Brickclub 3.2.3, “Luc-Esprit,” and 3.2.4, “An Aspiring Centenarian”
I have a lot of scattershot observations about these chapters and not much coherence. Bullet points it is:
Donougher helpfully explains that tresses “en sentiments soutenus,” variously translated, means “long tightly-curled ringlets.” A “sentiment” meant a tress of hair curled to lie against the neck; “sustained” ones were curled all the way to the tip.
Donougher renders the “curious baubles” in turquoise of FMA as “turquoise fascinator studs on the heels of her shoes.”
There’s some conflation of time in the list of ministers Gillenormand is scoffing at; Corbière was interior minister 1821-1828; Humann was minister of finance off and on starting in 1832, and Périer was minister of the interior and prime minister 1830-1832. We’re seeing a composite view.
Poland weirdly comes up twice in these chapters--Mme. de Boufflers, who calls him a delightful madcap when he’s 20, is the mistress of King Stanislaw I. And of course there’s the line in 3.2.4, about Catherine atoning for the Partition by sharing the recipe for a syphilis cure. I’m just imagining someone saying this in front of Feuilly.
I cannot for the life of me understand why FMA translates the line at the end of 3.2.4 as “I really hope that I shall not see ninety twice.” Did...did they think it was a timeline error? And just...correct it? WHY, at the end of a paragraph that’s namechecked the Terror once already, would you not assume if that if Hugo says ‘ninety-three’ he bloody well means ‘ninety-three’?
He also says he intends to live to be a hundred--which he can’t do, except by way of ninety-three.
We’ve talked a lot about characters gaining power from accepting their death--and if Gillenormand is a foil to Myriel, whom he matches in age, I think he’s also meant to be a foil to his initial-namesake G---, the first person we see who has that foreknowledge and acceptance of the moment of their death, and with it the power to transform Myriel.
In the convent, and again in the upcoming portrait of the Ultra salons, we see the opposite of that--mummification; stagnation. The too-small garment, the rancid perfume, the spoiled fish, the stranglehold of the past on the present.
If accepting the inevitability of death can grant power in this book, prolonging life for its own sake takes it away. The characters and institutions that have survived by embalming themselves have entirely lost their relevance in the modern world--they won’t change themselves, and they can’t change the world around them.
