Victor Hugo (d. 1885)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
We have been using a bit of our extra at-home Sabbath time to do some family history. \u00a0Today, we read through notes that were taken at the funeral of my wife\u2019s great grandmother. \u00a0One of those who spoke at the funeral quoted from an essay on immortality that the speaker attributed to the great French poet, essayist, and novelist Victor Hugo (best known in the English-speaking world for his novels\u00a0The Hunchback of Notre-Dame<\/i>\u00a0[French: Notre-Dame de Paris<\/i>, 1831) and\u00a0Les Mis\u00e9rables\u00a0<\/i>[1862]). \u00a0I have checked these remarkably complete notes against a couple of online sources and produced an amalgamated and perhaps corrected text of the passage that was read at the funeral. \u00a0It\u2019s quite a statement:<\/p>\n
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I feel in myself the future life. \u00a0l am like a forest which has been more than once cut down. \u00a0The new shoots are stronger and livelier than ever. \u00a0l am rising, I know, toward the sky. \u00a0The sunshine is on my head. \u00a0The earth gives me its generous sap, but heaven lights me with the reflection of unknown worlds. \u00a0You say that the soul is nothing but the result of the bodily powers. \u00a0Why, then, is my soul the more luminous when my bodily powers begin to fail? \u00a0Winter is on my head, and eternal spring is in my heart. \u00a0I breathe, at this hour, the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses as at twenty years. \u00a0The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. \u00a0It is marvelous yet simple. \u00a0It is a fairy tale, and it is history. \u00a0For half a century, I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, song. \u00a0I have tried all. \u00a0But I feel that I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say, like so many others, \u201cI have finished my day\u2019s work.\u201d \u00a0But I cannot say, \u201cI have finished my life.\u201d My day\u2019s work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open with the dawn.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not included in the notes from the funeral are the following sentences, which follow the quoted portion:<\/p>\n
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I improve every hour because I love this world as my father-land. My work is only a beginning. My work is hardly above its foundation. I would be glad to see it mounting and mounting forever. The thirst for the infinite means infinity.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
If I understand what he means by \u201cThe thirst for the infinite means infinity,\u201d it seems to be similar to an argument that C. S. Lewis used to make \u2014 namely, that appetites point to the possibility of their satisfaction. \u00a0We would never be thirsty, for example, if there were no water or analogous liquid for which we thirst. \u00a0If there were no such thing as food, we would not feel hunger. \u00a0Lewis believed that there is a yearning for God and meaning and heaven that powerfully indicates their existence. \u00a0Victor Hugo seems to have thought along analogous lines.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0 We have been using a bit of our extra at-home Sabbath time to do some family history. \u00a0Today, we read through notes that were taken at the funeral of my wife\u2019s great grandmother. \u00a0One of those who spoke at the funeral quoted from an essay on immortality that the speaker attributed to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1727,1543,1104,5817,11681,11669,11678,1008,11675,1011,1830,2340,11672],"class_list":["post-85169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afterlife","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-death","tag-eternal-life","tag-future-life","tag-hugo","tag-hunchback","tag-immortality","tag-les-miserables","tag-life-after-death","tag-notre-dame","tag-soul","tag-victor-hugo"],"yoast_head":"\n
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