Les Miserables - A Detail and A Resolve

We still haven't made it to the movies to see Les Miserables. Freezing winter weather and minor aches and pains, on the far edge of something flu-like dampened our enthusiasm for the 32 mile journey to the nearest cinema showing the film. We do intend making a try for an afternoon show this week though.

It's interesting, but unsurprising, to see how conflicting some reviews of the movie have been. Beloved 1,400-page novel condensed over the years, in several versions, to the movie screen; then adapted as a stage musical; then further modified as a movie musical.....Somebody, somewhere, isn't going to like what they've done to it, at any of the stages of the story's (d)evolution, but some will enthuse wildly. Each genre has a different perspective to offer, a different way of portraying the story's essence. A lot depends on how well the source material is known and understood by both those adapting it and those watching the adaptations.

To Scratch an itch at the weekend I fished out an old VHS tape of the 10 year anniversary concert version of Les Miz to watch and refresh my memory. A question kept presenting itself to my annoyingly logical mind, it was one I'd wondered about in the past when watching any of the the various non-musical film versions of Victor Hugo's famous novel. Jean Valjean (seen in the book illustration above) progresses from being a convict on parole, then stealing silver candlesticks, forgiven by their owner and being allowed to keep them; then, as if by magic - and with scant explanation other than the passing of time - he has become the owner of a factory employing many workers. In the past I've rationalised that he must have sold the silver candlesticks, invested the money somehow to increase its value, then had the good chance to come across a run-down business he could afford to buy and improve.

Should've read the book, you see! I will do so, soon as possible. In the meantime, a scoot around the net led me to the real answer which does appear in the novel, no doubt in great detail, in classic Hugo style. The answer? It was a matter of "black beads". Beads and bracelets made from, or imitating jet, the black mineral. I know a little about jet, a north of England coastal town I used to know well, Whitby, is famous for its jet and carved jet jewellery; my mother had a jet bracelet and a couple of carved pins, I recall.

Clip from Les Miserables, Book Fifth – The Descent, found HERE (I suspect it comes from one of the older translations of the novel because of the habit of using initials rather than full names. (M sur M = Montreuil-sur-Mer)

From time immemorial, M. sur M. had had for its special industry the imitation of English jet and the black glass trinkets of Germany. This industry had always vegetated, on account of the high price of the raw material, which reacted on the manufacture. At the moment when Fantine returned to M. sur M., an unheard-of transformation had taken place in the production of “black goods.” Towards the close of 1815 a man, a stranger, had established himself in the town, and had been inspired with the idea of substituting, in this manufacture, gum-lac for resin, and, for bracelets in particular, slides of sheet-iron simply laid together, for slides of soldered sheet-iron.This very small change had effected a revolution.This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country; in the second place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer; in the third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which was a benefit to the manufacturer.Thus three results ensued from one idea.
In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich, which is good, and had made every one about him rich, which is better. He was a stranger in the Department. Of his origin, nothing was known; of the beginning of his career, very little. It was rumored that he had come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most.

It was from this slender capital, enlisted in the service of an ingenious idea, developed by method and thought, that he had drawn his own fortune, and the fortune of the whole countryside.

Reading the book is an essential now! There must be many other tidbits of detail I've missed completely from non-musical movie versions. Finding the best version of the book, for me, will be quite a trick. Unabridged it has around 1,400 pages, depending on edition, and I balk at a 500-page novel! (Book illustration, left, by Lynd Ward).

The net to the rescue again. Reviewers and commenters mostly advise reading the unabridged version, or at least giving it a try initially; if really stumped by it there are abridged versions available too. Purists will insist on the unabridged edition, but there are considerations: the original was written for publication in episodes (as were most of Charles Dickens' novels) paid, I guess, by the length of each piece and number of episodes needed to conclude the tale. Hence it was in the author's best interest to wax into great detail about historical relevancies, and other matters which might assist the reader to fully appreciate the finer detail.
That was then though - before film, TV, internet and other modern distractions. In that long ago era reading a book, magazine or newspaper occupied a much bigger slice of the average person's day.

These days many of us are infected with internet-attention-disorder, expect easy-reading, quick hits. This post, for instance, is already longer than most blog readers would tolerate!

It'd do me no harm at all to re-educate myself in the gentle art of real reading.

In the case ofLes Miserables there's also the thorny issue of the most appropriate version of the novel's translation from French into English. Is it better to read one translated near Victor Hugo's own era, or a more modern translation? An older, literal translation, almost word for word French to English, doesn't sound like my cup of tea. There's a 1970s translation by Norman Denny (1901 - 1982) who was English, and whose work seems to be well thought of among commenters, that one sounds to be a likely bet. The most recent translator, an Australian: Julie Rose, could lean too far towards modern idiom to feel authentic .....anachronistic, I suppose is the term; though her version is likely to be an easier read, and well-received by the American market. She discusses her work in a piece here: What Julie Rose Adds to Victor Hugo.

From an interesting blog: The Art of Translation I found this comparison of the way three tranlators of a short piece of the novel approached it:

I'm in danger of becoming geeky here! Will go for Norman Denny's translation.

My New Year resolution for 2013: to read Les Miserables.

PS: An archived brief post about musical Les Miz with notes on composers' and Hugo's astrology is HERE: The Magic in Les Miz.

PPS: While watching the 10-year anniversary concert tape I noticed some lyrics which will appeal to the astrologically-inclined - verses of a song sung by Javert as he vows to track down Jean Valjean. I'm wondering how much of the song is poetic licence by the musical's composers, or whether this is a close adaptation/translation of Victor Hugo's own words? When I've kept my New Year's Resolution, then I'll know the answer!

Stars
In your multitudes
Scarce to be counted
Filling the darkness
With order and light
You are the sentinels
Silent and sure
Keeping watch in the night
Keeping watch in the night

You know your place in the sky
You hold your course and your aim
And each in your season
Returns and returns
And is always the same
And if you fall as Lucifer fell
You fall in flame!