Rev Left Radio - Les Misérables: Victor Hugo, Revolution, and French History

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Corey Mohler from Existential Comics returns to the show to discuss the famous novel (and its many adaptations) by Victor Hugo "Les Misérables". Together they discuss the novel, its various adaptations, its political and social themes, 19th Century France, the "Giants of '93", read some passages from the book, and discuss its ongoing legacy and relevance for us today!   Check out Existential Comics HERE  Check our all our previous episodes with Corey on a wide range of topics HERE   ------------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/revleft  

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have back on the show Corey Moller from Existential Comics. He's been on the show a few times. I think our last episode was the episode we did on the Russian novelist Dostoevsky. He's back on today to talk about the novel by Victor Hugo Le Miserab. Of course, it's been adapted into musicals, into movies, the abridged version. was a BBC adaptation for radio, etc. It's lived on through the years. The novel was written in 1862 and still in the 20th century we had many adaptations and today, you know, college and

high school students still learn about it. And it's just an interesting work of art as well as an interesting work of history because it covers a certain period in French history between the French Revolution and the Paris Commune that a lot of us, especially outside of France, know much about. And the themes in which the novel, the themes that the novel explores are those totally in line with the, with the political left broadly. And so me and Corey really dive into it and we explore, we explore the work of art by Victor Hugo. So this is a really interesting conversation. Now, if you are very familiar with Les Miserables, this will be a fascinating conversation to sort of get some, you know, analysis and pull out some certain themes and

the stuff that we talk about will be interesting to you. And, if you've never heard it at all. Don't, don't feel, you know, scared to listen to this episode. You know, listen to this episode and then go watch the musical or watch the movie or, heaven forbid, read the incredibly long novel. That would be, you know, an honorable thing to do. So, yeah, whether you're very well versed in this or never even heard the phrase, Les Miserab in your life, this episode will still connect with you and still offer something. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Corey on Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. I'm Corey Moller, best known for doing existential comics,

and actually in a couple weeks it'll be 10 years doing it. So that's kind of a milestone. But, yeah, here to talk about Lin Zerab. Wonderful. It's always a pleasure to have you on, Corey. You have to be a fan favorite. Been on some of our most downloaded episodes. I know that Dostoevsky episode was really well received as well.

Happy to have you back. you reach out to me saying this would be a wonderful thing to cover and I had honestly before that of course I've heard of it I sort of am aware of its its cultural impact I was aware of Victor Hugo

but I had never engaged with the text or any of its adaptations beforehand so this will be a fun one I learned a lot in prep and I'm sure I'll learn a lot talking to you about it today and hopefully if people

who have listened to it will get a lot or have read the book or I've watched the movie or whatever will get a lot out of this and people who haven't hopefully this will spur them to check it out. So let's go ahead and get into it. And I guess the best way to sort of start is, can you kind of just please introduce us first and foremost to this novel by Victor Hugo

and then discuss some of its adaptations, how they're similar or different from the novel itself, et cetera? Yeah, of course, most people probably know it through the adaptations, through the musical and maybe the movie, but the novel was one of the most popular novels ever written at the time and read all over the world. It was written in 1860s. 62. Victor Hugo was like 60 years old at the time, supposedly had been working on it for like 10 years, his masterpiece. He wasn't even really much of a novelist. He was mostly a poet, and that was back in the day when a poet could be the most famous and popular and wealthy person in France. He made millions of dollars through writing poetry. He had written the hunchback of Notre Dame, like 30 years earlier. That was super successful, but then he never really wrote any other novels. he wrote it while he was exiled from France basically for making fun of Napoleon III too much sensitive and exiled him

I mean we can talk about that a little more later it's kind of funny but he was living in Jersey which is like a not New Jersey unfortunately because that would really be funny but Jersey is like an island in the English Channel so he was exiled there writing this novel forever he was so popular in France at that time that, like, I guess they had offered him, like, the equivalent of five or ten million dollars for rights to this novel.

Different publishers were competing for the rights. And it was, like, such a guaranteed hit that they offered him this without even reading a single page of the novel, without knowing anything that it was about. They're like, if you're writing a novel, we'll pay you up front. It was like the largest upfront sum ever given to this kind of deal. The only thing that they asked them is, like, as long as it's not poise, political, which is sort of funny thing to hear because, of course, it's super political. But what they meant was, like, as long as it's not trashing Napoleon III and we're going

to get in trouble and the book's going to get banned, which it wasn't. It was, that's why it's set. It was written in 1862, but sort of set in 1832-ish. It also was like, had a weird thing where they didn't give advanced copies to literary critics. It was almost like a Harry Potter novel coming out. it was such an event. In France, everybody was going to read it. The critics actually, um, it's probably going to be surprising to people here, but the critics actually pretty much trashed it, partly probably because they were mad. They didn't get advanced copies because this is

kind of how they make their living. Uh, but also it was kind of, uh, I mean, it does have a lot of problems as a novel, to be honest. It's massively long. It's like 2,000 pages. He rambles on and on it about totally irrelevant things through many sections. Um, but yeah, the critics totally trashed it. The contemporary artists in France also kind of trashed it. I know Flombert was one of the most prestigious authors at the time. He said it was like Catholico, socialist, garbage.

You know, which, you know, I mean, he kind of has a point on it. But Flambair is like, I think the other reason it wasn't super popular among the artists is that it was kind of, Victor Hugo was known as sort of the great romantic author. And French romanticism is like just what it sounds. It was like a counterculture movement.

Everything's about love. They wrote these huge, great, sweeping, epic novels. And then, you know, the great genius Flombert is the new generation of artists, and they're doing modernism. And he wants to write a 900-page novel about a boring middle-class woman and nothing happens in the entire novel. And that's what they're interested in doing. That's Madame Bovary.

It's a good novel, but it is a lot different. So the modernist didn't really like it. Even, you know, the critics didn't really like it, but it didn't matter at all. It was massively popular. Everybody was reading it in France. It was immediately translated into dozens of languages and read all over the world in Russia and England. You know, Dostoevsky read it dozens of times supposedly, which seems unbelievable because it's like 2,000 pages.

But, you know, I guess. So it was immediately popular everywhere. He insisted to the publisher that they printed on cheap paper so that way the lower class people can still read it. and then basically it's been adapted ever since in plays Orson Wells like one of his first projects adapted it to the radio in like 1930 it was adapted to various plays

basically as soon as film was invented they started adapting it to film there were movies like in the 30s and 40s series is about it but obviously the adaptation is in 1980 they made Le Miserables and musical in England, in the West End. And that's the adaptation that everybody knows. It's like the longest running musical ever,

one of the most popular musicals ever. And sort of interestingly, it shares a sort of similar history where it was kind of the last of its generation of a certain type of musical where, like, I think the previous most popular musical of all time was Oliver, of a twist, we would notice. And that's sort of

similar in some ways to Lim Miserab. It has huge dance numbers, massive scenes, dramatic events, and it's largely about class struggles, poverty, you know, the unjustness of society. And Lim Mezerab was in that vein, and then that

when it came out, also it was trashed by the critics. Amazingly, people will probably be even more surprised to hear that. The critics thought it didn't do justice to the novel, which seems totally absurd to me. It seems like you can't have a better adaptation of a musical of the themes of the novel.

I don't know. Maybe they criticized the music, too. I don't know why, but it was not that well received by the critics. He definitely got that one wrong because it's like the most popular musical ever. And then that era of musicals sort of ended because Android Boyd Weber came out with his shitty musicals about cats or whatever he makes, Phantom of the Opera. So the West End musicals now are hardly at all class-based and stuff.

They don't have these really themes anymore, which is too bad. But Lim Ms. Rob is still playing, of course. And then, of course, you know, there was a very popular movie that came out in 2012 and sort of similar. I also got lukewarm reviews, mainly because the music, you know, they cast Hollywood stars to do the music and fucking Russell Crow can't sing at all. I mean, some of the music is a little butchered.

But the movie's great. Other than the music criticism, I think it was received very well. It was, I think it's the second most popular movie musical of all time after Mamma Mia. So again, very popular. So that's, and then also

I did want to talk about the BBC came out with a sort of high budget, long miniseries about it. that was very good for the most part, but I thought that they made one sort of mistake. I would say that the major differences between the musical and the book,

it gets all the themes perfectly. You amazingly are able to summarize this 2,000-page book into the musical and the movie. Probably the big differences is that cut down Marius' character. Marius is a much more large political plot. He's born to a royalist,

grandfather that raises him and tells him his own father is a trash person, you know, a garbage human being, a revolutionary, and his father was like a brave general under Napoleon, and then Marius sort of goes through this political transformation, joining the revolutionaries, turning against his grandfather. And a lot of this mirrors Victor Hugo's own life. It's sort of the insert. He was raised by a royalist mother, and his father was a Napoleonic general. and the other probably thing that's different about the musical is like the Tenadier character as the innkeeper

are sort of comical in the musical like in the movie especially Sasha Bear Cohen is the actor so they're sort of funny and they're a little harmless even and of course they're nasty people but in the novel they're like vicious animals and they're dangerous people like the very worst of humanity

is in these characters and the BBC adaptation does those parts well, they show Marius and they show the Tenadiers, but they make a really crucial mistake with Javert, and they have a really weird scene where they try to make it like, because he's the villain of the novel, I think they tried to make him a little more villainous, and they made him almost, like, obsessive about Jean Valjean, and they made him kind of almost shirking his police duties to be obsessed with capturing Jean Valjean. And the great thing about Javert is character, I think, that lives on is that

unlike, I think modern movies do this. Like, if you're going to have a Marvel movie or something, they'll put, you could have like a cop that's a villain in the movie. But the way that he's a villain is always that he's like a corrupt cop, right? There's corrupt politicians. There's corrupt

military people in modern movies. So they're not criticizing the military, the police, the politicians per se. They're saying, oh, look, these institutions can become corrupted. But Javert is so unique in that he is a morally perfect person. He's literally a perfect cop. He has no corruption in his soul, and he performs his duties perfectly.

So Javert is not the villain of the novel. The villain of the novel is law and property, like quite directly. So the BBC adaptation, I think made a big mistake in trying to like make Javert a little more like he had personal psychological problems that made him obsessive about Jean Valjean, Whereas in reality, he was obsessive about the concept of justice, where justice means the flame and the sword is going to enforce behavior through disciplinary mechanisms on the population. And that is always the villain. Like in Victor Hugo's estimation or in the estimation of the novel, that's like the police are the major villain of people in poverty. Like they're oppressed directly by the law itself, by law and property. So I think the BBC is kind of interesting

I think like modern a lot of modern people can't write that as well Or like don't understand that or don't want to write that So I think that's the big mistake of the BBC one But other than that I thought the BBC documentary was quite well acted and really good Yeah very interesting so yeah like usually like you're saying just to reiterate what you said is like Yeah there's like when you're trying to criticize the failures of police or whatever Then there's this this corrupt individual is in more moral person, you know, and it speaks to a larger liberal idea that manifests in many different

ways, you know, you can talk about like corporate greed. It's not capitalism. It's not the system. It's the CEOs that are that are too greedy, right? And then the same thing applies to or whatever. Exactly, exactly. But to make a morally perfect figure be a villain because he is serving law and property, that's a very interesting and nuanced take that does require some intellectual and moral depth that a lot of modern day creators, writers, et cetera, certainly don't have. And it also requires a deep systemic critique, which a lot of them don't have. And now we're going to get back to Victor Hugo as a human being. We'll talk about his politics, all that in a bit. One thing I'm interested before we get into the major themes of

the novel, which you've certainly already touched on, but we can maybe dive a little deeper, is I just have like a side question just interested. Like, how did you personally come to engage with this novel and its adaptations and what impact did it have on you? well I personally came to engage in it because my wife made me watch the movie and I was like oh how long is it you know but then I sat down and watched it and I was pretty blown away by the themes and the music as well and then sort of watched the musical on YouTube and then eventually got around to reading the novel oh I didn't mention the other probably the first adaptation by the way is abridging the novel like if you're going to read it you should

probably read the abridged version it's like two thousand and pages and Victor Hugo famously like rants and race like goes on and on and on about totally irrelevant stuff like quite famously when probably the most famous one is like when during the absolute

climax of the entire novel when Jean Valjean is taking Marius out through the sewers. Victor Hugo decides to spend about 30 pages discussing the architecture of the sewers and the city planning and how they got created and the map of the sewers and all this stuff

and it's kind of like, why am I reading this, you know? So you probably want to read the abridged version. I actually think it's really, there's a reason why he was so interested in the sewers because he lived, again, at a time through mass change in society. And if you look at like the death tolls, like the death certificates in that era, it's just all like, there was like there was a massive typhus outbreak during these events where thousands of people were dying. It's all communicable diseases.

And the sewers of Paris are like a modern marvel. It's one of the largest engineering projects I ever undertaken in France at that time. And the sewers are built entirely for the common good. Like it's the biggest thing you can do to prevent disease is the sewer system. And it caused a massive improvement in the lives of the poor. So I think that's like why he's so interested in that kind of. He saw for the first time in history, you could see that technology and industry has the potential to alleviate the suffering of the poor

and he was very interested in that kind of societal progress but of course you see that for the most part the money is not being spent that way but the sewers are a great example of like an incredible incredible feat of engineering at that time that massively

improved the lapse of the poor but yeah you probably don't want to read about it because who cares about the particular construct of the sewers these days. Right yeah but I did read somewhere that his digressions on the sewer system was to your idea. Quite famous.

Yeah, absolutely true. But also, like, he had this pet idea about agronomy that the fertilizer and the sewage, or the sewage could be used for fertilizer or something. So he also had this idea that how it could connect with an increase in agricultural production. I don't know. It's very kind of interesting. But, yeah, that pet idea plays out in the novel at some length. I think dozens of pages about that, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah. And you just, today, you really want to be reading that, you know. Right, exactly. Probably not. Absolutely. All right, well, let's touch on some more of the themes then, because you've definitely mentioned some of them and the first question you touched on to some of the political themes.

But can you just talk a little bit more about the major themes really explored in this novel, and particularly those that are relevant to politics? Yeah, obviously, probably the major theme that arcs through the entire novel is the conflict between Jean Valjean and Javert. It's kind of a ideological conflict between John Valjean's, sort of loving grace and forgiveness and goodness and Javert's flame in the sword style justice. That would be the major theme that plays itself out over and over.

And of course, it culminates in Javert committing suicide because the two ideas, like the fact that John Valjean is a good person is totally incompatible with his worldview. And, you know, like the musical, you know, sort of sums it up. There's nothing on earth that we share. It's either Valjean or Javert. The two things can't coexist in society. You can't have a society that's totally based around discipline and also leave room for forgiveness and love and have the people that are criminals are actually good people and the cops are bad people or the people who own property are bad people. It has to be a rigid hierarchy that's enforced with the good people on top and the wicked villains on the bottom. And once that that idea is not true, Javert has to just end it because there's nothing else to live for. But then obviously, politically, there are just, there's these revolutionaries who have an idea to once again overthrow the king. I mean, there's just, this takes place kind of in the mid period of the revolution. There were these great revolutions earlier.

The king got reinstated. New revolutioners come up. Always are inspired by the past and they want to try to get back to at least a French republic, if not. some kind of socialist utopia. Anja Ross, the main revolutionary leader, is obviously some kind of utopian socialist who wants to form a better society for the poor and is going to do that through violence. And that's very much glorified, praised throughout the novel in a way that Austin isn't

in other novels. He was glorifying almost violence. Even if they fail, he's like they should do violence, which is kind of funny because Victor Hugo really didn't believe in that, but he knew a lot of people did, and, you know, he's writing the novel for the population at the time who wanted to look back to the previous revolutions with some nostalgia, I think. Yeah, definitely. Well, I want to kind of combine these next two questions, because you have talked about it at length, the book itself, and it has a literary achievement. Obviously, any book that is still being, you know, turned into adaptations

a century or two after it was written, has a huge cultural impact. So maybe you can talk a little bit more about the book and the novel itself as a literary achievement, and then kind of to put the exclamation point on that, maybe you can read a passage or two that you're particularly fond of in order to give us sort of a sense of the book's literary force. Yeah, I think one reason the novel is so popular is because Victor Hugo was a very broad thinker and broad-minded and touched on all levels of society and everybody. I mean, there's also, you know, we're talking, of course, about Jean Valjean and the revolutionaries, but there's also these plot lines about the poor suffering women in the novel who go through horrible things. And,

you know, and there's plot lines of, you know, a teenage girl. The boy that she likes doesn't like her back. You know, that's a plot line too, that young people like to read. And people today still, you know, young girls watch Le Miserab, and they are focused in on Eponine. And they're like, oh, that's the part that I really liked. I didn't really care so much for the revolution, you know, or whatever. So the book is kind of written for everybody. And that's what happened. Everybody read it. Everybody of all classes read it.

Rich people read it, even though they were the ones who were going to get their heads cut off. They still enjoyed parts of it, I guess. And, you know, people who were just satisfied with society read it and people who were just interested in love and romance read it and everybody read it. And everybody continues to be affected by it. Even though it's 150 years later or something, we still watch the movie. It's still, we still, the musical is still running.

I think and people still go to it. Everybody still enjoys it. So it's had that kind of lasting force, I think, is a credit to Victor Hugo's kind of broad thinking. And then, yeah, I could read just, since we're obviously interested in this, mostly this political aspect, I'll read this passage that I thought was kind of almost tragic because he was writing it at the time about what Andros wanted this revolution to achieve. What is the point of doing this revolution? Like, why should we throw our lives away? So I'll just read this passage here that's taking place more or less when things are probably about to collapse around them and And Jaross is giving speeches to his compatriots about why they're doing this. Yes, instruction, light, light, everything comes from light, and to it everything returns. Citizens, the 19th century is great. But the 20th century will be happy. then there will be nothing more like the history of old.

We shall no longer, as today, have fear of conquest and invasion, a usurpation, a rival of nations, arms, and pans, an interruption of civilization depending on the marriage of kings, on the birth of hereditary tyrannies, a partition of people by a congress, a dismemberment, because of the failure of a dynasty, the combat of two religions meeting face to face like two bucks in the dark, On the bridge of the infinite We shall no longer have to fear famine Farming out

Prostitution arising from distress Misery from the failure of work And the scaffold of the sword In the Battle of Ruffianism The Chance of the Forest of Events One might almost say there will be No more events We shall be happy

The human race will accomplish its law As the terrestrial globe accomplishes its law Harmony will be reestablished between the soul and the star, the soul will gravitate around the truth, and the planet around the light. Friends, the present hour in which I address you is a gloomy hour. But these are terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. Oh, the human race will be delivered. Raised up, consoled. We affirm it on this barrier. Whence we should proceed that cry of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice,

O my brothers, this is the point of junction, and those who think that those who suffer, this baragade is not made of paving stones, nor of joyce, nor bits of iron, is made of two heaps, a heap of ideas, and a heap of woes.

Here misery meets the ideal. The day embraces night, and it says to it, I'm about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me, from the embrace of all desolationation, faith leaps forth. Suffering brings hither their agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our death. Brothers, he who dies here

dies in the radiance of the future. We are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn. So that's the end of the speech where he's explaining why they sacrifice for the future. And you can see, you know, the idea is that all you need is one revolution to get rid of all the kings and create democracies in all Europe. And there will be, as he says, no more events. And of course, it's very tragic because, you know, they almost did it a couple times. In 1848, there were revolutions in Germany and France. And you think, if they made democracies, even liberal democracies where the wealth was still stratified, even that, it could. could have prevented World War I and World War II.

Because this is, oh, the 20th century will be happy. And the 20th century was one of the most miserable centuries in European history and probably will be the most miserable ever in the history of Europe, hopefully. But you can also see what happened, you know, I mean, I think he would be pretty happy regardless of what you think of the European Union. And the European Union is now what he wanted, essentially what he called the United States of Europe is what he invented. vision for the future where look the world is a lot better um if germany isn't trying to invade

france every 20 years yeah like peace people can at least just go to work live at peace and not fear famine so the 21st century at least fairly in europe um at least saw peace uh of this kind of thing i'm sure he wanted a more equitable you know he was always mainly worried about the uh suffering of the poor, yeah, that's the reason you do revolutionists. So at one point, events will end, you know, and you can just get on with it. Absolutely. Yeah, that's a beautiful, you know, critique of inequality, war, religious conflict. He even mentions the degradation of prostitution that comes out of economic coercion, the irrationality of monarchism and hereditary lines of ascension. It's all nonsense. And then he also outlines this beautiful, yes, it's utopian, but I still

think there's a lot of value in a utopian vision of what humanity and the human civilization could be in the future. It certainly, as you said, wasn't the next century, but I still hold out for that vision of a world in which inequality and war and these conflicts. I mean, I do believe that we have it within our capacity, a possibility at least, to achieve such a world, how long it will take, what achieving it will look like. These are all questions still on the table for us as human beings. But I think there's a lot of value in that vision of a human future, free from all of the sort of elements of human civilization that have brutalized and tortured us and really gives rise to what we call the nightmare of history

that still weighs on us. And so, yeah, it's a fascinating and sort of beautiful passage. I know what later will get to the history and I'll bring up the Paris Commune, but I do wonder because you said this book was written in 1862. The Paris Commune happens in 1871 and surely some of these values are instantiated in that beautiful and brave and even down to the barricades and the cobblestone streets are very much sort of exemplified in that beautiful and also tragic event. Does Victor Hugo live to see that? And if he did, do you have any idea at all if he had any thoughts on it or if he talked about it? Yeah, he did live to see that. I think I'm pretty sure he kind of wanted to get out of there, to be honest. Victor Hugo, though, was throughout his life

very wealthy and kind of connected to the upper class despite being very popular among the poor. So I think he actually didn't, I think he fled Paris, if I'm remembering correctly, because he didn't want anything to do with the communes. And he actually didn't really support these kind of violent revolutions. He thought you could do it peacefully. Even obviously also nostalgic and glorifying the revolution, I think a large part of the novel is that he kind of wished he had taken part in this revolution as a young person. His Baudelaire, like his the second most, or the other kind of most popular poet in France actually took part in the barricades and was shooting a rifle, supposedly. So I think he did want to take part in that, and he probably saw the glorious ideals in the Paris commune, but I think he also didn't want to be there while happened, because he was maybe a little worried about what might happen to his property.

He lived in these massive mansions himself, so he's a little, you know, maybe nervous about that. But obviously he was very wanted a republic. He was always kind of a Republican in his life, meaning he wanted a democracy at least. But yeah, you have to think the people in the Paris Commune all read this novel. So this novel may have had a great deal of impact. I mean, this 1832 revolution was largely forgotten by history, even in 1860. People had forgotten about it, this little rebellion that got squashed. So this kind of glorification of it and almost calls.

people to try to do this again. I had to have an impact on young people who were reading this novel. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I never even thought that Victor Hugo's personal thoughts and actions aside that, yeah, many of the people on the barricades in the Paris commune very well

were familiar with this novel and probably had read it themselves. That's fascinating. And, yeah, saw it and took it in as inspiration. The last part I want to ask about the text before we move into the author and then discuss more of the history involved is some of the other characters. Maybe you could mention a few of the other characters that you haven't mentioned yet. And then importantly, I think it's interesting to ask the following, which is, what does the conflict between Jean Valjean and Javert help us understand about certain currents within Christianity and the left? I think that's an interesting aspect of this as well. Yeah, obviously the main character is like we've talked about a little bit. John Valjean, you know, was sentenced to 19 years. We're still.

stealing a loaf of bread. I mean, the novels are so overdramatic, but actually it's kind of funny because I looked up, he's not sentenced to 19 years in prison. He's sentenced to five years in prison, and it's not for stealing a loaf of bread, is for breaking an entering. He broke a window. And I looked up the laws in my state of Oregon, and five years is the maximum sentence for burglary. So if you break a window in Oregon, you could get five years in prison. And in the United States, if you attempt to escape prison, you can get time added on. So that's how it added up to 19 years. He kept trying to escape, and they kept catching him out on another five years, another five years. So Jean Valjean's story actually could happen today. It's not that outlandish. And there have been people sentenced for all sorts of things. I remember there was like a homeless person who stole $100 and then returned it. And they called the cops and he went to present.

Right. So there's all sorts of outlandish things. I remember a few years ago a mom lied about what school district her kid was in to get her into a better school. And it was like, I think 2012, 2014. and she got a prison sentence over that. I mean, absolutely wild. Yeah, so the prison system, which Victor Hugo is definitely a theme in his life critiquing criminal justice. He wrote also Last Hour of a Condemned Man, which is like a one day or last day of a condemned man or whatever,

which is like a chronicle of the last day of the life psychologically of someone who's going to be executed. So Jean Valjean, you know, can happen today. And then Javert we already talked about. And then there's also the Tenadiers, which are kind of. of the, you know, it's often Vaughan and Javert against each other, but it's almost sort of a triangle in a novel where the Tenadiers represent the third part of society, which is the people who are truly are a drain on society, like criminals, vicious people, who will do anything selfishly for themselves. And Victor Hugo always emphasizes that this is like, it was also

very powerfully into the idea that it's your upbringing and your, you know, your influences on you that caused your personality. Jean Baljean very well could have turned into the Tenadiers in the novel. That's obvious. He went into prison, a fairly decent person, and came out a nasty criminal who was willing to steal. And if it weren't for the monk showing him love in his life. And then, you know, other decisions he made along the way and other influences, he would

have turned out exactly like the Tenadiers. And who knows what the Tenadiers, you know, they were vicious. they beat their kids. That's probably because they were beaten as kids. So he's very interested in this idea that like criminals are not evil people. They're just victims of circumstance, even going down to their personality and their attitudes and things. It's like, so he thought they're not really blameworthy in that sense and they need to be

shown kindness and compassion by society. Yeah. And then of course there's Marius who, like I said, is kind of like a mirror of Victor Hugo who acts as sort of a. or insert through the novel in ways who can balance different ideas. He was one of these people. I guess this is a somewhat popular thing at the time, or there were a lot of people who were nostalgic for Napoleon I,

who called themselves Republicans, so they believed in a republic, but also love Napoleon, which seems a little weird because, of course, Napoleon ended the Republican and became a dictator. But, I don't know, they sort of wanted to, sort of a strong, they were sort of nationalist, where they wanted a glorified, the glorious France, but also let's make a republic. And of course, he's mainly, you know, he goes through this, all these arcs of,

does he care about the revolution most? Does he care about, you know, Cazette the most? And arcs all the way through the movie and then reconciles with his grandfather at the end. And then, of course, there's the revolutionaries that we already talked about. And then, you know, Fantine also was a very popular character, you know, showing the sort of misery that could be thrust on people at the, beginning of the book, you know, being thrust into prostitution essentially for no fault of her own, like never did anything wrong, tried to work, but it was thrust out of work because she

is a single woman and that was shameful, I guess, single mother, I should say. And then, you know, so all the characters have different arcs and there's many more characters, honestly. There's a lot of minor characters as well. But yeah. And you want to mention a little bit about that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And talking about how this is like, I think, You know, I think everybody kind of knows that Javert can exist in leftist circles. You know, people, I'm not going to start, like, ranting about cancel culture or anything, but, like, Javert walks everywhere. You know, if you go to any church group or any school board meeting or, you know, a homeowner's association or a socialist meetup, Javert will be there. Javert is everywhere in society, and he always has been and he always will be.

There are people who want to just enforce a rigid set of rules and discipline people who go against them. And I think just if any institution is to be humane and successful, people like Javert has to have to be relatively disempowered. And you just can't give people power who want to be totally brutal and strict and have everybody be the same and everything enforced brutally. And, you know, yeah, a lot of attention is always paid on these, like, leftists or whatever. Like, it's always part of the discourse. But I think, you know, the people, like the moms and church groups are probably the most vicious Javert is in society. Absolutely. Like, it's everywhere.

Yeah. But, you know, and also, like, Javert is enforcing law and property. But I think, you know, if he were part of the Soviet Union, he would be very happy to be a member of the KGB. right it's like ideology isn't always necessarily the most important thing he just wants to discipline people right yeah you mentioned something very interesting about like republican napoleon fans that were nostalgic for napoleon even though they were Republicans and even though Napoleon sort of i mean clearly ended uh the the french republic or one version of it sort of like frances julius caesar if you will um but what's interesting about that is of course the french revolution made napoleon

possible. I'm very much looking forward to the Walking Phoenix movie, if you can't tell. But this is just a digression, but this is sort of interesting, the French Revolution made Napoleon possible. And by conquering Europe, he really did spread many of the French Revolution's elements across Europe, many of those elements being a civil Republican, civic republicanism, even though he himself ended the Republic and was an emperor, which I find very fascinating. So a figure can both destroy Republican France while also promoting republicanism throughout Europe. I think Napoleon is an interesting figure for so many reasons. That's one of them.

And Victor Hugo, one of the long rants he went on was that the absolute failure of Waterloo was the biggest disaster in history. He thought if the French had conquered all of Europe, eventually it would have led to a united Europe and a republic. And it's not that outlandish of idea because people in Russia and Germany and England, that's why they were terrified of Napoleon, because they were afraid of the guillotine getting exported across Europe. They were afraid of the republic, even the Napoleon, yeah, like you said, he destroyed the republic, but other countries, other monarchs were terrified of him. And in Russia, I know they thought he was like a nihilist, he was going to come destroy

Christianity, like an atheist. They treated him like he was a revolutionary. Yeah, he might have been right. Maybe if Napoleon had won Waterloo, there might not have been a World War I and World War II. Maybe there would have been a republics all across Europe or a unified Europe. Who knows? And maybe he was right. Victor Hugo definitely believed that.

He thought Waterloo. If they had gone the other way, then everything would have been a lot better. And it's like, it's hard to say, of course. But yeah. Yeah. So interesting. That's why I do have a, you know, obviously Napoleon doesn't share my politics, but I do have a soft spot and a fascination with Napoleon and always will.

Let's go ahead and move on a little bit more about the author. Now you've said many things about Victor Hugo. One of the interesting things that is that he wrote this book while in exile. Can you just kind of, and we're going to talk about his politics next, so hold off on that a little bit. But anything else you want to say about Victor Hugo, why he was in exile, or anything else that we haven't covered so far. Yeah. So what basically happened is Victor Hugo, he was a poet. You know, like I said, he was very popular. He was often, like, in the inner circle of these monarchs that had to come back after the revolution. He was like, it was called like a peer of France, which means he was like sitting at the right hand of these monarchs. sometimes. And he kind of towed the company line throughout his life a lot. But when there was another chance at a republic, he was very excited about it. I think that was in 1848. And then Napoleon the third took over and he wrote a series of poems called Napoleon Petit. And in particular, there was like one line that said, oh, why did our forefathers get Napoleon Le Grand, Napoleon

the first, and we're just stuck with Napoleon Petit and Napoleon the third. And that nickname stuck. Everybody started calling him Napoleon Petit, and he did not like it, and exiled Victor Hugo to England or whatever. And so he had to write in exile, and he was working on the Miserab there. So that's pretty funny. Apparently, every bit, like these poems are banned, but everybody was reading them. And they had an enormous impact on politics because it was causing a lot internal pressure on the second Napoleonic regime so yeah other than that I mean his life is kind of you know a typical he's a French romantic he had a million affairs we don't have to go into all that I remember one like his wife who also had a million affairs on him they were constantly

having affairs his parents both had affairs on everybody like the whole thing if you read his biography it's just French people having affairs but his wife wife wrote him like 20,000 love notes apparently in his life, which is like if you were to write one a year, that would take like 30 years or something. So that's kind of the level of how much they valued love, I guess, in their life and stuff. So he was a true romantic. But I think the most persistent themes in his life were sort of, he thought society should work for the benefit of the poor mostly. And he thought criminal justice reform should be more humane. Those are probably the two main themes in his sort of ideological, political life.

You know, one thing that made me think of, you're talking about the Grande and the Petit, Napoleon. You know, the famous Marx quote, you know, history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce was from the 18th premier of Louis Bonaparte. And he was talking about Napoleon the first compared to Napoleon the third. Yeah. So it's very interesting to think about that in terms of that famous Marx quote. The Grande and Petit definitely plays into it, tragedy and farce. Yeah, for sure. So in our last episode on Dostoevsky, we discussed how he, he's a lot of, he said, he said,

turned to the right. And he's a conservative thinker. I have another episode coming out with Matt McManus who did a sort of survey of political thought and its opposition to egalitarianism from Aristotle to today. And he covers Dostoevsky as one of those crucial thinkers. And in that episode, you said something to the effect of Victor Hugo being a good version of Dostoevsky. And of course, we touched a little bit on it. But can you kind of elaborate on that claim and talk about Hugo's politics more broadly? I think if you read a Victor Hugo the novel and you read a Dostoevsky novel,

they're pretty interchangeable and sometimes. The last hour of a condemned man certainly could have been written by Dostoevsky and Lema's Arab is pretty similar in a lot of ways to Dostoevsky too. The sort of miracle that happens to Jean Valjean where he is living a nasty life

and then a single miracle turns around his life of the bishop or the monk or whatever showing in kindness. That's like a theme that happens over and over in Dostoevsky novels, so they're very similar. But Dostoevsky ended up being a royalist and a conservative and writing against socialists and revolutions. And in particular, you wrote demons where there's like a group of revolutionaries and they're sort of turning on each other and maybe they killed one of their own ranks who they thought was a spy. And it's all

very kind of gloomy how they're nihilists and they're destroying all values. And then here you have a group of revolutionaries, and in demons, they also fail to achieve their goals, of course. And here you have a group of revolutionaries who are certainly ready to shoot a police informant, right? They're ready to kill Javert. Javert was a legitimate police informant and they're ready to kill them. They're suspicious of each other. They're trying to overthrow our society violently to create a utopian society. And in one passage, Andre Ross even does something which in the Dostoevsky novel you would read with horror, which is that he, as the barricades are falling, he shoots one more sort of soldier, and they're trying to talk him out of it.

And he points up his gun, and there's like a tear in his eyes as he shoots one more basically like a kid. It's like a 19-year-old kid who joined the French military, and there's sort of no reason to shoot him. But Andro Ross is so committed to his ideas that he has to play them through. even in failure he's going to use violence to achieve the revolution and he holds up his rifle and he could have spared his life and he shoots him and in a Dostoisky novel that would be the horror of these socialists and in Victor Hugo's novel merely because of the language it's glorified to an extreme degree

he has these flowery passages like the one we read about their great vision for the future that he wants to happen so in that sense I think he's kind of like a good good version of Dostoevsky, where he says, look, we should alleviate, we should be organized as a society to suffer, around the suffering of the poor, we should be organizing society rationally around a republic. We should destroy the monarchy. We should destroy the old institutions for the glorious light of the future. Whereas Dostoevsky saw the light, you know, that phrase light, light, it's everything for light. Well, for Dostoevsky, the light was the light of Christianity in the past. For Victor Hugo, it's the light of, I guess, what you would call socialism

in the future. Yeah, and I was, I'm wondering, because Dostoevsky died in 1881, of course, Russia, France, far away. Is there any sense in which these two figures knew each other, knew of each other's work, anything like that? I don't know that Victor Hugo read Dostoevsky, but maybe. I know, yeah, Dastroesky did read Le Mizrov. Right. Oh, yeah, that's right. Dastorski traveled in Europe and remember that's like, I think, France was the cultural capital of the world at that time. So French novels would get moved into Russian much quicker that Russian novels necessarily would get moved into France.

I see. So Dostoevsky spoke French, I'm sure, I assume. Most intellectuals did. So, yeah, Victor Hugo was very popular in Russia immediately. Like, Le Miserables being read within a year in Russia. Tolstoy read them too. Oh, yeah, interesting. Okay, so let's get into the history here because Le Miserab occurs.

in 19th century France, roughly between the years of 1815 and 1832, a relatively obscure period of French history, especially for those of us outside of France, sandwiched between the more notable French Revolution of 1789 and the Paris Commune of 1871. It culminates the book in the historical June Rebellion of Paris that we've sort of been talking about and alluding to. Can you talk a little bit about this history? Because, you know, the June Rebellion in Paris is somebody like myself who fancies myself, somebody interested in history and left-wing history

and revolutionary history, this is a period that I really knew nothing about until sort of prepping for this conversation and reading into this novel. So can you kind of talk about that history and what that June Rebellion was about? Yeah, absolutely. So like I said,

even by the time the novel had written, people in Paris had forgotten about the June rebellion. Supposedly. Like most people, it was a blip. They remember the greater revolutions. Of course, the rubs pierre and the boys are the main one that sticks in people's brain. But after Robs Pierre and after the fall of Napoleon, there was a reinstitution of the old monarch, and that lasted until like 1830, where there was this, I think, it's called the July revolution, where they ousted him and put a new monarch on the throne for Louis Philippe, which is, they called him the citizen king. They were trying to appease the revolutionaries acting like it was sort of a half, halfway between a republic and a monarchy, but that's, you know, kind of ridiculous.

And I guess it was a period of intense, intense wealth disparity and disease and everything. And I guess Louis Philippe was sort of like, what little I read about him was like he was almost like a reganomics kind of supply side king or whatever. Like he was the king. it wasn't so much the revolutionist or just another monarch that got their guys, but it was like the business people put him in charge. He was like the business king. And at one point, France spent like half their GDP, like from the tax dollars and the treasury, giving it back to the business people whose money had gotten stolen or whatever in the previous revolutions. So he was just giving money to the rich. That was mainly his idea and serving sort of the business class. Maybe with the idea that they were trying to sort of industrialize to catch up with Germany and England, I don't know, because France was always a little behind. But, yeah, he was like the business, the business king. And wealth disparity got much, much worse. And obviously, I mean, it was always in France at that time quite severe.

But then two years later, some revolutionaries had the idea like, let's get rid of this isn't working. Let's get rid of this guy too. And they did the same thing that happened two years earlier, which has put barricades all up all over Paris and hope that the Persians would rise to the revolution. They did not rise. Nobody came. And they died alone on the barricade. And that was basically it.

Very little happened and everybody forgot about it. But Victor Hugo wins these events supposedly. And now it's pretty much shrined in history. So, yeah, and I think one thing we can learn from it, like, you know, we have a sort of analogous event in American history recently, which was like during the Black Lives Matter, there was this Capitol Hill autonomous zone and everybody was making them as a rob jokes on Twitter where these people boxed off the police and formed this like, we're just going to kick the police out and we're going to have an autonomous, almost anarchist society. And of course, you know, there were a lot of jokes about it. Obviously, like, there was no hope for it. Anybody who's realistic knows Seattle, much like Paris, was not going to rise to the occasion and form an anarchist, you know, Seattle commune or anything.

Right. But still, I think we can look at those people and say, look, they saw a chance during these Black Lives Matter protests to be as bold as possible and be an example to what you can at least try to do. Like, in American politics, nobody really tries to do hardly anything. Yeah. So those people, we can still look at them and say, look, that's the legacy of the Mezorov still. They're still trying to do something.

They're trying to say, look, we're going to kick the police out of an entire city block and not let them in. Let's try to do something. So, yeah, I think that's the value of these kind of heroic acts. And I can maybe read one more passage here that Victor Hugo wrote also. I think probably Andge Ross is saying this. Or actually, maybe this is just Victor Hugo. narrating. But here's another passage from the novel. Having made this reservation and made it with all severity is impossible for us not to admire, whether they succeed or not, those glorious

combatants of the future, the confessors of utopia. Even when they miscarry, they're worthy of veneration, and it is perhaps in failure that they possess the most majesty. Victory, when it is in accord with progress, merits the applause of the people, but her wrote defeat who marries their tender compassion. The one is magnificent, the other sublime. For our own part, we prefer martyrdom to success. John Brown is greater than Washington. And Pisa Cani is greater than Gary Abaldi.

That's the end of the passage. So Pisa Cani is the anarchist or the socialist who sort of came up with the term propaganda of the deed, if people don't know who that is. And obviously, John Brown, I hope most. most people know, but basically did terrorism to try to pre the slaves in America. So Victor Hugo is saying, look, these people are even greater than the actual statesmen who formed states like Washington, and Gary Abaldi, I guess, kind of formed the Italian kingdom. But we in some ways do. I mean, I think a lot of leftists today would admire John Brown more than anyone in American history.

Yeah, certainly more than Washington. You know, certainly more than Washington. It's kind of funny that he says Washington and not lengthen there. But even more than LinkedIn, you know. Absolutely, absolutely. And this is, again, this is kind of a shocking thing to say. He's basically supporting terrorism. I mean, in a mainstream novel, he's basically supporting the propaganda of the deed, you know,

throwing a ball at the czar, doing violence for the future. It's kind of a shocking thing to read in a mainstream novel. But, yeah, there you have it. John Brown was vilified by most Americans for hundreds of years. Absolutely. But, yeah, in retrospect, we can see. see that in a lot of ways him and his comrades fired the first shots of the Civil War which brought

the contradiction to a culmination and it was a sort of propaganda of the deed not that everybody rallied around him but he saw himself as doing a sort of propaganda of the deed even if he didn't use that language oh absolutely it was and you know this was also written 1862 or whatever like

this is quite recent after John Brown so yeah and Victor Hugo yeah it's very right after is already given it right after it yeah love that love that um for those listening we have episodes on both the French Revolution and the Paris Commune for anybody interested I'm particularly proud of both of those episodes

people if you haven't heard that go check that out and the other thing you mentioned earlier that I just wanted to comment on before we move forward is this the business king you're talking about it's very interesting it's sort of a weird figure that emerges in the transition between feudalism into capitalism where you still have a king but he's sort of doing Reagan era

free market libertarianism and supply side economics it's kind of a historical amusing amusement to me to hear about that. Yeah. Oh, and if people want to read more, like that passage was just a short passage, you can go into the novel or see it online and read just one chapter. It's called The Dead are in the Right and the Living Are Not in the Wrong. Like that chapter is really interesting to read. That whole chapter. Got it. All right. Well, one of the last questions

I have for you is just touching on the Giants of 93, which the novel makes mention of. Can you kind of discuss this idea and why it's relevant to the novel into French history? Yeah, it was a big thing for the revolutionaries in the novel to be inspired by the previous revolutionaries. And there's no one more inspirational to a revolutionary, I think, than the people in 1893 who cut the king's head off and did the first revolution in Europe. They made a big deal in the novel that the first person to die in the barricade was an old guy who had participated in the previous revolution. So if you watch the movie and there's that old guy coming over the barricade and getting shot, and they don't really explain. playing it that well. The whole point of that was to be a connection between the past and the past, the past revolutionaries and the present. So the first person to die was a veteran of 93.

And, um, like, I would say like sort of in the Nietzschean sense, you, you can look at 1893, uh, which is like the beginning of the French revolution. It had begun several years earlier, but in most people's brain, the French revolution is when they cut the head off the king, right? And Marie Antoinette gets, you know, beheaded. And they form a. public. And in a lot of ways, that was sort of like the greatest deed in European history, possibly in the history of the world, because throughout the history of monarchies, the greatest crime that you can possibly have is regicide, because all power and authority comes from the king, and he is a vessel of God. Remember that people genuinely believed that. So while regicide is the

greatest crime in history, right? And regicide was extremely common. I read that supposedly, like, There were periods in European history where 10% of monarchs were killed by their own subjects. So Regicide itself is nothing new. People are always trying to kill the king, of course. Societies have problems. Let's get rid of this guy. But what always happened when they killed a king is they put a new king in charge. It was just a rival king that would kill him.

Maybe their own subjects would kill him. But even then, you know, like you could compare it to like when they killed Julius Caesar. Was killing Julius Caesar the greatest deed in history? He was killed in the darkest deed in history. by his own legionnaires and a conspiracy of the other rich and powerful people and then they put another emperor in charge. It's not that great of a deed.

But what happened when they executed the king in France is they didn't, it wasn't to regicide. No crime was committed. They legally executed him and declared that not only were they killing the king, but they were killing monarchies forever. That's like almost in the Nietzschean sense

the physical act of the death of God. They are changing society forever and they're some of the boldest people to ever exist. These people who are saying, we're going to do it. We're going to end this system that has dominated Europe for, what, in 1,000, 2,000 years or whatever, they've had monarchies. We're going to end it and form a rational, virtuous republic is Robespierre's idea. And so whenever French revolutionaries look back, it was always like, those people in 1893, even though, you know, it ended up getting unpopular in the end, it's like,

What they actually did, the deed that they did in 93, it was they were giants among men. They were massive figures who were so bold that we can only hope to be as bold as they were in trying to form a new society with our lives. So I think that's kind of the ultimate glorification of revolution is these guys at 93, like, who tried to totally reform Europe. Yeah, absolutely. I remember I had this wonderful opportunity a couple of years ago to basically go to Paris without. having to pay for my plane ticket or hotel, which would have been prohibited for me. So I took the opportunity, of course, and I had a few days by myself walking through the Paris streets while I was listening to this world-class lecture on the French Revolution

and the Thermidorian reaction and how Robespier met his ultimate fate, and literally walking on the same roads that a bloody Robespier was stumbling down, holding his jaw to his face. And it was just this profound moment of feeling deeply connected to the Giants of 93. So it made me think of that. And the other thing is I just started this book by Michael Parenti. You mentioned the assassination of Julius Caesar and how it was carried out by his own legionnaires and the nobility, the rich and powerful, in part because they were threatened by his popular support, right? It's kind of weird for us today to think the Roman Empire or the Roman Republic ends with Julius Caesar because you think the Republic is more in line with the people's interests than an emperor.

But Julius Caesar actually had amazing amounts of popular support, which made him threatening to the other nobler. So the ending of the of the Republic and the instantiation of an emperor is sort of this nuanced, ironic, complex thing, not as simple as we would like to, our modern minds would sort of think about it. For anybody interested, that book by Michael Parenti is the assassination of Julius Caesar, a people's history of ancient Rome. I find it incredibly interesting. But yeah, salute to the Giants of 93, absolutely. So, Corey, as a way to sort of wrap this conversation up, of course, I absolutely love having you on. Always appreciate your insights. But overall, why should we still engage with this book and its adaptations today?

Why is it still relevant, particularly for us on the revolutionary left? I mean, I would just sum it up with how Orson Wells started every one of his radio broadcasts in his adaptation in the 1930s. He says, So long as these problems are not solved, so long as ignorance and poverty remain on earth, these words cannot be useless beautiful all right my friend thank you so much for coming on

I really really appreciate you definitely play Orson Wells doing it not me but yeah I'll do that because he has an awesome voice I'll toss him in there yeah any last words anything you want to plug or promote

no I think that's it all right you're awesome man thank you so much all right too that was just cool doing this again do you hear the people sing singing the song of angry men It is the music of our people who will not be slaves again. When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums,

there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes. Will you join in a crusade who will be strong and stand with me? Beyond the barricade is that a world you long to see? Then join in the fight That will give you the right to be free Do you hear the people sing Singing the song of angry men It is a music of a people

Who will not be slaves again When the beating of your heart tackles The beating of the drums There is a life about to start When tomorrow comes Will you give all you can give so that our banner may advance Some will fall and some will live Will you stand up and take your chance

The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of front Do you hear the people sing Singing the song of angry men It is a music of our people who will not be slaves again When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes