the best argument of French literature

Some books are more than books, they are flames that shine in the night and show mankind the road to follow. "The Last Day of a Condemned" is one of those flames. Under the appearance of a modest interior monologue of a few hundred pages, it is indeed a masterpiece of timeless message that vibrates every sentence of unprecedented emotion. What tells us this short story? The agony of a man, simply. A man sentenced to death, which, in the solitude of his dungeon, look shatter the minutes that separate him from the guillotine. Who is he? Mystery. His crime? We will never know the details. What interests Hugo, this is not the case, no, it is to explore the contrary, it is universal.

In the first pages of the book, the narrator describes his approach as "intellectual autopsy." The formula is terrible, but just terribly, because that's exactly what it is: each of the 49 chapters is a real blow scalpel, a surgical incision in the depths of a soul at bay. A start in life, one foot in death, we dissect anonymous prisoner's mental ordeal. Seeking he feeling sorry for us? No. To convince us? Not even. It is simply to the greater objectivity. He wants to show his "experience" by staying closer to his feelings. He embellishes nothing, nothing blackens. He observes, notes, analysis. This book is a seismographic survey, except that no sounds out the bowels of the Earth, but those of a human being. A human being with whom one has taken away all hope and who vainly debate facing death approaching like a fly trapped in the web struggles facing the spider about to devour her.

Certainly, certainly, I tell the supporters of the death penalty, all this is very exciting, but a company does not have the right and even the duty to be merciless to those who shamelessly flout its most laws Fundamental? Well, what do you want, I think that Hugo does not solve the problem of crime by killing criminals, and that the death penalty has less to do in the end, justice as a form of institutionalized vengeance. Murder is an abomination, it is obvious, but what is the point of punishing murder by another murder, was it legal? To nothing! It is even the last of the nonsense!

This is in all cases a poignant book that demonstrates the magnanimity of its author and has lost nothing, almost two centuries, impact or relevance.