The Notre Dame Cathedral fire is not only keeping everyone glued to TV and social media for news and updates but is also driving online book sales. In the last few hours on Amazon there has been a boom in requests for Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris
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The Notre-Dame Cathedral fire is not only keeping everyone glued to TV and social media for news and updates but is also driving online book sales. In the last few hours on Amazon there has been a boom in requests for Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris.
A paperback edition has jumped to the top of the sales classics on The Amazon, finishing in second place. Among the best-selling works there are also photo books and tourist guides on the cathedral devastated by the flames.
The sales boom of the novel Notre-Dame de Paris on Amazon it could be related to a particular reason. In the pages of the work, published in 1831, Hugo describes a fire very similar to the one that ravaged the cathedral yesterday.
For many it is a real one prophecy. These the word:
"A great flame among the bell towers" reads the text. And speaking of human neglect, Hugo went on to say: “Time is blind and man is foolish”.
Set in Paris in 1482, the romance tells the story of Esmeralda and Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bell ringer of Notre-Dame. Hugo describes in detail the fire of the Paris cathedral:
"The hype was heartbreaking." “All eyes had raised to the top of the church, what they saw was extraordinary. At the top of the highest gallery, higher than the central rose window, there was a great flame that rose between the two bell towers, with whirlwinds of sparks, a great disordered and furious flame of which the wind at times carried away a limbo in the smoke ".
In reality, the writer was not referring to a real fire but to a diversion devised by Quasimodo to distract the truands:
"Under that flame, under the balustraded dome cut with embers of embers, two gutters made into the jaws of monsters continually vomited that ardent rain whose silvery roar stood out in the shadow of the lower facade"
it still reads. In his novel Victor Hugo thus criticized him state of decay of the cathedral and he hoped that the work could raise awareness and help get the restoration work started. And so it was. The novel's fame and success prompted the government to resume the restoration work and restore the cathedral to its former glory.
At the time he wrote the novel, Parisians regarded the Gothic buildings as almost monstrosities.
A completely different story than today, when the whole world stopped in amazement at the destruction of this work, devoured by flames.
On the fire of Notre-Dame read also:
- Fire in Notre-Dame: the Parisian Cathedral is on fire!
- Notre-Dame fire: the structure is safe. That's why Canadair couldn't be used
- Fire of Notre-Dame: the moving tribute from illustrators from all over the world
- Notre-Dame fire: solidarity contest for reconstruction, how to contribute
Francesca Mancuso
