What is really curious and amusing is that the people of all
others the most vivacious, gay, and intelligent, should have always
understood the grand style in this pompous, pedantic fashion. But it was
inevitable.
April 8, 1863.--I have been turning over the 3,500 pages of "Les
Miserables," trying to understand the guiding idea of this vast
composition. The fundamental idea of "Les Miserables" seems to be this.
Society engenders certain frightful evils--prostitution, vagabondage,
rogues, thieves, convicts, war, revolutionary clubs and barricades. She
ought to impress this fact on her mind, and not treat all those who come
in contact with her law as mere monsters. The task before us is to
humanize law and opinion, to raise the fallen as well as the vanquished,
to create a social redemption. How is this to be done? By enlightening
vice and lawlessness, and so diminishing the sum of them, and by
bringing to bear upon the guilty the healing influence of pardon. At
bottom is it not a Christianization of society, this extension of
charity from the sinner to the condemned criminal, this application to
our present life of what the church applies more readily to the other?
Struggle to restore a human soul to order and to righteousness by
patience and by love, instead of crushing it by your inflexible
vindictiveness, your savage justice! Such is the cry of the book.
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