“Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance and her sunlight, from before human cruelty or suffering. She overwhelms man by the contrast between divine beauty and social hideousness. She spares him nothing of her loveliness, neither wing or butterfly, nor song of bird; in the midst of murder, vengeance, barbarism, he must feel himself watched by holy things; he cannot escape the immense reproach of universal nature and the implacable serenity of the sky. The deformity of human laws is forced to exhibit itself naked amidst the dazzling rays of eternal beauty. Man breaks and destroys; man lays waste; man kills; but the summer remains summer; the lily remains the lily; and the star remains the star.
As though it said to man, ‘Behold my work. And yours.”
Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist. He is considered one of the greatest and best known French writers. In France, Hugo’s literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). He was not only revered as a towering figure in literature, he was a statesman who shaped democracy in France writing and supporting the major political, social and artistic causes at the time. Hugo’s wish was to be buried in a pauper’s coffin. While this wish was granted, he was nevertheless, on his death in 1885, voted a National Funeral and was buried as a national hero in the Panthéon. It is estimated that at least two million people followed the funeral procession.
Hugo left five sentences as his last will to be officially published :
- « Je donne cinquante mille francs aux pauvres.
- Je veux être enterré dans leur corbillard.
- Je refuse l’oraison de toutes les Eglises.
- Je demande une prière à toutes les âmes.
- Je crois en Dieu. »
- (“I leave 50 000 francs to the poor.
- I want to be buried in their hearse.
- I refuse [funeral] orations of all churches.
- I beg a prayer to all souls.
- I believe in God.”)
Live & Learn 
much of mankind is merely in it’s infancy of understanding. we are but playing in the field of the natural world.
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yes Beth….
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How haunting are his words? How glaringly imperfect are we and how brazen we are as we flaunt it.
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Yes, you would think they were written today and not in the 1800’s. Incredible.
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Another perfectly painful example of how we can’t seem to learn from history..
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Painfully compelling observations and, as you and Mimi have observed, timeless….
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Yes, timeless they are.
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Alwasy lvoed his writing. Read Notre Dame de Paris in french when I was 14 years old. Mesmerizing. Your posts are always thought provoking. Thank you
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Sorry to say that I haven’t read any of his writing. Perhaps it’s time. Thanks for the kind words Michael. Happy Holidays.
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Humanity may destroy the planet, but as if in rebellion nature will always show a dazzling beautiful object beyond the reach of humanity to harm.
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Let’s hope so Alex.
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Reading that, I felt like I did as a child when my parents would tell me I had done something that had disappointed them. Haunting, yes. Also interesting to read about his wishes for burial and his actual burial. It seems like he was betrayed.
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I thought the same Carolann…and it has stuck with me.
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