#4.11.4

[most-unhinged-les-mis-moment]

Round One: B1: Poll Three

Which is more Unhinged?

Combeferre coming to the barricade dressed like an arsenal (The Brick)

Marius and Valjean's handkerchief (The Brick)

Voting ended onNov 9, 2024

Combeferre coming to the barricade with his three guns can be found in the Brick, at: 4.11.4

Marius and the Handkerchief can be found in the brick, at: 3.6.7

PROPAGANDA:

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

IV.xi.4 l’Enfant s’Étonne Du Vieillard

Which is your favorite translation of this chapter title?

The Child Wonders at the Old Man

The Child Is Amazed At the Old Man

The Boy Marvels at an Old Man

The Boy Marvels at the Old Man

The Child Is Amazed by the Old Man

Voting ended onMar 8, 2025

Wraxall has this one as “The Child Astonishes the Old Man”.

The Child Wonders at the Old Man: Wilbour, Jolivet, FMA

The Child Astonishes the Old Man: Wraxall

The Child Is Amazed At the Old Man: Hapgood

The Boy Marvels at an Old Man: Denny

The Boy Marvels at the Old Man: Rose

The Child Is Amazed by the Old Man: Donougher

[garbagecann24601]

The Child is Amazed at the Old Man

Gavroche meets up with Les Amis. They are all armed with various weapons, and Courfeyrac tells Gavroche to come with them. Someone is startled by Bahorel’s bright red waistcoat. Bahorel tears down a poster from the Archbishop giving the people permission to eat eggs, and Gavroche admires him for it. Enjolras, on the other hand, tells Bahorel that he needs to keep his anger focused.

Others join their group, including an old man. The old man, Mabeuf, doesn’t have a gun, but he hurries as to not be left behind.

[centrifuge-politics]

Brick Club 4.11.3, 4.11.4

Get wreckt, asshole barber.

This chapter starts off with a real bang, forcing me to read the words “paternal intestines of the elephant” with no warning.

I think that Georges Pontmercy is, in fact, the only officer of Napoleon’s army who really got the short end of the stick because here’s another legionnaire doing quite well, getting a shave while the insurrection revs up and reminiscing about the glory days. Gavroche does the world a good turn, he “who had the two mômes on his mind, could not resist the desire to bid him a good-day, and had sent a stone through the sash.” Good sir, we salute you, doing the Lord’s work on the streets. “What has anybody done to that gamin,” pah!

Gavroche is traveling toward the plot steadily but surely and distributing karma as he goes like a particularly enthusiastic newspaper delivery boy. Comeuppance for you! Street wisdom for you! Revolutionary ditty for you!

Can I just get a hell yeah for this excellent illustration that is all I ever wanted? Gavroche leading the triumvirate, get on that Eugène Delacroix. Is it rain or light coming down? Or both? It’s just so good.

Gavroche meets Enjolras and (most of) his lieutenants, who are fantastically kitted out. The image of Combeferre with a pistol on each hip and the musket from a National Guardsmen is badass, his coat is definitely flapping majestically in the revolutionary wind and he’s backlit by the fires of the émeute. And of course Courfeyrac has a sword-cane, honestly, thank God.

“They came from Quai Morland cravatless, hatless, breathless, soaked by rain, lightning in their eyes.” Squad, squad, squad. Bahorel’s crimson waistcoat is so frightening it sends a passerby reeling in fear and Bahorel laughs. Gavroche is instantly starstruck, “this conquered Gavroche…this tearer-down of posters had his esteem.” Oh, Gavroche, you should see Courfeyrac burn a charter.

[fremedon]

Brickclub 4.11.4, “The Child is Amazed by the Old Man”

The chapter title points us toward Mabeuf, who appears in the last sentence, but most of this chapter is about Gavroche discovering Bahorel.

Gavroche is Paris, Atomized; we’ve been reminded of this by the title of 4.11, “The Atom Fraternizes with the Hurricane.” Now, he meets the Amis (for the first time? It’s not clear--Navet introduces himself as “Gavroche’s friend,” but he might just be assuming Gavroche knows everyone), who are associated literally and metaphorically with water--they are “rain-drenched,” but Bahorel is also “a fish in the stream of the riot.” And it’s Bahorel that Gavroche, the incarnation of Paris, immediately admires (he tears down a poster! just like Gavroche was doing two chapters ago), latches onto, and starts imitating--specifically, starts picking up his slang, which Hugo has spent a long digression telling us is the expression of the soul of a nation. And the soul of Paris wants to talk like Bahorel.

This implicitly puts Paris on Bahorel’s side of his exchange with Enjolras over the poster-tearing: Enjolras chides him for wasting his anger on grievances outside their immediate goal: “You’re spending your wrath uselessly. Economize your ammunition. We don’t fire out of rank--not with the soul any more than the gun.”

Bahorel retorts that that may be true for Enjolras-- “You have that cold burning style” in FMA; “You’re the passionately cold type” in Donougher--it’s not true for him. “I’m not squandering anything, I’m getting myself fired up. Hercle! If I tore down that notice, it was only to whet my appetite.”

Coming after the chapters of the poor and the bourgeois watching the developing riot and failing to connect, this feels like a fairly weighty question: the optics of the revolution are important--and right now, they’re not connecting. Enjolras’s response--strategically, as well as temperamentally--is to make certain they don’t strike at anything outside their defined target. It’s necessary to a point--and with Le Cabuc we will see that point--but Gavroche’s interest here I think suggests that Enjolras is defining their target much too narrowly. Excluding anticlericalism and low-level property damage isn’t going to make them palatable to the bourgeois who are shutting their doors--but those are exactly the things that make their revolution attractive to Gavroche, and Gavroche is Paris.

[akallabeth-joie]

Brickclub Les Mis 4.11.4

“They were almost armed”. Tr: Every single weapon in Paris is currently in Combeferre’s pockets, so on average the group has a positive number of weapons, but the mode and median are 0.

I sort of love all of Les Amis in this scene: Feuilly out to avenge Poland, Combeferre somehow getting his hands on a National Guard musket, Courfeyrac with his swordcane. I also note that the group en masse is described as cravatless and hatless, yet everyone’s favorite adopter-of-stray-Marii will fetch a spare hat before the situation gets earnest, and still have his cravat as of 11am tomorrow. Courfeyrac is totally the best-dressed member of the group, along with Bahorel of the Impossibly Crimson Waistcoat.

Speaking of which: Bahorel is in his element, and I just want him and Gavroche to go off and wreck havoc to their hearts’ content. Also, I enjoy how Enjolras is all ‘let’s be calm and focused on our objective’ and Bahorel straight-up says ‘nope’.

Enjolras and Bahorel use ‘tu’, good iconoclastic revolutionaries that they are.

[akallabeth-joie]

Brickclub 4.11.4

Gavroche meets up with the Amis (sans Party Trio), who are leading a mob. Bahorel tears down a poster about eggs, earning a mild rebuke from Enjolras and the admiration of Gavroche. M. Mabeuf is also there.

*I found it interesting that Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Feuilly are still being grouped together here--they are 'leading' the crowd, while Bahorel and Prouvaire 'found' them. 

*Bahorel's humor comes through very nicely (joking about the color red, flocks/geese, and some gratutious Latin). 

*I want a million possible backstories about how Combeferre came to have a national guard musket. 

*Courf's swordcane! 

*Anyone else just want to see Feuilly take that sword and go liberate Poland? [Er, de-partition it?]. It makes a sort of sense that he's invoking Poland here: all the crimes of the 18th/19th century stem from the partition, that is from the powerful (such as the rulers of Russia and Prussia) imposing their desires on those with less power (such the people actually living in Poland). The insurrection is, after all, is an attempt to reverse that: the powerless seizing their destiny back from the powerful. [If this is 1848 and all goes well] the insurrection in Paris starts a wave of similarly disenfranchised populations overthrowing their oppressive governments. 

*Not to get ahead, but Gavroche gets invited/summoned to join the group, while Eponine's specific request to do the same got a noncommittal 'the streets belong to everyone'. I wonder how much of this is Gavroche already being a known quality (Navet will introduce himself to Joly, L'Aigle, and Grantaire as a friend of Gavroche), when Eponine is a stranger and behaving kind of oddly. Grantaire will also have strong feelings about being 'invited' to join the insurrection. Will need to think on this more.

*Mabeuf. ;_;

[pilferingapples]

Brick!club: Addendum to 4.11.4: The Reds

OKAY I HAVE PERMISSION TO DISCUSS THE THING. I wish to emphasize : 1) Credit for this analyses goes to Roberta Wickham; as you will all soon see, this is a path I, left to my own devices, would never have CONSIDERED traveling  AND THIS IS WHY COLLABORATIVE FANDOMING IS BEST FANDOMING 2) Roberta wanted me to put a big ol' disclaimer here that SHE COULD BE WRONG. And so she could.  But I think she's not.

"The reds, the reds!" replied Bahorel. "An odd fear, bourgeois. As for me, I don't tremble before a red poppy, Little Red Riding Hood gives me no dismay. Bourgeois, believe me, let's leave fear of red to horned cattle." (FMA)

Which of course, in context, sounds like a political comment- the Revolutionary symbolism of red bonnets has come up before, the poppy is loaded with political symbolism (plus, ya know, opium) the pedestrian is DEFINITELY freaking out about the threat of reds-as-a-political-group. BUT ALSO.

To quote Roberta directly from the message that's been cracking me up all afternoon:

So the thing about the poppy reference in the Chapter Wherein Bahorel Is Awesome is that the French word for poppy is coquelicot. Which, coincidentally, is slang for menstruation. (Here is wordrefence’s page on it: http://www.wordreference.com/fren/coquelicot).

Roberta goes on to say that she can't be 1001 percent positive the slang was current in the canon era (or when Hugo would have been writing, I guess) but I am going to take SOME PERSUADING to be convinced it's NOT, because: As NQLNQF's lovely post on the chapter points out, the other explicitly red thing Bahorel mentions is properly translated as Little Red Riding Hood-- and people could and DO write books about the symbolism there in regards to female physicality and sexuality. Of course virtually EVERYTHING in the color red gets used as a euphemism for menstruation by someone sometime, but Red Riding Hood is SUPER specific.

So basically, on top of EVERY OTHER JOKE going on here, on top of the political references that are already definitely happening, and the general Don't Fear The Riot attitude, Bahore WOULD APPEAR to be Calling Bullshit all over the idea of women's bodies and physicality and SEXUALITY being a scary taboo thing (which is of course a VERY bourgeois Thing at this point--think of Marius' freakout over Cosette's OMG ENTIRE ANKLE reveal, and the fact that IN THAT he is being Respectable). This is PRETTY DEFINITELY not what the PEDESTRIAN was talking about, but, well. "See the street in her low cut dress",  and all. It's kind of ALWAYS what Bahorel is talking about. And there are about a hundred directions this discussion can go from this point, but I am cackling too hard to go any farther in any of them. So HERE YOU GO,FANDOM, TAKE THIS AND USE IT WELL.