Horsetooth Reservoir, Fort Collins, Co. July 2015
Half Moon Bay, CA. August 2015. Last summer, I bought a bridge for nine dollars and forty-three cents. Shipping included. It was long. Took me a full week to cross, with a couple hours travelling each day. Plus rest stops along the way. But when I finally reached the view at its end — 500 pages later — I couldn’t believe how fast the journey had flown by, and how much I wanted to open the cover and begin again. The bridge is named The Man Who Laughs. It was built by Victor Hugo in 1869.
If the badge of a well-travelled bridge is engine oil and tire marks, then for a book it’s a broken spine, dog-eared corners and marginalia. Judging by the condition of my copy, I was its first traveller. This is tragic considering that its 115 years old. Printed in England in 1900 under the title By Order of the King, the hardback has survived one Cold War, two World Wars, and three generations of increasingly tyrannical governments. If only more minds had paid the nine dollars and forty-three cents toll and not taken the tourist trap exit: ‘Vote Your Homeland into Socialism’…
Victor Hugo said that, “If a writer wrote only for his time, I would break my pen and throw it away.” He didn’t, which in part is why his novels are some of the greatest ever written, because they explore timeless, universal, human viewpoints that every generation seeks to find — past, present, and future: a view of what matters — what’s important — what’s good, or in Aristotle’s words, of what “might be and ought to be”. All of us are hungry for a sight of the ideal — the heroic. Not just eye-candy, but eye-protein.
Most likely you’ve heard of or read Hugo’s more famous works, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which are terrific in their own right. But The Man Who Laughs connects us to an especially important, timely vista: the systematic scarring and deformation of mankind by political authorities.
If the badge of a well-travelled bridge is engine oil and tire marks, then for a book it’s a broken spine, dog-eared corners and marginalia. Judging by the condition of my copy, I was its first traveller. This is tragic considering that its 115 years old. Printed in England in 1900 under the title By Order of the King, the hardback has survived one Cold War, two World Wars, and three generations of increasingly tyrannical governments. If only more minds had paid the nine dollars and forty-three cents toll and not taken the tourist trap exit: ‘Vote Your Homeland into Socialism’…
Victor Hugo said that, “If a writer wrote only for his time, I would break my pen and throw it away.” He didn’t, which in part is why his novels are some of the greatest ever written, because they explore timeless, universal, human viewpoints that every generation seeks to find — past, present, and future: a view of what matters — what’s important — what’s good, or in Aristotle’s words, of what “might be and ought to be”. All of us are hungry for a sight of the ideal — the heroic. Not just eye-candy, but eye-protein.
Most likely you’ve heard of or read Hugo’s more famous works, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which are terrific in their own right. But The Man Who Laughs connects us to an especially important, timely vista: the systematic scarring and deformation of mankind by political authorities.
The story begins with a boy standing alone, looking out to sea at a small ship rising and falling atop violent waves. It’s sailed, we learn, by his kidnappers, who for some reason have chosen now to abandon him. As the ship disappears, the storm that’s been brewing above the water strikes land, threatening to freeze the boy unless he find shelter. Staggering through a nightmare of snow and night and wilderness, he discovers the body of a dead woman, and her baby girl, suckling at the last drop of milk — now frozen — on her mother’s breast. The infant’s eyes are glassy; she’s been blinded by the storm. The boy takes her in his arms, and continues, determined to save her too.
He does, eventually reaching a warm fire in the wagon of a travelling healer named Ursus and his pet wolf, Homo. The interior roof of the wagon holds a sky of scribbled constellations — various philosophical maxims about the absurdity of existence. The old man’s “great business was to hate the human race,” and he jests gloomily that as a healer, “I do men all the harm I can.” Then, as the firelight flickers, confirming Ursus’ tragic sense of life, the old man sights two matching scars on the boy’s face — ones curved upwards from the corners of his mouth. His kidnappers, the Comprachicos (‘child-buyers’), had cut a smile into his face.
I won’t give any more plot away, but on a thematic level The Man Who Laughs explores the relationship between political authority and mankind at-large. It takes place in 17th Century England, and certainly explores historical time-specific infractions, but really the work is speaking about injustices perpetrated by governments upon people — yesterday, today, and tomorrow — that is, as I said earlier, the systematic scarring and deformation of mankind by political authorities. While Hugo does give his view on the psychological issues at play in the minds of rulers, really the focus isn’t so much ‘Why do rulers hurt people?’ but rather ‘Look what hurt they do!’ Or — considering the story’s attention to the lives of the scarred boy, blind girl, and jaded old man, and the love they learn from one another despite it all — perhaps The Man Who Laughs is a melody about life’s possibilities and a requiem for its destruction.
One relevant historical note: Hugo wrote this book (and Les Miserables) while living in exile on the island of Guernsey off the coast of France. Leading up to this 1855 exile, he spent fourteen years serving in various parliamentary roles, a fierce critic of capital punishment, and proponent of universal education as well as freedom of the press. When Napoleon III took complete power in 1851 and established an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly declared him a traitor. In response, some of his essays were officially deemed illegal to read, and he soon fled with his family for safety.
A century later, we are still suffering under Napoleons and censorships in modern exiles and prisons. But we don’t have to. We can get the last laugh. { JG }
He does, eventually reaching a warm fire in the wagon of a travelling healer named Ursus and his pet wolf, Homo. The interior roof of the wagon holds a sky of scribbled constellations — various philosophical maxims about the absurdity of existence. The old man’s “great business was to hate the human race,” and he jests gloomily that as a healer, “I do men all the harm I can.” Then, as the firelight flickers, confirming Ursus’ tragic sense of life, the old man sights two matching scars on the boy’s face — ones curved upwards from the corners of his mouth. His kidnappers, the Comprachicos (‘child-buyers’), had cut a smile into his face.
I won’t give any more plot away, but on a thematic level The Man Who Laughs explores the relationship between political authority and mankind at-large. It takes place in 17th Century England, and certainly explores historical time-specific infractions, but really the work is speaking about injustices perpetrated by governments upon people — yesterday, today, and tomorrow — that is, as I said earlier, the systematic scarring and deformation of mankind by political authorities. While Hugo does give his view on the psychological issues at play in the minds of rulers, really the focus isn’t so much ‘Why do rulers hurt people?’ but rather ‘Look what hurt they do!’ Or — considering the story’s attention to the lives of the scarred boy, blind girl, and jaded old man, and the love they learn from one another despite it all — perhaps The Man Who Laughs is a melody about life’s possibilities and a requiem for its destruction.
One relevant historical note: Hugo wrote this book (and Les Miserables) while living in exile on the island of Guernsey off the coast of France. Leading up to this 1855 exile, he spent fourteen years serving in various parliamentary roles, a fierce critic of capital punishment, and proponent of universal education as well as freedom of the press. When Napoleon III took complete power in 1851 and established an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly declared him a traitor. In response, some of his essays were officially deemed illegal to read, and he soon fled with his family for safety.
A century later, we are still suffering under Napoleons and censorships in modern exiles and prisons. But we don’t have to. We can get the last laugh. { JG }
Pacifica, California. September 2015
