Clerihew of the Undead Translator

NORMAN DENNY

Norman Denny
Hasn't many
Fans left of the hatchet job
He made of Les Misérables.*

*Except Penguin, which can't resist reprinting Denny's bowdlerized translation 'cause it's, you know, free.

Daily Dose

From Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, translated by Norman Denny

YOU WHO

"I say to you who love that all these things are contained in love.  You must learn to find them."

From Part Four, Book Five, Chapter IV, The Heart Beneath the Stone

Daily Dose

From Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood

OR NIGHTMARES

"There is nothing like dogma for bringing forth dreams.  And there is nothing like dreams for engendering the future.  Utopia to-day, flesh and blood to-morrow."

From Volume III, Marius, Book Fourth, Chapter One

Daily Dose

From Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood

NOT

"Not seeing people permits one to attribute to them all possible perfections."

From Volume III, Marius, Book Second, Chapter VII -- Some Petticoat

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #113

Daily Dose

From Les Miserables, Volume One, by Victor Hugo, translated by Isobel Florence Hapgood

ALWAYS

"He always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he read."

From Book Fifth, III

Daily Dose

From Les Miserables, Fantine, Book First -- A Just Man, by Victor Hugo, translated by Isobel Florence Hapgood

YES

"'Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions.  When they are over, this fact is recognized, -- that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed.'"

From Chapter IX

Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #108

A Caricature

Breakfast at the Bookstore #12

Daily Dose

From Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, translation by Lee Fahnestock and Norman MacAffe

DARK

"Dark drifts covered the horizon.  A strange shadow coming nearer and nearer was spreading over men little by little, over things, over ideas; a shadow that came from indignation and systems.  All that had been hurriedly stifled was stirring and fermenting.  Sometimes the conscience of the honest man caught its breath, so great was the confusion in the air in which sophisms mingled with truths.  Minds trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of a storm.  The electric tension was so great that at certain moments any chance comer, though unknown, gave off light.  Then the twilight obscurity would fall again.  At intervals, deep and half-smothered mutterings enabled men to judge the amount of lightening in the cloud."

From Chapter IV, Cracks in the Foundation

A Caricature