Sentiments Abstractly Christian
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, and the Catholic Imagination
by Addison H. Hart
In 1985, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s musical version of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables opened to less than enthusiastic critical acclaim. The majority of critics were dismissive of the production. “There is a string of impressive sights over the three-and-a-quarter hours,” wrote John Hiley, “but little to grip the ear and still less to trouble the mind.”1 Susie Mackenzie chimed in: “[O]ur admiration is solicited not on the grounds of something truthful and profound, not on the grounds of something intelligent and stimulating, but on the grounds of melodrama, contrivance and artifice.”2 Lynn Gardner called the production a “load of sentimental old tosh,”3 and Christopher Edwards wrote it off as simply “sentimental and melodramatic.”4
The rest, of course, is theatrical history. Les Miz, as this contemporary opera has come to be affectionately nicknamed, was an instant and resounding popular success, pace the critics. It has gone on from the original “French concept” of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg to become, under producer Cameron Mackintosh, an international phenomenon, playing to enrapt audiences in numerous translations worldwide. Needless to say, this came as a surprise to those critics who initially doubted it could last a season.
What is it about this story that has so captivated so many? What is the secret of this “melodramatic” and “sentimental old tosh,” which made those abject critics of the professional aesthetic elite cringe, and the people love it?
But then, this all happened once before. It happened when Victor Hugo’s massive novel first appeared in 1862. Critics lambasted it, the public loved it. Once again, despite the critics, it went on to become an international best-seller.
In America, the critics from New England seem to have had a particular distaste for Les Misérables. The New Englander ran a review that stated: “[We look in vain] for any powerful dominant idea, pervading the whole and resolving itself into a determinate form.”5 Boston’s Atlantic Monthly showed nervous reaction to the perceived message of the book in its review: “[I]ts morbid elements are so combined with sentiments abstractly Christian that it is calculated to wield a more pernicious influence than Byron ever exerted. Its tendency is to weaken that abhorrence of crime which society possesses, and it does this by attempting to prove that society itself is responsible for crimes it cannot prevent, but can only punish.”6
Again, why was it that the popular response to Les Misérables was one of enthusiasm? If those critics from New England were to be believed, with all their concern for public morality, how could the general public be so led astray by “sentiments abstractly Christian” as to come under the spell of the novel’s “pernicious influence”?
I believe that the Atlantic Monthly critic stumbled on the truth of the matter and inadvertently provided us with at least one key for understanding the perennial appeal of Les Misérables, whether in its novel, stage, or numerous film versions. That key is simply the phrase “sentiments abstractly Christian.” Intended to suggest a deceptive veneer, a mask of hypocrisy, concealing the book’s more sinister tendencies, this phrase may actually unlock for us the real appeal of the work. If by “sentiment” we mean “a thought prompted by feeling,” then “sentiments abstractly Christian” are a positive good; and it should be encouraging to those of us who are Christians that such “sentiments” are seen to hold appeal for men and women everywhere. In fact, we Christians might well be instructed from the popularity of Les Misérables about precisely those “Christian sentiments” for which many hearts yearn.
A Blemished Writer, A Christian Work
This is not to say that, for orthodox Christians, blithely embracing Victor Hugo does not present its difficulties. We should not assume more than the biographical facts warrant. Hugo was not a Christian, and there is reason even to doubt that he was baptized. Religiously, as the foremost French Romantic figure of his age, he was a deist of sorts (his poetry, for example, indicates that he held to the concept of God that has since been termed “panentheism,” a belief that God both transcends and permeates all creation7). During his fifteen-year exile on Guernsey he developed an interest in the occult, attending séances in an attempt to contact his beloved daughter, Leopoldine, who had died tragically with her husband in a boating accident in 1843. His poetry further reveals the religious influence of Swedenborg, Reynaud, and Cheneau, and he frequently made use of theosophical metaphors in his writings. He was a dabbler in heterodoxy, to say the very least.
Addison H. Hart is retired from active ministry as parish priest and university chaplain. He is the author of Knowing Darkness: On Skepticism, Melancholy, Friendship, and God and The Yoke of Jesus: A School for the Soul in Solitude (both from Eerdmans). His forthcoming book is a study of the Sermon on the Mount. He lives and writes in Norheimsund, Norway.
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