Address to a Worker’s Congress at
Marseilles
For four hundred years the human race has not made a
step but what has left its plain vestige behind. We enter now upon great
centuries. The sixteenth century will be known as the age of painters, the
seventeenth will be termed the age of writers, the eighteenth the age of philosophers,
the nineteenth the age of apostles and prophets. To satisfy the nineteenth century,
it is necessary to be the painter of the sixteenth, the writer of the
seventeenth, the philosopher of the eighteenth; and it is also necessary, like
Louis Blane, to have the innate and holy love of humanity which constitutes an
apostolate, and opens up a prophetic vista into the future. In the twentieth century war will be dead,
the scaffold will be dead, animosity will be dead, royalty will be dead, and
dogmas will be dead; but Humanity will live. For all there will be but one
country—that country the whole earth; for all there will be but one hope—that
hope the whole heaven.
— Victor Hugo (born February 26, 1802)
On Les Misérables
You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Misérables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it
will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well
as to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland,
to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores
of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the
red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is
ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever
the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the
hearth which should warm him, the book of Les
Misérables knocks at the door and says: "Open to me, I come for
you."
— Victor Hugo (born February 26, 1802)
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| Victor Hugo (1802-1885) |
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