Romancing the Cathedral: Gothic Architecture in Fin-de-Siecle French Culture (review)

Emery, Elizabeth. Romancing the Cathedral: Gothic Architecture in Fin-de-Siècle French Culture. Albany: State U of New York P, 2001. Pp. 234. ISBN 0-7914-5124-0

Speaking through the character of bell-ringer Joris Borluut in Le Carillonneur (1897), Georges Rodenbach writes: "C'est la foule qui construit les monuments [...L]es cathédrales, les beffrois, les palais, ont été construits par la foule. Ils sont à son image et à sa ressemblance." As Elizabeth Emery argues in Romancing the Cathedral, senti-ments like Rodenbach's stem from Victor Hugo's successful rehabilitation of the Gothic cathedral as a democratic structure, one produced by the people and utilized by the people, "a stable edifice," writes Emery, "able to support an endless variety of artistic and civil liberties."

Emery's richly inter-disciplinary study examines the rekindling of enthusiasm for medievalism and Gothic architecture in nineteenth-century France, beginning with Nodier and Chateaubriand and culminating with Proust, for whom the cathedral represents the timelessness of art and the uninterrupted transmission of creative inspiration. Emery explains the title of her book as referring at once to various authors' "wooing" the cathedral and their adopting it as a significant structure in their novels (romans). In her meticulously researched, footnoted, and heavily written first chapter, Emery discusses the nineteenth-century's renewed interest in the cathedral by situating it in its historical context, citing Violett-le-Duc's praise of the cathedral as a national treasure, and describing Fustel de Coulanges' insistence - in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War - on the Gothic cathedral as a mani-festation of French artistic genius independent of German influence. As an expression of patriotism, piety, or supreme artistic talent, the cathedral became a versatile symbol appropriated by countless authors in support of their disparate political views.

Like the cathedral whose ascensional verticality makes it lighter as it rises, Emery's analysis gains strength as it proceeds. In her examination of Les Trois Villes, the Durtal cycle (En Route, La Cathédrale, L'Oblat), and A la recherche du temps perdu, Emery discusses Zola's reinterpretation of the cathedral as a secular edifice dedicated to the betterment of humanity through science, Huysmans' use of the cathedral as what Emery calls "a catechism for adults," a structure whose didactic function is to instruct through symbols, and Proust's changing depiction of the cathedral, not as the object of scholarly commentary, but as a living source of inspiration sustaining successive generations of artists.

Beginning in Germinal with Pluchart's vision of the workers' utopia as "the immense cathedral of the future world," Zola made frequent use of this image, showing the cathedral as different from the sites visited by Pierre Froment in his pilgrimages to Lourdes, where the emphasis was on opulence and pageantry, Saint-Peter's, where the Church pursued political intrigue and a quest for power, and Sacré-Cœur, where self-interest stifled the eleemosynary impulses of the faithful. Whereas Le Rêve had conveyed Zola's nostalgia for the medieval ideal of communal art and worship, he finished by dismissing his work as "a dream." Yet later in Les Trois Villes, Zola consecrates it as the crowning achievement of future evangelists devoted to egalitarianism, work, and social harmony.

The picture Emery gives of Huysmans is different from the impression readers form of the author as an atrabilious recluse fond only of cats. Friendless after the death of Carhaix and des Hermies in Là-bas, Durtal is unlike his author, a loyal, conscientious man whom Remy de Gourmont called a "social activist." Emery situates Huysmans' embrace of Catholic doctrine in the context of the conversion narratives in vogue in the fin de siècle. While in his later preface to En Route, Huysmans complains of audience queries that interfered with his writing, Emery maintains that Huysmans intended his novels to bring people to the Church. Indeed, after...