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everywhere on the horizon a leaden weight; a vast livid curtain falling down from the zenith; the specter of spleen in the shroud of the tempest; nothing anywhere that resembled hope,
Very like the Earthsea archipelago of Ursula Le Guin
Everyone stinks, stinks, stinks Like carrion. There is only my sweet Jesus Who smells sweet.
The opposite of the Incarnation's meaning
Man, a short-lived being who is perpetually dying, takes on the infinite. Against all the ebb and flow of nature, against elements seeking to communicate with other elements, against the vast navigation of forces in the depths man declares a blockade. He, too, can say: “Thus far and no farther.”
Job 38:11
He obstinately refused to perform any miracles, which is a ridiculous attitude for a warlock to take. You are not obliged to be one; but if you are you should carry out the duties of the position.
JC
Merely to look at her is to feel alive; she is like the dawn with a human face. She need merely be there to make an Eden of the house; she exudes Paradise from every pore; and she distributes this ecstasy to all by doing nothing more than breathing in their presence. To have a smile that somehow lessens the weight of the enormous chain dragged behind them by all living beings in common—what else can we call it but divine? Déruchette had such a smile; indeed we might rather say that Déruchette was that smile.
Milton's Eve
For thirty years he had borne the burden of his hypocrisy. Being himself evil, he had coupled with integrity. He hated virtue with the hatred of a man who has married the wrong wife. All his life he had been meditating evil, but since he had reached man’s estate he had worn the rigid armor of outward appearance. In his hidden self he was a monster; within his outer semblance of an honest man was the heart of a bandit.
e.g., Iago
His triumph had become a precipice. In place of deliverance, capture. In place of a long and prosperous future, he was faced with death. In a moment, in a lightning’s flash, the whole structure he had built up had collapsed.
e.g., Iago, Palpatine
Any man who ventured on the task would be more than a hero: he would be a madman.
calling DQ
Déruchette turned round: “—I would marry him,” she said. There was a silence. A man came forward, his face ashy pale, and said: “You would marry him, Miss Déruchette?” It was Gilliatt.
Don Quixote and Dulcinea. The parallel is even clearer later, when Gilliatt plays Deruchette the bagpipes at night, and fights the terrible monster on her family's behalf.
Dr. Hérode now embarked on a speech. He had heard that a great misfortune had occurred. The Durande had been wrecked. He had therefore come, as pastor, to offer consolation and counsel. This shipwreck was unfortunate, but was also beneficial. Let us look in our hearts: were we not puffed up with prosperity? The waters of felicity are dangerous. Misfortunes must be taken in good part. The ways of the Lord are mysterious. Mess Lethierry was ruined, no doubt; but to be rich is to be in danger. You have false friends; they leave you when you fall into poverty, and you remain alone. Solus eris.152
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Brilliant portrait of hypocrisy
Gilliatt had not expected to find only half of the vessel. Nothing in the account by the skipper of the Shealtiel, which had been so exact and detailed, had given any indication that the Durande had split in two. The break had probably taken place when the skipper heard a “devil of a crash.” No doubt he had been some distance away when the final blast of wind struck, and what he had thought was merely a heavy sea had in fact been a waterspout. Later, when he had drawn closer to observe the wreck, he had been able to see only the forward part of the vessel, the rest—that is, the wide break that
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Shades of that big liner that hit some ice in 1912
At the foot of the parallel walls, scattered about under the water or just above it, or in hollows in the rocks, were monstrous round boulders—scarlet, black, purple—that looked like human organs; fresh lungs, rotting livers. It was as if giants had been disemboweled here. From top to bottom of the granite ran long veins of red, like blood oozing from a corpse.
Hugo's imagination of the sea is more Gothic than Melville's
His biceps were no stronger than anyone else’s, but he had a heart that others lacked. To strength, which is a physical quality, he added energy, which is a moral quality.
Old dualism
A great black circle was revolving in the deep white sky of twilight above his head. In old pictures there are sometimes circles of this kind around the heads of saints. But in such cases they are golden against a dark ground; this circle was dark against a light ground. It was like the Great Douvre’s halo of darkness. The circle came closer to Gilliatt and then moved away, contracting and then enlarging. It was made up of a flock of seabirds—gulls, sea mews, frigate birds, cormorants—evidently excited and upset.
In 1843, Francis Bailey had published this account of a solar eclipse he had witnessed the previous year from Pavia, Italy:
"I was astounded by a tremendous burst of applause from the streets below, and at the same moment was electrified at the sight of one of the most brilliant and splendid phenomena that can well be imagined. For, at that instant the dark body of the moon was suddenly surrounded with a corona, or kind of bright glory, similar in shape and relative magnitude to that which painters draw round the heads of saints. . . . I had indeed anticipated the appearance of a luminous circle round the moon during the time of total obscurity: but I did not expect, from any of the accounts of preceding eclipses that I had read, to witness so magnificent an exhibition as that which took place."
such a task of salvage, in such a place and at such a season of the year—seemed to call for a whole team of men, and Gilliatt was alone; it called for a whole range of woodworking and engineering equipment, and Gilliatt had only a saw, an ax, a chisel, and a hammer; it called for a good workshop and shed to work in, and Gilliatt had not even a roof over his head; it called for a supply of provisions, and Gilliatt had not even a loaf of bread.
He's a Quixote with skill
Ignorance incites a man to endeavor; for ignorance is a dreamlike state, and a dream fed by curiosity is a powerful force. Knowledge sometimes disconcerts a man, and frequently discourages action.
Hamlet called dibs on this
To achieve suffering and triumph, it is necessary to leave no room for argument with one’s conscience and to allow no relaxation of one’s will.
"No more debates disturbed his mind. He knew all the arguments of despair and would not listen to them. His will was set, and only death would break it."
- from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", a passage about Samwise Gamgee
Fearful of a competitor, since a competitor might have been a rival, he had not sought any assistant.
He's a salty ancestor of Captain Quint
to feel, within the prodigious swell of this deluge of universal life, the insubmersible persistency of the Self! to look at the stars and say, I am a soul like you! to look at the darkness and say, I am an abyss like you! These vastnesses are Night. All this, magnified by solitude, weighed on Gilliatt. Did he understand it? No. Did he feel it? Yes.
a Dark Night of a kind
They possess this chaos. What do they do with it? Implacable deeds: we know not what. The den of the winds is more monstrous than a lions’ den. How many corpses there are in its deep recesses! The winds drive this great obscure and bitter mass pitilessly onward. We hear them always, but they listen to no one. They commit acts resembling crimes. We know not whom they are attacking with these white flecks of foam. What impious ferocity there is in bringing about a shipwreck!
Wind, not the octopus, is the sperm whale of this novel
On reefs in the open sea, where the water displays and conceals all its splendors, in hollows among unvisited rocks, in unknown caverns with an abundance of vegetation, crustaceans, and shellfish, under the deep portals of the ocean, a swimmer who ventures in, attracted by the beauty of the scene, runs the risk of an encounter. If you have such an encounter, do not give way to curiosity but make your escape at once. Those who enter there bedazzled emerge terrified. This is the encounter that you may have at any time among rocks in the open sea. A grayish form the thickness of a man’s arm and
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An earlier passage in the novel:
"Here, at a depth that divers can barely reach, are hidden caves and caverns and dens, a network of dark passageways in which monstrous creatures pullulate. They devour each other: the crabs eat the fish and are themselves eaten. In this dark world roam fearful living shapes, created to be unseen by the human eye. Vague forms of mouths, antennae, tentacles, gaping jaws, scales, claws, and pincers float and quiver in the water, grow larger, decompose, and disappear in the sinister transparency. Fearful swarms of sea creatures swim to and fro, prowling, doing what they have to do. It is a hive of hydras. This is horror in its ideal form."
Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" has an octopus-like creature, the Watcher In the Water, described thus by Gandalf:
"the arms were all guided by one purpose. Something has crept, or has been driven out of dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world."
the octopus has almost human passions: it can hate.
It is very intelligent, which may come off to us like design or cunning
Misshapen creatures struggle under a necessity of elimination that makes them hostile.
Hugo had written the following about Quasimodo: "He was in fact vicious because he avoided people; he avoided people because he was ugly. There was a logic in his nature as there is in ours."
she is readier to accept the smaller rather than the larger species, for that is, in all fields, her natural bent, which is microscopic rather than telescopic;
This statement about science is an old stereotype
They are deliberately created forms of evil. In face of these blasphemies of creation against itself what can be done?
contra Job, Genesis
Any evil beast, like any perverse intelligence, is a sphinx. A terrible sphinx propounding a terrible enigma: the enigma of evil.
Hunger is no more evil than the haunted house at Pleinmont, or the deceptive shorelines of the Channel Islands
Then he examined the belt. The outer surface had originally been varnished, but the other side was rough. On this yellow-brown background were some letters in thick black ink. Gilliatt deciphered them and read the name Sieur Clubin.
very similar to Dunstan's fate in George Eliot's "Silas Marner," published in 1861 (five years before "Toilers")
what might almost be called an encounter between two hypocrisies.
the octopus was honest
Nightmares offered a respite from despair.
Interesting implications about our love of horror; or about the usefulness of nightmares.
And Graham Robb had written this in the Introduction, concerning Hugo's participation in spiritual séances:
"His credulity was a deliberate ploy. By suspending his disbelief, he was summoning up the wild-eyed, holy sense of horror that kept the channels open between the writing hand and the deep unconscious."
To be powerless is a strength. In the presence of those two blind forces, destiny and nature, man in his very powerlessness has found a support in prayer.
Pauline almost
Man seeks help from his dread; he asks his fears for aid; anxiety bids him kneel.
Again, interesting implications about our relationship to fear
He was unnoticed. The crowd was at the other end of the harbor, near the entrance, at Les Bravées. There his name was in every mouth. People were talking so much about him that they paid no attention to the man himself.
JC
