Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

While in a convent, hiding with Cosette from Javert, Valjean reflects on two different kinds of imprisonment, and the value of doing for others:

This was the second place of captivity which he had seen. In his youth, in what had been for him the beginning of his life, and later on, quite recently again, he had beheld another,--a frightful place, a terrible place, whose severities had always appeared to him the iniquity of justice, and the crime of the law. Now, after the galleys, he saw the cloister; and when he meditated how he had formed a part of the galleys, and that he now, so to speak, was a spectator of the cloister, he confronted the two in his own mind with anxiety.  Sometimes he crossed his arms and leaned on his hoe, and slowly descended the endless spirals of revery.  He recalled his former companions: how wretched they were; they rose at dawn, and toiled until night; hardly were they permitted to sleep; they lay on camp beds, where nothing was tolerated but mattresses two inches thick, in rooms which were heated only in the very harshest months of the year; they were clothed in frightful red blouses; they were allowed, as a great favor, linen trousers in the hottest weather, and a woollen carter's blouse on their backs when it was very cold; they drank no wine, and ate no meat, except when they went on "fatigue duty." They lived nameless, designated only by numbers, and converted, after a manner, into ciphers themselves, with downcast eyes, with lowered voices, with shorn heads, beneath the cudgel and in disgrace.  Then his mind reverted to the beings whom he had under his eyes.  These beings also lived with shorn heads, with downcast eyes, with lowered voices, not in disgrace, but amid the scoffs of the world, not with their backs bruised with the cudgel, but with their shoulders lacerated with their discipline. Their names, also, had vanished from among men; they no longer existed except under austere appellations. They never ate meat and they never drank wine; they often remained until evening without food; they were attired, not in a red blouse, but in a black shroud, of woollen, which was heavy in summer and thin in winter, without the power to add or subtract anything from it; without having even, according to the season, the resource of the linen garment or the woollen cloak; and for six months in the year they wore serge chemises which gave them fever. They dwelt, not in rooms warmed only during rigorous cold, but in cells where no fire was ever lighted; they slept, not on mattresses two inches thick, but on straw. And finally, they were not even allowed their sleep; every night, after a day of toil, they were obliged, in the weariness of their first slumber, at the moment when they were falling sound asleep and beginning to get warm, to rouse themselves, to rise and to go and pray in an ice-cold and gloomy chapel, with their knees on the stones.  On certain days each of these beings in turn had to remain for twelve successive hours in a kneeling posture, or prostrate, with face upon the pavement, and arms outstretched in the form of a cross.  The others were men; these were women.  What had those men done? They had stolen, violated, pillaged, murdered, assassinated. They were bandits, counterfeiters, poisoners, incendiaries, murderers, parricides. What had these women done? They had done nothing whatever.  On the one hand, highway robbery, fraud, deceit, violence, sensuality, homicide, all sorts of sacrilege, every variety of crime; on the other, one thing only, innocence.  Perfect innocence, almost caught up into heaven in a mysterious assumption, attached to the earth by virtue, already possessing something of heaven through holiness.  On the one hand, confidences over crimes, which are exchanged in whispers; on the other, the confession of faults made aloud. And what crimes! And what faults!  On the one hand, miasms; on the other, an ineffable perfume. On the one hand, a moral pest, guarded from sight, penned up under the range of cannon, and literally devouring its plague-stricken victims; on the other, the chaste flame of all souls on the same hearth. There, darkness; here, the shadow; but a shadow filled with gleams of light, and of gleams full of radiance.  Two strongholds of slavery; but in the first, deliverance possible, a legal limit always in sight, and then, escape. In the second, perpetuity; the sole hope, at the distant extremity of the future, that faint light of liberty which men call death.  In the first, men are bound only with chains; in the other, chained by faith.  What flowed from the first? An immense curse, the gnashing of teeth, hatred, desperate viciousness, a cry of rage against human society, a sarcasm against heaven.  What results flowed from the second? Blessings and love. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume II – Cosette; Book Eighth – Cemeteries Take That Which Is Committed Them, Chapter IX, “Cloistered”.]

Novels:

• Bill Clinton and James Patterson, The President Is Missing: A Novel (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018): “It realistically depicts the selfless and often nameless people who work in government — and are willing to lose their lives — because they are compelled to serve their nation.”
• Jennie Offill, Weather: A Novel (Knopf, 2020): “. . . Offill is interested in the things we can save and the things we cannot. Lizzie calls Mr. Jimmy for rides to work because he’s threatened by the Lyfts and Ubers of the world; she thinks she can help him and his disabled son.”

Poetry

Feel for the wrongs to universal ken
Daily exposed, woe that unshrouded lies;
And seek the Sufferer in his darkest den,
Whether conducted to the spot by sighs
And moanings, or he dwells (as if the wren
Taught him concealment) hidden from all eyes
In silence and the awful modesties
Of sorrow; feel for all, as brother Men!
Rest not in hope want's icy chain to thaw
By casual boons and formal charities;
Learn to be just, just through impartial law;
Far as ye may, erect and equalise;
And, what ye cannot reach by statute, draw
Each from his fountain of self-sacrifice!

[William Wordsworth, Sonnet III, 1842]

Other poems:

• Robert Frost, “In Equal Sacrifice”
• Alfred Tennyson, “Enoch Arden”

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Johannes Brahms’ chamber works for strings, especially the quartets, quintets and sextets, are at their core about cohesion. The quintets, with the addition of a second viola, and the sextets, with the addition of a second cello, sound a tone of warmth that is not present in such abundance in the quartets. This warmth, coupled with Brahms’ characteristic romanticism, suggest the fellow-feeling that characterizes heartfelt altruism.

• String Quintet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 88 (1882) (approx. 26-29’)
• String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111 (1890) (approx. 25-30’)
• String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 18 (1860) (approx. 33-37’)
• String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36 (1865) (approx. 38-49’) 

Similarly, Ludwig van Beethoven’s three string quintets:

• String Quintet No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 4 (1795) (approx. 30’)
• String Quintet No. 2 in C Major, Op. 29, “Storm” (1801) (approx. 32-36’)
• String Quintet No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 104 (1817) (approx. 31-34’) 

​​In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Little Mermaid”, the title character wishes to live a fully human life. She falls in love with a prince but then must murder him or die. She chooses instead to kill herself. (Andersen’s tale does not have the happy ending of Disney’s recounting of it.) But then she may become immortal by servicing humanity for 300 years. Andersen imagined that self-sacrifice would be rewarded. In Disney’s retelling, King Triton sacrifices his own desires to free Ariel. The story has been set to music, each retelling presenting its own twist on altruism:

• Antonín Dvořák, Rusalka, Op. 114, B 203 (1900) (approx. 144-154’) (libretto), renders the story as an opera but in Dvořák’s telling of it, the prince accepts Rusalka’s kiss, and dies. Performances with video feature Strid, Nylund, Benacková, Fleming, and Hannan. Audio-only recorded performances are by: Červinková, Blachut & Prague National Thatre Orchestra (Krombholc) in 1952; Šubrtová, Žídek & Prague National Theatre (Chalabala); and Fleming, Heppner & Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (Mackerras) in 1997.
• Albert Lortzing, Undine (1845) (approx. 124-157’) (libretto): Based on a fairy tale by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, this opera is about a water nymph who falls in love with a knight, with a different ending from that of Rusalka. “Dvoř·k could keep the legend intact and have his prince kiss the water nymph whereupon he dies. Lortzing, too, preferred such a finale for his opera; but his audiences wanted a happy ending. Therefore, the composer acquiesced to their wishes and Undine ends with a rather sugary end: the prince kisses the nymph and accompanies his love for eternity into her water world.” Audio recordings are by Rothenberger, Pütz, Gedda & RIAS Symphonie-Orchester & Kammerchor (Heger) in 1967; and by Krause, Protschka, Janssen & Cologne West German Radio Orchestra (Eichhorn) in 1989.
• Hans Werner Henze, Undine (1957) (approx. 100-105’): In this modern ballet, a water nymph wishes to become human. The story line is an adaptation of de la Fouqué’s fairy tale. Oliver Knussen recorded the work with London Sinfonietta in 1997.
• Alexander von Zemlinsky, Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid) (1903) (approx. 41-48’) presents the tale as an orchestral work. 

Other works:

• Richard Strauss, Enoch Arden, melodrama for piano and narrator, Op. 38, Tr. V. 181 (1897) (approx. 53-54’), after Tennyson’s poem, in which the hero returns after ten years away from home, having been shipwrecked. Thinking that he has died, his wife has remarried. He never allows her to know that he is alive.
• Pēteris Vasks, Violin Concerto No. 1, “Tālā gaisma” (Distant Light) (1997) (approx. 29-36’)

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Bette Midler, “From a Distance” (lyrics)
• Maria Pomianowska Project, “Armenian Song ‘Sacrifice’”

Visual Arts

• Norman Rockwell, A Scout Is Helpful (1941)

Film and Stage

• High and Low: The kidnappers have taken the chauffeur’s child. Does the wealthy industrialist ransom him anyway?
• Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder), exploring the limits of altruism: a man who has set up a school in an area ravaged by famine “manages to survive for a while by exchanging his teaching services for food, but the devastation around him soon becomes so desperate that his altruism overcomes his instinct for self-preservation”
• Only Angels Have Wings: pilots facing death, finally for sure
• The Sacrifice: on what people say they would be willing to do to avert war