The monstrous regiment of modernists was so quick off the mark with their hideous, egomaniacal plans to rebuild the roof of Notre-Dame — one could not call any of their proposals a restoration — that I began to suspect that the fire that destroyed the roof was the result of a conspiracy by them. Gone were my suspicions that it was either Muslim terrorists or degenerate smokers who had set the fire, and my new hypothesis was perfectly reasonable. Modernists, after all, have done far more damage in the long run to the urban fabric of Europe than even the Second World War did; and it stands to reason that they, the modernists, would not want anything to escape their attentions for long, lest anything remain intact to shame by painful comparison their own wretched efforts.
So far their proposals have included apiaries and swimming pools, and all of them look like greenhouses for the cultivation of marijuana. And why not? After all, Baudelaire wrote a book about les paradis artificiels, that is to say those induced by psychoactive substances, and is not a spire an arrow pointing up to heaven? All conceptions of paradise are artificial in the sense than none of us has any direct knowledge of such a location; perhaps, in the spirit of ecumenical multiculturalism, a kind of Muslim-style paradise could be created under the glass roof (I shall refrain from describing it because young people might read this).
Of course, there is no end to the uses to which this prime space might be put. There could, for example, be a three-Michelin-star restaurant there. Think of the rent it would pay, the prices it could charge! The French state (which is responsible for the upkeep of the building) would — or at least could — be relieved of financial anxiety about it.
This proposal might be objected to because it would not be socially inclusive enough; the Pope would not countenance it because it would exclude illegal immigrants (except, perhaps, as plongeurs). The customers would be mainly wealthy foreigners, Russian oligarchs, Gulf oil sheikhs, and the like, and while this might assist with France’s yawning commercial deficit, it would do little for social justice, the ultimate aim of human existence, by which is meant the reduction of everything to the lowest common denominator.
Theodore Dalrymple, “What to Do With Notre-Dame?”, Taki’s Magazine, 2019-05-25.
July 19, 2019
QotD: “Re-imagining” Notre-Dame de Paris
Filed under: Architecture, France, History, Quotations, Religion — Tags: Christianity, Paris, SocialJustice, TheodoreDalrymple — Nicholas @ 01:00
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