The intensely visual and emotional Trumpian view of the landscape of war.

From the transcript of yesterday's press conference:

We're trying to get the war stopped, that horrible war that's going on in Ukraine with Russia, Ukraine. We've got a little progress. It's a tough one. It's a nasty one. It's nasty. People are being killed at levels that nobody's ever seen. It's very level fields. And the only thing that stops a bullet is a body, a human body. And the number of soldiers that are being killed on both sides is astronomical. I've never seen anything like that. And rapidly. I get reports every week and it's not even… It's like just… They're going down. Nobody's seen anything like it. It's a very flat surface, a very flat land. That's why it's great farming land. It's the breadbasket for the world actually. But it's very flat and there's nothing to stop a bullet but a body.

"The bells of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris rang out this morning for the first time today since 2019's fire."

"The Cathedral reopens with Mass on December 8th."

WE ARE SO BACK

The bells of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris rang out this morning for the first time today since 2019's fire

The Cathedral reopens with Mass on December 8th pic.twitter.com/roQS22b0t7

— Catholic Arena (@CatholicArena) November 8, 2024

"I'm not that worked up about the Disneyfication of the interior of Notre Dame. The contents of those alcoves along the perimeter are transitory — they'll live out their little lives and pass away."

I wrote on November 27, in a post that has a quote from The Spectator for its title "Plans are afoot to turn Notre Dame cathedral, once it’s restored, into what some have called a 'politically correct Disneyland.'"

I'm rereading that this morning after encountering "Opinion: Sorry, Internet: Notre Dame is not being 'wreckovated.'" by art history professor Elizabeth Lev (at WaPo). She observes that the criticism is about what will be done with "the two dozen-plus side chapels" — what I called "those alcoves along the perimeter." Before the fire, they'd been "an ill-kept hodgepodge generally passed over by tourists."

In the new design, Lev explains, the side chapels will follow a chronological sequence beginning with Genesis and continuing through the resurrection and the story of the Church in the modern world. The visitor will follow a "catechetical path." That's less of a jumble, but chronological order isn't a special province of Disney. It's the most obvious order, used by lovers of order all over the world and through the grand course of time. There are other orders — alphabetical order, order of importance — but getting bent out of shape about chronological order is super silly.

There is also a plan to use 5 of the chapels to represent 5 continents, displaying Bible quotes in the languages of those places. That's a tad Epcot-y, but come on. Should the Church not flaunt its extension over the globe? If you think that, I must chide you, paraphrasing Jesus: Why do you look at the speck of political correctness in your brother’s mind and pay no attention to that plank of political correctness in your own? 

On the other hand, if you are on the left and usually condemn colonialism and cultural appropriation, why don't you take over the condemnation of the renovation of the Notre Dame side chapels?

"Plans are afoot to turn Notre Dame cathedral, once it’s restored, into what some have called a 'politically correct Disneyland'...."

"The plans, yet to be rubber-stamped, will turn the cathedral into an ‘experimental showroom,' with confessional boxes, altars and classical sculptures replaced with modern art murals. New sound and light effects will be introduced to create ‘emotional spaces.' Themed chapels on a ‘discovery trail’, with an emphasis on Africa and Asia, will pop up. And Bible quotations will be projected onto chapel walls in various languages, including Mandarin. The last chapel on the new trail will have an environmental emphasis. Defenders of the new plan are bound to say that Notre Dame, before the heart-breaking fire of 2019, was already an artifice. The sublime cathedral, begun in 1163, was heavily adapted in a Gothic Revival style in the late nineteenth century.... With exceptional buildings, close to the public’s heart, like Notre Dame... architects can’t get away with doing the hideous things that go down well at the club. Well, they can’t on the outside of buildings, anyway.... And so radical changes for the exterior were vetoed.... Because people aren’t quite so familiar with the inside of Notre Dame, there is greater wriggle room for the anti-history brigade to prevail...."

From "Don’t turn Notre Dame into a 'politically correct Disneyland'" by Harry Mount (The Spectator).

I agree with Mount, but I just want to descend into the mundane language issue: Is "wriggle room" the British version of "wiggle room," and, if so, are there subtle, interesting difference between wriggling and wiggling that we ought to take into account? 

The OED does not have anything about "wriggle room," but it does have a definition for "wiggle room," though it's a "draft addition": 

Another U.S. expression the OED notes is "get a wiggle on" (which means to hurry). English has so many words. Do we need both "wriggle" and "wiggle"? And we also have "squirm" and "writhe," to name 2 more. "Squirm" has the advantage of rhyming with "worm," but worms really seem more to wriggle... or is it wiggle? "Wiggle" is the official Bob Dylan choice.

I'm not that worked up about the Disneyfication of the interior of Notre Dame. The contents of those alcoves along the perimeter are transitory — they'll live out their little lives and pass away.

UPDATE: This post made me remember a song that I don't think I have thought of in over half a century:

  

 

This song, from 1959, is by the stunningly unattractive men who called themselves The Playmates. Their hit that you're more likely to remember is "Beep Beep."

"The President of the Republic became convinced of the need to restore Notre-Dame de Paris as closely as possible to its last complete state, coherent and well-known..."

"... while betting on sustainable development in the choice of materials and site management" the French government announced today, the Washington Post reports.

After the fire destroyed the roof and the spire, architects were asked to propose the rebuilding, and there was some possibility of modernizing the design — possibly doing something with glass, like the I.M. Pei pyramid that became part of the Louvre. That is not going to happen. Good.

"That Notre-Dame still stands is due solely to the enormous risks taken by firefighters in those third and fourth hours."

"Disadvantaged by their late start, firefighters would rush up the 300 steps to the burning attic and then be forced to retreat. Finally, a small group of firefighters was sent directly into the flames, as a last, desperate effort to save the cathedral.... 'We were at first reluctant to go because we weren’t sure we’d have an escape route'... A group of firefighters from a neighboring suburb refused to go, but another team said it would do it. They broke a gate, and as they went inside the northern tower, found parts of a wall and the floor on fire. They climbed a set of stairs to the height of the bells. From there, they could douse the flames. One firefighter almost fell through the cracking steps — but by 9:45, they had the flames under control.... 'First off, this is all about our fragility,' Monsignor Chauvet, the rector, said on reflection. 'We are as nothing. The fragility of man, in respect to God. We are nothing but — creatures.'"

From "Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than people knew. This is how it was saved" — a detailed and elaborately illustrated NYT piece.

So wrong.

Notre-Dame competition an extraordinary opportunity, says Norman Foster. https://t.co/uQxmDZgHbz pic.twitter.com/FPpQgUmckF

— Royal Fine Art (@RoyalFineArt) April 20, 2019

"I had two priorities: to save the crown of thorns and a statue of Jesus."

Said Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier, quoted in "The Chaplain, the Cathedral Fire and the Race to Rescue Notre-Dame’s Relics" (NYT).

“We needed keys and codes to save some of the world treasures, which I clearly didn’t have,” Father Fournier said.... The crown of thorns... was locked in a chest.

While Father Fournier ran to look for the keys, some of his fellow firefighters opted for a more direct approach: They broke open the chest....

With the statue [of Jesus] in hand, Father Fournier, alone in the nave... "thought Jesus could help us a little bit and work, too,” he said. “I invited him to worry about his own house if he didn’t want to finish the night under a tent by the Canal Saint-Martin.”...

“The one who tells you that he’s not afraid in that kind of situation is either very dangerous or foolish,” the chaplain said. “Even for a firefighter, to go inside a building in flames isn’t that natural.”

ADDED: The NYT had to correct this story:

An earlier version of this article misidentified one of two objects recovered from Notre-Dame by the Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier. It was the Blessed Sacrament, not a statue of Jesus.

The commenters over there were irritated by the mistake:

I do not, in fact, think he was saving "a statue of Jesus". He was saving the Holy Eucharist, which Catholics see as the body of Christ. Come on, folks. This is pretty basic.

And:

The priest did not carry out "a statue of Jesus." He carried out the Eucharist, our communion wafers, which Catholics believe is the Body of Christ. It's more important than the crown of thorns.

Please make a greater effort to educate your staff on basic religious literacy. There are plenty of Catholics in New York, and this level of mistake is practically offensive to many of us.

"Although Macron and donors... have emphasized that the cathedral should be rebuilt as close to the original as possible, some architectural historians... believe that would be complicated..."

"... given the many stages of the cathedral’s evolution. 'The question becomes, which Notre Dame are you actually rebuilding?,' [say architectural historians like Brigniani]... 'Any rebuilding should be a reflection not of an old France, or the France that never was — a non-secular, white European France — but a reflection of the France of today, a France that is currently in the making. 'The idea that you can recreate the building is naive. It is to repeat past errors, category errors of thought, and one has to imagine that if anything is done to the building it has to be an expression of what we want — the Catholics of France, the French people — want. What is an expression of who we are now? What does it represent, who is it for?,' [Brigniani] says. [Jeffrey Hamburger, professor of art history at Harvard,] dismisses this idea as 'preposterous.'... 'It’s not as if in rebuilding the church one is necessarily building a monument to the glorification of medieval catholicism and aristocracy. It’s simply the case that the building has witnessed the entire history of France as a modern nation,' he says. '[You] can’t just erase history. It’s there, and it has to be dealt with critically.'"

Writes EJ Dickson in Rolling Stone.

Who gets it more nearly right?

Brigniani

Hamburger

 

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: It's fantastic how well the building held up:



So inspiring! There's such a glorious bright side to this. The wooden "forest" in the attic was fated to go out in a blaze, and the spire — a relatively recent addition — fell, but the flammable part will be replaced by something much more fireproof, and everyone is coming together, providing the money and the physical and mental labor, and everyone's focused on getting it done by the looming conspicuous goal that is the Paris Olympics in 2024.

"This Notre Dame Fire turned into people bragging about their vacations to Paris very quickly."

Ha ha.

Exactly.

And doesn't it show how optimistic and resilient people really are? I mean, it sounds awful, and it really bothered me on the day of the fire, but it's awful in that specially, utterly human way that's so hopelessly trivial and self-involved. Hopelessly... hopefully...

"Its construction began in the year 1163 and ended in 1345. It's time to say goodbye to your oratory polytheism."

That's the translation — from French — of the words of a "poster" that has appeared on line. It was — if we are to believe the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium — put up by Al-Muntasir, which is, we're told, affiliated with ISIS. Reported in The Daily Mail, with this image:



The non-French writing at the bottom says, we're told, "Have a good day."

I note:

1. It is not claiming credit for the destruction, so that it makes me more likely to believe what the initial reports on the fire speculated: It was an accident, perhaps related to the restoration project.

2. Though The Daily Mail says "the jihadists celebrated," the poster does not have to be read as a celebration. It doesn't say we're glad the cathedral burned. There are no images of jihadists dancing in the street or on rooftops.

3. The text doesn't say the fire was a good thing, only that its burning provides an occasion to reflect on the modern-day practice of adhering to a very old form of religion. A building from the middle ages went up in flames. It hasn't survived in the modern world. You should see that your religion is also a medieval construction. We're in modern times now. Let go of what doesn't fit anymore.

4. Let go of the medieval form of a great religion is something that non-Muslims say to Muslims all the time. If it's bad to say that, then don't say that. But maybe it's only bad to say it at the very time of the destruction of a great old monument or only when you are associated with people who themselves engage in the destruction of monuments.

5. But the poster implies that old things pass away, but it doesn't say old monuments should be destroyed, and it doesn't say put all old religion in the category of things it's time to say goodbye to. It singles out one sort of religion: "oratory polytheism." Presumably, that refers — critically — to Catholicism.

6. Google tells me that the phrase "oratory polytheism" has only been used on line in connection with this poster. The French is "oratoirepolythéiste." The Google translate device offers nothing for the single word and suggests adding a space. It translates "oratoire polythéiste" as "polytheistic oratory," which is easier to make sense of than "oratory polytheism." I understand the objection to polytheism and the way it is used to describe Catholicism (or all Christianity). It's harder to understand the problem with "oratory."

7. Perhaps "oratoire," the French word, relates to the meaning of the English word "oratory" that is — from the OED — "A place of prayer; a room or building for private worship, esp., in the Christian Church, a small chapel or shrine in or attached to a house, monastery, church." In this light, the translation shouldn't be "It's time to say goodbye to your oratory polytheism," but "It's time to say goodbye to your polytheistic chapel."

8. The Daily Mail doesn't take note of the hashtag in the upper left corner of the postcard: #Bonne Journée. That does mean "Have a good day," so now I'm not sure that the writing at the bottom of the poster translates to "Have a good day." I presume that is Arabic. Can anyone translate?

"[A] first fire alarm was triggered at 6:20 p.m. Monday, but that no fire was found after checks were carried out... A second alarm was triggered at 6:43 p.m...."

"... and a fire was found under the roof in a network of wooden beams, many dating from the Middle Ages, that is nicknamed 'the forest.' [Rémy Heitz, the Paris prosecutor] said that investigators were working off the hypothesis that the fire was an accident."

The NYT reports. Also: "The cathedral’s rector, Msgr. Patrick Chauvet, told the radio station France Inter that the cathedral had fire monitors who checked the wooden framework under the roof three times a day."

I'd like to know more about what happened between 6:20 p.m. and 6:43. Is there some kind of slow, undetectable burning that could take place in "the forest" and become so well established that, at the point at which it could be found, it would be unstoppable? If there is such a thing, did the fire experts know it and necessarily accept it?

North rose window.

From "Stained glass — rose windows" (Wikipedia).

Notre Dame on fire.

The giant spire has fallen and parts of the roof appear to have collapsed as a huge fire rages at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris https://t.co/NszGCr1Qag pic.twitter.com/fqIrzwcQMN

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) April 15, 2019

Notre-Dame Cathedral

in Paris is engulfed in flames.

🇫🇷 #NotreDame #Fire #Horrifying
via @herpsonc pls follow pic.twitter.com/0ueUk9z5T0

— Tom Hall ☘ (@TomHall) April 15, 2019

The moment #NotreDame’s spire fell pic.twitter.com/XUcr6Iob0b

— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) April 15, 2019

ADDED: BBC: "The cause is not yet clear, but officials say that it could be linked to renovation work.... Last year, the Catholic Church in France appealed for funds to save the building, which was crumbling. A spokesman for the cathedral said the whole structure was 'burning.' 'There will be nothing left,' he said."

AND: AP:

France’s civil security agency says “all means” except for water-dropping aircraft were deployed to tackle the blaze. The defense agency said those were unsuitable for fires like the one at Notre Dame because dumping water on the building could cause the whole structure to collapse....

Earlier Trump had tweeted, "Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out," so that answers that.

A Notre Dame spokesman said earlier that the church’s entire wooden interior was in flames....

On Thursday, 16 religious statues were removed from the peak for the first time in over a century to be taken for cleaning and therefore escaped the blaze.

MORE:

"A far-right French historian has killed himself at the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after declaring..."

"... that more radical action was needed in opposition to same-sex marriage in France."

Dominique Venner, 78, walked into the building at 4pm and put a letter on the altar before shooting himself through the mouth, according to local media reports. Hundreds of visitors were immediately evacuated from the site, which is the most visited Catholic monument in Paris.

The motive for the suicide and the contents of the letter were not immediately clear, although Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right Front National, tweeted her "respect" for Venner and said his death was an "eminently political" gesture.

Disgusting. You can't stand on traditional Christian values and commit suicide (and desecrate an altar). That's completely incoherent. Despicable.

Intent on charging for access — or just clueless — the New York Times fails to link to its own wonderfully rich archive.

I was reading the obituary for Jean Delannoy, the French film director who died on Wednesday at the age of 100. I didn't remember the name, though I see he directed the Anthony Quinn/Gina Lollobrigida version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," which I loved when I was a teenager.

Yeah, it's not very good, but it really did have a very deep emotional impact on me. The old Charles Laughton version is so much better: But let me get to my point. I learn from the obit that Delannoy was the sort of director that the French New Wave directors were rebelling against:

Mr. Delannoy had worked in the film industry for two decades when, in 1954, François Truffaut, then a 21-year-old critic for the film journal Cahiers du Cinéma, wrote his controversial article “A Certain Trend in French Film.” In the article Truffaut attacked France’s commercial cinema and its so-called tradition of quality, as exemplified by Mr. Delannoy and certain colleagues, and advocated in its place auteurism, a new, director-centered filmmaking style, which Truffaut came to embrace as a filmmaker. Established French directors, Truffaut wrote, had failed to express their personalities or espouse a worldview. He said that the worst of Jean Renoir’s movies would always be more interesting than the best of Mr. Delannoy’s. Stung, Mr. Delannoy responded by letter, calling the criticism “so low that I have never encountered anything like it in my 20 years in the profession.” He believed that a director’s job was to realize the work of the scriptwriters; Truffaut considered that attitude contemptuous of film as an art form. Jean-Luc Godard shared Truffaut’s opinion, once suggesting that when Mr. Delannoy carried a briefcase to the studio, he might as well be going to an insurance office.

This is important!

Mr. Delannoy responded by writing an article for The New York Times. The film industry, he wrote, was “dying of infantilism.”

Wait! He responded by writing an article for The New York Times?! Where is the link?!!! Now, I've had a little side project — which, admittedly, I've been ignoring for the last week or so — where I blog from the NYT archive for a date in the past as if I were blogging the news today. And I've struggled with the way the Times limits access to the archive for the years 1923 to 1986). Efforts to limit access to the current issue — the "TimesSelect" program — failed. But the partly closed historical archive remains. I'd love to be able to link to the old articles freely. They can't be getting much traffic. Why not let them burst out to a big audience when someone wants to talk about something, like what Jean Delannoy wrote in 1952 about the French New Wave? The Times itself should be sending us back into its archive. It's boneheaded not to link to the old article by Delannoy! So I'll have to be the one to go back and dig it out for you. It's here if you want to pay for access (or have an educational account and can get to 100 articles a month). Now, I'm reading the article, and it doesn't seem to be much of a response to Truffaut:

[T]he torture of the cinema in the world is, for the most part, due to the tightening of censorship.... The censors act in good faith, in the name of morality. But what is curious is that morality is not the same in one country as another.... All censorships are mistaken because they judge on the basis of pre-established criteria and not on the basis of intention. First and foremost, a film affects the understanding of an audience.... What the public looks for in the dimmed rooms is shocks, and emotions. Films that call upon the intelligence are rare and have only limited success....

He expresses concern that the movie "Savage Triangle" will be shown in New York for adults only.

[I]f I had a boy of 14, I would prefer him to get to know some "savage boys" as the one in the film, rather than to nourish himself solely on the violence of Robin Hood with his special interpretation of justice, or the ideas he has on religion, in the person of Friar Tuck, the monk with the cudgel who supports him. The cinema is dying of infantilism. Will censorship finish the job?

One reason not to link to the archive — a terrible reason — is that the old articles don't actually support the point you are citing them for! Delannoy isn't responding to Truffaut here. He's pissed off at censors (and Robin Hood).

ADDED: There is a short paragraph that appears between the discussion of Truffaut and the reference to Delannoy's old article:

Mr. Delannoy had earlier had his own complaints about the industry, partly because of censorship. “L’Éternel Retour” (“The Eternal Return”), a retelling of the Tristan and Isolde story, was condemned by the Legion of Decency in 1948. “Le Garçon Sauvage” (“The Wild Boy,” released in the United States in 1952 as “Savage Triangle”), the story of a Marseilles prostitute and her son, also ran afoul of censors.

The old article did support that paragraph. I incorrectly assumed that the new paragraph, which began "Mr. Delannoy responded by writing an article for The New York Times," referred back to the Truffaut criticism.