• Bio
  • Contact Ian

Ian Sidden

Subscribe

  • Email
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Craft
  • My News
  • About the Music
  • The Rest of Life

A Doozy of a Les Misérables Passage

January 5, 2015 By Ian Sidden

I’ve shifted some of my reading to my so-called “miracle morning”, and this morning I ran headlong into this doozy in “Les Misérables”:

Let us have compassion on the chastised. Alas! Who are we ourselves? Who am I who now address you? Who are you who are listening to me? And are you very sure that we have done nothing before we were born? The earth is not devoid of resemblance to a jail. Who knows whether man is not a recaptured offender against divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so made, that everywhere we feel the sense of punishment.

Are you what is called a happy man? Well! you are sad every day. Each day has its own great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for a health that is dear to you, to-day you fear for your own; to-morrow it will be anxiety about money, the day after to-morrow the diatribe of a slanderer, the day after that, the misfortune of some friend; then the prevailing weather, then something that has been broken or lost, then a pleasure with which your conscience and your vertebral column reproach you; again, the course of public affairs. This without reckoning in the pains of the heart. And so it goes on. One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day out of a hundred which is wholly joyous and sunny. And you belong to that small class who are happy! As for the rest of mankind, stagnating night rests upon them.

Thoughtful minds make but little use of the phrase: the fortunate and the unfortunate. In this world, evidently the vestibule of another, there are no fortunate.

-Hugo, Victor (2010–12–16). Les Misérables (English language) (pp. 651–652). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

One of my great surprises reading this book is that Hugo’s personal religion and morality are so hard to pin down. Every time I think I have a sense of it, it turns in a new direction.

But one thing is clear: compassion. The book is filled with compassionate moments leading to great changes in character’s lives. Any number of them, if erased, would fundamentally alter a character and shift the story. It’s so counter to what most modern stories praise, that to see it – especially embodied in the character of Jean Valjean – is occasionally breath-taking. A passage I recently read that is not mentioned in the musical or in the Liam Neeson movie actually took my breath away due to the incredible power of Valjean’s self-control and desire for self-determination and salvation through compassion.

In fact, I think my wife is right that this could serve as the or one of the thesis statements for the book. She said that after I read her the passage this morning.

We’re all in this together, whatever it is, so let’s be decent.

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailOn An Overgrown Path: Think on these things Default ThumbnailJean Valjean: The Pacifist Superhero Default ThumbnailOutliers: The Story of Success

Filed Under: The Rest of Life Tagged With: les miserables

« Three 2014 Habits to Take into 2015
Jean Valjean: The Pacifist Superhero »

About Ian

Ian Sidden is currently a bass member of the Theater Dortmund Opera chorus. Read More…

Latest Posts

Training Singing, Practicing Strength

In the past few years, I’ve begun viewing my singing work in a similar manner to my weight training. And vice versa. The two share obvious similarities. We use time and effort to get better: We want more power. We want more endurance. We want more agility. We want to be more durable. We want […]

Premiere: Fernand Cortez

Tonight we premiere our production of Gaspare Spontini’s Fernand Cortez, ou La conquête du Mexique at Opernhaus Dortmund. This is after a two year delay; originally we were to have premiered this in 2020, but history intervened. There are many versions of this opera floating around, and we are doing a version that has – […]

Premiere: Frédégonde

Here’s one I’ve been looking forward to for awhile. Tonight at Opernhaus Dortmund, we’re premiering Frédegonde for the first time in Germany. It’s a work inspired from the early history of the Merovingians in what is now France and the ongoing feud between two of the queens, Brunhild and Frédegonde. The work was composed by […]

“Ständchen” by Schubert, Guitar and Voice Arrangement

Here is a performance of my self accompanied guitar arrangement of Franz Schubert’s “Ständchen”.

PREMIERE: Tosca

Tonight at Opernhaus Dortmund, we’re premiering our “Tosca”, which is the first premiere including the chorus since March 13, 2020.

Copyright © 2023 · WordPress