It’s time. Actually we can just repeat that last image again:
A Group That Barely Missed NOT Becoming Historic, but yet !!
Chuckle, he’s just so wild for this.
I mean it’s not like Victor Marie Hugo does not frequently in this opus interrupt the plot to just explain a little guy to you, but it’s that there are nine of them.
To do this with nine little guys in a row….
Even if there were nothing else about this set of characters bonking around within the duvet cover of my brain, the structural chaos of the way the musical just suddenly releases the gates and lets flood the stage with Charli XCX’s Boys one hour into a show where they had not been previous, is not in fact dissimilar at all to the sensation of reaching this chapter of the novel, wholly halfway through, and having a nine-part dramatis personae and a floor plan poured onto you like a sheaf of papers from a moderate height. Hugo what??!, you call out as you scramble to keep them together, but he’s already laughed his way offstage, and will now never explain himself.
Anyway, what follows is exactly what you want: a sort of recap-rundown-commentary on who all I’ve just been re-introduced to, and how.
We start at the top:
Enjolras
- I mean of course he is, this feels like it explains a Lot actually, but my god Enjolras is a wealthy only child? Oh baby…very dark turns this story could have taken!
- Anyway he’s gorgeous and mean. Classic rich twink behavior.
- Priestly, disdainful (these are all direct Hapgood translations)
- Rosy pale, 22 but looks 17—oh so Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name but blonde and loves WAR
- Literally described as not knowing women exist and glaring at any that approach him, so, guess maybe this liberté and egalité really is just for the fraternité
- Does not break revolutionary focus for any of the world’s stock of beauty or joy
- I’ve never played DND but the amount of warlike and priestlike imagery combined here makes me suspect this guy is hardcore cleric, and it’s the one angle where I’m interested in him in himself and not just as a cold beautiful force that contextualizes other characters’ inner dramas
- “Woe to the love affair that should have risked itself beside him!” I said this to a friend, and then revisited it to be sure, and will now at last say it here: the point of Enjolras is that he’s never going to sleep with you, and that too has meaning! The Point of Enjolras is that he’s just everyone’s Clive. Here is E.M. Forster in 1960 looking back on his Maurice (1914) and describing, I swear to you, Clive Durham, not his Edwardian Oxbridge AU Enjolras (as far as we know):
What Italian boy, what French, maybe… Anyway I’m not blowing a whole thesis on passage one so we’ll leave it at that, just some food for thought!
Combeferre
- “Between the logic of the Revolution and its philosophy there exists this difference—that its logic may end in war, whereas its philosophy can end only in peace.” I had to Close the Book for a second, uh oh! Uh oh I’m gonna be real tender over you in 2022 huh!
- Best friend, confidante
- “The Revolution was more adapted for breathing with Combeferre than with Enjolras.” I find the atmosphere he creates incredibly comforting. Imagine if you could breathe.
- Gentle 😩
- Sweet nerd! Gets excited over arteries and geology—a Harry Goodsir! Oh noo
- It’s the 1830s and Combeferre is also complaining that literary education just confines itself to “the classics”—Combeferre wants to decolonize yr syllabus
- Combeferre is out of undergrad and it shows
- A purist & scientist but also thoughtful even on mythic creatures
- “He believed in all dreams, railroads, the suppression of suffering in chirurgical operations, the fixing of images in the dark chamber, the electric telegraph, the steering of balloons”—I just, love him
- Maybe holds a bit too much of an emphasis on innocence as goodness, like Hugo!
Je(h)an Prouvaire
- Ren Faire. We love him.
- (Knows what a woman is, and feels bad they have it so shitty)
- Likes long walks, flowers, and POETIC GRANDEUR
- Also a wealthy only son!
- Blushing awkward dear but doesn’t let that stop him
- Really I’m loving how endearingly embarrassing Prouvaire is, everyone needs an embarrassing friend who dresses poorly and has romantic nerd interests
Feuilly
- Working class hero
- Self-taught liberator of the people
- Wow a lot of this ends up being a lament for the partition of Poland in 1772
- Pretty sparse on personality details here since so much really was just about Poland, but: a generous heart
Courfeyrac
- One of my favorite French names to say, definitely badly
- “The particle, as everyone knows, possesses no significance.” Sounds like something someone without a particle would say, M. Hugo
- “We might almost, so far as Courfeyrac is concerned, stop here, and confine ourselves to saying with regard to what remains: ‘For Courfeyrac, see Tholomyes.’” [Gasp], No! Say more! Say you lied just now and he’s not like Tholomyes!
- “Only, Courfeyrac was an honorable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyes was very great.” Oh thank god! Also what! How can I ask this weird specific thing of Hugo and he delivers
- “There was in Tholomyes a district attorney, and in Courfeyrac a paladin.” Wait hang on, now what is happening. Do we have to DND all these fuckers? Oh god I do Not know enough about DND…ah whatever I’ll do this blind: Feuilly is a ranger, Prouvaire is a druid, Combeferre’s a…wizard, a warlock? Whatever one is book learning not deals. Alright who’s next!
Bahorel
- A ROGUE!
- Aw I remembered “daring waistcoats and scarlet opinions”—now that’s a Hugoism
- The button at the end of this run-on description “a student in his eleventh year”—sublime
- Anyway he is good-nature and keeps bad company (again sublime), a bit of a scamp, respects others so they respect him, and saunters. “To stray is human. To saunter is Parisian.”
- “In reality, he had a penetrating mind and was more of a thinker than appeared to view.”
- Y’know what I think he’s Eames
Lesgle/L’Aigle/Legle [de Meaux]/Bossuet
- The depths of French punning with this name I simply cannot fathom
- Anyway, extremely unlucky and extremely jovial about it
- Ostensibly a law student. Mostly just lives with Joly because he’s always losing what money he has.
- Feels like a Dickens character really. What will befall this young man next! Picaresque energy.
Joly
- Medical student
- Hypochondriac to the point of mysticism—well that’s fun
- The gayest! #text
- Agreeably eccentric
- Oh really elated I remembered correctly and the rest of them actually do call him Jolllly, that that was canon
- “Joly had a trick of touching his nose with the tip of his cane, which is an indication of a sagacious mind.” Okay!
- So he’s just any character played by Ben Whishaw, yeah? Neurotic fluttery-manic bird-boned weirdo, adorable.
Haha Hugo you’re feinting like you’re gonna skip him. I know you aren’t.
Grantaire
- Le sceptique
- “Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything.” there is So. Much. packed into That!
- What this litany of how he knew “the best place for everything” actually tells is that Grantaire holds a lasting memory of every nice moment he has experienced. Haha fuck, fuck fuck fuck
- “Grantaire is impossible” is a hilarious thing to say about his appearance. Also how do other English translators do what Florence Hapgood has chosen as “homely,” “inordinately” so
- Knows what women are, thinks they’re all beautiful
- A libertine, a fatalist, very drunk
- It’s reeeaally presented as Grantaire being almost transfixed by the oppositeness of Enjolras to him. It’s like he’s nigh helpless in the matter, like it’s planetary—Grantaire is mess and doubt, he is therefore anchored to this pristine believer.
- “He had need of Enjolras.” God this line fucks me up
- The “yielding” descriptor fucks me up too. Grantaire will allow pretty much anything, including, we see, his own harsh treatment
- “He was ironical and cordial. His indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without friendship.” [softly] stop..
- Anyway love when Hugo just falls to listing every gay ass Greek figure he can think of to make sure we really get it
- Haha IT’S SAD :(
Anyway I’ve made this:
Do Les Amis Know What A Woman Is, Ranked
- Enjolras - no
- Joly - loses half his points because so much of his definition is Pliny the Elder fabulisms
- Feuilly - aware of the principle, mostly as pertains to the partition of Poland
- Bahorel - sure! dames!
- Bossuet - haha oh yes a woman robbed me once
- Courfeyrac - would you like to know what a woman is ;)
- Prouvaire - yes, the poor creatures
- Combeferre - 100% a brother of sisters, at minimum two
- Grantaire - all Women are Goddesses
Not Rated: Marius - give him a moment!
[Brickolage]
