So I just found a link that someone on abaissé posted a while ago to an essay that Baudelaire wrote on Les Misérables and for some reason I decided to try and translate part of it. This is my first real attempt to translate French into English and I'm afraid that parts of it are a bit awkward, but I think it's fairly accurate and comprehensible. The original can be found
here. (
10littlebullets if you would mind taking a look at how I did, I would be much obliged).
Les Miserables of Victor Hugo
By: Charles Baudelaire
I.
Several months ago I wrote, in regard to a great poet, the most vigorous and popular in France, the following lines, which try to find, in brief, a more relevant application than les Contemplations and la Légende des siécles:
It will be, without a doubt, the goal, if space permits, to analyze the morale atmosphere that persists and circulates in his poems, which makes a noticeable contribution to the author's character. It seems to me to be a character manifested in equal love for the strong and the weak, and that the attraction the poet has for these two extremes comes from a unique source, which is the same source as the original vigor with which he is gifted. This force enchants and intoxicates him; he treats it like a parent: with fraternal attraction. So is he irresistibly carried away by all the symbolism of infinity, the ocean, the sky; by all the ancient representations of the force, the giants of Homer or the Bible, paladins, knights; by enormous and dreadful beasts. He playfully caresses that which would frighten weaker hands; he moves through immense heights without vertigo. On the other hand, with a different disposition, which comes from the same source, the poet is always a friend of all who are weak, alone, depressed; to all who are orphaned, a father. The strong find a brother in all who are strong, but see their children in all who need to be protected or consoled. It is through this force and the certitude it gives to its possessors that the spirit of justice and charity comes. And so, ceaselessly occurring in the poems of Victor Hugo is this empathetic love for fallen women, for the poor crushed by the gears of our society, for the animals martyred by our gluttony and our despotism. Few have noticed the charm and the enchantment that goodness adds to the force, and which is frequently seen in the works of our poet. A smile and a tear on the face of a giant, this is near-divine originality. Even in his small poems of sensual love, in these melancholy lines that are so voluptuous and so melodious, one hears, like the accompaniment of an orchestra, the reverberating voice of charity. Underneath the lover, one senses a father and a protector. It is not about the moralizing mind that, with its pedantic air and its didactic tone can ruin the most beautiful bit of poetry, but about the inspired mind that glides, invisible, through poetry, like the imponderable liquids of all the world's machines. The mind does not enter this art as a goal. It is mixed and confused as in life itself. The poet is a moralist without wishing it, by the abundance and fullness of nature.
There is a single line that must be changed; because in Les Misérables the moral is the direct goal, and so the opinion of the poet stands out, placed, in the form of a preface, at the beginning of the book:
While there exists, through laws and customs, an artificially created social damnation, hells, in civilization, and complicates divine destiny with human fate... so long as there is ignorance and misery on the earth, books of this nature cannot be useless
“While..!” Alas! One might as well say ALWAYS! But this is not the place to analyze these questions. We simply want to do justice to the marvelous talent with which the poet seized the attention of the public and the trend, like the recalcitrant head of a lazy student, towards the giant abyss of social misery.