Beneath its protective cranes, Notre Dame¹ still embodies² the horror and heroism³ that unfolded here two years ago. Since then, workers have been clearing the debris⁴, securing the structure and dismantling⁵ the scaffolding that melted in the fire. Forty thousand tubes of it, fused into strange new sculptures. Each mangled⁶ piece cut away, one-by-one.

在大型吊车的守护下，巴黎圣母院仍然使人联想起两年前火灾的惨烈和人们的英勇事迹。自那以来，工人们一直在清理废墟、加固结构，并拆除在火灾中熔化的脚手架。四万条脚手架管熔成了奇形怪状的新 “雕塑”。每一条残缺不全的管子都被逐个切了下来。

 

Now for the first time, thoughts are turning to the reconstruction⁷. A thousand trees have been pre-selected to rebuild the roof, nicknamed 'the forest' for its sheer number of rafters. Some of them more than twenty metres tall to span the vast spaces inside the cathedral.

直到现在，人们才转而开始考虑重建工作。一千棵树被预先挑选出来，用于重建屋顶，屋顶因木椽数量之多而被昵称为 “森林”。其中，一些木椽高达20多米，从而能够横跨在大教堂内部广阔的空间中。

 

Lucy Williamson, BBC Paris correspondent

This is one of the thousand oak trees that have been specially⁸ selected for Notre Dame. Smaller tree trunks will be used to rebuild the medieval rafters. Big ones like this will go to reconstruct the spire⁹.

露西·威廉姆森     BBC驻巴黎通讯员

“这是专为巴黎圣母院挑选出来的一千棵橡树中的一棵。较小的树干将被用来重建中世纪屋梁。像这样的大树干将用来重建尖顶。”

 

Each tree is tagged, measured and assigned a place in the reconstruction. This one ­– its trunk almost a metre across – would have sprouted¹⁰ soon after the French Revolution.

在重建过程中，每棵树都会被标记、测量并指定好需要安放的位置。这棵树的树干差不多有一米宽，它早在法国大革命不久后就发芽了。

 

Renaud Trangosi, Forest ranger¹¹ for the National Forests Office

This is the historic oak of our forests. We're proud to see the work we do is meaningful. The forest is eternal but that's not the case for the trees and if they have a second life in the new Notre Dame forest at the top of the cathedral, so much the better.

雷诺·特兰戈西     法国国家林业局护林员

“这是这片森林中的一棵具有历史意义的橡树。我们很自豪地看到我们所做的工作是有意义的。森林是永恒的，树木则不然，如果树木能在巴黎圣母院的屋顶重获新生，就再好不过了。”

 

A second life too for these statues of the apostles, taken from the cathedral's spire for routine restoration, days before it collapsed¹² in flames. Their survival, says the workshop's director, helped persuade officials to opt¹³ for an identical reconstruction, over a new contemporary design.

巴黎圣母院的使徒雕像也得以重获新生，为进行例行修复，它们被从大教堂尖顶上取了下来，就在尖顶被烧毁的几天前。修复工作室的主管说，雕像的幸存帮助说服了官员们选择完全按照过去的设计重建尖顶，而不是采用新的当代设计。

 

Richard Boyer, Head of Socra-Ateliers de France

We took the statues down on the 11th of April 2019. They arrived here the next day, a Friday. The following Monday, the fire broke out, and we immediately understood that what we had in our workshop was some kind of relics¹⁴. Looking back, it's clear we saved them because they would have been smashed to pieces when the spire fell.

理查德·鲍伊尔     法国 Socra 工作室负责人

“我们在2019年4月11日取下了雕塑。它们第二天被运了过来，那是星期五。接下来的星期一，火灾发生了，我们立刻明白，工作室里的这些雕塑是历史遗物。回过头来看，显然，我们拯救了这些雕塑，不然在尖顶倒塌时，它们就会被砸碎。”

 

There was a time that night when fire crews thought Notre Dame was lost, its survival measured in minutes. Today, it's measured in tree trunks, manpower, scaffolding. The vast reconstruction of a symbol – whose scale, isn't fully¹⁵ grasped through numbers – any more than through words.

火灾当晚，消防人员曾一度认为巴黎圣母院将不复存在，它能否幸存就取决于分秒必争的抢救。而今天，重建工作取决于树干、人力和脚手架。这是对一个文化象征的大型重建工作，其规模之大无法用只言片语来描述，更不能仅凭数字来衡量。

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