It's been over a decade since I first read Les Mis, and first drew this, (which still floats around in reblogs, the original post now being deleted with my old blog) and I thought I ought to finish this for Barricade Day. At the time, that illustration was the most ambitious I had ever drawn.
In the last ten years, Les Mis has perhaps felt more pertinent than ever. In Australia, where I live, bigoted, far-right political parties that were previously considered fringe are leading polls on the back of racist, anti-immigration rhetoric. I donate regularly to a charity that supports refugees that is local to me, the Asylum Seeker Resource Center, and am going to do so again today. I encourage you to do the same, either to the ASRC, or to an equivalent charity in your area.
"So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth... books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use." — Victor Hugo
Actual quote was like, "He should have been dancing at the Chaumière, as young people have a moral obligation to do."
One more late contribution to Barricade Week. I think M. Gillenormand is one of my favorite characters from the book. He is not a very good guardian, but everything he does is so funny. I had to pause at the end of this chapter to draw this.
I love that Les Misérables is one of the most profound and devastating historic-tragedies ever written, but also has chapter names reminiscent of a Percy Jackson novel
For this barricade day, I am sharing my translation of the tomb all flooded in dawn speech based primarily on Aki's @aki-511 Dear Friends of L'Heure Bleue! It's so beautifully illustrated and in translating it, I got to explore a bunch of the original French and all the other translations to synthesize something that I think best captures the intentional parallel structures and literary devices! Highly recommend checking out and buying the manga if you haven't already, it is such a wonderful adaptation of the amis and the barricade chapters are sooooo good.
Citizens (read: citoyens)
The 19th century is great
But the 20th century will be happy
In the 20th century there will no longer be anything resembling the history of old—
Conquest, invasion, usurpation,
Conflict between armed nations^,
Obstacles of civilization dependent on the marriages of kings,
The birth of a prince continuing hereditary tyrannies,
The partition of peoples by a congress,
The split of countries by the collapse of a dynasty,
The conflict of two religions, butting heads like two goats of darkness on the bridge to the infinite;
We shall no longer have to fear, as we do today,
Famine, exploitation, prostitution due to distress, poverty due to unemployment,
The scaffold, the sword, war,
And the chance banditry in the forest of incidents
One might even say things^^ no longer happen
People will be happy
Friends
The time we are currently in is a time of shadow
Revolution is the toll we pay to buy the future
Ahh, humanity will be liberated
We swear it to humanity from the top of this barricade
Where can the cry of love come from if not from the summit of sacrifice?
Friends—no,
Brothers
This barricade is not built from paving stones, wood beams, or scrap iron, but from a heap of ideas and a heap of sufferings
^directly = conflict between nations using military force. It's noteworthy that all of the following items of the list have the exact same syntactic structure
^^actually uses "they" but the translated list doesn't quite work intuitively here
At this barricade, misery meets the ideal
The day embraces the night and says to it,
"I die with you and you shall be born again with me"
From this embrace of all of suffering faith gushes out
2087
origamiaround
titsay
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
