Notre-Dame de Paris

by Victor Hugo

may, it would be a serious mistake to dismiss Hugo’s claim to be crusading for Gothic architecture as mere rhetoric, or at best as the expression of an amateur interest, however genuine. He wanted to achieve results, and from all accounts succeeded. As early as 1824 his ode ‘La Bande noire’ had denounced vandalism in general, and in March 1832, that is between the first and definitive editions of Notre-Dame, he had published a vigorous article in the Revue des deux mondes entitled ‘Guerre aux démolisseurs!’ [‘War on the Demolishers!’].