|
A few years ago, I taught Les Misérables to two Korean kids, ages (as I recall) twelve and fourteen. I had only seen the movie of the musical. In high school, I had tried to make my way through Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (popularly referred to as “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”) but did not succeed. Despite my stint in third grade outside of Paris, subsequent years of French studies, and a Ph.D. in English from Yale, I went into this project pretty much an ignoramus. |
On the other hand, my mother had instilled in me a belief that every word of an author should be respected (if worthy), so I told the kids, whose mother had selected the novel, that we would have a stab at the unabridged version. I used my husband‘s excruciatingly precise Charles Wilbour translation, originally published in 1862 and put out in the 1960s under the auspices of the Modern Library. The kids used the Norman Denny translation on Penguin. (There is now a new translation available on Penguin, just FYI.) The Denny translation looked bloated enough. I told them it was fine. Later, however, I noticed that the students seemed to lack some of the text as we went along, while other large chunks of text had been misplaced in the back. |
I do not need to tear Mr. Denny a new one here because in a few choice sentences, Graham Robb does so in his Victor Hugo: A Biography. Suffice to say, in the introduction to his translation, Denny brags about his cavalier judgment calls regarding Hugo’s “digressions.” He also boasts that he abridged the whole text as he went along, though he coyly declines to tell us where. He doesn’t need to. It is enough for us to know that he has understood the spirit of the novel better than the author himself. |
So here’s how this went. The siblings had separate lessons. The girl pretty much did not do the reading, as far as I could tell. She seemed to be reaching a rebellious phase. I didn’t really blame her because the novel is difficult and gargantuan, and she had a lot of work besides. I just dragged her along as best I could, forcing her to read at least some of the text by asking questions and waiting a long time for her answers, and by assigning essays, as mandated by their mom. The boy did seem to be engaged. He had a marked talent for literary analysis and had already produced a wonderful parody of The Grapes of Wrath earlier in our work together (N.B., this was pre-AI, and I’m confident AI can’t do that anyway). |
Meanwhile, I became fascinated by the novel. I spent hours looking up every reference I didn’t recognize, which was an embarrassing number, and I learned a lot of French history I should have learned already but hadn’t. Mired in the Trump era, I found Hugo’s audacious attempt to create a democratic utopia especially amazing and compelling, and I loved sharing this excitement with a precocious twelve-year-old. (Interestingly, a recent Borowitz Report has compared Trump to Hugo’s arch-nemesis, Napoleon III.) |
So a few years later, when my husband’s friend and co-editor kindly invited me to contribute to a handbook on literature and identity the two of them were putting together, I chose to “do” Les Misérables. Unlike my earlier contributions to various collections my husband has done, this did not go smoothly at all. First, I was granted an extension from the outset because we were moving–which, as I believe I have indicated in an earlier post, was traumatic (but so worth it in the end). During this time I did quite a lot of haphazard research, mostly on the internet, and discovered some cool historical background that no one, as far as I know, has discussed before. |
But when I finally had enough serious research under my belt to start serious writing, I found it hard. Everything in the novel is related to everything else. I couldn’t organize the material or cope with the word count for the essay, and the first draft I at last produced suffered from a disastrous lack of focus. With some help and a violent, though kindly-meant, kick in the pants from my husband’s co-editor, I at last got the thing into acceptable form and am quite proud of it. (I did my own translations, by the way, in consultation with Wilbour.) I believe the piece will be out sometime next year. |
In the meantime, however, between moving, enjoying Chicago, and having Victor Hugo move into my head and live there rent free, I almost stopped submitting (though not writing). Since my amicable divorce from the Romantic French writer, however, my life has settled down as much as it can in this wonderful city. I have actually published a couple of poems I’d like to write about here, and I’ll be sending more out, so stay tuned. |
Thank you for your patience. |
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment