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    Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné
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    Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné
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    Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné
    Ebook184 pages2 hours

    Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné

    By Victor Hugo

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    About this ebook

    Une édition de référence du Dernier Jour d’un condamné de Victor Hugo, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques.

    « Tout à coup l’un des valets m’a enlevé ma veste, et l’autre a pris mes deux mains qui pendaient, les a ramenées derrière mon dos, et j’ai senti les nœuds d’une corde se rouler lentement autour de mes poignets rapprochés. En même temps, l’autre détachait ma cravate. Ma chemise de batiste, seul lambeau qui me restât du moi d’autrefois, l’a fait en quelque sorte hésiter un moment ; puis il s’est mis à en couper le col.

    À cette précaution horrible, au saisissement de l’acier qui touchait mon cou, mes coudes ont tressailli, et j’ai laissé échapper un rugissement étouffé. La main de l’exécuteur a tremblé.

    – Monsieur, m’a-t-il dit, pardon ! Est-ce que je vous ai fait mal ?

    Ces bourreaux sont des hommes très doux. »

    (Extrait du chapitre XLVIII)
    LanguageFrançais
    PublisherCandide & Cyrano
    Release dateJan 1, 2012
    ISBN9782806232427
    Author

    Victor Hugo

    Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the most well-regarded French writers of the nineteenth century. He was a poet, novelist and dramatist, and he is best remembered in English as the author of Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). Hugo was born in Besançon, and became a pivotal figure of the Romantic movement in France, involved in both literature and politics. He founded the literary magazine Conservateur Littéraire in 1819, aged just seventeen, and turned his hand to writing political verse and drama after the accession to the throne of Louis-Philippe in 1830. His literary output was curtailed following the death of his daughter in 1843, but he began a new novel as an outlet for his grief. Completed many years later, this novel became Hugo's most notable work, Les Misérables.

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    Reviews for Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné

    4/5

    184 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This short psychologically powerful novel concerns the thoughts running through the mind of a man in prison and condemned to the guillotine in the early 19th century. It was first published anonymously in 1829, then reissued three years later with a preface by Hugo denouncing the death penalty, both as a matter of principle and as an example of a political abuse that no revolution had been able to abolish. It is not clear what crime the unnamed central character of the novel has committed; the implication is that he has killed someone (there is a reference by his lawyer to his belief the jury will acquit his client of premeditation), and he several times refers to the guilt he feels for the crime he admits to having committed, but we never learn the circumstances. In any case, it is irrelevant to the book's main point, which is the psychological changes he undergoes as the days and hours shrink down to the end. A terse but memorable read.
    • 2/5
      Likely to have had an impact at the time, and written with the mandatory flair and self-pity. Yet not as gripping today as it was before.
    • 3/5
      Hugo’s polemic against the death penalty is crafted as more of an emotional reaction than a political rant (though that appears in the preface). At first the condemned man believes that “death is infinitely to be preferred” to a life of hard labor; however, as his diary continues, we journey through his thoughts as execution day looms. Most disturbing is the festival atmosphere surrounding executions. When a woman remarks on the higher interest level in seeing a death row inmate versus a chain gang, out narrator posits “it is less diffuse, a concentrated and more aromatic liqueur.”It is also filled with Hugo’s beautiful prose: “For La Grève has already had enough. La Grève is mending her ways. The blood-swigging old crone behaved well in July. She now wants to live a better life, and to remain worthy of her recent good deed. Having lent her body to all the executions of the last three hundred years, she has now gone all coy. She is ashamed of her former calling. She wants to lose her bad name. she disowns the executioner. She is washing down her cobblestones.”
    • 4/5
      Capital punishment has always been a difficult issue for me, and reading Hugo’s slim book from 1829 was timely given a measure to repeal it in California will be voted on this November.The question that those against capital punishment must answer, I think, is why an incorrigible mass-murderer should be allowed to go on living, even if locked up in prison. Hugo’s answer to this is that we should not commit a murder in response to murder, and we should leave punishment to God. Atheists may have a problem with that last part, but the first part seems to be at the heart of the matter.The question that those for the death penalty must answer is why do it, particularly when studies have shown it’s actually more expensive, does not serve as a deterrent to crime, and enforcement is not only racially biased, but sometimes wrong, As David Dow says in the forward to this book, it seems to come down to a need for retribution, and aside from the slippery slope that represents, vengeance is one of the more base parts of human nature. Hugo doesn’t try to touch on those things or present a balanced argument; he makes it clear he is against capital punishment, and his approach is to make the case for all, instead of picking a single case of injustice (though they exist), or to focus on instances where the method of execution fails, resulting in cruel, lingering, agony (though he does mention a few). He alludes to the condemned man in the novel having killed, and mentions the hideous crimes of past occupants of the prison cell he’s in, but he doesn’t go into specific details for why this particular man should be spared – presumably because there will always be another person who’s committed worse crimes, and is “more deserving” of death.Hugo’s approach is simple – to show the humanity of the killer. He does this by writing in first person, from the condemned man’s perspective, showing his experiences in prison leading all the way up to his actual execution in the Place de Grève. Behold this thinking, feeling fellow creature, he says. Remember he is a father, husband, and son. Forget for a moment what he has done – what are you about to do?In the form of another convict he meets, Hugo shows how a man may have come to be a killer – orphaned, with a rough childhood, and once out of prison for theft and honestly trying to turn over a new leaf, shunned and denied work. Doesn’t this touch your heart of hearts, he seems to say, and shouldn’t we follow our most enlightened spiritual leaders in exercising clemency, and not become killers ourseves? You can hear those for the death penalty howl – remember the victims, *their* humanity, how they suffered! – and just where is “The Last Day of the Murdered Man” anyway? And so it goes. This book is pretty simple, and I doubt it will change minds that are entrenched. It does reveal Hugo’s noble nature, which I admire, and it did make me think, and for that it was worth reading. Interestingly enough, after having used the guillotine for the last time in 1977(!), France ultimately did abolish the death penalty in 1981, nearly a century after Hugo’s death in 1885.
    • 3/5
      Hugo’s polemic against the death penalty is crafted as more of an emotional reaction than a political rant (though that appears in the preface). At first the condemned man believes that “death is infinitely to be preferred” to a life of hard labor; however, as his diary continues, we journey through his thoughts as execution day looms. Most disturbing is the festival atmosphere surrounding executions. When a woman remarks on the higher interest level in seeing a death row inmate versus a chain gang, out narrator posits “it is less diffuse, a concentrated and more aromatic liqueur.”It is also filled with Hugo’s beautiful prose: “For La Grève has already had enough. La Grève is mending her ways. The blood-swigging old crone behaved well in July. She now wants to live a better life, and to remain worthy of her recent good deed. Having lent her body to all the executions of the last three hundred years, she has now gone all coy. She is ashamed of her former calling. She wants to lose her bad name. she disowns the executioner. She is washing down her cobblestones.”
    • 5/5
      I have read this book in its French edition during September 2012. Whenever you read Victor Hugo, I think, you will be moved by how beautiful the writing style and lexicon is. Hugo is an amazing writer.

      This book is about how a prisoner is living his last day before he is executed at the blade of a guillotine. When this book came out, this topic was a taboo, it wasn't approved to be criticizing the death penalty through decapitation. Nowadays, it is forbidden, of course, and activists are trying to render illegal the death penalty by hanging or by administering chemicals. SO, at the time, during the end of the 19th century, Hugo published this book anonymously, nobody knew who wrote it. It was an eye-opener to the people, and as I progress in this review, you will know why it was influential.

      Hugo was always an advocate for the people, especially the poor. He believes that no matter what crime(s) you may have committed, the guillotine is too cruel and unjust and should be banned. This is basically what this book tries to tell us.




      The book starts with a satirical dialogue between members of the bourgeoisie Française where they're ridiculing the book 'le Dernier Jour D'un Condamné' , attacking the poor, the prisoners and the writer of such a book that they wouldn't call literature. that was quite a clever way of introducing what Hugo is fighting against: the bourgeoisie, the class struggles, the snob society of the rich, the preconceived ideas, the merciless priests and politicians of his time, the absurdity of some so-called poets, and on.

      He proceeds then to offer us in a diary-like account of an anonymous prisoner, on death penalty, telling us about his verdict, the prison, his execution, and about all the feelings and thoughts going through his mind. He wrote it all on his last day, thus the title of the book. We know few things about him: he killed someone, he is a husband and father of a little girl, he is a rich man, and he is living in utter fear. We do not know anything about the murder, Hugo is highlighting the fact that it doesn't matter, and regardless of what the crime was, the man is suffering because of his imprisonment and awaiting death.
      There are many emotional instances in the book, especially the part about his daughter, about being in a cell where previously decapitated criminals lived until their own last days, about how merciless people are, how they would gather and celebrate an execution. This book is very personal to Hugo. He remembers having passed through a street one day, seeing people gathering in crowds since early morning, running around, singing and yelling, leaving their jobs, bringing their family and kids, all to witness joyfully an execution! He felt miserable about it, and he had to write this book as a protest against human cruelty and exaltation at the sight of a guillotine. There are some horrific details, like when the people would shout in disappointment if the guillotine's blade wasn't oiled or shaved properly as to decapitate the head at the first trial. That was one of many passages in this book that sent an icy shiver down my spine!
      The condemned man is anonymous because Hugo wanted us to relate to this unknown person, to put ourselves in his shoes, and see what it feels like to live in a constant nightmare.

      I will end my review by raising a few questions:
      - Do you think that criminals should be punished?
      - Do you think the death penalty is too harsh?
      - Many people, including myself, believe the guillotine was one of the most barbaric form of torture. Don't you think that the death penalty through painless merciful ways is a necessity?
      (I think that although the criminal would be in a horrendous psychological turmoil, and although sometimes an innocent man is convicted - this has to do with the laws of convict, not with death penalty per se - , but if you kill, you should pay for it, and you do not deserve to live in a 5 stars prison cell - like there are in some developed countries - while the person you've denied the right to live to your victim. So, I believe that a merciful death penalty, like injecting certain chemicals to stop the heart painlessly, is the best justice we can offer both the victim and the criminal, that is as far as I could sympathize with a murderer. Do not torture the murderers, but let them pay for their crime.)