#barricade scenes

[midautumnnightdream]

Consider The Cat

[midautumnnightdream]

Fraternity, Equality (and Death)

Enjolras had noticed the old man who had joined them at Rue Lesdiguières almost immediately: his white hair and uneven walk had made him stand out even in the ragtag group they had gathered over the course of their march from the other side of the river; and his silent vigil at the wineshop counter, once they had secured their position on rue de la Chanvrerie, had drawn the concerned attention of more than one insurgent. However, Courfeyrac had seemed to know him, had been speaking to him, so Enjolras was quite sure that the old man's choice to remain with them had been made in full knowledge of their intentions and the danger such choices presented. If he refused to withdraw, even after being urged to do so several times, it was only to be assumed he was quite firm in his convictions, whatever they were.

As for the rumors he had heard passed on in whispers during the march and the construction of the barricade... well, that a member of Convention, particularly one who had voted for the king's death, could live in Paris, unknown and undisturbed, defied credulity; and the idea that he was a scepter of one of those great men, coming back to exact justice for his fallen Republic, even more so. But the awareness of the facts had done little to deter insurgents in desperate need for hope and inspiration and Enjolras couldn't see any sense in trying to shut down such speculations. After all, the spirit of 1793 reached far beyond the handful of men who had wielded power on the convention floor, and there was nothing to scorn in a support of any man who had served as an eyewitness to that great and terrible epoch.

But a regicide or not, a scepter or not, there were some things owed by the young and hale to the old and frail, in this place of fraternity more than anywhere else. Their freshly minted barricade was as prepared for an attack as they could make it. The red flag was secured on an ombnibus pole, illuminated by the torchlight in a mournful prediction of inevitable bloodshed. Enjolras checked and rechecked all the defenses, before quietly asking Combeferre to take over the guard duty for a few minutes and made his way inside the wineshop, where Jean Prouvaire had taken it upon himself to keep the spirits up.

The old man sat alone at the counter, seeming completely unaware of his surroundings. Enjolras approached slowly, taking care not to startle the man. He stood beside the counter for a moment: when no acknowledgement of his presence seemed to be forthcoming, he seated himself and waited, until eventually it seemed to him that something had flickered in the older man's expression.

"Is there anything you need, citizen?" he asked, taking care to keep his voice quiet. "We're already out of food, I'm afraid, but there is wine, or water if you prefer."

Slowly, very slowly did the white head rise for a fraction and the pair of watery blue eyes, dulled with unspeakable grief, met his own. The old man shook his head slowly, before lowering his glance. For a moment it seemed that was going to be his only response, but eventually the man spoke, his voice thin and soft, with a hint of bewilderment underlying the obvious pain.

"I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid there is nothing anyone here can do for me," he said, then hesitated for a moment, as his voice took on a tone of pained confession. "Not any more. I have sold all my books. You see?"

"I see," Enjolras confirmed, honestly enough. The exact circumstances of the old man's tribulations were unknown to him, but the tone of his loss, the confused pain of grief was all too common; something he had heard several times over this day of insurgency and weeks, months, beforehand. We had to sell every-thing we had. Our home, they took it. They took our jobs. Our freedom to speak, to gather. Our words, our works, our dignity, our lives, our freedom, they took it all.

"I sold them all, one by one." The sense of urgency in the old man's voice now would have seemed impossible even a minute ago. The words blurred into each other, tumbling out with uneven speed, as if a great dam had been unleashed. "My own Flora of the Environs of Cauteretz, my life’s work. I sold the texts as waste paper and pawned the plates. They were sold to some copper-smith, who melted them down for stewpans." Enjolras winced. "Then I sold my other books  – Les Quadrins Historiques de la Bible, edition of 1560; president Delancre's De l’Inconstance des Démons; Florilegium Rabbinicum of 1644; a Tibullus of 1567 – all of them rare copies, for twenty or thirty sous a piece – but what can you do? Then my Diogenes Laertius " His voice broke a little. "I never meant to sell it at all. What difference does it make, to die now with one book, or in a few weeks with none at all? But my poor Mother Plutarque... My poor mother Plutarque was terribly ill, so I sold it. I brought her the money and the medicine. Then I came here." He fell silent for a moment, his eyes suddenly focusing on Enjolras, as if truly noticing his presence for the first time. "Books are important," he whispred, his voice low and urgent and for a moment it seemed to Enjolras that he truly carried the full weight of the old Republic in his words. "But people are important too."

Enjolras could only nod, unable to bring himself to say anything that might break this moment of great clarity.

Nevertheless, the old man seemed to lose some of his urgency, but he remained far more focused on his surroundings, looking around the tavern room and through the open door, with something almost like curiosity. "Is this why you are all here?" he asked, gesturing towards the general direction of the greater barricade "For the people?"

"For the people, always," Enjolras answered and thought of Combeferre's fervor on the subject of general education, of Feuilly spending his rare free hours making the best use of his hard-won literacy. Of his own uncle, the way his brow furrowed when yet another censorship law chipped away on what little freedom they had gained from the last revolution. Of the pamphlets printed in the dead of night and passed around in secret, of Jean Prouvaire and his words echoing even now between them, in this moment of silence  Et que, dans notre humble et petit ménage,Tout, même l’hiver, nous était printemps? "and perhaps a little for the books too." For the abaissé and for the ABC.

Perhaps... if they all survived this fight, something could be done for the old man and his lost books. He hesitated from bringing up the possibility - after all, the books might very well be gone forever, and it would be both foolish and cruel to offer false hope before investigating fist. But Enjolras wasn't fighting for a future that would forget the little tragedies of its champions the moment it didn't need every available body to man the barricades. He would at least try.

The old man was looking at him with something akin of wonder, as if he hadn't been expecting such answer. "And indeed why not," he mused. "People have a need of books, to be sure. What about gardens," he asked, suddenly. "Will there be gardens in this future of yours? It is well not to starve, but the people have a need for flowers."

Enjolras gaze wandered back to Jean Prouvaire, thinking about the pot of flowers his friend had inexplicably decided to bring with him to the barricade, now tucked safely under the main table, out of the way of the construction efforts and fighting.

Nos jardins étaient un pot de tulipe; Tu masquais la vitre avec un jupon;

"Yes," he admitted, biting back a smile at the literal nature of this promise. "We fight for flowers too."

The old man smiled suddenly, a fleeting expression tinged with melancholy, but genuine, and touched with wonder and something akin of hope. "This future of yours, my friend, sounds the most splendid."

"Our future," Enjolras answered. "And yes. It will be."

The other shook his head, knowingly. "I won't hold you to that. But the rest of it, yes. People and books and flowers. Yes." His gaze turned back to the tabletop, lost in thought. He said no more.

(Yes, the Bread and Roses reference is intentional. So is the reference to the mômes in Luxembourg. Prouvaire's Battle Plant comes, of course, from the Oslo production of Les Mis.)

[pilferingapples]

Re. barricade adaptations, I think it's partly about what you're inclined to notice. You're an Amis fan so you've been through those sections of the book with a microscope and even tiny deviations stand out to you. Let's take Arai, who is a pretty loyal adapter overall. Everyone knows he went off-piste in the barricade sequence (wtf was up with Combeferre?) But the "Confrontation" sequence was way off too- Valjean turns himself in after the three days in the manga, which is a massive change.

I wouldn’t count the “turned himself in in three days” thing as a massive change, though?– after all, the only indicator we have of what he did following the Simplice conversation and escape is at the start of The Ship Orion, when Hugo says he’ll “Skip over the painful details” and proceeds to give us the story through a couple newspaper articles. 

The Drapeau-Blanc, which is clearly the more objective paper, only tells us that he’s been apprehended again. The Journal de Paris, which is rather less objective, does say he was captured while trying to catch a carriage to Montfermeil– but it also says Fantine was his mistress (super wrong) and that he was captured thanks to the zeal of the authorities , and calls him a villain. While him trying to get to Montfermeil of course makes sense, it’s still a thirdhand account, from a markedly unreliable source.  Changing the details of that seems like a fair shift to me (if it is changed; I’m taking your word for it, because dealing with two languages that aren’t mine, here, and the only visual cues are that he’s been taken again, which IS accurate). 

If I were going to criticize the Confrontation sequence, it would be on the grounds of it being rather more violent than it is in the text, but I can understand that as a visual effect. I still think it’s a change that does matter–part of what makes Javert terrifying is that he never has to use force to do harm, with the power of the state behind him– but it makes some sense in a visual medium.(If we’re doing a comparison, I’d class this with having Combeferre’s final act being the saving of  a fellow revolutionary instead of a guard– both adaptational choices change the tone of the character, but not so much as to utterly contradict the character. We can be fairly sure Javert must have used his nightstick sometimes, and we can be fairly sure Combeferre was helping his fellow revolutionaries as well as he could, too.  Change of focus, but still with some logic for the character).

..okay this gets long now. 

 Or, again: having Valjean escape from the hospital rather than letting Javert take him and then escaping from the local prison  is condensing things a bit, but the method of escape (breaking through the iron bars) stays the same.  And, again, I understand it– drawing an entire new set, several pages that introduce no dialogue and no visible character interaction (because really that trip to the prison and the intervening time is about how the town reacts, which is not terribly visual) . So only  having the escape there doesn’t add a great deal symbolically without that Town Gossip element, which Arai gives us anyhow.   (As far as adaptational changes go, I’d say this is on par with having Feuilly live long enough to chop down the stairs– it may directly contradict a minor point in the book,but it’s doing so to make the flow of action more clear in a visual medium, and it in no way contradicts the characters or avoids any larger scene or point.)

Whereas the whole thing with Javert turning himself in to the revolutionaries for seriously NO REASON AT ALL instead of having Gavroche blow his cover, which really DOES alter his character, like, a LOT. Honestly if that were the only version I knew, I’d assume this was a guy who was already on the edge of turning from the path he’d chosen because of his  devotion to the truth over the law, and of course it’s really important that that’s not what’s happening!

And Arai is, seriously, one of the BEST if not THE best of the adaptations for sheer incident accuracy, which makes these things stand out more. Like, why start leaving out major on-page incidents here? Why THOSE scenes? (Why that thing Enjolras is wearing? Why???) 

--Anyway, to address the more general point, you’re wrong about why I pay so much attention to the barricade scenes (though I definitely do); it’s not because I’m “ an Amis fan” (though I am, it’s true) , it’s because the barricade sequence is one of the most beautiful examples of a literary/narrative effect I really adore, where multiple separate threads of a story combine with such harmony that it’s suddenly obvious they were all inevitably linked through the entire story, and that’s REALLY IMPORTANT for Les Mis, with its argument of all the individual stories having their common link, in a way it is with really very few books even when they pull this off. Every digression and rhetorical point, every main interest and conflict , religion and state, the convict, the woman, and the child, the question of faith and redemption, order and rebellion, all get summed up in one single harmonizing scene and it is AMAZING. 

Between you, me, and the somehow nonzero number of people following my blog , Nonny, I really don’t like battle or fight scenes, as a rule. If the barricades were just “Amis Fight Scene”  I would skim it; they’d still be my favorite secondary characters, but, y’ know, fight scene. But I love it BECAUSE of the rest of the book, because every single detail and argument Hugo throws out through the novel gets a reprise at the barricade, and the sequence involves EVERY MAJOR LIVING character (even Cosette gets her chapter!) and most of the secondary ones, all singing together for single instant (sometimes almost literally), and honestly I can’t think of any single sequence in ANY other fictional work that pulls off that effect so amazingly and on that scale and for a reason that’s still so horribly urgent in the world??* 

And THAT’s why I track changes in the barricade sequence, because changing things THERE can so easily deny OTHER PARTS OF THE STORY their note in that grand sequence, and those notes are there for a reason, and the reason is really, really important.

*which isn’t to say there is no other! This is just the only one I can think of. 

[thenightendsatlast]

Prima o poi impiegherò il mio tempo in qualcosa di serio.

Nel frattempo....