Victor Hugo: The Writer Who Loved the Soul of Man

I visited an old bookstore in Manhattan this March and bought a vintage, hardcover edition of Les Misérables. When reading Hugo, one finds the solemn and deep contours of one’s own sadness – which one must suppress to get through a productive day – suddenly flourishing in one’s consciousness, finding their cathartic, aestheticized expression. The empathy Hugo’s expressive style evokes for his characters is the antidote we need to the coldness of our detached, distracted world. Penetrating through his descriptions of unimaginable suffering and injustice is a fundamental, juxtaposing benevolence: a sense that the noble soul, in all its quiet grandeur, never permits its suffering to be the final word on life:

“I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old; his coat was threadbare – there were holes at his elbows; the rain passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”

This is classic Hugo. He piles horror upon horror, then sweeps it all aside in a single life-affirming declaration which relegates suffering to the periphery of man’s inner life.

Almost all writers extol mankind but consider man unexceptional. Not Victor Hugo. As the last Romantic-era writer, Hugo celebrates the heroic individual’s soul – and condemns society for suffocating it and exploiting its virtue.

Read Hugo. Experience, in Les Misérables, the moral redemption of a traumatised convict, imprisoned for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread, who had “sentenced society to his hatred” – and whose adopted daughter taught him the meaning of love. Join revolutionaries at the barricades, fighting tyranny. Feel the righteousness of Inspector Javert’s dedication to justice.

Read Hugo, not as a dutiful task, but as an aesthetic experience. Let the stars into your soul, and you’ll understand why that young man, impoverished though he was, held heaven in his heart.