Hugo is a man who. The man who laughs

In England everything is majestic, even the bad, even the oligarchy. An English patriciate is a patriciate in the full sense of the word. Nowhere was the feudal system more brilliant, more cruel and more enduring than in England. True, at one time he was useful. It is in England that feudal law is to be studied, just as royalty is to be studied in France.

This book should properly be titled The Aristocracy. Another, which will be its continuation, can be called "Monarchy". Both of them, if the author is destined to complete this work, will precede the third, which will close the whole cycle and will be entitled "The Ninety-Third Year."

Hauteville House, 1869

Sea and night

Ursus and Gomo were connected by bonds of close friendship. Ursus was a man, Homo was a wolf. In temperament, they were very suited to each other. The name "Homo" was given to the wolf by a man. He probably came up with his own; having found a suitable nickname "Ursus" for himself, he considered the name "Homo" quite suitable for the beast. The commonwealth of man and wolf was a success at fairs, at parish holidays, at street intersections where passers-by crowded, the crowd is always happy to listen to a joker and buy all sorts of charlatan drugs. She liked the manual wolf, deftly, without coercion, carrying out the orders of his master. It is a great pleasure to see a tamed shrew, and there is nothing more pleasant than watching all kinds of training. That is why there are so many spectators on the route of the royal motorcades.

Ursus and Homo wandered from crossroads to crossroads, from the squares of Aberystwyth to the square of Jedburgh, from one place to another, from county to county, from town to town. Having exhausted all the possibilities at one fair, they moved on to another. Ursus lived in a booth on wheels, which Homo, trained enough for this, drove by day and guarded by night. When the road became difficult due to potholes, mud, or when climbing uphill, the man harnessed himself to the strap and, like a brother, side by side with the wolf, dragged the wagon. So they grew old together.

For the night, they settled down wherever they could - in the middle of an unplowed field, on a forest clearing, at the crossroads of several roads, at the village outskirts, at the city gates, in the market square, in places of festivities, on the edge of the park, on the church porch. When the cart stopped at some fairground, when the gossips ran with gaping mouths, and a circle of onlookers gathered around the booth, Ursus began to rant, and Gomo listened to him with obvious approval. Then the wolf politely walked around those present with a wooden cup in his teeth. This is how they earned their living. The wolf was educated, the man too. The wolf was taught by a man or learned himself all sorts of wolf tricks that increased the collection.

“The main thing is not to degenerate into a man,” the owner used to say to him in a friendly way.

The wolf never bit, but it sometimes happened to a man. In any case, Ursus had an inclination to bite. Ursus was a misanthrope and, in order to emphasize his hatred of man, he became a buffoon. In addition, it was necessary to feed oneself somehow, for the stomach always asserts its rights. However, this misanthrope and buffoon, perhaps thinking in this way to find a more important place in life and a more difficult job, was also a doctor. Moreover, Ursus was also a ventriloquist. He could speak without moving his lips. He could mislead others, copying the voice and intonations of any of them with amazing accuracy. He alone imitated the rumble of a whole crowd, which gave him the full right to the title of "engastrimite." He called himself that. Ursus reproduced all sorts of bird voices: the voice of a song thrush, a teal, a lark, a white-breasted thrush - wanderers like himself; thanks to this talent of his, at any moment he could at any moment give you the impression of either a square buzzing with people, or a meadow resounding with the lowing of a herd; sometimes he was formidable, like a roaring crowd, sometimes childishly serene, like the dawn. Such a talent, although rare, does occur. In the past century, a certain Tuzel, who imitated the mixed rumble of human and animal voices and reproduced the cries of all animals, was attached as a menagerie. Ursus was shrewd, extremely peculiar and inquisitive. He had a penchant for all sorts of stories, which we call fables, and pretended to believe them himself - the usual trick of a crafty charlatan. He guessed by the hand, by the book opened at random, predicted fate, explained signs, assured that meeting a black mare was a failure, but what is even more dangerous to hear when you are completely ready for the road, the question: “Where are you going?” He referred to himself as a "superstition salesman", usually saying, "I don't hide it; that is the difference between the Archbishop of Canterbury and me.” The archbishop, rightly indignant, once summoned him to his place. However, Ursus skillfully disarmed his Eminence by reading before him a sermon of his own composition on the day of the Nativity of Christ, which the archbishop liked so much that he memorized it, delivered it from the pulpit, and ordered it to be printed as his work. For this, he granted Ursus forgiveness.

Thanks to his art as a healer, and perhaps in spite of it, Ursus healed the sick. He treated with aromatic substances. Well versed in medicinal herbs, he skillfully used the enormous healing powers contained in a multitude of neglected plants - in pride, in white and evergreen buckthorn, in black viburnum, warthog, in ramen; he treated consumption with sundew, used, according to need, the leaves of milkweed, which, being plucked at the root, act as a laxative, and plucked at the top as an emetic; healed throat diseases with the help of growths of a plant called "hare's ear"; he knew what kind of cane could cure an ox, and what sort of mint could put a sick horse on its feet; knew all the valuable, beneficial properties of the mandrake, which, as everyone knows, is a bisexual plant. He had medicines for every occasion. He healed burns with the skin of a salamander, from which, according to Nero, a napkin was made. Ursus used a retort and a flask; he himself distilled and sold the universal potions himself. There were rumors that at one time he was in a lunatic asylum: he was honored by mistaking him for a lunatic, but was soon released, making sure that he was only a poet. It is possible that this was not the case: each of us has been a victim of such tales.

In reality, Ursus was a literate man, a lover of beauty and a composer of Latin verses. He was a scientist in two fields, for at the same time. In the knowledge of the poetic craft, he. He could compose Jesuit tragedies no less successfully than Father Bugur. Thanks to his close acquaintance with the famous rhythms and meters of the ancients, Ursus in his everyday life used only his characteristic figurative expressions and a number of classical metaphors. Of a mother in front of whom two daughters walked, he said: "This is a dactyl"; about a father followed by his two sons: “This is an anapest”; about the grandson who walked between his grandfather and grandmother: "This is an amphimacry." With such an abundance of knowledge, one can only live from hand to mouth. recommends: "Eat little, but often." Ursus ate little and rarely, thus fulfilling only the first half of the prescription and neglecting the second. But it was already the fault of the public, which did not meet every day and did not buy too often. Ursus said: “If you cough up an instructive saying, it will become easier. The wolf finds comfort in howling, the ram in warm wool, the forest in the robin, the woman in love, the philosopher in the instructive saying. Ursus sprinkled comedies as needed, which he played with sin in half: it helped to sell drugs. Among other works, he composed an heroic pastoral in honor of the knight Hugh Middleton, who in 1608 led a river to London. This river flowed calmly sixty miles from London, in the county of Hartford; the knight Middleton came and took possession of it; he brought with him six hundred men, armed with spades and hoes, began to dig the earth, lowering the ground in one place, raising it in another, sometimes raising the river twenty feet, sometimes deepening its channel thirty feet, built ground water pipes from wood, built eight hundred bridges, stone, brick and log, and then one fine morning the river entered the boundaries of London, which at that time was experiencing a lack of water. Ursus transformed these prosaic details into a lovely bucolic scene between the River Thames and the Serpentine River. A powerful stream invites the river to itself, offering it to share a bed with it. “I am too old,” he says, “to please women, but rich enough to pay them.” It was a witty and gallant allusion to the fact that Sir Hugh Middleton produced all the work at his own expense.

The tramp Ursus appears as a versatile person, capable of numerous tricks: he knows how to ventriloquize and transmit any sounds, brew healing concoctions, he is a wonderful poet and philosopher. Together with their tame wolf Gomo, who is not a pet, but a friend, helper and participant in the show, they travel all over England in a wooden carriage decorated in a very unusual style. On the walls was a long treatise on the rules of etiquette of the English aristocrats and no less than a short list of the possessions of all those in power. Inside this chest, for which Gomo and Ursus themselves acted as horses, there was a chemical laboratory, a chest with belongings and a stove.

In the laboratory, he brewed drugs, which he then sold, enticing people with his ideas. Despite his many talents, he was poor and often went without food. His inner state has always been dull rage, and the outer shell - irritation. However, he chose his own fate when he met Gomo in the forest and chose to wander instead of living with a lord.

He hated the aristocrats and considered their government evil - but he still painted the wagon with treatises about them, considering it a little contentment.

Despite the persecution of the comprachos, Ursus still managed to avoid trouble. He himself did not belong to this group, but he was also a vagabond. The Comprachicos were gangs of wandering Catholics who turned children into freaks for the amusement of the public and the royal court. To do this, they used various surgical methods, deforming the emerging bodies and creating dwarf jesters.

Part One: The Cold, the Hangman, and the Baby

The winter from 1689 to 1690 was truly severe. At the end of January, a Biscay urka stopped in Portland Bay, where eight men and a small boy began to load chests and food. When the work was done, the men sailed away, leaving the child to freeze to death on the shore. He meekly accepted his share, setting off on a journey so as not to freeze to death.

On one of the hills, he saw the body of a gallows drenched in resin, under which lay shoes. Even though the boy himself was barefoot, he was afraid to take the shoes of a dead man. The sudden wind and the shadow of a crow frightened the boy, and he rushed to run.

Meanwhile, at the urk, the men rejoice at their departure. They see that the storm is coming and decide to turn to the west, but this does not save them from death. The ship somehow miraculously remains intact after it hit the reef, but it turned out to be overflowing with water and sank to the bottom. Before the team perishes, one of the men writes a letter and seals it in a bottle.

A boy wanders through a snowstorm and stumbles upon a woman's footprints. He walks along them and stumbles upon the body of a dead woman in a snowdrift, next to which lies a living nine-month-old girl. The kid takes it and goes to the village, but all the houses are locked.

In the end, he found shelter in Ursus' wagon. Of course, he did not particularly want to let the boy and the baby girl into his house, but he could not leave the kids to freeze. He shared his dinner with the boy, and fed the baby with milk.

When the children fell asleep, the philosopher buried the dead woman.

In the morning, Ursus discovered that the mask of laughter was frozen on the boy's face, and the girl was blind.

Lord Linnaeus Clencharlie was a "living fragment of the past" and was an ardent republican who did not defect to the restored monarchy. He himself went into exile on Lake Geneva, leaving a mistress and an illegitimate son in England.

The mistress quickly got along with King Charles II, and the son David Derry-Moir found a place for himself at court.

The forgotten lord found his lawful wife in Switzerland, where his son was born. However, by the time James II ascended the throne, he had already died, and his son had mysteriously disappeared. The heir was David Derry-Moir, who fell in love with the beautiful Duchess Josiana, the king's illegitimate daughter.

Anna, the legitimate daughter of James II, became queen, and Josian and David still did not get married, although they liked each other very much. Josian was considered a depraved virgin, since her numerous love affairs were not limited by modesty, but by pride. She couldn't find someone worthy.

Queen Anne, an ugly and stupid person, envied her half-sister.

David was not cruel, but he adored various cruel entertainments: boxing, cockfighting and others. He would often infiltrate such tournaments disguised as a commoner and then, out of kindness, pay for all the damage. His pseudonym was Tom-Jim-Jack.

Barkilfedro was at the same time a triple agent who watched the queen, Josiana and David at the same time, but each of them considered him his reliable ally. Under the auspices of Josiana, he got into the palace and became an opener of ocean bottles: he had the right to open all the bottles thrown onto land from the sea. He was sweet on the outside and wicked on the inside, sincerely hating all his masters, and especially Josiana.

Part Three: Tramps and Lovers

Guiplain and Dea stayed with Ursus, who officially adopted them. Ghuiplain began to work as a buffoon, luring buyers and spectators who could not help laughing. Their popularity was prohibitive, which is why the three tramps were able to acquire a new large van and even a donkey - now Homo did not need to pull the cart on himself.

Inner beauty

Deya grew up into a beautiful girl and sincerely loved Guiplain, not believing that her lover was ugly. She believed that if he was pure in soul and kind, then he could not be ugly.

Deja and Guiplain literally idolized each other, their love was platonic - they did not even touch each other. Ursus loved them as his children and rejoiced in their relationship.

They had enough money not to deny themselves anything. Ursus was even able to hire two gypsies to help around the house and during performances.

Part Four: The Beginning of the End

In 1705, Ursus and his children arrived in the vicinity of Southwark, where he was arrested for public speaking. After a long interrogation, the philosopher is released.

Meanwhile, David, under his guise of a commoner, becomes a regular spectator of Gwynplaine's performances, and one evening he brings Josiana to see the freak. She understands that this particular young man should become her lover. Gwynplaine himself is struck by the beauty of the woman, but he still sincerely loves Dea, whom he has now begun to dream of as a girl.

The Duchess sends him a letter inviting him to her place.

Gwynplaine suffers all night, but in the morning she decides to refuse the Duchess's invitation. He burns the letter, and the artists start breakfast.

However, at that moment, a staff-bearer arrives and takes Gwynplaine to jail. Ursus secretly follows them, although by doing so he breaks the law.

In prison, the young man is not tortured - on the contrary, he becomes a witness to the terrible torture of another person who confesses to his crime. It turns out he was the one who mutilated Gwynplaine as a child. During interrogation, the unfortunate one also confesses that in fact Gwynplaine is Lord Fermen Clencharlie, a peer of England. The young man collapses.

In this Barkilfedro sees an excellent occasion for revenge on the duchess, since she is now obliged to marry Gwynplaine. When the young man comes to his senses, he is taken to his new quarters, where he indulges in dreams of the future.

Victor Hugo's masterpiece “Les Misérables” remains a very popular work today, which is also confirmed by the many options for its adaptation and theatrical productions.

In our next article, we will learn more about the biography of Victor Hugo, an outstanding French writer and poet, whose work left an indelible mark on the history of literature.

Part Six: Ursus Faces, Nudity, and the House of Lords

Ursus returns home, where he plays a performance in front of Dea so that she does not notice the loss of Gwynplaine. Meanwhile, a bailiff comes to them, who demands that the artists leave London. He also brings Gwynplaine's things - Ursus runs to the prison and sees how the coffin is taken out from there. He decides that his named son is dead and begins to cry.

Meanwhile, Gwynplaine himself is looking for a way out of the palace, but stumbles upon Josiana's chambers, where the girl showers him with caresses. However, having learned that the young man should become her husband, he drives him away. She believes that the groom cannot take the place of a lover.

The Queen summons Gwynplaine and sends him to the House of Lords. Since the rest of the lords are old and blind, they do not notice the freak of the newly minted aristocrat, and therefore listen to him first. Gwynplaine talks about the poverty of the people and their troubles, that the country will soon be overwhelmed by a revolution, if nothing changes - but the lords only laugh at him.

The young man seeks consolation from David, his half-brother, but he slaps him and challenges him to a duel for insulting his mother.

Gwynplaine flees the palace and stops on the banks of the Thames, where he reflects on his former life and how he let his vanity overwhelm him. The young man realizes that he himself has exchanged his real family and love for a parody, and decides to commit suicide. However, the appearance of Gomo saves him from such a step.

Conclusion: the death of lovers

The wolf brings Gwynplaine to the ship, where the young man overhears his adoptive father talking to Dea. She says that she will soon die and go after her lover. In delirium, she begins to sing - and then Gwynplaine appears. However, the girl's heart cannot withstand such happiness and she dies in the hands of a young man. He understands that it makes no sense for him to live without his beloved and throws himself into the water.

Ursus, who lost consciousness after the death of his daughter, comes to his senses. Gomo sits next to them and howls.

In England everything is majestic, even the bad, even the oligarchy. An English patriciate is a patriciate in the full sense of the word. Nowhere was the feudal system more brilliant, more cruel and more enduring than in England. True, at one time he was useful. It is in England that feudal law is to be studied, just as royalty is to be studied in France.

This book should properly be titled The Aristocracy. Another, which will be its continuation, can be called "Monarchy". Both of them, if the author is destined to complete this work, will precede the third, which will close the whole cycle and will be entitled "The Ninety-Third Year."

Hauteville House. 1869.

PROLOGUE

1. URSUS

Ursus and Gomo were connected by bonds of close friendship. Ursus was a man, Homo was a wolf. In temperament, they were very suited to each other. The name "Homo" was given to the wolf by a man. He probably came up with his own; having found a suitable nickname "Ursus" for himself, he considered the name "Homo" quite suitable for the beast. The commonwealth of man and wolf was a success at fairs, at parish holidays, at street intersections where passers-by crowded; the crowd is always happy to listen to a joker and buy all sorts of charlatan potions. She liked the manual wolf, deftly, without coercion, carrying out the orders of his master. It is a great pleasure to see a tamed shrew, and there is nothing more pleasant than to watch all kinds of training. That is why there are so many spectators on the route of the royal motorcades.

For the night, they settled down wherever they could - in the middle of an unplowed field, on a forest clearing, at the crossroads of several roads, at the village outskirts, at the city gates, on the market square, in places of festivities, on the edge of the park, on the church porch. When the cart stopped at some fairground, when the gossips ran with gaping mouths, and a circle of onlookers gathered around the booth, Ursus began to rant, and Gomo listened to him with obvious approval. Then the wolf politely walked around those present with a wooden cup in his teeth. This is how they earned their living. The wolf was educated, the man too. The wolf was taught by a man or learned all sorts of wolf tricks that increased the collection.

The main thing is not to degenerate into a man, - the owner used to say to him in a friendly way.

The wolf never bit, but it sometimes happened to a man. In any case, Ursus had an inclination to bite. Ursus was a misanthrope and, in order to emphasize his hatred of man, he became a buffoon. In addition, it was necessary to feed oneself somehow, for the stomach always asserts its rights. However, this misanthrope and buffoon, perhaps thinking in this way to find a more important place in life and a more difficult job, was also a doctor. Moreover, Ursus was also a ventriloquist. He could speak without moving his lips. He could mislead others, copying the voice and intonations of any of them with amazing accuracy. He alone imitated the rumble of a whole crowd, which gave him the full right to the title of "engastrimite." He called himself that. Ursus reproduced all sorts of bird voices: the voice of a song thrush, a teal, a lark, a white-breasted thrush - wanderers like himself; thanks to this talent of his, at any moment he could at any moment give you the impression of either a square buzzing with people, or a meadow resounding with the lowing of a herd; sometimes he was formidable, like a roaring crowd, sometimes childishly serene, like the dawn. Such a talent, although rare, does occur. In the past century, a certain Tuzel, who imitated the mixed rumble of human and animal voices and reproduced the cries of all animals, was under Buffon as a menagerie. Ursus was shrewd, extremely peculiar and inquisitive. He had a penchant for all sorts of stories, which we call fables, and pretended to believe them himself - the usual cunning of a crafty charlatan. He guessed by his hand, by a book opened at random, predicted fate, explained signs, assured that meeting a black mare was a failure, but what is even more dangerous to hear when you are completely ready for the road, the question: “Where are you going?” He referred to himself as a "superstition salesman", usually saying, "I don't hide it; that is the difference between the Archbishop of Canterbury and me.” The archbishop, rightly indignant, once summoned him to his place. However, Ursus skillfully disarmed his Eminence by reading in front of him a sermon on the day of the Nativity of Christ, which the archbishop liked so much that he memorized it, delivered it from the pulpit and ordered it to be printed as his work. For this, he granted Ursus forgiveness.

Thanks to his art as a healer, and perhaps in spite of it, Ursus healed the sick. He treated with aromatic substances. Well versed in medicinal herbs, he skillfully used the enormous healing powers contained in a multitude of neglected plants - in pride, in white and evergreen buckthorn, in black viburnum, warthog, in ramen; he treated consumption with sundew, used, as needed, milkweed leaves, which, when plucked at the root, act as a laxative, and plucked at the top as an emetic; healed throat diseases with the help of growths of a plant called "hare's ear"; he knew what kind of cane could cure an ox, and what sort of mint could put a sick horse on its feet; knew all the valuable, beneficial properties of the mandrake, which, as everyone knows, is a bisexual plant. He had medicines for every occasion. He healed burns with salamander skin, from which Nero, according to Pliny, made a napkin. Ursus used a retort and a flask; he himself distilled and sold the universal potions himself. There were rumors that at one time he was in a lunatic asylum; he was honored by taking him for a lunatic, but was soon released, convinced that he was only a poet. It is possible that this was not the case: each of us has been a victim of such tales.

The starting point in the plot of the novel is January 29, 1690, when an abandoned child turns up in Portland under mysterious circumstances.

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Subtitles

Introduction

artistic method

The first part of the novel ("Sea and Night")

Life and death in children's and adult consciousness

Children's consciousness, according to the basic principles of romanticism, is perfect. In this regard, it cannot find the boundary between life and death, since in the mind of a child a person lives even after death. The author in the first book extrapolates the thoughts, feelings, experiences of the child to real life. As a result, there were episodes of the struggle of the corpse of a smuggler with a flock of crows and a meeting of a boy with a dead woman and her child. Both the smuggler and the Gwynplaine woman are alive. Moreover, they act nobly (the smuggler protects Gwynplaine from crows, and the woman gives all her warmth to the blind girl), therefore, they have not lost their moral foundations after death. One of the author's ideas (which subsequently determines the evolution of the protagonist's character) is that Gwynplaine managed to preserve the child's consciousness (albeit in a slightly different form) throughout his life. That is, Gwynplaine is a romantic hero who opposes the surrounding inert world, and, consequently, his consciousness was not “grown up” by reality.

Passengers of the urca have a completely different consciousness. Adult people understand the difference between life and death and do everything to save their lives during a storm. The “wise” and “crazy” old man becomes a notable character of Urka. There are romantic signs in his image. During the catastrophe, his consciousness finally becomes childish. Without prompting people to save themselves, he called them to accept death. Of particular importance here is the utterance of the final prayer "Our Father" (in Latin, Spanish and Irish). By praying, people acquire a childlike simplicity. Death ceases to be something terrible. Everyone remained on their knees, despite the fact that the water covered the heads of the passengers of the urca.

The second part of the novel ("By order of the king")

It begins with an introduction to the name "Gwynplaine", which became the last word of the previous part. Nature "endowed him with a mouth opening to the ears, ears bent to the very eyes, a shapeless nose, ... and a face that could not be looked at without laughter." Despite all this, Gwynplaine was happy and sometimes even pitied people.

Hauteville House. 1869.

PROLOGUE

1. URSUS

Ursus and Gomo were connected by bonds of close friendship. Ursus was a man, Homo was a wolf. In temperament, they were very suited to each other. The name "Homo" was given to the wolf by a man. He probably came up with his own; having found a suitable nickname "Ursus" for himself, he considered the name "Homo" quite suitable for the beast. The commonwealth of man and wolf was a success at fairs, at parish holidays, at street intersections where passers-by crowded; the crowd is always happy to listen to a joker and buy all sorts of charlatan potions. She liked the manual wolf, deftly, without coercion, carrying out the orders of his master. It is a great pleasure to see a tamed shrew, and there is nothing more pleasant than to watch all kinds of training. That is why there are so many spectators on the route of the royal motorcades.

For the night, they settled down wherever they could - in the middle of an unplowed field, on a forest clearing, at the crossroads of several roads, at the village outskirts, at the city gates, in the market square, in places of festivities, on the edge of the park, on the church porch. When the cart stopped at some fairground, when the gossips ran with gaping mouths, and a circle of onlookers gathered around the booth, Ursus began to rant, and Gomo listened to him with obvious approval. Then the wolf politely walked around those present with a wooden cup in his teeth. This is how they earned their living. The wolf was educated, the man too. The wolf was taught by a man or learned all sorts of wolf tricks that increased the collection.

“The main thing is not to degenerate into a man,” the owner used to say to him in a friendly way.