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Rob Baker is on page 743 of 1260

"Very few minds comprehend the divine tongue. The most sagacious, the most calm, the most profound, decipher slowly, and when they arrive with their text, the need has long gone by; there are already 20 translations in the public square.

From each translation a party is born, and from each misreading a faction; and each party believes it has the only true text, and each faction believes that it possesses the light"

— May 28, 2025 02:57AM

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Rob’s Previous Updates

Rob Baker is on page 1235 of 1260

Hugo can ramble:

"At what solution did he stop? What determination did he take? What was, within himself, his final answer to the incorruptible demand of fatality? What door did he decide to open? What side of his life did he resolve to close and to condemn? Between all the unfathomable precipices which surrounded him, what was his choice? What extremity did he accept? To which of these gulfs did he bow his head?"

— Jun 27, 2025 03:54AM

Rob Baker is on page 1210 of 1260

— Jun 26, 2025 07:30AM

Rob Baker is on page 1186 of 1260

"To realise his dream. To whom is that given? There must be elections for that in heaven; we are all unconscious candidates; the angels vote" (1184).

— Jun 25, 2025 02:25AM

Rob Baker is on page 1162 of 1260

Less than 100 pages to go!

And,turning towards Marius and Cosette, with arms extended in blessing, he cried: Permission to adore each other” (159).

— Jun 22, 2025 02:45PM

Rob Baker is on page 1125 of 1260

Only Victor Hugo could go on for four pages about what it would be like to drown in poop…

— Jun 21, 2025 05:45AM

Rob Baker is on page 1115 of 1260

“The pupil dilates in the night, and at last finds day in it, even as the soul dilates in misfortune, and at last finds God in it” (1104).

— Jun 19, 2025 07:02AM

Rob Baker is on page 1045 of 1260

— Jun 15, 2025 03:31AM

Rob Baker is on page 1025 of 1260

"There were a few corpses here and there, pools of blood upon the pavement. I recollect a white butterfly flying back and forth in the street. Summer does not abdicate" (1017).

— Jun 14, 2025 02:30AM

Rob Baker is on page 1005 of 1260

The man into whom great griefs enter feels something go out of him. In youth, their visit is dismal; in later years it is ominous. When the blood is hot, when the hair is black, when the head is erect upon the body like the flame upon the torch, if despair is a fearful thing, what is it then in old age, when the years rush along, growing bleaker, at the twilight hour, when we begin to see the stars of the tomb.

— Jun 13, 2025 02:32AM

Rob Baker is on page 984 of 1260

"They seemed to hear at the end of the street the breathing of many men. They saw nothing, only they discovered at the very end, in that dense obscurity, a multitude of metallic threads, as fine as needles, almost imperceptible, which moved like those indescribable phosphoric networks which we perceive under our closed eyelids. They were bayonets and musket barrels lighted up by the distand reflection of the torch"

— Jun 12, 2025 03:06AM