Quotes I liked:
“To be a saint is the exception. To be a good man is the rule.”
“Society is to blame for not giving free education. It’s responsible for the darkness it produces. In any benighted soul - that’s where sin will be committed. It’s not he who commits the sin that’s to blame but he who causes the darkness to prevail.”
“The selfhood of the infinite is God.”
“There is an inviolable horror at the portals of the enigma. Those dark openings stand there gaping, but something tells you, one of life’s passers-by, not to enter. Woe to whoever goes in there! Geniuses, in the uncharted depths of abstraction and pure speculation, placed to so speak above all doctrines, propose their ideas to God. Their prayer daringly invites discussion. Their adoration is questioning. This is direct religion, full of anxiety and responsibility for whoever attempts its challenges.”
“The mind’s eye can nowhere find more brilliant splendor and more tenebrous gloom than in man. It cannot set its gaze on anything more fearsome, more complicated, more mysterious and infinite. There is a spectacle greater than the sea: that is the sky. There is a spectacle greater than the sky: that is the inner soul.”
* * *
Les Miserables is the story of souls, of history, redemption, and grace. Of the conflict between law and order and justice. This is a big novel: my copy has over 1300 pages. Hugo is, to paraphrase the above, setting his gaze on the mysterious and infinite inner soul of man. It is striking to me, as a 21st century reader, how much time he spends discussing the moral evolution of characters and their consciences. My guess is that novel-writing changed alongside the development of science and psychoanalysis to veer away, largely and not as a rule, from souls.
It’s also apparent that in the 19th century, no one told people about that supposed ‘golden rule of writing’ (I hate it) to “Show, don’t tell.” Hugo certainly does his fair share of both. And why not? What if you have something great to tell? What is greater to tell than the reflections on the soul’s fathomless deeps, social darkness, the evolution of hatred within a man’s heart, on psychic wounds inflicted by kindness? My mind felt a sort of swirling upwards, as I was pushed into these abstractions, before coming back to earth each time as the story progressed.
There is a lot of beauty in these pages. The book begins with the character of the Bishop of Digne, a man who in his youth was violent, who experienced loss when his wife died, and was then ordained in middle age. The Bishop of Digne was not a naturally kind man, but once he settled on the conviction to be kind, he became so “thought by thought.” In this book, we catch the Bishop of Digne sitting in his garden, thinking about the radiance of God (oh boy, there’s Victor Hugo telling us!), as well as visiting outcasts and giving his salary to the poor (oh, thank god, now he’s showing). “Love one another” is his modus operandi; he does not question his faith beyond this directive, and his kindness is what propels the redemption of the novel’s main character, Jean Valjean. Valjean, just released from prison after nineteen years served for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving children, steals silver from the bishop. Police arrest Valjean, but the bishop offers Valjean grace, giving him the silver to buy his soul for God.
Hugo describes this act of grace as an “attack” on Valjean’s soul, mired in darkness as it was, and the attack changes him into a good man, or at least, one who tries to act through kindness and conscience. Without the initial gift of grace, the rest of the novel would not happen. The good deeds Valjean does as a changed man would not happen, he would spend his life, his soul dour, his body in a prison doing no good for anyone.
I am moved that the bishop’s orientation towards kindness is not natural but one borne of practice, and one conceived in prayer. He does not know Jean Valjean personally nor does he remain in contact with Jean Valjean after he saves him. It was an unselfish act of compassion/
* * *
I am trying to avoid summarizing too much, but this part also introduces us to Javert, a police officer who was born in prison to a gypsy mother, which is in his estimation a humiliation. This origin makes Javert eager to prove himself to people in power. He is set up as a foil to Valjean who believes that “the highest law is conscience”. Javert thinks that the law is the highest law, and that kindness creates disorder in society. Javert’s belief system consists of two truths: 1. Respect for authority and 2. Hatred of Rebellion.
Hugo described Javert’s face: “The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every she-wolf’s litter there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because otherwise as it grew up it would eat the rest of her young. Give this son-of-a-wolf dog a human face, and you have Javert.”
Woof. Love to hate Javert.
Also, whoever thought a readalike for Les Miserables might be Angela Y. Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete? I could not stop thinking about that book when I read Part I of this book. It’s a little depressing to consider how states (especially the United States, which I believe incarcerates 40% of all incarcerated people ON EARTH) continue to throw people away rather than examining its failings to provide for its people.
