"A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:
-- ANArKH.
These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been that soul in torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leaving this stigma of crime or unhappiness upon the brow of the ancient church.
Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down, I know not which, and the inscription disappeared. For it is thus that people have been in the habit of proceeding with the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years. Mutilations come to them from every quarter, from within as well as from without. The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon scrapes them down; then the populace arrives and demolishes them.Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author of this book here consecrates to it, there remains to-day nothing whatever of the mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame,--nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed up.
The man who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago; the word, in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church; the church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the earth.It is upon this word that this book is founded.March, 1831." ~ Victore Hugo. I'm so in love this.
Wow. A deep message. A little depressing actually. But a nice one, nonetheless.
I have always been profoundly effected by the thought of the passing of time and existence, much in the same way I have a fascination with the inescapable and lifeless void that is space but I wouldnt say in a way that makes me sad. Existence is as fluid as an ocean wave; it breaks, rolls forth with force to the shore, crashes and and lets itself be heard and reaches to the farthest point of shore that it can and then it immediately recedes, sucked under the and replaced by the force of the next wave which replaces it, leaving not a trace of it, even in the marks left on the sand. It is such an insurmountable and inevitable thing, I never understood what there is to be sad about or even fear of it yet it morbidly fascinates me, and yes, in a sad way that I would love to look everyone in the eye, smile and pass a loving message, the clinging of individual minds this existence beyond their mortal lives. Nothing saddens me more than a life never validated or acknowledged, like those who diein lesser fortunate country with no voice and no recognition of their pain and struggle. Such a profound thing that we take for granted. Of course, its only one among many buy the tragedy of this life is allowing a life that has been blessed to disappear into the indefinitness of time without acknowledging ones own power while we posess it.
It's a very sad thought about those who suffer and then disappear without acknowledging our own power. Not acknowledging our own power is in itself a sadder situation than the original suffering. For it only creates more suffering because we never get over the original suffering. Thanks for sharing this, Gabriel.