Blood & Dust: Drawing the Unconscious.
By: Vashik Armenikus
Tags: History, Literature, Art, Psychology, Creativity

Justice

‘To love another person is to see the face of God’ ~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables.

In 1853, the brutal murder of a woman by her husband shocked the small island of Guernsey. This was not crowded Paris where people felt distant from each other. This was an island of a few thousand inhabitants, where everyone knew each other, where every event felt tangible, where each tragedy touched every family.

Justicia by Victor Hugo | Wiki Art

The evidence against Charles Tapner, the man who was accused of murdering his wife, was substantial but not definite. The residents did not see any certain motivation in Tapner’s cruel action. Despite of numerous petitions signed by the residents pushing the British Home Secretary to acquit Tapner, he was still sentenced to death by hanging.

One of the signatories of that petition was Victor Hugo. He stood by his principles that nobody has the right of taking someone else’s life. After all, it was for defending those exact principles, that he was forced into the exile.

Hugo sank into a deep melancholy. He sat at his desk and drew one of the darkest and scariest drawings I have ever seen. He called it ‘Justicia’.

This drawing was made two decades before the art critic Louis Leroy used the term ‘impressionism’ to describe the artistic style of painters like Monet. But, we don’t have to be art-critics ourselves, to ask ‘what is Justicia drawing if not a product of an impression? An impression of Tapner’s soul surrounded by darkness and his floating head screaming from pain. If we step back and look from a distance we can also see a blurry face of a woman, of his wife.

Les Misérables.

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”

― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Those who are forced to be in exile never know if they are ever going to return home. From the very first days they try to create a space where everything looks and feels, tastes and smells like home.

The interior of the house, where Victor Hugo settled in, during his time in exile is a piece of art itself. He designed it entirely by his own hand. Each room in the Hauteville House reflected a historical period of France.

If every other room in the house was dedicated to the past, the room on the top floor was dedicated to the present.The room overlooked the sea, and it was there where Hugo began to write his masterpiece Les Misérables.

‘Those who do not weep, do not see’ says one of my favourite lines from that novel. If you see sufferings of others and their pain doesn’t put tears on your cheeks, then you did not fully grasp their pain.

Gavroche a onze ans.(“Gavroche at eleven years old”). | Wiki Commons

Drawing, once again, acted as a back-door to unconscious for Hugo.

We can see that in his drawing of Gavroche — one of the most iconic characters of Les Misérables.

He is the boy lives on the streets. His character represents what is it like to be someone who was born without the right for a decent future.

But Gavroche has a darker symbolism — he symbolises populism. The rule, the impulse, the irrational instinct of the crowd.

The drawing of him is as ominous and dark as Hugo’s drawing of Tapner.

Gavroche’s wide, dark smile and his narrow eyes remind me of another more recent fictional character who is also a populist, disenfranchised madman— the Joker played by Joaquin Phoenix in 2019 adaptation by Todd Philips.

Order & Chaos.

‘One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.’ ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Victor Hugo kept his drawings private and rarely shared with anyone outside his narrow circle. Although, one the greatest painters of the time Eugène Delacroix said that if Victor Hugo had decided to become a painter instead of a writer, he would have become one the greatest artists of the century.

Why did he keep his drawings secret? Literary critics explain this as his desire to focus the attention of the public on his novels. They might be right, but there can be another reason.

Hugo’s heart was a battleground between chaos and order. Throughout his hard life, he tried to tame the surrounding chaos to give birth to exceptional works. He drew his destiny as a strong, uncontrollable ocean wave, of which he tried to get hold of.

The wave of my destiny by Victor Hugo, 1857 | Wiki Art

He felt, as if, the destiny tried to take away everything that he had loved. His eldest and favourite daughter Léopoldine drowned in a boating accident in 1847. Then the destiny forced him out from home.

Drawing acted as a therapy. Through drawing he could make those forces of chaos more tangible. He could get into a dialogue with them.

Dante, Byron and Wilde did not dare explore other art forms to unlock their unconscious. That is what makes Victor Hugo and his writing exceptional. That is what makes Les Misérables so sublime. That novel is a drawing painted with words.