JAMESI

Seeing Jeremy secomb say in an interview that Chinese audiences would be very excited when talking about Javert, it reminded me of an idea I had been thinking about before. Javert's death might in some sense be a death that is very compatible with Eastern aesthetics. Compared to Western religious doctrines that view suicide as an unforgivable sin, emotions about suicide appear more complex and diverse in the context of Chinese classical literature and culture. Suicide is both tragic and full of sacredness. It is the most decisive choice made by a person to prove himself and preserve himself. In literary works, such as Liu Lanzhi and Jiao Zhongqing (from the poem “The Peacock Flees to the East and South,” where the two died of love), Du Shiniang (from “Du Shiniang Drops Treasures,” Du Shiniang committed suicide by jumping into the river because she did not want to be humiliated), or the play “Empress Flower” (the last princess of the Ming Dynasty and her husband committed suicide by taking poison for martyrdom), in the description of their making the choice to commit suicide, they all tend to describe them as choosing to end themselves in order to persist in some way, in order not to be contaminated by those things that make them feel pain and shame, and they also always describe the scene after their death in a mythological or deep and peaceful environment. From this perspective, “redemption” and “pity” for Javert were like gray dust in an originally black and white distinct world, disturbing the composition of his original world, twisting his originally persistent, straight forward path in another direction, which made him confused, painful, and unbearable，so he chose to preserve himself by ending himself in a way, perhaps also in another sense “preferring to be broken than whole.” In my memory, I had previously seen a post describing Javert as “quality and purity return purity, stronger than sludge sinking into ditches,”（质本洁来还洁去，强于污淖陷渠沟） which seems to be true. In short, Javert‘s choice to jump into the river may correspond to the hidden lamentations and yearnings of many people about “you can not crossing the river, but you instinct on crossing the river.”（公无渡河，公竟渡河）