"Yes, it is well written." An understatement. The prose is beautiful, sometimes stunning.
"I--I would want to read the whole thing," says Combeferre, surprising himself as he says it. But it's true. "The book is so sprawling, so ambitious. I can tell as much even from the little I've looked at. It would be worth seeing how much it encompasses." A Bishop in Digne, a convict named Valjean, Fantine the hapless grisette, Marius Pontmercy, and, strewn somewhere in the middle, the Amis de l'ABC.
"As you say--some problems. Hugo's politics evidently changed, if he could write about us with such obvious sympathy. But you can still see some of the old sensibility there, can you not? I haven't yet read the part where he talks of Louis-Philippe, of course, but that attitude, that sense of--of class allegiance--seems present elsewhere in the book as well."
So Bossuet is to blame for the satyr, hmmm? Combeferre shakes his head. "And I don't envy Bossuet that conversation with Grantaire."
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Date: 2015-01-19 07:35 am (UTC)From:"I--I would want to read the whole thing," says Combeferre, surprising himself as he says it. But it's true. "The book is so sprawling, so ambitious. I can tell as much even from the little I've looked at. It would be worth seeing how much it encompasses." A Bishop in Digne, a convict named Valjean, Fantine the hapless grisette, Marius Pontmercy, and, strewn somewhere in the middle, the Amis de l'ABC.
"As you say--some problems. Hugo's politics evidently changed, if he could write about us with such obvious sympathy. But you can still see some of the old sensibility there, can you not? I haven't yet read the part where he talks of Louis-Philippe, of course, but that attitude, that sense of--of class allegiance--seems present elsewhere in the book as well."
So Bossuet is to blame for the satyr, hmmm? Combeferre shakes his head. "And I don't envy Bossuet that conversation with Grantaire."