#lm 5.3.2

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

Round 1, Matchup 12: I.i.11 vs V.iii.2

Which chapter title do you prefer?

A Restriction

Explanation

Voting ended onApr 17, 2025

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

V.iii.2 Explication

Which is your favorite translation of this chapter title?

Explanation

An Explanation

Voting ended onMar 29, 2025

Explanation: Wilbour, Wraxall, Hapgood, Gray, Denny, FMA, Rose

An Explanation: Donougher

[pilferingapples]

[ID: the "X Mentioned!" meme , saying "Bousingot Mentioned!" /ID]

The result of this council held by the watch dogs was, that they had been mistaken, that there had been no noise, that it was useless to get entangled in the belt sewer, that it would only be a waste of time, but that they ought to hasten towards Saint-Merry; that if there was anything to do, and any “bousingot” to track out, it was in that quarter. From time to time, parties re-sole their old insults. In 1832, the word bousingot formed the interim between the word jacobin, which had become obsolete, and the word demagogue which has since rendered such excellent service.

--LM 5.3.2

[dolphin1812]

This might be short, but!

The tension around the lantern reminds me of the scene where Jean Valjean flees the Gorbeau house (the first time): I don’t know if it’s just a similar image of Valjean hiding in the shadows, but it feels similarly suspenseful. There is also, of course, dog imagery, as he hides from the “bull-dogs” and the “watch dogs” that hunt for those who have crossed societal/political lines in the sewers.

“From time to time, parties re-sole their old insults. In 1832, the word bousingot formed the interim between the word jacobin, which had become obsolete, and the word demagogue which has since rendered such excellent service.”

This is just a very funny way of phrasing a change in terminology.

It’s absolutely terrifying that the bullet came so close to Valjean! As long-winded as Hugo can be, he really does get tense moments, too; this entire section is so scary, which makes it quite fun to read.

It’s also fascinating to know that Valjean was saved not by his escape skills here, but by the flaws of the sewer itself, with the system he’s stumbled into being too much of a hassle to explore. The possibility of armed people is a threat as well, to be fair, but the chaos of the sewer - much like other harsh environments, like the forest or the convent - proves to be beneficial to Valjean in that it destabilizes hierarchies, giving him a chance to prevail in a way he wouldn’t in “organized society.” The sewer is still dangerous; of that, there’s no doubt. Still, it’s the scariest and darkest place Valjean has chosen in a long line of shady places that offer cover.

[cliozaur]

If the sewers are one of the circles of hell, they have their demons. And these demons are the police dispatched to hunt down the surviving insurrectionists. Fortunately for Jean Valjean, their efforts lack thoroughness. Even the lantern failed to expose him in the darkness, as they hurried toward Saint-Merry with its larger barricade.

Adding to the portrayal from the previous chapter, Hugo reminds us that Jean Valjean's remarkable resourcefulness wasn't an easy feat, considering he teetered on the brink of exhaustion due to 'lack of sleep and food.' The sudden emergence of the police behind him must have been extremely stressful, likely triggering flashbacks of a previous instance when the police chased him with Cosette before he reached the convent.

I love how Hugo chose to digress and explain the meaning of the word 'bousingot' as it was in 1832. It’s just so like him!

[pilferingapples]

Bousingot Bouzingo Bousingo

@everyonewasabird​  you mention in your post on Les MIs 5.3.2 (and I hope you don’t mind my quoting you out-of-post!, but this got. Long.), 

(If I’d had to guess where in Les Miserables Hugo defined the word bousingot for the reader, I absolutely wouldn’t have put it here, after the rebellion is done, after all our favorite countercultural rebels are dead…. but maybe that’s because I’m too used to Borel reclaiming it, and normal people think of it as a pejorative term. Here, it’s the police’s term for the insurgents.)

Indeed! “ Bouzingo/Bousingot/Bousingo”  was a word with a lot of connotations-- not unlike “ Romantic”  or, if it comes to that, “ Socialist” :P  But I think we’ve got enough versions of it for a sort of general Romantic consensus XD  :

Hugo’s version here is, of course:

From time to time, parties re-sole their old insults. In 1832, the word bousingot formed the interim between the word jacobin, which had become obsolete, and the word demagogue which has since rendered such excellent service.

“ Demagogue”  being something Hugo himself had been called by this point, and , as suggested, right in line with “Jacobin” -- it means, well , “ the reds” , and the cold war US sense of “ the reds” isn’t a bad way of translating it, either-- a term  that can mean either genuine political radicals or just someone a conservative doesn’t like for “ lifestyle”  reasons :/ Either way, fair game for a little police brutality!

More confirmation of them as Favorite Police Targets from George Sand in Horace,  via the novel’s main narrator, who is...left-sympathetic but politically more or less apathetic, like a more self-assured Grantaire, really (translation Zack Rogow, bolding/italics mine):

...They always find themselves naturally carried away by riots.  The youngest go just to observe, others go to take part; in those days almost everyone threw himself into it for a moment and then quickly withdrew, after having delivered and received a good few blows.   This activity didn't change things on the surface, and the only alteration produced by these efforts was a doubling of the fear of the shopkeepers and brutal cruelty on the part of the police. But not a single person who so casually disturbed public order back then need blush at the present hour for having had a few days of youthful warmth.   When youth cannot demonstrate the greatness and courage of its heart except by attacking that  society, that society must be evil indeed! 

They were called Bousingots because of the sailor hats of that name, made of shiny leather, which they adopted as their rallying sign.  Later they wore a scarlet headpiece in the form of a  military stocking cap ,  with a black velvet band all around it.  Pointed out again and again, to the police,  and attacked in the street by stool pigeons, they next adopted a gray  hat, but they were no less frequently rounded up and mistreated.  Their conduct has been much denounced; but I  don't think the  government has been able to  justify that of its own officers,  veritable assasssins who beat to death a good number of Bousingots while shopkeepers looked on, showing not the slightest indignation or pity. 

The name Bousingots stuck.  When le Figaro , which kept up a teasing and caustic opposition under the loyal management of M. Delatouche, changed hands, and little by little changed its stripes, the name Bousingot became an insult; after that there was no mockery too bitter or unjust with which to smear them.  But the true Bousingots remained unmoved...

The narrator’s description of a  “ true Bousingot”, his friend Jean Laraviniere,   seems familiar, as a personality:

...his face was pleasant, his  appearance original, as were his wits.  He was generous as he was brave, and that was no small measure.  His instinctual combativeness, as it's called in phrenology, drew him impetuously into every brawl, and he always brought along a cohort of intrepid friends, fanaticized by his coolheaded heroism and his bellicose joyfulness... He was a blusterer, a carouser, if you will; but what a loyal personality, what magnanimous devotion! He had  all the eccentricities of his role, complete recklessness about his impetuosity, all the swagger of his position.  You might have laughed at him; but you would have been  forced to love him. He was so good, so naive in his convictions, so devoted to his friends!

It doesn't sound too far from 

...a good-natured mortal, who kept bad company, brave, a spendthrift, prodigal, and to the verge of generosity, talkative, and at times eloquent, bold to the verge of effrontery; the best fellow possible; he had daring waistcoats, and scarlet opinions; a wholesale blusterer, that is to say, loving nothing so much as a quarrel, unless it were an uprising; and nothing so much as an uprising, unless it were a revolution; always ready to smash a window-pane, then to tear up the pavement, then to demolish a government, just to see the effect of it...a man of caprice, was scattered over numerous cafes; the others had habits, he had none. He sauntered. To stray is human. To saunter is Parisian. In reality, he had a penetrating mind and was more of a thinker than appeared to view.

He served as a connecting link between the Friends of the A B C and other still unorganized groups...

right? 

So there's an image of A Bouzingo as a character, at least:  loud, leftist to a point that would seem absurd to Reasonable, Moderate types, violent in that cause , a constant target/enemy of the police.  This seems consistent across sympathetic writers; even le Figaro, in the mocking article The Red Bouzingo, gives them the same general assessment, albeit from an unsympathetic POV:

The bousingot is inexhaustible, he will leave his mark like the camaraderie, the piqueurs and the jeunes-frances.  If one were still writing books, one would put him in the books; if one still had theaters, one would drag him over the theaters by his beard and by his hat.  The bousingot belongs to painting, statuary, to trestle-stages, to the Cockaigne pole, to Chinese shadows, to blockades at the intersection, he’s the sea-foam of politics, the flower of the ridiculous, the prototype of all exaggeration.  By nature he’s a being of 93 in politics, honorably refined for his fashion, a royal bird for his habits.  We’re waiting for Poulaine slippers.

Again: dangerously republican, dramatic to absurdity ; yet,even le Figaro concludes “ They’re not evildoers. “ 

And of course Philothee O’Neddy, the only person I’ve got quotes from who can and does actually claim the title for himself, says they were, rather intentionally, “laughable” in their exaggeration,but sincere in their politics.  

..and of course, that above all else, they were  bouzingo, no S, no T.  Ah well, what message is ever perfectly preserved across the ages? XD 

I suspect this is one of those (many) places where Hugo fully expected the audience to need no more than his nod at a term to understand both the reference and the opinion he had on the subject, but here we are now, and it’s an excuse for me to assemble a small run of references instead XD

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 5.3.2 “Explanation”

I don’t know what to make of this chapter.

We learn that the police in the sewer are part of a city-wide patrol looking for escaped bousingots--Hugo pauses to define the word, here, one that’s come up before in this book, but not often--with soldiers on the surface and police in the sewers.

(If I’d had to guess where in Les Miserables Hugo defined the word bousingot for the reader, I absolutely wouldn’t have put it here, after the rebellion is done, after all our favorite countercultural rebels are dead.... but maybe that’s because I’m too used to Borel reclaiming it, and normal people think of it as a pejorative term. Here, it’s the police’s term for the insurgents.)

Valjean isn’t seeing or thinking clearly--the lantern is a distant red light, and he makes out phantoms around it, and he knows to hold still and hide. But he hasn’t put together what or who it is, which is more indication than we usually get about how far out of it he is.

What he sees is a nightmare version of what he saw the night he and Cosette fled the Gorbeau house:

Jean Valjean saw these goblins form a kind of circle. These mastiffs' heads bunched together and whispered.

Once again, he’s on the run, and he can see the police gathered in an open square discussing how to catch him. Once again, the police make the mistake of staying in the light, which makes them easy to see and Valjean difficult to see. This time, in this bad light and bad state of mind, they’re not people but demonic guard dogs. And he’s not carrying Cosette, the living child he loves, he’s carrying Marius, her nearly-dead boyfriend whom he hates. And he’s not on the surface, heading towards burial, he’s already buried.

Javert failed that night because he was too thorough: he checked all the corners, giving Valjean time to climb the wall. Tonight, the police fail because they’re not thorough enough.

But I’m not sure how to put it all together. The police get a whole chapter here, but not much happens in it. We see again the ambiguous status of the sewer--the police can come here, but they don’t own this place the way they own the streets; they’re visitors here, and they’re awkward at it and out of their depth.

There’s something here about the inverted convent chase, but I’m not putting together what or why.