Victor Hugo on human nature, history and philosophy ...

I'm slowly coming back to my regular writing of reviews for the books I read and/or listen to.

Don't ask me please what has caused this, almost 2 months long, silence. There were reasons, but I wanted to keep them away from digital world, as all the thoughts and feelings caused by them ...

So my first very late review is for Victor's Hugo „Les Miserables” which reading I shortly reported here.

After „Notre-Dame de Paris” (here and there) I knew that Les Miserables will be THE book of my 2010 reading. And it was. It seems that writing any new review for the masterpiece of literature, which received thousands of excellent reviews, makes little sense. So it is, and let me only very shortly to tell you what is a historical fiction which plot starts in 1815 in France and lasts for about 20 years. The main story of the novel is about ex-convict Jean Valjean and his attempts of expiation and redemption against all odds. It later evolves into a love story in the second generation after him, however, placing his personage always in the context.

Even if it was written in XIX century, the storytelling in the novel is excellent and is still superior to so many later „epoch works” ....

However, I want to stress some other aspects of this enormous (1900 pages) work. It contains a lot of deep philosophical passages about the nature of law, ethics, politics, religion and French history. Set in one of most tumultuous periods of the country history (like defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo or Spring of Nations), it examines the nature of historical and philosophical dispute between royalists and republicans. And in all these, philosophical, historical, sociological analyses, Hugo shows incredible level of maturity and, I could say, professionalism. He does not merely „philosophize" — he goes deeply into the nature of the problem, yet his language remains simple and direct:

„Conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts, and of temptations; the furnace of dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions. Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul, gaze into that obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of giants, like those recorded in Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of dragons and hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary circles, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every man bears within him, and which he measures with despair against the caprices of his brain and the actions of his life! ”

And the last, but certainly not least matter: Hugo created the fictional world that still lives in us and in our culture. See around and you will quickly find Jean Valjeans, Fantines, Javerts, Cosettes, or little Gavroches. In operas, movies, theaters and songs... It is enough to remember this one ...

[the post finalized in Beavais, France in a cafe in front of monumental XIII century cathedral]

End of Seven Weeks in an another world - Les Miserables

I was reading, or to be precise, was listening to Victor's Hugo „Les Miserables” for the last 7 weeks. More than 1500 pages of text, rendered to more than 70 hours of fantastic story-telling (in a literal sense) by David Case (aka Frederick Davidson).

I will not write my review tonight. I'm still in the mood, despite the fact that during this reading I was also reading other books, listen to music, visited exhibitions.

I must think what and how to write. Les Miserables has caused hundreds of thousands of other reviews — so why I must write my own ? But I will wait, will wait until the incredible world created by Victor Hugo start to fade a bit, and my emotions start to sediment in the basin of forgetfulness ....

Les Miserables is so important that we almost forget it is a great book.

Who of us have not wept when little Gavroche died as a hero on a Parisian barricade of the Spring of Nations, who of us was not mesmerized when Susan Boyle sang Fantine's song... Who have never thought about a power of the qualms of conscience which had driven Jean Valjean to silent and troubled heroism; who did not imagine how beautfull was Cosetta and her mother Fantine...

That's all for tonight. If you haven't read it yet — do it please — it is more important than 1000 TV shows, more than hundreds football matches ...

I will write my regular review when the time will come....

A breath of fresh air over 150 years old Book ...

I'm reading, in fact — re-reading again (first time in my school years) Victor Hugo „Les Misérables”. And it is a very good reading. I sometimes marvel over old classics literature — what makes its reading experience so fresh ?

Trying to justify this phenomenon, I could perhaps say, that what makes it universal is a kind of fundamental dilemmas, choices and tragedies that face humans and are described therein. The time — XIX century, and the place — post Bonaparte France are, in this respect, no different from the present time, and from any place of the today's world...

I'm now deeply in the book, just have finished Volume I... So this is not a review yet... I'm also not sure if I would dare to write one for such a book !!!

So there may come some short notes ...

If one of you read it — I would be happy to know your opinion.

Notre-Dame de Paris - Aftermath

This book, probably read by millions of people, has so many senses, so many meanings, that it is hard to say, which is the one, the most important, the key meaning. There is love for Paris, love for Notre-Dame, love for love ....

But the thread I want to tell about in this review is that of morbid love. It is represented by the lust of Claude Frollo - the priest, to the young girl. The lust that ultimately takes her to her death under Paris's gibbet. The lust, that was not true love, that brings only unhappiness, grief and finally the death. And this thread of the book, the slow and deep analysis of this morbid feeling is what gives the book its universal meaning - how often we meet such cravings in our life - even if not in us, but around us....

And there is also a counter-tone, the tone of true, deep and unspoken love. Love that does not search for its fulfillment, for its satisfaction - the love of Quasimodo for Esmeralda. The love of ultimate care for the dead body of living soul - the love that seeks for its end in death - but the death in the eternal embrace of her body, thrown into Montfauçon - the common grave for people lost like her - in the dark ages of Paris ...

All - read this book, Victor Hugo is one of the greatest ....

Notre-Dame de Paris

After so many visits in Paris, I finally started reading Victor Hugo "Notre-Dame de Paris", which in many translations is called "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" or (in my native language) "The Bell-ringer of Notre-Dame". So many people read the book, so to write one more "typical" review does not make too much sense. What makes this book great, is the atmosphere of middle-age Paris, and almost physical imaginative power. Listening to this book today, made me first time ever walking around Paris' Cité for hours and to contemplate the cradle of the one of the largest and the most important cites of the world...

And, like the sign from heaven, when I entered the cathedral itself, there was a movie played on a huge screen - a movie about Notre-Dame history - in which Hugo's book was described as one of the most important events.....

And the very next day I visited The Archeological Crypt the most astonishing place on the Île de la Cité.


It's really amazing to be so many times on the big plaza at the cathedral and finally after years no notice the huge underground crypt, that shows ruins of old Paris, and the passage of time. Everything thanks to Victor Hugo, at elast in my case.

For all who love Paris - that's recommended reading.