Les Miserables part.1 - Victor Hugo

Les Miserables. 1

Author

Victor Hugo

Publisher

Minumsa | Published 2012-11-05

Category

Novel

Book description

Jean Valjean, a poor ex-convict, is reborn as a saint! A great 19th-century French literary...

The themes that have arisen recently as I read books can be summarized in two. One is 'death,' the other is 'religion.' First, the reason I talk about death first is that I wanted to choose it as a theme because quite famous or fairly popular literary works always use 'death' as a subject; and the reason I chose 'religion' is that I felt 'religious love,' which is hard to see in Confucian/Buddhist cultural spheres but easy to see in Catholic cultural spheres, is a quite important theme. The books that recently ended with 'death' included 'Jude the Obscure' (Thomas Hardy), 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' (Milan Kundera), 'Anna Karenina' (Leo Tolstoy), and 'Sophie's Choice' (William Styron); hmm.... from joint suicide to freezing to death alone in the cold, I felt it was very interesting and at the same time tragic that they ended their novels with various kinds of death. Why on earth do they borrow 'death' as a subject at the end of a novel? To emphasize emptiness? To emphasize the period setting of the novel? There may be various reasons, but death is not entirely comfortable. I can't keep just watching this death forever. Because a person isn't only brought to an end by dying. There are various paths without dying, yet they keep dying and dying and dying, so it's a bit much. Doesn't Fantine, too, end up dying in volume 1!

As for 'religion,' hmm... I'd like to talk about the 'agape' peculiar to Catholicism. Confucianism is fundamentally 'humanism,' Buddhism is fundamentally 'reincarnation' and 'non-possession,' but for Catholicism, repentance and love seem to be fundamental. When you look at the verse we know about turning the other cheek when struck on one cheek, or the writings about always showing love, Catholicism always emphasizes 'love.' And it could be said that, after repenting of one's sins, making the utmost effort in the present, and paying the price for that sin, one may then receive 'judgment' that could lead to 'heaven.' Because Anna's husband Alexandrovich, too, forgives Anna through the power of religion; Elinor, who comes from sense and sensibility, grows close to Edward through the power of religion; and the 'Jean Valjean' to be discussed here also repents by receiving the power of religion. Religion does not seem to be a subject to be taken lightly.

I didn't know any of the Jean Valjean story when I was young. I want to say first that I read Les Miserables in a completely blank state. I hadn't seen the film, hadn't seen the musical, hadn't seen the opera. But the film was a hit, my girlfriend said the film gave her a lot to think about, someone made and distributed a video parodying the musical film and it gained fame, and since I had recently kept wanting to read books to some degree, I chose this book. This book, too, was wrapped up at the end of volume 1 with 'death'!! Jean Valjean, receiving the power of religion, clears Champmathieu of his false charge and, to repent of the sins he committed, throws away the name 'Madeleine' and plunges in. When I asked people about Jean Valjean, they only told me the story of him going to prison for stealing bread, which was frustrating, but I learned that this part corresponds to only a very small portion at the very beginning of the writing, and Les Miserables, like 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,' is not just Jean Valjean's story but the story of many people. Within it religion appears, the Battle of Waterloo appears, and the French Revolution appears. (This is the typical method of content composition in Victor Hugo's writing.) I want to mention that culture and people's stories unfold at the same time.

Bienvenu Myriel is the Bishop of Digne. At the start, while mentioning this person, the narrator begins the story saying it would be convenient to mention him. (It is the very beginning of the book.) After Bienvenu Myriel became the Bishop of Digne, Digne becomes a very religious 'holy place,' and at this time Jean Valjean stops by Digne after completing his 19-year prison term. At the time there was no villager who didn't know 'Jean Valjean,' so seeing his yellow passport no one would let him sleep in their house, but Bishop Bienvenu lets him sleep in his own house. And then at dawn the next day, Jean Valjean steals the bishop's silver candlesticks and silver tableware, steals two of Petit-Gervais's Napoleon silver coins, and leaves Digne. Bishop Bienvenu is a very important figure who breathes the power of repentance into Jean Valjean. A religious figure usually gives off a very 'holy' feeling, and Bienvenu Myriel keeps only 2,000 francs of his monthly income and uses the rest for the poor, to put into practice his duty and his convictions. Seeing such a bishop, it is only natural that Jean Valjean, who spent 19 years in prison, did a great deal of thinking.

Here the 'French Revolution' appears. It's no exaggeration to say that the 'Battle of Waterloo,' which will appear in volume 2 that I'm now reading, was created by this French Revolution. The story 'G' told most earnestly about 'revolution' in volume 1, the story G told to His Lordship Bienvenu, could be called a very interesting part.

"I pity Marie Antoinette, the Austrian archduchess and Queen of France, but I also pity that poor Protestant woman who in 1685, under the reign of Louis the Great, was seized while nursing her baby, stripped to the waist, separated from her child, and bound to a stake. Her breasts swelled with milk and her heart swelled with anguish. The baby, gone pale from hunger, looked at her breasts and wailed in agony, while the executioner said to that woman, a mother and a nurse, 'Convert!' and made her choose between the death of her baby and the death of her conscience. How do you regard this torment of Tantalus applied to a mother? Remember this well. The French Revolution had its reasons. Its wrath will be forgiven in the future. Its result is a better world. From its most terrible blow comes a caress for mankind. I'll stop here. I'll cease here. Because I am all too much at an advantage. Besides, I shall soon die."

And he stopped gazing at the bishop, and quietly concluded his thought with the following few words.

"Yes, the violence of progress is called revolution. When the revolution ends, people acknowledge it: that mankind was put through an ordeal but progressed."

The member of the National Convention did not realize that he had crushed, one by one in succession, the ramparts in the bishop's heart. But one still remained, and from that rampart, the last means of resistance of His Lordship Bienvenu, came the following words, in which the initial sternness reappeared almost intact.

"Progress is possible only if one believes in God. Good cannot have a servant without faith. The atheist is a bad leader of mankind."

What sort of existence, really, is the French Revolution to these people? The character G tells His Lordship Bienvenu that the French Revolution is 'progress.' He says that although violence was bound up with it and countless people were sacrificed in the process, it was worthwhile. Taking a step forward is by no means an easy thing. The appearance of Napoleon can be called inseparable from this French Revolution. Although, through the Restoration, Louis XVIII ascended the throne again and it ended in England's victory, even after the French Revolution ended, the revolutionary thought that had spread across all of Europe began to rise up, not knowing how to die down.

The reason 'Les Miserables' cannot be dismissed simply as Jean Valjean's story lies here. As you read the book, there are stories of characters, but there are also parts that narrate the background. As you read the background, you sometimes get a confused feeling about whether this is background or just a separate story, but the more you read, the more it settles in as a single backdrop. It's a narrative method that was hard to see in other authors, so it's interesting, and I'm also grateful because it seems to teach the knowledge aspect too. It's just that it's hard to follow the unfolding. The reason my girlfriend said it 'divides by taste' must be precisely because of this part.

How on earth should the character Madeleine be judged? It's true that after his 19-year term Jean Valjean was released and, while wandering about, stole the silver candlesticks and silver tableware under His Lordship Bienvenu, and stole 2 coins of Petit-Gervais. In that part, I have a question of whether the author really needed to emphasize the personal anguish of the character 'Jean Valjean' this much and go toward 'tragedy.' It's just my taste, but tragedy always has many uncomfortable things. Of course it's true that it can heighten the dramatic character and that people can empathize more, but did Jean Valjean, who repents and lives as a new man, really need to be sent to hell once more like this? Did this person, who does his utmost to help Fantine after seeing that she came to live a hard life because of someone he himself had employed without knowing it, and who makes an enormous contribution to Montreuil-sur-Mer, really have to return to hell?

When you read the story of the dream he had within the content, you can see that he is repeatedly abandoning his past self and acting as a new person. In the part where the single Jean Valjean becomes two people (an older and a younger brother) saying 'Where are you going? Don't you know you've been dead for a long time?', his self-awareness and posture toward himself can be seen, and putting such a Jean Valjean into hell once more is, by 'Javert's' logic, natural, but at the same time it was very sad and regrettable to me.

I have some things to say about Javert too, but since I can't get them organized, it's frustrating that I can't do it even though I want to. Still, in the next piece I believe I probably will. Well, it's not to my taste, but it's certainly a book worth reading. The fact that it unravels very many stories one by one and in the end they meet at a single point is something said precisely of a book like this.