LM 3.7.1
New book: Patron-Minette
Here's to hoping this one is less painful. Chapter title is "Mines and Miners", which I would like to think does not somehow get applied to Marius. We will see.
Beneath the structure of society, that complicated marvel of a ramshackle edifice, are all sorts of excavations. There is the religious mine, the philosophical mine, the economic mine, the revolutionary mine. One person digs with an idea, another with numbers, another with anger. People call out and answer each other from one catacomb to another. Utopias make their way underground through these conduits. They branch out in all directions. They sometimes run into each other and make common cause.
Fun analogy going on here. All those on the surface, living their lives, easily capable of being unaware or at least ignoring, if they want, what's going on "beneath them".
The deeper down, the more mysterious the workers. Down to a level the social philosopher can identify, the work is good. Beyond that level it is dubious and variable. Lower still, it becomes terrible. At a certain depth the excavations become impenetrable to the spirit of civilization, the bounds of man’s breathable environment have been exceeded. This may be the beginning of monsters.
Oh, VERY much like how this bit is written. The straightforwardness of that last sentence is kind of chilling. Thinking about how the deeper you go in the ocean, the more alien things start to look....
There is a point where delving deeper means entombment, and light is quenched. Beneath all these mines we have just described, beneath all these galleries, beneath this whole vast vein-like subterranean network of progress and Utopia, much further down in the earth, deeper than Marat, deeper than Babeuf, deeper, much deeper, and without any connection with the upper levels, is the last tunnel. A terrible place. This is what we have called the third level down. It is the pit of darkness. It is the cavern of the blind. Inferi. It connects directly with the abyss.
YEAHHHH OH WE'RE BACK BABY!!!! Back to sentences that actually draw me in instead of making me want to shut my eyes!!!! Sentences I want to devour instead of spit out!!!!
Guzzling down this chapter like the most refreshing lemonade on the hottest of days. Not a single "Ugh" was felt, not a single sigh breathed.
Hugo's abyss is my sanctuary.