Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

In danger of being captured and imprisoned, Valjean has decided to flee France, for England, with Cosette. Cosette has fallen in love with Marius, and wishes to remain in France. For the first time, the desires of the surrogate father and daughter are in conflict.

Poor old Jean Valjean certainly did not love Cosette otherwise than as a father; but we have already remarked, above, that into this paternity the widowhood of his life had introduced all the shades of love; he loved Cosette as his daughter, and he loved her as his mother, and he loved her as his sister; and, as he had never had either a woman to love or a wife, as nature is a creditor who accepts no protest, that sentiment also, the most impossible to lose, was mingled with the rest, vague, ignorant, pure with the purity of blindness, unconscious, celestial, angelic, divine; less like a sentiment than like an instinct, less like an instinct than like an imperceptible and invisible but real attraction; and love, properly speaking, was, in his immense tenderness for Cosette, like the thread of gold in the mountain, concealed and virgin.  Let the reader recall the situation of heart which we have already indicated. No marriage was possible between them; not even that of souls; and yet, it is certain that their destinies were wedded. With the exception of Cosette, that is to say, with the exception of a childhood, Jean Valjean had never, in the whole of his long life, known anything of that which may be loved. The passions and loves which succeed each other had not produced in him those successive green growths, tender green or dark green, which can be seen in foliage which passes through the winter and in men who pass fifty. In short, and we have insisted on it more than once, all this interior fusion, all this whole, of which the sum total was a lofty virtue, ended in rendering Jean Valjean a father to Cosette. A strange father, forged from the grandfather, the son, the brother, and the husband, that existed in Jean Valjean; a father in whom there was included even a mother; a father who loved Cosette and adored her, and who held that child as his light, his home, his family, his country, his paradise.  Thus when he saw that the end had absolutely come, that she was escaping from him, that she was slipping from his hands, that she was gliding from him, like a cloud, like water, when he had before his eyes this crushing proof: "another is the goal of her heart, another is the wish of her life; there is a dearest one, I am no longer anything but her father, I no longer exist"; when he could no longer doubt, when he said to himself: "She is going away from me!" the grief which he felt surpassed the bounds of possibility. To have done all that he had done for the purpose of ending like this! And the very idea of being nothing! Then, as we have just said, a quiver of revolt ran through him from head to foot. He felt, even in the very roots of his hair, the immense reawakening of egotism, and the _I_ in this man's abyss howled. [Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (1862), Volume IV – Saint-Denis; Book Fifteenth – The Rue de L’Homme Armé, Chapter I, A Drinker Is a Babbler.]

 The main theme in Colm Tóibín's fiction seems to be regret. Though regret is not our ideal, it is a prominent part of our thoughts and therefore of our story.

• Colm Tóibín, The Empty Family: Stories (Scribner, 2011).
• Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn: A Novel (Scribner, 2009).
• Colm Tóibín, Mothers and Sons: A Novel (McClelland & Stewart, 2007).
• Colm Tóibín, The Master: A Novel (Scribner, 2004).
• Colm Tóibín, The Blackwater Lightship: A Novel (Scribner, 2000).

Other works on letting go:

•   Andrew Ridker, The Altruists: A Novel (Viking, 2019): “Even if it’s true that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, it seems pretty clear that many have the same dilemmas and woes. One that frequently pops up in life and literature is an inability or unwillingness to let go of the past and its generations-spanning mistakes, disappointments and resentments.”
•   Karen Hesse's Phoenix Rising: A Novel (Henry Holt and Co., 1994) takes its title from an ancient myth about a bird that never dies.
•   Victor LaValle, Lone Women: A Novel (One World, 2023): “Letting go of the past, of shame, allows one to become someone new. It’s an apt invocation in a novel centered on marginalized women in the American West who are finding ways to do more than just survive.”
• Yale van der Wouden, The Safekeep: A Novel (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2024): “She is much more interested in the broken bit of china plate in her handbag, which she has brought along to show Hendrik. The plate belonged to their home, to their mother, and she found it buried in the garden. She keeps a close inventory of every precious item in the house where the siblings arrived as children sometime during World War II, and where she continues to live . . .”

Poetry

A spruce tree stands alone
In the Northland on an bald peak
It reposes, shrouded in white
Surrounded by ice and snow.

It dreams of a palm tree
Which in the far away orient,
Mourns in silence and solitude
On the rim of a burning cliff.

[Heinrich Heine, Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam ("A spruce tree stands alone") (1823).]

I loved you, and I probably still do,
And for a while the feeling may remain...
But let my love no longer trouble you,
I do not wish to cause you any pain.
I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew,
The jealousy, the shyness - though in vain -
Made up a love so tender and so true
As may God grant you to be loved again.

[Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, “I Loved You”]

ARRIVING – LEAVING

Love, we're going home now, / Where the vines clamber over the trellis: / Even before you, the summer will arrive, / On its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom.
Our nomadic kisses wandered over all the world: / Armenia, dollop of disinterred honey: / Ceylon, green dove: and the YangTse with its old / Old patience, dividing the day from the night.
And now, dearest, we return, across the crackling sea / Like two blind birds to their wall, / To their nest in a distant spring:
Because love cannot always fly without resting, / Our lives return to the wall, to the rocks of the sea: / Our kisses head back home where they belong.

[Pablo Neruda, “Love, We’re Going Home Now”]

Other poems on arriving and leaving:

• Robert Frost, “Meeting and Passing”
• William Wordsworth, “Farewell Lines”
• James Joyce, “Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba”

Poetry books:

• Tree Daye, Cardinal (Copper Canyon 2020: “A slim collection of beautiful poems about moving (leaving, returning, remembering) . . .”

HOLDING ON – LETTING GO

I was angry with my friend;  / I told my wrath, my wrath did end. / I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

And I waterd it in fears, / Night & morning with my tears: / And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles. / And it grew both day and night. / Till it bore an apple bright. / And my foe beheld it shine, / And he knew that it was mine. 

And into my garden stole, / When the night had veild the pole; / In the morning glad I see; / My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

[William Blake, “A Poison Tree”]

Other poems on holding on and letting go:

• Robert Frost, “A Boundless Moment”

STIMULATING – LETTING ALONE

• Robert Frost, “Mending Wall” (analysis)
• Robert Frost, “Good-bye, and Keep Cold”
• Pablo Neruda, “Poor Creatures”
• Pablo Neruda, “Ode to Laziness”

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Compositions:

• Erich Korngold, Die tote stadt (The Dead City) (1919) (approx. 124-144’) (libretto): a man cannot let go of his deceased wife’s memory. Performances are conducted by Latham-Koenig, Segerstam, Hollreiser, Rubiķis, Lano and Leinsdorf.
• Alexander Scriabin, Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 29 (1901) (approx. 40-48’): “Much of Scriabin’s music is based on a contrast between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ themes, representing two opposite poles of attraction, energy and inertia. The ‘active’ themes are dramatic and rhythmically incisive, as at the beginning of the second and fourth movements. The ‘passive’ themes tend to be more complex harmonically, rhythmically fluid and heavily sensual in character: the entire slow movement is dominated by such music. Halfway in character between these two types is the slow, brooding C minor theme . . . heard at the symphony’s opening on a solo clarinet.”
• Paul Abraham, Viktoria und ihr Husar (Victoria and Her Hussar) (1930) (approx. 78-106’): thinking her first love has died, a woman marries an American legate. When her first love appears alive, her husband releases her to follow her heart.
• Franz Joseph Haydn, Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp Minor, Hob.I:45, "Abschieds" (Farewell) (1772) (approx. 32-34’)
• Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat major, Op. 81a, “Les Adieux” (1810) (approx. 17’)
• Jean-Marie LeClair, Scylla et Glaucus, Op. 11 (1746) (approx. 170’) (libretto begins on page 32): in this tragic opera, possessiveness is masqueraded as love. The plot comes from chapters XIII and XIV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Performances are conducted by Gardiner in 1988 and D’Herin in 2015.
• Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 5 (1995) (approx. 21’): Written in the twilight of Carter’s long life, this was his farewell to the string quartet.
• Jordi Savall’s compilation of music on his album entitled “Carlos V: Mille Regretz: La Canción del Emperador” (1999) (76’) pays homage to Carlos V, who abdicated his throne when he could not bring peace to his people. He gave a moving statement about his wishes for the people and his inability to bring those wishes into being.
• Kaija Saariaho, Nuits, Adieux (Nights, Farewell) (1991) (approx. 10-12’): “is about singing, breathing, whispering, night time, farewells. The piece consists of ten passages, five of them entitled Night, five remaining Farewell.”

Music: songs and other short pieces

Arriving:

•   Frank Kimbrough, “Coming on the Hudson” 

The number of popular songs that strike this chord attest to how common the pain of leaving is in our culture.

•   Bob Dylan, “Girl from the North Country” (lyrics)
•   Bob Dylan, “Red River Shore” (lyrics)
•   “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” (lyrics), sung by Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, and Vince Gill
•   John Denver, “Seasons of the Heart” (lyrics)
•   John Lennon, “Mother” (lyrics)
•   The Platters, “Harbor Lights ” (lyrics)
• Franz Schubert (composer), “Abscheid” (Farewell), D. 475 (1816) (lyrics)
• Franz Schubert (composer), “”Schiffers Scheidelied” (Sailor’s Parting Song), D. 910 (1827) (lyrics)
• Franz Schubert (composer), “Abscheid” (Farewell), D. 957 (1816) from song cycle Schwanengesang (lyrics)

Visual Arts

Film and Stage

• Red River, a American Western that warns of the importance of being able to let go emotionally of a lost love
• The Rider: The rodeo life was all that gave a young man a sense of purpose and meaning; then he could no longer live that life.
• Late Spring: a father in post-war Japan pretends that he is about to be married, hoping to encourage his daughter to leave the nest
• Life of Pi, about letting go, moving on and trying to figure out what was real
• Since Otar Left: an elderly woman uses a fiction to let go of her deceased son, her granddaughter lets go of a dysfunctional relationship with her mother, and the mother – the elderly woman’s daughter -  cannot let go