Victor Hugo’s Lesson
Date：2022-05-24
Speech by David Gosset, founder of the China-Europe-America Global Initiative
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During our previous meeting in 2021, I mentioned André Malraux (1901-1976) whose work and action contributed to the idea that many have of museums.
As we continue the dialogue this year around the need to better protect our cultural heritage, it is at the source of a great figure of the 19th century that I come to find inspiration.
Indeed, with Victor Hugo (1802-1885), we can clearly see how the fight to safeguard the culture of each nation is inseparable from the broader notion of protecting world heritage. He is the illustration of the fact that, fundamentally, the particular and the universal form only one whole.
The novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) is not only a hymn to the cathedral which rises in the heart of the French capital, but it is also an ode to architecture.
In 1832, Hugo wrote a pamphlet, "War on the wreckers", to accuse loud and clear those who damage the architectural masterpieces to which our identity owes so much. Let's not hide it, after the multiple destructions that the fury of the French revolution caused, it was necessary to start protecting abbeys, churches and castles.
It was a contemporary of Hugo, Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870), writer and archaeologist, who made the "General Inspection of Historic Monuments", created in 1830, an essential French institution.
Hugo's passion for architecture that partly made France does not lead him to ignore the surrounding world. On the contrary, by fighting in his own country against the demolishers, he stands ready to defend like no other the expressions of civilization in the four corners of the world.
Let's remember the ravaging of the Summer Palace! On October 18, 1860, James Bruce, British High Commissioner to China, ordered the destruction of the palace that Kangxi began to build in 1707. 3,500 soldiers set fire to the entire site that was eight times the size of the Vatican. It burned for three days, reducing to ashes masterpieces accumulated over centuries.
Faced with this despicable crime, which voice powerful enough to come to us resounded to express, in the name of all humanity, indignation? That of Victor Hugo.
The reason that made him cherish Notre-Dame de Paris, also led him to accuse those who had attacked the beauties produced by China: we do not destroy the expressions that honor our human civilization, we converge towards them in awe.
Victor Hugo in a justly famous letter of November 25, 1861 condemns what he calls the two "bandits" - France of Napoleon III and England of Queen Victoria - who plundered and burned "a wonder of the world".
This is the lesson that Victor Hugo asks us to remember. Do not separate local heritage from world heritage. To defend the former well is to better guard the common heritage of humanity.
It goes without saying that everything must be done to ensure that trafficking around ancient sites wherever they are, illicit trade in the field of art and culture, are combated with the greatest firmness.
I am sure that Europeans, Chinese and Americans can find common ground on such a subject.
May our dialogue lead to cooperation that will be a source of progress for all!
