Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2007-08-13 10:05 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2007-08-13 10:05 pm
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*prances about with new default icon*
While browsing a little bookshop in Montreuil-sur-Mer, I came upon an annotated copy of Les Misérables. Most of the notes weren't terribly interesting, just explaining some of the more obscure cultural references, so I didn't end up buying it. But I do remember two of the notes:
1. Feuilly was based on a real person Hugo knew, a self-educated fanmaker whose name I've forgotten. Given this, his lack of personality in canon surprises me a bit. Perhaps since Hugo knew the fellow, he couldn't reduce him that easily to a character sketch, and confined himself to noting facts about his life?
2. With the Orestes and Pylades metaphor, Hugo deliberately draws attention to the sequence of the letters: the E of Enjolras and the G of Grantaire are separated, but only by an F. The editor speculates that it probably stood for Femme, which made me do an undignified sporfle right there in the bookshop.
And speaking of dusty little bookshops, and the really random things one finds in them, who wants to read a letter from Ferdinand-Philippe, duc d'Orléans, to the Marshal Soult, concerning the 1832 insurrection? Apparently he was in Marseille at the time, and royally pissed off that he couldn't be in Paris.
1. Feuilly was based on a real person Hugo knew, a self-educated fanmaker whose name I've forgotten. Given this, his lack of personality in canon surprises me a bit. Perhaps since Hugo knew the fellow, he couldn't reduce him that easily to a character sketch, and confined himself to noting facts about his life?
2. With the Orestes and Pylades metaphor, Hugo deliberately draws attention to the sequence of the letters: the E of Enjolras and the G of Grantaire are separated, but only by an F. The editor speculates that it probably stood for Femme, which made me do an undignified sporfle right there in the bookshop.
And speaking of dusty little bookshops, and the really random things one finds in them, who wants to read a letter from Ferdinand-Philippe, duc d'Orléans, to the Marshal Soult, concerning the 1832 insurrection? Apparently he was in Marseille at the time, and royally pissed off that he couldn't be in Paris.