Friday, January 25, 2013
Gamins and gavroches
Gamins and gavroches
I suppose now is a good time as any to write this with the popularity of the film Les Miserables and the appearance in it of Gavroche, the quintessential street urchin and spirit of the people. Victor Hugo was responsible for it transferring from being a fictional character to a term to describe all Parisian gamins. As Hazan reminds us in his book on Paris a gamin already appears in the well known Delacroix painting of Liberty leading the People where he is right behind La Belle, La Revolution, brandishing two pistols ( and wearing a cartridge box that may have been picked up from a dead soldier).
And in Rousseau's reveries of a Solitary Walker is the description, with the background of pre-revolutionary Paris of " a very nice, but lame little boy who, hobbling along on his crutches, goes about graciously asking passersby for alms", one of the lost and abandoned children that roamed Paris.
These children were soon no longer ready to beg. An ex-prefect of police, Canler, in his memoirs, talking about the 1832 insurrection
( the one in which Hugo's character dies) mentions " a boy of twelve or so years old, clad in a coloured jacket of the Auvergne style..thrust to the front rank... Everyone knows this breed of Paris gamin, who always uttered seditious shouts in these gatherings, and almost always fired the first shots". There is the boy of Rey-Dussueil's Saint Merri, where the men on the barricade try to save little Joseph, who is already throwing stones at the National Guard, by asking him to post a letter to get him away. He replies:" Very sorry, but I haven't the time".
Hugo uses Gavroche to introduce argot, Parisian street slang for possibly the first time in French literature. Gavroche sings a song satirising conservative ideas, where the 1789 Revolution and Rousseau and Voltaire are blamed for the decay of society:Joie est mon caractere, c'est la faut a Voltaire, Misere est mon trousseau. C'est la faute a Rousseau." (Joy is my character.It's Voltaire's fault. Misery is my bridal gown. It's Rousseau's fault).
I suppose now is a good time as any to write this with the popularity of the film Les Miserables and the appearance in it of Gavroche, the quintessential street urchin and spirit of the people. Victor Hugo was responsible for it transferring from being a fictional character to a term to describe all Parisian gamins. As Hazan reminds us in his book on Paris a gamin already appears in the well known Delacroix painting of Liberty leading the People where he is right behind La Belle, La Revolution, brandishing two pistols ( and wearing a cartridge box that may have been picked up from a dead soldier).
And in Rousseau's reveries of a Solitary Walker is the description, with the background of pre-revolutionary Paris of " a very nice, but lame little boy who, hobbling along on his crutches, goes about graciously asking passersby for alms", one of the lost and abandoned children that roamed Paris.
These children were soon no longer ready to beg. An ex-prefect of police, Canler, in his memoirs, talking about the 1832 insurrection
( the one in which Hugo's character dies) mentions " a boy of twelve or so years old, clad in a coloured jacket of the Auvergne style..thrust to the front rank... Everyone knows this breed of Paris gamin, who always uttered seditious shouts in these gatherings, and almost always fired the first shots". There is the boy of Rey-Dussueil's Saint Merri, where the men on the barricade try to save little Joseph, who is already throwing stones at the National Guard, by asking him to post a letter to get him away. He replies:" Very sorry, but I haven't the time".
Hugo uses Gavroche to introduce argot, Parisian street slang for possibly the first time in French literature. Gavroche sings a song satirising conservative ideas, where the 1789 Revolution and Rousseau and Voltaire are blamed for the decay of society:Joie est mon caractere, c'est la faut a Voltaire, Misere est mon trousseau. C'est la faute a Rousseau." (Joy is my character.It's Voltaire's fault. Misery is my bridal gown. It's Rousseau's fault).
Labels: gamins, gavroches, Les miserables, Paris, Victor Hugo
