Victor Hugo

Barnaby Rudge It may be said that there is no comparison between that explosive opening of the intellect in Paris and an antiquated madman leading a knot of provincial Protestants.

The man of the hill, says Victor Hugo somewhere, fights for an idea.

The man of the forest for a prejudice.

Nevertheless, it remains true that the enemies of the red cap long attempted to represent it as a sham decoration in the style of Sim Tappertite.

this is sort of framed around or, you know, it gets to what they call the June Rebellion, right? Which is really only like this two-day thing.

these students at a barricade and i guess from what i was seeing is like mostly forgotten the history outside of this because victor hugo just happened to be there when it happened and i i hadn't realized that he publishes the book like pretty soon after it's only like 25 or 30 years after the events that happened i always just i i guess i hadn't thought about it but like that's still relatively new history um which is kind of interesting

And I think what also sometimes sort of speaks to like what's happening in the 1848 section of that in this piece is that in, so this is June.

In February, there was already a different revolution that had overthrown, I mean like the July contingent.

yeah it's

like that that works it makes sense i don't actually know that show really at all but i don't i understand that people like it um yeah but yeah so i just feel like could this could this have made more sense as like a more narrow thing but i don't know

yeah but i think it's also hard because like the author like victor hugo loves to be tedious and in-depth about things so i get like

right but that's something that works in a book

and yet of all celebrated composers berlioz was by all odds the most brilliantly gifted literature whose writings even to-day preserve most of their individuality polished style barbed irony and scintillant humor aside from his countless feuilletons and other articles his memoirs soires de l'orchestre travers champs and much else are literary masterpieces of their kind which even to-day retain their freshness and sparkle undoubtedly his important journalistic affiliations had the effect of involving him in numerous intrigues and difficulties inseparable from posts of influence besides sapping his energies that should have been employed otherwise yet he knew how to draw profit from the means of publicity and power which his connections placed in his hands and he did not hesitate to promote as best possible his personal interests when their marriage was solemnized at the british embassy with liszt as best man hector had exactly two hundred francs and harriet a mountain of debts for their honeymoon they could travel no further than the suburb of vincennes the wedding trip according to the groom was a masterpiece of love all the same he soon had chances to notice that his bride was not in the least musical likewise that she harbored a streak of jealousy not even the birth of their son louis on august fifteenth eighteen thirty four at their home on the hill of montmartre helped soothe this unhappy state of affairs which was to deepen as time went on harriet grew violently opposed to her husband's travelling though berlioz claims that a mad and for some time an absolutely groundless jealousy was at the bottom of it was it absolutely groundless the composer's intimate associate ernest le govet has led us into many secrets about the rift in the lute in his book soixante ans de the blonde irishwoman some years older than her husband was gradually losing her looks her failures as an actress had for some time increasingly embittered her and she presently took to drink the more the sentiments of the formerly so odd an hector changed to a correct and calm good-fellowship says le gouvet the more his wife became imperious in her exigencies and indulged in violent recriminations that were unfortunately justified berlioz whose position as critic and as composer producing his own works made the theatre his real world found there occasions for lapses that would have proved too much for stronger heads than his moreover his reputation as a misunderstood great artist endowed him with a halo that easily tempted his female interpreters to become his consolers madame berlioz searched his feuilletons for hints of his infidelities and not only there fragments of intercepted letters drawers indiscreetly opened brought her revelations just sufficient to make her beside herself without more than half illuminating her her jealousy was always outdistanced by the facts berlioz's heart went so fast that she could not keep pace with it when after so much research she lighted upon some object of his passion that particular passion was no more and then it being easy for him to prove his innocence at the moment the poor woman was as abashed as a dog which after having followed a track for half an hour arrives at the lair only to find the quarry already gone.

yet the jealous instincts of the once lovely ophelia and juliet were in fact only too sound and if her shrewishness increased by leaps and bounds she had no little cause for it hector's friends seemed perhaps a little less devoted to him since his marriage and since his miseries were a trifle less spectacular than they had been during his bachelor days but these comrades included not a few personages illustrious in their respective spheres among them were the musical chroniclers jeannin and the essayist and novelist le gouvet eugne sue alexander dumas sanveve victor hugo among the creative and performing musicians liszt of course and chopin who though personally the antithesis of berlioz never wavered in his faithfulness to the man and further flashing like a comet across the firmament of ector there was the demon fiddler in eighteen thirty four berlioz composed the descriptive symphony harold in italy in which byron's child harold the central figure of the work was represented by a viola solo Whether Hector's account of the genesis of the composition is wholly authentic or not, the tale he relates in his memoirs runs somewhat as follows.

Having heard the Symphonie Fantastique one day, Paganini came to see the composer and told him that he owned a wonderful Stradivari viola which he would love to play in public, though he had no music for it which he considered suitable.

Would Hector write him such a work? He had no confidence in anyone else.

With the mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and assumption and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science.

To come back anon to lighter themes and to revel in the grotesque humor of Dickens, the philosophic page of Bulwer, the chivalric romances of Walter Scott, the ideal creations of Hawthorne, the finished life pictures of George Eliot, the powerful imagination of Victor Hugo, and the masterly delineations of Thackeray.

To hang over the absorbing biographies of Dr. Franklin, Walter Scott, and Dr. Johnson.

To peruse with fresh delight the masterpieces of Irving and Goldsmith and the best essays of Hazlitt, De Quincey, Charles Lamb, and Montaigne.

I genuinely think, you know, the time has come for this idea.

We are, you know, the Victor Hugo quote, this is the moment for Georgism because there are no other options left.

And we are reaching the limits of, you know, particularly for an island like Britain, which is there isn't much land anyway.

So you've, and we're seeing that in America now as well.

He having lived with the heroes and the heroines of the past, the new man and the new woman, the new pathos and the new humor being alike unknown to him.

Scott and Dumas and Victor Hugo were his favorites.

Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, and The Arabian Nights he knew almost by heart, and these we discussed, exchanging many pleasant and profitable ideas upon the same.

But the psychological novel, I gathered, was not to his taste.

His first short story, the subject of which was, in fact, autobiographical, the sorry life of the poor student always half-starving was derisively rejected but he gained entry into an important st petersburg review with another and characteristic short story silence and with it won the attention of the russian literary world Now his popularity in Russia almost transcends that of Gorky.

Russian critics have said of Andreev, as Victor Hugo said of the author of The Fleur de Malle, that he has invented a new thrill, and Andreev seems indeed to be most at home in a region of horror, though it is very much psychologized horror.

A horror full of fine shades.

The Red Laugh is a literary outcome of the late war in Manchuria.

if my answer is all going to be

this though all right uh the category is the words of victor hugo All right.

Okay.

That's your category.