No other story besides the passion of the Christ perfumes my soul like Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. The dichotomy between Inspector Javert and Jean Valjean is simultaneously and thunderously inspiring yet disturbing. The French background, plot twists, psychological suffering, character development, and paired themes, such as love and redemption, mercy and judgment, forgiveness and injustice are unforgettable. So I’ve devoted a scratch of paper to it. I pray the ink spilt was not in vain.
Some walk down
a privileged path
of cheap-perfumed petrol
that fuels aristocratic passions.
Sympathizing not
with their step-brothers and sisters—
bruised reeds of society
who know what’s at stake—
royalty with its cracked crown
dismissively declare,
“Let them eat cake.”
Up all night
and sleep all day.
The proletariat frolic and play,
while peasants
awake,
hung over from a lifetime
of decadence.
A fork in the road
forces their hand.
The neon sign
to the promised land
has faded.
To the working-class
happy endings
are overrated.
A splinter in Jean Valjean’s brain,
aggravates a decision
born of poverty and pain—
to set an innocent rube free
at the peril of hanging himself
from Montreuil’s tree
or to keep a noble promise
to a dying grisette,
the product of Love’s broken arrow
that yielded a lonely sparrow,
called Cosette,
a child laborer,
earning her keep
at the Thénardiers’ inn,
a dreamer whose nightmares
are not yet set,
postponing their bargaining.
Each page
plagiarized on a political stage
to the grand rehearsal
of the French Revolution,
the epoch of the guillotine,
a symbol of terror
felt with every paper cut.
Fantine, a naïve, love-starved teen,
abhorred her occupation,
branded a brigand,
a cheap-perfumed slut.
A pane of glass
on Toulon Street
is all that separates the weak
from a loaf of bread and cured meat
worth more than the price of brass.
The fates of Javert,
the personification of law,
the antithesis of lasciviousness,
and Valjean—the fragrance of forgiveness
intertwine throughout the savage streets
of les misérables,
a memorial to all of us
by Christ’s ransom;
His passion and blood
buys our freedom.
The trespassed priest
tells his trespasser:
“Forget not, never forget
that you have promised me
to use this silver
[a symbol of purification
and predestination,
part of a divine plan]
to become an honest man.
“Jean Valjean, my brother:
You belong no longer to evil,
but to good.
[You belong to God
and no other.]
It is your soul
that I am buying for you.
I withdraw it from dark thoughts
and from the spirit of perdition,
and I give it to God!
[The Savior of man’s corrupt justice
and myopic reason.]”