Pascalian Reflections in Les Miserables
1999; University of Iowa; Volume: 78; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0031-7977
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Critical Theory
Resumoonly refers to Pascal by name in opening chapters of Miserables, in course of his description of Monseigneur Myriel, Bishop of Digne.(1) Here, ambivalently calls seventeenth-century Jansenist both a genius and a madman, a thinker devoted entirely to contemplation of absolute but so dazed by vision terrible de la montagne infinie that his mind slipped into insanity.(2) Many other paragraphs of Miserables, in which speaks of distant heavens and importance of prayer, suggest, however, that he felt an affinity and even an admiration for author of Pensees. Even title of his novel, especially original title, Miseres, points reader in direction of Pascal's thoughts. The resemblance between and Pascal is not a new idea to critical studies of Miserables, although most scholars see these resemblances as coincidences resulting from common religious preoccupations.(3) Henri Peyre best explains these overlaps in After 1850: where he notes Hugo's increasing obsession with God in works composed during exile and fact that Hugo had personal experience of God, experience that he considered as irrecusable as sign that Pascal, Jansenist, believed that he had received from Jesus Christ.(4) In Victor and Visionary Novel, Victor Brombert suggests a further reason for these similarities: Les Miserables, in Hugo's mind, grew to be an increasingly religious book. All of human destiny, as narrator explains, is summed up in dilemma: loss or salvation(5)--the same dilemma that inspired Pensees. Still other critics have proposed a deliberate connection between two writers. Kathryn Grossman, in Figuring Transcendence in Miserables, cites a number of concepts, most specifically the affinities between creatures and creation (or Creator), that is, between infinitesimal and boundless(6) that originated in Pensees. Bernard Leuilliot establishes that reread Pensees in Brussels in 1852 and found it un vrai livre d'exil.(7) Finally, Jacques Neefs points out imagistic and stylistic similarities between two works. In Miserables, weaves thousands of reflections on human condition into plot; he has a habit, like Pascal, of dramatizing philosophical debates through contrasts of light and dark, ascents and falls, vertigo.(8) While all of these comments draw our attention to curious way in which Hugo's novel so often echoes Pascal's obsessions, they fail to compare texts of Miserables and Pensees in a coherent fashion. The author's frequent allusions to such key Pascalian concepts as les deux infinis and Dieu sensible au coeur suggest that Pensees serves as a more prominent intertext in Miserables than critics have previously recognized. Moreover, a close examination of Hugo's conception of deity, relationship between human and divine, and redemption reveals that he understands these issues in same way, and often in same terms, as his Jansenist predecessor. A comparison between Miserables and Pascal's work allows us to approach novel's protagonist, Jean Valjean, as a character who embodies efficacy of faith and moral commitment advocated in Pensees and to interpret story of this hero's progress from crime to sanctity as a nineteenth-century version of Pascal's wager. Miserables, like Pensees, attempts to persuade its readers to wager in favor of God's existence and soul's immortality. The 1861 revisions of 1848 manuscript clearly orient novel in direction of theological argumentation. Albouy and Brombert have commented upon most significant additions: Bishop of Digne appears in novel before Jean Valjean and engages in discussions with both believers and non-believers in which defenders of God carry off victory; curious digression after introduction of Petit Picpus convent entitled Parenthese pleads for necessity of religious faith; long exposition of Battle of Waterloo insists upon deity's supervision of history. …
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