Ninety-Three

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 show more 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. show less

I must start by stating the obvious: Hugo's writing is sublime. He rises to the same rhetorical heights in 'Ninety-Three' as in 'Les Misérables'. His preoccupations remain liberty, personal conscience, justice, and duty. His fondness for two main characters that exemplify two sides of the same coin also persists, although in 'Ninety-Three' a level of complexity is added. Gauvain is placed in opposition on two levels; one with his great uncle Lantenac (a monarchist) and one with his tutor, friend, and colleague Cimourdain (a more absolute revolutionary than he). I found these tensions very powerful, as Gauvain played out dilemmas similar to those of Valjean in Les Mis. The validity of a single injustice placed against the greater good show more seems to be a major theme with Hugo, as he appears very sceptical of utilitarianism. In the context of 1793, the Vendéean uprising, and the civil war such moral dilemmas abound.

The novel is largely concerned with the Vendée and very little of it takes place in Paris. Only one scene gives us a glimpse of the figures ruling at the time; an argument occurs between Robespierre, Danton, and Marat. This degenerates into threats to one another, as each of them has a different view of which threat to the revolution should be the priority. The National Convention is also described in detail, both in terms of its architecture and in a blizzard of names. This creates considerable atmosphere. It is the woods and the mediaeval tower of La Tourgue that dominate the action, however.

What most surprised me about this novel is that it isn't really about the events of the French Revolution as such. Considering I've read Les Mis, this should not have been so surprising. Hugo uses the setting of civil war to play out conflicts on a personal level. He tends to describe abstractions in giddily epic terms, then swoop right down to a single character, personifying the concept. The civil war of rural Brittany versus Paris is personified in Lantenac versus Gauvain. It is repeatedly stated that without Lantenac the Vendée is lost, reinforcing the tension as he escapes death at the last minute by capricious fate. Then latterly the conflict between Terror and moderation within the revolution takes on the face of Cimourdain versus Gauvain. In both cases, the two figures in opposition are bound by strong links. Although in historical terms, Hugo concentrates on personality without considering the wider social trends at work (something he is much less inclined to do in Les Mis), this makes for a very appealing narrative. After all, Hugo is not writing to analyse, he is writing to inspire.

I'm also inclined to compare 'Ninety-Three' to other novels of the French Revolution. It is a great deal more epic and idealistic than 'The Gods will have Blood', but has interesting similarities concerning the momentum of revolutionary justice. Like 'The Glassblowers', this novel concentrates on the countryside during the revolution, but whilst 'The Glassblowers' concentrated on a single family at the sidelines of events, Hugo prefers to follow those actually fighting the civil war.

Although I enjoyed 'Ninety-Three' less than 'Les Mis', I remain in awe of Hugo's brilliant juxtapositions. I was shocked and moved by 'Ninety-Three', albeit not verklempt. (Gauvain may be a classically beautiful and abstemious young hero combining high ideals with human compassion, but he isn't quite an Enjolras. Not doomed enough, possibly? Insufficiently blonde?) As in 'Les Mis', Hugo uses the plight of children caught up in terrible events with great effect. As in 'Les Mis', the main characters are bedecked with classical illusions (we have another Orestes and Pylades, for instance). As in 'Les Mis', lengthy descriptions of places build up tension and anticipation of battles to come. The destructiveness and savagery of the civil war are vividly depicted. Basically, I really like Hugo's style. show less

Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo is a glorious romantic imagining of an episode from the year 1793, during the French Revolution and the year of the Great Terror. The setting is Brittany where counter-revolutionary forces have risen up to oppose the Revolutionary leaders. The leader of this group, the aged Marquise de Lantenac, is a romantic hero in the grandest sense. A Breton noble, he disguises himself as a peasant after landing on the western coast. His mission, which he pursues with ruthless single-mindedness, is to act as a leader to the rebels, harness them to the royalist cause, and contrive an opportunity for an English military invasion.

His fate seems to be determined by the Revolutionary forces which are led by his grand-nephew, show more Gauvain. Pitted against Lantenac, Gauvain, formerly the Vicomte de Gauvain, has renounced his noble heritage and embraced the republican cause. Gauvain commands the republican troops allied with Marat and tasked with hunting down and killing Lantenac.

The third protagonist is Cimourdain, once a priest and Gauvain’s tutor, now a fervent revolutionary. It was from Cimourdain that Gauvain first learned the political ideals he has adopted. Cimourdain has a secret, the one weak spot in his ideological armour, for he loves Gauvain, has loved him since childhood, like the son he himself never had. Cimourdain is sent by the revolutionary leader, Marat, as a special agent to the Vendée to ensure that Gauvain does not waver in his loyalty, for Marat has heard disturbing rumors that Gauvain may be capable of mercy, and revolutionary leaders view this as a cardinal sin.

The tension of the story is provided not only by the action, which is fiercely exciting, but by ideas. At one point Gauvain says to Cimourdain:
"Louis XVI was a sheep thrown among lions. He tried to flee, to save himself . . . But not everyone can be a lion who wants to. His feeble attempt was regarded as a crime."
He asks Cimourdain, "lions? What are they?"
"This made Cimourdain think. He raised his head and said, 'Those lions are consciences. Those lions are ideas. Those lions are principles.'" (pp 197-98)

While Gauvain is a man of action, a revolutionary for the republic, he is also a thinker and it is his thoughts about the humanity of men that lead him to his ultimate actions.
The grandeur of this novel is superb, while Hugo builds suspense in every section. Some scenes are so vivid that you are unlikely to forget them. One scene that is sometimes excerpted from the novel is the great cannon episode; depicting a loose cannon on a ship of anti-revolutionary French Royalists sailing towards Brittany, to aid the anti-revolutionary Chouannerie rebellion.
The whole of the novel is like this, filled with one astonishing experience after another, keeping this reader spellbound. show less

ძალიან მაგარი წიგნია ეს, შთამბეჭდავი, ჰუმანიზმითა და დრამით სავსე, წაკითხვის მერე სწრაფად სხვა წიგნს ჯერ რომ ვერ დაიწყებ, ისეთი!..

მაგრამ აი მაინტერესებს რომელ გენიოსს მოუვიდა თავში ამის გამოცემა სერიაში “ბიბლიოთეკა ბავშვებისთვის"?! აშკარად უფრო გვიან წასაკითხი რამეა, ვიდრე show more 90-იანების ბავშვებს წაგვაკითხეს.. ეგრევე ნაადრევად გაზრდილი ბავშვი ხდები წაკითხვის მერე, არაა ეს არც კარგი, არც საჭირო. show less

I've never read Les Miserables or The Hunchback of Notre Dame (all I've seen are the movies), so I have no idea how this one compares to the others in literary terms. However, this book was fantastic so I might seek out the others soon enough. It's set in the year 1793 (hence the title) during a counter-revolutionary revolt against the new French government, and it focuses on a British attempt to aid the supporters of the monarchy in a remote area of country against the revolutionary government's attempts to suppress the rebellion by whatever means necessary. One of the striking things about the writing is how even-handed Hugo is about presenting the different factions involved, which must have taken on added resonance given the book's show more publication shortly after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Everyone is portrayed in a bold, dramatic style that attracted none other than Ayn Rand, who wrote an introduction to my copy. Despite that dubious endorsement, rest assured that the dramatic action is backed by a series of truly thoughtful dialogues that place one of the most important events in the history of freedom in the context of the terrible warfare that went along with it. show less

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 show more 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.” show less

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 show more 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. show less