In fact, it's been a long time since I've spent three days reading a novel. More unfortunately, I am a lover of novels. Until a few days ago I finished reading "The Smiley Man."
"The Man with the Smiley Face" was completed by Hugo in nearly three years, and I personally think that this novel is a work that has impressed and touched me after "Les Misérables", although it seems to be less famous than "Notre Dame de Paris" and "'93". I'm happy because it seems rare to see the obvious "Hugo-esque rambling" in this novel.
Hugo has portrayed two ugly people in his life, one is Quasimodo in "Notre Dame de Paris" and the other is Guan Bolan in "The Smiley Man", Quasimodo has never been favored by Esmeralda, because Esmeralda is flawless; but Guan Beran and Deia feel sorry for each other, because the black eye destroys Deia's eyes forever.
Guan Bolan was once a descendant of the Lord, and after the fall of his father, he was sold by the king to human traffickers. The trafficker disfigured his face, from the corner of his mouth to the base of his ear. Since then, Guan Bolan has had an eternal smile and become a terrifying "smiley man".
At the age of ten, traffickers fled England in a hurry, and Guan Bolan was abandoned in the ice and snow of the sea. Guan Bolan rescued the blind girl Deya lying on her mother's corpse in the face of her own protection, and fortunately they were adopted. Fifteen years later, With his deformed face, Guan Bolan was very successful in street selling and became a famous "smiley man".
He and Deya also sprouted the purest love in the day and night together. However, after Guan Bolan's origins were clarified, he returned to the House of Lords, to the upper class to which he belonged. When he returns to his loved ones after a setback in the House of Lords, Dea is dying. After Deya's death, Guan Bolan also committed suicide by jumping into the sea.
Hugo wrote in The Smiley Man, "For Guan Beran, Dea is the Fang fei who looks at the eyes. For Deya, Guan Beran is the actual Eucharist." Dea is a blind woman, Guan Bolan is a deformity, and the disabled and the deformed people love each other like a blue sky in the night. Their fates are very similar, and the human suffering is nothing more than Guan Bolan and Dea in general.
But they are like Plato's most devout followers, savoring their utopian love in the Republic. They live in the ideal realm. They are two celestial-like couples in the Milky Way who keep their distance. But a few points of it all come down to the shortcomings they complement each other – disability and deformity.
The tragedy of nature, in the final analysis, is largely the malicious convergence of each person's desires, and finally it is reversed into the bitter fruit that each person has to taste. Crying and laughing, loving and separating, finally discouraged, and finally everyone blooms with the brilliance of humanity, which is a superficial tragedy, but the inner also has the meaning of great joy and "getting". Everyone mourned, but finally calmed down.
Life is nothing more than that. Hold hands together, dance a round dance, and then change the dance partner and start again?