Les Misérables, page 262
CHAPTER I--ORIGIN
_Pigritia_ is a terrible word.
It engenders a whole world, _la pègre_, for which read _theft_, and ahell, _la pègrenne_, for which read _hunger_.
Thus, idleness is the mother.
She has a son, theft, and a daughter, hunger.
Where are we at this moment? In the land of slang.
What is slang? It is at one and the same time, a nation and a dialect;it is theft in its two kinds; people and language.
When, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and sombrehistory introduced into a work written with the same aim as this39 athief who talked argot, there arose amazement and clamor.--"What! How!Argot! Why, argot is horrible! It is the language of prisons, galleys,convicts, of everything that is most abominable in society!" etc., etc.
We have never understood this sort of objections.
Since that time, two powerful romancers, one of whom is a profoundobserver of the human heart, the other an intrepid friend of the people,Balzac and Eugène Sue, having represented their ruffians as talkingtheir natural language, as the author of _The Last Day of a CondemnedMan_ did in 1828, the same objections have been raised. People repeated:"What do authors mean by that revolting dialect? Slang is odious! Slangmakes one shudder!"
Who denies that? Of course it does.
When it is a question of probing a wound, a gulf, a society, since whenhas it been considered wrong to go too far? to go to the bottom? We havealways thought that it was sometimes a courageous act, and, at least, asimple and useful deed, worthy of the sympathetic attention which dutyaccepted and fulfilled merits. Why should one not explore everything,and study everything? Why should one halt on the way? The halt is amatter depending on the sounding-line, and not on the leadsman.
Certainly, too, it is neither an attractive nor an easy task toundertake an investigation into the lowest depths of the social order,where terra firma comes to an end and where mud begins, to rummage inthose vague, murky waves, to follow up, to seize and to fling, stillquivering, upon the pavement that abject dialect which is dripping withfilth when thus brought to the light, that pustulous vocabulary eachword of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire and theshadows. Nothing is more lugubrious than the contemplation thus inits nudity, in the broad light of thought, of the horrible swarming ofslang. It seems, in fact, to be a sort of horrible beast made for thenight which has just been torn from its cesspool. One thinks one beholdsa frightful, living, and bristling thicket which quivers, rustles,wavers, returns to shadow, threatens and glares. One word resembles aclaw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye, such and such a phraseseems to move like the claw of a crab. All this is alive withthe hideous vitality of things which have been organized out ofdisorganization.
Now, when has horror ever excluded study? Since when has malady banishedmedicine? Can one imagine a naturalist refusing to study the viper, thebat, the scorpion, the centipede, the tarantula, and one who wouldcast them back into their darkness, saying: "Oh! how ugly that is!" Thethinker who should turn aside from slang would resemble a surgeonwho should avert his face from an ulcer or a wart. He would be likea philologist refusing to examine a fact in language, a philosopherhesitating to scrutinize a fact in humanity. For, it must be statedto those who are ignorant of the case, that argot is both a literaryphenomenon and a social result. What is slang, properly speaking? It isthe language of wretchedness.
We may be stopped; the fact may be put to us in general terms, which isone way of attenuating it; we may be told, that all trades, professions,it may be added, all the accidents of the social hierarchy and allforms of intelligence, have their own slang. The merchant who says:"Montpellier not active, Marseilles fine quality," the broker on 'changewho says: "Assets at end of current month," the gambler who says:_"Tiers et tout, refait de pique,"_ the sheriff of the Norman Isles whosays: "The holder in fee reverting to his landed estate cannot claim thefruits of that estate during the hereditary seizure of the real estateby the mortgagor," the playwright who says: "The piece was hissed,"the comedian who says: "I've made a hit," the philosopher who says:"Phenomenal triplicity," the huntsman who says: _"Voileci allais,Voileci fuyant,"_ the phrenologist who says: "Amativeness,combativeness, secretiveness," the infantry soldier who says: "Myshooting-iron," the cavalry-man who says: "My turkey-cock," thefencing-master who says: "Tierce, quarte, break," the printer who says:"My shooting-stick and galley,"--all, printer, fencing-master, cavalrydragoon, infantry-man, phrenologist, huntsman, philosopher, comedian,playwright, sheriff, gambler, stock-broker, and merchant, speakslang. The painter who says: "My grinder," the notary who says: "MySkip-the-Gutter," the hairdresser who says: "My mealyback," the cobblerwho says: "My cub," talks slang. Strictly speaking, if one absolutelyinsists on the point, all the different fashions of saying the rightand the left, the sailor's _port_ and _starboard_, the scene-shifter's_court-side_, and _garden-side_, the beadle's _Gospel-side_ and_Epistle-side_, are slang. There is the slang of the affected lady aswell as of the _précieuses_. The Hotel Rambouillet nearly adjoins theCour des Miracles. There is a slang of duchesses, witness this phrasecontained in a love-letter from a very great lady and a very prettywoman of the Restoration: "You will find in this gossip a fultitude ofreasons why I should libertize."40 Diplomatic ciphers are slang;the pontifical chancellery by using 26 for Rome, _grkztntgzyal_ fordespatch, and _abfxustgrnogrkzu tu XI_. for the Duc de Modena, speaksslang. The physicians of the Middle Ages who, for carrot, radish, andturnip, said _Opoponach, perfroschinum, reptitalmus, dracatholicum,angelorum, postmegorum_, talked slang. The sugar-manufacturer whosays: "Loaf, clarified, lumps, bastard, common, burnt,"--this honestmanufacturer talks slang. A certain school of criticism twenty yearsago, which used to say: "Half of the works of Shakespeare consists ofplays upon words and puns,"--talked slang. The poet, and the artist who,with profound understanding, would designate M. de Montmorency as "abourgeois," if he were not a judge of verses and statues, speak slang.The classic Academician who calls flowers "Flora," fruits, "Pomona," thesea, "Neptune," love, "fires," beauty, "charms," a horse, "acourser," the white or tricolored cockade, "the rose of Bellona," thethree-cornered hat, "Mars' triangle,"--that classical Academician talksslang. Algebra, medicine, botany, have each their slang. The tonguewhich is employed on board ship, that wonderful language of the sea,which is so complete and so picturesque, which was spoken by Jean Bart,Duquesne, Suffren, and Duperré, which mingles with the whistling ofthe rigging, the sound of the speaking-trumpets, the shock of theboarding-irons, the roll of the sea, the wind, the gale, the cannon, iswholly a heroic and dazzling slang, which is to the fierce slang of thethieves what the lion is to the jackal.
No doubt. But say what we will, this manner of understanding the word_slang_ is an extension which every one will not admit. For our part,we reserve to the word its ancient and precise, circumscribed anddetermined significance, and we restrict slang to slang. The veritableslang and the slang that is pre-eminently slang, if the two words can becoupled thus, the slang immemorial which was a kingdom, is nothingelse, we repeat, than the homely, uneasy, crafty, treacherous, venomous,cruel, equivocal, vile, profound, fatal tongue of wretchedness. Thereexists, at the extremity of all abasement and all misfortunes, a lastmisery which revolts and makes up its mind to enter into conflictwith the whole mass of fortunate facts and reigning rights; a fearfulconflict, where, now cunning, now violent, unhealthy and ferociousat one and the same time, it attacks the social order with pin-pricksthrough vice, and with club-blows through crime. To meet the needs ofthis conflict, wretchedness has invented a language of combat, which isslang.
To keep afloat and to rescue from oblivion, to hold above the gulf, wereit but a fragment of some language which man has spoken and which would,otherwise, be lost, that is to say, one of the elements, good or bad, ofwhich civilization is composed, or by which it is complicated, to extendthe records of social observation; is to serve civilization itself. Thisservice Plautus rendered, consciously or unconsciously, by making twoCarthaginian soldiers talk Phonician; that service Molière rendered,by making so many of his characters talk Levantine and all sorts ofdialects. Here objections spring up afresh. Phonician, very good!Levantine, quite right! Even dialect, let that pass! They are tongueswhich have belonged to nations or provinces; but slang! What is the useof preserving slang? What is the good of assisting slang "to survive"?
To this we reply in one word, only. Assuredly, if the tongue which anation or a province has spoken is worthy of interest, the languagewhich has been spoken by a misery is still more worthy of attention andstudy.
It is the language which has been spoken, in France, for example, formore than four centuries, not only by a misery, but by every possiblehuman misery.
And then, we insist upon it, the study of social deformities andinfirmities, and the task of pointing them out with a view to remedy,is not a business in which choice is permitted. The historian of mannersand ideas has no less austere a mission than the historian of events.The latter has the surface of civilization, the conflicts of crowns, thebirths of princes, the marriages of kings, battles, assemblages, greatpublic men, revolutions in the daylight, everything on the exterior;the other historian has the interior, the depths, the people who toil,suffer, wait, the oppressed woman, the agonizing child, the secret warbetween man and man, obscure ferocities, prejudices, plottediniquities, the subterranean, the indistinct tremors of multitudes, thedie-of-hunger, the counter-blows of the law, the secret evolution ofsouls, the go-bare-foot, the bare-armed, the disinherited, the orphans,the unhappy, and the infamous, all the forms which roam through thedarkness. He must descend with his heart full of charity, and severityat the same time, as a brother and as a judge, to those impenetrablecasemates where crawl, pell-mell, those who bleed and those who deal theblow, those who weep and those who curse, those who fast and thosewho devour, those who endure evil and those who inflict it. Have thesehistorians of hearts and souls duties at all inferior to the historiansof external facts? Does any one think that Alighieri has any fewerthings to say than Machiavelli? Is the under side of civilization anyless important than the upper side merely because it is deeper and moresombre? Do we really know the mountain well when we are not acquaintedwith the cavern?
Let us say, moreover, parenthetically, that from a few words of whatprecedes a marked separation might be inferred between the two classesof historians which does not exist in our mind. No one is a goodhistorian of the patent, visible, striking, and public life of peoples,if he is not, at the same time, in a certain measure, the historianof their deep and hidden life; and no one is a good historian of theinterior unless he understands how, at need, to be the historian of theexterior also. The history of manners and ideas permeates the historyof events, and this is true reciprocally. They constitute two differentorders of facts which correspond to each other, which are alwaysinterlaced, and which often bring forth results. All the lineamentswhich providence traces on the surface of a nation have their parallels,sombre but distinct, in their depths, and all convulsions of the depthsproduce ebullitions on the surface. True history being a mixture of allthings, the true historian mingles in everything.
Man is not a circle with a single centre; he is an ellipse with a doublefocus. Facts form one of these, and ideas the other.
Slang is nothing but a dressing-room where the tongue having somebad action to perform, disguises itself. There it clothes itself inword-masks, in metaphor-rags. In this guise it becomes horrible.
One finds it difficult to recognize. Is it really the French tongue, thegreat human tongue? Behold it ready to step upon the stage and to retortupon crime, and prepared for all the employments of the repertory ofevil. It no longer walks, it hobbles; it limps on the crutch of theCourt of Miracles, a crutch metamorphosable into a club; it is calledvagrancy; every sort of spectre, its dressers, have painted its face, itcrawls and rears, the double gait of the reptile. Henceforth, it is aptat all rôles, it is made suspicious by the counterfeiter, covered withverdigris by the forger, blacked by the soot of the incendiary; and themurderer applies its rouge.
When one listens, by the side of honest men, at the portals of society,one overhears the dialogues of those who are on the outside.One distinguishes questions and replies. One perceives, withoutunderstanding it, a hideous murmur, sounding almost like human accents,but more nearly resembling a howl than an articulate word. It is slang.The words are misshapen and stamped with an indescribable and fantasticbestiality. One thinks one hears hydras talking.
It is unintelligible in the dark. It gnashes and whispers, completingthe gloom with mystery. It is black in misfortune, it is blacker stillin crime; these two blacknesses amalgamated, compose slang. Obscurityin the atmosphere, obscurity in acts, obscurity in voices. Terrible,toad-like tongue which goes and comes, leaps, crawls, slobbers, andstirs about in monstrous wise in that immense gray fog composed of rainand night, of hunger, of vice, of falsehood, of injustice, of nudity, ofsuffocation, and of winter, the high noonday of the miserable.
Let us have compassion on the chastised. Alas! Who are we ourselves? Whoam I who now address you? Who are you who are listening to me? And areyou very sure that we have done nothing before we were born? The earthis not devoid of resemblance to a jail. Who knows whether man is not arecaptured offender against divine justice? Look closely at life. It isso made, that everywhere we feel the sense of punishment.
Are you what is called a happy man? Well! you are sad every day. Eachday has its own great grief or its little care. Yesterday you weretrembling for a health that is dear to you, to-day you fear for yourown; to-morrow it will be anxiety about money, the day after to-morrowthe diatribe of a slanderer, the day after that, the misfortune of somefriend; then the prevailing weather, then something that has been brokenor lost, then a pleasure with which your conscience and your vertebralcolumn reproach you; again, the course of public affairs. This withoutreckoning in the pains of the heart. And so it goes on. One cloud isdispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day out of a hundred whichis wholly joyous and sunny. And you belong to that small class who arehappy! As for the rest of mankind, stagnating night rests upon them.
Thoughtful minds make but little use of the phrase: the fortunate andthe unfortunate. In this world, evidently the vestibule of another,there are no fortunate.
The real human division is this: the luminous and the shady. To diminishthe number of the shady, to augment the number of the luminous,--thatis the object. That is why we cry: Education! science! To teach reading,means to light the fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.
However, he who says light does not, necessarily, say joy. People sufferin the light; excess burns. The flame is the enemy of the wing. To burnwithout ceasing to fly,--therein lies the marvel of genius.
When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer.The day is born in tears. The luminous weep, if only over those indarkness.
