V. Hugo - the largest French romantic, the head of the French. romanticism, its theorist. He played an outstanding role in the creation of the romantic novel, in the reform of French poetry, in the creation of the romantic theater. The first poems, written by Hugo in 1812-19, were created according to the rules of classicism, referring to the genre of a solemn ode, where he glorifies the royal dynasty. Under the influence of Lamartine and Chateaubriand, the poet moves to the positions of romanticism. Throughout his life, Hugo turned to the theoretical justification of romanticism.

In the novel St. Petersburg (1831), Hugo refers to the 15th century. The choice of the era itself is important for revealing the main idea. 15th century in France - the era of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. But conveying the living image of this dynamic era with the help of historical color, Hugo is also looking for something eternal, in which all eras are united. Thus, the image of the Notre Dame Cathedral, created by the people for centuries, comes to the fore. The folk principle will determine the attitude towards each of the characters in the novel.

In the system of characters, the main place is occupied by three heroes. Gypsy Esmeralda, with her art, with her whole appearance, delights the crowd. Piety is alien to her, she does not refuse earthly joys. In this image, the revival of interest in a person, which will become the main feature of the worldview in a new era, is most clearly reflected. Esmeralda is inextricably linked with the masses of the people. Hugo uses romantic contrast, emphasizing the beauty of the girl with the image of the lower classes of society, in the outline of which the grotesque is used.

The opposite beginning in the novel is the image of the archdeacon of the cathedral, Claude Frollo. It also expresses one of the aspects of the Renaissance man - individualism. But first of all, this is a medieval person, an ascetic who despises all the joys of life. Claude Frollo would like to suppress in himself all earthly feelings, which he considers shameful, and devote himself to the study of the full body of human knowledge.

But, despite his denial of human feelings, he himself fell in love with Esmeralda. This love is destructive. Unable to defeat her, Claude Frollo takes the path of crime, dooming Esmeralda to torment and death.

Retribution comes to the archdeacon from his servant, the bell ringer of Quasimodo Cathedral. In creating this image, Hugo especially widely uses the grotesque. Quasimodo is an extraordinary freak. It looks like chimeras - fantastic animals, whose images adorn the cathedral. Quasimodo is the soul of the cathedral, this creation of folk fantasy. The freak also fell in love with the beautiful Esmeralda, but not for her beauty, but for her kindness. And his soul, awakening from the sleep in which Claude Frollo plunged it, turns out to be beautiful. A beast in appearance, Quasimodo an angel in his soul. The end of the novel, from which it is clear that Quasimodo entered the dungeon where the body of the hanged Esmeralda was thrown, and died there, hugging her.


Hugo makes an attempt to show the dependence of a person's inner world on the circumstances of his life (obviously, under the influence of realism). Quasimodo, not wanting this, contributes to the death of Esmeralda. He protects her from the crowd, who want not to destroy her, but to free her. Coming out of the ranks of society, merging his soul with the cathedral, embodying the people's beginning, Quasimodo was cut off from people for a long time, serving the man-hater Claude Frollo. And now, when the spontaneous movement of the people reaches the walls of the cathedral, Quasimodo is no longer able to understand the intentions of the crowd, he fights it alone.

Hugo develops a type of romantic historical novel that is different from the novels of Walter Scott. He does not strive for detailed precision; historical figures (King Louis 11, the poet Gringoire, etc.) do not occupy a central place in the novel. Hugo's main goal as the creator of the historical novel is to convey the spirit of history, its atmosphere. But it is even more important for the writer to point out the ahistorical properties of people, the eternal struggle between good and evil.

The main theme of the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral" is the theme of the people and popular disobedience. We see the Paris of the poor, the destitute, the humiliated. The novel vividly depicts the peculiar customs, traditions, life of the French Middle Ages, reveals the historical specificity of the era. One of the main images - symbols of the novel is the majestic cathedral, which bears the name of the Mother of God. It was built from the 12th to the 15th centuries, as a result of which it combined different architectural styles - Romanesque, early Middle Ages and later - medieval Gothic.

The cathedral, which, according to Christian dogma, is a model of the world, acts as an arena of earthly passions. Inseparable from him are Quasimodo, who, with the sounds of his bells, “infused life into this immense structure,” and the gloomy abbot Claude Frollo.

Quasimodo is an artistic embodiment of the theory of the romantic grotesque, which Hugo outlined in the preface to his Cromwell. This is one of the writer's typical images, which embodies the theme of deprivation, "guilty without guilt." The grotesque for Hugo is a "measure for comparison", a means of contrast between internal and external. We see the first in the contrast between the beauty of Esmeralda and the ugliness of Quasimodo, the second - in the contrast between the spiritual beauty of Quasimodo and the inner darkness of Claude Frollo.

If Quasimodo frightens with his ugliness, then Frollo arouses fear with those secret passions that incinerate his soul: “Why did his broad forehead grow bald, why is his head always lowered? What secret thought twisted his mouth with a bitter smile while his eyebrows drew together like two bulls ready to fight? What mysterious flame flashed from time to time in his gaze? - this is how Hugo portrays his hero.

Claude Frollo is a real romantic criminal, seized with an all-conquering, irresistible passion, capable only of hatred, destruction, which lead to the death of not only the innocent beauty Esmeralda, but also himself.

Why is the bearer and embodiment of evil in Hugo's view a Catholic clergyman? This is due to certain historical realities. After 1830, a sharp reaction appeared in the advanced strata of French society against the Catholic Church - the main support of the old regime. Finishing his book in 1831, Hugo saw how an angry crowd smashed the monastery of Saint-Germain-L'oxeroy and the archbishop's palace in Paris, how peasants knocked down crosses from the chapel, along the high roads. Nevertheless, Claude Frollo is an image not only historically conditioned. Perhaps it was inspired by those huge shifts that took place in the worldview of Hugo's contemporaries.

The unknown origin of Quasimodo, physical deformity and deafness separated him from people. "Every word addressed to him was a mockery or a curse." And Quasimodo absorbed human hatred, became evil and wild. But behind his ugly appearance was a good, sensitive heart. The author shows that the unfortunate hunchback is capable of deep and tender love.

To love Esmeralda, to deify her, to protect her from evil, to protect her, not sparing her own life - all this suddenly became the purpose of his existence.

Claude Frollo is also a kind of symbol - a symbol of liberation from the power of dogmas. However, everything in life is full of contradictions. And the skeptic Frollo, having rejected church dogma, is captivated by superstitions and prejudices: the girl he loves seems to him the messenger of the devil. Claude Frollo passionately loves Esmeralda, but gives her into the hands of the executioners. He knows Quasimodo's attachment to him - and betrays this feeling. He is Judas, but not the one whom the passionate imagination of his admirers painted, but the one who became a symbol of treason and deceit.

Next to the image of Claude Frollo is an artistically authentic image of Captain Phoebus de Chateauper. The beautiful appearance and brilliance of his uniform hid the emptiness, frivolity and inner wretchedness of this young nobleman. The forces of evil that guide the actions of Claude Frollo challenged the Cathedral - a symbol of light, goodness, Christianity. And the Council seems to be expressing its dissatisfaction, warning that the archdeacon will be punished.

In the end, it is the Cathedral that helps Quasimodo to take revenge on Claude Frollo: “The abyss gaped under him ... He twisted, applying inhuman efforts to climb the chute onto the balustrade. But his hands slid along the granite, his feet, scratching the blackened wall, searched in vain for supports ... "

Conveying the essential features of the era, V. Hugo, however, did not always adhere to reliability in depicting the past. In the center of the novel, he placed the image of Esmeralda, a beautiful girl brought up by gypsies. He made her the embodiment of spiritual beauty and humanity. This romantic image was brought by the author into the environment of the 15th century. V. Hugo imagined that there was a constant struggle between good and evil in the world, and he created his positive images based on the abstract idea of ​​good, without reporting on how these positive characters could form in specific conditions of life.

In his preface to Cromwell, Hugo proclaimed that Christian times gave a new understanding of man as a being that combines the principles of the corporeal and spiritual. The first is bound by desires and passions, the second is free, capable of rising into the sky on the wings of passion and dreams. So, literature must contain the contrasts of the mundane and the sublime, the ugly and the beautiful, penetrate into the mobile, fickle, contradictory essence of real life.

11. V. Hugo "Les Misérables".

Notre Dame Cathedral, the dramas of the 30s reflected the revolutionary. writer's mood. In these productions, Bol. the popular masses and their movement played a role. In the novels of the 60s, the romanticism comes to the fore. personal

The plot of the novels of the 60s - "Les Miserables", "Toilers of the Sea", "The Man Who Laughs" - is the struggle of one person against some external force. In the novel "Les Miserables" Jean Valjean, the prostitute Fantine, street children - Cosette, Gavroche - represent the world of the "outcasts", the world of people who are bourgeois. society throws overboard and in relation to the Crimea it is especially cruel.

Jean Valjean goes to hard labor for stealing bread for his sister's hungry children. Having come to hard labor as an honest man, he returns as a criminal after 19 years. He is an outcast in the full sense of the word; no one wants to let him in to spend the night, even the dog kicks him out of his kennel. He was sheltered by Bishop Miriel, who believes that his house belongs to everyone who needs it. Valjean spends the night with him and the next morning disappears from the house, taking the silver with him. Caught by the police, he is not going to deny his crime, for all the evidence is against him. But the bishop tells the police that Jean Valjean did not steal the silver, but received it as a gift from him. At the same time, the bishop says to Jean Valjean: "Today I bought your soul from evil and I give it to good." From that moment on, Valge becomes as holy as Bishop Miriel.
In this novel, Hugo, as elsewhere, remains on an idealistic point of view in assessing the world; There are, in his opinion, two justices: justice of a higher order and justice of a lower order. The latter is expressed in the law on which the life of society is built. The law punishes a person for a crime committed. The bearer of this principle of justice is Javert in the novel. But there is another kind of justice. Its bearer is Bishop Miriel. From the point of view of Bishop Miriel, evil and crime should not be punished, but forgiven, and then the crime itself is stopped. The law does not destroy evil, but aggravates it. So it was with Jean Valjean. While he was kept in hard labor, he remained a criminal. When Bishop Miriel forgave the crime he had committed, he remade Jean Valjean.

Gavroche is another bright hero of the work of G. Bold and cynical, at the same time simple-hearted and childishly naive, speaking in thieves' jargon, but sharing the last piece of bread with hungry homeless children, hates the rich, is not afraid of anything: not God, Obraz Like Jean, Gavroche is the personification of the best features of people "outcast" by society: love for one's neighbor, independence, courage, honesty.

So, according to Hugo, moral laws govern the relationship of people; social laws perform service. role. Hugo does not seek to deeply reveal the laws of social life in his novel. Social Hugo's processes are in the background. He strives to prove that the social itself. prob. will be resolved when morality is resolved.

12. G. Heine's poem "Germany. Winter's Tale". Heine's vision of Germany's past, present and future. Artistic features of the poem.

Heine's creative achievements are most clearly reflected in his remarkable pro-and-poem “Germany. Winter Tale "(1844). Upon returning from Germany in December 1844, Heine met with Marx, their constant conversations undoubtedly affected the content of the poem. It embodied all the previous experience of ideological and thin. development of Heine - prose writer, publicist, political lyricist. The Winter's Tale, more than any other work by Heine, is the fruit of the poet's deep thoughts about the ways of Germany's development. The image of the homeland Heine painted in clear time. And space dimensions. The space of the poem is the territory of Germany, crossed by the poet, each new chapter is a new place, real or conditional. Here his desire to see his homeland as a single democratic state was most fully expressed. two possible ways of developing their homeland. In the system of artistic means of the poem, this theme is expressed in a sharply alternative form: either the guillotine (a conversation with Friedrich Barbarossa), or that terrible smelly pot that Heine saw in Gammonia's little room. the satires of the poem are the pillars of political reaction in Germany: the Prussian monarchy, the nobility and the military. Approaching the border line on a cold November day, the poet hears with excitement the sounds of his native speech. This beggar girl sings in a false voice to the accompaniment of a harp an old song about renunciation of earthly goods and about heavenly bliss. With the words of the song of this impoverished harpist speaks that old wretched Germany, which its rulers lull to sleep with a legend of heavenly joys so that the people do not ask for bread here on earth. Political circles, against which the sharpest stanzas of the poem are directed, are the Junkers and the cowardly German bourgeoisie, who supported the aspiration of the German aristocracy for the reunification of Germany "from above", that is, through the revival of the "German Empire", designed to continue the traditions of the "Holy Roman Empire of the German nations.” The deep reactionary nature of this theory is exposed in those chapters of the poem where Heine tells of Barbarossa, “Kaiser Rothbart”. The image of the old emperor, sung in folk tales and dear to the hearts of conservative romantics, is in the poem one of the sharpest methods of satire on the supporters of the "empire", on the champions of "reunification from above." Heine himself, from the first lines of his poem, advocates a different path for the reunification of Germany - the revolutionary path leading to the creation of the German Republic. Time is given in 3 dimensions, constantly replacing one another. In the center of the author's attention is the present time, as he emphasized "modernity". The recent past - the Napoleonic era - and antiquity, already formed into myths and legends, stand side by side on equal terms. Heine goes from new France to old Germany. The two countries are permanently related to each other. "G" is not so much a satirical poem as a lyre, capturing the joy, anger, pain of the author, his "strange" love for the motherland. The present, only hinted at in the scene with the harpist girl, gradually unfolds in all its ugliness through the satire image of Aachen, once the capital of the empire of Charlemagne, and now has become an ordinary town. The poet has not seen his homeland for 13 years, but it seems to him that little has changed in Germany over the years, everything bears the stamp of obsolete medieval laws, beliefs and customs. Heine chooses those episodes from Germany's past that were destined to become reference points in the worldview of the ordinary German: the history of the construction of the Cologne Cathedral, the battle in the Teutoburg Forest, the conquest campaigns of Frederick Barbarossa, the recent struggle with France over the Rhine. Each of the national shrines is interpreted ironically, paradoxically, polemically. In satire. The final lines of the poem, where the poet, together with the patroness of the city of Hamburg, the goddess Gamonia, predicts the future, the logic of the author. thought is this: Germany, recognizing the barbaric past as the norm, and miserable progress in the present-good, can expect only an abomination in the future. The past threatens to poison the future. The poet passionately urges to be cleansed of the filth of the past throughout the entire poem.

The cathedral

The true hero of the novel is "a huge cathedral of Our Lady, looming in the starry sky with a black silhouette of its two towers, stone sides and a monstrous croup, like a two-headed sphinx dozing in the middle of the city ...". Hugo was able to show in his descriptions the natural in bright light and cast strange black silhouettes against a light background. "The era seemed to him a play of light on roofs and fortifications, rocks, plains, waters, in squares seething with crowds, on close ranks of soldiers - a dazzling beam, snatching a white sail here, clothes here, stained glass there. Hugo was able to love or hate inanimate objects and give amazing life to some cathedral, some city, and even the gallows. His book had a huge impact on French architecture."

"... It is unlikely that in the history of architecture there will be a page more beautiful than the one that is the facade of this cathedral, where three lancet portals appear before us sequentially and together; above them - a jagged cornice, as if embroidered with twenty-eight royal niches, a huge central rose window with two other windows, located on the sides, like a priest standing between a deacon and a subdeacon, a high, graceful arcade of a gallery with stucco decorations in the form of a shamrock, carrying a heavy platform on its thin columns, and, finally, two gloomy massive towers with slate canopies. All these harmonic parts of a magnificent whole, erected one above the other in five gigantic tiers, serenely in infinite diversity unfold before their eyes their countless sculptural, carved and chased details, powerfully and inseparably merging with the calm grandeur of the whole. It is like a huge stone symphony; a colossal creation of both man and people; single and complex; wonderful cut the ultimate combination of all the forces of an entire era, where every stone spurts the fantasy of the worker, taking on hundreds of forms, directed by the genius of the artist; in a word, this creation of human hands is powerful and abundant, like the creation of God, from whom it seems to have borrowed its dual character: diversity and eternity. "

"Notre Dame Cathedral" was neither an apology for Catholicism, nor for Christianity in general. Many were outraged by this story of a priest devoured by passion, burning with love for a gypsy. Hugo was already moving away from his still recent immaculate faith. At the head of the novel, he wrote "Ananke"... Fate, not providence... "Fate soars like a ravenous hawk over the human race, doesn't it?" Persecuted by haters, knowing the pain of disappointment in friends, the author was ready to answer: "Yes." A cruel force reigns over the world. Rock is the tragedy of a fly seized by a spider, rock is the tragedy of Esmeralda, an innocent pure girl caught in the web of church courts. And the highest degree of Ananke is fate, which controls the inner life of a person, disastrous for his heart. Hugo is a resounding echo of his time; he embraced the anti-clericalism of his milieu. "This will kill that. The press will kill the church... Every civilization starts with a theocracy and ends with a democracy..." Sayings characteristic of that time.

"Notre Dame Cathedral" was Hugo's biggest achievement. According to Michelet: "Hugo built next to the old cathedral a poetic cathedral on such a solid foundation and with equally high towers." Indeed, "Notre Dame Cathedral" is an important link for all the characters, all the events of the novel, this image carries a different semantic and associative load. The cathedral, built by many hundreds of nameless masters, becomes the occasion for creating a poem about the talent of the French people, about national French architecture.

All the events described in the novel are connected with the Cathedral: whether it is the revelry of the crowd on the Greve Square, or the bewitching dance of Esmeralda, or the frenzy of the bells at the hand of Quasimodo, or the admiration for the beauty of the cathedral by Claude Frollo.

"... Quasimodo was closely associated with the cathedral. Detached forever from the world by the double misfortune that weighed on him - a dark origin and physical deformity, closed from childhood in this double irresistible circle, the poor fellow was used to not noticing anything that lay on the other side of the walls that sheltered him under As he grew and developed, the Gathering of the Mother of God consistently served for him not as an egg, then a nest, then a house, then a homeland, then, finally, the universe.

The cathedral replaced for him not only people, but the whole universe, all nature. He imagined no other flowering hedges than never fading stained-glass windows; other coolness, except for the shade of stone foliage, burdened with birds, blooming in the bushes of Saxon capitals; other mountains, except for the gigantic towers of the cathedral; other ocean than Paris, which seethed at the foot."

But even the cathedral seemed submissive to Quasimodo. It seemed that Quasimodo poured life into this vast building. He was omnipresent; as if having multiplied, he was simultaneously present at every point of the temple.

Hugo wrote: "A strange fate befell the Cathedral of Our Lady in those days - the fate of being loved so reverently, but in very different ways by two such dissimilar creatures as Claude Frollo and Quasimodo. One of them loved the Cathedral for its harmony, for the harmony that The other, endowed with an ardent imagination enriched with knowledge, loved the inner meaning in it, the meaning hidden in it, loved the legend associated with it, its symbolism lurking behind the sculptural decorations of the facade, like the primary letters of ancient parchment, hiding under more late text - in a word, he loved that riddle that the Cathedral of Notre Dame forever remains for the human mind.

MOU "Davydov secondary schoolN2"

ESSAY
ON THE LITERATURE ON THE TOPIC

"NOVEL OF VICTOR HUGO

"Cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris"

AND ITS MODERN REFLECTION IN THE MUSICAL

NOTRE DAME DE PARIS.

10th grade students

Belova Yana.

and literature

1. Introduction.

3. The novel "Notre Dame Cathedral". Era selection: 15th century.

4. Organization of the plot.

5. Reflection of social conflict in the novel.

6. The contrasts of the novel. Quasimodo, Frollo and Phoebus, everyone's love for Esmeralda.

7. Claude Frollo. Man cannot be placed outside the laws of nature.

8. The image of the people in the novel.

9. The main problems of the novel.

10. Musical "Notre - Dame de Paris".

History of creation.

Reasons for success.

11. Conclusion.

Why the musical "Notre-Dame de Paris" and Hugo's novel are interesting and relevant in

our days?

12. List of references.

1.Introduction.

Notre Dame Cathedral (Notre - Dame de Paris) was built for almost two centuries (from 1163 to 1330). Before the construction of the Eiffel Tower, it was he who was considered a symbol of France. A huge building 120 meters high, which has many secret passages, the servants of which have always been distinguished by special asceticism and isolation, have always aroused great interest among the townspeople. The cathedral, covered with a veil of mystery, forced the people who inhabited the city to add legends about themselves. The most popular of them is the story of the noble hunchback Quasimodo and the "little seller of illusions" (as Archdeacon Claude Frollo calls her in the original version of the musical) the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda. Rather, this is not even a legend, but a true story that has come down to us with some changes, thanks to the famous French writer Victor Hugo.


2. Victor Hugo. Short biography.

Reflection of his life positions in his work.

The life of Victor Hugo covers almost the entire 19th century. He was born in 1802 and died in 1885. During this time, France experienced many turbulent events. This is the rise and fall of Napoleon, the restoration of the power of the Bourbons and its collapse, the revolutions in 1830 and 1848, the Paris Commune. Young Hugo was formed as a person under the influence of contradictory tendencies already within the family. The father of the future writer was the son of a carpenter, who later became a military man. He participated in the campaigns of the Napoleonic army and received the rank of brigadier general. Hugo's mother came from a shipowner's family and sympathized with the royal family, which lost power as a result of the revolution of 1789-1794. But a friend of the family at one time was General Lagori, a Republican by conviction. He participated in a conspiracy against Napoleon, because he could not reconcile with the empire. He had to hide from the police in one of the monasteries in France, where the Hugo family also settled for a while. Lagorie spent a lot of time with the children, under his guidance the young Hugo read the works of ancient Roman writers. And it was from this man, as the novelist himself recalled, that he first heard the words "" freedom "" and "" right "". A few years later, Lagori, along with other conspirators who opposed Napoleon and the Empire, was shot. Hugo learned about it from the newspapers.

At an early age, the future writer got acquainted with the works of the French Enlightenment - Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. This determined his democratic sympathies, sympathy for the poor, humiliated, oppressed people. And although Hugo's political views, his relationship with the authorities were often complex and contradictory, even sometimes marked by conservatism (for example, under the influence of his mother, he was a royalist at one time), the writer was always worried about the problem of social inequality, he hated tyranny, arbitrariness and lawlessness.

3. The novel "Notre Dame Cathedral".

Era selection: 15th century.

In the novel Notre Dame Cathedral, which was published in 1831, the historical theme is deeply and circumstantially developed. The novel was created in the atmosphere of the revolution of 1830, which finally overthrew the power of the Bourbons in France. This determined the democratic pathos, the emotional intensity of the narration, the wide depiction of mass scenes.

The very choice of the era to which the writer refers is not accidental:

The great age of discoveries of genius

Age of catastrophes

Century killer and creator ...

(July Kim).

The 15th century is a period of significant changes in the history of Europe and, in particular, France, in whose life the features of the new time were already emerging and the ideals of the Renaissance were taking shape. But this age of "cathedrals" was cruel and merciless. At the beginning of the 15th century, the church tried to destroy the germs of all knowledge based on experience, and preached the most ridiculous inventions of Catholic theologians regarding living nature. The development based on the experience of knowledge in the Middle Ages, and the achievement of certain successes in the field of medicine and mathematics, physics and astronomy, took place in spite of the immediate and strongest resistance from the church. By this time, the church, unable to suppress the non-church schools that appeared in the cities of France, and to prevent the emergence of universities, tried to seize the leadership of educational institutions in its own hands. She expelled from them all the opponents of the "new order". So, killing the living and perpetuating the dead, the church used all its strength to prevent true cultural development. It brutally persecuted and destroyed the spiritual culture of the working masses both in the countryside and in the city, suppressed the slightest glimpse of scientific thought. But everything comes to an end. At the end of the 15th century, printing presses appeared in France, brick-making for buildings took on a large scale, metallurgical business developed significantly, the production of cast iron into iron began ... The Church, as far as it was in its power, still hindered the development of culture that was not placed at the service of the church. interests. She turned the University of Paris into the center of a deadly ecclesiastical scholasticism and the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy. However, the needs of the developing feudal society steadily led to the fact that sprouts of knowledge based on experience more and more often made their way through the thickness of scholastic sophistication.


These processes confirmed the young Hugo's optimistic view of history as the progressive movement of mankind from ignorance to knowledge, from animal aspirations to spirituality, the light of reason.

Being a romantic, the writer considers historical development as a struggle between good and evil, savagery and enlightenment gaining strength.

4. Organization of the plot.

Romantic pathos appeared in Hugo already in the very organization of the plot. The history of the gypsy Esmeralda, the archdeacon of Notre Dame Cathedral Claude Frollo, the bell ringer Quasimodo, the captain of the royal shooters Phoebus de Chateauper and other characters associated with them is full of secrets, unexpected turns of action, fatal coincidences and accidents. The fates of the characters are bizarrely crossed. Quasimodo tries to steal Esmeralda on the orders of Claude Frollo, but the girl is accidentally rescued by a guard led by Phoebus. Quasimodo is punished for the assassination attempt on Esmeralda, but it is she who gives the unfortunate hunchback a sip of water when he stands at the pillory, and with her good deed transforms him. There is a purely romantic, instant breakdown of character: Quasimodo turns from a rude animal into a man and, having fallen in love with Esmeralda, objectively finds himself in a confrontation with Frollo, who plays a fatal role in the girl's life.

The fates of Quasimodo and Esmeralda are closely intertwined in the distant past. Esmeralda was stolen by gypsies as a child and among them received her exotic name (Esmeralda in Spanish means “emerald”), and they left an ugly baby in Paris, who was later taken up by Claude Frollo, naming him in Latin (Quasimodo translated as “unfinished”), but also in France Quasimodo is the name of the Red Hill holiday, in which Frollo picked up the baby.

Hugo brings the emotional intensity of the action to the limit, depicting Esmeralda's unexpected meeting with her mother, the recluse of the Roland Tower Gudula, who all the time hates the girl, considering her a gypsy. This meeting takes place literally a few minutes before the execution of Esmeralda, whom her mother tries in vain to save. But fatal at this moment is the appearance of Phoebus, whom the girl passionately loves and whom, in her blindness, she trusts in vain. It is impossible not to notice, therefore, that the reason for the tense development of events in the novel is not only chance, an unexpected set of circumstances, but also the spiritual impulses of the characters, human passions: passion makes Frollo pursue Esmeralda, which becomes the impetus for the development of the central intrigue of the novel; love and compassion for the unfortunate girl determine the actions of Quasimodo, who manages to steal her from the hands of the executioners for a while, and a sudden insight, indignation at the cruelty of Frollo, who met the execution of Esmeralda with hysterical laughter, turns the ugly ringer into an instrument of just retribution: Quasimodo, suddenly rebelling against his tutor and gentleman, throws him off the wall of the cathedral.

The fates of the central characters are organically inscribed in the colorful life of Paris in the 15th century. The novel is densely populated. An image of the French society of that time arises in it: from courtiers to beggars, from a learned monk to a half-mad recluse, from a brilliant knight to a homeless poet. In an effort to convey the historical flavor of the era, the writer seems to resurrect before us the customs, customs, rituals and prejudices of people of the distant past. The urban landscape plays an important role in this. Hugo, as it were, restores 15th-century Paris, telling the story of each monument, explaining the topography, the names of streets and buildings. Most of all, Notre Dame itself is depicted, acting in the novel as a kind of character.

In the third book of the novel, completely dedicated to the cathedral, the author literally sings a hymn to this wonderful creation of human genius. For Hugo, the cathedral is “like a huge stone symphony, a colossal creation of man and people ... a wonderful result of the combination of all the forces of the era, where from each stone splashes the worker’s fantasy taking hundreds of forms, disciplined by the genius of the artist ... This creation of human hands is powerful and abundant, like creation God, from whom it seems to have borrowed a dual character: diversity and eternity ... "

The cathedral became the main scene of action, the fate of Archdeacon Claude is connected with it and Frollo, Quasimodo, Esmeralda. The stone statues of the cathedral become witnesses of human suffering, nobility and betrayal, just retribution. Telling the history of the cathedral (or any other building), allowing us to imagine how they looked in the distant 15th century, the author achieves a special effect. The reality of stone structures, which can be observed in Paris to this day, confirms in the eyes of the reader the reality of the characters, their destinies, the reality of human tragedies. This is facilitated by the bright characteristics that the author gives the appearance of his characters already at their first appearance. Being a romantic, he uses bright colors, contrasting tones, emotionally rich epithets, and unexpected exaggerations. Here, for example, is a portrait of Esmeralda: “She was short in stature, but she seemed tall - her slim figure was so slender. She was swarthy, but it was not difficult to guess that during the day her skin shone with that wonderful golden hue that is inherent in Andalusian and Roman women. The girl danced, fluttered, spun ... and every time her radiant face flashed, the look of her black eyes blinded you like lightning ... Thin, fragile, with bare shoulders and slender legs occasionally flashing from under her skirt, black-haired, fast, like a wasp , in a golden corsage tightly fitting the waist, in a colorful puffy dress, shining with her eyes, she truly seemed to be an unearthly creature. Esmeralda lives carelessly, earning her living by singing and dancing in the streets.

Depicting Quasimodo, the author does not spare colors to describe his deformity, but even in this frightening figure there is a certain attraction. If Esmeralda is the embodiment of lightness and grace, then Quasimodo is the embodiment of monumentality, commanding respect for power: “there was some formidable expression of strength, agility and courage in his whole figure - an extraordinary exception to the general rule that requires that strength, like beauty , flowed from harmony ... It seemed that it was a broken and unsuccessfully soldered giant. Quasimodo got used to the walls of the cathedral in which he lived so much that he began to resemble chimeras decorating the building: part of it. It is possible, almost without exaggeration, to say that he took the form of a cathedral ... The cathedral became his dwelling, his lair, his shell ... Quasimodo has grown to the cathedral, like a turtle to its shield. The rough shell of his building became his shell.

Comparison of Quasimodo with the cathedral, a peculiar assimilation of their people runs through the entire novel. And this is no coincidence. Quasimodo's connection with the cathedral is not only external, but also deeply internal. And it is based on the fact that both - the character and the building of the temple embody the folk principle. The cathedral, which was created over the course of almost two centuries, embodied the great spiritual forces of the people, and the ringer Quasimodo, under whose hand the bells come to life and begin to sing, became its soul. If Quasimodo embodies the spiritual potential of the people, hidden under external rudeness and bestiality, but ready to awaken under a ray of goodness, then Esmeralda is a symbol of people's cheerfulness, naturalness, harmony.

5. Reflection of social conflict in the novel.

Criticism has repeatedly noted that both characters, Esmeralda and Quasimodo, are persecuted, powerless victims of an unfair trial, cruel laws in the novel: Esmeralda is tortured, sentenced to death, Quasimodo is easily sent to the pillory. In society, he is an outcast, an outcast. But having barely outlined the motive for the social assessment of reality (as, by the way, in the depiction of the king and the people), the romantic Hugo focuses his attention on something else. He is interested in the clash of moral principles, the eternal polar forces: good and evil, selflessness and selfishness, beautiful and ugly.

The robber Clopin Truilfou, the altyn king from the Court of Miracles, who takes care of Esmeralda and became her second father, is also a very important character. In his novel, Hugo pays little attention to him, but in the musical "Notre-Dame de Paris" his role is very significant. First of all, it consists in the transfer of social conflict:

We are nobody, we are nothing

Nobody needs

But on the other hand, but on the other hand,

We always owe everything.

Our life is an eternal battle

Our life is a wolf howl!

…………………………………

Who is not his, he is the enemy,

Here is our answer to you...

(July Kim)

Since he is a leader among the tramps, it was important to reflect not only aggression, but above all that he is a thinker, like most leaders ... This character is very bright and dramatic. In the musical, the contrasting features of his character are well shown: aggressiveness, readiness to go to even the most extreme measures and the ability to enjoy life, his fatherly feelings are revealed in relation to Esmeralda:

Esmeralda, understand

After all, you have become different

What I was at eight years old

When she became an orphan...

(July Kim)

6. The contrasts of the novel.

Quasimodo, Frollo and Phoebus. Everyone's love for Esmeralda.

The system of images in the novel is based on the theory of the grotesque developed by Hugo and the principle of contrast. The characters line up in clearly marked contrasting pairs: the freak Quasimodo and the beautiful Esmeralda, also Quasimodo and the outwardly irresistible Phoebus; an ignorant ringer - a learned monk who knew all the medieval sciences; Claude Frollo also opposes Phoebus: one is an ascetic, the other is immersed in the pursuit of entertainment and pleasure. The gypsy Esmeralda is opposed by the blond Fleur-de-Lys, the bride of Phoebe, a rich, educated girl and belonging to the high society.

Quasimodo, Frollo and Phoebus all three love Esmeralda, but in their love each appears as the antagonist of the other (this is well shown by Luc Plamondon in the original version of the world famous song "Belle").

Phoebe needs a love affair for a while, Frollo burns with passion, hating Esmeralda as an object of his desires for this. Quasimodo, on the other hand, loves the girl selflessly and disinterestedly; he confronts Phoebus and Frollo as a man devoid of even a drop of selfishness in his feeling and, thereby, rises above them. This is how a new plan of contrast arises: the external appearance and internal content of the character: Phoebus is beautiful, but internally dull, mentally poor; Quasimodo is ugly in appearance, but beautiful in soul.

Thus, the novel is built as a system of polar oppositions. These contrasts are not just an artistic device for the author, but a reflection of his ideological positions, the concept of life. The confrontation between the polar principles seems to Hugo's romance eternal in life, but at the same time, as already mentioned, he wants to show the movement of history. According to the researcher of French literature Boris Revizov, Hugo considers the change of eras - the transition from the early Middle Ages to the late, that is, to the Renaissance period - as a gradual accumulation of goodness, spirituality, a new attitude to the world and to ourselves. Notre Dame Cathedral itself is a symbolic embodiment of this movement: begun in the 12th century and completed in the 14th, it embodies the entire crisis of the Middle Ages and the transition to a new time.

7. Claude Frollo.

You cannot put a person outside the laws of nature

But such a transition develops painfully. Characteristic in this regard is the image of the Archdeacon of Josas, Claude Frollo. He, as already mentioned, played a terrible role in the fate of Esmeralda: he tried to kill Phoebus, seeing him as his rival; and allowed Esmeralda to be blamed. When the girl rejected his love, he handed her over to the executioners. Frollo is a criminal, but at the same time a victim. A victim not only of his own egoism, of his own delusions, but also a kind of victim of historical development: in his person an entire era, an entire civilization perishes.

He is a monk who devoted his whole life to serving God, scholastic science, subordinating himself to ascetic dogma - the killing of the flesh. A kind of curse gravitates over Frollo - the ananke of dogma. He is a dogmatist in his religious ideas, in his scientific research. But his life turns out to be meaningless, science - fruitless and powerless.

This idea is already revealed in the description of Frollo's office: “... there were compasses and rhetors on the table. Animal skeletons hung from the ceiling. Human and horse skulls lay on the manuscripts... on the floor, without any pity for the fragility of their parchment pages, heaps of huge open tomes were thrown, in a word, all the rubbish of science was collected here. And on all this chaos - dust and cobwebs.

Even before meeting Esmeralda, Claude Frollo is deeply dissatisfied with himself, with his way of life as a hermit monk, with scientific studies that led him to a spiritual dead end. Meeting with a young, beautiful girl, the embodiment of natural harmony, turns his soul upside down. It awakens a living person, longing for love. But Frollo's feeling has to break through the barrier of religious prohibitions, unnatural moral dogmas, and it takes on the character of a painful, destructive selfish passion that does not take into account the feelings and desires of the very object of this passion. Frollo perceives his passion for Esmeralda as the influence of witchcraft, as cruel fate, as a curse. But in fact, this is a manifestation of the inevitable course of history, destroying the old medieval worldview, ascetic morality, which tried to put a person outside the laws of nature.

8. The image of the people in the novel.

The course of history leads to the awakening of the masses. One of the central scenes of the novel is a scene depicting the storming of the cathedral by a mob of angry inhabitants of the Court of Miracles, trying to free Esmeralda. And King Louis 11 at this time, fearing the rebellious people, is hiding in the Bastille. The perspicacious reader of that time could see a parallel between Louis 11 and Charles 10, removed from power after the 1830 revolution.

Depicting the people, Hugo shows his strength, power, but also the spontaneous nature of his actions, changeable moods and even his blindness. This is manifested in the attitude of the Parisians to Quasimodo, today electing him King of Jesters, and tomorrow humiliating him at the pillory.

In the scene of the storming of the cathedral, Quasimodo and the people turn out to be adversaries; but after all, both the ringer defending the cathedral and the people trying to break into it act in the name of the interests of Esmeralda, but do not understand each other.

9. The main problems of the novel.

Thus, the position of the author in assessing the people appears to be difficult. It is again due to the fact that Hugo, being a romantic, focuses the reader's attention on the role of chance in the fate of characters, on the role of emotions, passionate impulses, whether it be an individual person or a crowd of people. In the image of the writer, life appears at the same time full of tragedy and comic absurdities, sublime and base, beautiful and ugly, cruel and cheerful, good and evil. Such an approach to reality corresponds to Hugo's aesthetic concept, and reminds the modern reader of the eternity of many universal values: kindness, nobility, selfless love. The novel also recalls how compassion, sympathy are needed for people who are lonely, rejected by society, humiliated. In the preface to the Russian translation of Notre Dame Cathedral, he noted that Hugo's idea of ​​"restoring a dead person" is "the main idea of ​​the art of the entire 19th century."

10. Musical Notre-Dame de Paris.

History of creation. Reasons for success.

Hugo's work is widely reflected in the art of music. The Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi created an opera of the same name based on the plot of the drama Ernani, and the opera Rigoletto based on the plot of the drama The King Amuses himself. In the 20th century, the musical "Les Misérables" was staged.

Based on the novel Notre Dame Cathedral, Hugo wrote the opera libretto Esmeralda, the plot of which inspired many composers, including his opera Esmeralda, which was staged in 1847. The Italian composer Cesare Pugni wrote the ballet Esmeralda. In the 60s of the 20th century, the composer M. Jarre created the ballet "Notre-Dame de Paris".

But the most popular and interesting production of this novel was the now fashionable musical Notre-Dame de Paris, which became an event in theatrical life. It broke all box office records, captivating the audience, the total number of which exceeded three million. At the same time, the total number of audio recordings sold exceeded the seven million milestone.

What was the path to such incredible success?

In 1993, Luc Plamondon, a popular songwriter in France, Canada and a number of other countries, began to search for a French theme for a new musical.

I began to look through the dictionary of literary heroes, - he recalls, - but my eyes did not stop for a moment near the name Esmeralda, as well as near other names. Finally, I got to the letter “Q”, read: “Qasimodo”, and then it dawned on me - well, of course, “Notre Dame Cathedral”, because the plot of this work is well known to everyone, you can’t confuse it with anything, and no one will have to explain what is being said. And that's why there are at least a dozen adaptations of Hugo's novel, from the first silent films to Walt Disney's most recent cartoon version.

Rereading a six hundred page novel, Plamondon, in the heat of inspiration, made rough drafts of lyrics for three dozen songs and went with them to his old colleague, Richard Cocciente.

Plamondon, who worked on the musical with Cocciente for three years, recalls this meeting with delight:

At the same time, he played me some very successful melodies, which later turned into the arias "Belle", "Le Temps des Cathedrales" and "Danse Mon Esmeralda". It seemed to me that they were in no way inferior to the melodies of the best opera arias, and their unique originality should have ensured our success with the modern audience.

The composer's rather original musical taste was formed in childhood, when he became seriously interested in opera and at the same time listened to The Beatles with a binge, which largely influenced his further work: indeed, in all of Cocciente's music, in every song, there is both classic and contemporary.

In 1996, avant-garde director Gilles Mayu became interested in the musical. Back in the eighties, he staged a twenty-minute ballet about Esmeralda and three men in love with her.

All that remained was to find a producer. An outstanding French producer and entrepreneur Charles Talard decided to support the project, uttering a historic phrase:

If such people as Plamondon, Cocciente and Victor Hugo are involved in the case, consider that I am also involved in it!

The very next day, the producers rented the Palais des Congrès in Paris, whose hall can accommodate five thousand spectators, and invested three million pounds in the production of the play, which premiered in September 1998.

The best professionals participated in the creation of the visual sequence of the performance - lighting director Alan Lortie, lighting designer at the concerts of many rock stars; artist Christian Ratz (scenery designs), known for his work on the opera stage; costume designer, famous in the world of Parisian fashion, Fred Satal; the eternal director of modern ballet performances Martino Müller from the Netherlands Dance Theatre. The arrangements of the melodies were performed under the general direction of Richard Cocciente by the best French jazz improvisation artist Yannick Top (bass) and Serge Peratone (keyboards), with the direct participation of Claude Salmieri (drums), Claude Engel (guitar) and Marc Chantreau (other percussion instruments). ). Eight months before the premiere of the play, in January 1998, an album of hits from the musical was released.

In the Guinness Book of Records "Notre-Dame de Paris" hit as the most commercially successful musical in the first year. This musical has won more than twenty international awards, including Best Director and Best Show at the 1999 Gala of the ADISO in Montreal and Best Musical Performance at the Paris Festival.

The musical was doomed from the start. Stunning music, as already mentioned, combining classicism and modernity, attracts the attention of both young people and representatives of older generations.

Music is a mixture of different styles, carefully selected among themselves: for example, the first aria of the poet Gringoire resembles the song of a medieval troubadour singer; rock, gypsy romance, church singing, flamenco rhythms, just lyrical ballads - all these, at first glance, different styles are perfectly combined with each other and together form a single whole.

"Notre-Dame de Paris" played a key role in the history of the European musical, becoming a turning point that changed the laws of the genre created in America (although the canons of the American musical are not widely known in Russia), the texts of the musical's libretto amaze with their courage and philosophy.

In the musical, unlike the novel, there are no supporting roles (except for the ballet). There are only seven main characters, and each of them performs its function.

The poet Pierre Gringoire is not so much a participant as a witness and narrator of everything that happens. He tells the audience about the era of that time, about events and heroes. He strongly empathizes with the characters, expresses his dissatisfaction with the cruelty of the world:

For centuries there has been a war of people with people,

And in the world there is no place for patience and love.

And the pain is getting stronger, and the cry is getting stronger -

When, my God, will you stop them?!

(July Kim)

Fleur-de-Lys is the bride of Phoebe de Chateauper. If in Hugo's novel she is the same naive girl as Esmeralda, who blindly trusts her beloved Phoebus, then in the musical everything is not so simple. It is very interesting to observe the disclosure of character: if at the beginning of the performance we see the same character as Hugo:

The sun of life is bright Phoebus!

You are my knight, my hero...

(July Kim)

then the complete opposite appears at the end:

My dear, you are not an angel

I'm not a sheep either.

Dreams, hopes, vows -

Alas, nothing lasts forever...

I will be a faithful wife

But swear to me by your head

That this witch will be pulled up ...

(July Kim)

11. Conclusion.

Why the musical notre- Dame de Paris" and Hugo's novel

interesting and relevant today?

All the characters of Notre-Dame de Paris are attractive, first of all, because they are all ordinary people: they are also characterized by resentment, jealousy, compassion and a desire to live the way each of them wants to live.

Why does the public still care about Hugo's characters? Yes, because the story of the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda and the noble hunchback Quasimodo resembles the tale of Beauty and the Beast and in some ways anticipates The Phantom of the Opera. Even in a consumer society with its consumer passions, this story remains a powerful, soul-stirring myth. Some of the themes touched upon in Hugo's novel and preserved in Plamondon's libretto are becoming more relevant today than ever: about refugees seeking shelter, about racism, about the role of religion, about the fear of the unknown, about the place of man in an ever-changing world:

It's a new deluge of dubious words

In which everything will collapse - the temple, and God, and the cross.

The world is changing for unprecedented things,

We will fly to the stars - and this is not the limit.

And in his pride, forgetting about God,

Let's destroy the old temple and lay down a new myth.

Everything will have its time...

(July Kim)

But the main theme of both the novel and the musical is, of course, love.

Victor Hugo believed that love is the beginning and end of all things, and without love itself, people and objects cannot exist. A person of the highest spiritual essence clearly understands that when he comprehends the secrets of high love, he becomes one of the happiest people in the world.

Love is not a sentimental feeling that any person can experience, regardless of the level of maturity he has reached. Love cannot be without true humanity, selflessness, courage and faith.

Love is not for egocentrics. “The meaning of happy love is to give. He who is in love with himself cannot give, he only takes and thereby inevitably poisons all the best in love.

Love cannot exist without beauty, beauty not only external, but also internal.

When Esmeralda was in the cathedral, one day she heard Quasimodo sing. The verses of this song were without rhyme, the melody also did not differ in beauty, but the whole soul of the unfortunate ringer was invested in it:

Don't look at your face, girl

And look into your heart.

The heart of a beautiful youth is often ugly.

There are hearts where love does not live.

Girl, the pine is not pretty

And not as good as poplar

But the pine tree turns green even in winter.

Alas! Why would you sing about it?

That which is ugly, let it perish;

Beauty only attracts beauty

And April does not look at January.

Beauty is perfect

Beauty is omnipotent

One beauty lives a full life...

After the execution of Esmeralda, Quasimodo disappeared from the cathedral, and only two years later, in the crypt where the dead body of the Gypsy was placed, two skeletons of a man and a woman were found, one tightly hugging the other. Judging by the twisted spine, it was the skeleton of Quasimodo, when they tried to separate them, it crumbled ...

Years passed, followed by centuries, man entered the third millennium, and the story of the hunchbacked bell ringer and the beautiful gypsy woman has not been forgotten. It will be told and retold until the bell ringing sounds on the ground ...

13. References:

Foreign Literature: From Aeschylus to Flaubert:

The book for the teacher.

(Voronezh: "Native speech", 1994 - 172 p.)

The World History. Volume 3

The development of French culture in the 14th and 15th centuries.

(Moscow: "State Publishing House of Political Literature".

1957 - 894 p.).

3. Pierre Perrone.

"History of success".

"Notre Dame Cathedral" - a novel by V. Hugo. The novel was conceived in 1828, when the historical theme prevailed in French literature. On November 15, 1828, Hugo signed an agreement with the publisher Goslin for a two-volume novel, which was to be completed on April 15, 1829. Already on November 19, 1828, in the Journal de Debas, Goslin announces the publication of The Cathedral. But at this time, Hugo was carried away by the creation of other works and, in order not to pay a penalty for unfulfilled obligations, he had to ask for a delay until December 1, 1830. Hugo set to work on the novel on July 25, 1830 and even wrote several pages, but the events of the July Revolution again distract writer from work. A new postponement - until February 1, 1831, there was no further hope. Already by mid-September, Hugo, in his words, "went up to the neck in the" Cathedral ". The novel was completed on January 15, and on March 16, 1831, the book went on sale. But even after that, work continued: the second edition, which was published in October 1832, was replenished with three new chapters - “Abbas beat! Martini", "This will kill that" (in the fifth book) and "Dislike of the people" (in the fourth).

Long before the appearance of the text itself, the novel was titled with the name of an architectural monument, and this is no coincidence. Having read mountains of books, having thoroughly studied medieval France, old Paris, its heart - Notre Dame Cathedral, Hugo created his own philosophy of medieval art, calling the cathedral in the novel "the great book of mankind", which preserves the people's memory, its traditions (the construction of the cathedral lasted three centuries from the 12th to the 15th centuries). Hugo's reflections on architecture are filled with philosophical and historical ideas in the spirit of his time, explaining what the stone chronicle of the cathedral tells about: “Every civilization begins with theocracy and ends with democracy. This law, according to which freedom replaces unity, is written in architecture. Thus, the idea of ​​historical progress, the continuous movement of mankind from slavery to freedom, from aristocracy to democracy, which was widespread in the theories of the 1820s, received artistic expression.

Notre Dame Cathedral turned out to be the symbol and core of the novel: it personifies the spiritual life of the people, but also embodies all the dark forces arising from feudal oppression, religious superstitions and prejudices. In an effort to reveal the dependence of a man of the Middle Ages on religion, the power of dogmas that enslaved his consciousness, Hugo makes the cathedral a symbol of this power. The temple, as it were, directs the fate of the heroes of the novel. Therefore, the chapters dedicated to him are so significant (books three, five, chapter four from book ten). Stained-glass windows of the “flaming Gothic” decorated the cathedral in the 15th century, and a new spirit penetrated inside the temple, which spoke of the birth of a new time. Hugo did not accidentally turn to the 15th century, towards the end of the Middle Ages: he needed to show the historical mission of this century for the further development of the history of France. Depicting the most important process of the era - in the course of the struggle against the feudal lords, the royal power was forced to seek support by its actions in the strength of the people - Hugo sharpened the historical conflict, gave it a modern political sound.

Louis XI is glad that he can undermine the power of the feudal lords with the help of his "good people", but is frightened when he learns that the rebellion is directed against him, the king. The mob of Paris will be exterminated by Tristan, who is close to the king, and the meaning of the rebellion will be explained to him by the Dutch envoys, who have experience in how rebellions are made. Thus, in the bedchamber of the king, in the Bastille, the stronghold of feudalism, Hugo brought together different social forces, different views on the revolt of the plebs. In the storming of Notre Dame Cathedral - a prediction of the future storming of the Bastille. With the help of a fictional siege of the cathedral, Hugo introduces into the novel a rebellious people, who are presented to him in the form of a declassed mob: these are vagabonds, thieves, homeless people from the “Court of Miracles”, a kingdom within a kingdom, with their king Trulfou, their laws and justice. Parisian desolation is rude, cruel, ignorant, but in its own way humane in an inhuman world where witches were burned, free-thinking was punished (therefore, the symbolic role of the Greve Square in the novel is great - a place of executions and festivities). Among the "people" there are no representatives of the middle class - they are immersed in their trade affairs and willingly compromise with the authorities.

The crowd plays an important role in the novel also because it ties together its action. With a crowd, the reader enters the Palace of Justice for a performance of a mystery on a festive January day in 1482 (the marriage of Margaret of Flanders with the French dauphin), with a procession of fools, enters the exotic streets of Paris, admires them from a "bird's eye view", marveling at the picturesque, musicality of this "city orchestra", visits the kennel of the hermit, houses, shacks - everything that ties various events and many actors into one knot. It is these descriptions that should help the reader to believe in the writer's fiction, to feel the spirit of the era.

The strength of Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris is not in its historical authenticity, but in the free fantasy of the romantic artist. Hugo the narrator constantly reminds of himself. Commenting on the events or actions of the character, he explains the oddities of that era, which is so distant from us, thus creating a special method of historical depiction. The story seems to be relegated to the background, and the novel arises from the passions and feelings that own fictional characters: Esmeralda, a street dancer, Claude Frollo, the archdeacon of the cathedral, his slave Quasimodo, the poet Gringoire, the hermit Gudula. By chance, their destinies clash, a dramatic conflict ensues, the intrigue of which sometimes resembles an adventure novel. And yet the characters of Notre Dame Cathedral think, act, love, hate in the spirit of the time in which they live.

Claude Frollo, a monk who lost his faith and became a villain, was prompted by living reality. Hugo sees in him not only a criminal who killed an innocent soul, he shows the tragedy of a man who gave his strength, his life to comprehending the truth. Freed from the shackling dogmatic fetters and left alone with himself and the diverse world, his restless consciousness, in conflict with old concepts, could not accept a simple life, understand Esmeralda's simple love. Turning good into evil, freedom into dependence, Frollo fights against nature itself, which defeats him. He is the victim and instrument of fate. Phoebe de Chateaupier, a frivolous handsome man, turns out to be happier in love. But both Chateauper and Frollo are on the same moral level in relation to love. Another thing is Quasimodo, a freak, opposed to the handsome Phoebus, a simpleton, opposed to the clever Claude, he, thanks to his love for a gypsy, turns from a slave into a person. Esmeralda stands outside society, she is a gypsy (interest in these "free" people occupied the minds of writers in the first third of the 19th century), which means that only she has the highest morality. But since the world in which the heroes of Notre Dame lived was in the grip of blind and cruel fate, therefore the bright beginning was doomed to death: all the main characters perish, the old world perishes. “Phoebus de Chateaupeure also ended tragically,” the author remarks ironically. - He got married".

In the 1830s, despite the fact that the fashion for the historical novel had passed, Hugo's Notre Dame Cathedral was a great success. Hugo's ingenuity amazed readers. Indeed, he managed to animate his "archaeological" novel: "local color" helped him carefully write out the dark cloak of Frollo and the exotic outfit of Esmeralda, the brilliant jacket of Chateauper and the miserable rags of Gudula; the brilliantly developed language of the novel reflected the speech of all strata of society in the 11th century. (art terminology, Latin, slang). Metaphors, comparisons, antitheses, devices of the grotesque, contrast, the method of pictures - all this gave the novel that degree of "ideal and sublime" that the writer so aspired to. Hugo's work has always attracted attention in Russia. "Notre Dame Cathedral" was translated into Russian in 1866, in 1847 A.S. Dargomyzhsky wrote the opera Esmeralda.

MOSCOW STATE

UNIVERSITY OF PRINTING IM. I. FEDOROV

Institute of Publishing and Journalism

Department of Literary History


Course work

in the history of foreign literature

on the topic: Moral problems of the novel by V. Hugo "Notre Dame Cathedral"


Performed:

student of the group DKidB-1-3

Dyatlova E. S.

Checked by: Associate Professor Shchepakova T. A.




Introduction

Life and work of V. M. Hugo

Historical and fictional in the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral"

Moral values ​​in the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral"

Conclusion

Hugo novel moral pictorial


Introduction


The object of research in this work is the text of Victor Hugo's literary work "Notre Dame Cathedral".

The aim of the work is to study the moral issues of the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral".

In the course of the study, it is supposed to solve the following tasks:

· Acquaintance with the life of the writer and his work and determining the degree of influence of the events of his life path on his work;

· Acquaintance with the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral", identification of its distinctive features, structural analysis of the novel's problems;

· Definition of figurative and expressive means used by the author in the work;

· Studying the main literature on these topics;

The research method is the method of system analysis.

The classic of world literature, Victor Marie Hugo, lived a long life and left a rich literary heritage: poems, plays, literary criticism, but it was his novels that brought him worldwide fame. Especially famous are such works as "Les Miserables", "The Man Who Laughs" and "Notre Dame Cathedral". They provided Hugo with fame and popularity even after almost two centuries, thanks to the relevance of the ethical issues that he raised, enduring ideas and empathic colorful images of characters that have long passed into the quality of literary types of heroes. In addition, of course, one should not forget about the skill of the author, which gives these works a masterpiece.

"Notre Dame Cathedral" was the first full-fledged and incredibly successful novel by V. Hugo, translated into many languages. The history of its writing is very interesting, because one should not forget about the events that took place at that time: it was created on the eve of the July Revolution of 1830 as a "picture of Paris of the 15th century" and at the same time as a truly romantic work of "imagination, whim and fantasy". But the world around him captured the writer: the revolution forced him to postpone writing the novel for a while. But later, as his relatives say, he locked his clothes with a key so as not to leave the house, and five months later, that is, at the beginning of 1831, Hugo appeared at the publisher with a finished novel. This book made a splash among the people with its realism and picturesqueness. The author did not particularly focus on the psychological analysis of the characters, but he did not need this in order for the novel to gain unimaginable popularity. "The Cathedral" impressed with the skill of opposing characters to each other, the colorfulness of the descriptions, the melodramatic nature of the situations - not without reason, Hugo himself called it a "dramatic novel". After all, it is built precisely on the dramatic principle. In his work, Hugo refers to France of the 15th century. At the same time, the main characters are not famous personalities, but ordinary people, residents of Paris. The main storyline includes the love stories of three men for one girl, the gypsy Esmeralda, who, in turn, prefers the beautiful but vicious captain Phoebe de Chateaupe. The love of each of the characters is very peculiar and not similar to each other: for some it is tender and submissive, while for others it is a passion that burns from the inside. All this is happening against the backdrop of a variety of historical and personal tragedies. At the same time, the author tells the tragic fate of such characters as Jean Schoolboy, who succumbed to debauchery and died in the prime of life, or Paquette Chantefleurie, who lost her little daughter and found her in a man whom she hated most of all, but, alas, for a very short time. The fate of the characters in the "Cathedral" is guided by fate, which is announced at the very beginning of the work. It is symbolized and personified in the image of the Cathedral itself, to which, one way or another, all the threads of action converge. In addition, speaking about this building, the author reflects on eternal topics.

Critics of the time attacked Hugo like vultures, but the public did not attach any importance to this: the novel sold out among the people in huge circulations so soon that the publisher Gosselin begged Victor Hugo to give him something else. The poet promised two new novels: "La Quiquengrogne" ("Kikangronya" - the proper name of the ancient tower) and "Le fils de la bossue" ("The Hunchback's Son"), which, however, were never written.

So what is special and so significant in this work? Why can't this beautiful but tragic love story leave anyone indifferent?

For many reasons: from the imagery of the characters, the simultaneous historicity and fabulousness of the story, to the timeliness of its creation - all the distinguishing features of the novel can be listed without stopping. But the most important are reflections on the eternal themes of morality. These things deserve special attention and detailed creative analysis.


1. Life and work of V. M. Hugo


Naturally, this essay served as a response to the events of real life. As is known from various sources, Victor Hugo himself distinguished himself not only in literature, but also in political and social activities.

His long, creatively rich life was closely connected with that significant epoch of French history, which began with the bourgeois revolution of 1789 and through the ensuing revolutions and popular uprisings of 1830-1831 and 1848 came to the first proletarian revolution - the Paris Commune of 1871. Young Hugo was still an adherent of royalist convictions and an opponent of the Enlightenment philosophy of the 18th century and the revolution it prepared. In his first literary attempts, he sharply sings the figure of Napoleon and glorifies medieval France. Along with his century, Hugo underwent an equally remarkable political evolution from the monarchist delusions of his early youth to the liberalism and republicanism in which he finally established himself after the revolution of 1848. This marked the simultaneous rapprochement with utopian socialism and the strong support of the dispossessed masses of the people, to whom the writer remained faithful until the end of his life. Hugo had a difficult life path: he lost a loved one, resisted the power of Napoleon III, he was even forced to leave his homeland, although he was a peer, but despite this, the people loved him. When he returned from an unplanned emigration, the crowd greeted him with applause and enthusiastic cries of "Long live Hugo!"

And well deserved. In addition to the fact that the writer fiercely defended the rights of the people, he made a huge contribution to literature. Victor Hugo - the head and theorist of French romanticism, is considered a model of the romantic trend, despite some features of either classicism or realism in his works. His other great merit is his contribution to dramaturgy. He devoted many years of his life to the theater. And his achievements in the creation of the poem are undoubted. No wonder he is considered a reformer of French verse. Also, contemporaries, and simply connoisseurs of creativity, could be familiar with his graphic sketches on the themes of his own works, paintings.

But most of all, of course, he was loved by the people for his all-consuming philanthropy and compassion, thanks to which he is put on a par with such great writers as Dostoevsky, Dickens, Tolstoy. Hugo is a worthy representative of the literature of his homeland in the great struggle of the literature of the last century for the rights of the "humiliated and insulted". Mankind will not forget the one who, before his death, summing up his activities, said with good reason: “In my books, dramas, prose and poems, I stood up for the small and unfortunate, implored the mighty and inexorable. I restored the jester, lackey, a convict and a prostitute." Victor Hugo died in Paris on May 22, 1885, at one and a half in the afternoon. All the previous night, despite the bad weather, a large crowd stood in front of his house, waiting for information about the patient. When the thousands of people surrounding the house were told that the great poet and citizen, the great "supporter of forgiveness" was gone, loud sobs were heard. Visitors in an endless file went to the house with the intention of expressing their sympathy to the family; next to the representatives of the press there were government officials, and ordinary workers, and secular people, and members of the municipal council, and artists.

The patriot publicist and democratic politician overcame the temptations of vanity, many prejudices and delusions generated by the environment, and came to the ideas of true humanism and mercy. He became the conscience of France in its striving for the spiritual rebirth of mankind.


2. Historical and fictional in the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral"


Of course, many of these ideas, for which Hugo was so admired, were embodied in Notre Dame Cathedral. As mentioned earlier, this novel was a response to the events surrounding the writer.

It was not by chance that the author turned to history and chose the 15th century as the time of the events of the novel. Thus, he tried to find an explanation for the future, the reasons that led to the reality surrounding him. And he succeeded. First of all, this can be seen in the fact that in the novel he especially highlights the change in the worldviews of the inhabitants of Paris in comparison with the orders of the Middle Ages as a common phenomenon of that time. Here, even more clearly than in poetry, the search for new moral values ​​was outlined, which the writer finds, as a rule, not among the rich and those in power, but among the destitute and despised poor. All the best feelings: kindness, sincerity, selfless devotion are inherent in the foundling and hunchback Quasimodo and the gypsy Esmeralda, who are the true heroes of the novel, while their opposites, who are in power, like King Louis XI or the same archdeacon Frollo, are distinguished by cruelty, fanaticism, indifference to the suffering of people. Therefore, Hugo deliberately pushed prominent historical figures (Louis XI, Cardinal of Bourbon, Tristan Lermitte) into the background, constructing the composition of the novel in such a way that the various estates of France of the 15th century appeared before the reader in the most vivid and figurative way. For the novelist, it was much more important to show socio-historical conflicts than the clashes and intrigues of famous people in history. Not without reason, he believed that it was necessary to rewrite historical science, since he believed that in it more attention was paid to the insignificant everyday affairs of the king than to more important incidents among ordinary people. .

The interest of the Romantics in the Middle Ages largely arose as a response to the too strong attention of the classicists to antiquity. The desire to overcome the scornful attitude towards the Middle Ages, which spread thanks to the writers of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, for whom this time personified the kingdom of darkness and ignorance, which was useless in the history of human development, also played its role here. And, finally, the Middle Ages attracted romantics with their unusualness, as opposed to ordinary bourgeois life, a dull existence. It seemed to them that the people of that era were especially characterized by the ability for self-sacrifice and exploits, martyrdom in the name of conviction that then people lived with strong characters, persistent, full of raging passions. All this looked very mysterious to them because of the insufficient knowledge of the Middle Ages, which, meanwhile, was replenished by an appeal to folk traditions and legends. After all, they had a special meaning for novelists. For example, in the preface to his collection of historical poems, The Legend of the Ages, Hugo states that legend must be equalized with history: “The human race can be considered from two points of view: from historical and legendary. The second is no less true than the first. The first is no less conjectural than the second." The Middle Ages appears in Hugo's novel as a story-legend against the backdrop of a masterfully recreated era.

The basis of this legend is the view of the historical process, unchanged for the entire creative path of the mature Hugo, as an eternal confrontation between two world principles: good and evil, mercy and cruelty, compassion and intolerance, feelings and reason. It is precisely this that arouses much greater interest in the writer than the analysis of a specific historical situation. Hence the well-known over-historicism, the symbolism of the images of Hugo's heroes, their inherent timeless character. Hugo himself frankly admitted that history as such did not interest him in the novel: “The book has no claims to history, except perhaps for a description with a certain knowledge and a certain care, but only overview and in fits and starts, the state of morals, beliefs, laws , arts, finally, civilization in the fifteenth century. However, this is not the main thing in the book. If it has one merit, it is that it is a work created by imagination, whim and fantasy. "

It is known that for the descriptions of the Cathedral and Paris in the 15th century, the image of the mores of the era, Hugo studied considerable historical material and allowed himself to show off his knowledge, as he did in his other novels. Medieval scholars and critics of the novel meticulously checked the "documentation" considered by Hugo, and could not find any serious errors in it, despite the fact that the writer did not always get his information from primary sources. The great historian of the Romantic era, Michelet himself, spoke highly of Hugo's reconstruction of pictures of the past.

However, the main thing in the book, in Hugo's words, is "whimmy and fantasy", that is, something that was entirely created by his imagination and is very unlikely to be connected with history.

In turn, in Notre Dame Cathedral, an idealistic concept of history is manifested: highlighting and revealing the contribution of the people to history, Hugo at the same time depicts not his real struggle against absolutism and feudalism, but only shows the possibility of raising the national heroic spirit, the ability of the people to self-sacrifice, to all sorts of humane deeds, which the writer put above all else and which neither the nobles nor the clergy were in any way capable of. The author describes the image of the people through such characters as Pierre Gringoire and Jean Frollo. Such different they demonstrate the character of the people from opposite sides.

Pierre Gringoire is a dreamer, poet and philosopher, always open to new knowledge, looking for answers to eternal questions, promoting new ideas of the era of humanism. He is ready to help in saving the girl, personifying the soul of the people, because it was Pierre who provoked the poor to get rid of her from the gallows. At the same time, as a representative of the new time, he is no longer ready for the feat of self-sacrifice that novelists associated with the Middle Ages.

On the other hand, Jean Frollo, depraved, having lost moral values, he opposed the moral foundations of his tutor and older brother, and all he needed from life was passion and pleasure. But it was he who continued the work of Pierre Gringoire and raised the spirits of the poor during the storming of the Cathedral. His courage bordered on recklessness, but his charm allowed him to lure the crowd behind him.

"Feudalism requires the sharing of power with the theocracy in anticipation of the emergence of a people who, as always happens, will take the lion's share." In other words, Hugo sought to show the people as the main driving force of the spiritual history, the entire significance of which is associated with the idea of ​​the triumph of true justice.


3. Contrasting the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The main idea of ​​the novel


By the way, throughout the story, the author compares medieval ossified dogmas and prejudices, the depersonalization of a person, feudalism and the ideas of the Renaissance, humanism, and the value of the human person. The first is expressed in the image of the archdeacon Claude Frollo. This man is tough. He is a strict adherent of science, asceticism, renunciation of all life's pleasures in the usual sense of the word for us. More precisely, he finds them for himself in science and religion. But the author shows what happens to him when he meets a gypsy and falls in love for real. He loses self-control, becomes a terrible person, capable of force, deceit and blackmail to achieve his goals. He is cruel and rude. So the author shows us the true face of the Middle Ages. But, nevertheless, he does not forget his ideas. Claude Frollo turns out to be a symbol of a perverted human soul, crushed by the feudal order, and at the same time it is a real image of a cleric of the 15th century, who, for all his learning, superstitions and prejudices, cannot give vent to natural human passions. The archdeacon, as a real person, is able to arouse compassion in the reader.

On the other hand, Esmeralda is a naive and passionate girl who loves dancing, nature, noise, outdoor life, and most importantly, freedom. Of all the countries visited by the young girl, she accepted scraps of strange dialects, foreign songs and concepts. Residents of those quarters where she visits love her for her cheerfulness, inspiration, for her dances and songs. Esmeralda is the poetized "soul of the people", her image is almost symbolic; but reality is given to him by her innocence and spontaneity, and therefore, this is the possible fate of any real girl from the people in those days.

Another comparison of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the author displays in a comparison of architecture and printing. Human thought, freeing itself from the destructive influence of feudalism and Catholic dogmas, was able to spread thanks to the book. At first we feel a kind of regret that architecture is losing its power, because before the main idea was the innermost essence of buildings, and especially temples, in their forms and even in the very place that was chosen for them. "Every civilization begins with a theocracy and ends with a democracy," writes Hugo. The author looks at the evolution of the appearance of architecture along with the development of society. "Notre Dame Cathedral" was Hugo's biggest achievement. According to Michelet, Hugo built next to the old cathedral a poetic cathedral on such a solid foundation and with equally high towers. Indeed, Notre Dame Cathedral is an important link for all the characters, all the events of the novel, this image carries a different semantic and associative load. The cathedral, built and remade by many hundreds of nameless masters, becomes the occasion for creating a poem about the talent of the French people, about national French architecture. But then he says that it loses its function. Comparing these two types of art, he writes: "If we, instead of those individual characteristic monuments that we have just mentioned, examine the general appearance of this art during the period from the 16th to the 18th century, we will notice the same signs of decline and thinness." And on the other hand: "And what happened to printing in the meantime? All the vital juices that dry up in architecture are poured into it"<…>"One should not be mistaken: architecture is dead, dead forever. It is killed by the printed book; killed because it is less durable; killed because it costs more." Hugo considers printing as a progressive phenomenon of the 15th century and celebrates his victories in the struggle against the indisputable authority of the Catholic Church, which consisted in the fact that it gave any person the opportunity to express their ideas. He calls her "a true representative of human thought." Through the lips of a man of the 19th century, Hugo reads a waste of Catholicism and creates a poetic hymn to the book, a faithful companion of human progress. In the fifth book of the novel, revealing the meaning of the words spoken by the archdeacon Frollo: "The book will kill the building," Hugo writes: "In our opinion, this thought was ambivalent. First of all, it was the thought of a priest. It was the fear of a clergyman before a new force - printing; it was the horror and amazement of the altar server before the luminous printing press of Gutenberg, the pulpit and the manuscript, the spoken word and the handwritten word, sounded the alarm in confusion before the printed word... It was the cry of a prophet, who already hears the noise and seething of liberated humanity, who already foresees the time when reason will shake faith, free thought will overthrow religion from its pedestal, when the world shakes off the yoke of Rome.

In this negative attitude towards medieval and Catholic ideals, Hugo expresses his ideas of humanism. But he also manages to do it in another way - the hunchback Quasimodo. Not handsome in appearance, having been subjected to persecution and hatred by people all his life, he retained kindness and meekness in himself. Especially his ability to tender love and care is revealed in his attitude towards Esmeralda. But it is in Quasimodo, whose name has already become a household name, that the idea of ​​forgiveness, born out of a feeling of love for humanity, is embodied. It is significant that it was precisely this moral idea of ​​Hugo's first novel that F. M. Dostoevsky highly appreciated. Offering Notre Dame Cathedral for translation into Russian, he wrote in a preface published in 1862 in the journal Vremya that the idea of ​​this work is "the restoration of a dead person crushed by unjust oppression of circumstances ... This thought is the justification of the humiliated and all the outcast pariahs of society." “Who would not think,” Dostoevsky wrote further, “that Quasimodo is the personification of the oppressed and despised medieval people ... in which, finally, love and a thirst for justice wakes up, and with them the consciousness of their truth and still untouched infinite forces of their ". So Fyodor Mikhailovich expressed the main idea of ​​the novel. This is exactly the worldview that Victor Hugo himself came to during his life before the creation of this work through evolution and the formation of new political views and moral values. When he came to this idea of ​​humanism, philanthropy and individual freedom, his way to convey it was precisely the writing of Notre Dame Cathedral, the first major work of his life. Subsequently, she permeated all his work, especially large works, like a red thread. Like The Man Who Laughs and Les Misérables. In them, the heroes are also divided into two opposing "camps" - cruelty and kindness, compassion and hatred, those in power and the people, old dogmas and new thinking.


3. Moral values ​​in the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral"


Victor Hugo created this novel, pursuing not only historical and political goals. As in any other work, there is propaganda of any moral values, a life lesson that the author is trying to convey to the reader.

Firstly, this, of course, is the idea that inner beauty is much more important and valuable than outer beauty. To convey it, the author contrasts two heroes: Quasimodo and Captain Phoebus de Chateauper. Both fall under the attention of the beautiful Esmeralda, but only one deserves it, and the other, accordingly, does not.


Don't look at your face, girl

And look into your heart.


Such poems were composed by the poor deaf Quasimodo. Yes, he is terrible outwardly, oppressed by the crowd, hiding in the gloomy corners of the Cathedral from human cruelty, but his wonderful feelings for the gypsy reveal to us his sensitive, kind and affectionate soul. It is not only a symbol of the greatness of the people's soul, but also a symbol of moral rightness. Yes, he is throwing off his adoptive archdeacon parent, but deservedly so. In addition, he condemns himself to death next to Esmeralda. This is how eternal love and real marriage "in sickness and health" are depicted in our eyes until death or even after. The reader can only assume that the hunchback no longer saw the meaning of his life without his benefactor and without his love. This "marriage" is contrasted with the marriage of Phoebus, about which the book says: "Phoebus de Chateaupeure also ended tragically. He got married." Only two sentences, but how much meaning is conveyed in them, especially when you are familiar with the hero throughout the novel. This shameless and dishonest person becomes the object of Esmeralda's pure and bright love and tries to take advantage of it. The author compares them both with an ugly earthenware vase full of water, and a cracked crystal vase in which the flower withered, unlike the first. The same can be said about the heroes: the captain is handsome on the outside, but with a rotten core, and the hunchback is unattractive on the outside, but handsome on the inside.

Separately, in this struggle for the love of Esmeralda, it is worth highlighting Claude Frollo. He devoted his whole life to science, religion and holiness, confident that women could not touch his heart. But a sudden flash of passion made him a gray-haired old man ahead of time. To give an idea of ​​the appearance of Claude Frollo, the author recommends the reader to look at the engraving from the painting "The Alchemist" by Rembrandt, "this Shakespeare of painting." He is also opposed to Quasimodo, only in a purely spiritual sense. Unlike the deaf, in a cleric love awakens depravity, burning passion. As he himself says, this is "the love of the outcast." If in Claude the attraction to Esmeralda awakens only the sensual principle, leads him to crime and death, perceived as retribution for the evil he has committed, then Quasimodo's love becomes decisive for his spiritual awakening and development. The death of Quasimodo at the end of the novel, in contrast to the death of Claude, is perceived as a kind of apotheosis: it is the overcoming of bodily ugliness and the triumph of the beauty of the spirit.

In addition, it is worth noting that the novel is filled with betrayal. Almost every hero betrays someone: Jean Frollo betrays his brothers, both the eldest and the stepbrother. He never listens to any of Claude's moralizing, and also does not help Quasimodo in court, although he could talk about his deafness. In turn, the betrayal of the archdeacon is even more terrible: he betrayed God and his oaths. Another example of betrayal is the act of Pierre Gringoire at the very end, when instead of a girl he saved a goat, although he could well have saved both from the death. All this does not cause understanding in the reader, but rather only hostility, as, I think, was intended by the author.

The story of Paquette Chantefleurie or Gudula evokes sympathy in the reader, despite her former lifestyle. This is the greatest maternal grief - the loss of a child, which moved her to an ascetic life full of hardships in a cell. But after all, she doesn’t need anything else, except for the return of her daughter. Of course, her tragic fate and end cause only compassion, but at the same time, her hatred-filled nature cannot be called pure and immaculate. True holiness lies not in the conscious rejection of life's comforts, but in forgiveness, the expulsion of hatred from one's heart.

These and many other moral concepts are contained on the pages of the novel, leading the reader away from betrayal, deceit, hypocrisy or cruelty in the future, like the author's moralizing.


Figurative and expressive means in the novel


Victor Hugo is known as the master of antithesis. Everything is contrasted in his works: starting from the opposing world principles - good and evil, love and hate, ending with heroes, epochs and many others. "Notre Dame Cathedral" is also built on contrast. For example, Claude Frollo is opposed to several characters at once: Quasimodo in the correctness of spiritual impulses and actions, Pierre Gringoire in philosophy and openness to the ideas of modern times, Esmeralda in spiritual purity. As mentioned earlier, the author compares typography and architecture, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, strict Catholicism and free humanism. Using the method of antithesis, he thus very clearly and clearly conveys to the reader his most important thoughts, his point of view, for this he does not need a lyrical hero.

The only thing that has no comparison or contrast in the book is the Cathedral itself. On the contrary, it serves as a unifying milestone for everything: all events take place either in the building itself or near it on the Place Greve, just as the characters are constantly near or inside it. In addition, its architecture combines the styles of all eras due to constant alterations and additions. But the Cathedral not only performs the function of a link, being an expression of the soul of the people and the philosophy of the era, it becomes the personification of fate or "Ananke" for the heroes. It is for this reason that the novel is named after him.

It is also worth noting that this building has become a popular place, both among the Parisians themselves and among visitors, thanks to the talented, colorful and detailed description of Victor Hugo, which is very characteristic of the writer's style. Long digressions are not uncommon in his novels. Sometimes they are not directly related to the storyline, but they are always distinguished by poetry, picturesqueness or educational value. So we get to know Paris in great detail, thoroughly, but at the same time fascinating. The reader can vividly imagine both the city itself and the Cathedral. But this is the best evidence of the author's talent.

Hugo's dialogue is lively, dynamic, colorful. His language and manner of narration are filled with comparisons, metaphors and epithets. In addition, developing the position on language as a means of expressing thought, Hugo notes that if each era brings something new to the language, then "each era must also have words expressing these concepts." Therefore, he also includes in the novel terms that are characteristic of a particular environment or profession. Victor Hugo is a true master of word and pen. The reader is immersed in his environment, outlined by him, and reads his novels with rapture.


Conclusion


Thus, we come to the conclusion that the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral" is an exciting, amazing story, filled with both truth and fiction. This is an attempt by the author to find the reasons surrounding the events of the 19th century in the distant past, to understand why France came to revolution and uprisings. But at the same time, he is convinced that the explanation for all this should not be sought in historical science, which considers only the actions of kings and prominent political figures, but in the moods wandering among the masses. Hugo's confidence that ordinary people are the main uplifting spiritual and political force of any country is very vividly embodied in the novel. And he also conveys to the reader his belief that the whole essence of justice and morality lies in the versatile and all-encompassing worldview of the people.

In the best romantic techniques and some principles of dramaturgy, the writer contrasts the strict and gloomy Middle Ages, nevertheless, full of feats of self-sacrifice and martyrdom, and the free Renaissance with its innovative philosophy of humanism. And as the main life principle, he takes out philanthropy, respect for the individual, compassion and mercy. It is to this worldview that the novelist comes already in adulthood, having endured many hardships and sorrows, which provokes him to write his first major work in his life, which provided the author with such huge popularity carried through the centuries. Despite his peerage and upbringing, Hugo devoted his life to defending the rights of the common people out of love for them. Not without reason, he makes the protagonists of the novel come from different social strata of society. In response, readers admired him and adored his picturesque books, absorbed all the moral values ​​dictated in them.

The writer raised eternal questions, tried to find answers to what tormented him, and convey them to the reader. Thanks to his talent and skill, as well as proximity to the common man and citizen, intercession for him and philanthropy, his name is imprinted in the centuries along with Dostoevsky, Dickens and Tolstoy. He became an honored representative of France in the romantic direction, as well as in intercession for the ideals of mercy, and his first novel, Notre Dame Cathedral, is a wonderful work that has become a classic of literature, a testament to the author's genius, which will be read by generations and generations.


List of used literature


1. Hugo V. Notre Dame Cathedral. Roman / Per. from fr. N. Kogan. - M.: "Eksmo", 2003, 539 p.

Evnina E.M. Victor Hugo. - M.: Nauka, 1976, 215s.

Lunacharsky A. V. Victor Hugo. Creative way of the writer. T.6 - M. - L.: Goslitizdat, 1931, 320 p.

Paevskaya A. N. Victor Hugo: His life and literary activity. - M.: Book on Demand, 2011. - 50 p.

Tolmachev M.V. Witness of the century Victor Hugo. Collected Works in 6 volumes. T.1. Moscow: Pravda, 1988, 295 p.

Treskunov M. V. Hugo. Notre Dame Cathedral. - Chisinau: "Cartya Moldovenyasca", Chisinau, 447p.


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