The Man Who Laughs (also published under the title By Order of the King) is a novel by Victor Hugo, originally published in April 1869 under the French title L'Homme qui rit. Although among Hugo's most obscure works, it was adapted into a popular 1928 film, directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin and Olga Baclanova. The first major character whom the reader is introduced to is a mountebank who dresses in bearskins and calls himself Ursus. His only companion is a large domesticated wolf, whom Ursus has ...
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The Man Who Laughs (also published under the title By Order of the King) is a novel by Victor Hugo, originally published in April 1869 under the French title L'Homme qui rit. Although among Hugo's most obscure works, it was adapted into a popular 1928 film, directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin and Olga Baclanova. The first major character whom the reader is introduced to is a mountebank who dresses in bearskins and calls himself Ursus. His only companion is a large domesticated wolf, whom Ursus has named Homo (Latin for "man", in a pun over the Hobbesian saying "homo homini lupus", meaning "man is a wolf to his fellow man."). Ursus lives in a caravan, which he conveys to holiday fairs and markets throughout southern England, where he sells folk remedies. The action moves to an English sea coast, on the night of January 29, 1690. A group of wanderers, their identities left unrevealed to the reader, are urgently loading a ship for departure. A boy, ten years old, is among their company, but they leave him behind and cast off. The desperate boy, barefoot and starving, wanders through a snowstorm and reaches a gibbet, where he finds the corpse of a hanged criminal. The dead man is wearing shoes: utterly worthless to him now, yet precious to this boy. In the meantime, the wanderers' ship sinks after a long struggle with the sea in the English Channel. After walking some more, the boy finds a ragged woman, frozen to death.
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Add this copy of The Man Who Laughs to cart. $10.55, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Austell, GA, UNITED STATES, published 2015 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.
Add this copy of The Man Who Laughs to cart. $10.55, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2015 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.
This book is a very dark canvas, but it is precisely that darkness that makes the rays of light that shine through it all the more mystical and beautiful.
This book is a Gnostic mass in fiction form.
Contrary to the typical religious view, that this is my Father's world gone wrong, Hugo takes the position that this world is an evil place of darkness and suffering.
This is not my Fathers world at all.
It is essentially the Gnostic view. That human souls are sparks of divine light, temporarily trapped in an evil place. Those who oppress and torment the weak and the poor are simply soulless props, exercising and strengthening those sparks of divine light that are, for the moment, in their orbit.
Dea and Gwynplaine are kindred spirits who cannot be separated, but will continually find each other no matter what the odds.
B.E. Maxwell, author of The Faerie Door, a Gnostic fable for children of all ages.
(Harcourt Houghton Mifflin 2008)
