Hugo: I know I just explained all of this directly, but a chapter of metaphor should really hammer it in. The art is really stunning this time around though. Note the chain on the overboard man’s leg.
Hugo never kills his darlings (just every one of his characters aha), but it’s okay because I love the language in this chapter so much and its such a well of incredible imagery and metaphor and emotion.
I read some other translations of this to see if my response to the imagery changed at all between editions. Wraxall has some odd ideas about where the line breaks are, but the translation is mostly in the spirit (I preferred the Wilbour still), FMA names the chapter “Deep Waters, Dark Shadows” which I like as an alternate title despite the French title being pretty straightforward. Denny makes the same seemingly unnecessary line and language choices of Wraxall that even the modernish Rose translation avoids despite using the phrase “the jig’s up.” What I learned is that this sort of comparison is effort-heavy and returns-debatable.
The recidivism rate in these times has got to be incredibly high, though I doubt anyone was measuring incarceration rates in any meaningful way. Especially considering JVJ’s best bet at shelter in Digne was to, um, get arrested again.
“Liberation is not deliverance.” This is an interesting point to consider a little later when the bishop all but tells Jean Valjean to break the law in order to become a better man. To me, that’s his true liberation and his deliverance is his own choice to take on the responsibility of that charge. And his own deliverance inevitably becomes that of Fantine’s, Cosette’s, the entire town of Montreuil-sur-Mer’s, Marius’s, etc. Maybe in a less spiritual sense, but who can say where the physical, social, and spiritual begin and end?
