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ClubNinetyThree 5/3/14 1.3.1 Speech is the "Word"

It's the word, it's the word, it's got groove, it's got meaaniiiing...

ehm, sorry. But it's better than just screaming at everyone in this chapter, what with the BLATANT MANIPULATION and all.

I'm not saying Halmalo should have killed Marquis de Lizardtongue (come on it's him, time, Hugo, I call time) because Prince of Bastardry here killed his brother (although, I WOULD HAVE TOTALLY UNDERSTOOD, a guy shoots your brother right in front of you that's gonna mess up your head a LITTLE), or even to spare the Vendée a no-holds-barred burninating. There are reasons to spare a guy. Many of them are even good! But "BECAUSE AUTHORITY" is possibly the WORST reason to do ANYTHING EVER. I gotta hand it to the Viscount de Futurekiller-- he's really good at playing on a person's better emotions to make them willing to consider awful things. He lays out this whole "WE MUST SAVE THE CHURCH AND THE CHILDREN OF GOD" speech on Halmalo, And conveniently not mentioning the amount of Killing God's Children that THEY'LL have to do to get the job done. I am certain Marquis deFinitelyNotAPeasant believes what he's saying: that he's the chosen of God, etc. I'm also sure that he's manipulating the HECK out of Halmalo. And doing a darn fine job of it, what with Halmalo BEGGING PARDON FOR BEING UPSET ABOUT HIS BROTHER'S DEATH by the end. Marquis Duke Prince is a Magnificent Bastard, and I am hoping Hugo defies his own pattern and this guy ends up mucking out septic tanks for the rest of his long, long life.

Other questions raised by this chapter: "open pupils of a peasant"? Are peasants naturally inclined to have trouble focusing their eyes, or something? Is this something like wide-eyed, indicating some sort of innoncence and/or gormlessness?

#clubninetythree #93 1.3.1

Club 93 1.3.1 & 1.3.2

The footnotes return!

So far, they've been a bit of a mixed bag. But the editor, M Gohin, had some interesting stuff to offer about these (heartbreaking and terrible) chapters.

I'll put the original French text under a readmore. What you see is in my own shoddy translation.

La parole, c'est le verbe:

"For the word is the Verb, and the Verb is God." (IX, 81). (Meaning Les Contemplations, I think. It's a Hugo quote, at any rate.) Reference to the beginning of the Gospel of John, here very much ambiguous: the sermon (or lecture, depending) of "the peasant" to the ingenuous Halmalo is of the most skilful royalist strategy ("saving France... saving the king... saving God."); still it is a question of forgiving so that the bond of fraternity does not become a duty of hate; "the peasant" is "now in the shadow, now in the light."

Mémoire de paysan vaut science de capitaine

The peasant must have an extraordinary memory and the captain a bizarre knowledge so that the one can remember and the other organise such a long and complicated journey as the one detailed in this chapter. A wilfully confused panorama of the insurgent West, without a doubt. But why wait to send Halmalo to Ploërmel until after he's gone to Astille and Saint-Ouen-Les-Toits - which means a detour of more than two hundred kilometres. Chouan prudence or Hugolian whimsy? In any case, this is based on the Mémoires of Puisaye, who tells of hiding himself, in August of 1793, in the country house (but not in the hiding-hole!) of M. Thuault, "one of the Breton députés à l’Assemblée constituante", and mentions the marquis de Guer and his castle of Couesbot (sic). What Puisaye said dully: "the land, intersected by small woods and uneven ground, seemed to us extremely well suited to guerilla warfare", "the peasant" formulates in military style: "Ravines, small woods, uneven ground; a good place."

« Car le mot, c’est le Verbe, et le Verbe, c’est Dieu. »(IX, 81). Référence au début de l’évangile de saint Jean, qui est ici fort ambiguë : le prêche de [« le paysan »] au candide Halmalo est de la plus habile stratégie royaliste (« sauver la France… sauver le roi… sauver Dieu ») ; cependant il s’agit de faire grâce et de ne pas retourner en devoir de haine le lien de la fraternité ; [« le paysan »] est « tantôt dans l’ombre, tantôt dans la lumière. »

Il faudrait au paysan une extraordinaire mémoire et au capitaine une science bizarre pour que l’un retienne et l’autre organise une itinéraire aussi long et compliqué que celui qui est détaillé dans ce chapitre. Panorama volontairement confus de l’Ouest insurgé, sans doute. Mais pourquoi n’envoyer Halmalo à Ploërmel qu’après l’avoir fait aller à Astillé et avant de le faire aller à Saint-Ouen-Les-Toits – c’est-à-dire lui imposer un aller et retour de plus de deux cents kilomètres ? Prudence de chouan ou fantaisie de Hugo ? En tout cas, utilisation des Mémoires de Puisaye, qui raconte s’être réfugié, en août 1793, dans la maison de campagne (mais pas dans le trou !) de M. Thuault, « l’un des députés de Bretagne à l’Assemblée constituante », et mentionne le marquis de Guer et son château de Couesbot (sic). Ce que Puisaye disait platement : «le pays coupé par de petits bois, et des inégalités de terrain, nous parut extrêmement propre à faire une guerre de chicane », [le paysan] le formule en style militaire ; « Ravins, petits bois, terrain inégal, bon endroit. »

#clubninetythree #footnotes!#93 1.3.1 #93 1.3.2 #i like that even hugo is confused about the geography

Ninety-Three 1.3.1 The Persuasive Power of Human Speech

My copy of the book has a footnote that reads "'La parole c'est le verbe,'—Speech is 'the Word.'" I think that's a more literal translation of the chapter title. Although if that's the case, then why didn't Dole just use that as the title? Confusing.

The old man's guilt-tripping of Halmalo leaves a very bitter taste in my throat, what with the "You will LOSE THE WAR if you kill me!" and the threat of eternal damnation. Which…okay, I suppose saying anything to save your own life make sense in a way (and boy does he ever say anything! That's a paragraph that runs for two full pages!), and he's clever enough to learn and then use Halmalo's positions on religion. After all, much of his argument would fall upon deaf ears if Halmalo were like the soldiers in the woods, equating Christian belief with superstition.

But the fact that Halmalo buys the whole thing hook, line, and sinker so that by the end of the chapter he's begging the old man for forgiveness is really gross. The old man has thus far shown himself to be quite cold-hearted, and I have a feeling that this "forgiveness" is because Halmalo can be useful to him, not out of any sort of sympathy or fellow feeling.

#clubninetythree #93 1.3.1

ClubNinetyThree 1.3.1: The Persuasive Power of Human Speech

Haha about those title translations! So the original is "La parole c'est le verbe," parole being speech and verbe being "the Word" (Wikisource translation gives the scare quotes). I like the evocation of the Gospel, and also the connotations of power. (I was going to link to Schoolhouse Rock's "Verb" movie, but apparently I confused "Verb: That's What's Happening" with the PSA campaign for fitness "Verb: It's What You Do." Oh well, you know where to find Schoolhouse Rock if you need to.)

#ClubNinetyThree #93 1.3.1

1.3.1

Earlier the "peasant" said he wouldn't say his name if he were to die, and now he makes good on that promise, not giving his name at all during this scene. St. Anne d'Auray, which the "peasant" swears by, is a village in Brittany where St. Anne appeared to a man- it then became a place of pilgrimage. I can't find an etymology for Halmalo, though I guess it might be related to the one of the seven Breton founder-saints Malo. There's a lot of good stuff about how religion and politics can reinforce each other in this chapter; the bit about how God suffers in his child reminds me of the discussion in LM between the Bishop and G about the child king and all the other children who suffered. "under similar circumstances to those in which I had your brother shot, I would shoot my own son." Which shows just how little the "peasant," for all his conservatism, values family. Family is going to be a big theme. Also, callback to Joly. "Ah! you judge the means God chooses! Are you going to take it on yourself to judge the thunderbolt which is in heaven?" Again with the storms. The "peasant" is wrong about being an instrument of God, but he's not wrong about the inability of people to judge the "storm." I love the reverse psychology of this chapter. Halmalo expects the "peasant" to protest- his initial "as you like" disconcerts him enough that the later objections, first to the lack of priest and finally to the morality of the killing, get through, and to the end the objections are couched in a "go ahead, do it anyway" rhetoric. Halmalo is a peasant, but he's got his own opinions about politics, unlike Michelle. He's ideologically committed to the royalist cause, and the "peasant's" argument is all ideology- not "you shouldn't kill me because I'm a lord" but "you shouldn't kill me because you'll damage your own cause." It wouldn't work if Halmalo weren't political. I love how the "peasant" manages to successfully argue for his own life without ever begging for it or even making it about his own life. It's entirely about the consequences of killing him (and about both their souls). Regardless of what we think of the peasant, I think we can all agree that it's better for Halmalo's soul and his cause not to kill this man in vengeance. Mercy wins out over harshness here. To go back to Joly, though, here mercy violates family ties the way vengeance did there. In order to show mercy to this man, Halmalo ends up basically justifying his brother's death. Also, what will be the consequences of Halmalo's mercy? Good in his view, but in ours, not so much! What I love about this book is that everything has consequences.