Les Misérables again—no, the book. Tome I and the first six books of Tome II

There’s no way I could do justice to Victor Hugo’s magnum opus with just one review, so now that my e-reader says that I’m one-third through it, I’d figured I’d just post my thoughts on the first tome, Fantine, and the first six books of Tome II, Cosette. I actually think I’m going to complete this in the three-month timeframe I gave myself.

Here’s a quick thought: Have you ever noticed how Les Misérables is the only foreign book that did not have its title translated? I mean, look at “The Count of Monte Cristo” (Le Comte du Monte-Cristo), “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas” (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers), “The Mysterious Island” (L'Île mystérieuse), and “War and Peace” (Война и миръ). But we keep Les Misérables—translation: “The Wretched Ones.” I guess publishers figured that English speakers wouldn’t pick up a massive, five-tome epic called “The Wretched Ones.”

I love me a good political, romantic epic. The romantics have this amazing ability to create such visceral emotions with such lovely prose that you find yourself carried away on the lines of ink. The problem, when reading the foreign romantics, is getting a good translation, i.e., one that preserves the intentions of the author while still translating it accurately—not an easy task. When I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo, I got about seven chapters into the one on Project Gutenberg before I realized that it read very choppily. I found the one translated by Robin Buss by Penguin Classics, and that really did convey the romantic language and style that I thought Dumas was going for.

For Les Misérables, I received, for Christmas, the Penguin edition translated by Norman Denny. He explains that a translator’s goal is to preserve intent first and foremost, but he also said that he made abridgments of the text that were more “digressive,” for he said that modern English readers would find a lot of what was written irrelevant, and that Hugo and his work should not be treated as museum pieces, but as living, breathing texts.

Bullshit! I thought. Of course books are museum pieces! I want to read the book Hugo wanted me to read, not what you, a twenty-first century man, think what would be relevant to me. Let me make that judgment; let me read what Hugo wanted me to read, and I’ll decide if it’s relevant. So, let’s read!

I’m reading the Project Gutenberg edition, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. I chose this edition because, generally, the more recent the translation, the better it reads. I was told that the Signet translation was good, but according to Wikipedia, it had a “modernization” of the language and is based on the original translation. The Chicago Manual of Style calls retranslation a “sin.” I’ve heard that Julie’s Rose’s translation is downright awful and tawdry, so I avoided that. Isabel Hapgood’s translation (1887) is the most recent, unabridged translation from the French original. And the fact that it's free is, of course, a plus.

THE GOOD

I'm actually quite surprised at how much I'm enjoying this. I thought it was going to be a long, thick, unstimulated, history-book-like novel, something that I'd have to force myself through; something that I was only reading because I thought I should read it, as opposed to reading it because I enjoy it—but I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

The translation is quite lovely. Yes, the language is antiquated, but it gives it a really nice, romantic air, and I generally have no problems following. The words feel like a a whirlwind, carrying the reader away into Hugo’s ideas; and, for the most part, it flows extremely well, unlike the Project Gutenberg translation of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Right off the bat, the book dives into some really serious questions. The book does something that many modern writers fail to take into consideration: the book makes me think. Most writers nowadays are more concerned with telling a story per se, and I guess there’s nothing wrong with that, but I must say that I love the romantics for their desire and ability to make me feel the powerful emotions that they wanted me to feel. For example, when I reached the political debate that the bishop of Digne (oh, I’m sorry! His name is “the Bishop of D—”), that was when I knew the book was going to be good. The imagery in that scene is absolutely amazing; it was an incredibly touching, tear-jerking moment that I almost forgot that the man’s last breaths were given to a political debate. The Bishop is such a sweet man; every paragraph describing his actions really warms my soul.

I want to say, a really moving, shocking scene that stayed for me was Tome I, Book II, Chapter VIII, “Billows and Shadows.” A disturbing, horrifying, spine-shivering description of a man overboard. The thing serves as a metaphor for the penal system, but it’s a great read it its own right. I highly recommend just this scene if you’re not going to read the book. It’s free to read online, and this chapter is very short: a little over seven hundred words.

Speaking of short chapters, may I say that I fucking love them? I used to not like reading; it seemed to go on for too long. But I think American and British like long chapters, while the French like short chapters, and I must say that I’m quite fond of the latter. The Count of Monte Cristo, a political-romantic-adventure-epic, had one hundred seventeen incredibly short chapters, and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, a regular-adventure had them as well. Chapters are great demarcations, more so than section breaks, and, for whatever reason, they keep me wanting to read more. It just feels like a break, a breath of air that I can take, an appropriate place to put the book down if one feels like it. Something irks me about putting a book down mid-chapter; it feels like I’m breaking up the action unnecessarily.

I also want to say something about the French language: I really, really love the tu/vous (singular-informal vs plural or singular-formal) distinction. It’s a really subtle way to convey mood and tone of voice in writing, and it happened only once in The Count of Monte Cristo. I was delighted to see that Hugo uses this distinction quite frequently, and tu/vous is translated into English by thou/you, i.e., whenever someone wants to be informal, in the translation, they start speaking in Early Modern English. It’s a nuance of language that, English, unlike French, has rendered more-or-less archaic, but there’s so much subtlety that can be conveyed through this tu/vou-thou/you distinction.

I’m going to get this out of the way: I cry at every scene with Jean Valjean. He’s such a good man, but he’s never had a girlfriend, a wife, or any children. Everything he does is so warm and touching, and I really just want him to have a good, happy life. I cried when the Bishop bought his soul for god with the candlesticks; I cried when he was reassuring Fantine in her death-throes, and I cried when he rescued the sailor in the galleys. His relationship with little Cosette is so sweet that it gives me diabetes—he just cares so damn much in this world of revolution, of back-stabbing, and of abandonment, i.e., in the world of Les Misérables. Something really nice to see and to read about.

Fantine is an exceptionally tragic character. Hugo spends so much time saying how beautiful she is, how pure and how sweet she is, just so he can tear her down in the worst way possible. The musical did not do justice to how bad she actually had it. But, to be fair, the musical couldn’t do justice to a lot of stuff e.g., the song “Who Am I” does not even come close to the internal conflict Jean Valjean had in the book. That was probably one of the best chapters.

Hmm, well, I don’t really know how well I can describe how good this book is. I’ll leave you with: the writing is phenomenal; the concepts are amazing; it really is a riveting, chilling story, and I’m really invested in the characters. Will Jean Valjean have a good life? Will the dogged policeman Javert learn to love? We’ll have to read on.

THE DUBIOUS

I’m not calling this section “The Bad,” because, well, there’s nothing really bad about Les Misérables, because, as far as I’ve read, it’s a romantic masterpiece. I call this section “The Dubious,” because there are parts in it that may put off some readers. For example, here’s the first three sentences of the book:

In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D—— He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D—— since 1806. Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese.

Now, if you read this and rolled your eyes at any point during this excerpt, or groaned even a little bit, I highly suggest you put this book down now; you’re not going to like the rest. The thing is, Victor Hugo is quite . . . digressive, to say the least. A notable example occurs during a high-tension chase in Tome II (Javert is chasing Valjean), and Jean Valjean is watching over his shoulder, watching the figures in the distance follow him, etc. He stops at at an intersection, wondering where to go—and Hugo goes into baffling detail of the history of that intersection in the middle of a chase. It seemed really breaking to the flow of the story. Also, a more evident example is, at the end of Tome I, Jean Valjean gets recaptured and sent to the galleys. “Oh shit!” the reader must be thinking. “How is Jean Valjean going to get out of this? I better pick up the next tome!” The reader picks up the next tome; and, instead of reading about everyone’s favorite convict, he’s treated to about twenty thousand words about the Battle of Waterloo. I mean, I found that shit interesting as hell, but it may put you off.

Tome I, Book III, Chapter I, has not aged well. Basically, it’s just a listing of names with no reference to any of their actions, no further explanations, and just a bunch of French angst. For example:

All the young girls were singing the Hermit of Saint-Avelle, with words by Edmond Geraud. The Yellow Dwarf was transferred into Mirror. The Cafe Lemblin stood up for the Emperor, against the Cafe Valois, which upheld the Bourbons. The Duc de Berri, already surveyed from the shadow by Louvel, had just been married to a princess of Sicily. Madame de Stael had died a year previously. The body-guard hissed Mademoiselle Mars. The grand newspapers were all very small. Their form was restricted, but their liberty was great. The Constitutionnel was constitutional. La Minerve called Chateaubriand Chateaubriant. That t made the good middle-class people laugh heartily at the expense of the great writer. In journals which sold themselves, prostituted journalists, insulted the exiles of 1815.

What . . . what? This means nothing to me. I was against Norman Denny’s translation ethic from the beginning, but after this chapter, I really do see what he’s talking about. But, at the end, Hugo says that these actions are “wrongly called trivial,” as they form human history. I mean, I guess I can’t argue with that, but that chapter was a bitch to read.

The characters: I’ve heard complaint that Jean Valjean is too good to be believable, Cosette is too sweet to be believable, Thenardier is too evil to be convincing, and Javert is too mechanical to feel real. I understand these complaints, though I would like to say that these pure characters are very typical of the romantics i.e., the romantics depict people how they ought to be, rather than how they actually are. Jean Valjean, the goodman, is an exemplary one; Thenardier, the evil man, is a horrid one. Javert is dogged for the sake of being dogged i.e., Jean Valjean is depicted as good for the sake of goodness (how a goodman should be); Thenardier is evil for the sake getting as much as he can at the expense of others (what evil should be depicted as). These characters may turn you off; you may be rolling your eyes at how much Hugo is rubbing in your face how innocent Cosette is and how good Jean Valjean is, how mechanical Javert is, and how evil Thenardier is; but, personally, I love that shit. That’s how the world should be. I should know what’s right, what’s wrong, whom I should be rooting for and whom I should be censuring. I think the Greeks had it right: they worshiped human perfection (as evidenced by their statues). They aspired to be perfect, and they created characters who were perfect, who were role models. I like reading about heroes.

Actually, I want to talk about Javert for a bit. I really do think he needs to be fleshed out more. At first, I thought that romantic antagonists were always cynical, always jaded, always hated the good guy for the sake of hating the good guy—but that all changed when I encountered Gérard de Villefort of The Count of Monte Cristo, whom I firmly believe to be the greatest antagonist in the history of literature. Javert pales in comparison to this guy. I actually believe that a man like Villefort could do what he did, while Javert on the other hand . . . I don’t know—Javert feels to mechanical. Yeah, Javert’s a machine, and he serves his purpose, and I guess he is supposed to be a machine. But still! I mean, Les Misérables is supposed to be the definitive piece of romantic literature, yet The Count of Monte Cristo set my sights too high with romantic antagonists with Villefort. Fuck, I could talk about Villefort all day. I guess Javert is fine as he is (being born to a whore and a thief in prison explains his belief that every man is inherently evil, which, I guess is one of the reasons why I found Villefort so damn interesting), but I wouldn’t mind if he was fleshed out a bit more before he commits suicide. Because, as of now, when I watch the musical and watch Javert commit suicide, his whole song seems to me to be just a drawn-version of the error message “DOES NOT COMPUTE.” Again, he, no question, serves his purpose as a romantic antagonist, but I wouldn't hate to see him fleshed out. Fortunately, there's a lot of time for that. But the description his countenance is quite chilling, quite well thought-out, so I really can't complain.

But, I mean, the digressiveness breaks up the story so you don’t get bored; Javert, Jean Valjean, and Cosette—me wanting to see how they finally interact is what’s keeping me reading. Reading about the Battle of Waterloo for twenty thousand words is interesting, and it gets me excited to turn back to Jean Valjean. I love that French history stuff, and I must say reading the heavily annotated Penguin The Count of Monte Cristo really helped me get a lot of references. It just may turn off some readers.

THE BAD

Alright, alright, I lied. In Tome II, there is one bad part so far. And those are the nuns. Those fucking nuns.

Alright, well, Jean Valjean, holding Cosette, is running away from Javert, right? A nineteenth century police chase! How exciting! And he, just barely, makes his escape into a convent! What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen?

Hugo spends twenty-thousand words describing the history, the culture, and the layout of the convent.

I mean, good god! I know that this nun stuff is important, but that book could have been half the length that it was. In fact, it even bleeds out of the book; the book ends, and he’s still talking about the nuns! He even goes so far as to say that monasticism is a plague to society; fair enough, I suppose, but it shouldn’t take you that long to get back to Valjean. Ugh, it’s just this little thing in an otherwise phenomenal (so far) epic.

So, that’s my thoughts of the first third of the novel. I hope you liked it!

Comments

[averagejoey2000]

Later on they have about 30 pages about the parisian sewer system. But it's still infinitely more readable than Twilight (The Novel).