Below this flame … two spouts, terminating in gargoyles, vomited sheets of fiery rain, whose silvery streams shone out distinctly against the gloom of the lower part of the cathedral front.

“A vast flame, fierce and strong, fragments of which were borne away by the wind with the smoke. Upon the top of the topmost gallery, higher than the central rose-window, a vast flame ascended between the two belfries with whirling sparks. This epic novel helped spark a preservationist movement that led to the cathedral being restored to its full glory. It featured Charles Laughton in one of his most acclaimed roles. “All eyes were turned to the top of the church,” Hugo wrote. ISBN 13: 9781645171782 Description Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame was written in 1831, at a time when the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was falling into disrepair. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, American dramatic film, released in 1939, that is widely regarded as the finest adaptation of Victor Hugo ’s classic novel of the same name. In one often-cited passage from the novel, Hugo rages at the state of the building: “As much beauty as it may retain in its old age, it is not easy to repress a sigh, to restrain our anger, when we mark the countless defacements and mutilations to which men and time have subjected that venerable monument.”Ī second, equally prophetic passage has circulated widely on social media in France since the fire that destroyed large parts of the cathedral’s roof and sent its spire toppling into the nave. The novel went on to become a classic and is largely credited with helping to initiate a vast renovation of the crumbling cathedral – Hugo’s “majestic and sublime edifice” – in the mid-19th century, completed by the architects Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. 01:11 Notre Dame Cathedral: before and after the devastating fire – video

The hunchback book