Preface to Cromwell. Paras. 31-60. Victor Hugo (1827). 1909-14. Famous Prefaces. The Harvard Classics
If you want to know what Victor Hugo was doing when he created Enjolras and Grantaire just read this. Please. It's kinda long, but this is Victor Hugo, so what did you expect?
Pretty much all of this is gold, but this particular passage near the end is really interesting:
On the day when Christianity said to man: “Thou art twofold, thou art made up of two beings, one perishable, the other immortal, one carnal, the other ethereal, one enslaved by appetites, cravings and passions, the other borne aloft on the wings of enthusiasm and reverie—in a word, the one always stooping toward the earth, its mother, the other always darting up toward heaven, its fatherland”—on that day the drama was created. Is it, in truth, anything other than that contrast of every day, that struggle of every moment, between two opposing principles which are ever face to face in life, and which dispute possession of man from the cradle to the tomb?
Murf, you were the one talking to me about how Grantaire is the more, I believe “sensual” was the word you used, of the two, right? Here’s Victor Hugo pretty much saying that you’re exactly right.
“darting upward towards heaven, the fatherland” *coughcoughPatriacoughcough*
