Les Miserables

I experienced Les Miserables, the musical, for the first time tonight. The performances were quite good, and though necessarily truncated, the story line retained its integrity. Since this IS one of my favorite books, I must quote it!

Here are excerpts of Hugo's description of Javert:

Javert, when serious, was a bull-dog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. This man was a compound of two sentiments, very simple and good in themselves, but he almost made them evil by his exaggeration of them, respect for authority and hatred of rebellion . He had nothing but disdain, aversion, and disgust for all who had once overstepped the bounds of the law. His whole life was contained in these two words: waking and watching. His life was a life of privations, isolation, self-denial, and chastity: never any amusement. The whole person of Javert expressed the spy and the informer. Probity, sincerity, candour, conviction, the idea of duty, are things, which mistaken, may become hideous...they are virtues with a single vice - error. Nothing could be more terrible than Javert's face, which revealed what we may call all the evil of good.

Here is a representation of Javert's internal struggle after Jean Valjean spares his life and sets him free, then in return he lets Valjean go:

He saw before him two roads, both equally straight; but he saw two; and that terrified him. One of these two lines excluded the other. Which was the true one? One thing had astonished him, that Jean Valjean had spared him, and one thing had petrified him, that he, Javert, had spared Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean confounded him...his generosity overhwhelmed him. Javert felt that something horrible was penetrating his soul, admiration for a convict. He shuddered at it, yet he could not shake it off...he was reduced to confess before his own inner tribunal the sublimity of this wretch. A beneficent malefactor, a compassionate convict, kind, helpful, clement, returning good for evil, returning pardon for hatred, loving pity rather than vengeance, preferring to destroy himself rather than to destroy his enemy, saving him who had stricken him, kneeling upon the height of virtue, nearer the angels than men. Javert was compelled to acknowledge that this monster existed.

His supreme anguish was the loss of all certainty. There was in him a revelation of feeling entirely distinct from the declarations of the law, his only standard hitherto. He perceived in the darkness the fearful rising of an unknown moral sun: he was horrified and blinded by it.

He was compelled to recognise the existence of kindness. This convict had been kind. And he himself, wonderful to tell, he had just been kind. Therefore he had become depraved. Javert's ideal was to be irreproachable. Now he had just failed. "What have I done? My duty? No. Something more. There is something more than duty." Here he was startled. Order was his dogma and was enough for him...he had scarcely thought, until today, of that other superior, God. He had lost his bearings in this unexpected presence.

Truths which he had no wish for inexorably besieged him. He must henceforth be another man. He was emptied, useless...authority was dead in him. He had no further reason for existence. To be granite and to doubt! To suddenly perceive that you have under your breast of bronze something preposterous which almost resembles a heart! To be ice and to melt!

To be obliged to acknowledge this: infallibility is not infallible! there may be error in the dogma! all is not said when a code is spoken! judges are men! What was passing in Javert was the throwing of a soul out of its path...irresistibly hurled in a straight line and breaking itself against God. Under the pressure of this incontestable incomprehensible, he felt his head was bursting. He was less the transfigured, than the victim of this miracle. He saw in it only an immense difficulty of existence...he was dismantled completely!

There were only two ways to get out of it. One, to go resolutely to Jean Valjean and to return the man to the dungeon. The other -

Of course, here he heads to the bridge and plunges to his death...