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gavroche-le-moineau · 5 months

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I'm late with this translation note for today's chapter but it feels really important. The line I want to highlight in Hapgood reads:

“Suicide, that mysterious act of violence against the unknown which may contain, in a measure, the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean.”

In French the first part of that line is “Le suicide, cette mystérieuse voie de fait sur l’inconnu...”

The expression translated as "act of violence" is "voie de fait," which is specifically the legal term "assault / battery," and can also be more generally an unlawful act.

"Voie" means way/route/road/lane, and "fait" is a fact/event/occurrence (coming from the verb faire = to do or to make). To help understand the literal meaning of the expression, let's look at its counterpart, "Voie de droit," which has a more straightforward translation in English as "legal recourse," i.e. "path of the law." Now if we turn back to the expression that means "assault" or "an unlawful act," it's describing the path of the fact, the event that occurred, the thing that was done.

The unlawful nature of this act is highlighted by the use of this expression, especially in its direct opposition with "the way of the law" (musical, anyone?). It seems particularly important to me that this expression is used to describe a course of action which Javert, who clings to the law above all else, will soon take.

#les mis letters #lm 5.3.11 #javert #les mis spoilers #tw suicide #les mis language

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ruedesfillesducalvaire · 5 months

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@secretmellowblog got me thinking again with their recent post about javert being a terrible liar!!

this made me think about the juxtaposition of javert and sister simplice, two people incapable of telling a lie. both of them end up breaking their lifetime honesty streak one time, and in each case, it's to save valjean.

first we have sister simplice:

Never to have lied, never to have said, for any interest whatever, even in indifference, any single thing which was not the truth, the sacred truth, was Sister Simplice’s distinctive trait; it was the accent of her virtue.

(and that's just a short excerpt; hugo continues on in this way for A While, as he is wont to do.)

then, the moment she tells her one and only lie (to javert himself, no less):

This was Sister Simplice, who had never told a lie in her life. Javert knew it, and held her in special veneration in consequence. “Sister,” said he, “are you alone in this room?” A terrible moment ensued, during which the poor portress felt as though she should faint. The sister raised her eyes and answered:— “Yes.”

she does this, of course, to save valjean from being re-arrested (he is hiding behind the door).

then we have javert:

Javert [...] raised his head with the intrepid serenity of the man who has never lied.

and his one lie:

He added with a strange expression, and as though he were exerting an effort in speaking in this manner: “I will wait for you here.”

again to save valjean! (from being arrested) (by himself)

i don't really have a point, but it's interesting. also makes me even happier they got the chance to team up in my fic (in chapter 4); they seem like they would get each other...

#idk if anyone has made this point already recently but i haven't seen a post about it so i'll go ahead in case others find it interesting #sister simplice #javert #lm 5.3.11 #les mis letters #analysis #the brick #the brick quotes #sylvie's own nonsense #les mis #les miserables #les misérables

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cliozaur · 5 months

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Oh, they both are so not ok!

Jean Valjean is convinced that his happy life is over and continues sacrificing himself for Cosette’s happiness. The question arises: Why does it have to be so complicated? Hugo delves into speculations about what Valjean was going to do during his brief visit home, offering several options, but we will never know for sure what was on Valjean’s mind. One potential scenario is suicide, not at home, but as soon as he reaches the prison cell. Yet, Hugo dismisses it hurriedly, stating that “after the Bishop, there had existed in Jean Valjean a profound hesitation in the presence of any violence, even when directed against himself.”

And then we encounter a prophecy: “Suicide, that mysterious act of violence against the unknown which may contain, in a measure, the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean.” Unfortunately, it was possible for someone else.

Meanwhile, we learn that Javert was on duty for over seven hours! It’s insane. And I feel sorry for the coach driver: imagine the state of “the Utrecht velvet” after all that filth freshly brought from the sewers! Javert acts decently and compensates the driver fully. But now I’m puzzled: how does Javert possess such a large sum of money? Presumably, it isn't his private funds.

Releasing the driver is the first suspicious indication that something isn’t right with Javert. Valjean could still rationalize it—maybe they planned to walk instead of driving. However, Javert’s behaviour becomes increasingly odd. He specifically instructs Valjean, “It is well. Go upstairs,” and he forces himself to add: “I will wait for you here.” But he won’t. Someone, please, tell him that he needs a good nap (and a therapist). I am already very sad.

#les mis letters #lm 5.3.11 #les miserables #jean valjean #javert #cosette

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dolphin1812 · 5 months

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I had forgotten about the rope, but that was such a dark beginning to the chapter.

This will be brief, since this chapter is mostly plot. I love that the coachman is so mild in listing his protests and expenses to Javert; I know it’s for the unfortunate reason that he’s probably really conscious of his status as an officer, but it also makes the delivery of his complaints funny.

Javert is now behaving so strangely that Valjean’s picking up on it, with his odd actions peaking in this flight at the end of this chapter. Interestingly, we once again find cat language being applied to Javert, who gives Valjean the liberty to enter his house in the way a cat gives a mouse the liberty of its claws. That language is firmly predatory still and shows how dangerous Valjean sees Javert as being, but again, it’s unusual to see more cat than dog descriptions for him.

#les mis letters #lm 5.3.11 #javert #jean valjean

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everyonewasabird · 2 years

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Brickclub 5.3.11 “The Absolute, Rocked”

This short little chapter feels dense with meaning, and I don’t have it.

What’s the tone here? Valjean’s path tonight is explicitly called in this chapter the Via Dolorosa--a reference to Jesus’s route through Jerusalem to his crucifixion. Which we knew, of course; that symbolism has been very, very explicit.

But they left Calvary at the end of last chapter, and Valjean is still alive. The narrative Valjean thought he was moving through has veered off course, and it’s not clear Valjean has fully noticed that--at least not until Javert leaves.

Is that grace? I’m really, really not sure.

When Valjean met Javert, I was convinced it was still grace, and I think I managed to confirm how the usage of “statue, specter, corpse” was an illusion coming from Javert’s skewed vision and the treacherous streetlight, and things were actually much more providential than they looked.

But everything is dark again. Really dark. We’re talking again about Valjean and suicide, and Hugo talks about how he’s too religious to commit suicide, which still doesn’t rule out the possibilities of his letting himself die accidentally-on-purpose the way he’s been putting himself in the way of for years, and it doesn’t say anything about his wanting to live.

And when he leans out to look for Javert, he’s putting his head through a “guillotine window” and no fucking way is that an accident.

Meeting Javert didn’t knock Valjean off the providential path, but losing him seems to have. Why? Is it simply that Valjean is not Jesus, and he walked the path to Calvary, but then he walked on, and for better or worse he’s back in the old life he had before, with all its attendant neuroses and depressions?

Or is it that, if Valjean were truly like the bishop, or like Jesus, he would have noticed that the one who had done him so much wrong over the years is tonight a soul that needs saving?

In fact, this chapter makes that explicit: Hugo spells out that suicide “may contain in certain measure the death of the soul.”

Valjean isn’t the suicide in question.

Holy shit. I actually think Valjean was Meant to follow Javert to the Seine, in the good version, where grace lasted. Since the sewer, there’s been unbroken grace at a level Valjean has never had before. Suddenly, this chapter, it’s broken again.

And I think that’s why.

#brickclub #lm 5.3.11

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fremedon · 2 years

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Brickclub 5.3.10, “Return of the Son Prodigal With His Life” and 5.3.11, “A Shift in the Absolute”

I’m going to take these two chapters together, building off of @everyonewasabird‘s writeups here and here and trying to summarize the discussion a bunch of us have been having on Discord today.

After dropping off Marius, Javert agrees to take Valjean home, and then dismisses the coach and says he’ll wait for him in the street.

What did Jean Valjean want? To finish what he had begun. To alert Cosette, to tell her where Marius was, perhaps to give her some other useful information, to make, if he could, some final arrangements. As for himself, as for what related to him personally, it was all over.

Does he do any of this? He never tells Cosette about the money or any of her history, except for what he manages to get down in that last letter or on his deathbed. And we don’t actually know when (or what) he tells her about Marius. But we do know by inference that he can’t possibly tell her anything tonight, and probably doesn’t even wake her. Cosette’s not stupid. If she saw and spoke to Valjean tonight, covered in filth and blood, she would remember that when Marius starts looking for a man who carried him through the sewer.

So Valjean goes up the stairs still with the grace that has been with him since the sewers. There’s another miracle in him. And if he had actually TALKED TO COSETTE I would consider that a good use of it, even if that did mean Javert still kills himself.

But Valjean, thinking that Javert by letting him go inside on his own is playing his old cat and mouse game, thinks that he’s on his way to his death:

When he reached the first floor, he paused. Every via dolorosa has its way stations. The window on the landing, which was a guillotine window, was open. As in many houses, the staircase looked out on the street, with light coming in from there. The street lantern, directly opposite, illuminated the stairs, which saved on lighting costs.

Streetlights are an implement of surveillance. Throughout the book, streetlights have been an enemy of truth. They don’t show things as they are--they show what is useful to the police, to the state.

Valjean, believing himself on the way to his crucifixion, puts his head through a guillotine window, and sees, by the light of the street lamp--nothing.

Nothing he needs to concern himself with. Javert is gone--and if Javert isn’t arresting him, it doesn’t matter why, or what he’s doing instead.

This is the moment where Valjean loses whatever grace, whatever miracle, is with him. I think he might have kept it by going after Javert, or by going upstairs and actually talking to Cosette. But instead he looks out on an empty street and believes the lie the lamplight is telling: that he’s alone now, and he can just do nothing.

We talked on Discord about exactly what Valjean’s obligations to Javert are, but at root they’re the same obligations Fauchelevent called him an ingrate for ignoring ten years ago: to remember the people he’s saved. Ever since he started breaking into people’s houses to leave them money in M-s-M, he’s been trying to help people without having to interact with them as people, without having to face the mortifying ordeal of being known--treating other people not as individuals with their own stories but as instruments in his own salvation.

And because he’s able to step back into doing that here, he will be able to keep doing this with Marius, in a way that is deeply injurious to him--robbing both of them of connection, robbing Marius of any chance to be transformed by the gratitude that he wants to bestow. And also straight-up gaslighting a man with a head injury.

#brickclub #lm 5.3.10 #lm 5.3.11

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