Let's be honest. Last summer I listed to the soundtrack of Wicked, and it was inevitable that I would eventually read the book.
When I started listening to Les Miserables, did I not realize that nothing could prevent me from diving headfirst into Hugo's 1,463 page tome?
After just a few pages, the book (translated by Fahnestock and MacAfee) so far is excellent. I've had to mark three lines for future reference. Two are perhaps didactic and even cliched, yet somehow deeply meaningful to me.
"Err, falter, sin, but be upright" (13).
"Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?" (16).
The other line just makes me smile in wry amusement:
"Clearly, he had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the Gospels" (14).
I'm not even sure I understand it yet, but my summer reading is...changing my religious perspective. Giving it back to me, more accurately. Or giving it to me anew, even better. And I think it is continuing. The books I'm reading this summer are fundamentally changing me. It is always good for that to be possible.
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That first section of Les Mis is one of the most wonderful displays of a true Christian ethic that I've ever read.
ReplyDeleteIn central Minnesota there is a town named Hugo. It was indeed named for Victor Hugo. I have no idea why a little town in central Minnesota was named for a French novelist, but it's kind of cool.
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