Reading Notes

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, translation by Julie Rose.

Hardcover edition. Random House. 2008. ISBN: 978-0-679-64333-3

Brief review

I love this volume. The translation exudes the warmth and chubby-cheeked humanity of the author's original work.

It does takes forever to read. I'm halfway through. I began reading seven years ago when it was published - on and off. Mostly off. 1200 pages unabridged, with lengthy boring historical digressions by Hugo. His discourses put things into context, maybe if you lived in his time period, but to us, neonites, the cultural edification services are a snore.

But once you get over these historical speed bumps and hit the main plot... roll down the windows, put on your summer shades, let your hair down, smell the Surf n Turf, and enjoy a smooth cruise along the beach.


Notes

593
"Unbeknownst to them an invisible divine chain connects all these pioneers of the underground, who almost always believe themselves to be a lone but are not, their work is extremely varied and the light of some contrasts with the blazing of others. Some are heavenly, others tragic.

Yet, whatever the contrast, all these workers, from the uppermost to the most nocturnal, from the wisest to the most unhinged, have one thing in common and it is this: disinterestedness. Marat, like Jesus, forgets about himself. They put themselves completely to one side, leave themselves out, do not think about themselves.

They see something other than themselves. They have a look in their eyes and this look is trained on the absolute. The very uppermost among them has the whole sky in his eyes; the lowest, no matter how enigmatic he may be, still has the pale glow of infinity in his sights. So no matter what he does, venerate whoever bears the sign of starry eyes.

Dead eyes - that is the opposite sign.

Evil starts with dead eyes. Faced with someone whose eyes see nothing, think carefully and be afraid."

Life's about what you envision, where you're heading, what you want for the world when your own self-interest is removed from the equation that determines whether your life exemplifies heaven or hell. Or for those concerned only about themselves, an existence worse than hell, limbo.

"[those] who were not rebels,
nor were faithful to God, but were for themselves.
The heavens chased them out in order to be not less beautiful,
nor doth the depth of Hell receive them,
because the damned would have some glory from them."

And I, "Master, what is so grievous to them, that makes them
lament so bitterly?"

He answered, "I will tell thee very briefly.
These have no hope of death; and
their blind life is so debased, that they are envious
of every other lot.

Fame of them the world permitteth not to be;
mercy and justice disdain them.
Let us not speak of them,
but do thou look and pass on."

- Norton Translation of Dante's Inferno, Canto III

Back to Hugo's story...

595
"He was a man full of hot air, a good talker who put his smiles in italics and his gestures in inverted commas."

Nice literary technique with that line. :smiley:

598
"Each one of these names corresponds to a variety of those deformed toadstools that grow underneath civilization."

Toadstools in literature represent poison, something that grows in darkness. Toadstool is a blanket term for the inedible, poisonous varieties of fungi. As such there definition is inclusive of many varieties.

602
"What's cheap these days? Everything's dear. The only thing that's cheap is the world's troubles; they come for nothing, the world's troubles!"

Not sure if that line was in the Broadway play, but it jumps out as one written straight to be performed on stage!

608
"These sorry girls were also practicing all sorts of dark trades - and that the net result of the whole sordid business was two miserable beings who were neither children nor girls nor women, monsters of a sort at once foul and innocent, produced by dire poverty, smack in the middle of human society as we know it.

Sad creatures, without name, without age, without sex, already beyond good and evil, emerging from childhood into the world already stripped of everything, with neither liberty, nor virtue, nor any responsibility left. Souls blossoming only yesterday, but today faded like flowers fallen in the street, spattered by mud from all directions before being crushed under a wheel."

At what age does innocence die? When does responsibility and accountability for our way of life begin? What are the limits to our own blame for the cage we inhabit?

Should these creatures be given charity, should they be pitied, should they be condemned? At what age are we no longer 'saved' from our debauchery, but made an example for it??

Our sense of propriety, notions of innocence and compassion requires an expectation of how a life grows, what care and attention nurtures a life, before we release them from our tender hearts into culpability under steel and copper. (The sword and the coin).

When these developmental cares are not afforded, our judgment of morality becomes incomprehensible. Our rationale breaks down, because it is based on an expectation of reality that has failed to fruition.

Whose fault is it then? I'll venture this answer: fault and morality breaks down when our cultural expectation disagrees with reality. Am I saying it's no one's fault? No, it's more than that. The concept of fault, ethics is not yet created within this framework - this space, so the idea of wrongdoing is undefined, meaningless. In other words, the question of whose fault is not answerable, not because the answer eludes us, but because the question is ill-defined in the absence of a moral framework.

It's not that there is no morality to be had in the dregs, it's that none has been invented yet for the unanticipated circumstance of people within the abyss. It's that there is no general common consensus within this tumult, because the people living it are scattered and fallen out of place from a broader, accepted standard of norms and conventions. They try to apply conventional morality within a space destitute of the axioms that make the moral framework work. Common sense just collapses.

To hold one accountable to a wrong, one must know the difference between right and wrong. Morality therefore requires education, passed down through shared culture and a general agreement about how we view society. Everybody has to be on the same page, or at least shown what the expectations are.

But in the abyss, the communal culture has been fractured. People fallen from disparate walks of life have met with incomparable deficiencies in care. Whose axioms of morality do we choose to build our abyssal morals? Do we assume that every child has had parents who taught them that killing is a sin?

Is the individual who kills other human beings, in the dearth of opportunities, an evil man? It is, if he was taught it was evil. That's the only difference. Otherwise, it is a fair competitive struggle for existence, as primal to our nature as putting the rival company out of business or wrestling the promotion from our less Darwinian compatriots.

Somebody's going to take that previous paragraph and abuse it for Machiavellian purposes. Machiavelli wasn't saying, here's how to be evil go do this, trust me it'll work. He wasn't giving his prince a license to kill. He was saying fuck these assholes, you see what they are doing?? This is how shitty the world is, I hope as a young prince, you will have the naiveness and optimism to turn around these tactics they are using to do some good for your country for once, instead of what they are using it for!

But then the same type of people Machiavelli were opposing, in later generations turn his words around to justify their corrupt behavior, 'cause they don't give a fuck about truth.

636
"Spoken like a brave man and an honest man. Courage does not fear crime, and honesty does not fear authority."

Live free or die. All I have of the universe is in my life. Pray I don't make it a shitty one. The rest can ashes to ashes go.

736
"Knowing that she was beautiful, Cosette lost the grace that goes with ignorance; an exquisite grace, for beauty enhanced by artlessness is ineffable and nothing is as adorable as the blossoming innocent who walks along holding the key to paradise in her hand without knowing it."

Once you realize what you can gain from your desirability, and start using it for your self-interested advantage, it becomes mildly perverse.

The happy beautiful child who delights the heart of adults with her joy for flowers, blue breezes running through her summer dress, ice cream ... for those things themselves... that is wholesome. The young girl who affects these pleasures to draw favorable attention, seeking joy from her audience and not her props, that is the seduction of the serpent.

733
"She was walking down the street and it seemed to her that someone she did not see said behind her back: "Nice-looking woman! But badly dressed." "Bah!" she thought. "It's not me. I'm well dressed and ugly."
...
Finally, she was in the garden one day when she heard poor old Toussaint say: "Monsier, have you noticed how pretty Mademoiselle is becoming?"
...
Her conviction that she was beautiful came to her whole, all at once, in a flash, like daylight suddenly dawning; others noticed it, too. Toussaint said so, and it was obviously her the passerby had been talking about, there could be no more doubt about it. She went back down to the garden, feeling like a queen, hearing the birds sing - this was in winter- seeing the sky all golden, the sun in the trees, flowers among the shrubs, bewildered, wild, giddy with inexpressible rapture."

I love this description of a young girl discovering she is, in fact, pretty. LOL.

It's about recognition. It's about believing what other people tell you. How one person's comment can suddenly flip your self-image around and change your observations about your image.

One person's opinion is a fluke. A second person's is confirmation!

"She was beautiful; Toussaint said so!"

When I write my epic Wasteland-style poem at the age of fifty, I definitely want to include that as a literary allusion!