Opinion Channelling Victor Hugo

To add that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the riotous work that channelled Hugo’s republican and revolutionary sentiments,Les Misérables,is,well,the sort of coincidence that would hardly faze the man who contrived to have his hero,Jean Valjean,emerge and bump up into the man who had been hunting him for nearly two decades,Inspector Javert. Long before his death in 1885,Hugo had become France’s four-letter word for revolutionary purity. This reputation was set in motion by Hugo’s ferocious opposition to Napoleon III,who had overthrown France’s Second Republic in 1851 and revived his uncle’s empire and dictatorship. From various places of exile,Hugo vilified France’s ruler as “Napoleon le Petit” — to distinguish him from “Napoleon le Grand” — in prose and poetry. (Sarkozy,in turn,has frequently been described as “Sarko le Petit.”)

These early salvoes were little more than rehearsals for Les Misérables. Hugo’s novel became a palimpsest for his sharpening social and political concerns. In the wake of Napoleon’s coup,Hugo yoked the work to the fate of the Revolution’s trinity of values — liberty,equality and fraternity — in his own time. Though the novel revolves around the failed workers’ revolt of 1832,Hugo’s concern was the lot of the labouring poor in 1862. Through the trials of Valjean and Marius,Hugo conveyed the fragility of lives and livelihoods in the face of vast economic and technological forces. Is it surprising,then,that while the chattering class in Paris scorned the novel,the working class besieged bookstores to buy copies? What must they have thought of Hugo’s declaration that “revolutionary feeling is a moral feeling” and that “he who votes reigns”?

Enter the race for the Elysée Palace. French voters have long expected their politicians,especially their presidents,to be versed in literature or history. Charles de Gaulle was steeped in French classics and his own memoirs joined their ranks. Though François Mitterrand’s books never achieved the same renown,his literary knowledge ran deep and broad.

But not that long ago this tradition seemed endangered. If a presidential candidate is what he reads,what is he if he doesn’t read at all? A technocrat,Hollande declared just a few years back that he never bothered with novels. Similarly,Sarkozy once insisted that the French electorate was ready for a new kind of leader: one who quoted from television shows rather than The Princess of Clèves.

Recently,however,this cultural landscape,flat as a crêpe,has been rented by the man Le Nouvel Observateur calls the “great troublemaker”,Jean-Luc Mélenchon. With his trademark red tie and carnation,the leader of the Left Front has barrelled into third place in the national polls. Mélenchon’s politics are unabashedly radical (and for many critics utterly impractical): full retirement pension at the age of 60,the nationalisation of energy industries and a dramatic increase in the minimum wage. They are also fully republican: greater independence within the EU,greater distance from Germany’s suffocating economic policies and greater freedom for the French to pursue their nation’s destiny. At the same time,he disconcertingly expresses his admiration of Fidel Castro,all the while insisting that while Hugo Chávez is not a political model,he is a source of inspiration. But the other Hugo has been an even greater source of inspiration for Mélenchon. At meetings,he casts a conspiratorial smile to industrial or transportation workers and confides: “I’ve been told I’m too intellectual for you. But the people are,in fact,too cultivated for their leaders.” Donning his glasses,he then reads from Les Misérables.

While Hollande belatedly announced that Les Misérables is his favourite book,Mélenchon now owns the novel. With Hugo’s help,he channels in remarkable ways the anxiety of a growing number of French citizens who ask if progress is possible only by accepting the economic and monetary policies of European institutions that seem no less relentless and rigid as Inspector Javert. Or,instead,as Mélenchon insists,ask if progress is desirable only when “the people reign”?

ROBERT ZARETSKY is a professor of French history at the University of Houston Honors College