the France that never was

But for some people in France, Notre Dame has also served as a deep-seated symbol of resentment, a monument to a deeply flawed institution and an idealized Christian European France that arguably never existed in the first place. “The building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of liberation,” says Patricio del Real, an architecture historian at Harvard University.

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Despite politicians on both sides of the French political spectrum discouraging people from trying to politicize the Notre Dame fire, it would be a mistake to view the building as little more than a Paris tourist attraction, says John Harwood, an architectural historian and associate professor at the University of Toronto. “It’s literally a political monument. All cathedrals are,” he says.

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Any rebuilding should be a reflection not of an old France, or the France that never was — a non-secular, white European France — but a reflection of the France of today, a France that is currently in the making.

 

 

Это цитаты из статьи в Rolling Stone. Кому именно принадлежит последняя фраза, я не понял – не то одному из цитируемых в статье архитекторов, не то автору статьи. В любом случае, мысль впечатляющая: не только о необходимости восстанавливать собор с учетом современных и будущих реалий (какие реалии имеются в виду, в статье сказано – рост мусульманского населения), но и о том, что "a non-secular, white European France" никогда не существовала.