Contemplative life or active life? Durtal and the cathedral

Whether or not to abandon the active life of the educated—even that of a solitary aesthete—for the contemplative life of religion: this is the decision facing Durtal at Chartres. The world of the cathedral transforms this dilemma into a mise en abyme. The tension between active and contemplative life leads to another kind of tension: that between esthetic and religious contemplation. As such, the poetics of the dilemma deployed in La Cathédrale illuminates Durtal’s aesthetic experience.