THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1831)

 In this review I'll use the English language title for Victor Hugo's novel rather than the French one. One reason is that the word HUNCHBACK is easier to use as a short form for the title. But I also think it's a better title. Quasimodo is indubitably the novel's central icon, and as important as the 15th-century Parisian setting is, that importance is secondary. Supposedly foreign tourists became more interested in the Notre Dame cathedral after the publication of Hugo's novel. But I'd bet few tourists came to observe the cathedral's architectural wonders, but rather thought about the setting in which the pitiable hunchback came to his sad end.                                                       

In contrast to some 19th-century novels that I have frequently reread, like MOBY DICK and FRANKENSTEIN, I only read HUNCHBACK once before, thirty-forty years ago. I don't remember most of my impressions from the first reading. I had probably seen the classic 1939 movie adaptation and may have heard that it was not entirely faithful to the Hugo novel. I probably didn't know that Esmerelda too meets a terrible fate, and back then, I might have called that end "tragic." But on this reread, I realized that almost everything about the Hugo book is oriented toward the mythos Northrop Frye termed "irony." Esmerelda is the only character who incarnates any potential for good, and that means that she must be sacrificed to the stupidity and venality of 15th-century Paris. Quasimodo's claim to goodness is shakier, but he starts out with all the odds massed against him, so he too is doomed. Of the few characters in HUNCHBACK who prosper, all are utterly unworthy. 

   Often HUNCHBACK has been adapted in other media that obscured the book's ironic mode, focusing on the pathos of Quasimodo rather than his inevitable doom. Some versions also give Esmerelda a "happy ending" with her beloved guardsman Phoebus, one of those worthless characters mentioned above. But I've yet to see a truly ironic version, one that follows the book in depicting the entire society as informed by cruelty and rapacity. Usually all the negative aspects of Quasimodo's world are channeled into the hunchback's father-figure Frollo, who becomes obsessed with the beautiful Esmerelda's physical charms. Ironically, Esmerelda herself is no less captivated by beauty, becoming smitten with Phoebus for his looks (the reference to Apollo is a telling one). Quasimodo may be the one individual, even with his limited mentality, who appreciates Esmerelda as much for her kindness as for her beauty.           

 

Hugo is sometimes linked with the artistic movement called "Romanticism," but I don't think HUNCHBACK is a Romantic novel, as are both MOBY DICK and FRANKENSTEIN. It contains larger-than-life scenes that everyone with a basic education knows, like Quasimodo's public flogging and the mercy shown him by his sort-of victim Esmerelda, and the hunchback's dramatic rescue of Esmerelda from the hangman's noose. But HUNCHBACK also contains reams of incredibly prolix prose, as Hugo burns up space descanting on the foolishness of the Parisians, from the highest to the lowest. Hugo acts as if he thinks he invented satire, with the result that most of the other characters are superficial. HUNCHBACK is one of those rare novels which has become a sort of secular literary myth, at least in the sense that most people have at least a broad knowledge of its nature. Yet Hugo's mythopoeic powers are at odds when his didactic ones. For instance, one of the novel's most mythic moments takes place when one of Hugo's POV characters is victimized by the denizens of The Court of Miracles, possibly the first "city of thieves" in canonical literature. This is a great nightmarish scene, potentially portraying the thief-society as the inversion of normal Parisian existence. But once I saw that "overground" Paris was just as rotten and arbitrary as "underground" Paris, I felt that Hugo was making a very superficial equation between the two. In the end, HUNCHBACK is a classic novel that I can admire in many respects. But because of the conflict I perceive between Hugo's intellectual and imaginative powers, it's not a novel I like.                                                                                                       

Unlike most of the "monsters" who appeared first in 19th-century fiction, Quasimodo is never as imposing a menace as Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster or even Mister Hyde. I still believe he belongs to the domain of the uncanny because his crippled-yet-powerful status is not completely in the naturalistic mode.   
          

CURIOSITIES #45: ALTRUISM ANALYSES

 Since posting this mythcomics essay on one of the stories in Reiji Miyajima's THE SHIUNJI FAMILY CHILDREN, I've kept monitoring the series. It's not likely to come to a conclusion any time soon, given that Miyajima created five possible romantic subplots for the male hero. The newest installments, Part 44 and 45 (both untitled according to the online translation I read), concerned one of the sisters whose relation to her not-brother Arata has not yet received a lot of attention. This is the "science-nerd" Seiha, on whom I briefly commented in the earlier essay. I've no insight on where Miyajima might be going with this subplot, but I found one page interesting for the following philosophical reflection on altruism.                                                                                                     

The plot-context of Seiha's meditation, conveyed to her rather puzzled brother-in-name-only Arata, is that moments before this conversation, Seiha was assaulted by a couple of punks who thought she'd accrued a slutty reputation due to school-gossip. Hunky brother Arata shows up and chases the punks away, so that all Seiha suffers is some brief manhandling. Arata seems to recover from the experience very quickly, for she immediately launches into a lecture about how "self-sacrifice and self-importance are two sides of the same coin." Is she trying to distance herself from the unpleasant experience? Quite likely, and she qualifies that her general opinion of altruism does not affect her feeling of gratitude to Arata for his intervention. However, given her earlier lecture about the chemical determinism of human biology, clearly these thoughts are not new to her. One might assert that, based on what the artist reveals about Seiha's life, she might be the type who distances herself from all experience in her attempt to take a dispassionate, quasi-scientific view on life.                                                                                         

   So, since Seiha admits that she has been the beneficiary of Shiunji's altruistic action-- an action one assumes he would have taken for any woman, from real sister to perfect stranger-- why veer off into a discussion of how an individual act of "self-sacrifice" is inevitably tied to that individual's sense of "self-importance?" The reader doesn't know, yet. I considered another possibility: that Seiha also might be seeking to de-emphasize any instinctive feminine reaction to her being a defenseless young woman "saved" by an armorless (but maybe not amour-less) knight.  Saying that Arata was motivated in part by his own sense of self-importance perhaps takes away some of the "savior glamor." Her last remarks bring the conversation back to the fact that they're not real siblings, so that his rescue isn't a response to blood ties. But I don't know how seriously to take the idea Miyajima puts in Seiha's mouth: the idea that their non-relation should negate basic altruism, such as defending an imperiled woman whether one knows her or not. Presumably Seiha would say that this form of altruism too would be compromised by the "other side of the coin," though this seems like false rhetoric at this point.                                                                                                 

 I may revisit Miyajima's concept in future posts. For now, I'll note that this short reflection resembles a much more developed line of similar thought in one of Mark Twain's last works, the 1906 essay WHAT IS MAN? I have not read this in twenty years, but at the time I found it massively impressive. This too I may seek to revisit in future posts somewhere down the line.           

NULL-MYTHS: "THE ARROW OF ETERNITY" (BRAVE AND BOLD #144, 1978)

 While I don't retract anything I said about the two Bob Haney stories I analyzed in this post, here I want to show that even a story constructed from a tissue of coincidences can be pretty entertaining-- the more so since this one is a "rediscovery," one I didn't remember reading the first time round.                                                                                               

 So the action starts when Green Arrow, that noted bibliophile (sarcasm emoji), approaches Batman in his secret ID as rich guy Bruce Wayne, about a discovery the archer made. Arrow came across an old tome talking about a magic arrow made by Merlin himself. This arrow turned up much later in the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, and though history lies and tells us that the English won the battle thanks to superior archery weapons, the book tells Arrow that the English won because of just ONE arrow, when the magic bolt was used to bring down one particular French champion. Arrow being a bug of all things related to archery, the financially restricted hero asks Bruce for a lift to France. Bruce agrees.                                       

 So Arrow bails out of the Batplane, but after he leaves, Batman discovers that Arrow left his book behind. Batman doesn't plan to do much about this, but Some Mysterious Watcher fears that the crusader might launch an investigation of the tome's provenance. The Watcher spirits away the book, and-- causes the Batman to launch an investigation, tailing Arrow to his French destination.       

   

Batman then gets whipped back to 1415 at Agincourt, to which point in time Green Arrow has also been deposited. The mysterious manipulator is none other than The Gargoyle, one of the better Teen Titans villains created by Haney. He didn't want Batman, only Green Arrow, whom he manipulates into shooting him with the magic arrow of Merlin. Seems Gargoyle got exiled to the dimension of Limbo at the end of both of his previous two adventures, and though for some reason he's entered Earth back in the 13th century, he dopes out that he can return to the 20th if he gets shot by the arrow. Why does he have to be shot only by Green Arrow, and only during the Battle of Agincourt? Because the script says so, of course.                                   

                      

Gargoyle succeeds in getting shot, sending him back to the 20th century of his origins. Batman and GA follow, pour on tons of exposition, and eventually send the evildoer back into limbo by shooting him a second time. Despite all these tortured plot contrivances, this is a fun story based just on how well Haney succeeds in playing up the respective strengths of the bat and the archer. And how often do modern comics-stories even reference important historical events like Agincourt, even if the events are rewritten for the purpose of wild fantasy?                                                       

  Similarly, though artist Jim Aparo is no Hal Foster, I can't even imagine a modern comics artist attempting the sort of knightly grandeur seen in the above illustration.