The Martyr

It but instead of Pennywise living in the sewers it’s Victor Hugo. Via @honhonhonlafayette [x]

Inktober day 23. I know I’ve been slacking, I’m the worst.

one more thing about modern aus is that they'll go on about enjolras giving these long inspiring speeches for the majority of the vague meetings about the undefined cause which is so. in the books he is not on the stage preaching to everyone during most of the pre-barricade scenes. like its kind of made a point that he is either having actual conversations or just listening to what everyone else is saying. like yes he does give orders and instructions that he'll pre-face with a little speech but like. normally he's listening to others opinions before giving his own two cents. i think sometimes people just see the word leader and they can't imagine a version of that that isn't someone else forcing their thoughts and will onto a group of people.

bat at hornets nest maybe but "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" refers to low income communities needing to choose between survival vs being eco friendly. not you continuing to watch the harry potter movies

Enjolras animation✨✨

Quality is a bit butchered🥲

Les Misérables' OC character, Nande, by Su Manshu

Su Manshu was a revolutionary poet who wrote a translation of Book One of Les Misérables into traditional Chinese.

Copy and pasted from a comment I made in Dec 2024:

Su Manshu wrote a self-insert (Nande) who was a mouthpiece for the favour of the revolution of China (which was ruled by the Qing Dynasty at the time).

However, since there wasn't much of a freedom in press in regards to the criticism of it, the main character (the self insert) dies.

During the translation (which was only book 1), there is a running comparison of Chinese and French history, and also anti-Christian sentiments due to Su's fear of the 'Western influence' of China.

The translation is so different, there is some unintended comedic elements to it in retrospect, but I'm sure during the time when it was written, it was truly a piece of revolution. It's just funny if you take the political context out of it.

There is also mistranslations, such as the Bishop asking how many coins Jean Valjean has, and telling him that his place is not a hostel and therefore he doesn't need to pay -> to then become the Bishop asking Jean Valjean how much coins he has, and telling him that it is indeed like a hostel, and thus needs to pay him with all the coins that he has (rather than JvJ keeping them).

There is an academic argument apparently on whether or not mistranslations such as these were intentional, or if Su wasn't as proficient in English as we believed he was to be (since he translated from Wilbour's trans.)

It also is a running theme throughout the translation that JvJ is a bad guy.

The paper I read doesn't talk about other characters, so I don't know how other characters are presented unfortunately. Probably because it overly focuses on the OC lmao

[ID: a digital drawing of Valjean from Les Miserables. He is sitting mostly in the dark, at a table, staring emptily at a chicken wing. Handwritten text reads “last supper (a chicken wing).” End ID.]

“All Armenians know the name Victor Hugo thanks to Les Misérables— a delectable book that every last one of our peasants and the humblest of our village schoolteachers have read and reread and that has become like a second gospel for our people.”

- Arshag Chobanian (1902)

[The first Armenian translation of Les Misérables created a] "Hugolatria that bordered on mania," taking hold of many Armenian readers and writers and leading them to treat Hugo like a kind of oracle."

- Not the original person who said the quote, but I got it from the Manoukian's 2022 paper

father daughter nose boops part 2 🥲

🎥 @medium-observation

“The man remained silent for a moment, then said abruptly, ‘So you’ve no mother?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied the child.

Before the man had time to respond she added, ‘I don’t think so. Other people do. But I don’t.’

And after a pause she went on, ‘I think I never had one.’”

(LM 2.3.7)

everything about this exchange kills me. cosette’s simple acceptance of “I don’t” as if her existence as a motherless child is just the way it is. not a mystery, not a tragedy—she just inherently exists outside of other children’s reality.

it’s one small moment, but it encapsulates the age-old attitude that the status-quo will never change, that systems of oppression are simply a natural and unavoidable reality. and that perception squashes any potential to imagine a different way of life.

(only for valjean to show up at the inn all like “actually cosette, you are NOT inherently alone and unloveable, you are NOT destined to an existence of servitude and poverty, there IS another way of life for you and we’re going to go find it together”)

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - Entrance on the Scene of a Doll, LM 2.3.4 (Les Miserables 1925)

The last of these stalls, established precisely opposite the Thénardiers’ door, was a toy-shop all glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin. In the first row, and far forwards, the merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll, nearly two feet high, who was dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold wheat-ears on her head, which had real hair and enamel eyes. All that day, this marvel had been displayed to the wonderment of all passers-by under ten years of age, without a mother being found in Montfermeil sufficiently rich or sufficiently extravagant to give it to her child. Éponine and Azelma had passed hours in contemplating it, and Cosette herself had ventured to cast a glance at it, on the sly, it is true.

At the moment when Cosette emerged, bucket in hand, melancholy and overcome as she was, she could not refrain from lifting her eyes to that wonderful doll, towards the lady, as she called it. The poor child paused in amazement. She had not yet beheld that doll close to. The whole shop seemed a palace to her: the doll was not a doll; it was a vision. It was joy, splendor, riches, happiness, which appeared in a sort of chimerical halo to that unhappy little being so profoundly engulfed in gloomy and chilly misery. With the sad and innocent sagacity of childhood, Cosette measured the abyss which separated her from that doll. She said to herself that one must be a queen, or at least a princess, to have a “thing” like that. She gazed at that beautiful pink dress, that beautiful smooth hair, and she thought, “How happy that doll must be!” She could not take her eyes from that fantastic stall. The more she looked, the more dazzled she grew. She thought she was gazing at paradise. There were other dolls behind the large one, which seemed to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant, who was pacing back and forth in front of his shop, produced on her somewhat the effect of being the Eternal Father.

In this adoration she forgot everything, even the errand with which she was charged.