Kiki and I visited the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg in Alsace, France, the same week I watched Orson Welles’s quirky 1973 essay-film F for Fake, where, in the context of another French cathedral, Welles noted:
This has been standing here for centuries. But, it is without signature. …It might be just this one anonymous glory, of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gayety, this grand choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose, when all our cities are dust, to stand intact. To mark where we’ve been. To testify to what we had on a list to accomplish. …‘Be of good heart,’ cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced — but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much.
Seeing the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg was, for us, a brief stop on a busy Alsace itinerary — but Welles’ observation made me appreciate it (and experiences of that day) with a sharper sense of perspective.
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