{"id":4983,"date":"2013-10-02T09:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T09:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=4983"},"modified":"2013-10-02T09:00:11","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T09:00:11","slug":"journey-to-the-centre-great-middle-lines-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=4983","title":{"rendered":"Journey to the centre: Great middle lines – 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning I pulled from my bookshelf a translation of Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> by Victor Hugo.\u00a0 I flipped to the end, p. 1,463!\u00a0 Then I backflipped to the middle, where I read on p. 731 the essence of Hugo’s message about the miserable poor of France.\u00a0 Next to it on the shelf was a five-volume set of the novel in French, so I pulled out the third volume and had a go at translating the lines myself.<\/p>\n

Just before the lines of my translation, the narrator had recounted an incident where Marius, walking at a wintry nightfall, had run into two barefoot girls in torn rags whispering to each other about their narrow escape from the police.\u00a0 Once they had disappeared, he continued his walk:<\/p>\n

\n

Along the way, in an alley off the Rue Mouffetard, he saw a child’s coffin covered in a black cloth, lying across three chairs and lighted by a candle.\u00a0 It brought to his mind the two girls of the twilight.<\/p>\n

‘Poor mothers!’ he thought.\u00a0 ‘There’s one thing sadder than seeing your children die, and that’s seeing them live bad lives.’<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

*****<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning I pulled from my bookshelf a translation of Les Mis\u00e9rables by Victor Hugo.\u00a0 I flipped to the end, p. 1,463!\u00a0 Then I backflipped to the middle, where I read on p. 731 the essence of Hugo’s message about the miserable poor of France.\u00a0 Next to it on the shelf was a five-volume set … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Journey to the centre: Great middle lines – 8”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,461],"tags":[241,156,482,2,462,463,226,3,483,270],"class_list":["post-4983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-french-literature-and-translation","category-great-middle-lines","tag-19th-century-literature","tag-french-literature","tag-les-miserables","tag-literature","tag-middle-lines","tag-novels","tag-postaday2013","tag-translation","tag-victor-hugo","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t