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pilferingapples · 4 years

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LM 1.1.10

Tant qu'il existera, par le fait des lois et des moeurs, une damnation sociale créant artificiellement, en pleine civilisation, des enfers, et compliquant d'une fatalité humaine la dégradation de l'homme par le prolétariat, la décheance de la femme par la faim, l'atrophie de l'enfant par la nuit, ne seront pas résolus; tant que, dans de certaines régions, et á une point de vue plus étendu encore, tant qu'il y aura sur la terre ignorance et misère, des livres de la nature de celui-ci pourrant ne pas être inutiles. -preface to Les Miserables

"Je veux dire que l'homme a un tyran, l'ignorance. J'ai voté la fin de ce tyran-là.C'est-à-dire la fin de la prostitution pour la femme, la fin de l'esclavage pour l'homme, la fin de la nuit pour l'enfant. En votant la république, j'ai voté cela. - G-- the Conventionist, Les Miserables 1.1.10

As @everyonewasabird has pointed out, this is the chapter where Hugo sets up the book's position on the French Revolution, and it's not done in any vague or questionable terms. The French Revolution was sublime, the French Revoluion was scientifically correct, morally correct, everything--and its gains need to be restored and built on. The key sign that all this is not just G's Opinion but the position of the narrative is that G is the first person to speak of abolishing the three core wrongs mentioned in the preface of Les Mis, of ending ignorance and misery on earth. Les Mis is a book that does not want to be eternally relevant; G is the first person, and will for a long time yet be the only person, who advocates and hopes for not only helping those struggling with societal inequality, but ending that inequality all together-- of rendering This Book useless. In so many words, to vote for the Republic is to vote for the end of those evils. It’s an incredibly direct statement from Hugo, really, and I’m kind of surprised it didn’t get attacked more!

other Assorted Thoughts on this chapter:

-...I got nuthin’ on the Urbanist Monastery. Google keeps giving me results for Buddhism and that seems Unlikely, any Catholics in this read who can help me out?

- As it’s commonly held that Myriel is an expy of Bishop Miollis, I’ve seen a general agreement that G is largely inspired by Abbe Gregoire, who argued for the trial and condemnation of the king, but also for the suspension of the death penalty. Gregoire is honestly worth a whole Historical Fiction novel all on his own.

- I unironically love that Myriel comes to this meeting in a mindset that is just completely awful . He knows G is dying , and he's a priest, and he's ostensibly going to offer last rites/final mercies/ etc, what he considers the most important part of his job...but when he arrives, he's cold, he's judgemental, he's there to condemn , really. He considers the Conventionist beyond the law of Charity. He is coming to this meeting with curiosity, but not with compassion--not with the spirit of The Ideal. The symbolism is important for the conversation between theories about to go down, of course, but it's also a really humanizing moment for Myriel as a character; he's someone with personal reasons to hate the Revolution, and he does hate it, and he still has a grudge against the people he can see as responsible for it. And yet, even though he's very much not able to carry out the Spirit of his duties at first, he's there to do what he believes is the right thing, even coldly, even feeling offended by the Conventionist's existence. Well, I'm sure such a moral struggle will never be reflected again (no but really, I wish Valjean could know and understand that even Myriel has to struggle with doing what he knows is right!).

And..I believe this is the first time we see a penitent kneeling in the light of a newly understood ideal, though it certainly won't be the last. And as Bird has pointed out, it's also the first time we see someone who had never been able to understand the ideal of the Republic take a revolutionary's hand and ask for their blessing on the edge of death.

Ahem.

-The Enjolras comparisons really are inevitable and no doubt intentional--the human-and-marble description, the awareness of death, the moral confidence in the Republic and the Revolution despite the violence that attended those ideals, the image of the dead person still holding themselves Upright and leaving a sense of righteous power even in their death. And there's the contrast, of course, a heartbreaking one-- G the Conventionist can claim to have never deployed the death penalty against anyone.

But the hints of other characters to come really stand out to me this time through-- the mother forced to choose between her child's life and her conscience; the many children in rags and in finery , all just as innocent and worthy as each others, sinite parvulos; the invocation of Science as a guide (and inherently proof of the Ideal) ; the righteousness of a demolition to make way for the new--the outline of most of the cast of the story can be seen in mentions here. And they all lend their weight to the Conventionist's side of the argument.

-Honestly for all the debates that can be had about the True Main Character or the Real Point of Les Mis, I think if I had to give someone one chapter of the novel to sum it all up, it might be this one. Death and the Ideal and the Revolution uniting social and divine justice, it's all here.

#LM 1.1.10 #I've written longer but still #long post #Brickclub

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