Well, damn.
(Highlighting mine, obviously.)
I’m never going to run out of things in OFPD to analyze, am I?
Can you imagine, though, if that was the moment Grantaire realised – having never explained it to himself before- that what he felt towards Enjolras was real, true love? Ahahaha.
Fucking Victor Hugo and his fucking obsession with symmetry and symbolism. I hate him. So much.
(i checked the french btw and it’s also clairement/claire)
I kind of want to go down an offshoot of this path and translate this in terms of Grantaire realising that the only thing standing in his way the entire time was he himself; that his attraction to Enjolras (this in no way contradicts love, but that’s not the theme I want to run with right now) is in a very large way influenced by the strength of Enjolras’ character, of his belief, and of his passion. Grantaire, who has what he himself perceives to be a weak character, who cannot/works hard not to believe, who is passionate about nothing but his friends and – mostly – Enjolras, is attracted to these aspects of Enjolras that so contradict himself.
He is drawn to what he lacks, and he wants he lacks, wants that strong moral backbone or whatever Hugo spewed out, but he doesn’t realise fully what this means and would never come so far as to actually believing that he could achieve this Ideal, that he himself could be in any way similar to Enjolras. He’s too self-defeating and riddled with doubt for that. So, he just kind of sits and pines after these characteristics without realising why or that they could be something he could work on developing for himself.
What he realises then, before his death, is that the choice is his. All these qualities he admires in Enjolras don’t necessarily have to be genetic, something you are born with or develop without trying. He has to be active. He, in making this choice, transcends the boundaries of his old self and becomes his own Ideal. Of course he venerates Enjolras. Grantaire is not exactly the same; he is Grantaire, the convert and follower, that is Enjolras, the leader. But, he goes out with Long Live the Republic on his lips, as an equal. I can’t see this particular wording as a symbol of his realising that what he has been feeling is love, but rather as his finally realising what it is about Enjolras that has so entranced him, what he actually wants and what he can do to achieve that. And this is all, of course, driven by love, but has a lot more to do with his own development as a person as well.
Bless you all. That’s all I have to say.