The Novel of the Century

Review

David Bellos is the Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French and Comparative Literature  and Director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University. He is the author of Romain Gary: A Tall Story (published by Vintage Digital, 2010), and Georges Perec: A Life in Words (published by David R. Godine, 1993) (Prix Goncourt for biography), amongst other books, and the translator of Chronicle in Stone: A Novel by Ismael Kadare (Arcade Publishing, 2011), amongst other translations.

Geraldine Brodie, our Linguist of the Month of August 2016 and since then a regular contributor to this blog is Senior Lecturer in Translation Theory and Theatre Translation in the Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry, where she convenes the MA in Translation Theory and Practice.

The cover illustration of David Bellos's latest book shows a dusty-coloured tome partly obscured by a ribbon bearing the legend, 'The Novel of the Century'. This image also provides a graphic introduction to the contents, promising to reveal some surprises. Subtitled 'The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables', this volume invites the reader on a voyage of discovery of Victor Hugo's best-known work: its creation, content, context and subsequent translations and adaptations. Bellos is our tour guide; his encyclopaedic knowledge provides a constant source of unexpected information, and his evident enjoyment in the exploration is infectious. This book is not only informative – it's fun. But, most of all, Bellos sets out to examine the reputation of Les Misérables, a book more recognized these days for its spin-offs in the form of film, theatre and musical productions, and make a case for its significance as an enduring literary force, both in its own time and today.

Bellos's affection for Victor Hugo and for his oeuvre exudes from the pages, but he writes for a wide audience, recognizing the range of perspectives and levels of familiarity with which his readers may approach Les Misérables. An engaging author's note admits that even he, a professor of French, first read the book later in life and discovered that he had 'never before read a work so extraordinarily diverse yet so tightly wound round its central thread'. Bellos suggests to neophytes that as Les Misérables is composed of 365 chapters it can be read one chapter a day for a year. I began by following his recommendation, but came to the conclusion that it's better to take the approach of Bellos himself: total immersion. Nevertheless, one of the ways in which Bellos pays tribute to Hugo's composition is to organize his study in five loosely chronological parts, echoing the structure of the novel. Between each of these parts, Bellos inserts a short 'interlude' examining an extraneous aspect of the novel, such as 'Inventing the Names' or 'High Style, Low Style, Latin and Slang'.

This theatrical reference is particularly apposite in a work that discusses the film and theatre legacies of Les Misérables. Bellos points out that an 1897 clip by the Lumière brothers of an unknown performer representing key characters from the book (and Hugo himself) was the first cinematic recording of any kind of fiction. Since then, 'Hugo's novel has fed the film industries of almost every country in the world, and Les Misérables has become the most frequently adapted novel of all time'. Bellos is generous in his assessment of these adaptations, taking the view that anachronisms and invented scenes, such as the courtroom dramas depicting Jean Valjean's conviction to hard labour, 'are not contradictions of what Hugo expected his readers to understand'. Bellos himself takes up the challenge of adaptation, composing a film script for an imagined adaptation that would begin on the battlefield of Waterloo, an event that Bellos considers to be of vital significance for both Hugo and his novel, but which is frequently overlooked in its retellings.

Bellos's filmic vision asserts itself throughout his book, drawing a series of colourful pictures of Hugo's life and surroundings. Descriptions of the furniture in Hugo's apartment in Paris provide a key to Hugo's political and professional activities. Bellos is unimpressed by Hugo's interior decoration proclivities at Hauteville House in Guernsey, but his detailed descriptions portray the extent to which Hugo made a settled home for his family, himself and his wider entourage in exile. Bellos's visual interests extend to the insertion of a guide to colour codes , intended 'to help with the reading of all fiction written in France before around 1865' and typical of the erudite attention to detail that makes the book so enjoyable but can also transform an understanding of the subject text itself. The documentary film approach to the topic is established in the first lines of the introduction, with the opening scenario of the modern-day Commodore Clipper ferry travelling from Portsmouth to Guernsey, interweaving with Hugo's arrival in 1855. This is also the beginning of a detective adventure for the reader; how and why was this book written in Guernsey?

Bellos's discussions of translations of Les Misérables are as wide-reaching and entertaining as his hugely successful Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything (a book that I recommend to my own Translation students). He discusses the variety of translations of Les Misérables over time, including an 1863 pirate edition launched in Richmond, Virginia which was prefaced with the words, 'the absence of a few anti-slavery paragraphs will hardly be complained of by Southern readers'. Among other remarkable features, Bellos notes that 'the full text of Les Misérables in the right order of reading was not available to British readers until 2008',  23 years after the complete Chinese translation. From a lexical perspective, Bellos demonstrates how translation can have unintended consequences; scenes of Valjean as a galley slave in Boleslawski's early film adaptation, retained in Boublil and Schönberg's Broadway musical, stem from the 'maritime mistake' whereby the French term for 'hard labour', la peine des galères, had been long divorced from its original connotation with convict oarsmen, even when used by Hugo. Nevertheless, galère does indeed mean 'galley' and this early translator's decision has dictated one of the lasting images of Valjean.

Bellos also draws on his close acquaintance with terminology and definition to discuss the ideology of the Les Misérables. In his view, it is a progressive book but not left-wing, a label that has come about due to a shift in the meaning attaching to 'proletariat' (Marx, Bellos points out, was not as well versed in Roman political structure as Hugo). He explores the sometimes opposing stances taken by Hugo in the novel with regards to religion and politics, seeing them not as contradictions but as panoramic views of these topics. With regard to the polemics of religion Bellos writes, 'Les Misérables is intentionally designed to be equally irritating to both sides. How else could it seriously promote the great reconciliation between factions and classes whose lamentable and often bloody disputes were contingent and not necessary parts of social life?' From a political perspective, Bellos asks, 'Where, then, does the novel really hang on the great washing-line of political convictions stretching from the far left to the far right?' It is this panorama that makes Les Misérables worthy of its accolade 'Novel of the Century', a book that engaged mightily in the debates of its era, but was also a force for transformation. Bellos considers that Les Misérables was instrumental in the change of social perception about the status of poverty. Hugo's convictions continue to reach out to us today through the many proliferations of his work, says Bellos: 'There's a sense in which we are all Hugolians now'.

The Novel of the Century is less a study of the content of Les Misérables than an examination of its context and influence, while also providing insights on how the book was written and prepared for publication. In imparting this information, Bellos supplies a wealth of enjoyable comment and information for readers who have read or may read the book, or who have simply had some experience of its characters and story in some form. He is convincing on the significance of Hugo's novel and liberal in the myriad ways we might approach it. Les Misérables is a rich book, and perhaps like the menu for the banquet celebrating its publication, which Bellos reproduces in all its detail, it can be sampled or gorged on, but remains a tour de force.