以及它的力量和性格。 对于小说粉丝而言，卡西莫多是这个建筑物的比喻。因此，人们强烈要求对巴黎圣母院实行保护修复措施。恢复工作于1844年开始。

Gothic architecture evolved from the Romanesque around 1100 AD and reached its height in the mid-1400s. In the 1800s, when Hugo wrote his book, Gothic had given way to the Renaissance. By then Parisians considered medieval buildings vulgar, deformed monstrosities. Calling a building Gothic was an insult, a reference to Goth and Vandal Germanic tribes considered barbarians. Paris’ Gothic history was being torn down in the name of more respectable, if not more profitable, projects.
Hugo was alarmed. He believed architecture had reached its pinnacle during the Gothic era, writing, “Indeed, from the beginning of things down to the fifteenth century of the Christian era inclusive, architecture was the great book of humanity, the chief expression of man in his various stages of development, whether as force or as intellect.” He loved Gothic Paris and wanted its structures preserved. Notre-Dame’s towers, he argued, were symbols of a glorious past. For Hugo, Renaissance architects and their buildings had nothing to offer.
But Notre-Dame in 1829 was crumbling. The cathedral was used a gunpowder factory during the 1789 – 1799 French Revolution and heavily damaged. Its largest stones were earmarked for bridge foundations. Hugo feared that, like so many of the city’s other Gothic structures, Notre-Dame would soon be demolished. He wrote:
“All manner of profanation, degradation, and ruin are all at once threatening what little remains of these admirable monuments of the Middle Ages that bear the imprint of past national glory, to which both the memory of kings and the tradition of the people are attached. While who knows what bastard edifices are being constructed at great cost (buildings that, with the ridiculous pretension of being Greek or Roman in France, are neither Roman nor Greek), other admirable and original structures are falling without anyone caring to be informed, whereas their only crime is that of being French by origin, by history, and by purpose.”
Hugo decided to do something about it, becoming one of the world’s first historic preservationists outside of private collectors. “A universal cry must finally go up to call the new France to the aid of the old,” he said in an editorial declaring war on the “demolishers.” (Guerre aux demolisseurs!) His pen was mightier than any sword. The novel, Notre-Dame de Paris, was published in January 1831 to critical acclaim.
The book’s success brought thousands of French from the countryside and other cities to Paris to visit the building Hugo so lovingly described. They wanted to see firsthand where Quasimodo leaped to save Esmerelda from the gallows, where Frollo conspired with the King of France, where a sad soul carved fate in a tower wall. What the public found was a cathedral in danger of collapse. As Hugo anticipated, readers concluded Parisians didn’t appreciate the building’s heroic inner beauty, its strength, its character. Quasimodo was a metaphor for the building, which wasn’t lost on the novel’s fans. The public outcry to save Notre-Dame Cathedral was deafening and defining. Restoration began in 1844.


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186年后，雨果的历史故事仍在继续。虽然已无法统计具体数据，但数以千万计的读者都读过这本书。这部小说已在全世界范围内推广，甚至翻译成多种英文版本，改编为50多部电影、电视、芭蕾舞、舞台、音乐剧、广播剧、乐谱和电子游戏。

今天，人们已经很难将书与建筑分开。小说和大教堂几乎融为一体，相辅相成，它们变得不可分割。建筑师将会很好地了解到这一个神奇的关系。雨果在其中的爱情故事中隐含了内心的愿望。就像俄罗斯的玩偶一样，巴黎圣母院只是一个故事，从表面上看，是敲钟人救了那个女孩。而实际上，作者要表达的是对于建筑的拯救。雨果结合了建筑和故事，并在社会范围内激发了人们内心深处的共鸣，将建筑的保护行为转变为公共行动。想象一下，纽约市的Penn车站可能已经成为了Harper Lee和J.D. Salinger笔下畅销书的最好场景。

Hugo’s historical story is still in print, 186 years later. No reliable sales figures exist, but tens of millions likely have read the book. The novel has been translated worldwide, including multiple English versions, and adapted to more than 50 films, television, ballet, stage, musical theater, radio theater, music scores, and video game productions.
Today, it’s hard to separate book from building. Novel and cathedral are so intertwined, so reinforcing of each other, they’ve become inseparable. It’s a magical relationship that architects would do well to study. Hugo wrapped a stealth behavioral intervention inside a love story embedded in architecture. Like nested Russian dolls, Notre-Dame de Paris is a story within a story within a story. Outwardly, it’s save the girl. Inwardly, the hidden payload is save the building. Hugo wedded narrative to architecture and fermented intrinsically motivated behavior change on a societal scale, turning local apathy into public action. Imagine what might have become of New York City’s Penn Station had Harper Lee or J.D. Salinger written a 1960 best-seller persuasively set in the great terminal.


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巴黎圣母院是世界上第一座哥特式大教堂，也是第一座使用飞券支架的建筑，于1345年完工。在500年后，这个建筑仍是不可否认的艺术杰作和工程奇迹。到1830年，巴黎圣母院逐渐走向衰落，然而虚构的故事将这个即将废弃的建筑又变为国宝。设计界就是这样，没有情怀的建筑毫无意义，最终被人们遗忘。建筑不仅仅是一个空壳，它更需要灵魂。

这个充满讽刺的结局并不意外，有人猜测，雨果笔下卡西莫多（Quasimodo）的角色基于一个真实存在的人，法国雕塑家出生长相丑陋，绰号Le Bossu（法语为驼背）。Le Bossu住在巴黎第六区，距离大教堂不远。雨果是巴黎圣母院的常客，所以他可能会在该地区见过Le Bossu，也许了解他，甚至帮助过他。Le Bossu受聘于大教堂的修复项目，也从侧面成为这个故事中的一员。

Richard Buday是建筑师、作家和教育家，拥有20年的研究经验。他的休斯顿Archimage公司已经在建筑、室内设计、短片、广播电视广告和互动媒体方面赢得了数十个奖项。

Notre-Dame, one of the world’s first Gothic cathedrals and among the first to use flying buttresses, was completed in 1345. Almost 500 years later, the fact that the building was an artistic masterpiece and engineering marvel no longer mattered. By 1830, Notre-Dame was doomed—until a fictional story transformed the relic into a national treasure. The lesson for the design community is clear: a building without an engaging oral, prose or graphic narrative is meaningless and eventually forgotten. Architecture is more than an empty shell to be filled—it’s a story to be told.
And an ironic ending never hurts. There is speculation that Hugo based Quasimodo’s character on a real person, a French sculptor born deformed and nicknamed Le Bossu (French for the hunchback). Le Bossu lived in the 6th arrondissement, not far from the cathedral. Hugo was a frequent visitor to Notre-Dame, so it’s possible he’d seen Le Bossu in the area, perhaps knew him, maybe even helped him win a commission. Le Bossu was hired for the cathedral’s restoration project, poetically completing the story’s heroic arc.
Richard Buday is an architect, writer, and educator with 20 years experience in behavior research. His Houston-based firm, Archimage, has won dozens of awards for buildings, interiors, short films, broadcast television commercials, and interactive media.


出处：本文译自www.archdaily.com/，转载请注明出处。