Fic: The Five Year Plan, Les Misérables, Enjolras/Grantaire, NC-17
Work went crazy and I completely fell off the posting wagon, but I return bearing fic! And as the last fic I posted featured amnesia as a trope, I thought I'd do something completely different this time and write, um… amnesia fic. In a different fandom! And only one of them loses their memory this time! /o\
The Five Year Plan
Fandom: Les Misérables
Pairing: Enjolras/Grantaire
Word count: 16.000
Rating: NC-17
Enjolras loses his memory. Thankfully, nothing unexpected seems to have happened to him in the five years he can't remember. Well, except for the boyfriend. The boyfriend's kind of a surprise.
Notes: I wrote this story in three or four weeks in a series of emails to arriviste and go_gentle, who where the best cheerleaders any author could possibly ask for. And then I decided I needed to rewrite the ending, a process that ultimately changed about 500 words and only took me, oh, another six months or so.
I suspect large parts of my flist are either not familiar at all with the fandom or only familiar with musical or movie. If that's you, you may now be wondering, "neery, who the fuck are these people, and why are you writing about them? I barely remember them exchanging fours words in total during the entire movie." Well, at least that's what I was wondering when I blundered into the fandom. Thankfully, Arriviste has been gracious enough to let me quote from the awesome ship manifesto she sent me over email once upon a time. (She says it's out of date and not how she'd put a primer together now, but I say it's amazing, and I get to share it with you!
Note: This is all arriviste, I'm just copy/pasting.
[bits about the general plot of the movie I snipped] the main plot is pretty well-known - there are two halves, the first-gen half with Fantine, Javert, and Valjean, and the second-gen half with Marius, Eponine, Cosette, and the student revolutionaries (The Friends of the ABC - a terrible pun. Their 'cover' is that they're interested in education - l'ABC - but really they're about overthrowing the government for the sake of the downtrodden people - l'abaissé). The students don't get much time in the movie, compared to the novel (condensing 1500 pages into three hours: hard), and the Enjolras/Grantaire storyline pretty much fails to make the movie cut entirely except for their beautiful death scene. They're a little bit in Red&Black, which is mainly Marius gushing about this girl he's met, Enjolras trying to shut him up and TALK REVOLUTION, OKAY, and Grantaire encouraging Marius purely to annoy Enjolras, but otherwise it's all in the death. (I wish the scene was up on youtube so you could see all Grantaire's provoking looks, but alas - the song, anyway. Grantaire sings 'I am agog/I am aghast/Is Marius in love at last? etc). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUNojBi3uvg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKuZa9lUaI <- death scene. This video actually starts too late, because I think you need to see the last battle before it happens: the music is angry and frantic, all the ABC are dying one by one in the streets, Enjolras rushes upstairs with Combeferre, Jehan, and another dude, and the guns fire through the ceiling and they all fall, except him - he's alone, and the brigadier is about to shoot him. Then the music completely changes into a contrasting and ridiculous happy and triumphant lull, Grantaire rushes through the soldiers, takes his place beside Enjolras, and then BOOM.
So I saw the movie & went, so, what's up with that? Why did these guys get this moment of triumphant shared death? Were they holding hands?? and picked up the book. SO MUCH. SO MUCH.
Enjolras and Grantaire in the book:
- Hugo tells us 56564 times that Enjolras is the prettiest girl in the history of the world, but also the chaste 'marble lover of liberty' who has never so much as kissed anyone. Also, he tells us 575674375 times that Grantaire worships & adores him and they're literally two halves of the same whole, only Enjolras won't acknowledge it. He compares them to basically every pair of gay & ambiguously gay lovers in classical history, I'm not even joking.
SOME EXCERPTS.
On Enjolras's good looks:
Enjolras was a charming young man, who was capable of being terrible. He was angelically handsome. He was a savage Antinous (Hadrian's boy-lover-god)... He was an officiating priest and a man of war; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of the democracy; above the contemporary movement, the priest of the ideal. His eyes were deep, his lids a little red, his lower lip was thick and easily became disdainful, his brow was lofty. A great deal of brow in a face is like a great deal of horizon in a view.
Like certain young men at the beginning of this century and the end of the last, who became illustrious at an early age, he was endowed with excessive youth, and was as rosy as a young girl, although subject to hours of pallor. Already a man, he still seemed a child.
His two and twenty years appeared to be but seventeen; he was serious, it did not seem as though he were aware there was on earth a thing called woman. He had but one passion-the right; but one thought-to overthrow the obstacle.
On Mount Aventine, he would have been Gracchus; in the Convention, he would have been Saint-Just. He hardly saw the roses, he ignored spring, he did not hear the carolling of the birds; the bare throat of Evadne would have moved him no more than it would have moved Aristogeiton; he, like Harmodius, thought flowers good for nothing except to conceal the sword. He was severe in his enjoyments. He chastely dropped his eyes before everything which was not the Republic. He was the marble lover of liberty. His speech was harshly inspired, and had the thrill of a hymn. He was subject to unexpected outbursts of soul. Woe to the love-affair which should have risked itself beside him! If any grisette of the Place Cambrai or the Rue Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais, seeing that face of a youth escaped from college, that page's mien, those long, golden lashes, those blue eyes, that hair billowing in the wind, those rosy cheeks, those fresh lips, those exquisite teeth, had conceived an appetite for that complete aurora, and had tried her beauty on Enjolras, an astounding and terrible glance would have promptly shown her the abyss, and would have taught her not to confound the mighty cherub of Ezekiel with the gallant Cherubino of Beaumarchais.
Grantaire is super fixated on Enjolras:
Among all these glowing hearts and thoroughly convinced minds, there was one sceptic. How came he there? By juxtaposition. This sceptic's name was Grantaire, and he was in the habit of signing himself with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything. Moreover, he was one of the students who had learned the most during their course at Paris; he knew that the best coffee was to be had at the Cafe Lemblin, and the best billiards at the Cafe Voltaire, that good cakes and lasses were to be found at the Ermitage, on the Boulevard du Maine, spatchcocked chickens at Mother Sauget's, excellent matelotes at the Barriere de la Cunette, and a certain thin white wine at the Barriere du Com pat. He knew the best place for everything; in addition, boxing and foot-fencing and some dances; and he was a thorough single-stick player. He was a tremendous drinker to boot.
All those words: rights of the people, rights of man, the social contract, the French Revolution, the Republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, religion, progress, came very near to signifying nothing whatever to Grantaire. He smiled at them. Scepticism, that caries of the intelligence, had not left him a single whole idea. He lived with irony. This was his axiom: "There is but one certainty, my full glass." He sneered at all devotion in all parties, the father as well as the brother, Robespierre junior as well as Loizerolles. "They are greatly in advance to be dead," he exclaimed. He said of the crucifix: "There is a gibbet which has been a success." A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk, he displeased these young dreamers by humming incessantly: "J'aimons les filles, et j'aimons le bon vin." Air: Vive Henri IV.
However, this sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had Enjolras subjugated him? By his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith soar in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras.
That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself having occurred to him. He admired his opposite by instinct. His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly, shapeless ideas attached themselves to Enjolras as to a spinal column. His moral backbone leaned on that firmness. Grantaire in the presence of Enjolras became some one once more. He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, to all appearance, incompatible. He was ironical and cordial. His indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without friendship. A profound contradiction; for an affection is a conviction. His nature was thus constituted. There are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja. They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another man; their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjunction and; and their existence is not their own; it is the other side of an existence which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men. He was the obverse of Enjolras.
One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In the series O and P are inseparable. You can, at will, pronounce O and P or Orestes and Pylades.
(CLAWING MY FACE HUGO YOU ARE EVERYTHING WRONG/AMAZING/THE ORIGINAL WRITER OF SHIP MANIFESTOS seriously I only c+p. Homoerotic pairings referenced: Achilles/Patrocles, Nisus/Euryalus, Orestes/Pylades, Alexander the Great/Hephaestion, Pechmeja/de Breuil).
Grantaire, Enjolras' true satellite, inhabited this circle of young men; he lived there, he took no pleasure anywhere but there; he followed them everywhere. His joy was to see these forms go and come through the fumes of wine. They tolerated him on account of his good humor.
Enjolras, the believer, disdained this sceptic; and, a sober man himself, scorned this drunkard. He accorded him a little lofty pity. Grantaire was an unaccepted Pylades. Always harshly treated by Enjolras, roughly repulsed, rejected yet ever returning to the charge, he said of Enjolras: "What a beautiful statue!"
Is Grantaire's ridiculous love for his total opposite, who disdains him, reason enough to ship him with Enjolras? No! READ ON.
Later in the novel, Enjolras is handing out tasks for the forthcoming revolution. Obviously he doesn't give one to Grantaire, who doesn't believe in the cause, so Grantaire speaks up:
"What about me?" said Grantaire. "Here am I."
"You?"
"I."
"You? Indoctrinate republicans? You - to warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle!"
"Why not?"
"Are you good for anything?"
"I have a vague ambition in that direction," said Grantaire.
"You do not believe in everything."
"I believe in you."
"Grantaire will you do me a service?"
"Anything. I'll polish your boots."
"Don't meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe."
Anyway, Grantaire protests a lot that he can do it, and Enjolras 'consents to try him' if Grantaire will stop fooling for once.
"Be serious," said Enjolras.
"I am wild," replied Grantaire.
blah blah Grantaire goes and gets all dressed up in revolutionary garb.
"Red," said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Enjolras. Then, with the palm of his energetic hand, he laid the two scarlet points of the waistcoat across his breast.
And stepping up to Enjolras, he whispèred in his ear:-
"Be easy."
He jammed his hat on resolutely and departed.
Grantaire has all these good intentions of finally winning Enjolras;s regard, but his nerve gives out, and he ends up drinking and gambling with the men he should be converting instead. Enjolras creeps by to check on him, and all his prejudices are confirmed, and he dusts his hands of Grantaire. When the revolution breaks out, he doesn't include Grantaire in the ABC members he sends word to, which drives Grantaire to try and drink himself into a coma in the wine-bar.
Grantaire was drinking in a melancholy way.
"Enjolras disdains me," he muttered. "Enjolras said: 'Joly is ill, Grantaire is drunk.' It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won't go to his funeral." (I underline this just because it cracks me up).
Anyway, the ABC end up building their barricade outside the wine-shop because Joly's sick and Bossuet's drunk and neither of them want to have to walk too far to stage their revolution. Grantaire eventually staggers out to join in.
Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand, raised his beautiful, austere face. Enjolras, as the reader knows, had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition. He would have perished at Thermopylae with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with Cromwell.
"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."
Enjolras regarded him with disdainful eyes:-
"Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying."
Grantaire replied in a grave tone:-
"You will see."
He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the second period of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and abruptly thrust him, an instant later he had fallen asleep.
ugh I would underline this whole passage but it would be illegible. I love Grantaire, he's this alkie fuck-up who's intelligent as fuck (I haven't c+p'd his rants, but he basically speaks for pages on pages without break when he's drunk) who has given up on everything but Enjolras and his friends and he knows they're going to die for something he doesn't believe in :(((
Anyway, because Grantaire is a self-destructive fuck-up, he passes out and literally misses ALL OF THE FIGHTING. All his friends die while he's unconscious in a corner. Except for Enjolras, who is just about to be shot when Grantaire wakes up.
"He is the leader! It was he who slew the artillery-man. It is well that he has placed himself there. Let him remain there. Let us shoot him down on the spot."
"Shoot me," said Enjolras.
And flinging away his bit of gun-barrel, and folding his arms, he offered his breast.
The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort of sepulchral solemnity. The menacing majesty of Enjolras disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this tumult, and this young man, haughty, bloody, and charming, who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an invulnerable being, seemed, by the authority of his tranquil glance, to constrain this sinister rabble to kill him respectfully. His beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: "There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo." A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras, lowered his gun, saying: "It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower."
Twelve men formed into a squad in the corner opposite Enjolras, and silently made ready their guns.
Then a sergeant shouted:
"Take aim!"
An officer intervened.
"Wait."
And addressing Enjolras:
"Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?"
"No."
"Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?"
"Yes."
Grantaire had waked up a few moments before.
Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever since the preceding evening in the upper room of the wine-shop, seated on a chair and leaning on the table.
He realized in its fullest sense the old metaphor of "dead drunk." The hideous potion of absinthe-porter and alcohol had thrown him into a lethargy. His table being small, and not suitable for the barricade, he had been left in possession of it. He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent over the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded by glasses, beer-jugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming slumber of the torpid bear and the satiated leech. Nothing had had any effect upon it, neither the fusillade, nor the cannon-balls, nor the grape-shot which had made its way through the window into the room where he was. Nor the tremendous uproar of the assault. He merely replied to the cannonade, now and then, by a snore. He seemed to be waiting there for a bullet which should spare him the trouble of waking. Many corpses were strewn around him; and, at the first glance, there was nothing to distinguish him from those profound sleepers of death.
Noise does not rouse a drunken man; silence awakens him. The fall of everything around him only augmented Grantaire's prostration; the crumbling of all things was his lullaby. The sort of halt which the tumult underwent in the presence of Enjolras was a shock to this heavy slumber. It had the effect of a carriage going at full speed, which suddenly comes to a dead stop. The persons dozing within it wake up. Grantaire rose to his feet with a start, stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyes, stared, yawned, and understood.
A fit of drunkenness reaching its end resembles a curtain which is torn away. One beholds, at a single glance and as a whole, all that it has concealed. All suddenly presents itself to the memory; and the drunkard who has known nothing of what has been taking place during the last twenty-four hours, has no sooner opened his eyes than he is perfectly informed. Ideas recur to him with abrupt lucidity; the obliteration of intoxication, a sort of steam which has obscured the brain, is dissipated, and makes way for the clear and sharply outlined importunity of realities.
Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: "Take aim!" when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them:
"Long live the Republic! I'm one of them."
Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man.
He repeated: "Long live the Republic!" crossed the room with a firm stride and placed himself in front of the guns beside Enjolras.
"Finish both of us at one blow," said he.
And turning gently to Enjolras, he said to him:
"Do you permit it?"
Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile.
This smile was not ended when the report resounded
.
um
so.
THEY DIE TOGETHER HOLDING HANDS. The chapter's called 'Pylades Drunk and Orestes Fasting' and it's tragical because Grantaire spends his life the unacknowledged Pylades to Enjolras's Orestes (who, fasting, does not know what he is denying) but then in that last few moments he is accepted and Enjolras finally takes his measure and Enjolras doesn't die a failure, because he wins to the revolution the one person he couldn't convince with his speeches! Hence the brief scene in the movie and the sudden change in musical tone: okay, they're DEAD, but they're one of Hugo's collection of examples of the ~power of love~ when it comes to improving the lives of all/bringing one closer to god (the point of the novel).
The Five Year Plan
Fandom: Les Misérables
Pairing: Enjolras/Grantaire
Word count: 16.000
Rating: NC-17
Enjolras loses his memory. Thankfully, nothing unexpected seems to have happened to him in the five years he can't remember. Well, except for the boyfriend. The boyfriend's kind of a surprise.
Notes: I wrote this story in three or four weeks in a series of emails to arriviste and go_gentle, who where the best cheerleaders any author could possibly ask for. And then I decided I needed to rewrite the ending, a process that ultimately changed about 500 words and only took me, oh, another six months or so.
I suspect large parts of my flist are either not familiar at all with the fandom or only familiar with musical or movie. If that's you, you may now be wondering, "neery, who the fuck are these people, and why are you writing about them? I barely remember them exchanging fours words in total during the entire movie." Well, at least that's what I was wondering when I blundered into the fandom. Thankfully, Arriviste has been gracious enough to let me quote from the awesome ship manifesto she sent me over email once upon a time. (She says it's out of date and not how she'd put a primer together now, but I say it's amazing, and I get to share it with you!
Note: This is all arriviste, I'm just copy/pasting.
[bits about the general plot of the movie I snipped] the main plot is pretty well-known - there are two halves, the first-gen half with Fantine, Javert, and Valjean, and the second-gen half with Marius, Eponine, Cosette, and the student revolutionaries (The Friends of the ABC - a terrible pun. Their 'cover' is that they're interested in education - l'ABC - but really they're about overthrowing the government for the sake of the downtrodden people - l'abaissé). The students don't get much time in the movie, compared to the novel (condensing 1500 pages into three hours: hard), and the Enjolras/Grantaire storyline pretty much fails to make the movie cut entirely except for their beautiful death scene. They're a little bit in Red&Black, which is mainly Marius gushing about this girl he's met, Enjolras trying to shut him up and TALK REVOLUTION, OKAY, and Grantaire encouraging Marius purely to annoy Enjolras, but otherwise it's all in the death. (I wish the scene was up on youtube so you could see all Grantaire's provoking looks, but alas - the song, anyway. Grantaire sings 'I am agog/I am aghast/Is Marius in love at last? etc). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUNojBi3uvg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKuZa9lUaI <- death scene. This video actually starts too late, because I think you need to see the last battle before it happens: the music is angry and frantic, all the ABC are dying one by one in the streets, Enjolras rushes upstairs with Combeferre, Jehan, and another dude, and the guns fire through the ceiling and they all fall, except him - he's alone, and the brigadier is about to shoot him. Then the music completely changes into a contrasting and ridiculous happy and triumphant lull, Grantaire rushes through the soldiers, takes his place beside Enjolras, and then BOOM.
So I saw the movie & went, so, what's up with that? Why did these guys get this moment of triumphant shared death? Were they holding hands?? and picked up the book. SO MUCH. SO MUCH.
Enjolras and Grantaire in the book:
- Hugo tells us 56564 times that Enjolras is the prettiest girl in the history of the world, but also the chaste 'marble lover of liberty' who has never so much as kissed anyone. Also, he tells us 575674375 times that Grantaire worships & adores him and they're literally two halves of the same whole, only Enjolras won't acknowledge it. He compares them to basically every pair of gay & ambiguously gay lovers in classical history, I'm not even joking.
SOME EXCERPTS.
On Enjolras's good looks:
Enjolras was a charming young man, who was capable of being terrible. He was angelically handsome. He was a savage Antinous (Hadrian's boy-lover-god)... He was an officiating priest and a man of war; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of the democracy; above the contemporary movement, the priest of the ideal. His eyes were deep, his lids a little red, his lower lip was thick and easily became disdainful, his brow was lofty. A great deal of brow in a face is like a great deal of horizon in a view.
Like certain young men at the beginning of this century and the end of the last, who became illustrious at an early age, he was endowed with excessive youth, and was as rosy as a young girl, although subject to hours of pallor. Already a man, he still seemed a child.
His two and twenty years appeared to be but seventeen; he was serious, it did not seem as though he were aware there was on earth a thing called woman. He had but one passion-the right; but one thought-to overthrow the obstacle.
On Mount Aventine, he would have been Gracchus; in the Convention, he would have been Saint-Just. He hardly saw the roses, he ignored spring, he did not hear the carolling of the birds; the bare throat of Evadne would have moved him no more than it would have moved Aristogeiton; he, like Harmodius, thought flowers good for nothing except to conceal the sword. He was severe in his enjoyments. He chastely dropped his eyes before everything which was not the Republic. He was the marble lover of liberty. His speech was harshly inspired, and had the thrill of a hymn. He was subject to unexpected outbursts of soul. Woe to the love-affair which should have risked itself beside him! If any grisette of the Place Cambrai or the Rue Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais, seeing that face of a youth escaped from college, that page's mien, those long, golden lashes, those blue eyes, that hair billowing in the wind, those rosy cheeks, those fresh lips, those exquisite teeth, had conceived an appetite for that complete aurora, and had tried her beauty on Enjolras, an astounding and terrible glance would have promptly shown her the abyss, and would have taught her not to confound the mighty cherub of Ezekiel with the gallant Cherubino of Beaumarchais.
Grantaire is super fixated on Enjolras:
Among all these glowing hearts and thoroughly convinced minds, there was one sceptic. How came he there? By juxtaposition. This sceptic's name was Grantaire, and he was in the habit of signing himself with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything. Moreover, he was one of the students who had learned the most during their course at Paris; he knew that the best coffee was to be had at the Cafe Lemblin, and the best billiards at the Cafe Voltaire, that good cakes and lasses were to be found at the Ermitage, on the Boulevard du Maine, spatchcocked chickens at Mother Sauget's, excellent matelotes at the Barriere de la Cunette, and a certain thin white wine at the Barriere du Com pat. He knew the best place for everything; in addition, boxing and foot-fencing and some dances; and he was a thorough single-stick player. He was a tremendous drinker to boot.
All those words: rights of the people, rights of man, the social contract, the French Revolution, the Republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, religion, progress, came very near to signifying nothing whatever to Grantaire. He smiled at them. Scepticism, that caries of the intelligence, had not left him a single whole idea. He lived with irony. This was his axiom: "There is but one certainty, my full glass." He sneered at all devotion in all parties, the father as well as the brother, Robespierre junior as well as Loizerolles. "They are greatly in advance to be dead," he exclaimed. He said of the crucifix: "There is a gibbet which has been a success." A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk, he displeased these young dreamers by humming incessantly: "J'aimons les filles, et j'aimons le bon vin." Air: Vive Henri IV.
However, this sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had Enjolras subjugated him? By his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith soar in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras.
That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself having occurred to him. He admired his opposite by instinct. His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly, shapeless ideas attached themselves to Enjolras as to a spinal column. His moral backbone leaned on that firmness. Grantaire in the presence of Enjolras became some one once more. He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, to all appearance, incompatible. He was ironical and cordial. His indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without friendship. A profound contradiction; for an affection is a conviction. His nature was thus constituted. There are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja. They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another man; their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjunction and; and their existence is not their own; it is the other side of an existence which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men. He was the obverse of Enjolras.
One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In the series O and P are inseparable. You can, at will, pronounce O and P or Orestes and Pylades.
(CLAWING MY FACE HUGO YOU ARE EVERYTHING WRONG/AMAZING/THE ORIGINAL WRITER OF SHIP MANIFESTOS seriously I only c+p. Homoerotic pairings referenced: Achilles/Patrocles, Nisus/Euryalus, Orestes/Pylades, Alexander the Great/Hephaestion, Pechmeja/de Breuil).
Grantaire, Enjolras' true satellite, inhabited this circle of young men; he lived there, he took no pleasure anywhere but there; he followed them everywhere. His joy was to see these forms go and come through the fumes of wine. They tolerated him on account of his good humor.
Enjolras, the believer, disdained this sceptic; and, a sober man himself, scorned this drunkard. He accorded him a little lofty pity. Grantaire was an unaccepted Pylades. Always harshly treated by Enjolras, roughly repulsed, rejected yet ever returning to the charge, he said of Enjolras: "What a beautiful statue!"
Is Grantaire's ridiculous love for his total opposite, who disdains him, reason enough to ship him with Enjolras? No! READ ON.
Later in the novel, Enjolras is handing out tasks for the forthcoming revolution. Obviously he doesn't give one to Grantaire, who doesn't believe in the cause, so Grantaire speaks up:
"What about me?" said Grantaire. "Here am I."
"You?"
"I."
"You? Indoctrinate republicans? You - to warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle!"
"Why not?"
"Are you good for anything?"
"I have a vague ambition in that direction," said Grantaire.
"You do not believe in everything."
"I believe in you."
"Grantaire will you do me a service?"
"Anything. I'll polish your boots."
"Don't meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe."
Anyway, Grantaire protests a lot that he can do it, and Enjolras 'consents to try him' if Grantaire will stop fooling for once.
"Be serious," said Enjolras.
"I am wild," replied Grantaire.
blah blah Grantaire goes and gets all dressed up in revolutionary garb.
"Red," said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Enjolras. Then, with the palm of his energetic hand, he laid the two scarlet points of the waistcoat across his breast.
And stepping up to Enjolras, he whispèred in his ear:-
"Be easy."
He jammed his hat on resolutely and departed.
Grantaire has all these good intentions of finally winning Enjolras;s regard, but his nerve gives out, and he ends up drinking and gambling with the men he should be converting instead. Enjolras creeps by to check on him, and all his prejudices are confirmed, and he dusts his hands of Grantaire. When the revolution breaks out, he doesn't include Grantaire in the ABC members he sends word to, which drives Grantaire to try and drink himself into a coma in the wine-bar.
Grantaire was drinking in a melancholy way.
"Enjolras disdains me," he muttered. "Enjolras said: 'Joly is ill, Grantaire is drunk.' It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won't go to his funeral." (I underline this just because it cracks me up).
Anyway, the ABC end up building their barricade outside the wine-shop because Joly's sick and Bossuet's drunk and neither of them want to have to walk too far to stage their revolution. Grantaire eventually staggers out to join in.
Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand, raised his beautiful, austere face. Enjolras, as the reader knows, had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition. He would have perished at Thermopylae with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with Cromwell.
"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."
Enjolras regarded him with disdainful eyes:-
"Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying."
Grantaire replied in a grave tone:-
"You will see."
He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the second period of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and abruptly thrust him, an instant later he had fallen asleep.
ugh I would underline this whole passage but it would be illegible. I love Grantaire, he's this alkie fuck-up who's intelligent as fuck (I haven't c+p'd his rants, but he basically speaks for pages on pages without break when he's drunk) who has given up on everything but Enjolras and his friends and he knows they're going to die for something he doesn't believe in :(((
Anyway, because Grantaire is a self-destructive fuck-up, he passes out and literally misses ALL OF THE FIGHTING. All his friends die while he's unconscious in a corner. Except for Enjolras, who is just about to be shot when Grantaire wakes up.
"He is the leader! It was he who slew the artillery-man. It is well that he has placed himself there. Let him remain there. Let us shoot him down on the spot."
"Shoot me," said Enjolras.
And flinging away his bit of gun-barrel, and folding his arms, he offered his breast.
The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort of sepulchral solemnity. The menacing majesty of Enjolras disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this tumult, and this young man, haughty, bloody, and charming, who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an invulnerable being, seemed, by the authority of his tranquil glance, to constrain this sinister rabble to kill him respectfully. His beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: "There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo." A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras, lowered his gun, saying: "It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower."
Twelve men formed into a squad in the corner opposite Enjolras, and silently made ready their guns.
Then a sergeant shouted:
"Take aim!"
An officer intervened.
"Wait."
And addressing Enjolras:
"Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?"
"No."
"Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?"
"Yes."
Grantaire had waked up a few moments before.
Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever since the preceding evening in the upper room of the wine-shop, seated on a chair and leaning on the table.
He realized in its fullest sense the old metaphor of "dead drunk." The hideous potion of absinthe-porter and alcohol had thrown him into a lethargy. His table being small, and not suitable for the barricade, he had been left in possession of it. He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent over the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded by glasses, beer-jugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming slumber of the torpid bear and the satiated leech. Nothing had had any effect upon it, neither the fusillade, nor the cannon-balls, nor the grape-shot which had made its way through the window into the room where he was. Nor the tremendous uproar of the assault. He merely replied to the cannonade, now and then, by a snore. He seemed to be waiting there for a bullet which should spare him the trouble of waking. Many corpses were strewn around him; and, at the first glance, there was nothing to distinguish him from those profound sleepers of death.
Noise does not rouse a drunken man; silence awakens him. The fall of everything around him only augmented Grantaire's prostration; the crumbling of all things was his lullaby. The sort of halt which the tumult underwent in the presence of Enjolras was a shock to this heavy slumber. It had the effect of a carriage going at full speed, which suddenly comes to a dead stop. The persons dozing within it wake up. Grantaire rose to his feet with a start, stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyes, stared, yawned, and understood.
A fit of drunkenness reaching its end resembles a curtain which is torn away. One beholds, at a single glance and as a whole, all that it has concealed. All suddenly presents itself to the memory; and the drunkard who has known nothing of what has been taking place during the last twenty-four hours, has no sooner opened his eyes than he is perfectly informed. Ideas recur to him with abrupt lucidity; the obliteration of intoxication, a sort of steam which has obscured the brain, is dissipated, and makes way for the clear and sharply outlined importunity of realities.
Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: "Take aim!" when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them:
"Long live the Republic! I'm one of them."
Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man.
He repeated: "Long live the Republic!" crossed the room with a firm stride and placed himself in front of the guns beside Enjolras.
"Finish both of us at one blow," said he.
And turning gently to Enjolras, he said to him:
"Do you permit it?"
Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile.
This smile was not ended when the report resounded
.
um
so.
THEY DIE TOGETHER HOLDING HANDS. The chapter's called 'Pylades Drunk and Orestes Fasting' and it's tragical because Grantaire spends his life the unacknowledged Pylades to Enjolras's Orestes (who, fasting, does not know what he is denying) but then in that last few moments he is accepted and Enjolras finally takes his measure and Enjolras doesn't die a failure, because he wins to the revolution the one person he couldn't convince with his speeches! Hence the brief scene in the movie and the sudden change in musical tone: okay, they're DEAD, but they're one of Hugo's collection of examples of the ~power of love~ when it comes to improving the lives of all/bringing one closer to god (the point of the novel).