"A novel... is born, necessarily as it were, with all its chapters; a drama is born with all its scenes."
- Victor Hugo (in his introductory note to the Definitive Edition to Notre-Dame de Paris)
Day Count: 181
Page Count: 1463
As I prepare to begin what I will, for lack of a better term, call the second leg of my journey through the works of Victor Hugo, I find myself filled with the same sort of anxiety I felt a little over a year ago as I prepared to read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
I feel like "anxiety" is the right word, because it certainly captures the equal parts of excitement and trepidation I'm experiencing with regard to reading another great classic by another renowned author. This is especially increased due to the fact that I enjoyed Les Miserables to the extent that I did; I feel as though no matter how good Notre-Dame de Paris* is, it won't be nearly as incredible as Les Mis.
I suppose I'm not without precedent on this particular issue, seeing as how I had a similar, if not equal, situation last year. Don't get me wrong - Anna Karenina was a great book and I very much enjoyed the reading of it, but... War and Peace was (and, honestly speaking, still is) one of the best reading experiences of my life and I have yet to read something that comes close to its brilliance in my mind. Compared to a novel that wonderful, Anna K - though wonderful and compelling - fell a bit flat.
There is, of course, a very apropos response to this way of thinking, which is essentially that each novel cannot be compared to another, but must be read and appreciated on its own merits. This is a very good point, and worthy of consideration, but I can't help but feel as though it is, on some level, an exercise in futility. I feel like the nature of my exercise - reading the essential works of Victor Hugo in 2012 - renders such an objective appreciation impossible.
Allow me to explain. When I set out at the beginning of last year to read the essential works of Leo Tolstoy (a task at which I feel I was marginally successful), that goal had within it an implied amount of comparison built in. I'm not reading each of these books in a vacuum, but instead within the context of other books by the same author! It stands to reason that if I'm reading the works of Hugo for no other reason than to read the works of Hugo, there will be some comparison between the books.
I feel as though this comparison was especially apt last year in my study of Tolstoy, with both War and Peace and Anna Karenina being regarded as one of the best novels ever written. I felt like my comparison was not only encouraged, but mandated - as though it were my job as a thinking literary person to come up with an answer to the eternal question of which I preferred (a question I feel I have more than adequately answered to this point).
So, I suppose the question I'm posing to you, my conspicuously-absent-and/or-silent-of-late readership, is this: is comparison the prerogative of the reader/scholar or is it his/her own hubris that he/she asserts over the text being read? (Believe it or not, this is not a rhetorical question - I actually would like feedback. Please consider commenting on this post with your own thoughts.)
That having been said, I feel as though I'm taking some steps to keep myself mentally engaged in preparation for my next classic. Part of that was reading the Hunger Games series (as discussed in my last post), but those were read relatively quickly and provided little in the way of mental stimulation (leastways in the ways that Les Miserables did).
No, to keep my mental faculties engaged, I have turned to one of the greatest authors in the English language - William Shakespeare! There are upcoming auditions with a local community theatre group for an outdoor production of Shakespeare's immortal A Midsummer Night's Dream and I have decided that I want to go out for the show! Having never performed any Shakespeare before (outside of high school English and college-level Acting classes, that is), I figured I needed to get some advice. To that end, I dug up a copy of Barry Edelstein's Thinking Shakespeare, which I picked up on a whim at a Half Price Books a couple of years back. I've found the book extraordinarily helpful for an actor, filled with very practical, and at the same time, thought-provoking advice regarding the performance of the Bard.
Then, yesterday, on something of a whim, I read A Midsummer Night's Dream for the first time in... well, maybe ever. Certainly, I had read excerpts from the play over the years, but having never needed to study it in either high school or college, I cannot think of a time when I've needed to read it... so, I never have. (Don't worry. Sometime in the next decade, I am planning to devote a year of study to Shakespeare, at which point, I would like to read all of his plays in their entirety.) It was deceptively easy to read - especially after having read the first several chapters of Thinking Shakespeare.
Auditions are still two weeks away, but I can't help but get a bit giddy about the prospects of performing Shakespeare for the first time! Here's hoping I do well!
I'm more or less finished with this post, but I want to leave you with a story that totally happened while I was writing this post. Being without Internet access at home, I often find myself seeking Wi-Fi hotspots when the need to update my blog roll around. About half the time (maybe more), I end up at the Panera Bread down the street from my apartment as the food there is always tasty and the atmosphere is conducive to reading, study, and reflection (especially when you happen to be pumping Brandi Carlile through your earbuds). At any rate, knowing I was planning to update my blog today, I brought along my copy of Notre-Dame de Paris as well as Thinking Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
As I sat quietly typing away at my blog, a woman approached my table (completely innocently - I'm seated by both a trashcan and the front door, which is, admittedly, not the best of seating arrangements for a 100+-degree day, but allows for many people to walk by my location) and pointed to my stack of books.
"Are you reading it or teaching it?" she asked.
"Uh... neither," I answered. "I'm auditioning for Midsummer next month, so I have these two," I here indicated A Midsummer Night's Dream and Thinking Shakespeare, "and I'm getting ready to read this one [Notre-Dame de Paris] for my own amusement."
"Wow," she said. "That's pretty ambitious!"
"Wow," she said. "That's pretty ambitious!"
"Well, I just finished Les Miserables earlier this month," I responded.
"I could not read Hugo for my own amusement," she said as she walked out the door, "but I can read Shakespeare!"
I suppose I could comment further on this story (or you could), but I feel the need to let it speak for itself. At any rate, I feel like reading great books is the ultimate conversation starter!
Until next time...!
* For the record, I am refusing to call this novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, which is, admittedly, its more popular name. I am doing this for two reasons: (1.) Notre-Dame de Paris is the intended name for the novel, the one that Victor Hugo gave it when it was first published in 1831. In French, this translates to, literally, Notre Dame of Paris and, roughly, Our Lady of Notre Dame. The Hunchback is, of course, a reference to the book's 'protagonist,' Quasimodo. Still to call the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is, I feel, to do a great disservice to the cathedral itself, which I am told becomes something of the central figure of the novel. (2.) The edition of the text that I am using (the aforementioned Alban Krailsheimer translation) is not entitled The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, but is, in fact, called Notre-Dame de Paris (potentially for any number of the reasons I listed above).
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