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Can
a Work of Art Change Your Life?
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
By
Marilyn Green Faulkner
 With
the furor surrounding the release of Mel Gibson’s new movie, The
Passion of Christ, we are again faced with the old question
of art and its part in religious faith. Certainly the two cannot
be separated, for all real artistic expression is the effort to
fulfill the two great commandments: to reach upward toward God
and/or outward toward others. Kieth Merrill’s thoughtful review
of the film in Meridian reminds us that a great work of art can
have an impact on, but cannot be the basis for, a true faith in
Christ. Les Miserables, the great national novel of France
and Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, is a rare example of art in the service
of the Savior that has touched millions of hearts, inspired various
theatrical adaptations, and even spawned a religious movement of
its own.
Les
Miserables is the story
of one man’s journey from sin to salvation to sanctification. It
is unapologetically sentimental and brutally realistic. The grotesque
is juxtaposed against the sublime, and spiritual experiences are
reported with the same journalistic detail as battle scenes. In
other words, it represents a complete life of a spiritual man, with
both seen and unseen forces at work. The protagonist, Jean Val Jean
(a true “everyman’s” name) is a simple laborer who steals a loaf
of bread to feed his sister’s children. For this he is sent to prison,
and his repeated attempts to escape cause him to spend nineteen
years in grinding labor, only to be released with the dreaded “yellow
passport” that ensures his rejection from every inn and workplace.
His fate, however, is not unavoidably tragic, as later realistic
novels would paint. No, there is a force at work to save Val Jean,
and that force is God. God will intervene to save his soul, and
as a result Val Jean will become a new man.
Two Questions
This novel asks two fundamental questions: Can man really change?
Will society allow it? Hugo’s answers are respectively yes, and
no, and thus the spiritual journey of one man is placed against
the history of a nation embroiled in a revolution (inspired by our
own) that seesawed back and forth between monarchy and republic.
The plot of the novel careens up and down, like a roller coaster,
as Val Jean is repeatedly cast down and lifted up; from the tops
of trees where he works as a pruner to the depths of the galleys,
and back up into the welcoming arms of the Bishop who transforms
his life.
Later he sinks from the height of prosperity and respect back
again into the galleys, then climbs to the top of a ship to rescue
a sailor, then plunges back into the sea, into a new death, to begin
yet another life in exile. Later, fleeing the relentless Javert
(ultimate symbol of blind justice) he climbs straight up a wall,
and then drops into the safety of a convent. Later he descends into
a coffin to make an escape. The pattern is repeated over and over
through the novel, and with each incarnation Val Jean strips away
more of his benighted, bitter, carnal self and takes on the image
the of Master he has vowed to serve. The climactic moment when he
carries his future son-in-law into the depths of the sewers of Paris,
then raises him to life, completes his progression, as he gives
all to save one who will take from him his only joy, his daughter
Cosette.
The
tremendous physicality of Hugo’s writing is one of the reasons we
respond to it on so many levels. Hugo, like Dickens, is a visual
writer: he is cinematic as well as literary. People don’t just talk
in this novel, there is always something happening. It was
this combination of inner and outer drama, no doubt, that inspired
Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg to create a rock-opera
from the novel. Les Miserables has been shown more times
than any musical in history. Faithful to the spirit of the work,
it strives to portray the inner struggle of the man as well as the
action of the novel, and succeeds beautifully.
As
each of our children has graduated from High School we have shared
a trip together, and as a part of that trip I have taken each one
to see “Les Miz” in London, where it has been playing for twenty
years or more. To watch each of them experience the closing moments
of that musical has been one of the cherished experiences of motherhood
for me, since so much of what we have tried to teach them about
the purpose of life is encapsulated in those few moments. It is
an experience I recommend to any believing parent.
Hugo's Life
Victor
Hugo’s life was even more dramatic than his novels. His father was
a general in Napoleon’s army, and fell in and out of favor as the
regime changed. The family traveled constantly and the parents were
unhappy, so at an early age Victor was separated from his father
when his mother took her three sons to live in Paris. He fell in
love with the girl next door, Adele Foucher, and married her after
the death of his mother, who opposed the match. His brother Eugene
also desperately loved the girl, and flew into a psychotic rage
at their wedding. He spent the rest of his life in an institution.
After the births of their four children, Adele refused to live with
Hugo as man and wife any longer, and began a relationship with his
best friend. Hugo took a mistress, Juliette Drouet, who remained
his companion for the next fifty years. (The morals of this family
were so decidedly “French” that when Hugo fled to Brussels as a
political exile, he took the wife, the family, and the mistress
along with him!)
Hugo
was a devoted father, and was devastated by the death of his daughter,
pregnant with his grandchild, and her husband in a boating accident
soon after their marriage. His other daughter survived the accident
but suffered mental damage. He lived to see her committed to an
institution and both of his sons die, within three years of each
other. Hugo was active in the government and served in the legislature,
and was most famous for his poetry and plays. His masterwork was
not published until he was sixty years old, but it was an instant
success.
Hugo
spent nearly twenty years in exile in Brussels, and during this
time he searched for a spiritual philosophy that incorporated his
firm faith in God and his passion for social justice and reform.
He consulted spiritualists and spent many sessions with mediums,
attempting the “channel” the spirits of great figures of the past.
There is currently a sect of Buddhism, called Cao Dai, which originated
in Vietnam and is based on the writings of Hugo during this period.
They believe that Hugo and his two sons return to earth as reincarnated
beings occasionally. There are over two thousand temples and millions
of followers of this strange faith, another illustration of the
tremendous impact of Hugo’s work.
The
Masterpiece
In 1862, while still in exile, Hugo published Les Miserables,
which he had started two decades before. Working feverishly, standing
at a desk with a cup of hot chocolate beside him, Hugo completed
the 1200 page work in fourteen months. In a remarkable creative
effort, he arranged to have the book translated into English the
same year it was published in France. C.E. Wilbur’s translation
still stands as the definitive Les Miserables, and the double
release added to the great popularity of the work. Panned by critics
for its sentimentality and condemned by government representatives
for its harsh criticism of the legal system, the novel found an
immediate place in the hearts of people everywhere.
Though its themes are universal, this is decidedly a novel
about France, and Hugo’s love of his native country, exaggerated
by his long exile, is evident in the detailed descriptions of Paris
life. Hugo finally returned to Paris in 1870 and received a hero’s
welcome. When he died in 1885 at the age of 83, two million Frenchmen
passed by his coffin under the Arch de Triomphe. He was buried in
the Pantheon, the first of a series of cultural heroes to be entombed
there. June 1 was declared a national day of mourning and in 1902,
on the centenary of his birth, the Maison de Victor Hugo museum
was opened in the apartment where he had once lived and worked.
The
Best Books Club has been reading classics together for over three
years, and I have received many comments about Les Miserables
in that time. Whenever I ask people about their most cherished books,
this one is mentioned. Here is a typical comment:
“ Les Miserables tops my charts overall -- I
had an experience with that book that I have never had before or
since with a fictional work.”
If you have not read Les Miserables in
the last decade, or if by chance you have never read it, you have
a marvelous experience ahead of you. And if you have read and loved
Les Miserables, I would invite you to share your experience
with other Meridian readers. I’ll post these in an article in mid-March,
so I welcome your comments. Hugo sums up the impact of Les Miserables
within the pages of the book itself thus:
“The
book which the reader has now before his eyes is, from one end to
the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever may be the
intermissions, the exceptions, or the defaults, the march from evil
to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true,
from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness
to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness
to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning,
angel at the end.”
Les
Miserables is the February
selection for the Best Books Club, an informal Internet gathering
of readers who love the classics. Join our group by logging on to
the website at www.thebestbooksclub.com or writing
me at bestbooks@meridianmagazine.
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here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.
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Meridian Magazine.
All Rights Reserved.
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