Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

  CHAPTER I.

  THE ORIGIN OF SLANG.

  "Pigritia" is a terrible word. It engenders a world, _la pègre_, forwhich read, _robbery_; and a Hades, _la pégrenne_, for which read,_hunger_. Hence indolence is a mother, and has a son, robbery, anda daughter, hunger. Where are we at this moment? In slang. What isslang? It is at once the nation and the idiom; it is robbery in itstwo species, people and language. Four-and-thirty years ago, whenthe narrator of this grave and sombre history introduced into themiddle of a work written with the same object as this one[1] a robberspeaking slang, there was amazement and clamor. "Why! what! slang! why,it is frightful; it is the language of the chain-gang, of hulks andprisons, of everything that is the most abominable in society," etc.We could never understand objections of this nature. Since that periodtwo powerful romance-writers, of whom one was a profound observer ofhumanity, the other an intrepid friend of the people,--Balzac andEugène Sue,--having made bandits talk in their natural tongue, asthe author of "Le dernier Jour dun Condamné" did in 1828, the sameobjections were raised, and people repeated: "What do writers want withthis repulsive patois? Slang is odious, and produces a shudder." Whodenies it? Of course it does. When the object is to probe a wound, agulf, or a society, when did it become a fault to drive the probe toodeep? We have always thought that it was sometimes an act of courageand at the very least a simple and useful action, worthy of thesympathetic attention which a duty accepted and carried out deserves.Why should we not explore and study everything, and why stop on theway? Stopping is the function of the probe, and not of the prober.

  Certainly it is neither an attractive nor an easy task to seek in thelowest depths of social order, where the earth leaves off and mudbegins, to grope in these vague densities, to pursue, seize, and throwquivering on the pavement that abject idiom which drips with filth whenthus brought to light, that pustulous vocabulary of which each wordseems an unclean ring of a monster of the mud and darkness. Nothing ismore mournful than thus to contemplate, by the light of thought, thefrightful vermin swarm of slang in its nudity. It seems, in fact, as ifyou have just drawn from its sewer a sort of horrible beast made forthe night, and you fancy you see a frightful, living, and bristlingpolype, which shivers, moves, is agitated, demands the shadow again,menaces, and looks. One word resembles a claw, another a lustrelessand bleeding eye, and some phrases seem to snap like the pincers ofa crab. All this lives with the hideous vitality of things which areorganized in disorganization. Now, let us ask, when did horror begin toexclude study; or the malady drive away the physician? Can we imaginea naturalist who would refuse to examine a viper, a bat, a scorpion, ascolopendra, or a tarantula, and throw them into the darkness, saying,"Fie, how ugly they are!" The thinker who turned away from slang wouldresemble a surgeon who turned away from an ulcer or a wart. He would bea philologist hesitating to examine a fact of language, a philosopherhesitating to scrutinize a fact of humanity. For we must tell all thoseignorant of the fact, that slang is at once a literary phenomenon and asocial result. What is slang, properly so called? It is the language ofmisery.

  Here we may, perhaps, be stopped; the fact may be generalized, whichis sometimes a way of alternating it; it may be observed that everytrade, every profession, we might also say all the accidents of thesocial hierarchy, and all the forms of intelligence, have their slang.The merchant who says "Montpellier in demand, Marseille fine quality;"the broker who says, "amount brought forward, premium at end of month;"the gambler who says, "pique, répique, and capot;" the bailiff of theNorman Isles who says, "the holder in fee cannot make any claim on theproducts of the land during the hereditary seizure of the property ofthe re-lessor;" the playwright who says, "the piece was goosed;" theactor who says, "I made a hit;" the philosopher who says, "phenomenaltriplicity;" the sportsman who says, "a covey of partridges, a leashof woodcocks;" the phrenologist who says, "amativeness, combativeness,secretiveness;" the infantry soldier who says, "my clarionette;" thedragoon who says, "my turkey-cock;" the fencing-master who says,"tierce, carte, disengage;" the printer who says, "hold a chapel;"all--printer, fencing-master, dragoon, infantry man, phrenologist,sportsman, philosopher, actor, playwright, gambler, stock-broker, andmerchant--talk slang. The painter who says, "my grinder;" the attorneywho says, "my gutter-skipper;" the barber who says, "my clerk;" andthe cobbler who says, "my scrub,"--all talk slang. Rigorously taken,all the different ways of saying right and left, the sailors larboardand starboard, the scene-shifter's off-side and prompt-side, and thevergers Epistle-side and Gospel-side, are slang. There is the slang ofaffected girls as there was the slang of the précieuses, and the Hôtelde Rambouillet bordered to some slight extent the Cour des Miracles.There is the slang of duchesses, as is proved by this sentence,written in a note by a very great lady and very pretty woman of theRestoration: "Vous trouverez dans ces potains-là une foultitude deraisons pour que je me libertise."[2] Diplomatic ciphers are slang,and the Pontifical Chancery, writing 26 for "Rome," _grkztntgzyal_for "Envoy," and _abfxustgrnogrkzu tu_ XI. for "the Duke of Modena,"talk slang. The mediæval physicians who, in order to refer to carrots,radishes, and turnips, said, _opoponach, perfroschinum, reptitalinus,dracatholicum, angelorum_, and _postmegorum_, talk slang. Thesugar-refiner who says, "clarified syrup, molasses, bastard, common,burned, loaf-sugar,"--this honest manufacturer talks slang. A certainschool of critics, who twenty years ago said, "one half of Shakespeareis puns and playing on words," spoke slang. The poet and artist whowith profound feeling would call M. de Montmorency a bourgeois, ifhe were not a connoisseur in verses and statues, talk slang. Theclassic academician who calls flowers Flora, the fruits Pomona, thesea Neptune, love the flames, beauty charms, a horse a charger, thewhite or tricolor cockade the rose of Bellona, the three-cornered hatthe triangle of Mars,--that classic academician talks slang. Algebra,medicine, and botany have their slang. The language employed onshipboard--that admirable sea-language so complete and picturesque,which Jean Bart, Duquesne, Suffren, and Duperré spoke, which is mingledwith the straining of the rigging, the sound of the speaking-trumpets,the clang of boarding-axe, the rolling, the wind, the gusts, and thecannon--is an heroic and brilliant slang, which is to the ferociousslang of robbers what the lion is to the jackal.

  All this is perfectly true, but whatever people may say, this modeof comprehending the word "slang" is an extension which everybodywill not be prepared to admit. For our part, we perceive the precisecircumscribed and settled acceptation of the word, and restrict slangto slang. The true slang, the slang _par excellence_, if the twowords can be coupled, the immemorial slang which was a kingdom, isnothing else, we repeat, than the ugly, anxious, cunning, treacherous,venomous, cruel, blear-eyed, vile, profound, and fatal language ofmisery. There is at the extremity of all abasements and all misfortunesa last misery, which revolts and resolves to contend with the ensembleof fortunate facts and reigning rights,--a frightful struggle, inwhich, at one moment crafty, at another violent, at once unhealthy andferocious, it attacks the social order with pinpricks by vice, and withheavy blows by crime. For the necessities of this struggle, misery hasinvented a fighting language, which is called slang. To hold up on thesurface and keep from forgetfulness, from the gulf, only a fragmentof any language which man has spoken, and which would be lost,--thatis to say, one of the elements, good or bad, of which civilization iscomposed and complicated,--is to extend the data of social observationand serve civilization itself. Plautus rendered this service, whethervoluntarily or involuntarily, by making two Carthaginian soldiersspeak Phœnician; Molière rendered it also by making so many of hischaracters talk Levantine and all sorts of patois. Here objectionscrop out afresh: Phœnician, excellent; Levantine, very good; andeven patois may be allowed, for they are languages which have belongedto nations or provinces--but slang? Of what service is it to preserveslang and help it to float on the surface?

  To this we will only make one remark. Assuredly, if the language whicha nation or a province has spoken is worthy of interest, there isa thing still more wort
hy of attention and study, and that is thelanguage which a wretchedness has spoken. It is the language which hasbeen spoken in France, for instance, for more than four centuries,not only by a wretchedness, but by every wretchedness, by every humanwretchedness possible. And then, we insist upon the fact, to studysocial deformities and infirmities, and point them out for cure, isnot a task in which choice is permissible. The historian of moralsand ideas has a mission no less austere than the historian of events.The latter has the surface of civilization, the struggles of crownedheads, the births of princes, the marriages of kings, assemblies, greatpublic men and revolutions,--all the external part; the other historianhas the interior,--the basis, the people that labors, suffers, andwaits, the crushed woman, the child dying in agony, the dull warfareof man with man, obscene ferocities, prejudices, allowed iniquities,the subterranean counter-strokes of the law, the secret revolutionsof minds, the indistinct shivering of multitudes, those who die ofhunger, the barefooted, the bare-armed, the disinherited, the orphans,the unhappy, the infamous, and all the ghosts that wander about inobscurity. He must go down with his heart full of charity and severity,at once as a brother and as a judge, into the impenetrable dungeonsin which crawl pell-mell those who bleed and those who wound, thosewho weep and those who cure, those who fast and those who devour,those that endure evil, and those who commit it. Are the duties of thehistorians of hearts and souls inferior to those of the historians ofexternal facts? Can we believe that Alighieri has less to say thanMachiavelli? Is the lower part of civilization, because it is deeperand more gloomy, less important than the upper? Do we know the mountainthoroughly if we do not know the caverns?

  We will notice, by the way, that from our previous remarks a markedseparation, which does not exist in our mind, might be inferred betweenthe two classes of historians. No one is a good historian of thepatent, visible, glistening, and public life of a people, unless he isat the same time to a certain extent the historian of their profoundand hidden life; and no one is a good historian of the interior unlesshe can be, whenever it is required, historian of the exterior. Thehistory of morals and ideas penetrates the history of events, and _viceversâ_; they are two orders of different facts which answer to eachother, are always linked together, and often engender one another.All the lineaments which Providence traces on the surface of a nationhave their gloomy, but distinct, parallels at the base, and all theconvulsions of the interior produce up-heavings on the surface. Astrue history is a medley of everything, the real historian attends toeverything. Man is not a circle with only one centre; he is an ellipsewith two foci, facts being the one, and ideas the other. Slang isnothing but a vestibule in which language, having some wicked actionto commit, disguises itself. It puts on these masks of words and ragsof metaphors. In this way it becomes horrible, and can scarce berecognized. Is it really the French language, the great human tongue?It is ready to go on the stage and take up the cue of crime, andsuited for all the parts in the repertory of evil. It no longer walks,but shambles; it limps upon the crutch of the Cour des Miracles, whichmay be metamorphosed into a club. All the spectres, its dressers, havedaubed its face, and it crawls along and stands erect with the doublemovement of the reptile. It is henceforth ready for any part, for ithas been made to squint by the forger, has been verdigrised by thepoisoner, blackened by the soot of the incendiary, and the murderer hasgiven it his red.

  When you listen at the door of society, on the side of honest men,you catch the dialogue of those outside. You distinguish questionsand answers, and notice, without comprehending it, a hideous murmursounding almost like the human accent, but nearer to a yell than tospeech. It is slang; the words are deformed, wild, imprinted witha species of fantastic bestiality. You fancy that you hear hydrasconversing. It is unintelligibility in darkness; it gnashes its teethand talks in whispers, supplementing the gloom by enigmas. There isdarkness in misfortune, and greater darkness still in crime, and thesetwo darknesses amalgamated compose slang. There is obscurity in theatmosphere, obscurity in the deeds, obscurity in the voices. It isa horrifying, frog-like language, which goes, comes, hops, crawls,slavers, and moves monstrously in that common gray mist composed ofcrime, night, hunger, vice, falsehood, injustice, nudity, asphyxia, andwinter, which is the high noon of the wretched.

  Let us take compassion on the chastised, for, alas! what are weourselves? Who am I, who am speaking to you? Who are you, who arelistening to me? Whence do we come? And is it quite sure that we didnothing before we were born? The earth is not without a resemblanceto a prison, and who knows whether man is not the ticket-of-leave ofDivine justice? If we look at life closely we find it so made thatthere is punishment everywhere to be seen. Are you what is called ahappy man? Well, you are sad every day, and each of them has its greatgrief or small anxiety. Yesterday, you trembled for a health whichis dear to you, to-day you are frightened about your own, to-morrowit will be a monetary anxiety, and the day after the diatribe of acalumniator, and the day after that again the misfortune of somefriend; then the weather, then something broken or lost, or a pleasurefor which your conscience and your backbone reproach you; or, anothertime, the progress of public affairs, and we do not take into accountheart-pangs. And so it goes on; one cloud is dissipated, another forms,and there is hardly one day in one hundred of real joy and brightsunshine. And you are one of that small number who are happy; as forother men, the stagnation of night is around them. Reflecting mindsrarely use the expressions "the happy" and the "unhappy," for in thisworld, which is evidently the vestibule of another, there are no happybeings. The true human division is into the luminous and the dark. Todiminish the number of the dark, and augment that of the luminous,is the object; and that is why we cry, "Instruction and learning!"Learning to read is lighting the fire, and every syllable spelled isa spark. When we say light, however, we do not necessarily mean light;for men suffer in light, and excess of light burns. Flame is the enemyof the wings, and to burn without ceasing to fly is the prodigy ofgenius. When you know and when you love, you will still suffer, for theday is born in tears, and the luminous weep, be it only for the sake ofthose in darkness.

  [1] Le dernier Jour d'un Condamné.

  [2] "You will find in that tittle-tattle a multitude of reasons why Ishould take my liberty."