Victor Hugo-isms: #7

#7: "A faith is a necessity to man.  Woe to him who believes in nothing."

Where: Page 521.

What's Happening: This is another point, like the previous Victor Hugo-ism (#6), where not much is happening plot-wise.  Hugo is still giving us background information on the convent that Jean Valjean and Cosette will seek refuge at and additionally, giving some examples of why faith and work done with the mind is important.

What I Learned: First and foremost, the second sentence is absolutely beautiful.  "Woe to him who believes in nothing"...it is musical, it is powerful, it is true.  And although Hugo's thoughts here certainly stem from information and reflection on the convent, I think that this statement can go beyond religious faith.  I do certainly think that religious faith is an important aspect of Hugo's remarks here, because Jean Valjean believed in something; he believed in God and this is one of the things that helped him turn his life completely around to become such a good, loving, philanthropic man.  But I also believe that faith in anything can be a necessity to human beings.  There is faith in your family, in your significant other, and your friends; most definitely a special belief in those closest to you that nurture those relationships.  Furthermore, faith in love, in life, in goodness; these forces aren't human and don't have eyes or ears and can't talk back to you, and yet we put our utmost faith in the hands that we can't see.  Or faith in a favorite band ("Don't stop believing!  Hold on to that feeeee-eeeeeling!"), in an actor, in a superhero; people who are almost larger than life and people who we might quite possibly never meet in person, but whose work touches us in some huge way and instills some kind of faith, no matter how small, in us.  There are so many different kinds of "faith" and I agree with Hugo that it must be horribly sad and truly unfortunate when a man has absolutely nothing in life to believe in.  There is always something, even if it's only tomorrow...and of course, to me, that is one of the biggest triumphs in Les Misérables: tomorrow always comes!

Victor Hugo-isms: #6

#6: "The Unknown is an ocean.  What is conscience?  It is the compass of the Unknown.  Thought, meditation, prayer, these are the great mysterious directions of the needle.  Let us respect them.  Where do these majestic irradiations of the soul go?  Into the shadow, that is, toward the light."

Where: Page 517.

What's Happening: Plot-wise, not a whole lot is happening here.  This is a sort of transitional period in the book where Hugo is giving us a lot of background information on the convent that Jean Valjean and Cosette will eventually begin a new life at.

What I Learned: This passage is obviously very deep.  Although only a mere seven sentences, there is a world of meaning behind the words.  The first sentence is the part that resonates the most with me, because I sincerely agree that the Unknown is one vast, limitless ocean.  I can't tell you how many times I have gazed at an ocean...actually, come to think of it, not many times.  I don't live anywhere near an ocean and so I think I must rephrase and say that I can't tell you how many times I have seen an ocean on TV and thought to myself...what an enormous body of water that is!  How deep is it?  How far does it extend?  We can see straight to the horizon, yes, but how far away is the horizon and where does it go? Limitless.  And the Unknown - all of the mysteries of life, as well as all of the knowledge and information that there is to know about on this Earth - is just as vast and just as difficult to measure.  But although the ocean and the Unknown are immense and we human beings are very small, we can still feel connected, by thinking, meditating, and praying...three activities that bring us closer to a spiritual existence, and thus, harmony with the things that can't  yet be known...and are still there to be discovered.  We are spiritual sailors, navigating on the ocean of life through the waves of knowledge, sailing steadily to the light.

Victor Hugo-isms: #5

#5: "While we come and go in our native land, we imagine that we are indifferent to these streets, that these windows, roofs, and doors mean nothing to us, that these walls are strangers to us, that these trees are like any other trees, that these houses we never enter are of no use to us, that the pavement where we walk is no more than stone blocks.  Later, when we are no longer there, we find that those streets are very dear to us, that we miss the roofs, windows, and doors, that the walls are essential to us, that the trees are beloved, that every day we did enter those houses we never entered, and that we have left something of our affections, our life, and our heart on those paving stones."

Where: Pages 446-447.

What's Happening: Jean Valjean, knowing that he is being pursued by Javert, has taken Cosette and left the secluded garret, and is "threading" through the streets of Paris, so as not to be followed.  Hugo, who was away from Paris in exile, takes this opportunity to describe the once familiar streets.

What I Learned: This was another epiphany moment (and I am extremely grateful to Victor Hugo for providing me with so many of these).  I feel like it is completely true that in the course of everyday life, we become so familiar and comfortable with our surroundings that we don't think twice about them...at least not until we're far away from those places.  I know that one day, when I move out of my family's house to be on my own, I will vividly miss and remember things that I don't really think twice about now.  I'll miss how tiny our little wiener dog looks when he's waddling through the grass.  I'll affectionately think of the big ole' tree a few feet away that I was always afraid would fall on the house during a storm.  I'll remember how silly I thought the front door was because it was painted red and I'll rejoice on the days when I can walk through that red door once again.  The shapes of the windows, the placements of the door frames, the impact of listening to fifty Bruce Springsteen songs in "The Pink Room" (the sitting room that is now green), where the cereal was kept...Victor Hugo describes his version of these things in nineteenth century Paris perfectly.  There is nothing quite like nostalgia, especially when nostalgia is linked to places.  And I love, love, love the idea of “we did enter those houses we never entered.”  It makes me think that those places became so familiar that we entered them in our minds.  I believe the bottom line here is that we leave a bit of ourselves everywhere that we go, but we also take a bit of those places with us on our journeys into the future.

Victor Hugo-isms #4

#4: "Nothing is so charming as the ruddy tints that happiness can shed around a garret room.  In the course of our lives, we have all had our rosy garret."

Where: Page 437.

What's Happening: Jean Valjean has just rescued Cosette from the
Thénardiers and has taken her to live in a very secluded spot.  They are living in a garret (tiny top floor room or attic room) and their father-daughter bond begins to develop and they grow to love each other.

What I Learned: I was instantly drawn to this phrase with what felt like some sort of magnetic force.  The message here is simple: you don't need to be living in a fancy mansion(although fancy mansions are one of my favorite things ever) or on some tropical island or in a glamorous, rich city to be happy. The garret where Cosette is living with Jean Valjean is rundown, poor, and definitely not pretty, but it is pretty to her because it is her safe-house from the awful Thénardiers, the dwelling of her savior, and the beginning of a new life for her. If you are truly happy, wherever you are dwelling in life will be enough for you and will hold very fond memories. and hence, seem rosy and wonderful.

Victor Hugo-isms: #3

#3: "Nobody walks alone at night in the forest without trembling.  Darkness and trees, two formidable depths - a chimeric reality appears in the indistinct distance.  An outline of the Inconceivable emerges a few steps away with a special clarity.  You see floating in space or in your brain something strangely vague and unseizable like the dreams of sleeping flowers.  There are fierce shapes on the horizon.  You breath in the odors of the great black void.  You are afraid and are tempted to look behind you.  The socket of night, the haggard look of everything, taciturn profiles that fade away as you advance, obscure dishevelments, angry clumps, livid pools, the gloomy reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, the possible unknown beings, swaying of mysterious branches, frightful torsos of the trees, long wisps of shivering grass - you are defenseless against all of it...Forests are apocalypses..."

Where: Page 388-389

What's Happening: The young Cosette has been sent out in the night by the nasty Thénardiess to fetch a bucket of water from the well in the woods.  She is very afraid and her surroundings are being described to us.

What I Learned: First and foremost, this entire paragraph is stunning.  If this passage doesn't paint a vivid and animated picture, then I don't know what does!  It is simply so much fun to read this beautifully crafted paragraph.  And second, it's also very true.  Thank you, Victor Hugo, for writing down in extreme detail exactly why Nicole Knapp does not go into forests at night.  I had originally thought that I didn't venture outside at night for fear of either being eaten by bears or abducted by creepers, but now that I've read this passage and thought of it...there is something very strange about the forest at night.  While I do think the forest at night is mysteriously beautiful, I also think that it can be the stuff that nightmares are made of, if we let it.  Dangers - whether real or imagined - follow you as you step through the endless trees and the endless darkness.  And getting back to the language - the way this is written is just so cool.  The dreams of sleeping flowers, frightful torsos of the trees, forests are apocalypses...these phrases speak for themselves and emit a literary power of their very own.

Victor Hugo-isms: #2

#2: "If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow."

Where: Page 349.

What's Happening: I've heard people who have read Les Misérables say that Victor Hugo often goes off on long tangents on specific subjects and while that is true, these tangents are important to the story.  This quote appears in one of those "tangents," when Hugo is recounting the Battle of Waterloo.  It is in a chapter titled "Should We Approve of Waterloo?" which goes into detail about revolution and its role in Waterloo.

What I Learned: It took a tad bit of thinking for me to grasp this one, but it does make perfect sense.  Why does one start a revolution?  Because they want something to change and if something is changing successfully, it is progress.  And progress doesn't happen overnight.  The progress that one seeks isn't necessarily found in the past and it might not even be found in the present, but I believe it can be found Tomorrow.  Change takes time and there are many tomorrows to witness progress developing.  I also link this quote to the musical's wonderful last line: "Tomorrow comes!"  There is hope in the future, in change, in tomorrow!  Revolution is an important part of the story of Les Misérables and so is the idea of tomorrow.

Victor Hugo-isms: #1

Victor Hugo is, in my opinion, a wonderful, wonderful man, writer, and thinker.  I am more than halfway through Les Misérables, of which I have been enjoying an almost two-month long infatuation with.  I am almost ashamed to admit that I was never very interested in reading novels from the nineteenth century (I loved the stories, but didn't quite want to read them), believing the language would be so different, difficult, stiff, unimaginative, and dull.  How wrong I was!  Victor Hugo's Les Misérables is exciting, incredible, beautiful - I could rave for pages about it.  And when I am reading and suddenly it's time to go to work, or go to bed, or go wherever, I do have a hard time forcing myself to put the book down.

I have a small, wrinkled little receipt that I have been using as a bookmark and which is now filled with page numbers.  There are phrases from the novel that are so beautiful that I need to write down the page number so that I can reflect later.  But alas, where to put this little collection of mine?  Since I now am maintaining a blog, I figured it would be fun to create a little series called Victor Hugo-isms.  It is my hope that Les Misérables fans will stumble across them and enjoy them and perhaps it will encourage those fans of the musical who have never read the book to give it a try.  It is my hope that non-Les Misérables fans will find something special in them, as well.  And if that is not the case, I have them here for me to look back on and cherish, always.

And so without any further ado, I begin this series, below.

#1: "He believed that faith gives health.  He sought to counsel and calm the despairing by pointing out the Man of Resignation, and to transform the grief that contemplates the grave by showing it the grief that looks up to the stars."

Where: Page 17.

What's Happening: Monsieur Myriel, otherwise known in the show as the Bishop of Digne who gives Jean Valjean shelter, freedom, and a chance to become an honest man, goes to comfort those who are dying and those who have lost loved ones.

What I Learned:  When I read this quote, I think I literally gasped out loud/smacked a hand to my chest in awe/had an epihany/let the air know how pleased I was.  I learned that perspective is important.  When we lose a loved one, we can deal with it in two entirely ways.  We can be shriveled by grief, staring down into a deep hole in the ground, bitterly wondering where everybody ends up, wallowing in pity and fear and despair, and letting death conquer our thoughts.  Or we can use grief to reach a higher place and instead stare up at the sky, at the eternal stars, using hope as medicine, and conquering the thought of death with faith.  Or, I suppose, you could think of it this way: one can believe that everybody dies and ends up in a hole in the ground only, or one can believe that everybody dies and gets the chance to soar through the sky.  The bottom line is that Monsieur Myriel was an extremely positive man who gave his fellow men the gift of faith and hope and comfort and I, personally, would rather look up than down.