Another ending for La Traviata: the love affair between the great literary hero Hugo and Juliet Drewe

Poster of Les Misérables. (Xinhua News Agency/Ouxin/Photo)

Forget who once said that men like two kinds of women the most—one to be enlightened and one to be saved. This is actually not new, the women in classical literature are basically these two, innocent and flawless girls and charming sluts. Although this is the ironclad evidence of the traditional objectification of women, who in the end does not want to be the first love or the final romance, and to be in the lives of others instead of rushing by? Even if most of the two are not compatible. Similarly, it is difficult for Qianfan to keep his original intention, and he imagines that he can meet the needs of enlightenment and save both, probably like Juliet Drewe.

The first time I knew her name was in a very humble museum of letters on the corner of Rue Saint-Germain in Paris. In the middle of the smoke and rain, I saw a wall in the winding alley that read, "Je n'ai rien a te dire sinon que je t'aime " ( I have nothing to say to you, except that I love you ) " . It was a celebrity book fair, and the most memorable thing was the correspondence between Victor Hugo and an actress named Juliet Drewe, pages of yellowed letterheads with fiery emotions. The past of this unpopular actress who wrote more than 20,000 love letters to the world's top literary heroes will start from the last fifty years backwards.

<h3>After his wife cheated, Hugo met her...</h3>

It was 1832, victor Hugo had already made a name for himself in the literary world, but he had to encounter an embarrassing family crisis in the style of Wang Baoqiang. His young wife, Adele, threw herself into the arms of his critic and friend St. Beauf. Hugo had a heart after meeting her at the age of eight, and after a tortuous love affair, it was difficult to marry Adele into the door, which even led to the mental breakdown of Hugo's brother, who had always been obsessed with Adele. Ten years of calm married life, in Adele's eyes, Hugo is still the hairy boy who chases after her, and Hugo has become a rising star in the literary world, praised by the stars, often commanding her, her role is transformed from a delicate rich lady into a mother of four children, a copywriter, a private secretary and an old mother, and endless housework and writing work make her often fall into fatigue and boredom.

I once wondered why the beautiful Adele would look up to the ugly Saint-Beuve, and when I read his article "If we can penetrate the hearts of all people, who in the world is not worthy of sympathy", I understood how such a compassionate heart could not open any heart, especially Adele's sad and calm heart. Due to the different times of the national conditions, there was no tearing war, and Hugo was just struggling with the French melancholy of how to force a good face with his friends while maintaining the dignity of the family.

A year later, Hugo, who was in pain and dazed, met Juliet while rehearsing his new play? Drew, amazing.

Of course, there are no celestial beings in the world, and most of the people who fall from the sky are not Lin Sister, this time it is a woman with a complicated and bumpy background. Born in a French farmhouse in Brittany, the girl was raised by her uncle when her parents died at an early age, and her teenage years were spent in a harsh and harsh convent, and after a few years, like other orphan girls, she was driven into society and supported herself, and also embarked on the path of many girls who had nothing but beauty at that time. At the age of 19 she became a model and mistress of a sculptor in Paris, and although she took good care of the sculptor's living and even gave birth to a daughter, the sculptor felt that marrying this anonymous girl was indecent, and he abandoned her and introduced her to his artist friends. So the sculptor left, the painter came, the painter left again, the reporter came, and with her daughter she went through several turns, and one of her lovers became the manager of the theater, and she had the opportunity to become an actress. She has no acting skills, only to take over some small roles by posture, and her meager income is obviously not enough to support the mother and daughter, so she is full of brilliance and high spirits, "ready to throw herself into the arms of the first rich man to buy her", and gradually gained some fame in the social circles of Paris. When fate brought this 26-year-old girl, who had been through the cold of the world, to Hugo, she was already a high-class prostitute, living a life of debauchery and luxury, but all her belongings were a pile of beautiful clothes, a young daughter who went to boarding school and a sky-high debt of twenty thousand francs.

At that time, when he had just arrived and stood, he had lost his emotional sustenance, and Hugo, who had not yet experienced the wind and moon field, was like grasping a life-saving straw and fell in love. In his eyes, the beauty he fell in love with not only had the appearance of the national color and heavenly fragrance, but also had a noble and humble character, which seemed to be Don Quixote's ridiculousness, and proved the accuracy of vision in the years that followed. After a carnival night, Juliet officially became Hugo's mistress. This plunged Hugo into a huge tender love, experiencing a passion she had never had before, and Juliet, who had already used love as a survival chip, gradually discovered that this first-class talent gave her unprecedented respect and attachment. Of course, she still had to take time to meet other benefactors, because she always had to support her family and pay off her debts, and these Hugos could not help. To keep him from upsetting, she began to secretly pawn her clothes and jewelry—the spoils of the year—in exchange for living expenses. Things were pawned almost, and she could only continue to dwell on the old life. The jealous Hugo finally couldn't bear it, and when he learned of her debt, he was so shocked that he decided to reinvent her, a transformation that lasted half a century.

He intended to help her pay off her debts and place her in a very small room; she washed up her lead and had only two robes; she was not allowed to go out and could only travel with Hugo; her daily life was to do housework, to help Hugo copy and sort out the manuscripts, to sew up her clothes; the little money he gave her was not even enough for her to make a fire in the winter, and all the entry and exit had to be accounted for every time, to look at this clear account:

On the 12th, my dear earned money, 50 francs,

On the 14th, the money in my lover's wallet, 6 francs and 4 sue,

On the 20th, the money in the wallet of Toto (Victor's nickname), 3 francs ...

<h3>The color of the fall, the twilight of the beauty</h3>

In that case, Hugo's wife, Adele, had been doing the same thing. If there had been an accountant exam at the time, Hugo's women would have come out on top. Instead of resenting Hugo's miserliness, Juliet was grateful to him for giving her the chance to be a new person. Her neighbor recalled that near evening she always stood in front of the woods near the house waiting for her lover, no matter whether it was windy or rainy.

Perhaps with a retreat of enthusiasm, perhaps with the title of Viscountess in mind, or perhaps jealous of her husband's travels with her new children, Adele returned to Hugo, who gladly accepted. The heartbroken St. Beuve retaliated by fiercely criticizing Hugo's new work, but was attacked by the original couple, and it seems that the world is no different from ancient to modern.

Now that the world is stable and the years are quiet, the luxurious mansion of the Place des Vosges has restored the joy and laughter of the extended family, and Juliet, who has no hope of legal marriage, can only continue to play the role of mistress competently. Her theatrical career has long since been completely ruined by the verbal criticism of Hugo's opponents. She barely left the house, clinging to the habit of writing a love letter to Hugo every day, with no room other than the room full of cheap items from the thrift store, and no other interest than repeatedly reading Hugo's works to tears. This girl, who had once run in the vast nature of Brittany and soaked in the sideburns of glitzy Paris, lived a simple and forbidden life in the burrow without complaint.

The years did not treat her more favorably because of her piety, but the beauty of the fall was colorful, the fear of beauty was late, and before she was forty years old, she was already full of white hair. Her once-moving countenance and flesh have become less and less interesting, the uninterrupted love letters are as greasy as cookie-cutter hymns, and all kinds of young and beautiful women are scrambling to step on the dark ladder of her world-famous and prosperous lover. When leoni, the young and vigorous new favorite, tries to drive the old and fading Juliet away from Hugo, the desperate Juliet can only pray letter after letter for Hugo not to abandon her, because he is the whole meaning of her life, and she has "nothing but love". Of course, she also has the unfortunate daughter Claire, a beautiful and depressed girl who has been in boarding school for many years and has never enjoyed time with her biological parents, and her soaring biological father forbade her to use her surname, which became the last straw that overwhelmed her, and Claire had no intention of bringing her a miserable life. In her final letter to her adoptive father, Hugo, she pleaded with him not to abandon her kind and helpless mother. In the deserted funeral procession of this illegitimate daughter without a surname, Hugo, who was attacked by political enemies and peach-colored news, resolutely walked at the forefront.

<h3>You don't abandon me, I protect you</h3>

In fact, despite his boredom, Hugo, who had been hunting all his life, probably never really wanted to abandon Juliet, and he probably did not expect that this decision would save his life. In 1851, Napoleon III staged a coup d'état to tear up the Constitution, and the liberals led by Hugo advocated the return of rights to the people, and he fearlessly continued to convene political rallies and give speeches in the Place de Bastille. The brutal repression of the authorities began, and Hugo was wanted.

On the horrific night of the Paris massacre, hundreds of opponents were killed, and in the midst of layers of checkpoints and bullets, Juliet searched for Hugo alone, and finally took him to a safe place, and applied for a passport to Brussels with a false identity, alertly helping "Mr. Lanwan, a typestreaker" to escape abroad.

Hugo lamented that "I was not captured and shot, and I lived in the human world, all thanks to Juliet risking the loss of her freedom and life to protect me"; when Hugo was politically exiled to the remote and remote Island of Jersey, Adele was bedridden, Hugo stopped Leoni from following, and took Juliet with him. The passion of his youth has long since faded, but the emotional attachment may be more profound, and at this critical juncture of life's lows, he still needs the loyalty and intimacy of the old people.

During Hugo's exile, Juliet's tenderness turned into a tigress-like vigilance and strength, she was afraid that Hugo would be harmed, day and night to guard him, once one of his suitcases full of manuscripts fell into the sea, she did not hesitate to jump into the water to save the suitcase; and when Adele and her family also came to the island, she immediately gave up her position, and every day she just waved to Hugo on the balcony, ragged and ashamed to secretly look at Madame Hugo in a silk robe. Years later, even Madame Hugo could not help but have a respect for her, she solemnly visited Juliet, and from time to time invited her to dine with her children and grandchildren and even travel, juliet finally experienced a little belated family warmth.

Fifty years after that sweet love, Madame Hugo had died. When the esteemed eighty-year-old Hugo appeared in the middle of the Parisian theater with the dying Juliet, this once lonely and discredited woman was surrounded by relatives of the Imperial State, who was too ill to stand up and could not speak, and she shortened the distance between his wife and lover for half a century, making her Hugo's last de facto wife. After her death, the bank shares hugo bought for her many years ago were worth a fortune and had not moved, and she returned all the money in her will. Her last love letter confesses to Hugo, "I have proved that I love you with my life", and perhaps the sentence in the exhibition is more suitable for this scene, "I have nothing to say to you except that I love you", she has proved her language with fifty years of action, and only time can test the truth.

<h3>Another ending for la Traviata</h3>

In the Bible there is the story of Mary Magdalene, who was the notorious prostitute in the city. But when she saw the god of Jesus and begged him to let her live a holy life, he redeemed her, and she became one of Jesus' most faithful saints. Juliet is a true story of redemption. At that time, the fate of the poor girl was nothing more than a whirling between the la pantomime who squandered her life and the miserable female worker Fantine, and Hugo came like a god, so that she avoided the misery of the two special ways and died.

In reality, although the prototype of la Traviata did die early, she never gave up the vain life of pleasure as written in the novel, nor did she have true feelings for the little Dumas who was deeply infatuated with her, that is just the wishful thinking of the artist's creation, "the infatuated prostitute can only be found in the drama" or his original words; but Juliet did come out of the fall, although the identity of the mistress should not be advocated and beautified, but compared to the vast majority of fellow travelers who have taken love packaging to enjoy from ancient times to the present, Her simple and dedicated life illuminates the true background of her unique soul, and the cruelty and roughness of reality have not detracted from her original sincerity and steadfastness, which is rare as a legend.

If seeing Hugo as a god has allowed her to find her place in this life, and agreeing that the meaning of survival is to support the emotions of a great genius, she may be happier than most confused people, just like the people who have found faith. But all men are created equal, and whether anyone deserves such a sacred position, and whether anyone should live only for others. Juliet's fifty years of asceticism and begging were not all willing, and her unconditional obedience also had the jealousy and resentment of ordinary people, but in the face of a strong self, she chose to give in and accepted its baptism in its entirety.

Also the lover of the top masters, Camille Claudel, who was born of nobility and unparalleled talent, even if she loved Rodin to the point of madness, never gave up her pride and self-esteem, she could not bear to share his feelings with others as a lover, and her own light could not help people, did not need to rely on Rodin's aura, and feared that his light would affect her bright purity. And Juliet has always carried a humble humility that is low to dust, and this humility stems partly from love, and partly, probably because she knows that fate is as humble as she is, and needs the light of the master to illuminate her doomed dark life. So Rodin chose the ordinary Rose and abandoned Camille, just as Hugo and Juliet stayed together for fifty years. The genius's powerful self, which was comparable to talent, crushed the breathing space of other creatures, and the weak and lowly people around them could only be swallowed up by the huge shadow behind their light.

And the light was still so dazzling that the sparkle of the world dwarfed it. Juliet gave up material vanity, but was inspired not by morality or religion, but perhaps by another, more expansive spiritual vanity: that vanity was so close to "the noblest heart of its time", that her own life of humiliation and chaos seemed to become clean and noble; that vanity was that she had long since become immortal in Hugo's works, that the life of Cosette Abbey in Les Misérables had a shadow of her childhood, and that in 'Ninety-Three Years" General Guo Wen used her real surname. The annual commemorative book of Hugo's inscriptions is her unique pride; and her greater vanity is written on her epitaph:

The world has its thoughts

I had his love!

The world got his thoughts,

And I, have his love

Unable to witness Hugo's mournful state funeral two years after his death, and not enjoying the glory of Hugo's appointment to the Panthéon, juliet's will, she was accompanied by her daughter, who was not accompanied by her daughter in a humble deserted cemetery outside Paris, and the epitaph was inscribed by Hugo. Until the last moment, he looked at this poor and honorable woman with the mentality of a giver and savior. With a genius mind, he is quite self-aware, and in the end his charm is the brilliant thought that has touched generations, but also enlightened and saved a pure soul that was once lost.

(This article is only the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Slu