Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (138 page)

10
(p. 156)
Obstacles:
The repeated breakdowns of Jean Valjean’s carriage, and the delays occasioned by various obstacles on the road tempt him to abandon his plan to exonerate the innocent Champmathieu and to condemn himself to life in prison instead. These delays exemplify the
tentatio probationis
(temptation as an ordeal) that tests and refines one’s faith—as opposed to the tentatio subver sionis (temptation to submit to evil). For an example of the latter, on an outwardly similar, difficult journey, see Jacques Cazotte’s Le
Diable
amoureux
(1772), with Satan as a luscious, amorous woman seeking sex before marriage to the hero.

11
(p. 172)
When he was tried, God was not there:
During Jean Valjean’s original trial, “God was not there” both literally (the image was gone) and spiritually (mercy and forgiveness were unavailable to the prisoner). Compare the last paragraph of “Fantine”: “Happily, God knows where to find the soul.”

12
(p.193)
Without a wrinkle in his duty or his uniform:
This phrase is an example of the daring rhetorical figure called hendiadys (“one from two”). When criticized by classicists for using this device in his poetry (for example,
vêtu de candeur et de lin
blanc—“clothed in candor and in white linen”), Hugo triumphantly produced many examples from classical Greek and Roman literature, which he knew far better than did his detractors.

13
(p. 197)
she distinctly saw an ineffable smile beam on those pale lips ... full of the wonder of the tomb:
Suggested strongly here by the dead Fantine’s smile, Hugo’s faith in the Afterlife will be expressly articulated by Eponine as she dies at the end of chapter 4 (6), book fourteen, part IV (“We do meet again, don’t we? ... Promise to kiss me on the forehead when I am dead. I shall feel it.”), and once again by the author, when Jean Valjean dies: “Without doubt, in the gloom some mighty angel was standing, with outstretched wings, awaiting the soul.”

1
(p. 214)
Some of the newspapers... held up this commutation as a triumph of the clerical party:
Moved by blind partisanship, some left-wing commentators inaccurately see the commutation of Jean Valjean’s death sentence as undue interference by the Church in secular affairs. “The clerical party” refers to the
Congrégation,
which throughout the 1820s was feared to be a Catholic secret society controlled by the Pope, seeking to end the “Gallican liberties” that allowed French rulers rather than the Pope to make many decisions regarding the French Catholic Church, and to dominate European politics. For a fully developed dramatization of this supposed international Jesuit conspiracy, see Stendhal’s
Le Rouge et le Noir
(1830).

2
(p. 252)
“Monsieur owes twenty-six sous”:
After preparing a padded bill for Jean Valjean’s room and supper, for twenty times the proper amount (which he can implicitly blame on his wife, because Jean Valjean did not see who drew up the bill), Thénardier suddenly reverses his strategy. He realizes that Jean Valjean badly wants to take Cosette with him. He quickly adjusts. By now telling his guest what he truly owes, Thénardier lays the groundwork for portraying himself as a scrupulous person, who could not possibly hand over a child in his care to a stranger... without receiving a substantial bribe.

3
(p. 268)
as he was fifty-five:
Ten years later, at the conclusion, Jean Valjean is described as being eighty. To salvage chronological coherence, we must assume that Hugo means his emotional sufferings had suddenly aged him so that he looked like eighty.

4
(p. 277)
The sufferings of the first six years of her life had introduced something of the passive into her nature:
The critic Nicole Savy severely criticized Cosette as a nonentity (see “For Further Reading”). She is correct, but at this juncture, Hugo clearly explains why this is so. To be sure, Hugo’s female characters often lack substance—but the masterful depiction of the monstrous Mme Thénardier, for example, proves him capable of imagining a woman with a forceful personality.

1
(p. 359)
the God-man:
Commonplace in English, but usually unid iomatic in French, this combination of two nouns modifying each other is Hugo’s
métaphore maxima,
which is typically associated with moments of religious revelation; he used it frequently in his visionary poetry from
Les Contemplations
(1856) on. It blurs two familiar categories into a new, unprecedented one.

2
(p. 367)
the first of these two places of rendezvous was near the working-men, the second near the students:
Left-wing alliances of workers with students, usually no more than a distant dream in the United States, have been much more common in France, in part because nearly free access to higher education in France narrows the financial gap between the two groups, while militantly Socialist or Communist labor unions narrow the ideological gap with some intellectuals. “Les Événements” of 1968 provide a prime example.

3
(p. 370)
You cannot pick the mark out of a nation as you can out
of
a handkerchief:
Feuilly’s respect for national sovereignty means that he, like all the other members of “Les Amis de l‘ABC,” opposes Napoléon’s politics of conquest. One can readily predict a confrontation with Marius, who has come to idealize his Napoleonic father. This evolution, and Marius’s later move toward democratic ideals, echoes Hugo’s own political trajectory in his youth, as Marius’s passionate love for Cosette echoes Hugo’s love for Adèle Foucher before her betrayal.

4
(p. 415)
the descending ladder: L’échelle des êtres
renders the English “the Great Chain of Being,” the concept that all created things are arranged in an infinite hierarchy of relative perfection, each rung separated by the least possible degree of distance, but with an infinite distance between the highest of the angels, and God. Hugo believes in successive reincarnations: we rise or fall according to our merits in each life. At the end of time, all beings, even Satan, will be redeemed by suffering and taken up into the bosom of God. To begin the paragraph, Hugo half-playfully and half-seriously ranks a series of theologians and philosophers according to the relative spirituality of their doctrines.

5
(p. 433)
“Sometimes I go away at night.... When one has not eaten, it is very queer”:
Hugo, who was relatively insensitive to women, had diffi culty portraying them in interesting ways. This paragraph is an exception. Eponine describes an altered state of consciousness, brought about by starvation, in which her hallucinations show her haunted by guilt, and fearing death on the gallows. The stars seem accusing spotlights focusing on her; but they seem to be guttering out like candles (as did the stars around Satan when he fell into the Pit in
La Fin de Satan).
For God to be absent would be even worse than His accusing presence. The horses would be those of the mounted police pursuing her.

6
(p. 464)
Nos amours ... devrait durer toujours:
Our love lasted for an entire week; / How briefly the moments of joy descend! / A love that short was not worthwhile to seek! / The time of our love should have known no end! / Should have known no end! Should have known no end!

7
(p. 474)
“No more than before”:
Hugo can dramatize the combination of an emotional reaction and of perfect self-control only with an absurdity With the next remark, “Marius did not hear this answer,” Hugo drops the pretense of seeing everything through the young man’s eyes, in order to dramatize the intensity of Marius’s reaction to the revelation of Thénardier’s identity. “Could anyone have seen him ... in that darkness” introduces an episodic observer who is incapable of observation, because Hugo wants to intensify “the reality effect” of the events by multiplying the numbers and the viewpoints of the spectators.

8
(p. 477)
David desired to immortalise that feat of arms:
Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) dominated French painting for the last forty years of his life. He was Napoléon’s official painter, working in the “Neoclassic Stoic” style that evoked heroic feats under the ancient Roman Empire and the Roman Republic. He never would have bothered to immortalize the deeds of an obscure person such as Thénardier, even if the latter had been a soldier rather than a scavenger. To exalt his importance, Thénardier promotes Pontmercy by at least one grade in rank (from Colonel to General), and by two grades of nobility (counts outranked viscounts, who outranked barons).

9
(p. 481)
all this... was awkward for Marius, and painfully astonished him:
This detail prepares for the final chapters. Until just before the very end, Marius feels uncomfortable with Jean Valjean, and will suspect him of having stolen the 600,000 francs he offers Cosette, and of having murdered Javert at the barricade to exact revenge. Thus, having married Cosette, Marius will progressively discourage Valjean from seeing her.

1
(p. 499)
A capital error which led that family to lay its hand upon the guarantees “granted” in 1814.... our rights:
As early as 1830, Hugo had bluntly warned the French monarchs at least to accept gracefully the compromise of constitutional monarchy, comparing the People, on the march, to a rising tide:

2
(p. 581)
“Why does life continue afterwards?”
Hugo thinks sadly of his passionate devotion to his childhood playmate Adèle Foucher, whom he married at twenty. They had four children in eight years. Exhausted by her pregnancies, she refused to have sex with him any longer, and soon betrayed him with his best friend, Sainte-Beuve. The Hugos stayed together but were never any more than friends thenceforth, whereas Adèle’s affair with Sainte-Beuve continued secretly, on and off, for decades.

1
(p. 686)
On est laid à Nanterre ... C‘est la faute de Rousseau:
These lines and the ones that follow translate as: “They’re ugly in Nanterre / It’s the fault of Voltaire, / And dumb in Palaiseau, / It’s the fault of Rousseau. // I’m not a notary, / ... / I am a little bird, /...// Joyous my character, / ... / Poverty my trousseau, / . . . // I have fallen down, /... / My nose in the gutter, / ... //

“I thought it would last two or three years,” Cameron Mackintosh, producer of the record-breaking musical adaptation of
Les Misérables,
told the
New York Times.
So much for theatrical fortune-telling. The Broadway production of
“Les Miz”
was one of the most successful musicals of all time. The show originally opened on September 17, 1980, in Paris and in 1985 premiered in London, directed by Trevor Nunn and John Caird of the Royal Shakespeare Company. On March 12, 1987, the London production came to Broadway. Like Hugo’s novel, the musical was initially greeted with mixed reviews, but it was soon embraced by the theater-going public. The New York production ran for sixteen years, until March 15, 2003.
Les Misérables
is the second longest running musical in Broadway history, second only to the T. S. Eliot-inspired Cats.

The musical
Les Misérables
was created by Claude-Michel Schönberg (music) and Alain Boublil (original French lyrics), who together wrote the songbook; Herbert Kretzmer wrote the lyrics for the American version. The three-hour spectacle features fluid costumes that are simultaneously ragged and glamorous, revolving sets, sweeping lights, and a showcase of memorable numbers. The production is passionate, ecstatically energetic, and ultimately uplifting.

Les
Misérables
has been produced in thirty-eight countries and twenty-one languages, and has received numerous awards the world over. In the United States, it won eight Tony Awards—Best Book, Best Score, Best Set Design, Best Lighting, Best Actor (Michael Maguire), Best Actress (Frances Ruffelle), Best Director (Trevor Nunn), and Best Musical.
Les Misérables
also won two Grammys: one for a 1988 cast recording and another for a 1991 symphonic recording, one of a total of thirty-one recordings that have been made.

The first feature film based on the novel was Charles Pathé’s version of 1909, the same year J. Stuart Blackton filmed
Les Misérables
in England. Indeed, France’s first film to find a wide international audience was Albert Capellani’s faithful screen version of 1912. Fredric March played Jean Val jean and Charles Laughton was Inspector Javert in Richard Boleslawski’s superbly staged version of 1935.
Les Misérables
has been filmed more than twenty times, including musical productions.