Ayn Rand and Victor Hugo

After reading The Fountainhead and Atlas Shurgged, I was disgusted by Ayn Rand's philosophy. Imagine my surprise, then, when Web surfing revealed Rand's admiration of my favorite author--Victor Hugo. She mentions his works frequently in her Romantic Manifesto, even devoting a chapter to her introduction of Ninety-Three. Her comments reveal that she had read even some of his most obscure works. Admittedly, the two share a couple superficial elements of Romantic prose. Both paint exaggerated characters, headstrong and independent. Both often write about people with near-absurd commitments to their values. However, the substance of their prose--their social aims--are profoundly different. I don't think Hugo would approve of Objectivism. Nor does Rand approve of the liberal goals Hugo professed.

Hugo writes, in his introduction to Cromwell (often called his "Romantic Manifesto") that "Romanticism is liberalism in literature". Hugo means liberalism as we know it: advancement of the awareness of and help for poverty, equalization of opportunity, and socioeconomic progress of every sort--hardly Rand's ideal. Independent of political aims, their ethical philosophies could not have been more distinct. The intensity of Hugo's heroes' commitment to duty and self-sacrafice is only equalled by that of Rand's characters' rejection of the same ideals! In Les Miserables,  Hugo writes, "It is a terrible thing to be happy! How content one is! How all-sufficient one finds it! How, being in possession of the false object of life, happiness, one forgets the true object, duty." Compare this to the following excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, "You have sacraficed happiness to duty... Happiness is the proof of your moral integrity". Rand's further objection to duty as a moral standard is evidenced by her statement, "Immanual Kant is the real villain of our age".

Great Quote

"The lemonade is weak, like your soul."
from a rather odd translation of Schiller's play Intrigue and Love.