Serious Play

Nota 10

Les Misérables is one of only a few novels that have taken on a vivid afterlife long after their initial publication. There have been (horribly) abridged versions, rewritings, movies, and, of course, the world-famous musical, yet in order to understand the true scale of Victor Hugo’s achievement, one must return to the text itself. Like Tolstoy’s War and Peace, this novel is concerned with the way in which individual lives are played out in the context of epoch-defining historical events. What is “History”? Hugo asks us. Who creates “History”? To whom does it happen? What role does the individual play in such events? The character of Jean Valjean is thus the key to Les Misérables, an escaped convict whose desperate need to redeem himself through his adopted daughter, Cosette, lies at the heart of the novel. Valjean is pursued throughout by the extraordinary Inspector Javert, with whose life his becomes irrevocably entwined, and who is relentless in his determination to uphold the law and to apprehend him. This personal drama of hunter and prey is then cast into the cauldron of revolutionary Paris as Cosette falls in love with the radical idealist Marius and Valjean grapples with the possibility of losing all that he has ever loved. The novel draws the reader into the politics and geography of Paris with a vividness that is unparalleled, and then leads on, incorporating Hugo’s characteristic meditations upon the universe, to the Battle of Waterloo, and the final, astonishing denouement. There are not many texts that can be termed national classics, but Les Misérables is one, and is a landmark in the development of the historical novel that stands alongside the greatest works of Dickens and Tolstoy. It is also a deeply compelling read.