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Tensy Marcos-Bodker
read and liked
Jason's
review of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Modern Library):
"What happened to the beginning of this unabridged story!? For 300 pages, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame was scribed like a meandering storyline over a checkerboard, each square representing a chapter of the book. The few squares scribed directly by th...more
What happened to the beginning of this unabridged story!? For 300 pages, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame was scribed like a meandering storyline over a checkerboard, each square representing a chapter of the book. The few squares scribed directly by the line told fleeting, but essential parts of the story (about Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Frollo). The more numerous squares adjacent to the scribed storyline told even less essential bits of the story. And, the majority of squares, several dozen chapters, were far removed from the storyline, and had almost nothing to do with the concluding thrust of action in the book. It's not that the story dawdled; its just that most chapters were simply irrevelant to the main characters for the greater part of 300 pages.
I'm not declaring that the writing was no good. On the contrary, as you'll see below, the writing was detailed and powerful, and I record several favorite examples. This is my first encounter with Victor Hugo's literature, and the sweep of his writing clearly indicates that he is a master polyhistor. However, even after concluding the book, I felt that several dozen chapters--most at the beginning, but even some near the end--were completely unnecessary. That's a cocky, absurd statement from someone who can't write like Victor Hugo, but in this case it leads me to understand why there are several hundred versions of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and why most of those versions are abridged. In fact many versions are children's picture books, which capture the essential story, and excise chapters of the checkerboard that don't relate to the main three protagonists.
I understand that Hugo had to provide deep background for the story. It was essential to describe Notre-Dame and important for the reader to understand the life and times of late-medeival Paris. It's important to envision the environment and atmosphere in which the action takes place. It's critical to see the characters' early actions to translate and understand the profundity of their actions later. Yes, this all makes sense. In fulfilling this background, however, Hugo spent the greater part of 300 pages following a minor character, Gringiore. Gringiore did not serve as a foil, or a fulcrum, or a window into the main characters. No, he's a bit character whose importance actually declines toward the end. We have tantalizingly few descriptions about, and even less spoken words from, the key players.
I do enjoy classics--the timing it takes to develop; the word choice, the author's methodology; the subtlety, metaphor, and symbology that requires numerous re-readings to truly appreciate; the transcendence of the author's message or lesson. The last third of this book is the real classic. Oh, how I wish Hugo had focused early on Quasimodo, Frollo, and La Esmeralda, and never let go. These characters are fertile, anomolous, and peculiar enough for all the chapters of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
There are some incredibly tubocharged chapters, some of which were written akin to tragic Romantic soliloquies. Particularly:
- Book V, Ch II when Hugo rants about about how the written word has usurped architecture
- Book VIII, Ch IV when Frollo declares his love
- Book X, Ch I when Esmeralda meets her mother, and the mob attacks Notre-Dame
There are other problems I had with the book, though. The translator provided 20 pages of footnotes. Footnotes usually provide key information for understanding deep background. These footnotes, however, often called attention to Hugo's repeated misuse of Spanish and Italian. They also provided reference or explanation for things that were obscure, not exceptionally pertinent, and that didn't help backstage the story (for example, telling the real name of a building that doesn't actually exist anymore, legal cannon from the twelfth century, and what isolated Parisian neighborhoods used to be called before they disappeared to history). The notes, overwhelmingly, are simple translations of Latin, without explanation of why or to what purpose Hugo was using a particular Latin phrase. This is wholly my own prejudice, I know, but I fear that over time, Hugo's footnotes will become more and more obscure without better translation. Similar to how I feel about John Updike's writing. Several hundred years from now, readers will miss the awesome amount of reference that Updike makes to current cultural idiosycrasies and Americana, and will eventually require several hundred footnotes per book.
I also had a small problem with Hugo refering to us as 'the reader.' At one point he actually refers to 'this book' that he's writing. It just seemed to make the discourse between author and reader a bit too chatty. And, just too much Latin. I would have preferred the translator insert English into the body of the text, while providing footnotes that displayed and explained the author's original Latin. I read every footnote, and felt that it was too much.
New words: escutcheon, breviary, pudendum, orpiment, woad
Quotes:
- "Oh how hollow science sounds when you dash against it in despair a head filled with passions." (p. 329)
- "Grief like this never grows old. For a mother who has lost her child, it is always the first day. This pain never ages. It is useless that the colors of mourning fade. The heart remains black as ever." (p.338)
- "Nobody had noticed in the gallery of the royal statues, immediately above the pointed arches of the entrance, a strange-looking spectator, who had till then been watching everything impassively, head so outstretched, visage so deformed that, except for his apparel, half red and half purple, he might have been taken for one of those stone monsters out or whose mouths the long gutters of the cathedral have for these six hundred years disgorged themselves." (p. 354)
- "He ran through the fields until nightfall. This flight from nature, from life, from himself, from man, from God, from everything, lasted till evening. Sometimes he threw himself on his face on the earth and tore up the young corn with his fingers; at other moments he paused in some lone village street, and his thoughts were so unbearable that he grasped his head with both hands and tried to wrench it from his shoulders in order to dash it against the ground." (p. 360)
- "The night was cold. The sky was covered with clouds, the large white masses of which, overlapping each other at the edges and being compressed at the corners, resembled the ice of a river that has broken up in winter. The crescent moon, embedded in those clouds, looked like a celestial ship surrounded by aerial sheets of ice." (p. 367)
- "The round room was very spacious, but the tables were crammed so close together, and the customers so numerous, that all the contents of the tavern, men and women, benches and beer jugs, those who were drinking, those who were sleeping, those who were gambling, the able-bodied and the cripple, seemed to be tumbled together chaotically, with just as much order and harmony as a pile of oyster shells." (p. 407)
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