Les Misérables

We had a course called CARTS (creativity in arts and science). The prof circulated 2 handouts from this book which I read and felt I had read the complete book some time earlier. Now as I read this book afresh, everything seems so profound. For instance,

"Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in prayer."

How commensurate is each word for we indeed carry this body based on our own wants and desires. Now I understand why child is the father of the man. All we need to do is watch our thoughts, for they translate into words and deeds, or even simpler, watch our breath and merely observe it.

Now I realize why my sister who is a dentist can do the things (deal with blood and teeth) that i merely say, while she does it. I see the world with rose tinted glasses, seeing only the positive and the beautiful, while she sees it as it is. I left biology because of dissections, to go beyond this flesh and blood for healing the sufferers is something that doctors do and now I respect her even more and all doctors. To be completely aware, without being involved is the greatest mastery of this birth. And so Hugo’s lines as compared to Wilde’s lines (All art is quite useless) in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” makes a distinct impression on me:
The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps."

Senator’s lines on it is better to be a tooth than the grass, loud proclamations over existence have such inner meaning as well.

When Jean Valjean aka M. sur M says the following:
“The kindness which consists in upholding a woman of the town against a citizen, the police agent against the mayor, the man who is down against the man who is up in the world, is what I call false kindness. That is the sort of kindness which disorganizes society. Good God! it is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just.” It again raises the eternal struggle underneath, how different is this external perception for every individual.

“One can no more prevent thought from recurring to an idea than one can the sea from returning to the shore: the sailor calls it the tide; the guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does the ocean.” I am wondering what beckons people to beaches, why does it sound musical to some and disharmonious to others – these waves.

“That light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had hitherto beheld rays; from the same man it constructs two different phantoms, and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader.”

Why do very few people see the coin as a whole, while others confine only to the brilliance and yet others focus on the darkness? What is that one needs?

And again, the war history is overwhelming and the connection to explain where the post man Joseph drives the post wagon “What is Waterloo? A victory? No. The winning number in the lottery.”

“The peculiar property of truth is never to commit excesses. What need has it of exaggeration? There is that which it is necessary to destroy, and there is that which it is simply necessary to elucidate and examine. What a force is kindly and serious examination! Let us not apply a flame where only a light is required.” How can Librans and Sagittarians learn to apply this to their daily lives?

“To roam thoughtfully about, that is to say, to lounge, is a fine employment of time in the eyes of the philosopher;…. end of the divine murmur, beginning of the human uproar; hence an extraordinary interest.”

Almost every chapter had paragraphs of wisdom and the fact that he was a (Feb 26, 1802) moon scorpio, sun-piscean further intrigued me. When I did a wiki and found his 19 year old daughter dead, another daughter in an insane asylum and sons dead, somehow made me wonder about the fate of the children he had in spite of achieving such greatness in literature. Ok, let me not mix astrology with literature.

His book made me laugh, made me cry, made me go through all emotions. His way of building up a huge background for the players to enact was at times painful to read. At times, it made me wonder about his methodical nature. How assiduous he was in describing each and every detail, right from the wars to the sewers.

Jean Valjean’s life of untold miseries and hardships and divine interventions and finally to die with just a moment’s relief before death made me feel what life is this to die thus. Fantine’s death was depressing enough. Only Cosette’s AndTheyHappilyLivedEverAfter gave some relief. It took me 2-3 months to read this book. Why Vikram Seth’s Suitable Boy hardly took little more than a week. That was like reading an mega tv serial. India why the half the world lives below the poverty line. The story of African orphaned children, widowed women with AIDs in the documentary on Nile Perch, makes one acutely aware of the conditions of the miserables everywhere in this world. But what is being done about them? It pains me and something will be done soon with god’s grace.