Quasimodo's Cri de Coeur

"It’s there in black and white for anyone to see," the poet Robert Murphy writes, in a stark meditation on the 1939 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Charles Laughton as Quasimodo

For the most part, Murphy's poem, “All things at everywhere in ruins about him,” is a bare description of those scenes. (See the poem below.) By the end, however, the descriptions give way to a powerful rendering of their essence: the mutual needs of beauty (Esmeralda, in the person of the beautiful Maureen O'Hara) and truth (Quasimodo, the hunchback portrayed by Charles Laughton).  

Amending Keats ("Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"), Murphy's poem dives deeper into the nature of the relationship between truth and beauty. Truth and beauty are not identical, pace Keats, but interdependent parts of a whole. In the film, Esmeralda is, for a moment, in the hopeless position of a woman about to be hanged in front of a cathedral. She is in desperate need of a savior, and Quasimodo, the church's bell ringer, "[s]wings down (or his stunt double does)/From what might be a bell rope/Without a bell above," and whisks her out of harm’s way, Murphy observes.

In the powerful concluding lines of the poem, Murphy focuses on  "[the] truth beauty would have us cling to." Through her innocent beauty, a beauty more akin to Mary Magdalene than to Salome (this gypsy girl is no temptress), Esmeralda has won the heart of Quasimodo. And that heart is the suffering heart of humanity, laid bare for all to see: "Misshapen, hunchbacked, broken."

Near the end of the film, there’s a fleeting moment of peace and safety for the counterparts. Quasimodo has rescued Esmeralda and loudly claimed the right of sanctuary for her in the church bell tower. From her perspective, she is safe from the mob below; from his, he is close to his beloved.

We sense that this moment is not meant to last, and that a happy ending is in the offing. Most tragically for the hunchback, however, Quasimodo sees Esmeralda joyously being led to the altar by another man.

He puts his cheek against a stone gargoyle, and utters his soul-rending cri de coeur, which Murphy has chosen for his epigraph: "Why was I not made of stone like Thee?"

The title of the poem, “All things at everywhere in ruins about him,” seems an apt description of Quasimodo's state of mind at the end of the film. In fact, it is a line from a poem by Nathaniel Tarn, one of seven poems Tarn had written after receiving Murphy's most recent book, Among the Enigmas.

In turn, Murphy is writing a seven-poem sequence responding to lines in Tarn's poems, and the poem I’ve been discussing is one of them. In many ways, as both a poet and the editor of Dos Madres Press, Murphy has proved himself to be a great collaborator. (Full disclosure: Dos Madres has published three books of mine.) In this poem, and in addition to Tarn, he's again teamed up with another artist–William Dieterle, the director of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

 Robert Murphy

“All things at everywhere in ruins about him.”

  Why was I not made of stone like Thee?

It’s there in black and white for anyone to see
Without having to read between the lines:
In the 1939 film the moment Charles Laughton
Portraying the Hunchback of Notre Dame – 
The deaf Quasimodo, crowned King of Fools, 
Seen earlier ridiculed and tormented
By that carnival of humanity – 
Those be-ragged, unwashed extras 
Under the hot, southern California sun.
Hundreds milling about 
On the steps of the façade, 
That bit of movie make-believe 
Created to resemble fifteenth century Paris 
And the great cathedral’s ancient mortars and stones . . . 
Swings down (or his stunt double does) 
From what might be a bell rope 
Without a bell above.
And with not a minute more to spare
To rescue the gypsy dancer Esmeralda,
Whisking her out from underneath 
The hangman’s noose – 
She, having been sentenced to death as a witch.
That Esmeralda, more Mary Magdalene
Than Salome, played by the beautiful
Maureen O’Hara. And bewitching she is, 
Or was, caught between the God-awful 
And the very real need to be taken up
Into the arms of any unlooked-for safety . . . 
And without a net beneath 
To catch them should they fall.
With those groundling hearts below . . .
(is it in rage or is it joy) shouting
“Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”
The truth beauty would have us cling to:
Misshapen, hunchbacked, broken . . .
All we need to know. Or think we know.
Of heaven and earth, high and low.
For appearance sake – having made it so:

The life and loves of the unrequited.