When I discovered the story of Les Miserables through the musical, about 4 years ago, I became obsessed with it for a while. I listened to the music non-stop, watched a lot of the movie adaptations and of course, read the book by French author Victor Hugo.
There is a lot happening and the reader follows some characters, but to summarize let’s say it is about a prisoner finally set free after spending 19 years in prison for stealing a piece of bread. Disappointed in the law and seeing no justice in the world, however touched by the actions of one priest, he changes his name and begins a new, righteous life, changing the lives of others on his way.
Last week, I was really in the mood the reread it, so that’s what I did. It was still great, but I noticed a lot of things:
- The book I have is so much more fast-paced and action driven than I remember Hugo’s writing to be from his other novels. He also does not seem to lose himself in details as he normally does.
- A lot of character relationships are not as developed or emotional as in the adaptations. I thought maybe they changed this when making a movie to add higher stakes and more drama.
- The writing style is pretty basic. It is well written, I’m not arguing it’s not, but even though the story is very special and I loved it, the writing is not as phenomenal as you would expect.
- This book is not as enormous as everyone claims it is. I heard a lot of people say that Les Mis is this huge monstrosity of a book and mine has only 600 pages. I didn’t think much about it though, since for some (or even many people, probably) 600 pages is a lot.
And then I noticed why this was the case:
My version is based on the German abridged and edited translation from 1933, a very much abridged version indeed. It took me just a little research to discover that the original has over double the pages, between 1400 and 1500.
In German bookstores, I have never seen a bigger version of Les Mis than the one I have, they never even came close to that many pages. Apparently, there never even was an unabridged version in my mother tongue. Around the 70’s and 80’s there existed a translation that was closer to being complete, but even in this one the translator Hugo Meier took some liberties and left out parts describing e.g. circumstances of France at that times and shortened descriptions that went on to long in his opinion.
I know Hugo’s writing and am aware that he can go on forever with character and place descriptions to a point were you are wondering what happened to the story (I sometimes felt this way reading The Man Who Laughs or Toilers of the Sea), but I somehow doubt that this justifies cutting half the book without acknowledging this somewhere.
I think it’s interesting how classics and books in general can be shortened to such an extend without even really letting the reader know. In Germany, this butchered version is sold as Victor Hugo’s masterpiece Les Miserable without alternatives in the same language and if you’re not really engaged into this topic you will never know better. It’s probably not such a big deal, but it does make me wonder of how many other classics I have never read the full version, since until recently I never even checked or thought about by whom and how it was translated.
I now ordered an unabridged version in English and am looking forward to finding out what I was missing.
Have you read Les Mis and do you know how your country handled the translation? If so, let me know, I would like to find out if Germany is the only country in which it is that way.
picture: Ylanite Koppens
information source: Zeit Online