Meep!

[erised-wings.livejournal.com]

I don't know how smart this was, but I joined a LJ community that prompts the writer to assume the identity of a character, and respond to weekly topics in kind. Because I am semi-suicidal, I took on Inspector Javert. http://www.bathtubdjinn.com/muse/muse.html, is the main website, I encourage people to check it out. It's amazing, and well the dear Inspector's blog is linspecteur

I really need to get him a spiffy layout...

Anyways, I hope you enjoy, or at least don't snicker too loudly.

Comments

[axmxz.livejournal.com]

I keep wondering why people think Javert ought to think in such straight, ponderous thoughts... he spoke like this only once in the book: when he was desperately trying to articulate to Madeleine why he had to be fired. He couldn't even sustain it for the entirety of the meeting - he lapsed into colloquial as soon as he started telling Madeleine the whole story about how they detained Champmathieu. It comes through even in the translation. He sounds as street as one can expect a cop to sound when he's not concentrating on sounding precisely like a cop. "Just doing my job, ma'am" isn't how cops really talk - it's how they feel they *should* talk but can't, outside of soundbytes and short speeches about why they ought to be dismissed.

(And Vidocq was fond of the f-word - it's an f-word even in French, incidentally - and used it everywhere including courtrooms.)
But that's just my reaction, so feel free to ignore it.

[erised-wings.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I tend to see Javert in very ambiguous terms. He always seems very surreal and prefect to me, but that prefection comes from deep-seated uncertainty about himself. He's cheeky, and comfortable in his skin but then again he's also...afraid. Of what I dunno. He is one of the more confusing characters I've ever been vain enough to attempt to write.

I shall endevour to make him real in future posts. You have my promise. I love the insight you give so by all means continue.

part I

[axmxz.livejournal.com]

Well, all this is perfectly fine. I'm not speaking of inner goings on here so much as the way of speaking - his manner of communicating with the world. Some people speak very correctly; some punctuate their speech with filler words like "like," "dude," "whatever" etc.

Javert, to my ears, speaks very coloquially and in a way that betrays, even in official circumstances, a born story-teller. My favorite aspect of this style of speech is that the person who talks like this never lets his knowledge of facts get in the way of telling a good story. A normal person, if they don't recall some aspect of the story will hem and haw, or pause to think about it, but a good, fluid storyteller will dismiss their lack of knowledge of a certain fact as insignificant to the actual point of the story. It's a very fluid and sociable way of speaking; it's speech that entertains more than it informs. And with Javert, there's not only that but also a tendency to take on the voices of the characters of whom he speaks. For instance, here's his entire speech about Champmathieu made to the Mayor. See if you can "hear" when Javert begins to do voices for his characters:

part II

[axmxz.livejournal.com]

"This is the way it is, Mr. Mayor. It seems that there was in the neighborhood near Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher an old fellow who was called Father Champmathieu. He was a very wretched creature. No one paid any attention to him. No one knows what such people subsist on. Lately, last autumn, Father Champmathieu was arrested for the theft of some cider apples from--Well, no matter, a theft had been committed, a wall scaled, branches of trees broken. My Champmathieu was arrested. He still had the branch of apple-tree in his hand. The scamp is locked up. Up to this point it was merely an affair of a misdemeanor. But here is where Providence intervened.

"The jail being in a bad condition, the examining magistrate finds it convenient to transfer Champmathieu to Arras, where the departmental prison is situated. In this prison at Arras there is an ex-convict named Brevet, who is detained for I know not what, and who has been appointed turnkey of the house, because of good behavior. Mr. Mayor, no sooner had Champmathieu arrived than Brevet exclaims: `Eh! Why, I know that man! He is a ex-convict! Take a good look at me, my good man! You are Jean Valjean!' `Jean Valjean! who's Jean Valjean?' Champmathieu feigns astonishment. `Don't play the innocent dodge,' says Brevet. `You are Jean Valjean! You have been in the galleys of Toulon; it was twenty years ago; we were there together.' Champmathieu denies it. Parbleu! You understand. The case is investigated. The thing was well ventilated for me. This is what they discovered: This Champmathieu had been, thirty years ago, a pruner of trees in various localities, notably at Faverolles. There all trace of him was lost. A long time afterwards he was seen again in Auvergne; then in Paris, where he is said to have been a wheelwright, and to have had a daughter, who was a laundress; but that has not been proved. Now, before going to the galleys for theft, what was Jean Valjean? A pruner of trees. Where? At Faverolles. Another fact. This Valjean's Christian name was Jean, and his mother's surname was Mathieu. What more natural to suppose than that, on emerging from the galleys, he should have taken his mother's name for the purpose of concealing himself, and have called himself Jean Mathieu? He goes to Auvergne. The local pronunciation turns Jean into Chan--he is called Chan Mathieu. Our man offers no opposition, and behold him transformed into Champmathieu. You follow me, do you not? Inquiries were made at Faverolles. The family of Jean Valjean is no longer there. It is not known where they have gone. You know that among those classes a family often disappears. Search was made, and nothing was found. When such people are not mud, they are dust. And then, as the beginning of the story dates thirty years back, there is no longer any one at Faverolles who knew Jean Valjean. Inquiries were made at Toulon. Besides Brevet, there are only two convicts in existence who have seen Jean Valjean; they are Cochepaille and Chenildieu, and are sentenced for life. They are taken from the galleys and confronted with the pretended Champmathieu. They do not hesitate; he is Jean Valjean for them as well as for Brevet. The same age,--he is fifty-four,-- the same height, the same air, the same man; in short, it is he. It was precisely at this moment that I forwarded my denunciation to the Prefecture in Paris. I was told that I had lost my reason, and that Jean Valjean is at Arras, in the power of the authorities. You can imagine whether this surprised me, when I thought that I had that same Jean Valjean here. I write to the examining judge; he sends for me; Champmathieu is conducted to me--"

part III

[axmxz.livejournal.com]

"Well?" interposed M. Madeleine.

Javert replied, his face incorruptible, and as melancholy as ever:--

"Mr. Mayor, the truth is the truth. I am sorry; but that man is Jean Valjean. I recognized him also."

M. Madeleine resumed in, a very low voice:--

"You are sure?"

Javert began to laugh, with that mournful laugh which comes from profound conviction.

"O! Sure!"

He stood there thoughtfully for a moment, mechanically taking pinches of powdered wood for blotting ink from the wooden bowl which stood on the table, and he added:--

"And even now that I have seen the real Jean Valjean, I do not see how I could have thought otherwise. I beg your pardon, Mr. Mayor."

Re: part III

[latin-cat.livejournal.com]

I seem to have acquired a really crap translation of "Les Miz" - I don't have half of the colloqualisms or Javert doing 'voices'. Please excuse me while I go assainate Norman Denny...

Back now. *grumbling* Bloody RP. What translation of this have you got? I think I very much need to get it.

Re: part III

[axmxz.livejournal.com]

I don't actually own a copy of Les Mis (unless you count an ancient "Marius" volume in French). The text is from here:

http://www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/les_miserables/

Despite the ads, this is a great site, because it has the entire text searchable by word.

Re: part III

[latin-cat.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)

Re: part III

[axmxz.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that even this one omits some of the more, I don't know, risky colloquallisms. Javert is hilariously fond of the words "drole" and "droless", which always make him sound a little NYPD in my head. The sentence in the above post that reads "The scamp is locked up" sounds far more like "The clown is locked up."

[erised-wings.livejournal.com]

If nothing else, dear one. You'll teach me humility. :)

[axmxz.livejournal.com]

I have no desire to teach anyone humility. (Unless it's by example, which is unlikely.) But I feel as though Javert as a *concept* is so bogged down in fanon that he is not given a chance to speak for himself in his own voice. No matter what reference to Les Mis one reads, what Cliff's Notes or summary, or what movie or TV-movie one watches, he's never anything like he is in the book. It's like, in order to summarize that monster of a book, one needs to have a short, glib description of Javert, and so one finds the introductory passage by Hugo about how he was a savage in service of civilization who'd arrest his own mother if she broke parole, and there we go. And then one adds at will qualities that one feels would be appropriate to him, viz.: religiosity, obsession with the letter of the law, obsession with Valjean, absolute contempt for anyone who's ever done anything wrong, sometimes even physical violence. (How many fics have we read where he slaps Fantine?) And this sort of rubbish snowballs through the years.

I'm a historian by training and I believe in primary sources. Don't believe the hype. If you want to really get into a character's head, hear what *he* has to say first, not what's said *about* him. Javert has relatively little "screen-time" in Les Miserables, but he gets himself across just fine when he's on stage.

/rant