clockreadslesmis - Tumblr blog

clockreadslesmis · 2 years

Text

Love and the Infinite

something I wrote on discord in response to someone asking for/about “[quotes] about love, maybe even explicitly in a religious context“. only semi-on-topic — this really wanted to be a meta about Revolution, the Infinite, love, death, and the way the latter two are inextricably linked with the former throughout the Brick — but I want to archive it in A Place Which Isn’t Discord because discord is terrible for meta.

corrections, additions, etc. are appreciated. I’m pretty certain I’ve Horribly Misused certain terms about Romanticism, and I know very little about the historical background.

all quotes are from the Hapgood translation on Project Gutenberg.

***

[re. “to love another person is to see the face of God” being a musical quote rather than a brick quote]

something similar from the brick is

To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is a fulfilment

(5.6.2 Jean Valjean Still Wears His Arm in a Sling)

there are definitely Other Quotes About Love From Les Mis, but I think this is the one I've seen most often. and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the inspiration for the lyric!!

I looked again (ie, did a ctrl+f for "to love", saw there were only 25 results, and decided to look through them all) and found

God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent.

(4.5.4, A Heart Beneath a Stone)

which seems more similar to the lyric to me!!

pretty much all of 4.5.4 A Heart Beneath a Stone might be relevant to you, actually!! it's got love And God, and if I tried to pick out particularly Relevant-Sounding and/or Quotable bits, I'd just have to post the whole chapter :P https://www.gutenberg.org/files/135/135-h/135-h.htm#link2HCH0246

this one isn't Explicitly connected to religion, but it is about love-in-the-context-of-Progress-and-The-Future!! I'd say love, the Infinite*, and The Revolution are pretty much equally entwined in les mis

it compares the beauty and necessary pain of Revolution (something something, Grotesque And Sublime, yay Romanticism!!), and the beauty and necessary pain of love. to love others is to see that The World Is Terrible In Many Ways Because There Is So Much Unnecessary Suffering**, and love is inherent in revolution: 'the luminous' in this quote refers to not only those who love, but Those Who Use That Love To Bring About Revolution (think Enjolras!!). since revolution is, necessary to Reduce The Suffering... idk, I'm not good at words

However, he who says light does not, necessarily, say joy. People suffer in the light; excess burns. The flame is the enemy of the wing. To burn without ceasing to fly,—therein lies the marvel of genius.

When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The luminous weep, if only over those in darkness.

(4.7.1 Origins)

here's one which is actually in the context of religion!!

He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah’s mantle; he projected no ray of future upon the dark groundswell of events; he did not see to condense in flame the light of things; he had nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician about him. This humble soul loved, and that was all.

That he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration is probable: but one can no more pray too much than one can love too much; and if it is a heresy to pray beyond the texts, Saint Theresa and Saint Jerome would be heretics.

He inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates. The universe appeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere he felt fever, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and, without seeking to solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound. The terrible spectacle of created things developed tenderness in him; he was occupied only in finding for himself, and in inspiring others with the best way to compassionate and relieve. That which exists was for this good and rare priest a permanent subject of sadness which sought consolation.

There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction of pity. Universal misery was his mine. The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness. Love each other; he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that was the whole of his doctrine. One day, that man who believed himself to be a “philosopher,” the senator who has already been alluded to, said to the Bishop: “Just survey the spectacle of the world: all war against all; the strongest has the most wit. Your love each other is nonsense.”—“Well,” replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contesting the point, “if it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it, as the pearl in the oyster.” Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics—all those profundities which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness; destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent I, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.

Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior of mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without troubling his own mind with them, and who cherished in his own soul a grave respect for darkness.

(1.1.14, What He Thought)

(nb: the italics are in the copy I'm looking at; I didn't add them in randomly :P)

I've quoted the entire several paragraphs for the Context, but quotes you might find relevant [to the initial question about quotes about love in a religious context] are

This humble soul loved, and that was all.

and

Love each other; he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that was the whole of his doctrine. One day, that man who believed himself to be a “philosopher,” the senator who has already been alluded to, said to the Bishop: “Just survey the spectacle of the world: all war against all; the strongest has the most wit. Your love each other is nonsense.”—“Well,” replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contesting the point, “if it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it, as the pearl in the oyster.”

these ones are on familial love. I've bolded Particular Quotes You Might Find Useful :D they're all from the same chapter

All the passion and affection within him awoke, and rushed towards that child. He approached the bed, where she lay sleeping, and trembled with joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it meant; for that great and singular movement of a heart which begins to love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.

Poor old man, with a perfectly new heart!

Only, as he was five and fifty, and Cosette eight years of age, all that might have been love in the whole course of his life flowed together into a sort of ineffable light.

It was the second white apparition which he had encountered. The Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon; Cosette caused the dawn of love to rise.

and

Nature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf between Jean Valjean and Cosette; destiny filled in this gulf. Destiny suddenly united and wedded with its irresistible power these two uprooted existences, differing in age, alike in sorrow. One, in fact, completed the other. Cosette’s instinct sought a father, as Jean Valjean’s instinct sought a child. To meet was to find each other. At the mysterious moment when their hands touched, they were welded together. When these two souls perceived each other, they recognized each other as necessary to each other, and embraced each other closely.

and

Life, henceforth, appeared to him to be full of interest; men seemed to him good and just; he no longer reproached any one in thought; he saw no reason why he should not live to be a very old man, now that this child loved him. He saw a whole future stretching out before him, illuminated by Cosette as by a charming light.

(2.4.3 Two Mistakes Make One Piece of Good Fortune)

2.3.11, 2.4.2, and 2.4.3 are presumably what Suddenly is based on :)

and we're on to the final two bits I want to mention!! the quotes themselves are mostly about Love And Revolution, but the Infinite veri much makes an appearance: both these bits are from The Barricades, so God Has to be there — as we saw earlier with G and the Bishop :D (...I've been Having Emotions about Parallels between G and The Amis At The Barricades for the past week and a half. someone send help)

the context for this bit if you don't already know it is: a man at the barricades named Le Cabuc shoots an innocent bystander ~in the name of the Revolution~. Enjolras immediately executes Le Cabuc (well. he gives him one minute to Reflect, and then executes him), since the murder of innocents Cannot happen at the barricade. both from an optics perspective, and bc the killing of innocents really is antithetical to The Purpose Of The Revolution. I think it's notable that Enjolras is literally embodying Divine Justice when he does this although he's compared to the ancient greek goddess of divine justice, Themis, rather than the Christian God. and then he condemns himself to death for condemning another person to death. Enjolras Sure Is A Person!!

anyway the Actual Quote is

“So be it,” replied Enjolras. “One word more. In executing this man, I have obeyed necessity; but necessity is a monster of the old world, necessity’s name is Fatality. Now, the law of progress is, that monsters shall disappear before the angels, and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce the word love. No matter, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it. Love, the future is thine. Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come that we are about to die.”

(4.12.8 Many Interrogation Points With Regard to a Certain Le Cabuc)

again I've bolded bits which are probably most relevant to you :P

......also, See What I Mean about Love and Revolution being entwined (with Love and Death being The Sublime And Grotesque Elements of Revolution And Progress....... ROMANTICISM. I'm sure I'm using all those concepts veri slightly wrong :P) :D

FINAL BIT!! I... really doubt this will be relevant to your project, but it Is relevant to my infodump the Themes of Love, Revolution, and The Infinite, and thus I shall bring it up anyway :D it's from the Quel Horizon speech, where Enjolras acts in his Narrative Role (as The Embodiment Of The Revolution, Spokesperson On Behalf Of The Author, and, uh, Priest Of The Ideal***)™

"Friends, the present hour in which I am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. Oh! the human race will be delivered, raised up, consoled! We affirm it on this barrier. Whence should proceed that cry of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is the point of junction, of those who think and of those who suffer; this barricade is not made of paving-stones, nor of joists, nor of bits of iron; it is made of two heaps, a heap of ideas, and a heap of woes. Here misery meets the ideal. The day embraces the night, and says to it: ‘I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.’ From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our death. Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn."

(5.1.5 The Horizon Which One Beholds From the Summit of a Barricade)

(if this were The Meta It Wanted To Be Deep In Its Heart Of Hearts about love/death/Revolution/God as aspects of each other, I’d probably want to talk a lot more about this whole passage)

.....y'know, I said Love And Death were Sublime And Grotesque elements of The Revolution, but I do wonder if Enjolras thinks of it as, Revolution And Death are the Sublime And Grotesque elements of Love.

since (I'd say) Enjolras's love for The People is expressed as Belief In Equality™, he spends a lot of the speech talking about Equality rather than directly mentioning Love, which is why I haven't just quoted the entire thing. but the entire speech is fundamentally about Love!!

(SORRY TO ANY LITERARY ANALYSIS PEOPLE WHO ARE CRYING AT MY MISUSE OF ROMANTICISM AND THE SUBLIME AND GROTESQUE..... I Won't Stop Though :) )

...OH YES and if your project is about Love And Christianity, you might be able to do something with "The day embraces the night, and says to it: 'I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me'" and Jesus!! with Jesus as the Day and humanity as the Night (which goes well with light representing the Infinite to some degree as well as Progress, and darkness/night representing suffering. which I'm sure you can link to Humanity In A State Of Sin!!). since there's the sacrifice and the resurrection and the promise of Something Better...

***

* the Infinite being God —

"'The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an I. That I of the infinite is God.'"

(1.1.10 The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light)

(note that line is spoken by G the Conventionist, who even the Bishop doesn't like at first because of his role in the revolution!! and G is speaking in response to the Bishop saying he thinks True Social Change/Revolution is incomplete without God)

** ...there's probably a less, uh, Depression-Brain way to say this. I am not a Literary Analysis Person :P

*** he's compared to a prophet and an angel as he starts speaking. Just Normal Things!!

He was engaged in thought; he quivered, as at the passage of prophetic breaths; places where death is have these effects of tripods. A sort of stifled fire darted from his eyes, which were filled with an inward look. All at once he threw back his head, his blond locks fell back like those of an angel on the sombre quadriga made of stars, they were like the mane of a startled lion in the flaming of an halo

(5.1.5 The Horizon Which One Beholds From the Summit of a Barricade)

#Les Miserables #Les Mis #Les Misérables #Not sure if Tumblr counts that as a separate tag #This would work so much better with line breaks... I swear Tumblr used to have a line break option :(#It's really more A Collection Of Quotes With A Tiny Bit Of Commentary On Linked Themes than a Proper Meta #But it's the best I can manage :')#It's edited very slightly from my original posts‚ but only very slightly #Sorry it's such a long post! I don't want to stick it behind a readmore though because I have seen too many readmore'd metas #lost to time and deleted blogs #And on the visible part of the post‚ these words appear: I have Written an Excellent and Much-Referenced Meta;#Look on my Works‚ ye Fandom‚ and rejoice!#Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that once-beloved Blog‚ boundless and bare the lone and level dashboards stretch far away.#...You know how it is. :P #This is Not the sort of post I expect anyone to try to reference in five years' time‚ but it's The Principle Of The Thing #Long post ///#<-- I'M TRYING TO MITIGATE THE DAMAGE :(#I wanted to title this 'Love and the Infinite (and REVOLUTION!!!)'‚ but alas I barely talk about Revolution in this #There is SO MUCH MORE TO WRITE on this topic #I know I've missed a bunch of really important stuff pertaining to the original request alone #Let alone about what I actually ended up writing about #(Honestly I think it's not just Love/Infinite/Revolution/Death‚ I think Sacrifice is in there too)

2 notes · View notes