Hugo's Repentir

I lived just a few blocks away from the Victor Hugo’s home on Place des Vosges in Paris, which is now a public museum. If you haven’t been to Place des Vosges you are missing out on one of the more beautiful places in Paris. It is one of the most spectacular parks to take your kids to play on grass, have a glass of wine, or go to an art gallery. If there is one square in all of Paris I miss most it is the Place des Vosges, and one of the things I miss about it is walking through the home of Victor Hugo. This home is not a miserable one for sure. It is large, with beautiful views, a stunning library, an art collection, and a piano where Hugo himself studied for a short time with Liszt (though there is evidence that after only a few lessons Liszt declared his friend Hugo a lost cause). I of course look at the Maison de Victor Hugo as a man who lived in New York during the reign of the musical “Les Miserables”, over 100 years after Hugo himself departed Place des Vosges for a burial site in the Pantheon. I loved the musical, even after I became snobbish enough to realize that the music wasn’t exactly Stravinsky, and the adaptation lacking in some of the most important ideas of Hugo’s successful novel. When I first saw the preview for the new film adaptation, I wept in the theatre with excitement, and of course from the general anguish that comes with seeing so many miserable people in two minutes on a large movie screen. I still felt this way after seeing the movie, which was stunning and passionately moving in so many ways.

Over these last few days since I have seen “Les Miserables”, I have not only had those songs in my head, but also the memories of that Paris house, and my recollections of the book that it was based on. In some ways I think I should hate the movie despite my powerful emotional response to it. I recently wrote on a Facebook post of someone complaining about the movie saying “you are cynical”, which was unfair of me. There are a few, and maybe more, reasons why this movie shouldn’t be someone’s only journey into mid 19^th century Paris, or into the world of Victor Hugo. Hugo said himself “music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” This may mean I should be silent here. But neither Hugo nor myself (two names never uttered in the same sentence) remain silent about much.  Though it doesn’t need to take away from the enjoyment of the movie, there are some problems with the adaption for stage and screen which bother me, and I think would bother Hugo as well (as I am of course so qualified to speak on his behalf).

Jean Valjean was not meant to be Victor Hugo. Likely it was meant to be the man Hugo wanted to be. Valjean is a brave and selfless revolutionary. Hugo became somewhat the same, living in exile, taking care of the poor and changing his monarchical sympathies for republican ideals. Of course a big difference exists in the two, and Hugo clearly knew this. Valjean and Hugo both became wealthy, but Valjean had to live his life as a shadow even in the heart of Paris. Hugo by contrast was the most famous writer in the world, and he seemed to love this fame. The great novelist Gustave Flaubert, who was his contemporary and is now considered my many people to be the better writer, felt that Hugo was completely out of touch with common struggles. He though that the language and characters of “Les Miserables” were ludicrous. He said of that the characters of “Les Miserables”  "speak very well – but all in the same way". Emile Zola, who was the real grit naturalistic writer of Parisian poverty during that era, and the poet Baudelaire also criticized the book for much the same reason. I get that point, and can imagine that only the cockney accents of the thieves and whores would help change their views of the film. Mostly though Valjean’s perfection and the difference between a romanticized character and a real person are hinted at with Hugo’s own words “the greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves”. Even more telling is this quote: “Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved”. So Hugo was both not without ego, and unlike the Valjean of the film who post redemption cared only about loving others, wanted desperately to be loved himself.  The book has a much more profound ending than the musical and film adaption. In the novel Valjean is buried in an unmarked grave, not from poverty, but because he died a wanted criminal. There would be no Pantheon and parade as there was for Hugo, yet it doesn’t seem to be a sad ending either. Perhaps Hugo wished, like so many of us, that we cared less about legacy, as Hugo himself cared so much for it.

The ending of the musical/ movie not only lacks this existential juxtaposition with human nature, it becomes a Christian fantasy. I know that I tend to be so anti-religion that I criticize everything that hints at God. I really don’t mean to do this with “Les Miserables”, which clearly has plenty of very passionate theistic aspects. Instead I think that the makers of the musical/movie miss an opportunity to see the possibility of redemption as a purely altruistic and beautifully human rather than supernatural event. Victor Hugo was like most of us.  He had a spiritual journey which for him started with being a staunch Catholic and ended with being a deist, which was about as close to agnostic as contemporary views allowed. He wrote “Les Miserables” in the middle of this transformation, and I would say that this is in many ways Hugo’s own redemption. It was during his time in exile that he completed almost 20 years of writing “Les Miserable”. He said in the year of its publication, “hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly”.  This sounds much more like Richard Dawkins than a Pope.

 

 It was in exile in Guernsey that he began living a more Valjeanesque existence by starting schools and caring for the poor. One of my favorite things in the Maison de Victor Hugo is a desk with ink wells, personal items and signatures donated by many of the most famous French writers of the era (Georges Sand, La Martine,Dumas and Hugo himself). He put this up for sale at a charity auction to help pay for new schools. When it didn’t sell, he purchased it himself. He said wisely “he who opens a school door, closes a prison.” When we look at both Hugo’s life at this period when he became a Republican, philanthropist and deist, we see the all-important redemption of Jean Valjean in a very different way than it is depicted in the musical/movie. In both the book and the movie, nothing is more powerful and more profoundly inspiring than when Bishop Myriel gives Valjean both his dignity and his silver, and sets him on a path to be a great man. This is touching because it is a man giving this, not because God is giving it. This could be a secular call that it is possible to be saint-like without being a saint. Instead Valjean spends much of movie in a devotion to God and the promise of heaven. The book realizes a heaven on earth, through the love Valjean finds in Cosette, and the ability to forgive Javert.

Writing even this brief description of my feelings makes me aware of how unequipped I am as a literary historian or critic. I better stick to microscopes, and drinking in parks. I respond to these works of art through the lens of a modern American, who loved spending days looking through Victor Hugo’s windows onto a Paris that brought me and my family so much pleasure. Perhaps this is also why “Les Miserables” in all its incarnations remains so powerful. I also realize that I have spent too much time since I first saw the musical on Broadway, until writing this this blog contemplating one mans vision, and many others interpretations. Being rational, being analytical and just feeling sometimes is enough. Also as Hugo himself said “Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.”