Books and arts Feb 23rd 2017
The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables.
By David Bellos. Particular Books; 307 pages; £20.
To be published in America by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in March; $27.

克劳德-米歇尔·勋伯格（Claude-Michel Schönberg，1944年7月6日－），法籍犹太裔唱片录音师、演员、歌手、流行曲和音乐剧作曲家，经常和填词人阿兰·鲍伯利（Alain Boublil）合作。1987年凭借《悲惨世界》获得托尼奖（最佳原创音乐）。

“只要地球上还有无知和贫穷，”维克多·雨果在《悲惨世界》序言中写道，“这样的书就不可能是无用的。” 155年以前，在法国首次出版并传播到其他方，这部小说或者其流行普及本身从未失去它的意义。

《悲惨世界》大约有65个电影版本（最早的版本出现在1909年），使它成为有史以来改变最多的作品。第一阶段，音乐剧于1863年一月在费城开幕。自1980以来，Alain Boublil和Claude-Michel Schönberg合作的音乐歌剧已经在44个国家和349个城市上演了超过53000场次。然而，从一开始，众多的改编者和译者就得从纷繁庞杂的源头中获取素材。英国的爱好者必须等到2008年才有一个完整的英文小说文本，正如原著作者曾经期望的那样。即使对《悲惨世界》的爱好者来说，雨果震惊世界的巨著，感觉就像一个失落的大陆。

大卫·贝洛斯（David Bellos），一个出生于英国的普林斯顿大学法国文学教授，著名的翻译家，通过他的作品我们得以一窥门径，包括五个组成部分，48本书和365章，思路清晰、机智风趣。他既博学又有趣，他揭示了小说的魔力在于它的多种多样功能。雨果的非凡功绩是在拿破仑之后提供一幅“错综复杂的现实主义的法国”，“一个戏剧性的、引人入胜的书” 充满了悬念、演示了一个“慷慨的道德原则”，对今天读者的仍然具有吸引力。

雨果，当时已经是《巴黎圣母院》的作者，作为诗人、剧作家和小说家的文学巨星，于1845开始写一个前罪犯的故事，一个社会中的穷人和被遗弃者如何寻找新的生活。通过冉阿让（Jean Valjean）的生活轨迹，自1815年从废船监狱释放以来，就使他面临艰难的风险抉择，雨果编织了一个巨大而“非常紧密的“社会冲突与个人新生历程的壁毯。

1848年革命，其中激进的狂热分子发现，“他的头脑是理性的”，虽然他的心是穷人”，打断了雨果的庞大工程。它重新成为流亡作家，被新发迹的皇帝驱逐（拿破仑三世），定居在英属格恩西海峡群岛：不再是“辉煌的野心家”而是一个“独立的抗议者”。

奇怪的是，这个“英国王室的小小的封建前哨”，促成了一本书的孕育和诞生，这本书赢得了全世界的心、促进了思想的改变。珍贵手稿的编辑和打印依赖于维多利亚女王皇家邮政的计划和英属格恩西轮船时刻表。在1861年，“书籍史上最伟大的一笔交易”，雨果获得了相当于20年的主教的薪水：足够“建小铁路”。直到1862年底出版，Charles Wilbour的英文翻译版被报道是“美国历史上最大的书籍订单”。

除了雨果的文学对手（大仲马把它比作“涉水通过泥浆”），每个人都喜欢冉阿让的改过自新历程，众多的各色人物让人很快就进入民俗的世界：街上的女孩梵蒂尼，她的女儿珂赛特，海胆伽弗洛什，学生马吕斯。美国内战期间，删减了谴责奴隶制的内容之后，盗版小说甚至在南方士兵中间广为流传。一个疲惫的双关语冠以他们的指挥官的名字，他们戏称自己是“李的悲惨世界”。（南方指挥官罗伯特-李将军）

从人道地对待罪犯，再到关怀流浪儿童，《悲惨世界》带头呼吁改革，促成了“未来社会的进步”。一些书真的改变了世界。这一次，它早就打破了舞台上的票房纪录。在音乐剧中，雨果的英雄在吟诵：一首电视选秀节目选手喜爱的——“带他回家”。Bellos先生的工作毋宁说，他将“悲惨世界”从制造者和他的时代完整重现。

Economist:

By the book How Victor Hugo came to write “Les Misérables”, his magnum opus

The extraordinary story of a book that changed the world

The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables. By David Bellos. Particular Books; 307 pages; £20. To be published in America by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in March; $27.

“AS LONG as there are ignorance and poverty on Earth,” wrote Victor Hugo in his preface to “Les Misérables”, “books such as this one may not be useless.” Over the 155 years since it was first published in France and then elsewhere, the novel has never lost its relevance—or its popularity.

Around 65 film versions (the first in 1909) make “Les Misérables” the most frequently adapted novel of all time. The first stage musical opened in Philadelphia in January 1863. Since 1980 Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s operatic melodrama has been performed more than 53,000 times in 44 countries and 349 cities. Yet, from the outset, adapters and translators cherry-picked elements from their supersized source. British admirers had to wait until 2008 for a complete English text of the novel in the order in which the author had planned it to be read. Even to lovers of “Les Mis”, Hugo’s world-shaking blockbuster can feel like a lost continent.

David Bellos, an English-born professor of French literature at Princeton University and an eminent translator, navigates through its five parts, 48 “books” and 365 chapters with clarity and wit. At once erudite and entertaining, he shows how the novel’s magic lies in its multitasking versatility. Hugo’s extraordinary feat is to deliver “an intricately realistic portrait” of France after Napoleon, “a dramatic page-turner” packed with suspense—and a demonstration of “generous moral principles” that readers still find appealing today.

Hugo, already the author of “Notre-Dame de Paris” and a literary superstar as a poet, playwright and novelist, began in 1845 to write his story of a former convict seeking a new life in a society rigged against the poor and outcast. Around the questing figure of Jean Valjean, freed from the prison-hulks in 1815 to make his way against the steepest odds, Hugo stitched a vast but “very tightly knit” tapestry of social strife and personal rebirth.

The revolution of 1848, in which the radical firebrand discovered that “his head was with order” although his heart “was with the poor”, interrupted Hugo’s mammoth project. It resumed after the exiled writer, banished by the upstart emperor, Napoleon III, settled on the Channel Island of Guernsey: no longer a “brilliant careerist” but a “stand-alone protester”.

Curiously, this “tiny feudal outpost of the British crown” hosted the gestation and birth of a book that won hearts and changed minds across the world. The editing and printing of the precious manuscript depended on the schedules of Queen Victoria’s Royal Mail and the Guernsey steamer timetables. In 1861 “the biggest deal in book history” saw Hugo paid the equivalent of 20 years of a bishop’s stipend: enough “to build a small railway”. By late 1862, the year of publication, Charles Wilbour’s English translation was reported to be “the largest order ever placed for a book in America”.

Save for Hugo’s literary rivals (Alexandre Dumas likened it to “wading through mud”), everybody loved the long haul of Valjean’s rehabilitation in the company of characters who soon entered folklore: the street-girl Fantine, her daughter Cosette, the urchin Gavroche, the student Marius. Shorn of its condemnation of slavery, the novel even circulated in a pirate edition among Confederate soldiers during the American civil war. In a weary pun on their commander’s name, they dubbed themselves “Lee’s Miserables”.

From the humane treatment of ex-offenders to the care of street children, “Les Misérables” spearheaded calls for reform and contributed to “the future improvement of society”. Few books really change the world. This one did, long before it broke box-office records on stage. In the musical Hugo’s hero intones—in a song loved by television talent-show contestants—“Bring Him Home”. Mr Bellos does just that, as he restores “Les Mis” to its maker and his times.

This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "By the book"

参考文献

1、 Youtube :Bring Him Home
2、 Amazon: The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables
3、Wiki David Bellos