Hell | 
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• "there Is No Hell Other Than Our Mad Longing To Live" 03 October, 2008
L'enfer or Hell is a philosophical novel dealing with solipsism and existentialism. The release of "Hell" in English started a burning scandal because of its depiction of voyeurism. The story revolves around a young man in a Paris boarding house peeking through a hole in his bedroom wall to witness love, death, adultery, and birth in the most graphic way.
The topic or the actions described are not the reason for the greatness of this work, rather it is the way this young man describes regular daily events
Endless unforgettable scenes like the helpless exposed position of a woman during childbirth, two doctors discussing a health condition of a dying man, a man discussing religion/God right before his death, two lovers trying to escape emptiness through desire and fantasy. The greatness of the scenes is not the act as much as Barbusse's language:
* "And I think about myself, about myself who can neither know myself well nor get rid of myself; about myself who am like a heavy shadow between my heart and the sun"
* "Nothing can prevail against the absolute statement that I exist and cannot emerge from my self"
* "What's the matter? Nothing is the matter. It's just me"
* "Humanity is the longing for novelty combined with the fear of death"
* "God is merely a ready-made reply to mystery and hope, and there is no other reason for the reality of God but our longing for it"
I don't usually include phrases of the work itself in my reviews, but I'm making an exception for readers like me, who might be fascinated by Barbusse's use of language.
Whether Barbusse intended to deal with existentialism or solipsism or simply the inner hell of a total cynic, he created an absolutely brilliant work; the likes of which has no equal.
Philosophical ideas fall in and out of fashion with time, but the way an idea is delivered, as exemplified by Barbusse, can have a significant impact on how that idea is initially received and how it lives on. Barbusse's Hell is a timeless, great work.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AGQY11NLQJ2JL
• Beyond Beauty, Beyond Words ... Breathless 23 May, 2008
A man in his empty room ... witnessing through a hole in the wall all that mankind has to offer of its soul.
And what of this witness? Life greatest mysteries, triumphs, and desperate measures spread out before him, what torture. His reward - understanding. His punishment - the knowledge that he might never have all of those life's moments for himself. If you had the choice, which would you choose - Knowledge or Life?
This book is a deep look into the hidden passions of mankind. A voyeuristic look, but are we all not voyeurs in some way ... as we read the gossip columns, as we watch the so-called reality TV, or even when we read a book, we are choosing to be a voyeur, immersing ourselves in a life not our own for no other purpose than to see how it measures up to the life we have chosen for ourselves, and maybe to gain some small shred of insight into our own souls. Think of the infinite possibilities, the reasons, the rationale ... what do those wall hide from view? What darkness does it smother?
Henri's witness knows the answers to those questions. His Hell: knowing the truth in the intimate lives of others, yet never actually living himself - never feeling worthy of living.
The language has depth, overflowing with romanticism. This gives us valuable insight into the desperation of our witness, how he longs to be part of the world and yet remains so detached from it.
I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates a bit of narrative philosophy while gazing through the peephole.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2QBCUXQP6ZBZJ
• All Is Me 06 December, 2007
I first took up reading this book because I had liked a few other books translated by Robert Baldick, the person who translated this. "Hell" has its moments of Poignancy, although it does get tedious at times; but maybe that is Barbusse's fault or intention, the unbearable lightness of being feel. It has the same feel as many Existential books, and may be a cousin to that movement. The narrator looking through a hole at the lives of others is the primary mode of imput for his self-evaluation, although the book is about as much about voyeurism as Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is about killing your uncle. The medium of the hole could have been tv, or drugs, or any sort of escapism that places pictures/visions in front of you, the escapism as life passes you by, although Barbusse's hole does very well.
The narrator's analyses of why exist and what is life about in ways that touch moments that most people have probably had feelings about but never deeply analyzed. It is interesting that way, in a poetical way Barbusse's capturing of these rare, elusive yet universal thoughts. The end is a manifesto to solipsism which is unfortunate because it got preachy in the end and the author might have done better to let one come to their own conclusion. Mine was different. I thought the narrator chose to live because that's all there is.
The author seemed to preach that I am all there is so the sayings, actions of "others" are really my own conciousness speaking in this nether world of conciousness me, being all there is. Everything spoken by "others" is really just mine own conciousness reasoning with itself and things are just symbols. There seemed to be a lot of fireworks of poetic imagination, I was just a bit disapointed in the development. The parts were greater than the whole I thought.
Is there any relation to "I think therefore I am" which may explain my existance but it doesn't explain others.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A7P4F23NQGCRL
• "hell Is Me, And I'm Trapped In Myself." 03 January, 2008
The back cover of _Hell_ brashly refers to it as "the most highly focused study of voyeurism ever written". Though one would argue that any great French novel is at least part fetishism, the true purpose of _Hell_ is not to study the watched, but to study how the -watcher- uses this data to explore -himself-. More than anything else, Hell is a book of Solipsist philosophy, and one of the best I've read (not an easy title to gain from this reader, by the way).
Barbusse beautifully illustrates that the only reality anyone may know is that subjective reality within his own heart and mind, and that regardless of the objective world taking place outside, the only one which can possibly matter to the individual is that existence which he personally witnesses:
"I do not know whether the universe has any reality apart from me. What I do know is that its reality occurs only through the instrumentality of my thought, and that in the first place it exists only through the concept I have of it."
A treasure for any collector of fine literature, and a particularly good find for the literary Francophile.
- Reviewed by customer ID: ANZ0HMTM2Q9QS
• A Diamond In The Rough 13 August, 2008
this novel was better than i expected; it was indefintely better than the synopsis on the back would have led me to believe.
it is one of those books that sadly gets grouped into a vague fetishistic catagory, simply because it looks not at superficial life but at those things that drive and define our existance as people, including sex and death.
it beautifully weaves philosophy and fiction...it's hard to put down.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2KX7K3WNUDR5B
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