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Les Misérables
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Les Miserables - Background/Banter
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Dan
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Mar 16, 2018 06:20AM
Les Miz is not about the events of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, I think we will see it is very much about the principles and meaning of 1789.
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I think it'll be good to brush up on a bit of French history before diving in. 1789 and a July Uprising are the setting for this novel? They happened maybe 100 years before the French Revolution? *shuffles off to youtube for some videos* I just received my copy today. *bursting with happiness* There's tonnes of notes at the back, the translator kept some of the names/social roles and more difficult French phrases in the actual text. I'll share some of them as we go along.
I started reading it today. Just a few pages. But I am so excited to read this. A tad different than my impressions of The Whale.
The book starts in 1815 after Napolean (and France) lost at Waterloo. Although they "lost", this battle set up nearly 100 years of peace and balance of power in Europe.
I've almost finished "The Novel Of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Miserables. Recommend to prep
I'm horrible at history. I remember continually looking up stuff online and reading about French history while reading this, which was a good side project in and of itself. Of course, I don't remember any of the history 3 years later! Oh my poor memory...
Dan wrote: "My 1.99 Delphi Complete Hugo uses the Hapwood translation for Les Miz, which looks fine and has that nice 19th century style which some like, especially for 19th century novels. I splurged and boug..."I have the hapgood audible and the donougher hard copy. I like having both actually!
Heather wrote: "Hi, I'm new to this group (although I think I was a member about 5 years ago and read East of Eden). I would like to join in on this read, I like the idea of 50 pages a week although I do find read..."welcome Heather!! You might want to start reading now so that you have some built in cushion for the schedule - the pages range from 50-70 for most weeks.
Here is a great article I found on the history of Les Mis from bookhaven.com a Stanford University blog (before the film came out, but helpful here in any event!): It’s Christmas Eve. The world awaits in joyful expectation the coming of… Les Misérables in a theater near you.
But please, do me a big favor, in the spirit of the season. Please don’t say this film is about the French Revolution. Many of us have repeatedly corrected the media, Huffington Post included, for this oft-repeated gaffe. No surprise, perhaps, since even Director Tom Hooper seems a little dim about French history.
So let me help everyone sort this out. The French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The principal events of Les Misérables take place in 1832. Different century. The July Revolution two years earlier had put the Orléanist monarchy on the throne, under the popular “Citizen King” Louis-Philippe. Popular for awhile, that is. Despite his unpretentious manners and a character that Les Miz author Victor Hugo commended as “good” and “admirable,” the income gap widened and the conditions of the working class deteriorated. By the spring of 1832, a deadly cholera epidemic had exacerbated a severe economic crisis.
In the early morning hours of June 5, crowds of workers, students, and others gathered in the streets of Paris. The immediate trigger was the death of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque, who had been a friend to the poor and downtrodden. The crowd had hoped to accompany Lamarque’s hearse before it took the general home to his native district in the southwest of France. Those mourning and those with a political agenda merged into a mob that numbered in the tens of thousands – some witnesses claimed it eventually grew to 100,000.
The 30-year-old Victor Hugo was nearby, in the Tuileries Gardens, writing a play. Then he heard gunfire from the direction of Les Halles. Instead of going home to safety, he followed the sounds of gunfire through the deserted streets. He was unaware that the mob had taken half of Paris, and the barricades were everywhere in Les Halles. According to Wikipedia, Hugo headed north up the Rue Montmartre, then turned right onto the Passage du Saumon, finally turning before the Rue du Bout du Monde (if this street still exists, it has a different name now): “Halfway down the alley, the grilles at either end were slammed shut. Hugo was surrounded by barricades and flung himself against a wall, as all the shops and stores had been closed for some time. He found shelter between some columns. For a quarter of an hour, bullets flew both ways.” Three decades later, he would write about the unforgettable experience in Les Misérables.
I had hoped to visit some of the route during my recent visit to France. Alas, my trip was too brief, and I couldn’t quite figure out what had happened, and where, on my Paris map. I had to make the journey vicariously, later, through Mark Traugott‘s The Insurgent Barricade (University of California Press).
No wonder I was confused. Traugott’s map of the insurrection shows that Lamarque’s funerary procession made a wide arc around the city’s right bank. The insurrection affected both sides of the Seine, but the flash points were here, on the right bank.
Dragoons had been under orders to refrain from the use of deadly force, but when a shot rang out from somewhere, the crowd began to throw stones at the military. The cry “To the barricades!” resounded through the streets. But what, exactly, did that mean?
According to Traugott:
“Insurgents began uprooting the saplings planted to replace the larger trees cut down during the July Days. They also scavenged planks and beams from nearby construction sites and improvised tools for prying up paving stones. These classic raw materials were natural choices because they added mass, helped knit the structure together, and were usually found in abundance right at the site of the barricade construction. Between 5 p.m., when the first sporadic gunfire was exchanged, and 6:30, when pitched battles were initially reported, dozens of barricades had been completed on both the right and left side of the Seine. Individual structures took as little as fifteen minutes to erect.
“Even as the first barricades were going up, a frantic search for arms began. Some rebels had to be content with sabers, staffs, or scythes, but rifles were the weapons of choice, and bands of insurgents boldly seized them from small patrols of soldiers encountered in the streets. Others joined in pillaging the premises of Lepage frères, the largest of several Paris gunsmiths whose establishments were looted.”
Why, you may ask, have I chosen to illustrate this post about a doomed revolt with the elegant photos of Nichole Robertson over at Little Brown Pen?
This little gem of a 16th-century church is Église Saint-Merri. The insurgents staged a desperate last stand in and around this church, at the heart of the district where the fiercest fighting took place.
The insurgents pleaded for help, but no help came. The citizens of Paris were not as quick to join the revolution as they were to join the unruly funeral procession. In the theatrical production of Les Miz, the army officer warns the insurgents via a loud-bailer:
You at the barricade listen to this!
No one is coming to help you to fight
You’re on your own
You have no friends
Give up your guns – or die!
And it was true. According to Traugott, “The casualty toll among the insurgents, mounting as high as 800 dead and wounded, was particularly heavy because the people of Paris withheld their support, leaving most of the committed insurgents of June 1832 to pay for their rebellion with their lives.”
If nothing else, please remember is that the whole point of the French Revolution is that the revolutionaries won. Remember the beheading of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Robespierre et al.? This was different. In 1832, writes Traugott, “The last guns were silenced a barely twenty-four hours after hostilities had begun.”
Victor Hugo: 
has anyone seen the live show or movie of les mis? I saw it live in NYC and it was amazing!
Dianne wrote: "Here is a great article I found on the history of Les Mis from bookhaven.com a Stanford University blog (before the film came out, but helpful here in any event!): "The link to the article along with the pictures noted in it is below:
http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2012/12...
I saw the new remake film but don't recall anything from it.
Peg wrote: "Dianne wrote: "Here is a great article I found on the history of Les Mis from bookhaven.com a Stanford University blog (before the film came out, but helpful here in any event!): "The link to the..."
thank you Peg!
Biblio wrote: "I saw the new remake film but don't recall anything from it."book must be better!
I loved both the show and the recent-ish musical film both of which do a good job of streamlining the story but keeping the big, powerful moments. But yes, the book is best!
I saw it in NYC a couple years ago. And I love the most recent movie version
Dianne wrote: "has anyone seen the live show or movie of les mis? I saw it live in NYC and it was amazing!"A long time ago, my uncle sent me a VHS tape he'd recorded. I believe it was a PBS broadcast. It was a taping of a live show. It was probably 20 years ago. Though I'd heard of the book, that was my introduction. I enjoyed it, though I wouldn't say I became obsessed. That came later, when figure skaters started using the music :)
I saw it in London some 30 years ago. I did nod off a bit in the second half.
It’s amazing how long it’s been running and how many different versions there are. I’ll see if I can find some good video clips to post as we go along.
Dianne wrote: "has anyone seen the live show or movie of les mis? I saw it live in NYC and it was amazing!"I would love to see the show, but have only watched the movie. Absolutely loved the movie though. Not ashamed to say I cried a few times.
I would love to see the play (I saw it once as a high school production, which just isn't the same, although they did a good job of it) but the recent film was wonderful! The music still gets stuck in my head sometimes :)
I liked the Liam Neeson one, although it's highly abridged.
I couldn't read this abridged :( I heard Notre Dame's abridgement takes out a lot of the descriptions of Paris. The whole point of the book is to make Paris sound exquisite to show the decayed state it was in, when Hugo wrote it. The church actually is the main point of the book, perhaps like Moby Dick in Melville's book? The Les Mis movie ... I only saw the new one that came out recently. Probably with Hugh Jackman. I would go for one from the 50's, maybe the 60's at the latest. That era for adaptations seem pretty good, overall? Is that a fair assumption?
I'll get back into reading this one, hope to finish it this month & I'll catch up on the discussion threads. It's a fantastic book, just have gotten so behind on GR :(How's everyone else doing with Les Mis?
I’m also game to jump back in this weekend :)
Don't rush on the threads, I still have to go through & catch up on all the old threads. I'll get back into reading this by this weekend though. Ever get that feeling time somehow escapes you & gets away no matter how hard you try to keep track?!
Definitely! Luckily books are always there when you resurface!
Thanks, how is your reading for this going?
If you can record it, a repeat of the first episode will be shown at 2 a.m. tonight (Tuesday morning) on WILL, the Champaign PBS station and 3:00 a.m. on WESC, the Springfield PBS station. I enjoyed it but my wife thought it a little slow and fell asleep. The Waterloo scene was striking. It looks like they've spent money on it and since Andrew Davies wrote it, and with a good cast, I look forward to seeing the rest as a 6 part show should get in more of the novel's details.
I don't watch telly, but if there's a new one it's probably the BBC newer version of Les Miserables that was on last year. My friends know i'm crazy about it and they were telling me how good it was.However if you haven't read the book, i'd advise reading it FIRST.
Who translated your copy Lorna?
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