To love another person is to see the face of God

Today, I finished reading Les Miserables. I had been reading it off-and-on since about September. I must say that I was a bit overwhelmed when I finished reading the last words. Any book of more than 1,200 pages becomes a friend, and I was saddened that my journey with this particular friend has drawn to a close (for now -- books are forgiving friends, and they don't mind years of ignorance).

To say Les Miserables was a good read is to somewhat miss the point. It is a good read, but, I think that the plot (though certainly interesting and polished) is more of a device of the central thesis. I had this feeling when I read Brideshead Revisited some time ago. In this regard, they may be seen as cousins. Brideshead muses on the workings of grace in depraved humanity, while Les Mis concerns itself with the application of mercy and love to those who are undeserving (or so we might think). We see the actors on a stage of divine proportions. The Bishop's first merciful act toward Jean Valjean sets in motion the rest of the novel, wherein Valjean's goodness and mercy towards others (as well as his interior struggles to form his conscience uprightly) influence the other characters profoundly. There exist not a few foils to this central motion of the plot. There are the Thenardiers - the very personifications of selfishness. Javert, clearly, is at the other end of the spectrum, in that he forgets himself (and his humanity) for the sake of the sterile letter of the law. Marius is torn between his love for Cosette and his desire for the restoration of the Republic. Cosette is the personification of innocent love itself - standing in the world as if an icon.

My first exposure to the story was through the film version released two Christmases ago. I did not even know the general storyline before then. When I saw the film, I was really quite moved. The story felt so fresh and real - in a way that many stories of that age do not. In a way, it was very rewarding to move from the general outline sketched in the film to the very deep well of information conveyed in the book. Entire subplots bubbled to the surface and formed streams that swirled throughout the story, tying this and that together. To continue the metaphor, the streams which are the subplots truly influence the outcome of the river, which is the main arc of the plot. To fit such complexity into a film, things are necessarily flattened quite a bit, and much of the richness of the layers beneath the surface was lost.

But, in the end, it is not about these plots and subplots, it is about a group of characters struggling in their circumstances to do what is right and to make decisions for the betterment of what they love (whether it be the Revolution, the girl through the gate, the prostitute, the law, or money). Seeing into the minds of the characters as they struggle with their decisions is what makes Les Miserables such an engaging and fascinating read.

Victor Hugo on the cosmos

I am about 3/4ths through reading Les Miserables (only about 300 pages to go!), and it is proving to be one of my favorite books that I've ever read. It seems to me that Hugo, though certainly quite wordy, moves at just the right pace. The action never gets too far ahead of itself, and the background information on history and geography never (really) overwhelms the plot. In fact, I tend to quite enjoy these background chapters, because it gives the author some space to be a bit philosophical about the story at hand. One portion of such a chapter struck me as quite beautiful and worth transcribing in its entirety:

Nothing is truly small, as anyone knows who has peered into the secrets of Nature. Though philosophy may reach no final conclusion as to original cause or ultimate extent, the contemplative mind is moved to ecstasy by this merging of forces into unity. Everything works upon everything else. The science of mathematics applies to the clouds; the radiance of starlight nourishes the rose; no thinker will dare to say that the scent of hawthorn is valueless to the constellations. Who can predict the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who can measure the action and counter-action between infinitely great and infinitely small, the play of causes in the depths of being, the cataclysms of creation? The cheese-mite has its worth; the smallest is large and the largest is small; everything balances within the laws of necessity, a terrifying vision for the mind. Between living things and objects there is a miraculous relationship; within that inexhaustible compass, from the sun to the grub, there is no room for disdain; each thing needs every other thing. Light does not carry the scents of the earth into the upper air without knowing what it is doing with them; darkness confers the essence of the stars upon the sleeping flowers. Every bird that flies carries a shred of the infinite in its claws. The process of birth is the shedding of a meteorite or the peck of a hatching swallow on the shell of its egg; it is the coming of an earthworm or of Socrates, both equally important to the scheme of things. Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? You may choose. A patch of mould is a galaxy of blossom; a nebula is an antheap of stars. There is the same affinity, if still more inconceivable, between things of the mind and material things. Elements and principles are intermingled; they combine and marry and each increases and completes the other, so that the material and the moral world both are finally manifest. The phenomenon perpetually folds in upon itself. In the vast cosmic changes, universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, borne by the mysterious flow of invisible currents, making use of everything, wasting not a single sleeper's dream, sowing an animalcule here and shattering a star there, swaying and writhing, turning light into a force and thought into an element; disseminated yet indivisible, dissolving all things except that geometrical point, the self; reducing all things to the core which is the soul, and causing all things to flower into God; all activities from the highest to the humblest - harnessing the movements of the earth and the flight of an insect - to the secret workings of an illimitable mechanism; perhaps - who can say? - governing, if only by the universality of the law, the evolution of a comet in the heavens by the circling of infusoria in the drop of water. A machine made of spirit. A huge meshing of gears in which the first motive force is the gnat and the larges wheel the zodiac.