LES MIS: The quotinghouse

Le Dictateur has given his august go-ahead for this thread. I think it'd be nice if we could indicate which translation we're quoting from, and maybe use a 1:3:2 style of referencing, i.e. Part:Book:Chapter? Just a suggestion.
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There are men who labour for the extraction of gold; he worked for the extraction of pity. The misery of the universe was his mine.

(Wilbour, 1:1:14)

You just stole the quote I was going to start with!

Haha! It's the result of your regime. We're all starting to think like you.

But you know, the more I think about it the less sense that quote makes. He extracts pity from the misery of the universe - is it all his pity? Or other people's? What good does extracting pity do? Doesn't it really mean that he extracts suffering? Is this a translation issue, or a brain-melt on my part?

I get the feeling that the bishop is trying to extract pity from other people, and the misery of the universe is the context, the setting, for that activity. Misery is the mine; pity is the jewel to be extracted from it. Does that make sense?

I didn't write this quote down so it might be off a little, but it says "Bienvenu visited the poor when he had alms. When he had none, he visited the rich." In another place he is appealing to the people to "look at the misery all around you." He would be inconsistent if he did not try to arouse pity for those suffering; he himself felt their pain so keenly, he cannot help but try to awaken others to it as well that it might be alleviated. I had another quote on this but it's escaping me at the moment.

A couple of favorites so far (from Wilbour):

"The spirit is a garden." (p. 17)

"The beautiful is as useful as the useful." (p. 22)

"Ask not the name of him who asks you for a bed. It is especially he whose name is a burden to him, who has need of an asylum." (p. 23)

"Satan may visit our house, but the good Lord inhabits it." (p. 30)

(I should have written this one down... I'll have to search for it) "Succeed: this is the advice that falls, drip by drip, from the overhanging corruption."

I am keeping a notebook of favorite quotes and thoughts/margin arguments as I read and I haven't been noting part and chapter yet, just page numbers. I'll try to do that in future.

>3 ChocolateMuse: Chocolate Muse:

The sentence in French was: "L'universelle misère était sa mine."

A literal translation would be "Universal misery was his mine", but this seems to be a distinction without a difference. Perhaps the difficulty is in the connotation of the word "extraction". In the sense of a mine, it means "working the mine" I think.

If we think of it that way, and consider the quote in the context of the preceding paragraph, does it make more sense?

Wisewoman--I had underlined many of the same quotes including the "succeed" one. I especially liked the passage which follows it, "In passing, we might say that success is a hideous thing. Its false similarity to merit deceives men." (Part I, Book I, Chapter XII, Fahnestock/MacAfee translation).

"Liberation is not deliverance." (Part I, Book II, Chapter IX)

"L'universelle misère était sa mine."

This actually means "Universal misery was his way of being."

In French when we say "Il a bonne mine", we mean that he looks well. There is a way of being about him that looks well. That's how Hugo's quote works.

PS. I'm a native French and English speaker so if you have any translation queries feel free to ask. :)

ETA: Ah ha! So I was PMed for clarification and it helps if I actually see the full quote. So basically we are dealing with one of Hugo's many puns where you can derive both meanings and they work equally well with one another. Basically, where "mine" can be translated as a physical "mine" or his "way of being".

>7 lilisin: okay, that is seriously cool. I am missing out on SO MUCH by having to read it in English. Thanks lilisin and Lisa for translations! And thanks WW, that does make more sense, that he wants to awaken pity in others.

Lilli - May I ask which "Knock there." or "Then do." was a more accurate version of the French when Valjean is directed to Myriel's? Which is better, if that is different?

Thanks, lilisin, for pointing out the puns. I did not know that Hugo used them liberally! Puns--like idioms--are hard to translate, and perhaps something to consider when looking at some of the quotes that might not quite make sense to us who are not native French speakers.

#9: For lilisin: the passage slick is asking about:

—Vous avez, reprit-elle, frappé à toutes les portes?

—Oui.

—Avez-vous frappé à celle-là?

—Non.

—Frappez-y.

-------

The novel is available in French on Project Gutenberg. If you open up the .html documents, there are some nice hyperlinks to each chapter in each book. And, of course, you can do a search on the page if that's useful to you.

Book One (Fantine)
Book Two (Cosette)
Book Three (Marius)
Book Four (Saint-Denis)
Book Five (Jean Valjean)

(P.S. Looks like "Knock there" to me, but I just know what my dictionary & Google translator tell me. :)

10 -
Yes yes! Hugo was a big fan of puns so it's important to look for those.

11 -
I would translate it as a combination of both: "Then knock". Literally "Then go knock" if you can't hear the tone of voice being used.

I do wish I had my copies of Les Mis with me here in Colorado. Alas they're with my parents in Texas.

11 & 13: Thanks for everything!

All the problems which the socialists propounded, aside from the cosmogonic visions, dreams and mysticism, may be reduced to two principle problems.
First problem:
To produce wealth.
Second problem:
To distribute it.
The first problem contains the question of labour.
The second contains the question of wages.
In the first problem the question is the employment of force.
In the second of the distribution of enjoyment.
From the good employment of force results public power.
From the good distribution of enjoyment results individual happiness.
By good distribution, we must understand not equal distribution, but equitable distribution. The highest equality is equity.
From these two things combined, putlic power without, individual happiness within, results social prosperity.
Social prosperity means, man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.
Englands solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth wonderfully; she distributes it badly.

Charles Wilbur translation

The visible me in no way authorizes the thinker to deny the hidden me. 5:5 Signet p 170

15> Hugo's socio-economic philosophy expounded - and a very huge rationale behind his composing Les Mis, not just as a book to entertain, but to enlighten, and by enlightening, ultimately altering, for the better hopefully, the poverty and pain so prevalent.

Speaking of poverty and pain, from Book VIII (The Noxious Poor), chap. VIII (The Sunbeam in the Hole);
observe how caring and sensitive the Thenardiers are as parents to their children:

"The older daughter went to her father and touched his hand.
'Feel how cold I am,' she said.
'Pshaw!' answered the father. 'I'm a good deal colder than that.'
The mother cried impetuously, 'You always have everything better than the rest, even pain.'"

And if you're a parent out there, may you too aspire to be as loving and tender as the Thernardiers.

Great quotes so far, everyone--I have almost all of these underlined as well.

Two more of my favorites from Part One, Book One:

"To commit the least possible sin is the law for man." (from Myriel's personal doctrine, 1:1:4, M/F p. 13)

"His universal tenderness was less an instinct of nature than the result of a strong conviction filtered through life into his heart, slowly dropping into him, thought by thought; for a character, as well as a rock, may have holes worn into it by drops of water."
(1:1:8, M/F p. 53)

The second quote, with its "drops of water" metaphor, comes just a couple of pages after wisewoman's quote in #4. ("Succeed: this is the advice that falls, drip by drip, from the overhanging corruption.") Brilliant contrast!

"In the twilight they could hear the loading of the artillery, the lighted matches like tigers' eyes in the night made a circle around their heads; all the linstocks of the English batteries approached the guns, when, touched by their heroism, suspending the moment of death above these men, as an English general- Colville according to some, Maitland according to others- cried out to them, 'Brave Frenchman, Surrender!' Cambronne answered 'Merde!'"
(2:1:14 p.341)

"Certainly, a doctor would have seen in Jean Valjean an incurable misery; he would perhaps have pitied this man sickened by the law, but he would not have even attempted a cure; he would have turned from the sight of the caverns glimpsed in that soul; and, like Dante at the gate of Hell, he would have erased from that existence the word that the finger of God has nonetheless written on the brow of everyone--Hope!"

Book II, chap VII (p. 90, Signet ed.)

"Behind living on a little, lies the art of living on nothing. They are two rooms; the first is obscure, the second is utterly dark." (Book five, chapter IX, p. 157)

"One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty, it is called remorse. God upheaves the soul as well as the ocean." (Book seven, chapter III, p. 196)

"The realities of the soul, because they are not visible and palpable, are not the less realities." (Book seven, chapter III, p. 197)

"To travel is to be born and to die at every instant." (Book seven, chapter V, p. 216)

There is a way of avoiding a person which resembles a search.

Wilbour, 1. III. 2.

Chocolate, that's another that I also have underlined. So true.

On Fantine, just right after she says "All Right!, I'll sell what's left."

She has turned to marble in becoming corrupted. Whoever touches her feels a chill.

F&M Fantine - Book 5 - XI (page 187)

On Thenardier and Thenardiess:

"This man and this woman were cunning and rage married--a hideous and terrible pair."

Wilbour, Cosette, B. 3, Ch 2.

Fantine:

Then she thought of Tholomyés, who shrugged his shoulders at his child, and who did not take this innocent child to heart, and her heart became dark in the place that was his.

Wilbour, 1:IV ch 1.

...though I guess the original French doesn't use the word 'heart' twice in the same sentence - I only noticed that while typing it out.

I like the image of that little bright space having the light flick off forever.

Part I, Book VIII, Chapter III, Fahnestock/MacAfee:

"Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the idea of duty, are things that, when in error, can turn hideous, but--even though hideous--remain great; their majesty, peculiar to the human conscience, persists in horror. They are virtues with a single vice--error. The pitiless, sincere joy of a fanatic in an act of atrocity preserves some mournful radiance that inspires veneration. Without suspecting it, Javert, in his dreadful happiness, was pitiful, like every ignorant man in triumph. Nothing could be more poignant and terrible than this face, which revealed what might be called all the evil of good."

Cosette, Book V, Ch. 5, Wilbour:

"Jean Valjean had this peculiarity, that he might be said to carry two knapsacks; in one he had the thoughts of a saint, in the other the formidable talents of a convect. He helped himself from one or the other as occasion required."

and this one at Book V, Ch. 10 made me chuckle:

"It must be remembered that at that time the police was not exactly at ease; it was cramped by a free press."

Cosette, Book 6, Ch. 5, Wilbour

This is one of those puns lilisin was talking about, and it helps to know a bit of French:

"There was a fat portress, who was always to be seen hurrying about the corridors with her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agatha. the great big girls,--over ten, called her 'Agathocles'."

The French word for keys is "clés".

(I'm so far behind everyone else...) Part 1 Fantine, Book 7, Ch 3. Wilbour

To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and final epic.

You're not as far behind as I. I expect to take delivery of this, Paradise Lost, and Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust sometime early next week.

27: I noticed that one and wanted to type it out for this thread - glad you beat me to it!

"Diamonds are found only in the dark bowels of the earth. Truths are found only in the depths of thought."

Part I, Book VII, Chapter III

This thread is fantastic for those of us who are not reading the book. We hardly need to.

Keep 'em coming Salonistas!

Has anyone figured out yet who Monsier Madeleine is?

Sshhh. Don't give out the answer if you already know, some readers may not be there yet.

For those of you who are there, how long did it take for you to figure out who Madeleine was?

"'Well, what is it? What's the matter, Javert'"

Javert remained silent a moment as if collecting himself, then raised his voice with a sad solemnity, which did not, however, exclude simplicity: 'A criminal act has been committed, Monsieur Mayor.'

'What act?'

'A subordinate in the government has been lacking in respect to a magistrate, in the gravest manner. I come, as is my duty, to bring the fact to your attention.'

'Who is this subordinate?' asked M. Madeleine.

'I am,' said Javert.

'You?'

'Me.'

'And who is the magistrate who has cause to complain of this agent?'

'You, Monsieur Mayor.'

M. Madeleine straightened up in his chair. Javert continued, with serious looks and eyes still downcast.

'Monsieur Mayor, I come to ask you to be so kind as to make charges and procure my dismissal.'

Amazed, M. Madeleine opened his mouth. Javert interrupted him: 'You will say that I might tender my resignation, but that is not enough. To resign is honorable; I have done wrong. I ought to be punished. I must be dismissed.'"

Cringe alert for those who are not there yet:

Part IV, Book 3, Ch. 5

". . . .deposited in her heart one of the two seeds that must later fill all of the life of woman, coquetry. Love is the other."

Ugh.
Part IV, Book 8, Ch 1
"One of the generosities of women is to yield."
"Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is all of heaven."

"One of the generosities of women is to yield."

What an awesome quote, nee-nee! Thanks for that. I'm posting it on our fridge pronto for my wife and daughters to meditate upon. ;-)

Oh dear, Monsieur le dictateur. Your humble subjects of the female persuasion in Le Salon are not likely to revolt, but I hope you have a good place to hide if you put such a thing on the refrigerator of your family abode.

Hmm, I wasn't offended by that quote. I read it more as Hugo saying women don't have to yield/give in/whatever, but when they choose to, it is a favor, not an obligation (hence the "generosity" of it). They're still in control of that decision.

Some of the other quotes re: women, though, yes, they might induce a cringe or two.

40: The thing that's dated about it, for me, is its specificity that this is a generosity of women rather than humanity as a whole. When a man yields, he often considers it a favor as well.

I find both of these to be very similar to the one about dolls. Hugo had, for his time, a very loving and sweet attitude about women - but this attitude did not see them as the same sort of humans as him, and that's what jars for this modern reader.

Good point. I could argue that Hugo says "women" there because the context is women, but I'd be hard-put to prove that that wasn't really his belief. Hugo has something to attract and offend everyone, that's for sure.

It's sexism pure and simple, whether "tender" or misogynistic. In Hugo's time adult French women were still legally classified with minors, criminals and the mentally retarded (from which there followed a mountain of legal and social discrimination). A man who "loved women" invariably was someone who in fact loved to sleep with women (Hugo belongs to this set, and then some!), and male feminists were few and far between. At best you encounter pious exhortations to husbands and fathers to be gentle and loving toward females, weak and stupid creatures in need of protection, aid and indulgence.

Older literature has the added fascination of being rife with history lessons (sometimes the only reason to read it now), but really, only if one is capable of reading critically.

43: I want to be you when I grow up!

#44

...and pay my debts! Dealio! :)

I just want to add that I'm thinking about these things primarily in the context of schooling, wondering exactly how and what one teaches when one assigns Hugo (for example!) to kids, how one conveys both the moral of the story and contextualises that moral in our times.

Fill em all and let the gods sort it out.

Hugo was all about women yielding, especially when they were servants or "fallen women."

There were several times in Les Mis when I rolled my eyes and moved on (more than once I caught a whiff of virgin fetishism when Hugo waxed on about Cosette, which merits a roll of the eyes along with a turn of the stomach). What can you do? He's dead, so I can't whack him upside the head and then tell him that besides that, I really enjoyed his novel. :)

Reading these past few posts I really want to read your thoughts on Notre-Dame de Paris. You guys would have a field day with Esmeralda and Phoebus. But oh, Frollo! Such an interesting character!

(None of my touchstones for French titles seem to be working. Strange. -- oh wait, working again!)

#43 In the art world Renoir was considered a lover of women and Degas was considered the opposite. The reason being that Renoir painted those soft romanticized versions of women and Degas painted them more as they actually were, including a wonderful portrait of his friend Mary Cassatt (who, alas, didn't like the painting, thought it unflattering);

>39 LisaCurcio: No revolt here either. As a newbie, I am hanging out in the corner of the salon, near the bar. Times were certainly different then and I can respect that. As a modern reader I cringe, and then keep on keepin on. It's a beautiful story and I can't get enough of it!

43: LolaWalser "It's sexism pure and simple, whether "tender" or misogynistic."

I have some trouble with that. Certainly we all agree these comments offensive. And I think they are revealing as to some serious limits on what Hugo understands about human nature (and he makes the same ridiculous characterizations of children too, IMO). But, I don't see this so black and white. I mean anytime you describe an entire sex, you are making a sexist statement. But to apply the term in the derogatory sense here - it's just not that simple. First of all there's the time period to consider. And second, there's more color here, there more complexity to his characterizations.

Well, first, YOU are the one tacks a "derogatory" interpretation on Hugo's sexism--I leave it open. Wisewoman above interprets some of these quotes in the halo of tenderness etc. In my view, it's not necessarily one thing or the other (and I thought I remarked to that effect above, but obviously not emphatically enough for you)--one can hold sexist opinions with a benevolent or a malevolent attitude and so on.

The question of who finds these quotes offensive is irrelevant--I think that what we all can agree on is that they need to be read remembering the period of the book's writing. Some readers are likely to find them extremely offensive, some, jaded like me (I grew up not only mostly on classics, but in an extremely misogynistic environment), will hardly blink.

But there is no error in ascribing Hugo's views to sexism--they are literally an expression thereof.

Oh and, as for the complexity of his characterisations... well, it makes me laugh. I don't want to cast the tiniest bit of a shadow on anyone's enjoyment of the book, so I'll recuse myself from further discussion, but I looked over some of it today, and boy. Complexity of character isn't one of the best reasons to read Hugo, nosirree.

Lola,

In another thread earlier on, you mentioned something to the effect that you just couldn't take Victor Hugo seriously, but that you didn't want to expand upon it because you knew it was "your personal issue" - or something like that.

Listen, I'm very curious (and I know for a fact I'm not the only one who's curious) to know why you don't take Victor Hugo seriously (I'd assume his sexism and tendency toward manufacturing "character types," rather than creating "real characters" (assuming such an observation is, in fact, true ;-) ) would perhaps be the tip-of-the-iceberg reasons for your, what I hear to be (correct me if I'm wrong) "rejection of Hugo" as one not belonging brushing shoulders with the world literary iconic likes of Dostoy and Proust and early Tolstoy, etc. et al.

Really, you're not raining on anybody's parade as far as I'm concerned. I'd welcome some more negative criticism of Hugo, if you're game.

Lola,

What Freeque said. I've got no problem with your critique of Hugo and Les Mis. Let 'er rip.

Lola - I'd also like to hear your critical thoughts - blast away. I don't think you'll hurt anyone's experience here.

Lola: Oh and, as for the complexity of his characterisations... well, it makes me laugh. I don't want to cast the tiniest bit of a shadow on anyone's enjoyment of the book

Too late, darling, you have spoiled my enjoyment of the book forever. *sob* Henceforth, when I attempt to read Hugo, it will be all bile and blood.

;)

I think you can fire away with your assessments of his characters. You'll be in good company--writers and critics, including Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, and Zola hammered away at Hugo's works.

I have a book out from the library that I really wish I had the time to read right now. Hopefully in January or Feb, as we're wrapping things up, I can get to some of this lit crit.

Anyhow, it's called Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo, by Isabel Roche. I'm interested to see what a scholarly type has to say about Hugo's characters, particularly any kind of defense that she mounts.

One chapter in particular, "Hugo and Type Character," seems to focus heavily on Les Mis. Other chapters include "The Archetype Transformed" and "Character as Template."

Mario Vargas Llosa also speaks briefly of Hugo's use of character types in The Temptation of the Impossible. To quote Llosa:

"When our grandparents wept as they read Les Miserables, they thought that the characters moved them to tears because of their touching humanity. But what really moved them was their ideal nature, their manifest inhumanity . . . Apart from Marius, who seems the odd one out in this group, none of the main characters are average, common, easily recognizable men and women. Instead they represent extreme and unusual forms of human behavior: the saint, the righteous man, the hero, the villain, the fanatic. The novel is full of archetypal figures."

Vargas Llosa then goes on to link these extreme behaviors of caricatures or stereotypes to Hugo's Romanticism and the flavor of the day. (Of course, as I understand, realism was also becoming more prevalent at the time, spurring much of the criticism of Hugo's characters.)

Vargas Llosa again: "Every age has its own unreality: its myths, its phantoms, its illusions, its dreams, and its ideal vision of human beings that fiction expresses more faithfully than any other genre. To medieval readers, the exploits of Amadis or Esplandián could seem realist because the fabulous adventures expressed their deepest desires. For readers in the romantic era, who expected excess and fervently desired the world to be made of up angels and devils, Les Miserables offered them a cast of characters for whom immoderate behavior is the norm and ordinary behavior is the exception."

Also: one tiny bit that I ran across while browsing the Roche just now: in the chapter The Archetype Transformed, Roche links Javert and Valjean by their origins: both come from families of "misérables."

Nooooo! Noooo! I'm not reading it again! Noooo!

Really, dear folk, I have nothing groundbreaking to say, I'm just apt to snigger offensively in the offside. :)

But if Le Dictateur wants to open a thread for haters* (clearly labelled, so that the more delicate among lovers know to stay away), I'll contribute a mud pie or two!

*Jokey use of the term. I do not hate Hugo. He was one of my FAVE writers--when I was a kid. I can't retread that road, though, and nowadays to me he sounds overblown, kitschily sentimental, and, well, unreal. Hugo's novels are fairy tales. In itself, this is not a condemnation--fairy tales have their purposes, and I think absorbing Hugo's moralising as a kid was educational in the best sense of the word, because we didn't discuss his style in tenth grade, but his ethics.

However, even in this aspect he seems to me severely limited now. Hugo's simple Christian-Republican panaceas have no practical use in our world, however laudable, of course, his principles remain.

Pffft. Realist.

#57

Cool x-post! I agree with Vargas Llosa etc. etc.

#60

Schmaltz lover!!

Let's move the discussion of why we don't like Hugo or appreciate him as much as we once did when we were lovely young lads and lasses (and I'm sure most of us are still young and lovely) over here and return this thread to the quoters whom I hear, are simply beside themselves that this thread has been summarily hijacked by all the haters!

Thenardier's Theory of Innkeeping

"'The duty of the innkeeper . . . is to sell the first comer, food, rest, light, fire, dirty linen, servants, fleas, and smiles; to stop travelers, empty small purses, and honestly lighten large ones; to receive families who are traveling, with respect: fleece the man, pluck the woman, and pick over the child; to charge for the open window, closed window, chimney corner, sofa, chair, stool, bench, featherbed, mattress, and straw bed; to know how much the reflection wears the mirror down and to tax that: and, by five hundred thousand devils, to make the traveler pay for everything, including the flies his dog eats!'"

Thenardier would've made a great banker too! No offense to any bankers out there ;-)

pg. 381, Signet ed.

#65 - Rique - thought I posted something already, but it must not have gone through. This passage caught my attention because (I'm slightly embarrassed by this) of the musical. The entire Thenardier song is essentially based on this paragraph.

An excerpt:

Charge 'em for the lice, extra for the mice
Two percent for looking in the mirror twice
Here a little slice, there a little cut
Three percent for sleeping with the window shut
When it comes to fixing prices
There are a lot of tricks he knows
How it all increases, all them bits and pieces
Jesus! It's amazing how it grows!

For full lyrics, see here: http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/lesmiserables/masterofthehouse.htm

Fabulous! Thanks dchaikin!

Uh oh. The songs are starting in my head! Good thing I love the musical.

#68/69 - ooh, I apologize, I don't wish that in your head. I haven't been able to get the songs in my head to stop - for two weeks now.

ooooooooooooooh! HERRING!

From the Modern Library edition of Wilbour's translation:

"Men, make as many laws as you please, but keep them for yourselves. The tribute to Caesar is never more than the remnant of the tribute to God. A prince is nothing in presence of a principle."
Cosette:VIII:V, p. 478

"When these poor creatures are men, the millstone of our social system almost always comes in contact with them, and grinds them, but while they are children they escape because they are little. The smallest hole saves them."
Marius:I:XIII, p. 518

"For there are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life. There is a determined though unseen bravery, which defends itself foot to foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and of baseness. Noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees, which no renown rewards, which no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious ones."
Marius:V:I, p. 588

"...those are rare who fall without becoming degraded; there is a point, moreover, at which the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confounded in a single word, a fatal word, Les Misérables; whose fault is it? And then, is it not when the fall is lowest that charity ought to be greatest?"
Marius:VIII:V, p. 643

"The right, when it triumphs, has no need to be violent."
Saint Denis:I:II, p. 715

"God makes visible to men his will in events, an obscure text written in a mysterious language. Men make their translations of it forthwith; hasty translations, incorrect, full of faults, omissions, and misreadings. Very few minds comprehend the divine tongue."
Saint Denis:I:IV, p. 725

"Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie its pleasure. To replace thought by reverie is to confound poison withh nourishment."
Saint Denis:II:I, p. 745

"The soul which loves and which suffers is in the sublime state."
Saint Denis:II:I, p. 746

"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
Saint Denis:III:IV, p. 807

"Love. A sombre starry transfiguration is mingled with this crucifixion. There is ecstasy in the agony."
Saint Denis:III:IV, p. 809

"Are you what is called a fortunate man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care... One cloud is dissipated, another appears. Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and of unbroken sunshine. And you are of that small number who are fortunate! As to other men, stagnant night is upon them.
Reflecting minds make little use of this expression: the happy and the unhappy. In this world, the vestibule of another evidently, there is none happy.
The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark."
Saint Denis:VII:I, p. 854

"Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light to fraternity of strangers."
Saint Denis:XII:IV, p. 955

"Civil war? What does this mean? Is there any foreign war? Is not every war between men, war between brothers? War is modified only by its aim. There is neither foreign war, nor civil war; there is only unjust war and just war."
Saint Denis:XIII:III, p. 975

"There are interior subsoilings. The penetration of a torturing certainty into man does not occur without breaking up and pulverizing certain deep elements which are sometimes the man himself. Grief, when it reaches this stage, is a panic of all the forces of the soul. These are fatal crises. Few among us come through them without change, and firm in duty."
Saint Denis:XV:I, p. 1000

"The abundance of light was inexpressibly comforting. Life, sap, warmth, odour, overflowed; you felt beneath creation the enormity of its source; in all these breezes saturated with love, in this coming and going of reflections and reverberations, in this prodigious expenditure of rays, in this indefinite outlay of fluid gold, you felt the prodigality of the inexhaustible; and behind this splendour, as behind a curtain of flame, you caught a glimpse of God, the millionaire of stars."
Jean Valjean:I:XVI, p. 1057

"The ideal is nothing more nor less than the culminating point of logic, even as the beautiful is nothing more nor less than the summit of the true."
Jean Valjean:I:XX, p. 1072

"The pupil dilates in the night, and at last finds day in it, even as the soul dilates in misfortune, and at last finds God in it."
Jean Valjean:III:I, p. 1104

"To love or be loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life. To love is a consummation."
Jean Valjean:VI:II, p. 1191

"It is not enough to be happy, we must be satisfied with ourselves."
Jean Valjean:VII:I, p. 1204

"God has his instruments. He uses what tool he pleases. He is not responsible to man."
Jean Valjean:VII:II, p. 1216

"'Because things are unpleasant,' said Jean Valjean, 'that is no reason for being unjust towards God.'"
Jean Valjean:IX:V, p. 1256

I just began the book this A.M. and had to put it aside due to setting up the center where we are having my father-in-law's memorial service tomorrow so I am only on page 35, but this one nailed me right out of the gate:

"Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do."

quoted from the Charles E. Wilbour edition.
belva

In the meantime let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them. The counterfeits of the past take assumed names, and are fond of calling themselves the future. That eternally returning specter, the past, not infrequently falsifies its passport. Let us be ready for the snare. Let us beware. The past has a face, superstition, and a mask, hypocrisy. Let us denounce the face and tear off the mask.

Cosette:VI:IX

Random excerpts. Page numbers refer to the Fahnestock/MacAfee translation from Signet Classics. I know these are terribly long (865 words) and obscure. Please don’t feel compelled to read them.

something about Javert
But—and this is the necessary corrective to an excess of absolute meaning that certain words may have presented—there can be nothing really infallible in a human creature, and the very peculiarity of instinct is that it can be disturbed, and thrown off course. Were this not so, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would possess a purer light than the man. - p 173

Hugo over the top
To write a poem of the human conscience, if only of one man, even the most insignificant man would be to swallow up all the epics in a superior and definitive epic. The conscience is the chaos of chimeras, lusts, and temptations, the furnace of dreams, the cave of ideas that shame us; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, the battlefield of passions. At certain moments, penetrate the ashen face of a human being who is thinking and look at what lies behind; look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There, beneath the external silence, giants are doing battle as in Homer, melées of dragons and hydras, and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, ghostly spirals as in Dante. Such gloom enfolds that infinity which each man bears within himself and by which he measures in despair the desires of his will and the actions of his life! - p 220

Hugo over the top – on travelling
What was he doing during that trip? What was he thinking about? As he had during the morning he watched the trees go by, the thatched roofs, the cultivated fields, and the dissolving views of the countryside that change at every turn in the road. Scenes like that are sometimes enough for the soul, and almost eliminate the need for thought. To see a thousand objects for the first and last time, what could be more profoundly melancholy? Traveling is a constant birth and death. It may be that in the murkiest part of his mind, he was drawing a comparison between these horizons and human existence. All aspects of life are in perpetual flight before us. Darkness and light alternated: after a flash, an eclipse; we look, we hurry, we stretch out our hands to seize what is passing; every event is a turn in the road; and suddenly we are old. We feel a slight shock, everything is black, we can make out a dark door, the gloomy horse of life that was carrying us stops, and we see a veiled and unknown form that turns him out into the darkness. - p 248

19th century suburbs?
Forty years ago, the solitary pedestrian who ventured into the unfrequented regions of La Salpêtriére and went up along the boulevard as far as the Barrière d’Italie reached certain points where it could be said that Paris disappeared. It was no longer empty, there were people going by; it was not the country, there were houses and streets; it was not a city, the streets had ruts in them; it was not a village, the houses were too tall. What was it then? It was an in habited place with nobody to be seen, it was a deserted spot, a street in Paris, wilder at night than a forest and gloomier by day than a graveyard. - p 428

on nostalgia - perhaps I should have cut this one from the post?
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 those streets 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. All those places that we no longer see, which perhaps we shall never see again, but whose image we have preserved, assume a painful charm, return to us with the sadness of a ghost, make the holy land visible to us, and are, so to speak, the true shape of France; - p 446-7

on cold science?
There are people who ask nothing more—living being who, having the blue sky, say, “That’s enough!” Dreamers absorbed in the marvel, drawing an indifference to good and evil from idolatry of nature, contemplators of the cosmos radiantly diverted from man,… - p 1219

cheese fries – I just like the image
The sun gilded, crimsoned, and kindled the tulips, which are nothing more nor less than all varieties of flame made flowers. - p 1221

edited to fix mistakes.

Hey is there really such a thing as too long of a post? Especially when it's Hugo quotes? I like that last image a lot too, that's poetry, whether it's cheeseville or not.

Yes, and yes... even of Hugo. ;)

St Dennis IV

"We do not dwell upon it; this is not the place."

And this after we have been dwelling upon "it" for quite a number of pages. I had a good laugh.

Ditto!

double ditto!