WEBSITE UPDATE

[tenlittlebullets]

BEHOLD MY UPDATE OF DOOOOOOM

Okay, it's not the full update. But I added information and corrections to the Field of the Lark page; added photos of Père Lachaise and the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas; added additional photos of Montfermeil, the place where Javert jumped into the Seine, the Café Musain, the Rue Plumet, Marius and Cosette's wedding, the Gorbeau tenement, the Field of the Lark, the Rue de l'Homme-Armé, and La Force. And fiddled with the gallery pages so they'd be less dialup unfriendly. And I'm going to do the rest of the updates sometime this year, I swear.

(Rest of the updates = pages for Père Lachaise, Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, and the Rue de l'Ouest; photos and a page for Saint-Sulpice; additional photos of the site of the barricade, Jardin du Luxembourg, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, Rue de la Verrerie, stuff around Saint-Merry, the Panthéon, and the sewer museum. And at some point I should try to find out where the hell that convent was, but my head hurts at the very thought.)

Comments

[apkdsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the new pictures :D

I thought the convent didn't actually exist, and that Hugo had made up that area?

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure Hugo didn't make up that area, but it's changed so much that it would be pretty much impossible to find the places he was talking about. It would be like trying to find the tapis-franc from Mysteries of Paris that was in the slums on the Ile de la Cité--half the island was razed to the ground by Haussmann, and what's there now doesn't correspond at all to what was there before. Ditto for Picpus.

Apparently whoever did the "Paris in the time of Victor Hugo" exhibit at Carnavalet succeeded in reconstructing the Javert-Valjean chase from the Gorbeau tenement to the Picpus region (or at least across the Pont d'Austerlitz). I might take pictures and put that on the site sometime if I'm feeling really nerdy.

[apkdsmith.livejournal.com]

In my Julie Rose translation there's a note that says:
"See the 1727 Map of Paris: There is something of a wink in this chapter title as Hugo departs from his geographical realism to describe a fictional neighbourhood and convent. Up until Jean Valjean and Cosette cross the Austerlitz bridge, their path follows real streets of pre-Haussmann Paris, following the western edge of the city from the barrière de Fontainebleau to the Seine. Hugo modelled the Petit-Picpus neighbourhood after the faubourg Saint-Antoine and the convent after one in the faubourg Saint-Marceau. The streets surrounding the convent are likewise inventions of the author."

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Oops, my bad. I could've sworn Hugo was talking about a real place, but I haven't actually done the research on that and Julie Rose probably knows better. (Although she apparently had a brain fart--it's the eastern edge of the city, not the western.)

I think my mistake comes from three different things:
1. The Valjean-Javert chase route does, as noted, follow streets that really existed.
2. The Picpus cemetery was also real.
3. Last year for one of my classes we read a book called Dora Bruder, about the author trying to track down what happened to a Jewish girl who was hidden in a convent in the 1940s. There are lots of explicit references to Les Mis and he treats Cosette's convent as though it actually existed, hence confusion.

[carey-pontmercy.livejournal.com]

Your fanfiction has had me sniffling for the past half hour and I am sure to be melancholy for the rest of the evening. Good Lord but you're a brilliant writer.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Awww, thanks!

Now that I look over it, it... is all kind of hideously depressing. Oops. My joined-at-the-hip Les Mis buddy Marguerite writes amazing fic that is mostly happy, if you want to cheer up.

[carey-pontmercy.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love her stories! I've read some of them on ff.net. I've read some of yours there, too, but I never read "A Turning Point" or "Driven Like the Snow" before, and I don't think that "Fairy Tales" and "Alouette" are posted there. Those were the ones that really got me.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

She is made of win and awesome. And is more skilled as a writer than I am which is why I stick to drabbles and angsty "Your fanon DOES NOT HAVE A HAPPY ENDING" one-shots.

Which reminds me, I need to own up to some of the godawful porn I've been writing for the kink meme. *slinks off to work on the genderswitch crack*

[mmebahorel.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! :)

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

*grumbles* Chapter 2 is almost done, except there's a Feuilly cameo that's proving impossible to write. Because I know what I want him to DO, just not what kind of a person he is. Damn you ol' Vic, you and your sketchy characterizations.

[ulkis.livejournal.com]

Yay, thanks for putting them up.