5.8.2025 | Most remarkable thing about Les Miserables so far is its similarity to the musical, which adapts the first book very nearly scene for scene; I had expected there to be considerably more in the 1200-page book than in a two hour musical, but the book is simply deeper rather than broader, each scene full of emotions and character histories that do not count up to very much more plot than the musical. It's also tonally quite well-represented by the musical: a little bit moralizing and obvious, a little bit melodramatic, very interested in the characters' feelings and the evolution of their moral sense in difficult times. I finished Book One and currently am in the middle of a long digression about the battle of Waterloo, which has been easily the most boring bit of the book so far, though I do enjoy the characterization of Napoleon "the fatalist":
Napoleon was accustomed to gaze steadily at war; he never added up the heart-rending details, cipher by cipher; ciphers mattered little to him, provided that they furnished the total—victory; he was not alarmed if the beginnings did go astray, since he thought himself the master and the possessor at the end; he knew how to wait, supposing himself to be out of the question, and he treated destiny as his equal: he seemed to say to fate, Thou wilt not dare.
The dignity and regal bearing of the morally pure, Fantine at her deathbed shining with new light, Valjean at trial commanding the awe of the whole room, was also striking. Each of these moments made me misty-eyed.
25.8.2025
People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: there is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions. In the meantime, let us study things which are no more. It is necessary to know them, if only for the purpose of avoiding them. The counterfeits of the past assume false names, and gladly call themselves the future. This spectre, the past, is given to falsifying its own passport. Let us inform ourselves of the trap.
20.5.2025 | Charmed by each character's indecision; it's difficult to really change. I think narrative mostly selects for the linear, related events and thoughts, but AK is very interior, and follows the winding turns through the characters' minds whether or not they end in action or change. Identifying with Levin's yearning for (his external observation of) the simplicity of the peasant; an exoticized idea he has of the simple life.
14.7.2025 | Levin in the city feels out of place, always busy but not doing anything of consequence. He feels awkward among the customs of city life but he is less outwardly irritable than he was at the beginning of the book. His opinions about art and science and his difficulty in expressing them to others verbally; seeing his ideas from inside we surely sympathize with him, and it seems clear the author does. It's nice to read about a sort of Prufrock type guy who feels out of place everywhere and isn't super excited by social norms but (contrary to the trope as I usually understand it) actually does have a place where he feels at home and worthwhile. Wendell Berry/Thoreau/homesteader behavior but it is working for him! This is truly a much better book than I anticipated. Sensitively written, attuned to the inner lives of all its characters in a way that feels really satisfying and emotionally cathartic but about small/everyday life things. I did not expect to like this so much.
22.7.2025 | Finished Anna Karenina! The final book dispenses with the nominal main character entirely, and even ships off Vronsky. Levin and his spiritual enlightenment is the main question of the last part. I think any time before about a year ago this would've made me super mad, but I liked it. I felt stirred by the way external life fails to reflect to him his newfound inner peace. This is definitely the part that will stick with me, though Anna's carriage ride on her final day was also striking, and I liked the short sections from Laska's point of view. Also Anna and Vronsky in Italy being artists sort of? A lot of the second half was really involving, despite being about stagnation. (Contrast with Bovary which almost attempts to create the experiences of its characters in the reader; then I think of James Joyce which is outright punishing to read when the character is feeling that way.) I read the critical supplements to Madame Bovary which happened to be included in the library book, and I was interested but I don't think any of them informed my interpretation. I wish I remembered why I had chosen Anna Karenina but it's been too many months for me to rediscover the chance reference that made me choose this long classic in particular. I have started Les Mis; it is by comparison much less interior, feels more theatrical or less realist. The characters are more clearly here to represent ideas, their traits are all pointed at a singular purpose. AK spent more time dwelling in the complexity of social existence; it definitely had things to say about living in a society but different characters had different ideas about that. LM is more interested in a total picture that contributes to one idea about mercy and justice and poverty. (More familiar to a fan of Dickens.) Influenced by the chapter I just read which is an extended nautical metaphor about falling to sin -- I am reminded of watching some Sea of Thieves this weekend, and the investment in realising the frustrations of sailing (bailing out water, repairing the ship as it sails, a lack of fast-travel, but also the beauty of the waves and sky, making sailing itself a pleasure) vs other games which treat chores not as the substance of life but a hindrance to be abbreviated in order to be dispensed with. I was initially thinking of this in terms of narrative function -- immersion in the real, the everyday, vs a gesture at the everyday in order to immerse more fully in an obvious fabrication, stagecraft over naturalism. Now, though, I think of Levin and his love of labor (and his disappointment in the experience of milestone moments, the awkwardness of his wedding, the sustained horrible tension of his brother's death, the detachment from his child's birth).