Ninety-Three (1874)

Hugo was 72 years old when Ninety-Three, his last novel, was published in 1874. It seems the common wisdom is it’s on a par with his other major works, but I found it a step down.

On the positive side, while Hugo is clearly passionate about the topic, at the same time he gives both royalists and republicans an opportunity to “speak”, presenting both views, and showing the royalist leader to be virtuous, noble, and willing to sacrifice himself. In the end, he’s just on the wrong side of progress, and the wrong side of history.

However, I found the role of the three dispossessed children at the center of the plot to be a bit absurd, even for 19th century Romantic fiction. Worse was the excessive detail Hugo launched into in Part II relative to people involved in various ways in the Revolution. At first I was thinking, hmm some footnotes or a map in places would be nice, but then I realized I would simply stop reading them – the barrage of names is disconnected and pointless.

The historical fiction portion where Robespierre, Danton, and Marat meet to discuss the Revolution is interesting, but the narrative leaves them afterwards, and it seems to me the novel would have been better if it had followed these characters later in the book through to their demise.

Not awful but I was glad when I made it to the end, which is never a good sign.

Quotes:
On children:
“…he who has not yet lived has done no evil: he is justice, truth, purity; and the highest angels of heaven hover about those souls of little children.”

On judges:
“The law is immutable. A judge is more and less than a man: he is less than a man because he has no heart; he is more than a man because he holds the sword of justice.”

On politics, and how little it means when you’re hungry:
“’Which side are you on?’ he asked. ‘Are you republican? Are you royalist?’
‘I am a beggar.’
‘Neither royalist nor republican?’
‘I believe not.’
‘’Are you for or against the king?’
‘I have no time for that sort of thing.’”

On the French Revolution:
“At the moment Louis XVI was condemned to death, Robespierre had still eighteen months to live; Danton, fifteen months; Vergniaud, nine months; Marat, five months and three weeks; Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, one day. Quick and terrible blast from human mouths!”

And:
“Gauvain, learn that it is necessary to make war on a woman when she calls herself Marie Antoinette, on an old man when he is named Pius VI and Pope, and upon a child when he is named Louis Capet.”

Finally:
“In La Tourgue were condensed fifteen hundred years (the Middle Age), vassalage, servitude, feudality; in the guillotine one year, - ’93; and these twelve months made a counterpoise to those fifteen centuries. La Tourgue was Monarchy; the guillotine was Revolution, - tragic confrontation! On one side the debtor, on the other the creditor. On one side the inextricable Gothic complication of serf, lord, slave, master, plebeian, nobility, the complex code ramifying into customs, judge and priest in coalition, shackles innumerable, fiscal impositions, excise laws, mortmain, taxes, exemptions, prerogatives, prejudices, fanaticisms, the royal privilege of bankruptcy, the scepter, the throne, the regal will, the divine right; on the other, this simple thing, - a knife. On one side the noose, on the other, the axe.”

Lastly, on the smallness of man in the scheme of things, my favorite passage:
“Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering. She overwhelms man by the contrast between divine beauty and social hideousness. She spares him nothing of her loveliness, neither wing or butterfly nor song of bird. In the midst of murder, vengeance, barbarism, he must feel himself watched by holy things; he cannot escape the immense reproach of universal nature and the implacable serenity of the sky. The deformity of human laws is forced to exhibit itself naked amidst the dazzling rays of eternal beauty. Man breaks and destroys; man lays waste; man kills; but the summer remains summer; the lily remains the lily; the star remains the star.” ( )

This book reminds me of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Iliad and The Last Days of Socrates. There're memorable adventures and battles at sea, a ferocious siege that leads to a battle to the death, and finally, in the face of death, a contemplation of meaning, duty, freedom and destiny. Echoes of these contemplations are found in Tolstoy's War and Peace, especially the Epilogue.

Introduction

If you've read Les Miserables, you would notice a year mentioned throughout the book (although in the background), 93. It was the year of Terror during the French Revolution, when "many times freshly severed heads, borne aloft on the tops of pikes, sprinkled their blood-drops" over the table of the Assembly. It's also the central point of a debate between the bishop and the conventionist: Is bloodshed inevitable in social progress?

Reading this book is like being transported in a time machine to 18th century France during the French Revolution. First on board a battleship in the midst of a raging sea, watching a bizarre yet deadly battle between the sailors and an inanimate but powerful enemy; then to Paris,and the Assembly hall of the Convention, the Olympus, witnessing the intense struggles among powerful personalities, Danton, Robespierre and Marat, the leaders of the Revolution, where orders are issued on which lives of thousands are decided; and finally, to the final battleground, where heroes are destroyed but also born, where battles of the tongue are no less fierce than those of the cannon, but much more hilarious.

How the Heroes are Born

When I read Iliad, I couldn't help but felt depressed by a sense of fatality. Why did the Greeks and the Trojans have to kill or be killed? Both sides wanted peace and attempted a truce but the gods intervened, and the heroes fought to the death. Despite the best efforts of all reasonable and intelligent people, World War II broke out, no less inexorably than the Trojan War. Why all the senseless deaths?

Hugo contemplated these questions in the wake of the French Revolution, and in this book, he re-wrote the ending of Iliad, so to speak. There're a few unexpected turns, i.e., the offspring of free will and choice. It's no less tragic and heroic, but more than that, there're also freedom, joy and hope. Despite the apparent inevitability of events, each hero/person has to make his own choice according to his conscience, and in doing so he attains to freedom, dignity and mastery of his destiny.
( )

I read this from a volume which also contained the Hugo work Things Done. I finished the volume on April 20, 1975. Ninety-Three is a novel laid in 1793 and telling of Lantenac's dramatic return to France to lead the revolt in Brittaney. SPOILER The general in charge of Republican forces there is Gauvein, his great-nephew. Finally Lantenac and 18 others are beseiged in a fortress. Lantenac escaptes by an unknown passageway, then returns to save three children. Gauvain lets lantenac escape, and is guillotined by Cimourdain, his boyhood tutor, who shoots himself. The story has its memorable moments. It was p[ublished in 1829. ( )

I got about half-way through this book set during the Reign of Terror before giving up and admitting this is not a book that in any way clicks with me. Indeed, reading this book made me decide I won't read Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I did get through his Les Miserables, with mixed feelings. I feel that Ninety-Three has some of its worst qualities, without its virtues.

I remember Jean Valjean as the best of Les Miserables--the reason to read it. He's a character with a fascinating redemptive arc. And Javert is a chilling adversary with an interesting side to him in his devotion to justice, however rigid. The two "heroes" of Ninety-Three at the half-mark on the other hand, Marquis de Lantenac and Cimourdain, leave me cold--both are rigid, fanatical, pitiless. It's as if we had Javert in conflict with Javert.

But more than that, my problem with Hugo is that he's the very epitome of tell, not show. Prolix, bombastic, Hugo will never give you one telling detail where pages can do. Let me give you one sentence about a canon that breaks from its moorings from the section, "Tormentum Belli:"

That mass speeds on its wheels, tilts when the ship rolls, plunges when it pitches, goes, comes, stops, seems to meditate, resumes its swift movement, goes from one end of the ship to the other with the speed of an arrow, spins around, slips to one side, dashes away, rears up, spins around, slips to one side, dashes away, rears up, collides, smashes, kills, exterminates.

It then goes on with this description for 41 lines. That's a smattering of his style. I was done in by "The Convention" chapter--by comparison, the inexorable chapter about the Parisian sewers in Les Miserables seems a lesser sin.

To be clear, this isn't the reaction of someone who despises the classics or 19th century literature. Books by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, E.M. Forster and other classics have secure places on my bookshelves. But Ninety-Three is going into my try-to-sell-to-the-Used-Bookstore box. ( )

A superb historical novel which captures the bloody civil war in the Vendee in France, circa 1793. Peopled with vivid characters, who jump off the page, it brings to life the kin versus kin aspect of the French Revolution Hugo allows the reader to decided which side he/she favors, the old regime or the Revolution. ( )