K-Squared Ramblings

I’m re-reading Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables after 20 years. Start with part 1, go back to meeting Marius, or read on.

If you only know the musical, you may know that the student rebels meet at the “ABC Café.” The café is actually called the Café Musain, and they are officially the Society of the Friends of the ABC (ostensibly promoting children’s education), because in French, “ABC” sounds like “abaissé” — the underdog.

In the novel, the band of students really are individual characters — not just Enjolras the Leader, Grantaire the Drunk, Marius the Lovestruck and a bunch of indistinguishable backup students.

Enjolras is logic, utterly focused on justice to the exclusion of everything else.

Combeferre is philosophy, broad-minded, scientifically curious, in tune with the world and its people.

Enjolras and Jean Prouvaire are both rich, only children.

Feuilly, “Being an orphan he had adopted mankind as his parents.” He’s particularly incensed by and obsessed with the First Partition of Poland, finding one way or another to blame it for all of the modern world’s political ills.

Courfeyrac is described as Felix Tholomyès (Fantine’s ex-boyfriend) if he’d been “a decent young man.” Pander vs paladin.

Bahorel is “a creature of good intentions” but “a born agitator: that is to say, he enjoyed nothing more than a quarrel except a rebellion, and nothing more than a rebellion, except a revolution.” He hates lawyers despite going to law school. Or at least being enrolled in it. He’s not in the stage musical, or at least not mentioned by name, though he is credited in the movie.

Lesgles’ family name was officially changed to L’Aigle by Louis XVIII (being a law student, this makes him a legal eagle — the pun isn’t pointed out, so I don’t know if it works in French too or if it’s a coincidence), though his friends call him Bossuet. He’s known for being unlucky.

Joly is a medical student and a hypochondriac (but I repeat myself).

Grantaire is a hipster (before hipsters were uncool). He’s skeptical of everything, has a wide knowledge of Paris, and “lived in irony.” Always drunk, womanizing, dismissive of everything. He was probably into rebellion back in the day, but now everyone’s into it. Even so, he loves Enjolras and insists on following the group around. (Enjolras is not impressed.)

Marius gets involved by accident: L’Aigle answered roll call for him on a whim in class one day (and was himself dropped from the rolls as a result). He spots Marius’ cab a few days later (as he’s moving out), recognizes the name on his luggage, and strikes up a conversation. Courfeyrac recommends the hotel where he’s staying, and a few days later invites him to a meeting.

Marius mostly listens for a while, but it’s a huge change from the royalist salons he went to with his grandfather. Nothing is sacred, and they discuss a wide range of ideas.

One night, Grantaire rambles about how everything sucks while everyone else is involved in their own conversations: playwriting, dating advice, mythology, politics. Courfeyrac argues against half-measures, saying “Rights must be whole or they are nothing.”

Whoa — don’t disparage Napoleon in front of Marius.

Marius: Corsica made France great. Enjolras: “France did not need Corsica to make her great. She is great because she is France.”

Marius goes on a tear about Napoleon. What could possibly be greater than to follow such a man? Combeferre replies: “To be free.”

Feeling out of place, Marius stops going. Having no income, he sells his few possessions, leaves the hotel, and, too proud to accept charity from his grandfather, declines the allowance that his aunt tries to send him.

Pages covered: 555-583. Image by Jeanniot from an unidentified edition of Les Misérables, via this fantastic illustration gallery. If you want to follow only this series, you can do so at ReReadingLesMis.tumblr.com or Follow @ReadingLesMis.

This post is part of the thread: Re-Reading Les Mis – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.

I’m re-reading Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables after 20 years. Start with part 1, or read on.

After meeting Gavroche, we’re told that we will learn about Marius Pontmercy. As it happens, though, we’re instead introduced to Monsieur Gillenormand, an old upper-middle-class man of 90. He’s one of those people who are interesting because of their age, and “peculiar because whereas they were once like everyone else they are now like no one else.”

Still in perfect health, he has two emotional states: happy/mocking, and furious. He loves to tell story of how he escaped the Revolution with his head intact, but for once Hugo doesn’t relate the tale to the reader. He hates the Revolution, the Republic and the Empire, and he hates that his son-in-law fought for Napoleon.

Marius’ aunt is so prude that she’s haunted by the memory that a man once saw her garter.

“Anyone walking through the little town of Vernon in those days, and crossing the beautiful stone bridge which, let us hope, will soon be replaced by some hideous construction of cables and girders…”

Georges Pontmercy’s distinguished military career includes one battle alongside Victor Hugo’s uncle. For someone who doesn’t like to speak of himself, he sure sneaks in a lot of references to “the present writer.”

Upon Marius’ mother’s death, Gillenormand demands custody from his father under threat of disinheriting the boy. He agrees, but every few months visits Paris to sneakily steal a glimpse of his son. Both Marius and Cosette are given up by a single parent for their own good.

M. Gillenormand is part of a salon of mostly returned aristocrats, described as being in their 25th year of adolescence. This is the only real experience of the outside world that young Marius gets.

Ultraism (n): To be so vehemently for something as to be in fact against it.

Nice. After years of intercepting his letters and telling Marius that his father is a no-good brigand, M. Gillenormand finally tells him to go see him…on his deathbed. Marius arrives too late. He’s unmoved, however, having believed himself abandoned rather than surrendered.

Not long afterward he has a chance meeting with one of his father’s friends who remarked on his surreptitious visits, and Marius realizes (1) he’s been lied to, and (2) he’s been wholly unfair to his father. He starts researching, and changes his opinions not only of his father, but of Napoleon and politics in general. Because he was so sheltered and shown only the negative side, he ends up being the more strongly for his father, the Republic, the and the Empire. It’s the zeal of the convert. “What was right seems wrong, and what was wrong seems right.”

Nowadays you might call him radicalized.

“Théodule [Marius' cousin] grinned the grin of a pickpocket commended for honesty.”

They finally fall out when Gillenormand finds out that Marius has been visiting his father’s grave and not just sneaking out to see some girl. Next, in Part 15, Marius gets to know some ABCs. Students, that is.

Pages covered: 512-554. If you want to follow only this series, you can do so at ReReadingLesMis.tumblr.com or Follow @ReadingLesMis.

This post is part of the thread: Re-Reading Les Mis – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.

I’m re-reading Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables after 20 years. Start with part 1, or read on.

Now that Valjean and Cosette are safely established at the convent, we move on to “Part Three: Marius” and jump ahead several years.

Of course, we don’t start with Marius. Just as “Part One: Fantine” opened with the Bishop and “Part Two: Cosette” opened with the Battle of Waterloo, this section starts with street urchins. Marius isn’t even one of them.

Paris has the best street urchins, or at least they did back in the good old days. Victor Hugo presents a fascinating, idealized description of the typical Paris urchin, then goes on to present the urchin as a microcosm of Paris, which he sees as a microcosm of — and the center of — the world. Let’s just say this won’t be the last time Hugo expounds on the wonders of Paris.

Harpers Ferry and John Brown are mentioned in a list of leaders and movements inspired by the revolutionary spirit of Paris. I remember reading that the novel was popular among Confederate soldiers (sometimes known as Lee’s Miserables), but the rare references to the US fall into two categories: historical “Yay revolution!” or contemporary “Boo slavery!”

There’s a lot of talk about the transition between city and country, in-between places that are both but neither (briefly discussed in other chapters). That’s something I’m not super-familiar with, having grown up in southern California in the 1980s. The sprawling suburbs stopped abruptly at a big industrial farm (most of which is gone now), and if we went hiking or camping, we drove from solid city to solid country, and skipped right past the transitional areas.

Anyway, after a while we get a brief introduction to Gavroche, mostly relying on the description of the standard urchin. He occasionally visits his family, who don’t really care for or about him… in the same dreary Paris tenement where Valjean first hid out with Cosette. The family name is given as Jondrette, but there are a few hints to suggest who they really are. (I find it interesting that in the musical, Gavroche re-introduces the Thénardiers after the time jump, given that in the book he’s part of the family, if only by birth.)

Adding to the coincidences: Their next door neighbor is a penniless student named Marius, whom we’re told will be the next subject of concern. Except that he isn’t. The next chapter is about Marius’ grandfather.

Pages covered: 495-511. Image of Gavroche “after an original by Émile Bayard,” from an unidentified edition of Les Misérables, via this fantastic illustration gallery. If you want to follow only this series, you can do so at ReReadingLesMis.tumblr.com or Follow @ReadingLesMis.

This post is part of the thread: Re-Reading Les Mis – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.

I’m re-reading Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables after 20 years. Start with part 1, or read on.

Previously: Valjean and Cosette fled Javert and landed in a convent garden. Then we learned all about the convent’s history.

Fauchelevent turns out to be a former legal clerk. Then he took a cart to the knee.

He figures he can come up with a cover story for Jean Valjean and Cosette to stay, but the hard part is sneaking them out again so they can be seen coming through the front door. Cosette can fit in a basket, but Valjean?

Having established himself as indispensable but harmless over the last two years, playing dumb while observing everything, Fauchelevent rambles to the prioress about how he’s getting old, the garden’s so big, and could he maybe trouble them to let his brother come to assist him? Oh, and he has a granddaughter who might attend the school, and who knows, one day she might choose to join their order?

One of the nuns has just died, her final wishes to be buried in the vaults beneath the convent. Of course, city regulations require the dead to be buried in an off-site cemetery, which means they’ll be sending the coffin out without a body. Hmmm…

The nun, upset at the city’s usurpation of a spiritual matter, goes on a rant about secular vs religious authority, and even Hugo remarks that she’s going on a tear.

Fauchelevent comes to Valjean with two problems: getting Valjean out, and getting the empty coffin out. If only he had another body to put in it…. Shrewd as he is, the idea of smuggling Valjean out in the coffin doesn’t occur to him. It literally is inconceivable. To Jean Valjean, on the other hand, an ex-convict with three escapes behind him, it’s easy to contemplate. He’s seen worse.

Even long-winded Victor Hugo knows if you describe a plan in detail, you don’t need to portray the execution of it until the point where it goes off the rails. In this case, the grave digger Fauchelevent had planned to get drunk so he could sneak Valjean out of the coffin turns out to be dead. The new guy? Teetotaler.

Hugo is actually having fun with the quirks of this new gravedigger, who is a failed writer but still works as a scribe for illiterate clients. Love letters by day, graves by night. As Valjean gets buried alive, the scene above the grave is actually comic.

By the time Fauchelevent chases the new guy off and gets down to open the coffin, Valjean has fainted. Fauvent is convinced Valjean has suffocated, and laments at length about this cruel trick of fate. Then Valjean opens his eyes. Commence freaking out.

As the new assistant gardener, Valjean compares the nuns’ life in the convent with the prison life he knew — oddly similar, but on one hand voluntary austerity and deprivation leading to greater virtue and on the other hand enforced, leading to hatred, and finds himself moved to humility.

That wraps up Part Two: Cosette. Next up is the jump forward in time to 1832.

Pages covered: 451-491. Image of the grave situation by de Neuville from an unidentified edition of Les Misérables, via this fantastic illustration gallery. If you want to follow only this series, you can do so at ReReadingLesMis.tumblr.com. Next up: The urchins of Paris. Follow @ReadingLesMis

This post is part of the thread: Re-Reading Les Mis – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.