tenlittlebullets: (tl;dr)
Ten Little Chances to be Free ([personal profile] tenlittlebullets) wrote2008-01-14 06:49 pm

The return of the Annotated Brick!

Had my 20th birthday on Friday. (One more year, one more year... the US has the most back-asswards drinking laws.) Does this mean I'm not allowed to see Spring Awakening and enjoy it anymore? *g*

I got a giant pile of books for Christmas, but birthday was quality over quantity. So I got a really nice oversize ceramic mug with a built-in strainer and a lid, which means I can make looseleaf tea by the cup without having to break out the teapot. And--I love my mother forever for this--my very own shiny copy of Maurice Allem's annotated Les Misérables. Or in other words, the one with all the footnotes, commentary, and deleted scenes. All the rough-draft fragments I put up on the website were from a copy that is currently languishing in the Simon's Rock library 400 miles away; my last act before I left that godforsaken school for good was to photocopy about fifty pages' worth of footnotes and then return it to the library, but even a casual page-through reveals tons of things I missed. (Joly's "I swore to go through fire, not water," for example, was originally "So we have a choice to make between water and wine.")

Strange to think that the semester from hell was two years ago. There are things from that time that I'm still bitter about, things I haven't talked or posted about--at the time I couldn't see anything but the individual problems piling up, so I had no idea what a nasty situation I was in, and by the time I realized how badly I'd been fucked over it was too long ago to comment. And one of the only things keeping me sane at that point was spending hours in an ill-lit dorm room poring over the tiny print of that book with a pair of drugstore reading glasses, typing it up onto the computer and trying to translate it with my rusty high-school French.

One of the things I found on a random page-through:

Victor Hugo avait d'abord songé à faire connaître au père de Cosette, qu'il avait appelé Lebotelier avant de l'appeler Tholomyès, le mariage de son enfant. On a trouvé, dans le dossier des Misérables:

« Nous croyons devoir informer M. Gustave Lebotelier, avoué à Évreux, que sa fille, l'enfant de Fantine, s'appelle maintenant Mme la baronne Telbon, possède vingt-cinq bonnes mille livres de rente, et demeure rue du Hanovre, No. 17, au premier. Un citoyen honorable peut avouer et remplir les devoirs de la paternité vis-à-vis d'une personne ainsi placée. »


I'm imagining the look on his face, and it's priceless.

[identity profile] icicaille.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 12:19 am (UTC)(link)
Good lord, that is fabulous. Pwned, Félix! ;)

[identity profile] coppertone.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 02:03 am (UTC)(link)
That is a whole new level of pwned, I think. Oh, Hugo. ♥

[identity profile] 10littlebullets.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
I can't tell if it's more pwned or less pwned than this. I'm thinking less, but if they both actually happened talk about a double bitchslap when that letter arrived. XD

[identity profile] coppertone.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 03:12 am (UTC)(link)
I love that. XD The man is so mean to poor Félix. :D And I don't know-- he seems to've coped with the ruined wedding, but I'd imagine that that news might leave him headdesking for the rest of his life.

[identity profile] 10littlebullets.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 04:04 am (UTC)(link)
I'm thinking that he would've headdesked a bit, then gone "....:D" and crashed Marius and Cosette's wedded bliss to try to profit off his position. XD Which is probably why Hugo left that bit out.

[identity profile] coppertone.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 04:04 am (UTC)(link)
--And then run off into the sunset with Thénardier, since they obviously think alike?

[identity profile] 10littlebullets.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 04:08 am (UTC)(link)
Yes! Obviously M. Hugo was fond of writing fanfiction of his own books (see: Cosette crashing her daddy's wedding, Les Amis running into Patron-Minette, etc), so he probably decided not to expose his audience to a crackpairing that disturbing.

[identity profile] coppertone.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 04:14 am (UTC)(link)
He was, wasn't he? How thoughtful, of him, to spare his audience so. (I am currently reading/transcribing Saint-Just's ridiculous teenage poetry, and he, evidently, was nowhere so kind.)

(Although, Les Amis running into Patron-Minette is among the best things ever.)

[identity profile] 10littlebullets.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
The quarry scene = classic Enjolras. "We feel sorry for you, you're the products of a sick society, we want to heal you instead of punish you... but if any of you motherfuckers touch my barricade I'll kill you on the spot."

[identity profile] coppertone.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 04:22 am (UTC)(link)
That's because Enjolras is made of awesome. And a little bit of crazy. ♥

[identity profile] 10littlebullets.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 04:23 am (UTC)(link)
But an awesome kind of crazy. ♥

[identity profile] 10littlebullets.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 04:31 am (UTC)(link)
The kind that involves threatening a cavern full of bandits in the name of ideological purity? That's definitely the best kind of crazy.

Damn you, Hugo, for making a character so deliciously sexy and yet so unassailably virginal and/or gayer than Jean Prouvaire's wardrobe. Damn you.

[identity profile] evewithanapple.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
Does this mean I'm not allowed to see Spring Awakening and enjoy it anymore? *g*

Of course you can! Sexually frusturated angst is for all ages!

Victor Hugo avait d'abord songé à faire connaître au père de Cosette, qu'il avait appelé Lebotelier avant de l'appeler Tholomyès, le mariage de son enfant. On a trouvé, dans le dossier des Misérables:

« Nous croyons devoir informer M. Gustave Lebotelier, avoué à Évreux, que sa fille, l'enfant de Fantine, s'appelle maintenant Mme la baronne Telbon, possède vingt-cinq bonnes mille livres de rente, et demeure rue du Hanovre, No. 17, au premier. Un citoyen honorable peut avouer et remplir les devoirs de la paternité vis-à-vis d'une personne ainsi placée. »


Pardonez-moi? Je ne parle pas francais. /mangled French> Er, something about Tholomyès being Fantine's babydaddy?

*g* Happy Birthday. Gift forthcoming.

[identity profile] 10littlebullets.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 04:12 am (UTC)(link)
"Victor Hugo had at first thought about making known to Cosette's father, whom he had called Lebotelier before calling him Tholomyès, his child's marriage. This was found in the Les Misérables dossier:

We believe it necessary to inform M. Gustave Lebotelier, solicitor in Evreux, that his daughter, the child of Fantine, is now called Mme la baronne Telbon, possesses an income of twenty-five thousand francs, and lives in the rue du Hanovre, no. 17, on the first floor. An honorable citizen may admit to and fulfil the duties of paternity towards a person thus placed."

[identity profile] silent-sybil.livejournal.com 2008-01-15 03:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Happy birthday! God, you're young. :P

[identity profile] josiana.livejournal.com 2008-01-16 12:59 am (UTC)(link)
Happy belated birthday, citizen. I'd offer you some frenchboy pr0n, but you'd probably be twenty one by the time I finished, but eeee, that is so shiny and awesome. ^_____^ I'm envious.

Also, there is no cat macro that adequately represents the pwnfulness of that.

[identity profile] fyuvish.livejournal.com 2008-01-18 02:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Belated happy natal day, [livejournal.com profile] 10littlebullets!

My apologies for the late greeting.