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Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo
Jul. 5th, 2020 05:15 pmI decided I needed a bit of a respite from D. K. Broster's heroically romantic Royalists :D
Ninety-Three (1874; I read the 1889 translation by Aline Delano) was Victor Hugo's last novel, but it's only the second of his that I've read, after the highly memorable Les Misérables. Les Misérables, while not directly about the French Revolution, is very much indirectly about it, and has a lot to say on the subject, but it's in this book that Hugo tackles the subject head-on. The title, of course, means 1793—it's set during the civil war in Brittany and the Vendée, features several major historical Revolutionaries and has fictional Republican and Royalist leaders as its main characters.
It's much shorter than Les Misérables, and the plot is relatively straightforward. The Bonnet Rouge, a Republican battalion fighting in Brittany, meet a young mother and her three children who are fleeing from the conflict, and end up adopting them; after Royalists attack the battalion the mother, Michelle Fléchard, is left wounded, while the children are taken captive by the Royalists, and she sets out to find them. Meanwhile a terrible and ruthless Royalist aristocrat, the Marquis de Lantenac, has arrived in France and rallied the Royalists, while the bold but merciful Republican leader Gauvain prepares to oppose him. In Paris, the Revolutionary high command send the former priest and pitiless Republican Cimourdain as a delegate to support and keep an eye on Gauvain. These characters all come together in fatal ways, and the climax involves a horrible moral dilemma. As is typical for Hugo, only a certain amount of the page-count is taken up with the actual plot, with the rest being devoted to digressions on the Revolutionary government, the state of Paris and the provinces, philosophy, history and a general overview of Hugo's opinions about things.
I'm always glad when I can recognise an author's prose style across different works translated by different people—it reassures me that the translators are representing the original style reasonably faithfully—and, happily, this was the case here. I was especially glad in this case, because Hugo's prose style is lovely and very powerful, and there are some truly great moments of description and imagery. One scene early on in the book, in which one of the cannons on board a warship breaks from its fittings and rolls around the gun deck causing mayhem, is particularly vivid—I'd never really thought about the origins of the phrase 'loose cannon' before, but I certainly won't forget it now! The final scene is another amazing piece: I won't go into detail, because spoilers, but the staging of the thing, the ominous description of the guillotine, the contrast between it and the tower—Victor Hugo certainly knows a capital-S Symbol when he sees one—and, best of all, the image of 'pitiless Nature', constant in its beauty while humans do horrible things to each other around it—I mean, there's using the natural world to set a scene and then there's this! I can't do it justice. Please read this beautiful, awful book and see for yourself.
So, if you thought that Les Misérables had a horrible ending... :D The final twists of this book are perfectly set up for an outcome that's devastating in its complete inevitability. It ends up hinging around an awful dilemma which, once resolved, presents another character with a different dilemma, and all the choices made are horrible and tragic and great. Hugo uses both the general Revolutionary setting and the specifics of the situation he sets up to explore the various fundamental moral questions involved. Is it acceptable—or possible—to use violence in the pursuit a better world? Does revolutionary violence aim at its own obsolescence? Can an act of mercy be a wrong act? We don't really get easy answers in this book.
(One question he doesn't address in so many words is 'was the French Revolution a good thing?'—because, as far as he's concerned, it's not a question of good or bad, not a matter of should but one of must. His attitude to the Revolution as this awful, inevitable, beautiful and terrible instance of the philosophical Absolute makes a lot of sense as a way of dealing with events like that).
One of my reasons for reading this now was to counterbalance D. K. Broster's Royalism a bit. Hugo, while by no means ignoring the evils of the Revolution, is certainly on the side of the Republicans, and presents some powerful arguments for it, e.g. this succinct statement of the situation from Michelle's backstory:
There are other interesting comparisons to be made with Broster. Of course, the politics are far more important to Hugo—both this book and Les Misérables really give the impression that they're only partly about their own plots, and in some ways much more attempts to grapple with universal questions of philosophy and morality—whereas Broster is concerned with the characters and plots of her stories and the historical details directly relevant to them, and takes people's political allegiances mostly for granted. There's an interesting bit near the end where the Royalist villain has a big speech setting out his opinions and vision of society—in a believable, would-actually-sound-sympathetic-to-a-conservative way rather than a sneering-villain way—and it was at least refreshing to have this portrayed as the evil it is, rather than glossing over the reality of such a society by only ever writing about generous, honourable individuals. And I think the ending presents an interesting contrast with the ending of The Yellow Poppy, in that they both involve characters willingly going to their deaths out of rigid adherence to strict principles of morality and honour—but in very different ways.
I haven't even got onto the characters—the triangle of rigid, absolute ideals that is Cimourdain, Gauvain and Lantenac, and the ways they clash with each other; the kindly Sergeant Radoub; Michelle and her friendship with the characters of the Bonnet Rouge; the memorable portrayals of Robespierre, Danton and Marat in their cameo—but they're very good too! And various other things—Gauvain's opinions on sewage treatment and renewable energy, the symbolism of the guillotine, Hugo's way of describing a setting by throwing loads of highly specific details into a dense paragraph and letting the general impression emerge, etc. etc. Overall, despite some definite problems with the political attitudes it takes, I really enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it if you too would like some more dramatic Republican philosophising in your life.
Ninety-Three (1874; I read the 1889 translation by Aline Delano) was Victor Hugo's last novel, but it's only the second of his that I've read, after the highly memorable Les Misérables. Les Misérables, while not directly about the French Revolution, is very much indirectly about it, and has a lot to say on the subject, but it's in this book that Hugo tackles the subject head-on. The title, of course, means 1793—it's set during the civil war in Brittany and the Vendée, features several major historical Revolutionaries and has fictional Republican and Royalist leaders as its main characters.
It's much shorter than Les Misérables, and the plot is relatively straightforward. The Bonnet Rouge, a Republican battalion fighting in Brittany, meet a young mother and her three children who are fleeing from the conflict, and end up adopting them; after Royalists attack the battalion the mother, Michelle Fléchard, is left wounded, while the children are taken captive by the Royalists, and she sets out to find them. Meanwhile a terrible and ruthless Royalist aristocrat, the Marquis de Lantenac, has arrived in France and rallied the Royalists, while the bold but merciful Republican leader Gauvain prepares to oppose him. In Paris, the Revolutionary high command send the former priest and pitiless Republican Cimourdain as a delegate to support and keep an eye on Gauvain. These characters all come together in fatal ways, and the climax involves a horrible moral dilemma. As is typical for Hugo, only a certain amount of the page-count is taken up with the actual plot, with the rest being devoted to digressions on the Revolutionary government, the state of Paris and the provinces, philosophy, history and a general overview of Hugo's opinions about things.
I'm always glad when I can recognise an author's prose style across different works translated by different people—it reassures me that the translators are representing the original style reasonably faithfully—and, happily, this was the case here. I was especially glad in this case, because Hugo's prose style is lovely and very powerful, and there are some truly great moments of description and imagery. One scene early on in the book, in which one of the cannons on board a warship breaks from its fittings and rolls around the gun deck causing mayhem, is particularly vivid—I'd never really thought about the origins of the phrase 'loose cannon' before, but I certainly won't forget it now! The final scene is another amazing piece: I won't go into detail, because spoilers, but the staging of the thing, the ominous description of the guillotine, the contrast between it and the tower—Victor Hugo certainly knows a capital-S Symbol when he sees one—and, best of all, the image of 'pitiless Nature', constant in its beauty while humans do horrible things to each other around it—I mean, there's using the natural world to set a scene and then there's this! I can't do it justice. Please read this beautiful, awful book and see for yourself.
So, if you thought that Les Misérables had a horrible ending... :D The final twists of this book are perfectly set up for an outcome that's devastating in its complete inevitability. It ends up hinging around an awful dilemma which, once resolved, presents another character with a different dilemma, and all the choices made are horrible and tragic and great. Hugo uses both the general Revolutionary setting and the specifics of the situation he sets up to explore the various fundamental moral questions involved. Is it acceptable—or possible—to use violence in the pursuit a better world? Does revolutionary violence aim at its own obsolescence? Can an act of mercy be a wrong act? We don't really get easy answers in this book.
(One question he doesn't address in so many words is 'was the French Revolution a good thing?'—because, as far as he's concerned, it's not a question of good or bad, not a matter of should but one of must. His attitude to the Revolution as this awful, inevitable, beautiful and terrible instance of the philosophical Absolute makes a lot of sense as a way of dealing with events like that).
One of my reasons for reading this now was to counterbalance D. K. Broster's Royalism a bit. Hugo, while by no means ignoring the evils of the Revolution, is certainly on the side of the Republicans, and presents some powerful arguments for it, e.g. this succinct statement of the situation from Michelle's backstory:
"They [Michelle's family] were laborers. My father was feeble and could not work, on account of a beating which the lord, his lord, our lord, gave him: it was really a mercy, for my father had poached a rabbit, a crime of which the penalty is death; but the lord was merciful and said, 'You may give him only a hundred blows with a stick;' and my father was left a cripple."But other aspects of his politics here are less sympathetic. By setting the story in the counter-Revolutionary struggles of Brittany and the Vendée, it becomes less a question of why the people disliked the oppressive aristocrats and more one of why the peasants of these provinces chose to fight against the Revolution. As I understand it, one important factor in this was that the Republicans wanted to suppress the independence and local identity of the provinces, especially Brittany, and Hugo's interpretation of this conflict boils down to 'the Bretons are ignorant savages who need to have their culture and language stamped out in the name of Progress and Enlightenment', which isn't really what you'd call a sympathetic perspective on the People or the Rights of Man. And, drawing the obvious line between French treatment of Brittany and British treatment of e.g. the Highlands—maybe Broster got some things right, after all.
"And then?"
"My grandfather was a Huguenot. The curé had him sent to the galleys. I was very young then."
"And then?"
"My husband's father was a salt smuggler. The king had him hung."
"And what did your husband do?"
"He used to fight in those times."
"For whom?"
"For the king."
"And after that?"
"Ah! For his lord."
"And then?"
"For the curé."
There are other interesting comparisons to be made with Broster. Of course, the politics are far more important to Hugo—both this book and Les Misérables really give the impression that they're only partly about their own plots, and in some ways much more attempts to grapple with universal questions of philosophy and morality—whereas Broster is concerned with the characters and plots of her stories and the historical details directly relevant to them, and takes people's political allegiances mostly for granted. There's an interesting bit near the end where the Royalist villain has a big speech setting out his opinions and vision of society—in a believable, would-actually-sound-sympathetic-to-a-conservative way rather than a sneering-villain way—and it was at least refreshing to have this portrayed as the evil it is, rather than glossing over the reality of such a society by only ever writing about generous, honourable individuals. And I think the ending presents an interesting contrast with the ending of The Yellow Poppy, in that they both involve characters willingly going to their deaths out of rigid adherence to strict principles of morality and honour—but in very different ways.
I haven't even got onto the characters—the triangle of rigid, absolute ideals that is Cimourdain, Gauvain and Lantenac, and the ways they clash with each other; the kindly Sergeant Radoub; Michelle and her friendship with the characters of the Bonnet Rouge; the memorable portrayals of Robespierre, Danton and Marat in their cameo—but they're very good too! And various other things—Gauvain's opinions on sewage treatment and renewable energy, the symbolism of the guillotine, Hugo's way of describing a setting by throwing loads of highly specific details into a dense paragraph and letting the general impression emerge, etc. etc. Overall, despite some definite problems with the political attitudes it takes, I really enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it if you too would like some more dramatic Republican philosophising in your life.
