Why do I want to talk about Les Miserables? There are two big mountains in my reading world, Les Misérables and War and Peace, that I’ve been dying to climb. These two works are so major, on a very grand scale! There’s a strange phenomenon nowadays of over-interpretation of contemporary works, where very, very small details are given lots and lots of meaning. And for the classical things, perhaps because they are complexly structured, so we don’t talk about them, and in this way we actually lose a lot of important things, so I felt I had to come to face these two masterpieces. Of course, in addition to these two major projects, I have a residual program that I will have to analyze sometime in the future, which is all the detective novels of Agatha Christie, I have read 70% of her novels, and reading them all may be quite a daunting task! Those are the three tasks in my reading world!
In October 2012, when I finished what I had in hand, I decided to give myself a vacation, a “reading vacation”. For several years, especially in those two or three years, I kept writing, almost every day, even when I was on a trip, on a plane, in a hotel, I was writing, as if there was an inertia, and when I wrote in September, I thought it was time to wrap up for the time being. I kept using what I already had, as if I was running out, so I should go read some books! When I really want to read, I am very excited, as if I will face a very big festival, very happy! I felt like I was going to start having a “good” time. The two boxes of books from Taiwan arrived in Shanghai. I feel so lucky to live in a world so full of words and so many books for me to read! When I read one book after another, basically one book in two days, one book a day, I felt it was almost an “extravagance”! How can a person be so addicted to such pleasure? I suddenly felt that I should let this pleasure restrain a bit, so I moved out the “Les Miserables”.
In fact, I had made a lot of notes on Les Miserables, but when I decided to really conquer this fortress, I was still afraid. Because it is that complex, and its complexity is by no means complex in the usual sense! Because its plot is again exceptionally simple, it can be so simple that I can sum up its story in one sentence. That’s why I especially emphasize that a good work should not have a plot that is so wide open that it can be summarized in just one sentence. Although such a work is complex, it is never complicated or cluttered, it has order, and this order can be summarized. Then Les Miserables, for me, can be summarized in this sentence: “The austerity, the asceticism of a man, that is, Jean Valjean.” This man’s practice is not in a religious place, but in the secular world, and this “secular world” is named after “Les Miserables.
This is a very simple story, but when I really faced it, I saw that there were so many materials, so many events, how should I lay it out? How do I imagine a writer from hundreds of years ago, how did he arrange his story, his characters and these different scenes?
Here, by the way, my understanding of “reality” is that Hugo finally finished this work in 1862, while the stories he wrote mainly took place in 1831 and 1832, a difference of thirty years from the time he wrote, but we have never doubted that Hugo was a writer who did not care about reality. Therefore, we should relax the scale of reflecting “reality”, and not think that reflecting “reality” must be reflecting the current reality, today’s reality, I think there should be a width for “reality”. I think there should be a breadth of tolerance for “reality” to at least 100 years. A writer as active and close to the world as Victor Hugo wrote Les Misérables thirty years ago, in 1831 and 1832, against the backdrop of the French Revolution, in 1793. This is the patience and determination of the writer to consider reality.
In 1994, I gave a course at Fudan University, and the whole course was devoted to my views on fiction, and I confess that my views have not changed, so today I still interpret Les Misérables with the same concept I had at that time, which is: fiction is not a direct reflection of reality, it is not a portrait of our reality, it is to create a subjective world. This “world” is unreal, which creates a dilemma for it, because the materials it uses are realistic. This is because the secular nature of fiction, unlike poetry and painting, is externally similar to the world we live in. A realist like me must have a very subjective position on how to read fiction and how to read it, so my interpretation of a Romantic writer like Victor Hugo today may be completely incorrect and deviate from his original intentions, but today I still want to tell you about my reading experience, so that you may be more or less inspired.
I think the realists have this characteristic: they have a kind of fascination with the outside of life by nature, they prefer the details and the appearance of the outside of life, because they think life is particularly good-looking, life is good-looking because it is reasonable, it always starts from human needs, and the existence out of human needs will give people a very orderly feeling. For me, what I want to do is very simple: I want to hunt all the beautiful things for my materials and create my subjective world, which is very beautiful, not all of them but the essence of them. Therefore, it is very difficult for a realist like me to talk about fiction apart from the reality of life, because we can’t create a miraculous, bizarre story, nor can we shape a fairy, superman, or chivalrous man.
These are my explanations, now we can cut to the chase.
01
Time and space
The phrase I mentioned earlier that sums up Les Miserables is: The place of one man’s practice, that is, Jean Valjean’s practice, is in the miserable earth. I will give an introduction to the time and space of his ascetic process.
The time is 1831 and 1832, which is the time when the story is concentrated, and the novel devotes a whole chapter to these two years. One of them is Napoleon’s “Hundred Days Coup”, familiarly known as the “Defeat at Waterloo”, which took place in 1815. Hugo used a very beautiful flashback: In 1816, a traveler came to Ugomont, he walked through a farmhouse in a very beautiful and peaceful rural idyll, and saw a girl doing farm work, some farming tools were placed by the girl, the surrounding area was quiet and the sun was very good. He saw potholes on the door, and the village girl told him that they were left by the Waterloo War last year. It was like our old Chinese saying, “If you want to ask the court about something, ask the woodcutter”, a sensational event returned to peace a year later. Then he recounted many details of the war back then to illustrate the miraculous nature of the war at that time from several aspects. The war that Napoleon fought at that time was certainly not realistic and objective in Hugo’s writing, and there was certainly a lot of fiction from his own needs. He described the battle with special emphasis on details, such as the weather, it rained all night, the ground was muddy, the artillery team did not arrive on time, which is a very fortuitous factor, but these very small variables became decisive factors in the battle of Napoleon’s absolute advantage. He writes very carefully and interestingly, he writes section by section, for example, encountering an immature guide who pointed out the wrong way, or not looking at the terrain properly, or not spying accurately enough on military intelligence. In short, they are all very small and not enough to affect the whole war, but the result is that the war was lost and lost very badly. When Hugo finished his account of the war, he concluded with these words: Even without these variables, Napoleon would have lost the war! Why did he have to lose? God wanted him to lose, and God could never let him win! Why? Because the time for heroes has passed, and history is no longer the history of heroes! Therefore, the downfall of Napoleon actually meant the rise of a democratic era. Well, Napoleon was defeated, and until Waterloo, there were no more heroes in this era.
Again, I am narrating exactly the way I read, not the way the author wrote the novel. It is no longer possible to speculate on the author Hugo’s thoughts.
That’s how a great writer is, when he narrates a big event, he seems to carelessly use a few strokes, but these few strokes lay the groundwork for the later story. What kind of ambush? When the war was over and the corpses were all over the place, a man came from afar. This man was obviously a scoundrel, and this scoundrel was looking east and west on the battlefield to see if there was anything valuable to wear on the corpses, a man who took advantage of the fire. Suddenly, he saw a hand in the pile of corpses with a gold watch on it. So, in order to get the gold watch, he dragged this hand out of the pile of corpses and took the gold watch. And he dragged this hand out, but inadvertently did a good thing. The man had been pinned down by the corpse, was dragged out, breathed fresh air, and suddenly came to his senses. The officer was very grateful to the man and asked, “Who are you? I must repay you in the future!” The scoundrel who stole the watch said his name was “Denati”. From then on, the officer remembered this name firmly. This incident is very minor in this battle, and it is not a remarkable pen. But in fact, there are two characters who have already appeared here. One is Denardi, who plays a large role in the fate of Fantine’s daughter Cosette and Jean Valjean, the owner of a small hotel, and the other is Penmacy, Cosette’s lover and Marius’ father. In the introduction of the general background, two characters appear unnoticed, which I think is a master stroke. When we write novels, either we leave our stories completely out of the background, and despite the magnificent writing, our characters are not involved, or we let our characters take on roles in isolation, and then you have a hard time reconciling them with the important background, whereas Hugo is able to let his characters appear in the background with such carelessness.
Hugo wrote about the defeat of Waterloo in preparation for writing about 1831 and 1832. I think he wrote about a carnival of the Parisian people, a carnival that needed a foundation, a foundation that there were no more heroes, that the people rose up, and that was an important section toward 1831 and 1832.
In his novels, the people are the background of a song and dance, and they play the role of the masses in a big song and dance, which is very cheerful and vivid, but at the same time, the people have very bad weaknesses, and in the end, a god must appear to lead the people up. Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo
The second period of time to be taken into account is the failed coup of Napoleon and then the accession of Louis XVIII to the throne. This is a very interesting period of time that he writes about. This was in the days of the failed French Revolution, when there was no longer basically any element of revolutionary possibility. In Paris, France, during this time, there was an extravagant atmosphere, very hedonistic, with many new fashions in the streets, and intellectuals began to write literary works for the people, like pop music and soap operas. One gets the impression that after the revolution, the whole of France was very tired and needed a good rest to catch its breath. An accident happened at this time: four university students were studying in Paris and they hooked up with four female workers, one of whom was Fantine. These female workers are very happy, they have no moral sense, and the college students have fun, picnics, sex, but of course the four college students do not really belong to these female workers. Time passes day by day, finally one day, the four college students together to discuss a game: is to take the four girls to the countryside to go on a picnic, indulge in a happy, and then leave without saying goodbye. For this result, the other three girls are fine, they go away, but for Fantine this thing is very bad, because she already has a child with the university students. The other three girls were fine with it, they left, but for Fantine it was bad, because she had a child with a college student. Fantine is a very contented person, she did not think of using the child to blackmail the college student, so she became a single mother. In this stage of time, the story begins unceremoniously.
This is where the important story takes place: an era of democracy without heroes, an era of bitter fruits caused by the worldly pleasures, slowly coming to 1831, when the bitter fruits begin to ripen, what kind of story will it produce? This is the temporal condition of the story.
Spatially, the main occasion is Paris. Hugo was very fond of Paris, and his description of Paris was very beautiful and magnificent, and he wrote about the nature of the city. Of course, there are preparatory stages toward Paris: the first is the hard labor field, which is a very important spatial stage, although no large positive description appears in the text; the second is the city of Montréal by the sea, in which Jean Valjean becomes the mayor of a city and rises in status, gaining the respect of many people. For Jean Valjean, the Field of Hard Labor was hell, the city of Montrouis was heaven, and Paris was earth. Jean Valjean’s asceticism must have taken place on earth, where he was practicing, because hell would have turned him into a devil, and heaven was too unreal. So he had to come to Paris, which was his real place of practice.
Hugo wrote a great deal about this place, Paris! For the sake of convenience, I will divide it into hardware and software. First of all, the hardware, that is, the nature of the set, there are several places: one is the old house of Gorbeau, which is the first hiding place where Jean Valjean brought Cosette from the countryside to Paris, and it is a very desolate place near the suburbs. The old house of Gorbeau was surrounded by sad places, asylums, nunneries, almshouses. Then there is the rue de Prümme, the place where Jean Valjean settled after leaving the convent with Cosette. In this garden, Marius and Cosette had a love affair together. This place gives a wonderful feeling that our modern people no longer have the imagination to write a romantic place, our romanticism has gone to the cafe, really do not know how the romance is back.
We’ll talk about this Prümme Street later, how it sets the stage for a romantic drama. Another place is the Corinthian Tavern, the place where the barricades were fought, the command post, which is also very interesting!
All of the above is the structure of the ground, and the space below the ground is the sewer. I think the description of “sewer” is very good. I confess to you that Hugo put a lot of meaning in this “sewer”, which I can’t really understand now. He wrote so patiently about the sewer, presenting a scene so horrible, dirty and dark, but you are convinced by it, you feel that it is so magnificent, full of tough manpower, it seems to be a monument of humanism, in front of which the idea of good and evil becomes very small. Although I still haven’t fully understood its meaning, in any case, it made me see the three-dimensional map of the city.
The space above the ground can be said to be the light of Paris, the most splendid building of Paris, the barricade. This barricade really surprised me. Hugo wrote about the barricades built by university students and workers in 1831 and 1832, but he didn’t write too much about them, he wrote, “Have you ever seen the barricades of 1848? He devotes a chapter to two barricades, one ruinous, with various objects – large ones like half a pavilion, small ones like cabbage roots – piled up in a jumble of teeth; the other one is precisely built with paving stones, straight and steep. The former has the spirit of anarchy, while the latter is strictly disciplined. I think this barricade laid out the shape of the Revolution.
The above is the hardware.
In contrast to this hardware, what separates him is his characters, his software. I think Hugo’s works can be particularly well adapted to the stage, with so many characters, doing different gestures and making different voices, with great grandeur.
The biggest base of Hugo’s characters is the citizens, and this class is the class that most relies on Hugo’s sympathy and criticism. There is a representative character of the citizen class, Mr. Maboeuf, who is a church property manager, an old man with a bland nature. He went in and out of the church and witnessed many things. He noticed that every Sunday there was a middle-aged man with a scarred face, as if he had had a military career and was very disillusioned, always sneaking behind a pillar to watch a woman with a little boy at Mass, a scene the old man had always witnessed. This little boy was Marius, and one day after he grew up, he came again, and by this time his father was dead. The old man then told Marius: “Before, he came to see you every week, and he loved you very, very much!” These words touched Marius deeply and led him to change his world view. This old man died a very heroic death in the end, so I would say that he was a representative figure of the citizens, who came to the center of the barricade war in a state of ignorance. He was very gentle, quiet, simple, and had only two hobbies in his life – plants and books, and he was a versionist. He had no great expectations, but he still found that the world was going downhill more and more: his brother died, his notary embezzled his little fortune; the July Revolution caused a crisis in the book industry, and his botanicals were out of sale; his income was getting smaller and smaller, and his beloved rare books were going out of sale little by little; he moved again and again, more and more remotely; he had no idea how life had become like this, no idea at all He was completely unaware of the political and historical reasons behind it. In the end, he died heroically in the battle of the barricades.
Another group is the vagrant children. Hugo’s vagabonds make you feel their extraordinary joy, he thinks they are the seeds of Paris, the children of Paris, they roll around in the filthy life, but because they are innocent and pure, they are actually very healthy, he writes about vagabonds with great fun, full of enthusiasm and joy, he loves these children! They have no demands on life, they only need a little condition to sustain themselves, but they are so happy and joyful that they see this miserable world as a game. Among them there is also a representative figure – little Gavroche, who is the son of Demondi. There are three children in the Demondi family, two daughters are very popular, while he was kicked to the street by his parents at an early age, a child who could not return to his home. This child is also surprising, as he ends up in a barricade battle, which he also sees as a game. Here perhaps lies one of Hugo’s views on the revolution, which Hugo saw as a magnificent game because everyone is an urchin in the eyes of God. The boy joins the war with great enthusiasm and is later shot by government troops for running out of barricade cover and picking up weapons and bullets.
Hugo places special emphasis on this old man and this young man who died in the barricade battle. This old man and this young man were the best figures of Paris in his mind, the secular elite of Paris, so to speak.
Then there was another group of people he considered to be the light, the light of the whole of France, the university students. The university students were the leaders of the barricade stations, they added reason to the purity of the vagabonds, they added ideals to the vitality of the citizens, they were the fetuses conceived by the French Revolution. They were the fetuses of the French Revolution. He was moving up the hierarchy, with the citizens at the bottom, the vagrants at the top, and the university students at the top. Below the horizon of “citizens” there are two more layers: the police, the state apparatus, of which Javert is the typical figure. Javert is a representative of this group of people, about whom we may know more. The bottom layer is the mob, the mob is represented by Denardy, who is very much written about and who takes on more tasks in the fate of Jean Valjean. This is the time and space in which the whole story takes place. Jean Valjean in the film Les Misérables
02
Plot
Then I will narrate the plot as I understand it. I have divided Valjean’s asceticism into five stages and one result.
The first stage is the field of hard labor. Jean Valjean was born into a peasant family, his father and mother died one after another in a very fortuitous accident, leaving him with his widowed sister and her seven children, of whom he has been the nurturer ever since, living a life of ignorance and poverty. He was a tree trimmer, and one winter when he could not find work, he went to the city, smashed the window of a bakery, reached in and took bread, and was convicted of theft and sent to prison. On his way to the hard labor camp, he did not understand anything, he was completely animal-like mind, wailing, thinking that the children had no food to eat, he thought that his wailing would make others moved, but there was no such thing, he was still transported to the hard labor camp, into a very miserable world like that. In this world, they have their own black words, black names, nicknames, they have their own discipline, they take turns to help a hard laborer escape, when his turn, he “out”, the result is, and then caught back to add sentence, in and out many times, the sentence has been added up to more than ten years. This is the man who trained his physical survival in the hard labor field, which I regard as the first stage of his asceticism. Here, he first completed his organism, he was strong, very durable, physically very good, nicknamed “jack”, meaning that he could put a lot of weight up; he also learned a lot of ways to turn danger into success, a lot of other people can not think of ways to survive in the harsh environment. Hugo said that in the place where he escaped, he would often find a large coin, Javert chased him, and in the twinkling of an eye, people disappeared, but found a large coin. Javert saw this copper coin and felt familiar with it. A coin that was very carefully cut into two pieces, surrounded by serrated, screwed on, which hid a very thin blade, the blade can help him accomplish so many things. Javert recognized that this was a trick of the hard labor prisoners. Later, the church came to the hard labor camp to run a school, where he studied, learned to read, learned to count, and got an education.
His first stage was actually a very simple one, that is, Jean Valjean had the physical strength, the ability to survive in the worst conditions, and a little knowledge. Why was this knowledge necessary? Because the practice he will undergo in the future will soon rise to a rational level, and without this preparation cannot reach the point of spiritual sublimation, so Hugo had to create these conditions for him. This is how we write novels, to set a task for the character, we must create conditions for him, without these conditions, he will not be able to complete the task.
The second stage, which I think is more dramatic, is when he meets M. Milière, the bishop of Digne. Mr. Milière is also a very interesting man. He is from the nobility, and there is a faction of the French nobility called the “French robe” nobility, which is from the church system, and his ancestors have been from the church for generations. So he was a nobleman, but this nobleman was very unlucky, when he was a teenager met the “French Revolution”, his property was lost, he was deported to Italy, in Italy experienced a very tragic fact: his wife died, the children also lost. When he returned from Italy, he had become a very devout monk, and no one could guess what he had gone through spiritually, but his piety was obvious to everyone, and he was very kind and friendly to the suffering people. From his birth, his political views were certainly royalist, but from the point of view of a merciful God, he was compelled to care for a deposed and banished revolutionary party, which was in his parish. Why was this revolutionary party not beheaded on the spot? Because he did not vote in the vote for the execution of Louis XVI, whose more moderate attitude finally left him alive and allowed him to leave Paris to live in the suburbs. Unfortunately he fell seriously ill, and knowing this news, Bishop Milière went to pray for him as a dying prayer. In the interior of the country at that time, the royalists were very powerful, and many people could not understand: why pray for this rebel party? Here Hugo then wrote a long dialogue between Bishop Milière and this man, from which we can see how the bishop’s political faith, step by step, yielded to his faith in God, which was a more macroscopic faith than politics. From here we can see what kind of devout man Bishop Milière was. Stills from the movie “Les Miserables
The following detail is well known: Jean Valjean was released from hard labor, and because he had a “criminal record” on his resume, no one took him in, and he was chased out even to the doghouse. He said he had no place to go, and she told him, “You can go to a man’s house, you can knock on a door. This door was the door of Bishop Miliere’s house. And sure enough he knocked and went in, and he treated it all in a very rude manner, as if the whole world had wronged him and he didn’t have to be polite and courteous to anyone! It is true that Bishop Miliere treated him well, but it was nothing great. But there was one thing that struck him as very strange. The Miliere family had a very simple population: the bishop, the bishop’s sister and a maid, that is, two old women and an old man. All three had a calm attitude toward his arrival, and this calmness made him feel very strange. Never had he been looked at with surprise or disgust, always with strong emotion, but today the family treated him so calmly and naturally, without the slightest hint of condescension that had been bestowed upon him. What happened next was even more strange to him. When he escaped in the middle of the night and “took” the bishop’s silverware with him, and the police brought him back, the bishop calmly said: “I gave these things to him, let him go.” Then he said, “Why didn’t you take the silver candlesticks I gave you?” Then he gave the silver candlesticks to Jean Valjean. When the police had gone, the bishop said to him these words, “These things are God’s, and they are not at all mine to have.”
Jean Valjean felt bewildered after taking the things, he had never been treated in such a way, and he spent the whole day thinking about it when he walked out of the bishop’s house. The classical writers could write so boldly, writing the feelings and realizations in a positive way, writing that kind of divine illumination in such a positive and direct way, writing in a very naive way. Let’s leave this aside and follow the plot. Jean Valjean was thinking about what had happened, he had already grown a “shell” of the world, and now this “shell” seems to have a crack, revealing the soft feelings, he was confused. Then he followed his evil inertia and robbed a child of money – a penny, which was the last mistake he made, and this mistake brought him endless trouble. Hugo has such a skill that you think he wrote so much, but none of it was written in vain, it all had his reason. After he grabbed this penny, he suddenly felt that the sky and the earth had collapsed, and his soul suddenly exploded into a fission, and this is where Hugo and Tolstoy are completely different. Tolstoy had to go through many processes and episodes to accomplish the great change in his characters, while Hugo’s romantic temperament allowed him to truly believe in the bliss of the soul, so he could write about the change so positively and directly.
The following story is simple: he makes a determination: he’s going to shed his skin, he’s going to be a new man! He traveled almost the whole of France to the sea, to that city of Montrouis.
God also gave him a very good chance, he arrived just when the town hall was on fire, he threw his clothes and his bag, jumped into the fire and saved two children, who happened to be the children of the police captain. So, his identification was exempted from inspection and he stayed in the city. In this city, he is a friendly but unknown person. Everyone could accept him because he had such a great kindness and did such a good job. The city had an old industry that made black glass ornaments. Since he had worked in the hard labor field, his hands were very dexterous and he had a lot of ingenuity. He made several technical innovations: one was to replace one of the mineral raw materials with some kind of cheaper raw materials, thus reducing the cost; another was to change the process of welding into the process of live fastening, which also reduced the labor. As a result, the black glass industry flourished and brought a lot of tax revenue to the city. He opened a very large factory, which was like a socialist society, with pay for work and equality for all, where both male and female workers were honest residents who lived separately and paid great attention to the issue of decency. In this way, his virtues were greatly celebrated in the city of Montréal, and everyone knew him and respected him. He also got a new name, Father Madeleine, and the old name was no longer known, because his pass was not presented. He gave the image of a very kindly old dad, and then he was twice strongly requested by the voters to be elected mayor. The first time, he refused; by the time the king gave him the medal because he had invented such a good technology that made the whole industry developed and the tax revenue guaranteed, the voters once again strongly requested him to be the mayor, and everyone said, “If you are such a good man, if you don’t become the mayor, you are irresponsible to us.” It came to this point that he had to do it. By this time his destiny had changed completely, he could really be said to have been transformed into a new person altogether. Here, it was simply a gift from heaven, everything helped and made him into a new man, no one knew Valjean, only he knew himself, and he did not want to think about it. In this second stage, Jean Valjean had to enjoy himself, and the word “enjoy” is too frivolous, perhaps “gain”, he “gained” dignity. This man had never been given dignity, and here he has the dignity of even God. I think this is very necessary for a person’s asceticism. If a person is always trampled under the feet of others, his soul can never be noble. I think that in the city of Montréal, Jean Valjean he had to complete his nobility, to make his soul noble, and then he could accept the following further tests. Javert in the movie Les Misérables
The third stage can be named for it by an event, which is called the incident of Jean Marchau. When he was just right in front of Papa Madeleine, suddenly Sheriff Javert told him such a thing, told him this thing in such a way. He said: “Mayor, I committed a great crime today, I dare to suspect you.” He asked, “What do you suspect me of?” Then Javert told him that he had caught a man in the court of Arras, another city, who had only gone to steal apples from people, a relatively minor crime, but the problem was that someone had suddenly come out and testified against him, saying that he was Jean Valjean, a hard laborer from years ago, and saying it with certainty. He insisted that he was Jean-Marcou, but they didn’t believe him and proved in many ways that “Jean-Marcou” could also be pronounced as “Jean Valjean”. This man is now on trial. So why did Javert come to tell him? Javert said, “I suspected that you were Jean Valjean! Because once, the old man was crushed to death by an overturned carriage, which was so heavy that several men could not lift it. At this time, someone said to find a jack, but at once can not find. At that time, the mayor of Madeleine, you went over and used your own back to put the carriage up. I have only seen one person with such strength, and that person was Jean Valjean, so I paid extra attention to you, and even did a lot of research. I actually dared to suspect you, and now out comes a Jean Machu, whom a lot of hard labor prisoners have identified as Jean Valjean, so I am guilty of disloyalty to the mayor.” After he made such a review, Jean Valjean’s heart jumped, he knew that he was Jean Valjean and that Shangmaqiu was wrongly accused.
So what was the effect of this incident on Shangmachou? If he had been a hard laborer and had committed a crime after his release from prison, hadn’t he robbed a child of money? Add to that stealing apples, then it is a repeat offense. The nature of his crime would be very different and the sentence would be long. Jean Valjean’s heart was shaken, and he felt that he had to go confess, to turn himself in, and he had to make this identity clear. But then came out the matter of Fantine. The story of Fantine is the story that all the dramatists love. The story is known to everyone: In order to go back to her hometown to earn a living, Fantine put her illegitimate son Cosette in the inn of Demondy in the Paris countryside. On her way home, she saw the wife of De Monti playing with her two daughters, a woman who was so gentle that she found it very reassuring to leave the children with them. When she entrusted them with her daughters, the two families asked her for a lot of money, which she was very generous, in order to entrust them to a trustworthy person, and then she went to her hometown. Her hometown was the city of Montréal, where she worked as a female laborer in Jean Valjean’s factory, and she was able to maintain her life with a monthly salary that covered her basic expenses and the support of her daughter. In this way, she had to send money every month. She could not read or write, and she had to find someone to write to and send money, so some people wondered about her behavior, and some nosy ones went to inquire about it, and when they found out that she had an illegitimate daughter, they reported it to the factory, and the factory manager of women workers was very dull in carrying out Papa Madeleine’s instruction: “My male and female workers must be honest! ” So she was dismissed. Once, when she was insulted to the point of no return, she fought with the john and was taken to the police station by Javert, and then she saw the mayor of Madeleine. By this time Fantine was so desperate that she shouted out all her grievances to him, and Papa Madeleine felt so much pity for her that he decided to help her. He took her to the hospital to cure her, but her illness was incurable and her last wish was to see her daughter, so Jean Valjean swore to her that he would go and bring Cosette.
And now that he was going to admit that he was Jean Valjean, how was he going to take Fantine’s daughter? So he just keeps weighing: which is more important? Both are important! Both are saving bitter people! Shangmachou was alone, Fantine here was mother and daughter, and he used many reasons to convince himself to fulfill his heart’s desire for Fantine. To help Jean-Marcheau, he had to admit that he was Jean Valjean; to help Fantine, he had to be the mayor of Madeleine. Which of these two identities would do more good for him? In the end, it was impossible to choose, so he left it to God! He inquired about the journey to Arras Court and rented a carriage. When he was on his way, he encountered bad weather, then the car broke down again, and at every obstacle he thought, “God told me to save Fantine and let me continue to be the mayor of Madeleine,” he said to himself every time. But unluckily, every time, he was able to turn the situation around, and he felt that it was God’s will for him to free Jean-Marcheau, and finally he had to rush to court to prove that he was Jean Valjean.
There is a very important element here, more important than saving Jean-Marcou or saving Fantine: you have no problem to continue to be Madeleine, even Javert has released you, but you are just doing a very easy asceticism, because you are doing it with a “new man”, and this “new man “is actually a dummy! You must return to your real body. How will you complete your practice in your real body in this miserable world? How to do and what to do? The practice will be more difficult and difficult. This is one of the keys to Jean Valjean’s practice. I see all of this as preparation for the main plot. This is where the story really begins, when he resumes his identity and really begins his asceticism. Before this is an easy side path. Fantine in the film Les Misérables
He admits that he is Jean Valjean, but he cannot abandon his vow to Fantine. How should he go about it? Hugo assigns Jean Valjean a very difficult task: he wants him to save Cosette in her true form, to raise her, and finally to offer her to happiness, which is an afterthought. Now he must solve the specific problems: how to get out, how to save Cosette, and how he can survive with her. The process is very concise: Jean Valjean goes to court and confesses, then he quickly returns to the city, sees Fantine and promises her to save her child, who dies peacefully without seeing the child but with his promise, when Javert comes in and catches him, and there is another escape. This escape was very important in order to take his money, 600,000 francs he had earned in the city of Montrouis, which he buried, without which his life with Cosette in Paris could not be explained later. Sometimes we have to create plots for a detail, and from these plots I think Hugo is still a more realistic romantic writer, who has to solve these realistic problems. His burying money is written in a very romantic way. In this place spread a superstition, that from ancient times, the devil has chosen the forest as a place to hide treasure, if there is a “man in black” in a quiet place in the forest when it is dark, the “man in black” is the devil, if you hide the devil’s If you find the treasure hidden by the devil, you will certainly die! So no one would dig for Jean Valjean’s treasure there.
After being arrested again, he was sent to hard labor. One day, when a battleship was in port for repairs, a sailor suddenly lost his balance on the mast and was in a very dangerous situation! At that moment a hard labor prisoner jumped out and said, “Can I go and save him?” At this point no one could say no, they all said, “If you can, you go!” So this hard laborer very quickly untied his ankle chain, climbed up the mast to save the sailor, and then suddenly turned around and jumped into the sea, and all thought he had lost his footing and was buried at the bottom of the sea, feeding the fish and shrimp. This hard laborer was Jean Valjean, who went to rescue Cosette.
In this stage of his training, he returns to his true form, meets with Cosette, enters Paris – the great field of suffering – and the story takes the front stage.
When he goes to rescue Cosette I think Hugo writes very beautifully! Great writers are very good at writing about children. When he finally negotiates a price with the Denardies and gets Cosette out, he pulls a mourning suit out of his back pocket and puts it on for the child, because her mother has died. So that morning a stout man was seen in the morning mist carrying a child, who was dressed in a black mourning suit, with a big pink doll in her arms, very beautiful and very compassionate! Cosette walked into her life in her mourning clothes. Then they came to Paris and stayed in the old house of Gorbeau, a point that Jean Valjean had stepped on beforehand.
The fourth stage I named the convent. He had never experienced this kind of affection in his life. He had relatives, but at that time his mind was not yet enlightened and he could not understand it at all. Now he had Cosette, and although their life was very simple in this old house, they were both very happy. It did not last long, and soon their trail was discovered by Javert. Javert had long heard that there was an old man living in this house on an annuity with a little girl, and at the same time he received a report from an inn in the suburbs of Paris, telling him that a little girl had been taken away by a middle-aged man, and when he put all these circumstances together, he felt very suspicious, although he had also read the report that the hard laborer was dead, but he believed more in the ability of the hard laborer to survive, so to speak, and he always With a very vigilant attitude, always feeling that he would pop up somewhere, he was always there waiting, he even rented an adjacent room in the old house to keep an eye on Jean Valjean. One day he finally had to act, but Jean Valjean was also very alert, several times, he felt that a beggar in the street looked very much like Javert, so when he knew that a new tenant was living in the neighboring house, he did not hesitate to take Cosette and go, immediately heard footsteps behind him, when he was chased to a dead end, there was no way out, he had no choice but to go over the wall into a convent. Thus he began the fourth stage of his monastic life.
The first problem he had to solve was how to settle down in the monastery. Coincidentally, the gardener of the monastery was the same old Father Cut Wind, whom he had rescued from under the carriage, and he could ask the gardener to help him find a position in the monastery. But the problem is: he went to seek a position, he should walk in through the door, and he has gone over the wall to get in, he can’t go over the wall again to get out, and outside the wall may still be waiting for Javert. In this very strict austerity of the place, only one man is cut wind old man, his knees tied the bell, hear the bell ring, the nuns have to avoid, in the convent of the boarding school for nuns, if a parent to visit, also can not embrace, much less kiss, here must keep the rules, can not do a little obedience to your human nature. It was risky to enter this heavily guarded rectory, but how to get out? A child is easy to do, put it in a basket and get out, but a man as big as Jean Valjean is a real problem!
And they found a way. There were many nuns here who had spent their lives in asceticism, and they all wanted to die and be buried under the slabs of stone, to be with the convent forever. But this was not allowed by the government, nor by the church, but the nuns often buried their bodies under the slabs quietly. On this day, another nun died in the convent, and the upper nuns were discussing: This nun had been here since she was a child, and was very devout and strict in her observance! Can we fulfill her wish and bury her here? However, the government had already sent in a coffin and must carry the nun out to be buried. So, unprecedentedly, Papa Cutwind was called in to discuss: “We want you to bury an empty coffin, and you must keep it a secret!” And then Jean Valjean said, “Then I will lie down in this coffin.” The coffin was taken out and buried, but unfortunately, the gravedigger who was very good with Papa Cutwind was not there, and a new worker was replaced. This new gravedigger does not like to drink, very serious, especially responsible, must be buried the coffin before leaving. Father Cutwind tried everything to get him to leave, then opened the coffin and released Jean Valjean, and led him into the convent to live legally.
I think the importance of the monastery plot lies in its environment, and the novel says this: the monastery is the continuation of Bishop Milière’s work. Jean Valjean experienced two places of imprisonment in his life: a hard labor camp and a convent. He contrasted these two places: one where men were imprisoned, the other where women were imprisoned; one where people really sinned, the other where people were sinless; both places were places of atonement, one for themselves, the other for all; the one side was full of resentment, while the other side was full of willingness. He therefore developed a very strong respect for these physically weak but spiritually strong women, and there is a scene in the novel in which Jean Valjean kneels down and prays to them outside the hall where the nuns are praying. Hugo’s novels often have such dramatic actions, which are less likely in Tolstoy’s works. Tolstoy’s settings are extremely realistic, so the characters would not have exaggerated behavior, but Hugo can. Cosette in the movie Les Miserables
The fifth stage I named “Cosette”. By this time, they are already in Paris in 1831 and 1832, and this stage can be said to be the climax of the story.
By this time, Cosette had become very dependent on Jean Valjean’s “daughter”, and Jean Valjean could not live without Cosette, who made him feel tender, compassionate feelings, and he would feel that his life was worth living, which was almost a blessing from God!
But then the heavens began to test him in a new way. Cosette grows into a beautiful maiden, in love with Marius.
Marius is an interesting character! He grew up with his royalist grandfather and has been in and out of the salons of the royalist legacy since he was a child. But his father was a revolutionary, the one who was dragged out of the pile of corpses by Denardy, a subordinate of Napoleon, and a war hero. So he went through a violent turmoil in his mind, with the ideas of his royalist grandfather, and when he knew that his father loved him, he became a revolutionary at once. He broke with his grandfather, left home, and lived a hard life on his own, even refusing the little help he received from his grandfather. At this time, he met a group of university students, and when he was with them and listened to them, he felt wrong again. These university students were neither royalists nor revolutionaries, they only admired freedom, and in their minds was a France, not the emperor’s nor Napoleon’s, but the people’s masses, so he had new ideas again. While he was going through these changes of mind, he met Cosette, and that’s when love overwhelmed everything! He felt that love was the truest for him, so Marius was not driven by ideas when he went to the barricade battle, but only by the disillusionment of love, which, in turn, was kindled from youth. I thought this was also a portrayal of the spirit of the French Revolution.
At that time he was already very close to Cosette, and they always met in the garden. The garden where they had their rendezvous was the garden of the rue de Prümme, where Jean Valjean had taken Cosette from the convent, believing that he had no right to decide Cosette’s life and that she should enjoy her life in the world and then make her own choices. The garden of the Rue de la Plume was originally a place where the magistrate hid his mistress, so the location was very private and secluded, and the decoration of the house and garden was very ornate, with a stone statue of Venus, a vineyard, rocking chairs and swings, which, in the words of Victor Hugo, “corresponded precisely to the flirtation of the magistrate”. But a hundred years later, the garden was deserted, overgrown with weeds, no one restored, and no one wanted to move in, but Hugo said that the wildflowers and vines spread to cover up the original pretensions, nature is so vigorous, “disrupting the man-made dog and fly camp”, the garden from The garden has risen from the tone of “love-stealing” to pure love.
I think this paragraph is very well written! Hugo very patiently built a beautiful stage for the two lovers.
They encounter many dangers during their rendezvous here, including one in which Demondi is rescued from prison by the mob and follows Jean Valjean to the Jardin de la Rue de la Plume, ready to blackmail him. But his second daughter, Éponine, loves Marius very much, and although it is very painful to see Marius in rendezvous with Cosette, she cannot let Cosette be hurt because she loves Marius, so she stands up to stop them and warns Jean Valjean to take precautions. So Jean Valjean decides to leave France with Cosette. At this moment, Marius decides to return to his grandfather’s house and asks his permission to marry Cosette, but is ridiculed by the proud old man, and the disillusioned Marius then goes to the alley.
How does Jean Valjean approach the happiness of Cosette and Marius? This was a major test, and the blessings given to him by heaven were to be withdrawn at this time. He came into the world naked and left it naked, he had to give away the only thing he had gained in the world, and he finally succeeded in completing the answer to this one life: he gave Cosette away intact.
During all these years, thanks to careful calculation, he used only 20,000 francs of the 600,000 francs he had saved, and with the interest he had a total of 584,000 francs, and Cosette had a rich dowry; he also created a birth for Cosette, counting Cosette as the daughter of Father Cunningham, who had joined the nunnery as a handyman, as the brother of Father Cunningham, so that the surname of Father Cunningham had already become Cosette’s surname. He did so because he felt that he was not “clean” and he could not stain Cosette with his identity as a hard laborer. On Cosette’s wedding day, he cut his hand in order not to sign their marriage certificate, but to pass the sacred opportunity of signing it to Marius’ grandfather, an old nobleman. He perfectly hands over Cosette to her lover, while he himself is left with nothing and slowly aging.
There are some episodes in between that deserve attention! Early in the morning of Cosette’s second day of marriage, Jean Valjean runs to Marius’ house and confesses his origins to him. Marius’ attitude is that he wants Jean Valjean to break off relations with Cosette and to gradually implement a plan to alienate them. Then, one day, Marius discovers that the benefactor who saved his life is Jean Valjean, and he brings Cosette to his house to express his gratitude to Jean Valjean and to take him back, but, of course, it is already too late, as Jean Valjean is about to die. But at last Jean Valjean appeared to the world in his true form, and was honored.
Valjean finally appears before the world in his true form as Valjean, doing good in the world, coming with nothing and going with nothing, and this is the result after those five stages!
I would also like to highlight a scene where Cosette’s wedding day coincided with the last day of Carnival, and when her wedding carriage drove through the streets, there were many, many people in the streets, they were very joyful, and Jean Valjean was sitting in the wedding carriage with a bandage on one hand, looking very grim! I felt very moved, I felt that Jean Valjean was like a god come to earth. Hugo always treated the masses as a kind of joyful singing and dancing scene, and let his god walk alone, just like in Notre Dame de Paris, where Quasimodo was chosen by the crowd as the ugly king and carried in procession. In such a metaphysical scene, Hugo does not abandon the specific needs of the plot: in a “masked caravan” sits Denardy, who, because of his illegal escape from prison, does not dare to go out into public, and can only wear a mask in broad daylight during the carnival. He recognizes Jean Valjean and then goes to tell Marius the truth about his rescue.
These seemingly careless links are actually firmly and securely fastened! Hugo gives me the impression that he is very dashing! A big scene like this one, we often don’t even have time to paint the scene in detail, and he still manages to put the plot in and develop it, while showing it in an interesting way!
Within this result, there is another scene where Jean Valjean is dying and Marius comes with Cosette and says, “We’ll take you back, we’re family, we can’t be separated!” But he is already dying. In these last moments, Jean Valjean tells Cosette: “Your mother’s name was Fantine, she suffered so much for you! You are so happy! She was so unhappy!” Everyone, including Cosette, is a seed of this miserable world that has to be planted, then grow and blossom. Jean Valjean completed his training in his true form, and he had to let Cosette obtain her true form and complete her training, a responsibility that no one could replace or avoid! Fantine is Cosette’s true body. Don’t look how happy you are now, but I want to tell you how bitter your mother was! He has to hand over the task of this practice and continue the practice in the miserable world.
The above is a result of my reading of this novel.
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