Why do we feel such an attachment to beautiful places? This week a BBC article asked that question, using as examples the National Museum in Brazil that burned last year, the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria that was destroyed by bombing in 2017, Dresden's Frauenkirche that was destroyed by bombing during World War II - and, oh yes, a very familiar building to us here in Haiti, the National Palace, knocked down by the earthquake in 2010. The BBC talked to a woman who was in Port-au-Prince in 2010, and in Paris last week when Notre Dame burned. I think I can imagine some of what she must be feeling right now.
Palais National, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Getty Images
Getty Images
By the way, this article uses the figure of 160,000 people killed in the earthquake; that's a figure I haven't seen before. I wrote about some of the controversy about how many died in this post back in 2011. The BBC article touches on the guilt you can feel missing buildings - like, for example, the wonderful Ste. Trinité Episcopal Cathedral that also collapsed in the earthquake - when human beings were lost too, so much more precious than mere structures.
Fleda Brown's poem, linked in the first paragraph of this post, has an epigraph from a Philip Larkin poem. I looked it up and read it; it was somewhat familiar but it had been a long time since I'd looked at it, and in the context of Notre Dame it struck me. (Here it is.) In the poem, Larkin visits a church in England, as I have done many times. When I lived there, you usually found churches unlocked during the week, and there would be pamphlets in the back detailing the history of the place, and a box to donate to its upkeep. Larkin imagines a time in the future when people won't even know what churches are. "Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?" he asks. Although he calls this particular church he's visiting an "old barn," he also recognizes: "A serious house on serious earth it is."
Notre Dame is the same: "a serious house on serious earth." It's a real place of worship, used regularly and in use for Mass when the fire started. It took hundreds of years to build up all the seriousness that this house contains, years when people came there to worship, which is one of the most serious pursuits human beings can engage in. We've all been learning more about Notre Dame's history, or remembering long-forgotten facts. They almost knocked it down after the French Revolution put an end to Catholicism, supposedly forever. Victor Hugo stirred up pride in it again. There were bees living on the roof and they survived the fire.
In the midst of articles telling all these facts and many more about Notre Dame were reminders that other churches have been destroyed recently, by arson, in the United States and Haiti. And then this past weekend, bombings in Sri Lanka targeted Christians celebrating Easter Sunday. More destruction of buildings, and though the humans lost are of far greater worth, it still tears my heart to see the photos of roofs open to the sky.
Let's face it: there's a lot to be sad about during this National Poetry Month, this "cruelest month" of April.
Today's line for the Progressive Poem is here.
1 comment:
This makes me wonder how many churches have gone in all the ways they can, fire or earthquake, other changes. A church I visited with a grandmother long ago has been sold and re-done as someone's home in a town I visit once in a while. I find it difficult to understand how that can be, what changes they could make to make a home where many worshiped? Changes are happening and in ways we often find questionable.
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