avagueambitioninyourdirection:
e m’abbia sempre per estimatore ed amico. –
”..and keep me always as an admirer and friend.” (from an autograph letter of an Italian poet, 1820 ca.)
grantaire looks so happy i’m
enjolras
WIP
OMG nisie is drawing again?!! maybe she will even start drawing well again?!!
(ugh seriously i hate everything i have been drawing lately, maybe i won’t hate this one, we’ll see)
Oh gosh, would you look at his eyelashes. ::breathes out slowly:: This is such achingly lovely work. I mean, Enjolras is not a peaceable person. He’s angelic in the old sense, as a herald nearly too terrifying to look upon; even his beauty can be savage; for a future of happiness, freedom, and equality he stands in a grave where he knows he will drown, a monstrous hero. But it’s really rather impossible for me to think of him as only these things, no matter how marvelously complicated such attributes happen to be. Whatever else Hugo wanted him to be (symbol, allegory, warning) Enjolras’s fuller humanity is where he resonates for me, and what I think when I see Nisie’s WIP here is, yes, he’s a soldier, he will kill as necessary and he will accept his own death; he has given himself up to this cause; and yet. He must also be so weary and, beneath the fierce bravery, in some ways so very heartbroken.
‘I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me’ is Enjolras’s (::cough::Hugo’s::cough::) proverbial brand of wrenching optimism — it takes the edge off a little, just a little, to imagine he and Grantaire are having a grand old time on some barricade beyond this mortal coil — but jesus it makes my chest hurt to think they didn’t get to hold each other when they were actually alive (um, alive as fictional people. You know). This drawing is like the best kind of wish fulfillment, and it still hurts like hell and makes me want to weep for an hour or two. LOVE SO MUCH LOVE.
““Grantaire,” he shouted, “go get rid of the fumes of your wine somewhere else than here. This is the place for enthusiasm, not for drunkenness. Don’t disgrace the barricade!”
This angry speech produced a singular effect on Grantaire. One would have said that he had had a glass of cold water flung in his face. He seemed to be rendered suddenly sober.
He sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at Enjolras with indescribable gentleness, and said to him:—
“Let me sleep here.”
“Go and sleep somewhere else,” cried Enjolras.
But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on him, replied:—
“Let me sleep here,—until I die.”
”
Volume IV
Book Twelfth.—Corinthe
Chapter III. Night begins to descend upon Grantaire
(via roseshavesteelthorns)
RED ALERT RED ALERT
micaela and i were just going through the french originals of les mis and
it turns out “enjolras’ smiled was not completed” when he died more accurately colloquialistically translates to “enjolras’ smile had not been achieved” when he was shot
do you know what this means
do you know what this FUCKING means
enjolras had only begun smiling at grantaire when he was shot, he didn’t turn afterwards to face the soldiers or brace himself
enjolras died mid-smiling at grantaire
grantaire
was the last thing
enjolras ever saw
From what I take from “had not been achieved” it also means he never actually quite smiled. He was about to, but never did.
So maybe Grantaire saw the corners of his lips quirk, just slightly, but died before he could actually see his smile.
The last thing Enjolras tried to do before he died was smile at Grantaire. The last action he ever took – to start to smile.Whoops I made myself sad.
Obvs it’s kind of up to interpretation (hi I’m the Micaela mentioned above) but considering Enjolras presses his hand “en souriant” I’m pretty sure he is in fact in the action of smiling—he never hits full smile capacity but there is definitely smiling going on, he is mid-action
Inspired by and based on this post, which is a fragment of Victor Hugo’s original notes for Les Miserables, posted by flo-nelja. (Textures from planets-bend-between-us and rosebein.)
