Tag: victor hugo

secretmellowblog:

The thing about Les Mis is: I love how beneath Paris there’s literally a secret labyrinth decorated with millions of human bones– a sprawling ancient mine that was converted into catacombs in 1700s with passageways where the walls are made out of skulls and long halls where you have to wade through waist-deep mounds of bones, full of mysterious altars and secret passages and graffiti from the French Revolution and hidden entrances that to this day at haven’t been fully explored

 yet Victor Hugo chose to give us a 300000 page history lesson on the sewers

ggrantairee:

Victor Hugo (about Enjolras): He did not seem to know that there was on the earth a being called woman.

Victor Hugo (about Grantaire): This fanaticism was neither an idea, nor a dogma, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras.

Literature experts: Straight? Straight? straights?

pilferingapples:

aresnergal:

spacestationtrustfund:

I’ve figured out how BBC is going to add more sex to Les Mis: Victor Hugo Himself will be a character. Victor “I had so much sex on my wedding night that my wife got mad at me” Hugo. Victor “historians argue about how many partners I had” Hugo. Victor “when I died all the prostitutes in the city wore black over their crotches to mourn their favourite client” Hugo. Victor “random acts of nudity” Hugo. It’s not going to be any of the other characters at all, it’s just going to be … Hugo … himself …

they’re going to include his monologue but also borrowing the “sexposition” trope, so we’ll see him fucking random people while talking to them (and the audience) about the Paris sewers.

Depending on the scene, it shifts between a Younger Hugo making out with Juliette or Leonie or ???, and full-bearded Exile Hugo snogging So Many Random Passerby 

cestbrulercesnuits:

pilferingapples:

the-thrill-be-damned:

pilferingapples:

like not only did Hugo NOT get paid by the word 

NOT ONLY did Hugo’s editors beg him to please shut up

NOT ONLY do all the digressions carry core messages to the larger point of the book 

there is  ALSO a nonzero chance Hugo came up with some of the core ideas for  Les Mis under the guidance of ghosts , and sometimes comets

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO ADVANCE THE MOST BORING POSSIBLE THEORY FOR WHY IT’S A LONG BOOK WHEN YOU COULD HAVE GHOSTS

what’s this about space rock ghosts

omg you’re gonna love this

while Victor Hugo was in exile–this started around 1853– the family’s friend Delphine Girardin introduced them all to table-tapping. Peak Spiritualism time, right?

Hugo totally fell in love with the idea, at first hoping to make contact with his dead daughter Leopoldine. Which he started to think he had! I would not laugh about that. 

But then  he started to get “messages” from all manner of ghosts and spirits, including:

-Shakespeare, now, as a spirit, finally able to access the Truest Language of Humanity (French)
-A Comet
-Andre Chenier, who dictated the ending of an “unfinished” poem that just happened to be one in a collection Hugo hadn’t finished 
– The Spirit of the Sepulchre 
– Napoleon III, From The Future, When He Was Dead 
– Jesus 
-Plato
-A Lion , Like,A Four-Legged Animal That Goes Roar, But Now Dead and Speaking French , GOD’S OWN LANGUAGE, because of course
-Aliens from Mercury
– AND MANY MANY MORE 

all speaking French and frequently speaking in RHYMED ALEXANDRINES 

all sounding remarkably like Victor Hugo, though without him apparently realizing this, given that he frequently scared himself into near-faints at these Revelations
and telling him, among other things, that he was going to be hailed as a PROPHET OF THE NEW AGE but had to accept not being Known as such for a while yet

and I will ABSOLUTELY laugh at all that, because OH HUGO  

I SWEAR I am not making this up , there are books collecting the records of the sessions, because of course he was recording these WORLD CHANGING REVELATIONS 

anyway then he got back to writing and among other things finished up Les Mis in the years to come , so SPACE ROCK GHOSTS may have had a hand in the novel! Or not!  Who can say what voices move the soul of an author?  Except that whatever they are, they speak in French.

I feel like I need to bring up the post about heavenly judgement zone he personally designed for his deathbed-room which he never used but modelled it off a church complete with burning bush and labelled chairs at the other end of the room labelled specifically for God, Mary, and Jesus cause…. this dude…

enjolryas:

what victor hugo defines as love in les mis: 

“When two mouths, rendered sacred by love, approach to create, it is impossible that there should not be, above that ineffable kiss, a quivering throughout the immense mystery of stars. These felicities are the true ones. There is no joy outside of these joys. Love is the only ecstasy.”

what grantaire defines as love from his own experience: 

“I know just what it is like. Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars.”