Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 27
Fragment ID: 7178
Victor Hugo [1]
When I said to Pavitra that Les Misérables was one of the great works of art he replied “Faugh! What a shallow thing.” But I believe I heard from Amrita that you used to regard it as one of the world’s great novels.
It is not one of the masterpieces of “art”, but I regard it as the work of a powerful genius and certainly one of the great novels. It is certainly not philosophically or psychologically deep, but it is exceedingly vivid and powerful.
25 April 1937