Les Mis!

[brooke]

Watching the film I thought it would have been nice to learn what was in the letter Marius gave Cosette. It seemed to consist of several pages. What did he write ? He had seen Cosette only a few times, from a distance. At any rate, after reading it, Cosette felt safe to go and meet him, a complete stranger, alone, at night.

And I wondered, if this letter is in the original novel by Hugo or if maybe the scriptwriter made it up.

I searched the book on Project Gutenberg (a fabulous website for classics with expired copyrights) and found out, that in the novel it's not a simple letter, but a 15 pages manuscript/notebook.

Hugo describes it as

"... a message of love made to be brought by an angel and read by a virgin [...] This had been written with one foot in the grave and one finger in heaven.These lines, which had fallen one by one on the paper, were what might be called drops of soul."

As beautiful as these words may be, I don't think I could keep up the stamina to read the novel's ca. 1600 pages.

If anyone is interested in the content of the "letter", the effect it has on Cosette and Hugo's description of Cosette's and Marius' rendezvous the following night, it can be found here.

[Virgil Reality]

I agree brooke I found it very wordy with lots of off philosphising. I guess that's aprtly the point of the novel and why it's still set as a school novel for study, but I can't help feeling that today the publishers would have got Victor Hugo to edit quite drastically.

That said, I've read plenty of quite recent novels that needed a ruthless editing. Especially those novels where a llot of research has been done and d**n, he's going to use it all.

[Gg]

Oh stop it you two -- read the abridged version. There are less politics and philosophy but you will see how much more complex Marius' relationships, as well the the plot in general, are. But actually I would miss all the philosophy really, because, a bit like Cthingyens, it gives a glimpse, however preachy, into the a society and a system that the author feels strongly enough to condemn... with 1600 pages even... and for me, having read the novel, and walking into the film all those years ago with trepidation actually thinking it was going to be too "Hollywood" a treatment, I was really struck by how much Hans did resonate with my reading of the Marius of the novel (though he professed at the time to not reading it). I had only seen in Bramwell a day or two before, and his protrayal of Hugo's character convinced me that my impression of his performance in Bramwell wasn't just a fluke.

[tsv]

1600 pages?!!! Are you kidding?! I have a very faint memory of having this book on my list of books to read for school when I was 8 or 9 or something and I remember it being a pretty thin book.... Obviously the version I had was heavily edited. I remember reading a little bit in the beginning and just getting terribly frustrated (needless to say I never finished it). It seemed far too gritty back then. And because of that not particularly happy experience, I couldn't basically sit through the whole movie. I kept fast forwarding most of the time...