Curate, connect, and discover
grantaire is in love with enjolras and enjolras is just wondering what this gremlin man is doing hanging around the friends of the abc so dang much and this upsets me greatly but not because i want them to kiss: an essay.
part three: “enjolras and his lieutenants” – or, oh gawd the secondhand embarrassment is awful.
part one | part two
prologue: a short interlude in which grantaire interacts with other people and there is minimal drama.
from “marius, while seeking a girl in a bonnet encounters a man in a cap” :
Once, having confidence in a fine September sun, Marius had allowed himself to be taken to the ball at Sceaux by Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and Grantaire, hoping, what a dream! that he might, perhaps, find her there. Of course he did not see the one he sought. -- “But this is the place, all the same, where all lost women are found,” grumbled Grantaire in an aside. Marius left his friends at the ball and returned home on foot, alone, through the night, weary, feverish, with sad and troubled eyes, stunned by the noise and dust of the merry wagons filled with singing creatures on their way home from the feast, which passed close to him, as he, in his discouragement, breathed in the acrid scent of the walnut-trees, along the road, in order to refresh his head.
i need to stop calling grantaire “honey,” but somehow that is just the automatic response that pops into my head at these things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
look at this, though. grantaire’s second appearance in a scene (if barely described) is -- wait for it -- another one where enjolras doesn’t enter into the equation. in fact it’s one of courfeyrac’s attempts to cheer marius up.
R is being a bit of a pill here, in that he’s niggling at marius to find a new girl to moon over when clearly marius wants to Not Do That, but -- look at the wording. it’s an aside, and a short one at that. he’s not directing the comment directly at marius, who no doubt would be morbidly offended by it. he’s not being obtrusive or annoying, just making a small remark. and that’s all of the description hugo deigns to give us about it.
it’s a ball at sceaux -- sceaux being about 10 km south by southwest from the center of paris. there’s a little chateau there, a park, gardens, it’s very pretty. an event there would likely be one of several society events the likes of which courfeyrac, as a former de courfeyrac and therefore extremely bourgeois, probably gets invitations to on a regular basis.
only it’s not only courfeyrac who brings marius along, it’s also bossuet (who he first met; who is unluckily poor nine days out of ten) and grantaire (who we hadn’t seen marius interact with at all before; who is if not bad company then disreputable company).
i hate to keep hammering at the point, except that i don’t.
my garbage nerd son has good friends. and they enjoy his company enough that they don’t drag him along to parties complaining, he willingly goes with them from the get-go. it’s marius who acts like the old “hit the ball drag fred” golf joke.
grantaire isn’t a burden on his friends. he loves them.
... okay. now that a small cute thing is out of the way, on to the main event.
lots of screaming ahead, folks.
“That arranges everything,” said Courfeyrac.
“No.”
“What else is there?”
“A very important thing.”
“What is that?” asked Courfeyrac.
“The Barriere du Maine,” replied Enjolras.
Enjolras remained for a moment as though absorbed in reflection, then he resumed: --
“At the Barriere du Maine there are marble-workers, painters, and journeymen in the studios of sculptors. They are an enthusiastic family, but liable to cool off. I don't know what has been the matter with them for some time past. They are thinking of something else. They are becoming extinguished. They pass their time playing dominoes. There is urgent need that some one should go and talk with them a little, but with firmness. They meet at Richefeu’s. They are to be found there between twelve and one o'clock. Those ashes must be fanned into a glow.
so it looks like the barrière du maine is right up grantaire’s alley, from the very first mention of it. marble-workers ( “what fine marble!” ), painters, sculptors. these are people that grantaire probably knows very well.
but the rest of enjolras’ description is what, on the second read-through, made me thump my computer and say aloud, in probably too loud of a voice, “really, hugo??”
an enthusiastic family, but liable to cool off. thinking of something else. pass their time playing dominoes. those ashes must be fanned into a glow.
does that sound ........... like anybody else we know, enjolras?
That Right Thar Sounds Like A Meta Fer Somethin’ If’n Ya Ask Me!
For that errand I had counted on that abstracted Marius, who is a good fellow on the whole, but he no longer comes to us.
RE -- REALLY? YOU WERE GOING TO ASK MARIUS??
IT’S EIGHTEEN THIRTY-TWO, ENJOLRAS. THE LAST TIME MARIUS CAME TO THE BACK ROOM OF THE MUSAIN WAS IN EIGHTEEN TWENTY-EIGHT WHEN COMBEFERRE HANDED HIS ASS TO HIM, ENJOLRAS. IT’S BEEN FOUR YEARS.
enjolras is sharp as a tack in terms of politics, in terms of persuasion, in terms of battle tactics. but the guy’s a little blunter in terms of interpersonal relationships. i love him. i do. i promise. he is also a nerd ( as exhibited by his wonderful off-the-cuff straight-faced pun earlier in this passage, “joly will go to dupuytren's clinical lecture, and feel the pulse of the medical school” ), and i love him for it.
but -- in keeping with other facets of his characterization ( “silence in the presence of jean-jacques! i admire that man. he denied his own children, yes, but he adopted the people” ) -- enjolras really doesn’t have much of a clue about what makes normal human people tick.
enjo is just as contradictory and human as grantaire, and this scene is one place we really see it.
the artists at the barrière du maine need their passion for revolution to be stoked. well. so does the one right in your backyard, enjolras.
we know from the prose intro that grantaire doesn’t believe. but has enjolras ever tried to convert him? or did he just hear grantaire going off on a tangent about the hopelessness of the world, and never even bother?
this might come back to bite him ...
I need some one for the Barriere du Maine. I have no one.”
“What about me?” said Grantaire. “Here am I.”
“You?”
“I.”
grantaire -- who it is implied never does anything like this -- has just volunteered for a mission.
notice here that enjolras tutoies grantaire in the original french -- he addresses him informally. this might be important later, especially because hugo being hugo, pronoun usage can be a major plot point.
“You indoctrinate republicans! you warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle!”
“Why not?”
BECAUSE YOU NEVER WANTED TO BEFORE.
why does he want to do it now? we’re never given an answer. all we’re given is an outsider’s view -- or enjolras’ view -- of the conversation. nothing internal on grantaire’s sudden wish to be useful. (though knowing hugo, and knowing me, that would just result in more screaming.)
“Are you good for anything?”
in the original french, the question is, “est-ce que tu peux être bon à quelque chose ?”
literally: can you be good for something?
this is a sarcastic, rhetorical question. enjolras isn’t actually looking for an answer.
“I have a vague ambition in that direction,” said Grantaire.
but grantaire answers it earnestly, as though enjolras were looking for an answer. he’s frank with enjolras: he has a vague ambition towards being good for something -- i.e., the revolution -- i.e., enjolras. he wants to be good for enjolras. (“good,” as in “useful” : he wants to be as pylades to him.)
given enjolras’ utter bewilderment just before this, this is probably the first time grantaire has voiced anything of the sort. this is, and i cannot stress it enough, an abnormal occurrence.
“You do not believe in everything.”
“I believe in you.”
WELL FUCK ME SIDEWAYS I GUESS !!!!!
enjolras tutoies grantaire, presumably out of that mild disdain mentioned from earlier chapters. “tu ne crois à rien.” -> you believe in nothing.
grantaire tutoies him back. “je crois à toi.” -> i believe in you.
note here, he says “je crois à toi,” not “je crois en toi.”
from l’académie française :
“Croire à quelqu’un signifie tenir pour certaine son existence, admettre son pouvoir : Il croit aux revenants. Il ne croit ni à Dieu ni à Diable.”
to hold someone’s existence for certain, to admit their power.
that is what he thinks of enjolras. and he uses tutoiement to do it.
if he had vouvoied enjolras (addressed him formally), i’m not gonna lie, i probably would have started shrieking, and not in a good way. but what it looks like here is grantaire addressing enjolras with the familiarity of a friend, when it’s just been made clear a handful of lines ago that they are not friends, they are just people who have friends in common.
(or if you want to get really pedantic and symbolic, i can draw attention to the fact that the french use tutoiement for God as well as their friends and family. probably for similar reasons, on a theological level, but i digress. point being that this implies grantaire believes in enjolras the exact same way that someone else would believe in a deity.)
look at this. look at this. grantaire is being utterly transparent about his feelings. he’s not diving off into an extended ramble, he’s not orating to all and sundry. he says four little words that mean everything, and he leaves it at that.
grantaire’s dialogue so far in this scene has been short, concise, one sentence at a time. sometimes even one word at a time. he’s really not trying to yank enjolras’ chain here. at least --
“Grantaire will you do me a service?”
“Anything. I'll black your boots.”
-- until this happens.
i have a suspicion that the joke, “i’ll black your boots,” with its possibly sexual undertones if you’ve got a dirty enough mind, is a hasty retreat from the earnestness of “anything.” grantaire has not yet understood that he is in love with enjolras. (that won’t come until literally his dying breath.) but he does now understand that whatever he feels for enjolras is very strong, and he’s a little afraid of the implication.
“Well, don’t meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe.”
“You are an ingrate, Enjolras.”
enjolras soundly refuses grantaire’s offer, tacking on a sentence implying that the only reason grantaire offered at all is because he’s drunk off his gourd. and grantaire replies -- immediately -- that enjolras is ungrateful for rejecting him.
this is a once in a lifetime offer. take it while it’s still on the table, buddy.
(oh, grantaire. the reverse also applies ...)
“You the man to go to the Barriere du Maine! You capable of it!”
“I am capable of descending the Rue de Gres, of crossing the Place Saint-Michel, of sloping through the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, of taking the Rue de Vaugirard, of passing the Carmelites, of turning into the Rue d’Assas, of reaching the Rue du Cherche-Midi, of leaving behind me the Conseil de Guerre, of pacing the Rue des Vielles Tuileries, of striding across the boulevard, of following the Chaussee du Maine, of passing the barrier, and entering Richefeu’s. I am capable of that.
i’ve mentioned before in part one that this mini monologue works to show us how familiar grantaire is with the city on foot. he can map out a route verbally on request. whether he’s been cogitating over it from the first mention enjolras made of richefeu’s, or whether he’s just speaking off-the-cuff in the moment, the point is he knows paris (or at least that section of paris) like the back of his hand.
My shoes are capable of that.”
i love you.
“Do you know anything of those comrades who meet at Richefeu’s?”
“Not much. We only address each other as thou.”
grantaire tutoies the richefeu gang. that sounds pretty dang useful to me!
but also ...
... okay. time for a digression about translations, and translations of tutoiement and vouvoiement specifically.
anyone who’s heard me rant about this before (and i know some of y’all have) can skip to the next quoted section. i’m just flogging a dead horse at this point.
but ... hapgood. hapgood. you’re my favorite translator for les mis. but if you’re gonna use the thou/you archaic english in/formal dichotomy, to show the tu/vous french in/formal dichotomy, then you have to be internally consistent.
enjolras and grantaire are addressing each other as “tu” the entire time. not “vous.” therefore, the dialogue should go something like this:
thou dost believe in nothing. / i believe in thee.
grantaire, wilt thou do me a service? / anything. i’ll black thy boots.
well, do not meddle in our affairs. sleep thyself sober from thine absinthe. / thou art an ingrate, enjolras.
sound clunky and awkward? well, yeah, to our modern ears, because english dropped the in/formal dichotomy pretty suddenly in the 17th century, and the “thou” form was solidified as an archaic form of speech in samuel johnson’s a grammar of the english tongue.
modern english doesn’t have a cultural understanding of the in/formal second person pronoun connotations the same way that french does. that’s a difference that translators have to juggle, and some of them struggle with it. i get it. i’ve tried my hand at translating passages from les mis before, i’ve torn my hair out over it with the valjean & javert barricade scene, i get it. but ...
consistency is all i ask!
“What will you say to them?”
“I will speak to them of Robespierre, pardi! Of Danton. Of principles.”
“You?”
“I. But I don’t receive justice. When I set about it, I am terrible. I have read Prudhomme, I know the Social Contract, I know my constitution of the year Two by heart. ‘The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins.’
oh, honey.
he’s memorized so many other things. quoted ecclesiastes, quoted horace, pulled dates and figures out of his hat extemporaneously. and among all the myriad things he has memorized, he took the time to learn by heart the republican tracts that all of his friends espouse.
Do you take me for a brute?
i don’t think you want the answer to that :(
I have an old bank-bill of the Republic in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a Hebertist. I can talk the most superb twaddle for six hours by the clock, watch in hand.”
and i bet you can, at that, if worked into enough of a passion about it.
grantaire talks about what he’s passionate about. he talks about the suffering of the world, the repetition of history, the inextricable link between vice and virtue. he cares about that.
he cares about enjolras. and, if drunk enough, i would be willing to bet good money that given a sympathetic audience (sans the man himself), grantaire could orate for hours about the pure and perfect halo of enjolras’ golden hair, that symbol of his angelic nature upon the earth, that ferocious righteous cherubim of ezekiel.
but he doesn’t care about the revolution in and of itself. nobody has fanned those ashes into a glow. grantaire could quote as much as he liked about the rights of man, but what audience would agree with a speaker who doesn’t even believe what he himself is saying?
“Be serious,” said Enjolras.
“I am wild,” replied Grantaire.
and here’s the big quote. the one everyone trots out.
it’s a good quote. it’s ... it’s a damn good quote.
it’s even better when you look at the original french.
“sois sérieux.” “je suis farouche.”
from larousse dictionary :
“Se dit d’un animal sauvage qui fuit à l’approche de l’homme. Qui évite les contacts sociaux et dont l’abord est difficile. Qui exprime avec force, vigueur, la violence de quelqu’un ; âpre, véhément.”
said of a savage animal that flees at the approach of a human. someone who avoids social contact and whose social manner is difficult. someone who expresses violence forcefully and vigorously upon someone ; harsh or fierce, vehement.
to be farouche is not just to be wild. it is to be feral.
Enjolras meditated for a few moments, and made the gesture of a man who has taken a resolution.
“Grantaire,” he said gravely, “I consent to try you. You shall go to the Barriere du Maine.”
enjolras has listened to grantaire. he has paid attention to the words that grantaire says, maybe even for the first time ever. he has considered their meaning.
and the result is that he agrees to take a chance on him.
this is monumental! enjolras has bent a little! grantaire argued his case and he won!
this is a victory!
but a small one. enjolras has given grantaire the chance to do something for his cause. it’s what grantaire does with the opportunity that matters the most.
Grantaire lived in furnished lodgings very near the Cafe Musain. He went out, and five minutes later he returned. He had gone home to put on a Robespierre waistcoat.
“Red,” said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Enjolras.
robespierre red. grantaire has ... a robespierre red waistcoat.
i don’t even know what to say to that. i’ve been trying to think, all day, to come up with a coherent response to the fact that grantaire owns a red robespierre waistcoat. but i got nothing. just inarticulate screaming.
Then, with the palm of his energetic hand, he laid the two scarlet points of the waistcoat across his breast.
And stepping up to Enjolras, he whispered in his ear: --
“Be easy.”
He jammed his hat on resolutely and departed.
oh god. ooooh god. this is fine.
i wonder what everyone else was thinking when they saw that. i know i would have bluescreened.
and we’ve got a little time skip here. a quarter hour after grantaire leaves (in his red robespierre waistcoat), the café musain is empty, and enjolras is reflecting on the revolution, and his friends’ good work, and on his friends’ excellent qualities. it’s a really endearing little section. enjolras isn’t just the metaphorical personification of revolution, he’s human, too. while he doesn’t have hobbies like grantaire does (his hobby is REVOLUTION), he displays the same fiercely devoted love for his friends.
All hands to work. Surely, the result would answer to the effort. This was well. This made him think of Grantaire.
aw, crap.
“Hold,” said he to himself, “the Barriere du Maine will not take me far out of my way. What if I were to go on as far as Richefeu’s? Let us have a look at what Grantaire is about, and see how he is getting on.”
oh no.
does anybody else hear the jaws theme in the background right now, or is it just me?
One o’clock was striking from the Vaugirard steeple when Enjolras reached the Richefeu smoking-room.
He pushed open the door, entered, folded his arms, letting the door fall to and strike his shoulders, and gazed at that room filled with tables, men, and smoke.
A voice broke forth from the mist of smoke, interrupted by another voice. It was Grantaire holding a dialogue with an adversary.
google earth to the rescue. it would take about 35-40 minutes on foot, provided a lack of traffic jams, to walk from the musain to richefeu’s. 30 at a brisk pace.
so let’s call it 45 minutes total between grantaire’s departure and enjolras’ arrival.
given that it is one o’clock when enjolras arrives at richefeu’s, and it is twelve-fifteen when grantaire departs the musain, and it takes grantaire the same length of time to traverse the city that enjolras does --
(ooooh, math in les mis. hugo would be hissing like a cat confronted with water right now. TOO BAD, BUDDY.)
-- grantaire has been at richefeu’s for fifteen minutes tops when enjolras arrives to check on him.
Grantaire was sitting opposite another figure, at a marble Saint-Anne table, strewn with grains of bran and dotted with dominos. He was hammering the table with his fist, and this is what Enjolras heard: --
oh no. oh no. noooo. the build-up is terrible. it’s. aw, man. it’s a train wreck coming but you just can’t look away.
“Double-six.”
“Fours.”
“The pig! I have no more.”
“You are dead. A two.”
“Six.”
“Three.”
“One.”
“It’s my move.”
“Four points.”
“Not much.”
“It’s your turn.”
“I have made an enormous mistake.”
“You are doing well.”
“Fifteen.”
“Seven more.”
“That makes me twenty-two.” [Thoughtfully, “Twenty-two!”]
“You weren’t expecting that double-six. If I had placed it at the beginning, the whole play would have been changed.”
“A two again.”
“One.”
“One! Well, five.”
“I haven’t any.”
“It was your play, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“Blank.”
“What luck he has! Ah! You are lucky! [Long revery.] Two.”
“One.”
“Neither five nor one. That's bad for you.”
“Domino.”
“Plague take it!”
PLAGUE TAKE IT, INDEED!
i’ve seen other metas on tumblr about this, about how they want enjolras’ reaction to what he sees. what is enjolras thinking, upon seeing this? does he approach grantaire? does he scold him there, at richefeu’s? does he wait until later, when the company gathers again at the musain, to give him the dressing-down (no innuendoes implied) that he deserves? or does he never mention it at all?
i thoroughly agree with them. i want to resurrect ole vicky and shake him by the shoulders until his teeth rattle and ask him “is that it? how can that be it?? you could write fifty pages about the bishop of digne but you couldn’t spare even one more page on this???”
(that’s not the only thing i want to yell at him about, but that’s neither here nor there.)
we don’t get a follow-up to this scene. the next time that grantaire appears, it is june fifth, and he is crashing joly and bossuet’s brunch date. from then on we’re in full pre-barricade mode.
and the other side to the coin: what on earth is grantaire doing? the other meta writers are pretty vocal about this side of it too.
we’ve got a few options here.
grantaire has already convinced the entire room to join the cause, and then decided to play a game of dominoes after his work is done (unlikely)
grantaire has decided actively to break his promise to try to convince the artists to join the cause, and has decided to faff about and play dominoes instead (unlikely)
grantaire has plum forgotten his promise to enjolras and is just doing what he always does at richefeu’s, which is playing dominoes with a casual acquaintance, no malice intended (likely)
grantaire is in the process of working his way up to a one-on-one conversation about revolution, which is better started with a game of dominoes than with trying to command the attention of the entire room (likely)
grantaire is doing what he always does at richefeu’s, and is trying to think of ways to bring up revolution and therefore fulfill his promise to enjolras, but is stymied for some reason (likely)
that’s really the issue with this scene ending so abruptly. there are multiple possibilities, all of them with different connotations. and with the end of the scene, we get enjolras’ implied exit. certainly we get the reader’s exit.
i personally like the last one. grantaire simply isn’t passionate about the revolutionary cause: he’s passionate about enjolras. but while passion for an individual man can be enough to galvanize people who already have something at stake or who already believe in the cause, it isn’t enough to galvanize people who currently don’t care much one way or another.
there are plenty of watsonian explanations for why grantaire is playing dominoes right now, and there are innumerable ways that fans can extend the scene. but the scene’s quick termination at this particular point has a specific doylist implication here, as far as i can tell.
it doesn’t actually matter why grantaire is playing dominoes right now.
because the fact is that in this particular moment (the moment which enjolras sees: the moment which matters), grantaire is not doing what he promised to do.
enjolras listened to grantaire, and allowed him the opportunity to participate, probably for the very first time in all the time he’s known the man.
and grantaire, for all intents and purposes, has squandered that opportunity.
this scene gets no follow-up because, for all intents and purposes, enjolras now has concrete proof that grantaire isn’t worth a second chance.
oh God it hurts.