jelepermets

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i think valjean deserves a break and also all that silver

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Good News everyone! After having spent one chapter on a random side character, we're finally back to the good old Bishop of D-- and a detailed description of his works

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pia douwes as fantine and uwe kröger as enjolras and a swing (upscaled) in les miserables (1991) by joop van den ende theaterproducties in koninklijk theater carré 

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Les Mis Letters: 1.1.9

Today's chapter was really interesting within the context of the footnote in my edition.

Last time I read this chapter I sort of brushed it off as Hugo being Like That about women. And while I don't necessarily think this is an incorrect way of seeing it, I would like to explore the other possibility given:

Première "restriction" à la perfection de Mgr Bienvenu: domination excessive ... sur deux femmes privées de plaisir ... de sécurité, de toute autonomie de pensée, des agrément élémentaires de la vie.

First fault in the perfection of Mgr Bienvenu: an excessive influence [...] over two women deprived of pleasure [....] security, autonomy of thought; fundamental elements of life.

Within this view, the trust that Mlle Baptistine and Mme Magloire confide in M Myriel becomes much more saintlike, and achieves a sort of martyrdom. One that, if this is meant to be read as over-severity, is in fact holding M Myriel back. Just as Myriel's fondness for the silver is a small failure that might be overcome, so is the way he controls the freedoms of the women in his life. Only this one feels much more fundamental. After all, "Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother’s end would prove her own. Madame Magloire did not say this, but she knew it."

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Me, every time I open my mouth to talk some more about Grantaire:

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Brickclub I.1.8, “After-Dinner Philosophy”

I need to start writing up the day’s reading before @everyonewasabird posts, so I can say more than “what Bird said.”

The senator’s philosophy is definitely a key to Gillenormand, and to Tholomyès, but also feels like a key to Grantaire–this is the template of the self-centered hedonism that Grantaire is consistently, and unsuccessfully, trying to talk himself into believing.

The self-proclaimed materialist backs up his philosophy with material facts that are simply wrong, starting with the spontaneous generation of eels. (Eel larvae would not be positively identified until the 1890s, but by the 1770s naturalists had located eel ovaries and were confident they must spawn somewhere, even if they’d never seen them do it.)

More animal metaphors follow: “Renunciation, for what? Self-sacrifice, to what? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the benefit of another wolf. So let us stay with nature. We’re at the summit, so let’s have a superior philosophy.” This is as multivalent as all Hugo’s fursonas animal identifications fursonas: If by wolves, he means aprex predators / human beings–a logical reading when construed with the previous section on Needham’s eels–then Hugo is going to spend the rest of the book showing us that this is also simply incorrect. Construed with the following sections, on allowing the poor to have God while has his philosophers, “wolves” reads as “the powerful,” who might do little favors for their sons-in-law but are not a self-sacrificing lot.

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"philosophy after drinking" is literally a chapter about Graintaire btw

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teen & young adult

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Les Mis Letters: 1.1.8

Okay, this chapter is fascinating for a couple of reasons. Warning though: I will be going full red string corkboard in this post.

One because it's so obviously Hugo in active conversation with his time. The questions this senator is asking, his philosophy of self-interest is a conversation and debate pulled directly from the Enlightenment, the Revolution, the Restoration, and beyond. Hugo isn't just speaking to the audience in a metaphorical sense. He's actively engaging in contemporary discussion.

Two because of this footnote: "Thénardier a les mêmes lectures." [Thenardier has the same speeches]. Indeed, the senator's self interest is very similar to Thenardier. But, and not to bring up my darling favorite character months and hundreds of pages before he shows up buttt... the rhetoric of the senator is not thattt different from some later speeches given by Grantaire.

Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy.

This? This is exactly the sort of thing Grantaire would say. So what makes him different from the senator, from Thenardier? Why do we have these characters giving these nihilistic speeches to vastly different effects in the novel?

Well, part of the reason to me is what M Myriel says in response:

You great lords have, so you say, a philosophy of your own, and for yourselves, which is exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone, good for all sauces, and which seasons the voluptuousness of life admirably.

In the case of the senator, the biggest detraction from this speech is that he has no real sense of the suffering of humanity. He condemns God because he has no need for Him, for any comfort from the divine. He does not need to contemplate "the grief which fixes its gaze upon a star." He has no true empathy for the downtrodden, nor wish to understand or mix with them. He sees his philosophy as the correct one and the poor as worthy of ridicule and contempt.

In this way he resembles Thenardier a lot more than Grantaire. For while the senator and Thenardier turn their ire outward onto others, Grantaire takes his nihilism and plants it firmly inwards. Thenardier's life is more miserable than Grantaire's, but Thenardier looks around and commits all matter of unspeakable evil. In this way he is like the senator - selfish and individualistic. Grantaire is not, not selfish or individualistic in a manner of speaking. But, as we shall see with his relationship with the ABC (and, y'know...), his selfishness has a boundary. In the end he has much more contact with the populace and willingness to talk (or play dominoes) with them than either the senator or Thenardier.

And thus a single philosophy can have a hundred variations in ricochets

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Les Mis Letters: 1.1.7

Cravatte time!! I'm going to come out swinging with a footnote translation, since I think it meshes really well with the idea that these chapters are leading up to the next book and to Myriel's character change in three chapters

Troisième recontre de Myriel avec ceux dont le nom intitule le livre ... Faussaire, meurtrier, bandit: les misérables sont ceux par qui le scandale obscurcit, et éclaire, la conscience trop limpide du juste.

The third encounter of Myriel with those who title the novel [...] counterfeiter, murderer, bandit: the miserables ones are those who scandal obscures, and who illuminate the too limpid conscience of the just.

In this chapter we see the faith of the bishop redeemed. Not only is M Myriel unimpeded, but he is given "to him who contents himself with the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop.” Here we once again see the theme of M Myriel as baptized and sanctioned by the people.

I also just want to underline the way that Hugo delineates between those who commit wrong - often due to extenuating circumstances - and the wrongs that are committed upon others. Specifically how M Myriel says:

Let us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul.

This, again, is pointing to what is to come.

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Les Mis Letters: 1.1.6

Immediately have to play catch up due to personal stuff, but I am ready to continue our saga.

We're still on the ideal vs the real theme, as explicitly said by Hugo when he asks: "who is there who has attained his ideal?"

This in mind I think it's important that this is the chapter where we are introduced to the silver. Though it's a throwaway line in comparison to the debacle regarding keeping the door unlocked, I really do feel like this little fallibility is the focus on the chapter. Not only because foreshadowing, but because we are in a slew of chapters where M Myriel's ideals are both reinforced and shocked to their core (as we will see soon). In this chapter, however, we see both M Myriel's ideal goodness and fallibility.

I also want to mention the footnote that says how:

L'histoire de cette maison - comme celle de la famille de M Myriel - résume le côté lumineux de l'histoire des temps modernes.

The history of this house - as with the history of M Myriel's family - presents the bright side of the history of our modern times.

Once again, Hugo's ability to weave the mundane with the historical is breathtaking.

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Les Mis Letters: 1.1.5

Today I want to deep dive into M Myriel's travels. As a footnote puts it:

Ainsi Dieu partage-t-il avec les misérables cette forme d'anonymat qui résulte de la multiplicité des noms

Thus God shares with the miserables one this anonymous form, resulting in a multitude of names.

This really reminds me of an earlier footnote in 1.1.2:

Myriel est consacré Mgr Bienvenu par les paysans, dans une sorte de baptême populaire.

Myriel is consecrated Monseigneur Bienvenu by the populace, in a sort of popular baptism.

The idea that God rests within the populace, and shares more with the miserable ones than he does with the law or the Church is implied in the continual contrast between the ideal and the reality, the law of God and the law of man, human nature and the divine.

As Hugo portrays, God is not dissimilar from humanity, nor can the divine and the human be separated. They are like contrasting colors (hehe see what I did there). And God is best seen in the ways that people react to the poor masses, and the way the masses react in return.

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Les Mis Letters: 1.1.4

Was traveling all day so this is late, but I want to talk about two main themes in this chapter. One is the conflict once more between the human and the divine. And the second is how this chapter feels like an echo of Jean Valjean's future entrance on the scene.

The first theme is introduced by M Myriel himself: "God gives air to men; the law sells it to them. I do not blame the law, but I bless God."

I think the last part of this is interesting, especially paired with: To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule [...] The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream of the angel."

However this tone changes when dealing with the question of the death penalty. After helping the condemned man, Myriel comments:

I did not think that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?

The footnotes comment that this moment with the condemned man: "Produit sur Myriel, le juste, un effet comparable à celui de la justice de Jean Valjean sur Javert."

Produces in Myriel, the just, an effect comparable to the mercy of Jean Valjean on Javert.

However, I think this is also comparable to the way that Myriel later affects Jean Valjean. The way that small actions of goodness cascade is a huge theme in Les Miserables, and it's interesting to see how quickly these cascades begin (especially because this moment is not one that often makes adaptation).

And speaking of Jean Valjean, I really love the example of these two men facing the death penalty because not only do they feel very similar to Jean Valjean:

A wretched man, being at the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money, out of love for a woman, and for the child which he had had by her

but it reminds us that to Myriel, the actions that are so profound on Valjean are actions that he attempts to do basically his whole life. Again, small actions cascading. Even the smallest changes. This chapter always makes me cry due to the last line: "He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man, by pointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief which gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze upon a star."

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Les mis predictions based on the first four chapters of @lesmisletters: this book will be about Bishop Myriel’s quest to abolish the death penalty in France! Can’t wait for 10000 pages of Myriel’s witty banter & clever bishop hijinks

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Happy (late) new year guys!!! Today I'm starting with Do You Hear the People Sing? vs. In My Life!

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Les Mis Letters: 1.1.3

Today's reading once more made me think on the power of stories and of fables that people tell themselves and their community. Instead of berating the villagers for their faults, M Myriel uses the myth of a more prosperous, kinder village to make his point.

I also think it's interesting the place - or lack of place - that the law has in these mythical villages. Hugo describes them as "like a republic" and says

Neither judge nor bailiff is known there. The mayor does everything. He allots the imposts, taxes each person conscientiously, judges quarrels for nothing, divides inheritances without charge, pronounces sentences gratuitously; and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple men.

Of course, there is still the mediator of the mayor - which dips into a paternalism that feels very carried over from the Ancien Regime. Nevertheless the rhetoric is interesting, both neoclassical and deeply steep in the rhetoric of the French Revolution.

(Also shoutout to M Myriel's puns, literally never grow old)

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One chapter into the Julie Rose translation, and it's already jarring:

Napoléon, seeing the old boy give him the once-over with a certain curiosity, wheeled round and said brusquely: “Who is this little man staring at me?” “Your Majesty,” said Monsieur Myriel, “you see a little man, and I see a great man. Both of us may benefit.”

"Little" man?????????????????????

And now I'm reading the introduction by Adam Gopnik but I'm not sure how seriously I should take it because this is the second sentence:

I write these words having just returned from a packed Boxing Day performance of the operetta version of the book by Schönberg and Boublil, whose emblematic image of an embattled, wide-eyed nymphet, taken directly from the illustration of Cosette in the first French edition, has by now become familiar to the world.

Emphases mine. Les Mis is not an operetta! Pop opera, sure, or you could just call it, y'know, a musical. And "nymphet"??????????????? My immediate association for that word is Lolita (through cultural osmosis, I haven't read it), and all the definitions I'm finding involve sexuality. Which I hope is not what anyone thinks of when looking at the iconic Cosette illustration. :(