Post by wiccanvixen on Aug 17, 2010 0:30:09 GMT -5
hmmm...VERY interesting
www.aolnews.com/world/article/hunchback-who-may-have-inspired-victor-hugos-quasimodo-discovered-in-british-archive/19595067?icid=main|main|dl1|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fworld%2Farticle%2Fhunchback-who-may-have-inspired-victor-hugos-quasimodo-discovered-in-british-archive%2F19595067
LONDON (Aug. 16) -- Quasimodo is one of literature's great tragic heroes: kind and gentle, yet doomed by a hideous deformity. But a recent discovery by a British archivist hints that the bell-ringer from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" wasn't merely a product of Victor Hugo's vivid imagination; he may have been inspired by an actual historical figure.
Evidence that a real hunchback might have worked at the Parisian cathedral around the time Hugo wrote his breakthrough novel (1828-1831) has been uncovered by Adrian Glew, head of archives at London's Tate Collection. He was examining the seven-volume memoirs of little-known 19th-century British sculptor Henry Sibson -- which document the artisan's employment at Notre Dame in the early 1820s -- when he came across a mention of a Frenchman nicknamed "le bossu" -- the hunchback.
Sibson -- an argumentative fellow who clashed with numerous employers, Glew told AOL News -- encountered this curious character after losing his first job inside the cathedral in 1820. (He'd sparred with his contractors over their failure to supply a carving tool.) Forced to look for a new employer, he applied for work at the government-run studio, where a team of artisans was crafting a series of large stone figures for Notre Dame.
It was here that he met a craftsman called Trajin (although Sibson misspells the name as Trajan in the memoir), who he describes as the "most worthy, fatherly and amiable man as ever existed." Sibson adds that, "He was the carver under the government sculptor whose name I forget as I had no intercourse with him. All that I know is that he was humpbacked and he did not like to mix with carvers."
When he read that line, Glew knew he'd found something significant. "It was one of those moments where the hairs on the back of your neck stand up," he says. "It's very exciting to think you may have found a connection between this particular person and Victor Hugo's character."
Further research revealed that the artisans described by Sibson would likely have worked at an atelier linked to L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris' 6th arrondissement -- Hugo's home in the early 1820s. A tradesman's almanac from 1833 backs up this theory, as it lists Trajin as a resident of the area. "It's interesting to conjecture whether Victor Hugo would have seen these people as they walked around this particular part of Paris," Glew says.
The chance of an actual encounter between the hunchback and Hugo is made more likely by the fact that the author was a regular at Notre Dame. He frequently visited the cathedral, according to his journal, and publicly opposed the neoclassical restoration carried out in the early 1820s by architect Etienne-Hippolyte Godde. (He wanted the building, which was damaged during the French Revolution of the 1790s, to stay true to its Gothic roots.)
In fact, there are so many occasions when the paths of the author and the disfigured artisan cross that it's possible to believe they were fated to meet. In the spring of 1821, for instance, Sibson writes how he was hired by Trajin and "M[onsieur] Le Bossu [the Hunchback], a nickname given to him and I scarcely ever heard any other," to work on a project in the town of Dreux, some 50 miles west of the capital.
"That July, Hugo also went to Dreux to propose to his future wife Adele," Glew notes. "Unfortunately, Sibson left town to go on a trip to Switzerland just before Hugo arrived. But it's quite the possible that the carvers and the hunchback were in the town when the author was around. There really is an interesting coalescence of timings and places of work."
Glew says that he has one last mystery to unravel: the hunchback's real name. "We haven't found it yet," he says. "But I feel we're getting closer."
www.aolnews.com/world/article/hunchback-who-may-have-inspired-victor-hugos-quasimodo-discovered-in-british-archive/19595067?icid=main|main|dl1|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fworld%2Farticle%2Fhunchback-who-may-have-inspired-victor-hugos-quasimodo-discovered-in-british-archive%2F19595067
LONDON (Aug. 16) -- Quasimodo is one of literature's great tragic heroes: kind and gentle, yet doomed by a hideous deformity. But a recent discovery by a British archivist hints that the bell-ringer from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" wasn't merely a product of Victor Hugo's vivid imagination; he may have been inspired by an actual historical figure.
Evidence that a real hunchback might have worked at the Parisian cathedral around the time Hugo wrote his breakthrough novel (1828-1831) has been uncovered by Adrian Glew, head of archives at London's Tate Collection. He was examining the seven-volume memoirs of little-known 19th-century British sculptor Henry Sibson -- which document the artisan's employment at Notre Dame in the early 1820s -- when he came across a mention of a Frenchman nicknamed "le bossu" -- the hunchback.
Sibson -- an argumentative fellow who clashed with numerous employers, Glew told AOL News -- encountered this curious character after losing his first job inside the cathedral in 1820. (He'd sparred with his contractors over their failure to supply a carving tool.) Forced to look for a new employer, he applied for work at the government-run studio, where a team of artisans was crafting a series of large stone figures for Notre Dame.
It was here that he met a craftsman called Trajin (although Sibson misspells the name as Trajan in the memoir), who he describes as the "most worthy, fatherly and amiable man as ever existed." Sibson adds that, "He was the carver under the government sculptor whose name I forget as I had no intercourse with him. All that I know is that he was humpbacked and he did not like to mix with carvers."
When he read that line, Glew knew he'd found something significant. "It was one of those moments where the hairs on the back of your neck stand up," he says. "It's very exciting to think you may have found a connection between this particular person and Victor Hugo's character."
Further research revealed that the artisans described by Sibson would likely have worked at an atelier linked to L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris' 6th arrondissement -- Hugo's home in the early 1820s. A tradesman's almanac from 1833 backs up this theory, as it lists Trajin as a resident of the area. "It's interesting to conjecture whether Victor Hugo would have seen these people as they walked around this particular part of Paris," Glew says.
The chance of an actual encounter between the hunchback and Hugo is made more likely by the fact that the author was a regular at Notre Dame. He frequently visited the cathedral, according to his journal, and publicly opposed the neoclassical restoration carried out in the early 1820s by architect Etienne-Hippolyte Godde. (He wanted the building, which was damaged during the French Revolution of the 1790s, to stay true to its Gothic roots.)
In fact, there are so many occasions when the paths of the author and the disfigured artisan cross that it's possible to believe they were fated to meet. In the spring of 1821, for instance, Sibson writes how he was hired by Trajin and "M[onsieur] Le Bossu [the Hunchback], a nickname given to him and I scarcely ever heard any other," to work on a project in the town of Dreux, some 50 miles west of the capital.
"That July, Hugo also went to Dreux to propose to his future wife Adele," Glew notes. "Unfortunately, Sibson left town to go on a trip to Switzerland just before Hugo arrived. But it's quite the possible that the carvers and the hunchback were in the town when the author was around. There really is an interesting coalescence of timings and places of work."
Glew says that he has one last mystery to unravel: the hunchback's real name. "We haven't found it yet," he says. "But I feel we're getting closer."
