Les Mis
August 28, 2007
My current reading experience, with which I am completely captivated, is Victor Hugo’s classic: Les Misérables, the unabridged edition, no less. I haven’t quite finished it yet (on page 980 of 1,463), but I am very impressed with his vocabulary and originality of thought and phrase. Victor Hugo is a cut above all; above Patrick O’Brian, Alexandre Dumas, Fyodor Dostoyevosky, or any other author I’ve read (so far).
Let’s see if I can give you the flavor of Hugo’s prose. The context is an innocent girl and her unknown lover from a distance. They both have fallen in love with an idea of the other. They have never met nor exchanged a word.
This is from p. 932, “A Heart Beneath A Stone“:
The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being into God, this is love.
Love is the salutation of the angel to the stars.
How sad the soul when it is sad from love!
What a void is the absence of being who alone fills the world! Oh! How true that the beloved becomes God! One would understand that God might be jealous if the Father of all had not clearly made creation for the soul, and the soul for love!
One glimpse of a smile under a white crepe hat with lilac veil is enough for the soul to enter the palace of dreams.
God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a human being is to make her transparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
I suspect that passages like the above trigger vastly different emotions or images for different readers. Some of my reactions are that the theology is a tad confused but right on target for one who hardly ever thinks about God or his/her relationship to Him.
Another thought is that a modern popular author would deal with the same theme with a lot of gratuitous physical sex.
Another thought is that the passage deserves deeper thought than most moderns are prepared to give it. Most of our lives are filled with noise and cruft that effectively stifles much serious thought.
Can you, dear reader (if you in fact exist) be reached by this passage? I would love to see your comment below.
Dave, off the deep end and not holding his breath.
P.S. Another little quote:
Thoughtful minds make little use of this expression: the happy and the unhappy. In this world, clearly the vestibule of another, no one is happy.
The true divisionof humanity is this: the luminous and the dark.
Comments
4 Responses to “Les Mis”
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First of all I love the word cruft! Perhaps a juxtaposition of the words crap and crud?
Wikipedia says:
Cruft may also refer to useless junk or excess materials (including obsolete computer hardware) that build up over time and have no value, including things collected from rubbish bins, so “dumpster diving” is also called “crufting”, and things collected from rubbish bins are “crufted”.
As for that passage…not sure I could read a whole 1400+ pages of such fanciful writing. If you can think in simplisitic terms it is a fancy way of saying, “God is love”… I liked the idea of the loved one being transparent implying that God is seen through them when loved. So if you only love partially the person is translucent…. all that cruft hides God. A person’s love can only be pure when God’s love overflows through them, otherwise it is spoiled by the baser emotoins…selfishness, self gratification, etc. Kinda of goes along with the other highlighted passage that divides humanity into the luminous and the dark. Perfect love casts out fear, darkness.
Only parts of the book are “such fanciful writing.” There is a narrative tale that runs throughout the book, think Jean Valjean and Cosette, if you are familiar with the movie version.
Maybe the best way to approach Les Mis is try the abridged version to establish the story line. Then the fanciful stuff makes sense. The book is sort of like Moby Dick, where the story pauses every now and then for a “backgrounder.”
I suspect, though, that if you make it through the first 100 pages of the unabridged edition, you will be hooked. I’m sure I must have passed a few of those genes along.
I’m waiting for Kyle to find the post.
i stumbled over the clumsy paperback edition of Les Mis at the bookstore in the minneapolis airport last week and I’m thrilled to see that you’re reading it, Grandpa. The musical is in my collection and i love it, but haven’t read the Hugo classic. I can say the passage you posted didn’t really reach me but it may have if i was reading the whole book. One summer maybe i will read it.
Fat little rascal, isn’t it? I’ll be interested in knowing how it grabs you when you get into it. I’ve passed the 1000 page mark, trying to finish it so I can start Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness.” Then I’ll let my summer reading binge come to an end.