Les Misérables, page 263
CHAPTER II--ROOTS
Slang is the tongue of those who sit in darkness.
Thought is moved in its most sombre depths, social philosophy is biddento its most poignant meditations, in the presence of that enigmaticdialect at once so blighted and rebellious. Therein lies chastisementmade visible. Every syllable has an air of being marked. The words ofthe vulgar tongue appear therein wrinkled and shrivelled, as it were,beneath the hot iron of the executioner. Some seem to be still smoking.Such and such a phrase produces upon you the effect of the shoulder of athief branded with the fleur-de-lys, which has suddenly been laid bare.Ideas almost refuse to be expressed in these substantives which arefugitives from justice. Metaphor is sometimes so shameless, that onefeels that it has worn the iron neck-fetter.
Moreover, in spite of all this, and because of all this, this strangedialect has by rights, its own compartment in that great impartial caseof pigeon-holes where there is room for the rusty farthing as well asfor the gold medal, and which is called literature. Slang, whether thepublic admit the fact or not has its syntax and its poetry. It is alanguage. Yes, by the deformity of certain terms, we recognize thefact that it was chewed by Mandrin, and by the splendor of certainmetonymies, we feel that Villon spoke it.
That exquisite and celebrated verse--
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan? But where are the snows of years gone by?
is a verse of slang. _Antam--ante annum_--is a word of Thunes slang,which signified the past year, and by extension, _formerly_. Thirty-fiveyears ago, at the epoch of the departure of the great chain-gang, therecould be read in one of the cells at Bicêtre, this maxim engraved with anail on the wall by a king of Thunes condemned to the galleys: _Les dabsd'antan trimaient siempre pour la pierre du Coësre_. This means _Kingsin days gone by always went and had themselves anointed_. In the opinionof that king, anointment meant the galleys.
The word _décarade_, which expresses the departure of heavy vehicles ata gallop, is attributed to Villon, and it is worthy of him. This word,which strikes fire with all four of its feet, sums up in a masterlyonomatopoia the whole of La Fontaine's admirable verse:--
Six forts chevaux tiraient un coche. Six stout horses drew a coach.
From a purely literary point of view, few studies would prove morecurious and fruitful than the study of slang. It is a whole languagewithin a language, a sort of sickly excrescence, an unhealthy graftwhich has produced a vegetation, a parasite which has its roots in theold Gallic trunk, and whose sinister foliage crawls all over one side ofthe language. This is what may be called the first, the vulgar aspect ofslang. But, for those who study the tongue as it should be studied, thatis to say, as geologists study the earth, slang appears like a veritablealluvial deposit. According as one digs a longer or shorter distanceinto it, one finds in slang, below the old popular French, Provençal,Spanish, Italian, Levantine, that language of the Mediterranean ports,English and German, the Romance language in its three varieties, French,Italian, and Romance Romance, Latin, and finally Basque and Celtic. Aprofound and unique formation. A subterranean edifice erected in commonby all the miserable. Each accursed race has deposited its layer, eachsuffering has dropped its stone there, each heart has contributed itspebble. A throng of evil, base, or irritated souls, who have traversedlife and have vanished into eternity, linger there almost entirelyvisible still beneath the form of some monstrous word.
Do you want Spanish? The old Gothic slang abounded in it. Here is_boffete_, a box on the ear, which is derived from _bofeton; vantane_,window (later on _vanterne_), which comes from _vantana; gat_, cat,which comes from _gato; acite_, oil, which comes from _aceyte_. Do youwant Italian? Here is _spade_, sword, which comes from _spada; carvel_,boat, which comes from _caravella_. Do you want English? Here is_bichot_, which comes from _bishop; raille_, spy, which comes from_rascal, rascalion; pilche_, a case, which comes from _pilcher_, asheath. Do you want German? Here is the _caleur_, the waiter, _kellner_;the _hers_, the master, _herzog_ (duke). Do you want Latin? Here is_frangir_, to break, _frangere; affurer_, to steal, _fur; cadene_,chain, _catena_. There is one word which crops up in every language ofthe continent, with a sort of mysterious power and authority. It is theword _magnus_; the Scotchman makes of it his _mac_, which designates thechief of the clan; Mac-Farlane, Mac-Callumore, the great Farlane, thegreat Callumore41; slang turns it into _meck_ and later _le meg_, thatis to say, God. Would you like Basque? Here is _gahisto_, the devil,which comes from _gaïztoa_, evil; _sorgabon_, good night, which comesfrom _gabon_, good evening. Do you want Celtic? Here is _blavin_, ahandkerchief, which comes from _blavet_, gushing water; _ménesse_,a woman (in a bad sense), which comes from _meinec_, full of stones;_barant_, brook, from _baranton_, fountain; _goffeur_, locksmith, from_goff_, blacksmith; _guedouze_, death, which comes from _guenn-du_,black-white. Finally, would you like history? Slang calls crowns _lesmaltèses_, a souvenir of the coin in circulation on the galleys ofMalta.
In addition to the philological origins just indicated, slang possessesother and still more natural roots, which spring, so to speak, from themind of man itself.
In the first place, the direct creation of words. Therein lies themystery of tongues. To paint with words, which contains figuresone knows not how or why, is the primitive foundation of all humanlanguages, what may be called their granite.
Slang abounds in words of this description, immediate words, wordscreated instantaneously no one knows either where or by whom, withoutetymology, without analogies, without derivatives, solitary, barbarous,sometimes hideous words, which at times possess a singular power ofexpression and which live. The executioner, _le taule_; the forest, _lesabri_; fear, flight, _taf_; the lackey, _le larbin_; the mineral, theprefect, the minister, _pharos_; the devil, _le rabouin_. Nothingis stranger than these words which both mask and reveal. Some, _lerabouin_, for example, are at the same time grotesque and terrible, andproduce on you the effect of a cyclopean grimace.
In the second place, metaphor. The peculiarity of a language which isdesirous of saying all yet concealing all is that it is rich in figures.Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke,the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is moremetaphorical than slang: _dévisser le coco_ (to unscrew the nut), totwist the neck; _tortiller_ (to wriggle), to eat; _être gerbé_, to betried; _a rat_, a bread thief; _il lansquine_, it rains, a striking,ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilateslong oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting pikes of thelancers, and which compresses into a single word the popular expression:it rains halberds. Sometimes, in proportion as slang progresses fromthe first epoch to the second, words pass from the primitive and savagesense to the metaphorical sense. The devil ceases to be _le rabouin_,and becomes _le boulanger_ (the baker), who puts the bread into theoven. This is more witty, but less grand, something like Racine afterCorneille, like Euripides after Æschylus. Certain slang phrases whichparticipate in the two epochs and have at once the barbaric characterand the metaphorical character resemble phantasmagories. _Les sorgueuersvont solliciter des gails à la lune_--the prowlers are going to stealhorses by night,--this passes before the mind like a group of spectres.One knows not what one sees.
In the third place, the expedient. Slang lives on the language. It usesit in accordance with its fancy, it dips into it hap-hazard, and itoften confines itself, when occasion arises, to alter it in a gross andsummary fashion. Occasionally, with the ordinary words thus deformed andcomplicated with words of pure slang, picturesque phrases are formed, inwhich there can be felt the mixture of the two preceding elements, thedirect creation and the metaphor: _le cab jaspine, je marronne que laroulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri_, the dog is barking, I suspectthat the diligence for Paris is passing through the woods. _Le dab estsinve, la dabuge est merloussière, la fée est bative_, the bourgeois isstupid, the bourgeoise is cunning, the daughter is pretty. Generally,to throw listeners off the track, slang confines itself to adding toall the words of the language without distinction, an ignoble tail, atermination in _aille_, in _orgue_, in _iergue_, or in _uche_. Thus:_Vousiergue trouvaille bonorgue ce gigotmuche?_ Do you think that legof mutton good? A phrase addressed by Cartouche to a turnkey in order tofind out whether the sum offered for his escape suited him.
The termination in _mar_ has been added recently.
Slang, being the dialect of corruption, quickly becomes corrupteditself. Besides this, as it is always seeking concealment, as soon asit feels that it is understood, it changes its form. Contrary to whathappens with every other vegetation, every ray of light which fallsupon it kills whatever it touches. Thus slang is in constant process ofdecomposition and recomposition; an obscure and rapid work which neverpauses. It passes over more ground in ten years than a language in tencenturies. Thus _le larton_ (bread) becomes _le lartif; le gail_(horse) becomes _le gaye; la fertanche_ (straw) becomes _la fertille;le momignard_ (brat), _le momacque; les fiques_ (duds), _frusques; lachique_ (the church), _l'égrugeoir; le colabre_ (neck), _le colas_. Thedevil is at first, _gahisto_, then _le rabouin_, then _the baker_; thepriest is a _ratichon_, then the boar (_le sanglier_); the dagger is _levingt-deux_ (twenty-two), then _le surin_, then _le lingre_; the policeare _railles_, then _roussins_, then _rousses_, then _marchands delacets_ (dealers in stay-laces), then _coquers_, then _cognes_;the executioner is _le taule_, then _Charlot, l'atigeur_, then _lebecquillard_. In the seventeenth century, to fight was "to give eachother snuff"; in the nineteenth it is "to chew each other's throats."There have been twenty different phrases between these two extremes.Cartouche's talk would have been Hebrew to Lacenaire. All the words ofthis language are perpetually engaged in flight like the men who utterthem.
Still, from time to time, and in consequence of this very movement,the ancient slang crops up again and becomes new once more. It has itsheadquarters where it maintains its sway. The Temple preserved the slangof the seventeenth century; Bicêtre, when it was a prison, preserved theslang of Thunes. There one could hear the termination in _anche_ ofthe old Thuneurs. _Boyanches-tu_ (bois-tu), do you drink? But perpetualmovement remains its law, nevertheless.
If the philosopher succeeds in fixing, for a moment, for purposes ofobservation, this language which is incessantly evaporating, he fallsinto doleful and useful meditation. No study is more efficacious andmore fecund in instruction. There is not a metaphor, not an analogy, inslang, which does not contain a lesson. Among these men, to beat meansto feign; one beats a malady; ruse is their strength.
For them, the idea of the man is not separated from the idea ofdarkness. The night is called _la sorgue_; man, _l'orgue_. Man is aderivative of the night.
They have taken up the practice of considering society in the lightof an atmosphere which kills them, of a fatal force, and they speak oftheir liberty as one would speak of his health. A man under arrest is a_sick man_; one who is condemned is a _dead man_.
The most terrible thing for the prisoner within the four walls in whichhe is buried, is a sort of glacial chastity, and he calls the dungeonthe _castus_. In that funereal place, life outside always presentsitself under its most smiling aspect. The prisoner has irons on hisfeet; you think, perhaps, that his thought is that it is with the feetthat one walks? No; he is thinking that it is with the feet that onedances; so, when he has succeeded in severing his fetters, his firstidea is that now he can dance, and he calls the saw the _bastringue_(public-house ball).--A name is a centre; profound assimilation.--Theruffian has two heads, one of which reasons out his actions and leadshim all his life long, and the other which he has upon his shoulders onthe day of his death; he calls the head which counsels him in crime _lasorbonne_, and the head which expiates it _la tronche_.--When a man hasno longer anything but rags upon his body and vices in his heart, whenhe has arrived at that double moral and material degradation which theword blackguard characterizes in its two acceptations, he is ripe forcrime; he is like a well-whetted knife; he has two cutting edges, hisdistress and his malice; so slang does not say a blackguard, it says_un réguisé_.--What are the galleys? A brazier of damnation, a hell. Theconvict calls himself a _fagot_.--And finally, what name do malefactorsgive to their prison? The _college_. A whole penitentiary system can beevolved from that word.
Does the reader wish to know where the majority of the songs of thegalleys, those refrains called in the special vocabulary _lirlonfa_,have had their birth?
Let him listen to what follows:--
There existed at the Châtelet in Paris a large and long cellar. Thiscellar was eight feet below the level of the Seine. It had neitherwindows nor air-holes, its only aperture was the door; men could enterthere, air could not. This vault had for ceiling a vault of stone, andfor floor ten inches of mud. It was flagged; but the pavement had rottedand cracked under the oozing of the water. Eight feet above the floor,a long and massive beam traversed this subterranean excavation from sideto side; from this beam hung, at short distances apart, chains threefeet long, and at the end of these chains there were rings for theneck. In this vault, men who had been condemned to the galleys wereincarcerated until the day of their departure for Toulon. They werethrust under this beam, where each one found his fetters swinging in thedarkness and waiting for him.
The chains, those pendant arms, and the necklets, those open hands,caught the unhappy wretches by the throat. They were rivetted andleft there. As the chain was too short, they could not lie down. Theyremained motionless in that cavern, in that night, beneath that beam,almost hanging, forced to unheard-of efforts to reach their bread, jug,or their vault overhead, mud even to mid-leg, filth flowing to theirvery calves, broken asunder with fatigue, with thighs and knees givingway, clinging fast to the chain with their hands in order to obtain somerest, unable to sleep except when standing erect, and awakened everymoment by the strangling of the collar; some woke no more. In order toeat, they pushed the bread, which was flung to them in the mud, alongtheir leg with their heel until it reached their hand.
How long did they remain thus? One month, two months, six monthssometimes; one stayed a year. It was the antechamber of the galleys.Men were put there for stealing a hare from the king. In thissepulchre-hell, what did they do? What man can do in a sepulchre, theywent through the agonies of death, and what can man do in hell, theysang; for song lingers where there is no longer any hope. In the watersof Malta, when a galley was approaching, the song could be heard beforethe sound of the oars. Poor Survincent, the poacher, who had gonethrough the prison-cellar of the Châtelet, said: "It was the rhymes thatkept me up." Uselessness of poetry. What is the good of rhyme?
It is in this cellar that nearly all the slang songs had their birth.It is from the dungeon of the Grand-Châtelet of Paris that comesthe melancholy refrain of the Montgomery galley: _"Timaloumisaine,timaloumison."_ The majority of these songs are melancholy; some aregay; one is tender:--
Icicaille est la theatre Here is the theatre Du petit dardant. Of the little archer (Cupid).
Do what you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic in the heartof man, love.
In this world of dismal deeds, people keep their secrets. The secret isthe thing above all others. The secret, in the eyes of these wretches,is unity which serves as a base of union. To betray a secret is totear from each member of this fierce community something of his ownpersonality. To inform against, in the energetic slang dialect, iscalled: "to eat the bit." As though the informer drew to himself alittle of the substance of all and nourished himself on a bit of eachone's flesh.
What does it signify to receive a box on the ear? Commonplace metaphorreplies: "It is to see thirty-six candles." Here slang intervenes andtakes it up: Candle, _camoufle_. Thereupon, the ordinary tonguegives _camouflet_42 as the synonym for _soufflet_. Thus, by a sortof infiltration from below upwards, with the aid of metaphor, thatincalculable, trajectory slang mounts from the cavern to the Academy;and Poulailler saying: "I light my _camoufle_," causes Voltaire towrite: "Langleviel La Beaumelle deserves a hundred _camouflets_."
Researches in slang mean discoveries at every step. Study andinvestigation of this strange idiom lead to the mysterious point ofintersection of regular society with society which is accursed.
The thief also has his food for cannon, stealable matter, you, I,whoever passes by; _le pantre_. (_Pan_, everybody.)
Slang is language turned convict.
That the thinking principle of man be thrust down ever so low, that itcan be dragged and pinioned there by obscure tyrannies of fatality,that it can be bound by no one knows what fetters in that abyss, issufficient to create consternation.
Oh, poor thought of miserable wretches!
Alas! will no one come to the succor of the human soul in that darkness?Is it her destiny there to await forever the mind, the liberator, theimmense rider of Pegasi and hippogriffs, the combatant of heroes of thedawn who shall descend from the azure between two wings, the radiantknight of the future? Will she forever summon in vain to her assistancethe lance of light of the ideal? Is she condemned to hear the fearfulapproach of Evil through the density of the gulf, and to catch glimpses,nearer and nearer at hand, beneath the hideous water of that dragon'shead, that maw streaked with foam, and that writhing undulation ofclaws, swellings, and rings? Must it remain there, without a gleamof light, without hope, given over to that terrible approach, vaguelyscented out by the monster, shuddering, dishevelled, wringing its arms,forever chained to the rock of night, a sombre Andromeda white and nakedamid the shadows!
