Victor Hugo Guernsey Quotes

I dedicate this book to the rock of hospitality and liberty, to that portion of old Norman ground inhabited by the noble nation of the sea, to the island of Guernsey, severe yet kind, my present asylum, my probable tomb.

El profesor Henri Guillemin ha descifrado, en un libro muy divertido, Hugo et la sexualité, aquellos cuadernos secretos que llevó Victor Hugo en Jersey y Guernsey, en los años de su exilio. Unos años que, por razones que son obvias, algunos comentaristas han bautizado «los años de las sirvientas». El gran vate, pese a haberse llevado consigo a las islas del Canal a su esposa Adéle y a su amante Juliette, y de haber entablado esporádicas relaciones íntimas con damas locales o de paso, mantuvo un constante y múltiple comercio carnal con las muchachas del servicio. Era un comercio en todos los sentidos de la palabra, empezando por su aspecto mercantil. Él pagaba las prestaciones de acuerdo a un esquema bastante estricto. Si la muchacha se dejaba sólo mirar los pechos recibía unos pocos centavos. Si se desnudaba del todo, pero el poeta no podía tocarla, cincuenta centavos. Si podía acariciarla sin llegar a mayores, un franco. Cuando llegaba a aquéllos, en cambio, la retribución podía llegar a franco y medio y en alguna tarde de prodigalidad enloquecida ¡hasta a dos francos! Casi todas estas indicaciones de los carnets secretos de Victor Hugo están escritas en español para borrar las pistas.

Ecclesiastes declares that life has no meaning, that evil will be rewarded, and goodness punished. He says that even the most honorable man can be left in town to die in the street, while the greediest fool gets a eulogy and a proper burial. But either people skip that part of the Old Testament, or they never read the Bible at all, and instead they follow their instinct to mythify a sequence of random events and the stream of strangers they encounter in life: Good things happen to them or people they like and they think, “justice.” Bad things happen to people they don’t like and once again they think, “justice.” This is part of why a cold bump can be so effective: Lucien believed that he summoned me into his life by heart alone, by fate. He believed he deserved to fall in love (everyone believes they deserve this) and, in his specific case, with someone like me. His satisfied desire was a reward, as if it were part of a grand design based on birthright, on being from a good family, and making good choices, moral choices, and aesthetic ones too. We took turns kissing and talking, lying on the grass of the Place des Vosges. Lucien was telling me about Victor Hugo, how Victor Hugo, exiled to the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, had heard voices in the waves, addressing him on the subject of the future of France.