#2.1.15

[umeed-e-sehr]

2.1.15

The descriptions in this chapter are at once exaggerated, flowery and funny. Yet this chapter seems to be Romantic as well, at least to me. It uses a commonplace, grotesque word and elevates both the word and the speaker to sublime heights. It brings Waterloo near to Mardi Gras, his word is crude, but it is also very solemn and disdainful. Provided a chance to surrender, he scorned it and not only scorned it, but insulted the enemy with it.

I do continue to find it amusing that according to Hugo, neither Wellington, nor Blucher can claim responsibility for the victory, because one was dependent on the other (yes we know your feelings about the English army, Hugo, you are not subtle), but the Generals of Wellington’s army have to pause before this unknown soldier and this word, even though they have just crushed Napoleon. 

This unknown soldier, inspired and supported by the Divine, gives them a final protest, after everything the French have faced during the battle. This not only is the last insult flung across Europe by the empire (which to Hugo means little), but Cambronne also hurls the insult across past decades in the name of the French Revolution and its deputies.  

So Cambronne gets to have the last laugh in front of the cannons, the cannon fire cannot win against his protest, which is equally worthy of being in the annals of history, according to Hugo.

(Sidenote: I also love the past mingling with the present in this chapter too, people still go about this place where the battle was fought). 

This also ties so much with a lot of Waterloo and history being about unimportant people and the choices they make, but this is also about Courfeyrac and Bossuet joking in front of cannon fire or Enjolras’ look of disdain before the firing squad. Cambronne’s protest stretches towards the past but it also stretches towards the future. 

[garbagecann24601]

Cambronne

“To make that reply and then perish, what could be grander? For being willing to die is the same as to die; and it was not this man’s fault if he survived after he was shot.”

[Insert that scene from A Very Potter Musical:

Harry: I was prepared to die to save these people.

Voldemort: But you didn’t!

Harry: Yes, but I meant to.]

“The winner of the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, who was put to flight; nor Wellington, giving way at four o’clock, in despair at five; nor Blücher, who took no part in the engagement. The winner of Waterloo was Cambronne.”

(In case you’re like me and forgot, Cambronne was essentially a nobody introduced in the previous chapter who was leading the last square of French soldiers. When told to surrender, he replied, “--” [or, according to some editions, “Merde,”])

The English fire on the French. The square is obliterated.

[ssdgames]

Repeat the process to add a Circle Collider 2D to the Red Ball and preview your game. Nothing happens. This is because Colliders tell the objects how to interact with each other, but they do not know how to react to their world yet. You could use our current set up for a top down or cross-section game where gravity does not matter, and the red ball could be moved by the player and not be able to go through the rectangle wall/floor (Pac-Man is an example of such a setup)

[akallabeth-joie]

Brickclub Les Mis 2.1.15

In which Hugo expounds on why the last word of 2.1.14 was so important, thus calling out as cowards all the translators who elide or otherwise obfuscate it.

He's really leaning into Cambronne's "Merde!" as defiance in the face of death--as we saw earlier with the guard, and we'll see it later on multiple occasions with the barricade fighters. I find it interesting that Hugo dovetails this motif with that of the great man being not-a-thing and the importance of details in history: that Cambronne (named, but low-ranking) has done something great without himself being great. Something much like Ney did earlier, even to the point of both being ready to die but not getting killed. Hugo's treatment of these two men feels rather different: that the once-great Ney is to be pitited for surviving, where Cambronne's elevation is unsullied by this failure to die. One gets pathos, the other glory. 

It's also reminding me of how the barricade fighters (specifically Prouvaire, Enjolras, and Grantaire) are actually killed after giving their final comments on the matter. Most of our Waterloo characters are not (there's plenty of death, but the ones Hugo singles out keep surviving despite their best efforts, up to Napoleon and Wellington). My brain's not cooperating, but it feels noteworthy that the book's greatest death-defying cry ("raise the barricades 30 feet high and defend them with our dead bodies") comes not merely from a non-notable person, but from a completely anonymous one; and that this sentence belongs to the sequence in which the heroes facing-down death are not deprived of the consummation.

And then we're back to the beginning, with battlefield of the past fading into mundane modern life.

No second person pronouns. 

[akallabeth-joie]

Brickclub 2.1.15

"Le lecteur français voulant être respecté, le plus beau mot peut-être qu'un Français ait jamais dit ne peut lui être répété. Défense de déposer du sublime dans l'histoire."

Hugo knows what we want: analysis of his use of the word "merde" in the last chapter. I choose to take this as his sanction of our enterprise here. And I love that he then starts applying all these grand metaphors to Cambronne. It reminds me of Dante's "gargoyle cantos".

Too tired to make much sense, but does anyone want to write a fic where Cambronne and Enjolras hang out in whatever afterlive awaits defiant French badasses? Charles Jeanne can join them.

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

Brickclub: 2.1.15

I love Cambronne, and I love how much Hugo loves Cambronne. This chapter is a riot, from the over the top defense of a common swear word to the proclamation that Cambronne, rather than any of the generals, truly won Waterloo, to the linkage with Revolution, to the final futility of the gesture. It’s so delightfully Hugo.

Among the many things I like are the fact that Cambronne doesn’t actually die and Hugo feels almost embarrassed about that fact. So embarrassed, in fact, that that fact is never mentioned again. As Fantine is an honorary virgin because she Loved, Cambronne is an honorary martyr because he Defied. Never let it be said that something so paltry as observable fact gets in the way of Victor Hugo’s Romantic Symbolism.

I love how subtly this chapter moves from almost an farcical reverence for the act of swearing at death to a much more poignant understanding of what it means to swear at death. Cambronne can do nothing else here. His men are dying, his general has run away, he is surrounded and outnumbered. He cannot win this battle. And so he does the only thing left to him, which is to go out on his own terms. That act of radical agency is what Hugo so admires here, I think -- the fact that Cambronne grabbed his death with both hands and refused to let it be defined by the enemy or Napoleon or anyone other than him.

And with Cambronne the French have fallen, giving way only to fields of corpses that will one day hold nothing but crops, as life moves on. The present, Hugo reminds us, belongs to the living, no matter how valiant or admirable the dead might have been.

[creatively-constipated]

Im stressin real hard right now. I have so much coming up and so much to do in gon cry I have an act prep class tomorrow and an essay due along with normal homework, then next week i have tryouts til 5 for bowling and another prep class from 6:30 to 9 on thursday which is my mothers birthday... Then the actual act that saturday and the following week is finals. Kill me.

[pilferingapples]

Les Mis 365 Retroblogging 2.1.14-2.1.16

2.1.16

There's a really interesting bit of foreword in the Donougher translation that quotes Hugo as saying this whole digression , morally at least, wins Waterloo back for the French; for the France of the Revolution, that is, his Ideal France, rather than any particular government. It's not hard to see that happening in these chapters, so they really shouldn't be as funny as they are. But COME ON, Hugo totally calls Bullshit on Waterloo through Cambronne, AND THEN MAKES A PUN ABOUT IT.  

...And then he goes on to argue very strongly that military force, and Waterloo as its symbol, don't reflect the greatness of nations (of 'civilized' peoples, which, hnnrhg), that that shows in ideas, and I am ABSOLUTELY on board with that argument, but his proof of that? BYRON AND GOETHE. England and Germany aren't great because of combat! They're great because of their Romantic Authors! HINT HINT, say Hugo, ever the master of humility.

But as much as some of Hugo's passages here crack me up (and they really do, I cackled out loud at the Goethe-and-Byron thing) this digression is of course also a major thesis statement for the book. Hugo's already put forth his assertion that Waterloo marked the end of the era of Great Men; here he also argues that it marks (the beginning of?) the end of power and greatness by military force (which, geez, wouldn't it be nice if THAT idea would sink in a little more).

Even more than that, he specifically sets up Glory, embodied by Napoleon and the Empire, as DIRECTLY opposed to Freedom. More glory, less freedom; less glory, more freedom.  And since he's claiming Providence/the Ideal/God loves antithesis as much as Hugo himself, that makes glory the losing option on a divine scale.

And this is one of those parts of the book where I wish I were a better political debater, because for all Hugo often deals in general ideals, dang, he's right on a PRACTICAL level sometimes. There a definite not-awesome correlation between how much a country invests in its military might and how much it invests in its non-military endeavors; this might have been less obvious before the rise of the modern military, but even historically,  drafts and combat and military training and money going to cannon practice are resources that have to come from SOMEwhere--and if it's not from an empire's own subjects, it's from the conquered. SOMEONE loses their freedom when an Empire strikes out for glory.

...and this will, of course, be relevant to a debate in another tome and a half. For now, Hugo's got more snarkin' at the English to do! :P