Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  We have never understood this kind of objection.

  Later two powerful novelists, the first a profound student of the human heart and the second a fearless friend of the common people, Balzac and Eugène Sue, having made criminals talk their natural language, as the author of Le dernier jour d’un condamné had done in 1828, were similarly castigated – ‘Why do these writers inflict this revolting patois on us? Argot is a disgusting thing!’

  No one would deny this. But when it comes to the probing of a wound, an abyss or a social phenomenon, can it be wrong to lead the way and penetrate to the heart of the matter? We had always thought this to be an act of courage, or at least a useful act, worthy of the sympathy that any performance of duty deserves. Why should not everything be explored and studied? Why stop halfway? To stop is the action of the plummet, not of the leadsman who operates it.

  Certainly it is not an easy or an attractive task to peer into the lowest depths of the social order, the region where earth ends and mire begins; to burrow into the muck and capture and expose to the public view that debased idiom, that diseased vocabulary of which every word is like a scale of some monster of darkness and the swamp. Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of argot. Indeed it is like a sort of repellent animal intended to dwell in darkness which has been dragged out of its cloaca. One seems to see a horned and living creature viciously struggling to be restored to the place where it belongs. One word is like a claw, another like a sightless and bleeding eye; and there are phrases which clutch like the pincers of a crab. And all of it is alive with the hideous vitality of things that have organized themselves amid disorganization.

  But since when has a horror been debarred from study? When has sickness driven the doctor away? Can one imagine a naturalist refusing to study a scorpion, a bat or a tarantula on the grounds that these things are too ugly? The thinker who turns his back on argot is like a surgeon who shrinks from a suppurating wound; he is a philologist reluctant to examine an aspect of language, a philosopher reluctant to scrutinize an aspect of humanity. For this must be said to those who are unaware of the fact: argot is both a literary phenomenon and a social consequence. The proper definition of the word is this: it is the language of poverty.

  At this point we must pause. It can be argued that every trade and profession, one might almost say every accident in the social hierarchy and all forms of intelligence, have their argot, from the lawyer who wraps up an agreement in jargon of his own, the house agent who talks about ‘extensive grounds’ and ‘modern conveniences’, the butcher who talks about ‘prime beef, to the actor who says, ‘I was a flop.’ The printer, the master-at-arms, the sportsman, the cobbler, the cavalry-officer all have their specialized language. At a pinch it can be claimed that the sailor who uses port and starboard for left and right is talking argot. There is an argot of the great and an argot of the little. That duchesses have their argot is proved by the following sentence from a letter written by a great lady at the time of the Restoration, ‘Vous trouverez dans ces potains-là une foultitude de raisons pour que je me libertise.’ (‘You will gather from this tittle-tattle a multitude of reasons why I am talking freely.’) Twenty years ago there was a school of criticism which asserted that, ‘Half Shakespeare is word-play and punning’ – in other words, that he used argot. The poets and artists who label Monsieur de Montmorency a ‘bourgeois’ because he is not well versed in art and poetry are themselves talking argot. Classical scholars have their argot; mathematics, medicine, botany, all have their own language. The splendid language of the sea, resonance of the wind and the waves, the humming of the shrouds, the rolling of the ship, the roar of cannon, and the crash of the boarding-axe, all this is a superb and heroic argot that, compared with the barbaric argot of the underworld, is like a lion compared with a jackal

  All this is true, but whatever may be said in its favour this extension of the meaning of the word ‘argot’ is something that not everyone accepts. For our own part, we restrict the word to its old, precise meaning, and for us argot is simply argot. The true argot, argot par excellence (if those words may be used in this context), the immemorial argot which was a kingdom in itself, is, we must repeat, nothing but the ugly, restless, cunning, treacherous, profound and fatalistic language of the outcast and squalid underworld, the world of hunger and pauperism –les misérables. There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime. And for the purpose of this struggle the underworld has its own battle-language, which is argot.

  To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost – that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization – is to extend the scope of social observadon and to serve civilization. It is a service rendered consciously or unconsciously by Plautus when he made a Phoenician talk to Carthaginian soldiers, and by Molière with his Levantine and the varieties of patois which he put into the mouths of so many of his characters. To this it may be replied that patois is a different thing – it is a language that has been used by a whole people or province. But what is argot? What purpose is served by ‘rescuing’ it? Our answer is simply that if there is one thing more deserving of study than the language spoken by a people or province it is the language spoken by misery; a language that has been spoken in France, for example, for more than four centuries: the language not merely of one particular misery, but of misery itself, all possible human misery.

  Moreover we must insist upon the fact that the examination of social failings and deformities is ordained so that they may be recognized and cured, an inescapable task. The vocation of the historian of mores and ideas is no less strict than that of the historian of events. The latter deals with the surface of life, with battles and parliaments and the birth of princes, while the former is concerned with what goes on beneath the surface, among the people who work and wait upon the outcome of events, weary womenfolk and dying children, ignorance and prejudice, envy and secret rivalries between man and man, the vague tremors running through the mass of the impoverished, the unfortunate, and the infamous. He must descend in a spirit of both charity and severity to that secret region where the destitute are huddled together, those who bleed and those who strike, those who weep and those who curse, those who go hungry and those who devour, those who endure evil and those who cause it. Are the duties of the historians of hearts and souls less exacting than those of the historians of external fact? Has Dante less to say than Machiavelli? Is the under side of civilization less important than the upper side because it is darker and goes deeper? Can one know the mountain without also knowing the cave?

  From the foregoing it might be inferred that a gulf exists between these two kinds of historian, but we have no such thought in mind. One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other. All the features traced by providence on the surface of a nation have their sombre but distinct counterpart in the depths, and every stirring in the depths produces a tremor on the surface. True history being a composite of all things, the true historian must concern himself with all things. Mankind is not a circle with a single centre but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

  Argot is nothing but a changing-room where language, having some evil end in view, adopts a disguise, reclothing itself with masked words and tattered metaphors, a process which renders i
t horrible.

  It can scarcely be recognized. Is this really French, the great human language? It is ready to enter the stage, to put words into the mouth of crime, to act out the entire repertory of ill-doing. It no longer walks but shuffles, limps on a crutch that can be used as a club; it bears the name of vagrancy and has been daubed with makeup by ghostly dressers; it crawls and rears up its head, two characteristics of the reptile. It is prepared to play any part, made fraudulent by the forger, tainted by the poisoner, blackened by the soot of the incendiary; and the murderer has daubed it with red.

  When, from the honest side of the fence, we listen on the fringe of society, we may hear the speech of those who are outside. We distinguish questions and answers. Without understanding it we catch a horrid murmur, resembling the human accent but nearer to growls than to words. That is argot. The words are misshapen, distorted by some kind of fantastic bestiality. We might be hearing the speech of hydras.

  It is the unintelligible immersed in shadow; it grunts and whispers, adding enigma to the encircling gloom. Misfortune is dark and crime is darker still, and it is of these two darknesses put together that argot is composed. Obscurity is in the atmosphere, in the actions and in the voices: a dreadful toad-language which creeps and skips and monstrously moves in that vast fog of hunger, vice, lies, injustice, nakedness, asphyxia, and winter which is the bright noontide of the underworld.

  Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who are you? Whence do we come and is it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born? This earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows but that man is a victim of divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so constituted that one senses punishment everywhere.

  Are you what is known as a happy man? Yet you experience sadness every day. Every day brings its major grief or its minor care. Yesterday you trembled for the health of someone dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be money trouble, the next day the slander of a calumniator, and on the day after that the misfortune of a friend; then there is the weather, or some possession broken or lost, or some pleasure which leaves you with an uneasy conscience; and another time it is the progress of public affairs. All this without counting the griefs of the heart. And so it goes on; as one cloud is dispelled another forms. Scarcely one day in a hundred consists of unbroken delight and sunshine. Yet you are one of the small number who are called happy! As for the rest of mankind, it is lost in stagnant night.

  Thoughtful persons seldom speak of happiness or unhappiness. In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge. To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

  But to talk of light is not necessarily to talk of joy. One may suffer in the light; its excess burns. The flame is the enemy of the wing. To burn without ceasing to fly, that is the achievement of genius. When you have reached the stage of knowing and loving you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The enlightened weep, if only for those still in darkness.

  II

  Roots

  Argot is the language of the shadows.

  Thought moves to its most sombre depths, social philosophy leads to the most poignant conclusions, when confronted by this enigmatic dialect which is at once blighted and rebellious. It is here that chastisement is visible; every syllable bears the brand. The words of this language of the people seem seared and shrivelled, as though by a red-hot iron; some, indeed, seem to be still smoking, and there are phrases which put one in mind of the swiftly bared and branded shoulder of a thief. Ideas are almost inexpressible in the language of the outlaw, of which the metaphors are sometimes so outrageous that one feels that they have worn manacles. But despite all this, and because of it, this strange patois is entitled to its place in that vast, impartial assemblage which finds room for a worn halfpenny as well as for a gold medal and which is known as literature. Argot, whether we like it or not, has its own grammar and its own poetry. If there are words so distorted that they sound like the muttering of uncouth mouths, there are others in which we catch the voice of Villon.

  ‘Mais où sont les neiges d’antan’ is a line of argot. Antan – ante annum – belongs to the argot of Thunes and signifies‘ last year’ and, by extension, ‘the past’. It was possible thirty-five years ago, at the time of the departure of the great chain-gang of 1827, to read the following words scratched with a nail on the wall of one of the cells in Bicêtre prison by a leader of the Thunes mob condemned to the galleys: ‘Les dabs d’antan trimaient siempre pour le pierre du Coëscne’, which means, ‘The old-time kings always had themselves consecrated’ – consecration, in this case, being the galleys

  From the purely literary point of view few studies can be more interesting and fruitful than that of argot. It is a language within a language, a sort of sickly excrescence, an unhealthy graft producing a vegetation of its own, a parasite with roots in the old Gallic trunk whose sinister foliage covers half of the language. That is what one might term the first aspect, the vulgar aspect of argot. But for those who study the dialect as it should be studied, that is to say, in the way a geologist studies the earth, it is more like an alluvial deposit Examining it one finds, buried beneath the old colloquial French, Provençal, Spanish, Italian, Levantine – that language of the Mediterranean ports – English, German, the French, Italian and Roman varieties of Romance, Latin and finally Basque and Celtic. A profound, weird conglomeration; a subterranean edifice erected by all outcasts. Each accursed race has contributed its layer, every heart and every suffering has added a stone. A host of souls, evil or lowborn or rebellious, who have lived through life and passed on to eternity, are almost wholly present and in some sort still visible in the form of a monstrous word.

  Do you wish for Spanish? The old Gothic argot is full of it: for example boffette, for which the French is soufflet, meaning a bellows, a puff of wind (blow) or a buffet, derived from bofeton ; vantarne (later vanterne) meaning a window; gat, meaning cat, derived from gato ; acite, oil, derived from aceyte. Or Italian? There is spade, sword, derived from spada ; carvel, boat, derived from carvella. English? There is bichot, bishop; raille, a spy, derived from rascal; pilche, a case, derived from pilcher, a sheath. German? There is caleur, from the German Kellner, a waiter; Herr, the master, from Herzog, the duke. Latin? Franjir, to break (Latin frangere) ; affurer, to steal (fur) ; cadène, a chain (catena). There is a word which appears in all the continental dialects with a sort of magical power and authority. It is the word magnus (great). In Scotland it becomes mac, meaning head of the clan,* such as Macfarlane or Macdonald; French argot turns it into meck, later meg, meaning God. Do you look for Basque? There is gahisto, the devil, derived from gaiztoa, evil; sorgabon, good night, derived from gabon, good evening. Celtic? There is blavin, handkerchief, derived from blavet, a spurt of water; menesse, woman (derogatory) derived from meinec, full of stones; barant, a stream, from baranton, fountain; goffeur, locksmith from goff, a smith; guedouze, death, which is derived from guenn-du, white-black. Finally, do you want history? Argot calls a crown-piece a maltaise, recalling the money which circulated in the Maltese galleys.

  Apart from its philological origins, of which a few examples have been given, argot has other, more natural roots, emerging, so to speak, from the very spirit of man. First there is the actual creation of words, which is the mystery of all language – the depiction of objects by the use of words which, no one can say why or how, bear a countenance of their own. This is the primal basis of all language, what one might call the bedrock. Argot teems with such words, spontaneous words, created all of a piece no one can say where or by whom, words without etymology, analogy or derivation; solitary, barbaric, sometimes hideous words, which are neve
rtheless singularly expressive and which live. Le taule, the gaoler; le sabri, the foreuist; taf, meaning fear of flight; le larbin, the lackey; pharos, the general, prefect or minister; le rabouin, the devil. Nothing can be more strange than these words which both conceal and reveal. Some, such as rabouin, are at once grotesque and terrible, conveying the effect of a Cyclopean grimace.

  Secondly, there is metaphor. The characteristic of a language that seeks both to say everything and to conceal everything is its abundance of imagery. Metaphor is a riddle behind which lurks the thief planning a robbery and the prisoner plotting an escape. No dialect is more rich in metaphor than argot – devisser le coco, to twist the neck; tortiller, to eat; être gerbé, to be judged; un rat, a stealer of bread; il lansquine, it is raining, an ancient, striking image which in some sort reveals its own date, relating the long, oblique lines of rainfall to the couched weapons of sixteenth-century pike-men, and also encompasses the popular saying, ‘it’s raining halberds’. Sometimes, as argot progresses from its first stage to the second, words also pass from the savage, primitive stage to the metaphorical. The devil ceases to be le rabouin and becomes le boulanger (baker), ‘he who puts in the oven’. It is more amusing but less impressive, something like Racine after Corneille, or Euripides after Aeschylus. And there are certain sentences of argot, belonging to both stages, which have a phantasmagoric quality. Les sorgueurs vont sollicer des gails à la lune (rustlers are going to steal horses tonight). This presents itself to the mind like a company of ghosts. One does not know what one is looking at.