【英文翻译版37】大卫·贝洛斯：《悲惨世界》

A monster that occupied the bookshop

就是它，占满了整个书店

Zachary Davis: In 1862, French novelist, poet, and dramatist Victor Hugo published what would become one of the bestselling novels of the 19th century—Les Misérables . Since its initial publication, the story has been translated into 21 different languages and adapted for countless films. In 1980, it was adapted into a musical that is still performed today, making it one of the longest running musicals in the world. Over 150 years later, it’s a story that still resonates with readers and audiences around the world.

扎卡里·戴维斯：1862年，法国小说家、诗人和戏剧家维克多·雨果发表了19世纪极为畅销的小说《悲惨世界》。自最初发表以来，小说已被翻译成二十一种语言，被改编为无数电影。1980年，它被改编为音乐剧，至今仍在上演，已成为全世界上演时间最长的音乐剧之一。一百五十多年后的今天，这个故事仍然引发着世界各地读者与观众的共鸣。

David Bellos: I mean, there is almost nothing in Les Misérables  that you could object to now. And that's not true of any other 19th century novelist. Racial attitudes in many 19th century novelists that would seem like common sense then, but which offend us now. There's nothing of it. Les Misérables , there’s nothing. There's no anti-Semitism. There's no racial aspersions or assumptions or even implications. It is a novel about the whole world, but told through what Hugo knew, France.

大卫·贝洛斯：《悲惨世界》中的所有内容与思想都能得到当代人的认同。19世纪其他小说家的作品可不是这样。他们的作品中往往会出现一些种族歧视的观点，在当时倒也无可厚非，但如今会让人颇为不适。但《悲惨世界》和它们不同，没有反犹太主义的思想，没有对某个种族的诋毁或揣测，也没有一丁点种族主义的影子。这本小说讲述的其实是整个世界的故事，只不过场景发生在雨果所熟悉的法国。

Zachary Davis: The story highlighted the unjust social class system of 19th century France by moving the underrepresented lives of the poor and miserable to center stage. But this wasn’t something unique to France. It was, and still is, a global issue. Hugo knew this story had worldwide relevance and he wanted it to be accessible to all readers.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这部小说聚焦于社会边缘的、穷苦人民的生活，展现了19世纪法国不公平的社会等级制度。但这并不是法国独有的问题。时至今日，它仍然是一个全球性的问题。雨果深知这部小说具有普世性的意义，所以希望全世界的读者都能阅读它。

David Bellos: What is so heartening and livening and profoundly important about Les Misérables  is that it is written for everybody, but it is written without the slightest compromise with Hugo’s conception of high art. And maybe it's the last work in our modern history that completely overrides the distinction between elite and popular culture.

大卫·贝洛斯：《悲惨世界》之所以振奋人心、引人入胜且至关重要，是因为它是为每个人而写的，但同时也展现了雨果对高雅艺术一丝不苟的追求。可以说，它是现代史上最后一部打破精英文化和大众文化界限的作品。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor David Bellos to discuss Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables . When Victor Hugo published this work in 1862, he was an enormous figure in French literature and European culture.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：100本改变你和世界的书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和大卫·贝洛斯教授一起讨论雨果的《悲惨世界》。1862年该书出版时，雨果在法国文坛和欧洲文化圈子中已经赫赫有名。

David Bellos: He was so daunting that when Charles Dickens had a trip to Paris and went to have tea with him, he hardly dared to say a word in the presence of this towering genius who bore the mantle of Goethe, if not of Homer and Virgil, with absolute naturalness. I mean, he was totally megalomaniac, except that it was entirely justified. Well, and when it appeared in 1862, Hugo had published a huge amount throughout his life, but he hadn't actually published a novel since 1831’s Notre-Dame de Paris, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

大卫·贝洛斯：雨果是这么令人敬畏，以至于查尔斯·狄更斯到巴黎拜访他、同他喝茶时，都紧张得一个字也不敢说——面前这位，可是才高八斗、堪比歌德、甚至也不亚于荷马和维吉尔的文学巨匠啊，何况他如此自然地接受了自己的文坛地位。他是如此骄傲，然而又完全担得起这份骄傲。1862年《悲惨世界》发表时，雨果已经著作等身。不过自从1831年出版《巴黎圣母院》之后，那三十年他都没有真正发表过小说。

Zachary Davis: Hugo had been working on Les Misérables  for many years and it was highly anticipated by the public.

扎卡里·戴维斯：雨果花了很多年酝酿《悲惨世界》，这本书深受大众的喜爱。

David Bellos: It sold out in days. It was reprinted. It sold out in days. It was reprinted, etc. Hugo’s colleagues amongst writers and publishers in Paris were very miffed. I mean, he had bulldozed the entire book market. Nothing was being sold in bookshops except Les Misérables  to the degree or to the extent that Flaubert delayed publication of his novel Salammbo for nine months because his publisher told him there's no chance of selling any copies. That's not what people are spending their money on.

大卫·贝洛斯：书没过几天就卖光了，然后重印，过了几天又卖光了，如此往复。雨果写作界和出版界的同行都颇有微词，因为他的书占据了整个图书市场。除了《悲惨世界》之外，书店里都不卖别的书。福楼拜甚至不得不推迟九个月出版小说《萨朗波》，因为出版商告诉他，现在出版根本卖不出去，人们不会把钱花在你这本书上。

David Bellos: So there was a kind of snide resentment of this monster who sort of occupied the whole literary space. And that's why in the correspondence of Flaubert, in the letters that Baudelaire wrote to his mother, amongst the subtle but establishment writers snide remarks about it being a pat for the masses and outrage and so forth.

大卫·贝洛斯：这部鸿篇巨制占据了整个文学市场。也正因此，很多人对它都有意见。福楼拜在书信中吐露不满，波德莱尔也在给母亲的信中有所抱怨，很多功成名就的作家更是明嘲暗讽，说它在迎合暴徒、赞美暴行。

David Bellos: And then, of course, there were many writers who were politically on the other side of him, very much on the other side of the line, very conservative, reactionary monarchists who wrote diatribes against the novel. One of the interesting things is that since it had absolutely no impact on the readership of the book or its integration into not merely French with European and broader global culture, you begin to wonder whether book critics matter at all.

大卫·贝洛斯：许多与雨果政见不同的保守派、保皇派作家也纷纷提笔猛烈抨击这部小说。有意思的是，这些抨击完全不影响读者对这本书的喜爱，也不影响它在法国、欧洲乃至整个世界传播，所以你甚至会怀疑图书评论家能有几分影响。

The best of times, also the worst of times

是最好的时代，也是最坏的时代

Zachary Davis: Help us put the book in the context of French publishing history.

扎卡里·戴维斯：您可以讲讲这本书出版时，法国出版业的情况吗？

David Bellos: It’s published in 1862, OK. France was not yet a completely literate country, but it was well on its way to become. Many, many readers were new readers, you know, had just become literate. So it comes as like the crowning glory of a period of great creativity in French literature, and American and British as well.

大卫·贝洛斯：这本书于1862年出版。当时法国还没能全民识字，但识字率在慢慢提高。许多读者都是刚刚识字、刚刚接触图书的人。当时可以说是法国文学史上大放异彩、极富创造力的时代。在美国和英国，情况也是如此。

David Bellos: I mean, after all, these are also the decades of George Eliot and Jane Austen and the Brontes, Melville, Dickens, you know, when you think about it is extraordinary how much you had to read of wonderful new stuff. Great Expectations 1861. You know, Moby Dick, just a few years before. War and Peace, the first part appeared 1863. So Les Misérables  comes out in the middle of a tremendous flowering of the art of the novel.

大卫·贝洛斯：那几十年里涌现出了一大批优秀的作家，如乔治·艾略特、简·奥斯汀、勃朗特三姐妹、梅尔维尔、狄更斯。仔细想想你会觉得不可思议，有多少精彩的新作品等待你阅读啊：如50年代出版的《白鲸》、1861年发表的《远大前程》、1863年问世的《战争与和平》第一卷。在小说艺术的蓬勃发展中，《悲惨世界》诞生了。

Zachary Davis: Although this was a prosperous time for the novel, politically, things in France were more bleak. In 1851, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Louis Napoleon, or Napoleon III, seized power in France and established an anti-parliament constitution.

扎卡里·戴维斯：尽管当时小说领域欣欣向荣，但在政治领域，法国局势并不乐观。1851年，拿破仑·波拿巴的侄子路易·拿破仑，也就是后来的拿破仑三世，在法国掌握大权，颁布了削弱议会权力的宪法。

David Bellos: And Hugo was an “undesirable”. Hugo was becoming more and more opposed to Louis Napoleon, more and more interested in and supportive of what we now call left wing positions that were called republican and marginally socialist at the time. And so he went into exile just before he was declared to be persona non grata anyway.

大卫·贝洛斯：雨果成了所谓的“异见分子”。他越来越反对路易·拿破仑，越来越支持左翼政派，也就是当时的共和派和少数社会主义者。于是在被列为“不受欢迎的人”之前，雨果被迫流亡国外。

Zachary Davis: Hugo moved with his family to Brussels for a few months before settling on the island of Jersey, situated in the English Channel between France and England. Jersey is a self-governing democracy that is politically independent from the United Kingdom, but physically protected and defended by Britain.

扎卡里·戴维斯：雨果和家人在布鲁塞尔停留了几个月，随后搬去了泽西岛。该岛位于法国和英国之间的英吉利海峡。泽西岛是一个自治的行政区，行政上独立于英国，但国防上受英国保护。

David Bellos: So he took up residence in Jersey alongside quite a number of other French and European socialists, bohemians, exiles, political undesirables and other riffraff. And so they formed a whole community. And relations between the exile community and the locals got more and more strained because secret agents from Paris were there stirring up the trouble. And the British found themselves now in alliance with the French over the war in the Crimea. And so they joined in in stirring up troubles.

大卫·贝洛斯：雨果和法国以及欧洲大陆的社会主义者、艺术家、流亡者、政治不良分子一起居住在泽西岛，他们构成了整个流亡者群体。然而从巴黎过来的间谍不断煽风点火，流亡者们与当地人之间的关系越来越紧张。此时，英国又在克里米亚战争中与法国结盟，于是也在泽西岛给流亡者使袢子。

David Bellos: And in 1855, three years after his arrival on Jersey, finally there was the beginning of a riot which the local authorities used as an excuse for serving an expulsion order on, well, he wasn't the leader of them, but he was the single most respected, most symbolic figure amongst the exile community.

大卫·贝洛斯：1855年，也就是雨果到达泽西岛的第四年，这里爆发了一场暴乱。尽管雨果并非此次暴乱的领导人，但他最受流亡者尊敬，也最有代表意义，所以当局以暴乱为借口驱逐了他。

David Bellos: So he then did something even cleverer. Next to Jersey in this sea of the English Channel was another island that was a direct dependency of the British crown and similarly in semi-independent in the same way. And he took up residence on Guernsey in 1855 and remained there for many more years. And that's where he actually wrote or rather completed the writing and rewriting of Les Misérables . And that's not often realized that Les Misérables  is a French novel written by a man who has France completely in his head, but it's not written in France.

大卫·贝洛斯：他做了一个更聪明的决定。泽西岛边上有一个小岛，也位于英吉利海峡。它也是英国的属地，以类似的形式半独立于英国。1855年，他搬到了根西岛，在那儿居住了很多年。正是在那儿，他大幅修改并完成了《悲惨世界》。《悲惨世界》是一部法国小说，描绘的是作者脑海中法国的图景。但我们通常不会想到，这本书并不是在法国写成的。

A scandal of Hugo

雨果的桃色新闻

Zachary Davis: What motivated Hugo to write this book? He was a celebrated poet, writer, figure. Why did he write this monumental work that focuses on the miserable of France?

扎卡里·戴维斯：雨果为什么要写这本书？身为一个有名的诗人和作家，他为什么要写这部关于法国穷苦人民的伟大小说？

David Bellos: The poor, the poor and the wretched. Yes. The idea of the book goes back long, long before 1862. In 1845, Hugo was pretty much at the peak of his life. And anyway, he was in his 40s, handsome, married, had children and a devoted mistress, the most famous author in the world already, living in a splendid apartment in what's now Place de Vosges in Paris, called Place Royale in those days. A member of the Académie, he’s already elected to the position of being an immortal.

大卫·贝洛斯：没错的，雨果把目光投向了底层穷苦人民。很早之前，他就想写这样一本书。早在1845年的时候，雨果正处在人生的巅峰时期。他当时四十多岁，英俊潇洒，已婚，有儿有女，还有个深爱的情人。当时他已经是全世界最有名的作家，住在皇家广场，也就是如今巴黎孚日广场的豪华公寓里。他还是是法兰西学术院的成员，已经当选终身院士。

David Bellos: And then two things happened. First, the King Louis Felipe elevated him to the peerage, made him a member of the upper chamber of the French legislature, rather like, it was modeled on the British House of Lords, except that it wasn't hereditary. It was by nomination by the king. So I don't know, there were a couple of hundred of them. It was Pair de France, the highest rank you could possibly have, short of being royal yourself. Point one.

大卫·贝洛斯：随后发生了两件事。一是国王路易·菲利普封他为贵族世卿，让他成为了贵族院议员。贵族院类似于英国上议院，不过贵族院议员不能世袭，而是由国王任命。总共大概有几百位议员，是仅次于皇室成员的社会最高等级。这是第一件事。

David Bellos: Point two, Hugo had discovered the joys of sex some years before, and was a fairly rampant philanderer. And in 1845, in April 1845, he got caught in bed with a lovely lady who had a very, very vindictive husband.

大卫·贝洛斯：第二件事是，雨果这几年开始寻欢作乐，到处拈花惹草。1845年四月，他正和一位迷人的女子幽会，却被人捉奸在床。这位女子的丈夫怀恨在心。

David Bellos: And at that time, adultery was illegal, it was punishable, and Hugo pulled rank. Being a pair de France, a member of the upper chamber, he was immune to prosecution by the courts. He could only be tried by the chamber itself.

大卫·贝洛斯：通奸在当时是违法的，需要受到惩罚。而雨果已经贵为贵族院议员，可以免受法庭起诉。只有贵族院可以审判他。

Zachary Davis: Hugo was let off the hook, but the woman he was caught with was sentenced to a brief time in prison.

扎卡里·戴维斯：雨果逃过一劫，但和他幽会的女子被判处短期监禁。

David Bellos: So we know that the, beginning of this book dates from that conjunction of circumstances, Hugo’s elevation and debasement, his position of guiltiness. People in the know joked that because he'd sort of been caught in unsaintly behavior, he had to sort of redeem himself by writing about a saintly character. Les Misérables  was a great compensation exercise.

大卫·贝洛斯：所以可以说，雨果在一种复杂情感的驱使下生出了写这本书的念头。他身份高贵，却生活放荡，因而心生罪恶感。知情者开玩笑说，雨果忍不住做了不道德的事，所以不得不塑造一个圣人般的角色来自我救赎，《悲惨世界》就是一部伟大的救赎之作

After seventeen years, he finished the novel

十七年，书稿最终完成

David Bellos: There's an element of truth in that as motivation for when he started it, but it's not entirely adequate as an explanation. Hugo's maiden speech to the Chambre des Pairs, to the upper house of the legislature was called “De La Misère”, about poverty. Somehow or other in the middle of the 1840s, in the middle of this spectacular, meteoric, stellar career, Victor Hugo looking around, seeing the state of France became both interested in and moved by the plight of all those poor people on the streets.

大卫·贝洛斯：这可以算作他开始写作的一个动力，但绝不是唯一的原因。1848年他在国民议会发表题为《苦难》的首次演讲，呼吁关注贫困。出于某种原因，雨果在19世纪40年代中期事业如日中天的时候，开始将目光投向周遭，被街头穷人们的境遇深深触动。

Zachary Davis: Hugo wasn’t the only writer at the time to turn his attention to the poor. A few years earlier, Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote the novel Poor Folk. Before that, English author Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist. Both works shed light on the lives of the poor, and were hugely popular in their time. Hugo took a similar approach with Les Misérables .

扎卡里·戴维斯：雨果并不是当时唯一将关注点转向穷人的作家。几年前，俄罗斯作家费奥多尔·陀思妥耶夫斯基撰写了小说《穷人》。再往前看，英国作家查尔斯·狄更斯撰写了《雾都孤儿》。这两部作品都将视线转移到穷人身上，在当时广受欢迎。雨果在《悲惨世界》也关注着穷人。

David Bellos: So he started it in 1845. And by 1846, he was really into it, and he was scribbling away. And indeed, in his correspondence, you know, he sort of says every now and again, I stayed up till midnight writing last night, which for Hugo was very late. He's an early riser. He always went to bed, usually went to bed pretty early and got up at dawn. So being kept up to midnight by his new subject means he was really intensely caught up in it. And then something extraordinary happened in February 1848.

大卫·贝洛斯：1845年，他开始酝酿这本书。到了1846年，他真正投入其中，开始写文稿。在信中他时不时地说，自己昨晚又写到了半夜。这对于雨果来说非常迟了。他习惯早睡，一般早早上床，天一亮就起床。可是写这本书的时候他竟然一直熬到了半夜，可见他对这本书的主题是多么感兴趣。然而1848年二月，一件非同寻常的事情发生了。

Zachary Davis: Hugo was in the middle of writing a scene in which the characters erect barricades in the streets. While he was writing this he looked out the window to see barricades being assembled in the streets outside his own apartment. Revolution was breaking out. This became known as the February Revolution. Louis Napoleon was in the process of overthrowing the current government.

扎卡里·戴维斯：雨果正在写书中的一个情节，书里的角色在街上立起了路障。这时，他望向窗外，发现自己公寓外面竟然也竖起了路障。革命爆发了，史称“法国二月革命”。路易·拿破仑上台了。

David Bellos: Hugo just put his pen aside. From February 22 I think, 1848, he devoted himself to public life because after all, he was a member of the legislature and he was a man of duty. So it's his duty to participate. So he went into politics. He was very active. He made lots of speeches. And he didn't write much or certainly didn't write any fiction all through that period, which ended disastrously for him when basically the autocrat took over completely and Hugo had to flee.

大卫·贝洛斯：雨果把笔放到了一边。从1848年2月22日起，他开始投身于公共事务，毕竟他可是立法机关的一员，有公职在身，这也是他的职责。他开始活跃于政坛，发表了许多演讲。在此期间，他几乎没有写小说。然而当路易·拿破仑走向独裁后，雨果不得不开始流亡。他的政治生涯以一种毁灭性的方式暂且告终。

David Bellos: So when he arrived years later on Guernsey in 1855 with his great trunks of manuscripts, there was in it an unfinished novel about 200,000 words long, I mean, already quite a chunky novel called well, it was still sort of called, Les Miser, but he'd already begun to change his mind that actually it ought to be called Les Misérables , shifting the focus from the abstract moral of wretchedness, to the people, the Misérables , which means both poor folk, in the sense of without money, but also poor folk in the sense of pitiable, those we should pity.

大卫·贝洛斯：几年后，1855年，他带着厚厚一沓手稿来到根西岛。手稿大约二十万字，是一部尚未完成的小说，但篇幅已经不短了。小说名叫《苦难》，但雨果已经决定要改名为《悲惨世界》，将全书的重点由抽象的关于苦难的道德寓意转向悲惨世间的穷苦民众，这里的穷苦，指的不仅是身无分文的穷人、更是值得同情的可怜人。

David Bellos: And he kept telling himself whether he was writing poems or scraps or indulging in turning tables, which he did, and talking to the spirits of the past, and they kept reminding him, grand homme, great man they said, finish your novel! But it wasn't until 1859 that finally he summoned up the energy and the resolve to do just that. And so Les Misérables  in the form that we know it now was written between the summer of 1859 and the first weeks of 1862.

大卫·贝洛斯：他反复思考，到底是要写诗歌、小短文还是其他什么体裁。他回顾过往的心境，那一幕幕不断提醒他，了不起的人啊，完成这部小说吧。直到1859年，他终于集中所有精力、下定所有决心来写这本小说。所以如今我们熟悉的《悲惨世界》写于1859年夏天到1862年的最初几周。

David Bellos: I think that that double composition of the book is part of what makes it so fascinating. It is both a story told by a man in his prime, and a reflection on that story by somebody who feels himself to be an old man.

大卫·贝洛斯：但我想，这种跨越了两个人生阶段的写作历程也是这本书的迷人之处。雨果在壮年时构思了这个故事，但书中同时也包含了雨果在晚年对这个故事的回顾与思索。

The lowest can become the highest

低微的出身，高尚的灵魂

Zachary Davis: Let's move now to impact. How did this affect the hearts and minds of its first readers in Paris and across Europe?

扎卡里·戴维斯：我们来谈谈这本书的影响吧。它如何立刻影响了巴黎乃至整个欧洲读者的内心？

David Bellos: For me, anyway, the main import of Les Misérables , is to say that the lowest may also become the highest. That's the real message, that men are created equal and have equal potential for goodness and for evil. Valjean is our great hero of not only so much of goodness, but of the possibility of transformation, of self-transformation, of growth. And a huge boulder-sized reason for rejecting what were actually quite widely shared, commonsensical 19th-century views that, you know, the poor are not like us.

大卫·贝洛斯：在我看来，《悲惨世界》的主题是，最低贱的人也有可能成为最高尚的人。它告诉读者，人生而平等，有着同等的向善或向恶的可能。冉·阿让之所以伟大，不仅是因为心地善良，还因为他能够自我转变、自我成长。小说通过这个高大的形象，反击了19世纪对穷人的普遍偏见，驳斥了穷人生来就不同于体面人的说法。

David Bellos: Hugo is saying, the poor are like you and you are like them, you too can, etc.. So that message is implicit from beginning to end of Les Misérables . That's why it is called Les Misérables  in the plural. It's not un Misérables , les Misérables  is a collective thing of wretched people and it says wretched people are OK. Yes, sure. You know, alright. But in 1862, that is still a positively revolutionary position to adopt. I think it's had an unending impact on the world.

大卫·贝洛斯：雨果说，穷人跟你一样，你也和他们一样，大家都没什么区别。《悲惨世界》自始至终都隐含着这样的观念，这也是《悲惨世界》法语原书名用了复数的原因。它不单单指某个境遇悲惨的人，而是指所有穷苦民众，认为所有人都和体面人没有两样。现在你可能觉得这个观点很正常，但是在1862年，这可是一个有待接受的、革命性的观点。而这一观点对世界影响深远。

David Bellos: Of course, Hugo is not the first person to make this claim. I mean, it goes back to the Sermon on the Mount and many philosophers and men of goodwill have made the point. But Les Misérables  makes the point in a way in which it really can be absorbed as a whole explanation of life on a vast scale.

大卫·贝洛斯：当然，雨果并不是第一个提出这一观点的人。类似的思想甚至可以追溯到《圣经》中的登山宝训，许多哲学家和心怀大爱的人也提过这样的观点。不过《悲惨世界》把它拓展为宏观的、对生命的完整阐释。

Zachary Davis: You know, one of my favorite ways of tracking the change in attitudes about the poor is instead of calling the poor, you know, in America unfortunate or misfortunate, we say we use the words like loser, right? Losers and winners. How did the people that Hugo was trying to affect, impact, actually think about the poor? How were they different? And did it relate to a, you know, the revolutionary effort of trying to expand power and dignity to more people?

扎卡里·戴维斯：我喜欢从对穷人的称呼中观察人们对穷人态度的变化。在美国我们不再称他们是“倒霉蛋”，而是叫他们“失败者”，对吧？把人们分为“失败者”和“人生赢家”。雨果努力改变读者的偏见，那他的读者如何看待穷人呢？他们与其他人有什么不同？这本书能否带来革命性的转变，让更多人享有权力与尊严？

David Bellos: 19th century France, like 19th century England was afraid of the poor. And they were right to be afraid in a limited sense. They kept on doing dreadful things like having revolutions and chopping people's heads off. France had a particularly dramatic history of the murderous potential of the mob. And the mob is made of poor people.

大卫·贝洛斯：19世纪的法国和英国的中上层阶级都很害怕穷人。这也情有可原，因为当时穷人总是会做出令人惧怕的事情，比如掀起革命或是把人送上断头台。尤其在法国，总是会出现暴徒大肆杀戮的骇人事件。而暴徒大多都是穷人。

David Bellos: So, the standard middle class bourgeois view of the poor, let's say, in 1862, but it’d be true in 1832, in 1892 as well is that, you know, you don't mix with them. They're full of diseases and they're full of resentment and anger. So, Hugo's novel knocks that view on its head through the personality and character and statements of Javert, the policeman. Javert is an extreme example, well, perhaps not extreme, but is a fully-formed example of binary thinking that there are two kinds of people.

大卫·贝洛斯：所以1832年、1862年乃至1892年，中产阶级和资产阶级对穷人的典型态度是，不要跟他们混在一起，他们是心怀愤恨的害群之马。雨果在小说中借由沙威警长这个角色批判了这一观点。沙威的性格与言论都展现着他对穷人的偏见。他是一个极端的例子，或许算不上极端，但确实充分展现了他二元化的观念，觉得人非富即穷、非好即坏。

David Bellos: And for Javert, there is the establishment, the bourgeoisie whose servant he is. And there are the others. And it's his job to keep the others where they are. And by imagining this actually rather sad policeman who is himself the child of convicts. And who sees no place for himself, either amongst the bourgeoisie or amongst criminal classes.

大卫·贝洛斯：沙威警长服务于当权派和资产阶级，至于社会上的其他人，他的职责就是让他们安分守己。然而警长本人却是囚犯的后代。不难想象，他也是个可怜人，因为不论是在资产阶级还是在底层罪犯中，他都找不到归属感。

David Bellos: You know, he becomes a prison warder since that’s the media he grew up in, and becomes a servant of the state, which is his salvation. And you see, he's not evil in himself, Javert, he is a dutiful man. He believes what he believes. And he serves an ideology that is not so very distant from common sense, except he exacerbates it. And that's Hugo's genius, really, is to show you how wrong it is and how you get to the wrong answer, how you hit a brick wall and always lose if you divide society into us and them, that that is no way forward.

大卫·贝洛斯：他在监狱长大，成为一名监狱看守，效忠于政府。这是他的救赎之路。他心肠并不坏，只不过是在恪尽职守。他相信自己的信仰。他遵从的观念与和那个年代的中上层人士差不多，只不过他对这套观念的遵从到了偏执的地步。这就是雨果的高明之处，他不露声色地展现了对穷人的偏见是如何荒谬，以及你会如何得出荒谬的结果。如果你仅仅把所有人简单地一分为二，你就会不断地撞南墙，找不到一点出路。

A book for French, and for everyone

为法国人而写，更为全世界人而写

Zachary Davis: And so did this text spur some social reform, laws changing, practices, values?

扎卡里·戴维斯：小说是否推动了社会改革、法律调整以及思想观念的进步？

David Bellos: When the hated regime of Louis Napoleon collapsed in 1870 and after some real horrible struggles in Paris, a new republic emerged, the Third Republic. Hugo then returned to France. He wouldn't return to France while Louis Napoleon was still in charge.

大卫·贝洛斯：1870年，受人憎恶的路易·拿破仑政权倒台。在一些激烈的斗争之后，新政权建立了，这就是法兰西第三共和国。雨果回到了法国。路易·拿破仑若是还在掌权，他便不可能回国。

David Bellos: But once he'd gone, Hugo was back in Paris and he was like a national monument, you know, an old man with big white beard. Pretty good impersonation of God in the Third Republic. And it was a reforming republic, at least in its early years. It was a reforming bourgeois republic. And one of its signal achievements was to introduce universal, non-religious and obligatory primary education throughout France. That's the famous laws of 1877.

大卫·贝洛斯：而如今他下台了，雨果便回到了巴黎。他被视作国家的英雄，雪鬓霜髯，模样倒有几分像上帝。共和国在实行改革，至少早期是这样。这是一个改革中的资产阶级共和国，其标志性的成就之一便是在全法国建立了普遍的、世俗化的义务教育。这就是1877年颁布的著名法令。

David Bellos: And you could say that Les Misérables  was one of the reasons why that just seemed so obvious as a reforming move. It's about the only thing that is quite explicitly promoted in the later parts of the novel, that education is what you should give the poor.

大卫·贝洛斯：可以说，《悲惨世界》从某种程度上推动了这一革命性的进步。可以说，这是书中后半部分唯一明确提出的观念：穷人应当可以接受教育。

Zachary Davis: How could we track the values and the perspective, the framing of Les Misérables , to maybe the greater liberalism of France and then later the EU?

扎卡里·戴维斯：《悲惨世界》中的这些价值观与思想，如何演变成了法国的自由主义思想以及欧盟的一体化思想呢？

David Bellos: In the great barricade scene, the leader of the students, student group that are fomenting this uprising, is a beautiful young man called Enjolras. He gives a wonderful speech when they know that they're on their own and that actually the revolution is not going to work and that they're going to be slaughtered. He gives a kind of pep talk Blueprint for the future, which is a spectacularly persuasive but also lyrically overwrought encomium.

大卫·贝洛斯：街头起义时，领导这群学生的是一个俊美青年，叫安灼拉。当他们走投无路，发现起义即将失败、自己即将牺牲时，安灼拉发表了精彩的演讲，勾勒出一幅振奋人心的美好蓝图。演讲慷慨激昂，极尽赞美之词，也极富感染力。

David Bellos: And Enjolras looks forward explicitly to the days when nations will no longer exist, when Europe will be a single unit governed by a committee of the intelligent, and where the different nations of the world will meet in some Olympian palace to ensure peace and harmony. I mean, that's the UN and the EU are almost adumbrated directly. Now, you could say Enjolras does not speak for Hugo. Hugo is using Enjolras to let the revolutionaries, as it were, have their moment of glory before they go bang, bang, bang and that's the end of them. So you can take it either way.

大卫·贝洛斯：安灼拉畅想着，未来国家边界将不复存在，整个欧洲将成为一个整体，由知识分子组成的委员会统一管理；世界各国将在奥林匹亚开会来保障和平与和谐。可以说，从这段构想中已经能看到联合国与欧盟的影子了。当然你也可以说，安灼拉并不能代表雨果的观点。雨果只是借这个角色，让革命者有机会在牺牲前说出自己的宣言，最终他们的起义还是失败了。你可以赞同任何一种说法。

David Bellos: That Enjolras’s lyrical blueprint for the future is a piece of nonsense and that's why, you know, revolutionaries need to be shot. And I'm sure many bourgeois readers took it that way, that he comes up with such outrageous and absurd things that it's no wonder the revolution failed. On the other hand, I think most of us reading it now think, well, how amazing that Victor Hugo could put his own self in the mind of a kind of utopian idealist and tell us that there is a utopia that looks actually structurally quite like what we have built since then.

大卫·贝洛斯：你也可以认为安灼拉极具抒情性的构想就是胡说八道，这就是为什么他们需要被枪决。我敢说当时很多资产阶级的读者都是这么想，觉得他提出了如此骇人且荒唐的想法，难怪起义会失败。不过另一方面，如今我们很多人读这一段时，会觉得维克多·雨果太了不起了，他借由这位理想主义青年之口，表达了这么乌托邦的理念，而这些想法又和后世人们慢慢建立的机构与秩序如此之像。

David Bellos: And I think it's no coincidence. I mean, every one of the people who built the EU had read Les Misérables  as kids. So it's present there in as it were, often unspoken, but it's present there in all the conversations about creating this remarkable political body that is neither a state nor a treaty, but something else besides.

大卫·贝洛斯：我觉得这绝非巧合。我猜每个参与建立欧盟的人小时候都读过《悲惨世界》。它总是默默地映在人们的脑海中，促使人们进行会谈，商讨建立这个不同寻常的、既非国家也非联盟的政治实体。

Zachary Davis: When Les Misérables  was first published in 1862, it was so popular that in the same year, it was translated into Portugese, Greek and Italian.

扎卡里·戴维斯：《悲惨世界》1862年首次出版，风靡一时，当年便被翻译成了葡萄牙语、希腊语和意大利语。

David Bellos: The Italian publisher or the publisher of the Italian translation before it was finished wrote to Hugo and said, you know, there's stuff in this novel that's really all about France, and do you mind if I leave some of it out for the Italian audience? And he got a fabulous reply from Hugo, a letter that is often printed as an appendix to the novel in which he said, you know, hang on there, the novel may be about France, but I wrote it for everybody, for Italians and Irishman.

大卫·贝洛斯：意大利译本的出版商在出版前写信给雨果，问道，小说中有很多关于法国的内容，您介意我把它们删掉，来方便意大利读者阅读吗？雨果对此作了精彩的回复，他的回信如今常常被收作小说的附录。他说，等等，就放那儿，这本小说写的是法国，但我是为所有人而写的，为法国人，也为意大利人、爱尔兰人。

David Bellos: And he said it's not really a French novel, and the older he gets, the more he feels that he is writing as a European, and more than that, he said, just as a human being. So there is a kind of thrash-up in that letter about the future of literature, at least as becoming a global thing without any particular attachment to a place, a country or a political entity.

大卫·贝洛斯：他说，这并不是一部真正的法国小说。而且我年纪越大，越觉得自己写作时不只是法国人，还是欧洲人乃至整个人类中的一份子。这彻底阐明了文学未来的走向：文学不再仅仅是某个地方、国家或政治实体的文学，而是全世界的文学。

David Bellos: It's a remarkable letter. And I do recommend everybody should read it. And he says you know, wherever the people who are suffering, wherever there are people in misery, you know, my novel knocks on the door and says, I've come for you.

大卫·贝洛斯：这封信很了不起，建议大家都读一读。雨果说，哪儿有受苦受难的人，我的小说就会去哪儿，轻叩他们的门，告诉他们我为你们而来。

Zachary Davis: Victor Hugo used the backdrop of 19th century France to illustrate a global issue. He showed how unjust class systems often leave many good people with nothing but bad options. By giving readers a glimpse into the lives of the poor, and humanizing characters in the lowest class of society, Hugo showed how similar we are to one another, and how necessary it is for society to support all of its citizens, not just the lucky few.

扎卡里·戴维斯：维克多·雨果以19世纪的法国为背景，揭示了一个全球性问题。他告诉我们不公平的社会等级制度让许多善良的人别无选择，只能做出糟糕的事情。他向读者展现了穷苦人民的生活，展现了一个个身处底层但心地善良的人物，让我们明白底层人民与中上层人民并没有什么不同，也让我们懂得了社会不仅仅要照顾到少数幸运儿，更要照顾到所有公民。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant and me, Zachary Davis, with help from Liza French, Ariel Liu, Wendy Wu, and Monica Zhang. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！​