The Last Day of a Condemned Man: Victor Hugo

By Oussama Tahiri

Victor Hugo1802-1885The Last Day of a Condemned Manfollowed byClaude GueuxThe Electronic Library of QuebecCollection tous les ventsVolume 141: version 1.0At the head of the first editions of this work, first published without a name of author, that the few lines that one will read: " There are two ways to realize the existence of this book. Or indeed, there was a wad of yellow and uneven papers on which we have found, recorded one by one, the last thoughts of a wretch; where he met a man, a dreamer busy observing nature for the benefit of art, a philosopher, a poet, what do I know whoseidea was fantasy, who took it or rather let it be taken by it, and could get rid of it only by throwing it into a book." From these two explanations, the reader will choose whatever he wants. " As we see, at the time this book was published, the author did not think proper to say all his thoughts. He preferred to wait until she was understood and see if she would be. She was. The author today can unmask the political idea, the social idea, which he wanted to popularize under this innocent and candid literary form.He therefore declares, or rather he highly admits, that The Last Day of a Condemned is nothing but a plea, direct or indirect, as one might like, for the abolition of the death penalty. What he intended to do, what he would like posterity to see in his work, if ever he cares for so little, is not special defense, and always easy, and always transitory, of a chosen criminal, of a particular accused of election; it is the general and permanent pleading for all present and future defendants; it is the great point of law of humanity alleged and pleaded in any voice before society, which is the great court of cassation; it is this supreme end of inadmissibility, abhorred to blood, built forever before all criminal trials; it is the dark and fatal question which palpitates obscurely at the bottom of all the capital causes under the triple thicknesses of pathos, whose envelope the bloody rhetoric of the king's people.; it is the question of life and death, I say, undressed, naked, stripped of the audible twists of the floor, brutally brought to light, and put where it must be seen, where it must be, where she is really, in her true environment, in her horrible environment, not in the court, but in the scaffold, not at the judge's, but at the executioner's.That's what he wanted to do. If the future granted him one day the glory of having done it, which he dares not hope,

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1793862214
• ISBN13: 9781793862211
• Release Date: January 2019
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"