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everyonewasabird · 4 years

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Brickclub 1.1.10 “The bishop in the presence of an unknown light”

“Dying is simple.”

Oh no, we’re going to hear that idea again in the last lines of the book, and I’m sad.

It feels like one more key to the text--Dying is simple, but living is complicated. There are many, many ways to arrive at death, and the differences between them are important.

G’s line “Everyone has his dream; I would like to live till dawn, but I know I have less than three hours left,” echoes the "But who attains his ideal?” said about Mlle Baptistine’s sofa. The irony of both is in being a grandiose and melancholy statement said about a very small thing--except G is aware of the irony and choosing to use it.

...You’re all with me in this feeling that I’m watching the alternate-universe death of Enjolras or Combeferre, right?

To the point about child guides in earlier chapters, G is the first person we see take care of a shepherd boy in a way that acknowledges he’s a child.

There’s been a slight cloud over these last chapters, and mostly it’s been a subtle one: little moments where I can’t quit read the mood of the narrator, or times when Myriel’s perfectly set up one-liners get old. Then G starts talking and it’s just... oh. Here’s the true voice of the book repeating the concerns of the Preface and putting the French Revolution into its rightful context. The narrator and the bishop are both generally benevolent, but G is right.

“You condemn the thunderbolt” is such a beautiful critique of of the criticisms of revolution.

I love this chapter. I don’t know how to go into all the ways I love this chapter.

I’ve talked before about how the description of G’s “dying because he wished to die” is a motif that comes up again. I don’t know how to defend this point, but I feel like there’s a level of wisdom and connection to the infinite you can attain that, according to the rules of the magic in this book, you can’t be harmed until you choose to die. (There also seems to be a few scary and slightly off versions of that state, like Javert’s unwise and unmagical choice to die, or Eponine becoming invulnerable by being a kind of undead wraith.)

On this readthrough I was especially struck by how much was lost because of Myriel’s prejudice. G was here in the woods for years, a sad life, though he seems to have made the best of it. But when he talks about the bishop’s finery, maybe the one actually mistaken thing he says, and the bishop allows him to remain wrong about it--it’s just, like.... in a better world, they could have been friends. They would both have gained so much from it.

When G addresses the ideal in answer to Myriel’s complaints about atheists, it seems to confirms the reading I had a few days ago: that anyone who believes in one of the names of God the bishop listed (Compassion, Justice, etc.) believes in God enough for this book’s purposes. We’ve moved from puncturing straw atheist idiots to asking for benediction from people who view the cosmos and the sublime from a wise framework that isn’t an explicitly religious one.

And the chapter ends with Myriel making his peace with the revolution via a pun, which is the most Les Mis thing of all possible Les Mis things.

#brickclub #lm 1.1.10 #hugolian magic system

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themanofonebook · 6 years

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—Okay here is that promised Enjolras and Javert meta that I was talking about. @pontificalandwarlike and I were having this discussion a while ago and I don’t remember what she said but I can guess based on the context and below the cut is the response which I sent to her and also an added bit from myself with more on the subject read at will I do this because I love it. There’s some stuff in there about Hugo and Christianity and blah blah it’s long because I’m dumb.

“Oh I can tell you why people laud Enjolras and decry Javert very simply, though it says a bit about how we, as humans, think of ourselves and our souls — and also just a bit about Hugo and Christianity, which was basically his purpose in writing the book if we’re going to be totally honest.

Yes Javert and Enjolras are basically the same character, it’s true; they are both “terrible”, they are both obsessively devoted to their cause with the supposed exclusion of all else (though Enjolras has his friends and Javert has his snuff and flair for the dramatic), they both value their own perception of justice above everything else in the known world; in their minds, “the right” is the most important thing and anything you offer up pales in comparison to their idea of a perfect world, Enjolras’s being a democracy bordering on Marxist ideas which would not be born for quite some time, Javert’s being a country where all criminality is stamped out and the bourgeois are petted and protected because they are born good and have the smallest chance of falling to evil.

Their character arcs parallel — introduction in which they are, in reality, a powerful, marble backdrop for the main characters at the time; Enjolras is the lover of liberty whom we compare Marius and Les Amis to, Javert is the staunch supporter of the law and Valjean’s twin and contrast. They go through their own personal development, delved into with a touch of detail, but their greatest moments are their deaths; the very ends of the developmental stages and their subsequent demises are what changes perception of their places in the story, Enjolras being an angel and stand-in for Saint Michael, Javert being closer to the musical’s “Lucifer” and falling from the grace that is his own righteousness because he cannot comprehend goodness — and there’s the point.

Enjolras, while beginning as a bit of a pigheaded arse, if I might be so bold, has the benefits of Combeferre, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, etc., and Marius on the barricade. Being there, fighting, killing others, brings out in him that shred of humanity, but his focus, his Justice, can allow for the deaths of others for the greater good. Then there is his death, and this is important in regards to what I said about this entire novel being Hugo’s prompt to return to religion (Christianity, the Christian God) and seek goodness there. Up until this point, Enjolras has killed, derided; he’s floated on his own cloud of aloof angelic righteousness, which is why he is Saint Michael; but Grantaire, lowly, non-believing Grantaire, extends his hand to him; Enjolras, touched by Combeferre’s humanity, touched by the deaths of his friends, touched by the pure goodness and all-too poignant mortal sorrow of those going to die on the barricades, takes this offering and raises Grantaire to his level (in a way, maybe not entirely), and dies with him. He is redeemed enough, as a human being, to stand with someone “lesser” than himself, to accept and to love them, and to die with them; he now relates to the very people whom he was fighting to aid with his revolution. It’s this admission of humanity which reinforces one of the most basic beliefs of Christianity. And all of this religious spew that I’m doing right now is coming from a non-Christian so there’s that, haha. Enjolras, in the end, embraced Grantaire, embraced Heaven, embraced human love, perhaps even embraced Jesus, and that, in and of itself, earns him his redemption and shifts him from “marble bastard of unfeeling harsh murderous justice and rebellion” to “sympathetic golden symbol of a new dawn”.

Javert, though he goes through a lot of development as a person, does not do so as a symbol. He becomes looser, we see that he is snarky, etc. etc., but he is still the same supporter of the law and the corrupt system as always, up until the moment of his death — in fact, his death itself is a reflection of how deeply Javert is rooted in his beliefs concerning the French justice system. Valjean, poor, suffering Valjean who has made something good of himself, who has learnt love as well as kindness and therefore raised himself up just as Enjolras did, lowers — yes, lowers — his hand to Javert, who has never grown past this point because who in France would spare an inspector, who would extend kindness their way? He offers Javert his life, and then offers himself; in conceding to go with Javert to the station and then to prison, he lowers himself to Javert’s level; it is a clear stepping down, and even Javert recognizes this, therefore he recognizes himself as low; low, in his mind, does not register as “loveless”, or lacking in morality, because he has no sense of either of these things; in Javert’s perfectly flawed world, “low” means “criminal”. Valjean is stepping down to him, bowing to his demands; Valjean had and gave up the high ground to him. Whom has Valjean served in such a way in the past? The poor. He lowers himself to them, to the destitute, to those who have nothing, to those outside of society,but not to policemen, not to Javert. Javert knew that he was not a member of society, but there was always that line; he was of the law, therefore he was right, if not good; now, Valjean extends a hand to him, bows to him, offers himself, and Javert has no choice but to consider himself a criminal… and to see Valjean as a superior once more, a vicious slap in the face giving the events of M.sur.M and what that must have done to him mentally. Javert does not take it well.

He doesn’t accept the offered hand as Enjolras did, he doesn’t lower himself to lift himself up, he hardly recognizes the change in himself — rather, he knows that something is different, but does not know what that something is, and is afraid; the system is capable of change, for Javert represents the system, but the system is required to fall to change, and Javert is only a human. He is a person. He cannot process goodness within himself, refuses to be on par with Valjean, though he concedes, in the end, to let him go, because he cannot bear to see that man die. He knows that it would be wrong. He knows! Already, his perception of right and wrong is changing! He has a chance.

…and he does not take it. He kills himself, with one foot out and one foot in, still trapped by the law which consumed his life; he must apologize, for not returning this man to jail, even though he couldn’t, for the sake of love — not romantic love, but basic, moral goodness. He couldn’t do it. And he couldn’t handle the change which Valjean prompted in him. And he fell.

A lot of people say that Javert’s death shocked them, and I don’t think it’s just because a strong man like that died so quickly; it’s because he was given the option to change, the transformation was initiated, and we as readers were so used to these being successful (Valjean, Marius, Enjolras), that when Javert cannot take it and derails before his shift is complete, it shocks us. It’s Hugo’s last jab at the system which Javert did and did not represent; it’s a snatching away of hope — hope for Javert, hope for change. Hugo wanted to see that system go down so badly that Javert died. At the same time, Javert’s death is clearly made out to be an apology to God; this is the only way he knows, now, having failed in his duties as a human being beneath Heaven, inspector aside; the last time he apologized (to Madeleine), he resigned. The only way to resign to God is… well. But Hugo leaves it semi-ambiguous as to whether or not Javert was ultimately forgiven for his sins in lacking goodness and kindness. We don’t know. That ambiguity is the only hope for the system. By taking apart what we have, can we really make it better? There’s a chance, and we have to try.

But to us mere mortals, to know that Enjolras had his chance at redemption and seized Grantaire’s hand and held tight, and that Javert was given the same chance and instead made to apologize by dying, we opt for the more hopeful, and praise Enjolras for being so good and abhor Javert for failing and falling, because we should all like to be like Enjolras, and have the hope of redemption that Enjolras has and Javert ultimately denied in dying — yes, he may have had redemption after death (I mean look at ghostverse that’s what I’m sayin’), but what can we, as living humans, do with that? We don’t want to die! We want to rise up and change and be good and loving and loved, and that is what Enjolras’s death is, and Javert’s is not.

And an addition here with a tiny note:

I think it’s important that we judge Enjolras on the same scale as we do Javert, or we’re being just as unfair as the system of law which the book was so against and so for altering. Enjolras willingly takes his friends out into the streets, builds a barricade which he must know is going to fall, fights with the army of France (made up of French citizens; note how Enjolras seems willing enough to exclude them from the people he wants to save, and, while admittedly some of them were rich and also reaping the benefits of having work and such that’s still a dick move and his redeeming point comes with the whole “he is my brother tear down the marble cheek” bit which I love), and ultimately ends up dying with his compatriots and accomplishing nothing he missed becoming historic men like Enjolras who are willing to have this brilliant moving moral suicide are not the future lovers like Marius Pontmercy who acknowledge the corruption in society and accept different points of view (see “my mother is the republic” Combeferre singing about Caesar on his way out the door his willingness to take in his father’s beliefs about Napoleon but also to go to the barricade and fight against the monarchy with his friends because that is what he truly believes to be wrong that is his opinion which he has formed after listening to others) are the future they will see the future while people like Enjolras and Courfeyrac and Combeferre will not bless them they burn out so fast.

If we’re going to judge Javert on the basis that the ends do not justify the means and that his letter to the Préfecture and his suicide do not excuse his actions then we must also judge Enjolras in the same way instead of raising him up onto this unrealistic pedestal which has been created for him he is not Apollo he is not a god he is not even marble he is a man just as flawed as any other man in this book.

#tbt.

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