There is a power,
a soul, that one feels in sacred spaces. What Yeats writes in “Prayer for My
Daughter”: To be “rooted in one dear perpetual place.” Why tears flowed when
Notre Dame was burning, when the first images came into view.
Just before M and I
left for a visit to Paris last October, I found a book on the street. Judging from
its condition, “Notre Dame of Paris” by Allan Temko (1924-2006), published by
Time Inc. in 1952, had spent a lot of time in someone’s basement. It’s brittle cover
sheered off in my hand when I cracked the book open. There is still a musty smell to
it.
But Temko, whose
ardor for the cathedral never lags, thrilled me with his writing, a portion of
which is excerpted below. In fact, it reminded me of John Ruskin’s “Stones
of Venice.”
During these days of
pain and loss in the aftermath of the fire’s damage, find and buy a copy of
Temko’s book. There is so much to admire here, so much for those in need of
healing following this painful event, to wit:
“The first Parisians
settled in the Ile de France, bringing with them their gods and their arts, for
the two were inseparable. On a bend in the Seine they found an island naturally
suited for defense, with a low hill on its eastern point; and since the summits
of the hills were sacred, they built a temple of branches and leaves at the
crest and installed their gods on Ile-de-la-Cite. Paris then could not have
look anything like Paris today, but the gods bear some resemblance.
Men adored a
stone, a spring, a green tree. They sacrificed to the sun and the moon and to
the brighter stars. They dedicated altars to beasts and reptiles and various
birds – to the hawk, the serpent, the hound and the bear. They worshipped a
powerful wind which sometimes swept over the uncultivated fields. There was a
god in the white waterfall, in the solemn lakes, in every well, in caverns, or
where paths met, on hilltops. The gods were numerous, fierce, jealous, and as
complicated or uncomplicated as the humans who enshrined them; but among the
gods was a mother deity, a neolithic madonna who occasionally held a child in
her arms, and both mother and child have had a certain following in France to
this day.”
Next: Running for Your Life: Notes from “The Long Run”
