"Toilers of the Sea" by Victor Hugo *****

• LibraryThing Group Read
• Originally published 1866
• French author
• Translation by James Hogarth, Introduction by Graham Robb, and Illustrations by Victor Hugo (not done for this novel, but placed by the author on specific pages of his manuscript, and they are in the same locations in this edition)
• Written while Hugo was in exile on the island of Guernsey after opposing the coup d'etat of 1851 by Napoleon
• Setting:  Guernsey Island of the Channel Islands, 1820s
• Characters:  Gilliat (reclusive Guernsey fisherman, Deruchette (young charming local girl)
• Vocabulary:
• ananke:  Greek term for necessity
• lozenge pattern:  camouflage
• autochthonous:  indigenous
• eclogue:  a pastoral poem, often in dialogue form
• lazaretto:   a hospital for those affected with contagious diseases, especially leprosy
• pullulate:  to send forth sprouts, buds, etc.; germinate; sprout.
  
  
• Introduction:
• p.xix...."By suspending his disbelief (in the spirit world), he was summoning up the wild-eyed holy sense of horror that kept the channels open between the writing hand and the deep unconscious.".......Hugo was a fan of table tapping and seances
• Dedication:  "I dedicate this book to the rock of hospitality and liberty, that corner of old Norman soil where dwells that noble little people of the sea; to the island of Guernsey, austere and yet gentls, my present asylum, my future tomb."

• Preface by Hugo, at Hauteville House, March 1866:  "Religion, society, nature:  such are the three struggles in which man is engaged.  These three struggles are, at the same  time, his three needs.  He must believe:  hence the temple.  He must create: hence the city.  He must live:  hence the plow and the ship.  But these three solutions contain within them three wars.  The mysterious difficulty of life springs from all three.  Man is confronted with obstacles in the form of superstition, in the form of prejudice, and in the form of the elements. A triple ananke weighs upon us:  the ananke of dogmas, the ananke of laws, the ananke of things.  In "Notre Dame de Paris" the author denouced the first of these; in "Les Miserables" he drew attention to the second; in this book he points to the third.  With these three fatalities that envelop man is mingled the fatality within him, the supreme ananke, the human heart."

•  Quotations I Like:
• p.6..."The industry of the sea, which created ruin, has been succeeded by the industry of man, which has made a people."......from "Ancient Cataclysm" section
• p.10..."You thought you were in a village:  you find that you are in a regiment.  Such is the nature of man."....reference to the austere nature of the Guernsey community
• p.12..."Nothing changes form so quickly as clouds, except perhaps rocks."....the wearing away of the coast
• p.13.."Beauty has its lines: deformity has, too.".....follwed by a beautiful passage about disintegration
• p.16..."Sunday is, by law, a day of stagnation."...interesting word choice, not day of rest
• p.19..."The Channel Islands are fragments of France that have fallen into the sea and been picked up by England."
• p.23..."When a man dominates an age and incarnates progress, he cannot expect criticism; only hatred."....reference to Voltaire
• p.45...."These islands have offered shelter to men afflicted by destiny."
• p.48...."Everything on earth is being perpetually moulded by death....".
• p.50..."Of all the teeth of time the one that works hardest is man's pickax.  Man is a rodent.  Everything is modified or changed at his hand, either for the better or for the worse.  Here he disfigures, there he transfigures."
• p.50..."Everything limits man, but nothing stops him.  He responds to limits by jumping over them.  The impossible is a frontier that is perpetually receding."
• p.51..."Globe, let this ant of yours have his way"...Hugo's reference to man's propensity for displacing, suppressing, knocking down, leveling, mining undermining, digging, excavating, breaking up, pulverizing, effacing, abolishing, rebuilding what he has destroyed.........
• p.60..."....adolescence, the mingling of two twilight periods, the first emergence of a woman in the final stage of childhood."
• p.77...."Solitude produces men of talent or idiots."......
• p.78..."The true pilot is the sailor who navigates the bed of the ocean more than its surface."
• p.81....The Unknown sometimes holds surprises for the spirit of man.  A sudden rent in the veil of darkness will momentarily reveal the invisible and then close up again.  Such visions sometimes have a transfiguring effect.....".
• p.82...."Analogy suggests that the air must have its fish just as the sea has."
• p.83...."The dream world is the aquarium of night." 
• p.103..."Every embryo conceived by science has a double aspect:  as a fetus it is a monster, as the germ of something more it is a marvel."
• p.99..."If men's destinies have a wardrobe, Raintaine's destiny would have worn the garb of a harlequin."
• p.299....
• Humorous bits:
• p.20..."There are families living today in Normandy that still have the lordship of these parishes.  Their divine right is now under water:  such is sometimes the fate of divine rights
• p.35...."always the two on the ten", a phrase referring to keeping two eyes on the ten fingers of a worker......"ancient mistrust denouncing ancient idleness."
• p.45..."And since, in the view of many people, and particularly of state religions, to hate our enemies is the best way of loving ourselves, Catholicism should be much loved in the Channel Islands." 
• p.62......"The confessor replied:  ;To be sure whether it is the Devil or your husband, feel his forehead, and if you find horms you will be sure..'.  'Sure of what?' asked the woman."

•  Interestiung Tidbits
• Guernsey Lily
• the three dangers of a calm sea....the current, the shoals, the whirlpool formed by underwater rocks
• vessels hauled ashore to the sound of a flute......"the flute player is a better worker than the workmen".....
• the price of being a pilot with duty to mariners in distress is higher when the pilot has a family because the pilot risks his life......"One party is selling life, the other is buying it."
• "Homo Edax" or man the devourer......
• "Bu De La Rue".......end of the road.....apt name for Gilliat's home
• Predictably (for the era) sexist commentaries on women
• Interesting commentary on notions about the steamship when first introduced
• 
  
• Review:   Imagine the perfect recipe, the perfect blend of elements.  In many respects "The Toilers of the Sea" is that perfect blend.  One part epic drama, one part satiric wit, one part ethnographic study of Guernsey Island in the mid 1800s, one part battle between man and nature, one part spiritual allegory, and the topping is two parts elegant prose.  Yes, yes, it is a lot to take on, but Victor Hugo did it oh so well.  How many authors can make long drawn out descriptive passages gripping? 
  
  Hugo's prose is marvelous and his insight into human nature seems the result of astute, keen observation.  This book, written during his exile on Guernsey Island, represents a veritable compendium of observation.  His writing makes me want to hop a flight to Guernsey yesterday! I have witnessed storms such as Hugo describes and it sent shivers up my spine as he recaptured the sense of foreboding in the air just before a massive storm breaks!
  
  Drawbacks, unfortunately, they exist.  Dialogue? Relationship between individuals?  I get the sense that Hugo was aching with solitude and projected that into this novel.  Character development is done really well, except that the characters rarely interact until the very end of the tale, and then quite superficially.  If, as existentialists say, we are ultimately alone and judged by our actions, then this allegory is perfection itself!
  
  I loved it......