#4.1.2

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

Brickclub: 4.1.2

God I need to read Cromwell. Or at least the preface to Cromwell. I think that would help a lot with these chapters.

But I have not yet done that, so we'll have to make do without. Here we continue the theme of the nation being Tired. Hugo is more cynical about it in this chapter than he was in the last, which is an interesting shift. It feels like 4.1 is a conversation he's having with himself, as he tries to figure out what the right answer is. On the one hand, we have 4.1.1, where he tries really hard to make a case for the Restoration being a good idea but marred by having the wrong people in charge. Here, he rejects that notion by pointing out that this desire for peace and stability stems from people who already have it made just wanting to keep what they have, regardless of how many others don't have that comfort yet. He gets it, but he doesn't approve of it. And he really doesn't approve of people manipulating that desire to get power for themselves. I'm reminded of way back in 1.1, when he had Things To Say about people with ambition and skill. Hugo's definitely very wary of a certain kind of ambition, and I haven't yet pinned down what, precisely, he's objecting to. On a broad level, of course he objects to people who take advantage of misfortune and crisis to improve themselves. "As soon as a revolution has made the coast, the skilful make haste to prepare the shipwreck" is definitely a condemnation of people taking advantage of and manipulating turmoil in order to emerge more powerful and influential than they otherwise would have been. And I think, in general, he's very wary of people who want to be in charge. He seems very uncomfortable with people who willingly seek out authority and power over others. All his good leader characters either sort of stumble into it accidentally, and are more or less uncomfortable with that responsibility (Myriel, Valjean) or accept it as a necessary burden in the fight for the greater good (Enjolras).

This chapter, meanwhile, is about people who deliberately seek out leadership, and Hugo is bitingly sarcastic about all of them. Essentially he seems to be saying that people seek out power because they're not good enough at anything to have it given to them. It's... a take, all right, and not even a terrible one at that.

And then we move into Hugo's opinion about the bourgeoisie, in an interesting precursor to today's concept of privilege. It's not a one to one, obviously, and I'm not trying to bring modern opinions/worldviews into a venue where they don't really belong, but I still see a parallel there. Because basically Hugo is saying that the people who support the status quo and who want to be done with all this revolution stuff already are the people who have already profited. They've made it. They fought and they won and they're ready to just be done. They're not malicious, like the power seekers, but they are selfish. They're Tired and they don't see why they should have to keep fighting for the sake of others when they've already fought so long and so hard for their own sakes. It's an interesting twist on the concept of class solidarity and struggle.

Honestly, Hugo's ideas about class in general are interesting. This isn't really the time to get into them, but if someone's written that thesis I'd love to read it.

So anyway, between the scheming of those who want power and the selfishness of those who have found comfort, the revolution of 1830 was stopped in its tracks. It deposed the Bourbons but then it didn't go further, just sought out another dynasty to replace them. They didn't want to return to the autocracy of absolute monarchy, but they weren't ready to have another round of full on revolution, so they stopped halfway and found a half king to sit on the half throne. Enter the Pear himself, the man who can see a gamin drawing a rude picture and help him finish it, Louis Philippe.

[centrifuge-politics]

Brick Club 4.1.2

It’s possible none of this will track without reading my offensively long post on 4.1.1—particularly the section on violence—so I’ll just go ahead and link that if you’re feeling masochistic.

Oh, yes, this is more like it. Hugo calls 1830 “a revolution arrested in mid career” and I think that’s dead on (with caveats). I said in my last post that this chapter would complicate Hugo’s arguments in 4.1.1. I think I know specifically why now and it has everything to do with the misconception of what constitutes ‘violence.’

The “able,” people with enough power to want to keep it but not enough to be targets (of this revolution at least), quickly work to contain any radical fallout from 1830, “the right once affirmed, the state must be reaffirmed.” I’m just going to call them the bourgeoisie because I find the able/wise distinction pretty useless. This is the first blush of classical liberalism combined with the lingering assumption of a “monarchical continent.” Just more damage the “worthy” Bourbons left behind. What we end up with is the bourgeoisie class instituting monarchy-lite, offering just enough concession to revolutionary ideas that they needn’t stoop to actually acting on them. And when power becomes insidiously entrenched in this new dynasty—“each branch of which, by bending to the ground, takes root there and becomes a banyan. Each branch may become a dynasty”—all you need to do is keep abreast of public opinion and “take precautions against too much success.” You have an unbreakable cycle of power. Hmm, that sounds positively Machiavellian, if only some Renaissance thinker had written a well-known book exposing these exact tactics—

Anyways, Hugo hits the nail on the head when he says the bourgeoisie are “ingenious in putting a mask of necessity upon profitable fictions.” A continued revolution will not benefit them, so they halt it in its tracks and cauterize the wound with a dynasty. They do this because they have power and have something to lose. Hugo at least acknowledges this process is deliberate and even calculated, which is why I don’t find his able/wise dichotomy very meaningful. It isn’t that the bourgeoisie aren’t wise, it’s that they have no reason to do the work of the wise. The “wise” are just bourgeoisie with a sense of morality (”the wise do not separate from the able, but they begin to distrust”) and have the same capacity as the “able,” yet seem unwilling to use it, reduced to feeble protests and objections. They are ultimately complicit in the creation of the dynasty. The poor classes don’t appear to have a place in this narrative, despite being the driving force of the revolution and the ones with the most to lose when the bourgeoisie fuck things up. Without any power, they are forced to wait for the wise to get their shit together and grow a sense of social responsibility. Maybe they should bypass the institutions of power and organize a revolution—oh, wait.

Take a break with this nice illustration and then I launch into My Point™️ below the cut

All of this takes us to the reason why Hugo’s breakdown of the July Revolution is so inconsistent. He incorrectly does not consider the actions of the monarchy and bourgeoisie to be a form of violence on par with the actions of the revolutionaries. He says the Bourbons were neatly cut out of place and retreated with respect, that the civility of the restoration is to be admired. Yet the legacy of their dynasty is what enables the bourgeoisie to undermine the revolution. The bourgeoisie are not staunching the wound of the revolution or even halting it as Hugo claims; they are violently attacking its ideals. This may sound dramatic but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration.

Hugo actually addresses a lot of my critiques from 4.1.1 very well in this chapter, making a point of directly calling out the bourgeoisie as culprits. Where he falls into a hole is that he too still considers the ‘fact’ as a default state, whether he realizes it or not. The fact that he characterizes the July Monarchy as a halt is very telling, saying, “Halt is the regaining of strength, it is armed and watchful repose.” The fact is always inherently in existence while the right needs to be asserted. Therefore, to Hugo, the work of the able is a sort of maintenance of the fact rather than a form of active violence done by the bourgeoisie. Which I will pretty confidently say it is.

This results in a shaky ideological foundation for Hugo to balance. He still wants to believe that “the right, when it triumphs, has no need to be violent” because he doesn’t see the state as perpetrating violence against the lower classes. He can’t bring himself to understand the struggle of the revolution as a matched response to an inherently violent status quo.  He wants the July Revolution to be a mild triumph against a worthy, if misguided, dynasty, rather than a violent overthrow of oppressors that was, in turn, overthrown violently by the bourgeoisie. He’s not sympathetic to the state in any sense—“when the able had finished their work, the immense viciousness of their solution became apparent”—but he wrongly links civility and nonviolence.

This doesn’t mean his arguments are all wrong or that he doesn’t make any really good points, but it’s a lens through which everything is filtered. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and this is me trying to navigate that landscape.

[intj-greenwords]

Prince Vasili has lost both his children in relatively quick succession, and yet I feel strangely unmoved.

[ssd6000]

1. Command of English

There is not much you can do about this except practice your presentation so that you do not stumble over words. If you want to write your speech out and have someone read over it to help you structure the sentences, that could help, but make sure that you do not rely on that written document and read from it during the presentation.

[garbagecann24601]

Badly Sewed

The next step in a revolution is securing a dynasty, and finding a dynasty is more complicated than simply finding a king.

The July Revolution of 1830 was stopped halfway. The bourgeoisie was satisfied.

“But through a desire to sit down too soon, one may arrest the very march of the human race. This has often been the fault of the bourgeoisie.”

Louis Philippe d’Orleans was crowned king.

[akallabeth-joie]

Brickclub Les Mis 4.1.2

In which Hugo continues comparing 19th-century France to 17th-century England, and opines at how revolutionary changes mellow as is reestablished power. He rephrases a few times that ‘bourgeoisie’ is a state of contentment rather than a social class, which makes me curious about how Hugo would define the social classes of 1830s France. Unforunately, he never names a positive statement as such (at least not here).

I do like how these chapter titles ‘Well Cut’, ‘Poorly Sewn’, neatly sum up his take on the July monarchy/Bourbon restoration in general. There was a possibility for it to go well (some sound principles, notably guaranteed popular rights and limits to royal power), which were negated by poor execution (the monarchy acting like it was actually in charge and 1789-1815 hadn’t happened).

No second person pronouns.  

[ssdgames]

Make sure its z position is 0.

Position it under the ball as shown.

Since it is a child of the ball, it will move whenever we move the ball now.

[akallabeth-joie]

Brickclub 4.1.2

Hugo is now a fan of the July Revolution['s potential] and is somewhat less than impressed with the House of Orleans, take 2.

Favorite bit of wordplay: "couper les angles et les ongles".

I also like his social theory that "La bourgeoisie est tout simplement la portion contentée du peuple"--the bougeoisie isn't a social class, it's being satisfied with the status quo.  

And I really like how Hugo is handling his framing here: he sees 1830 as a revolution half-finished, and 1848 as the completion. He's setting up 1832 as the noble attempt to complete 1830, while (again) reminding us that it's not going to succeed. The impulse is 'right', but the time is not yet come.

[Revolution, logic, and right being so intimately connected here, the final line about right terribly retreating into the darkness made me imagine Enjolras stalking through Paris at night like the Shia Laboeuf song].