Victor “Ego” Hugo actively refused to go to the Polytechnic school because he didn’t want to do A Math; his father tried to force him, financially, and he willfully bombed out
but by all records he totally could do math
he just really, really,really didn’t want to, ever
Furthermore, his dad actively didn’t want him to be a writer and cut him off financially unless he would agree to follow a more Mathtastic career; this is certainly a part of why Hugo worked so intensely on his writing career as a very young man
Les Mis is not only full of terrible math; it is in many ways the result of and monument to one man’s absolute devotion to Not Doing Math
Tag: victor hugo
I like how at the beginning of Les Mis I was like “I hope Victor spends as much attention on young men at some point as he did describing what may or may not have been allusively Fantine’s cleavage” and now I know that in fact Enjolras’s Greek profile and perfect beautiful face and bare neck are just as important as the perfection with which Fantine’s flesh used to cover her skeleton. Thank you Victor. I feel better now.
“#YOU get five paragraphs of uncomfortably detailed physical description!#and YOU get five paragraphs of uncomfortably detailed physical description#EVERYONE gets five paragraphs of uncomfortably detailed physical description !”
@pilferingapples I’m crying your tags are spot on
He described the wings of Marius’ nose as open and passionate… what does that even fucking mean Vicky?
wait wait wait that’s AMAZING
no he did not call them Nose Wings in French (or the English translations) he said Marius had passionate NOSTRILS
I always thought that was pretty hilarious all on its own but NOSE WINGS is a whole new level ,I am Delighted
My favorite thing about Victor Hugo is that the Notre Dame Cathedral was a huge eyesore on the verge of collapsing and was planned to be demolished but Victor Hugo was like “hey 😦 I like that building” and wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame to save it. and it worked
In the book he described the cathedral in the state it was in but also in comparison to what it looked like in the 15th century before it got all fucked up in the French Revolution. His book got translated into a fuck ton of languages and was distributed all around Europe. Tourists who were fans of him would go to see it while in Paris and were appalled to see just how bad of shape it was in and it started to become stain on paris’ reputation.
So finally the king funded the Hella expensive restoration which I imagine was one really fucking gnarly project, the structure it’s self being the tip of the ice burg because of how many religious artifacts and statutes and junk that had been ruined.
So thanks Vicky that’s one hell of a beautiful tower.
So you’re telling me that we still have the Notre Dame Cathedral because of fanfiction?
yes.
so I did some research regarding Enjolras’ name and discovered that he was almost definitely based off of French anarchist/friend of Victor Hugo Louise Michel. Enjolras was one of her pseudonyms when writing, and she signed her letters and poems to Hugo with the name (Hugo also referred to her in his journal as ‘Enjolras’.
this is interesting because Michel is a lot like Enjolras, daring to be shot (“Since it seems that every heart that beats for freedom has no right to anything but a little slug of lead, I demand my share. If you let me live, I shall never cease to cry for vengeance.”) instead of imprisoned, publicly protesting the government, and being violently anti-Bonapartist. It’s also interesting that another of Michel’s pseuds was ‘La Louve Rouge’ (the red wolf), and Enjolras is almost always depicted as wearing red.
Louise Michel went on to help lead the Kanak Revolt, and later singlehandedly lead many demonstrations in Paris. She was also most likely not straight, and involved in a relationship with Sylvia Pankhurst while they advocated for women’s rights.
tl;dr shown through their many similarities (and Michel’s affiliation with Hugo), it’s quite possible that Enjolras’ name/character was based off of feminist-anarchist Louise Michel.
Sources: [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] (a couple of those are in French)
my favourite thing to do is to tell my friends about the wild things victor hugo did and see the look of shock and horror in their faces bc they only know him as the great author who wrote les mis and hunchback and not as the man who gave his fiancee a live bat in an envelope
he what now
‘Average book talks about the Parisian sewage system for 50 pages’ factoid is actually a statistical error – Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ which talks about the Parisian sewage system for 5000 pages is an outlier and should not have been counted.
i stroll into heaven straight chillin and i look around. i know he is here. i must find him. i must ask him the question that has haunted me all my life.
when i finally find him, victor hugo, i walk up and take him roughly by the lapels.
“COMMENT S’APPELLAIENT-ILS, LES AMIS DE L’ABC? DISEZ-MOI MONSIEUR JE VOUS EN PRIE!“ he looks at this screaming lady, baffled. "JE DOIS SAVOIR MONSIEUR HUGO,” i implore.
he sighs gently and pats my hand.
“ils s’appellaient jean.”
“… les tous?”
“les tous, mon enfant.”
“vous etes le pire, monsieur hugo,” i spit bitterly, and let forth a cry that shakes the heavens: “THEY WERE ALL NAMED JEAN”
victor hugo really is the most insufferable writer of all time, every damn five chapters he introduces a mysterious stranger, an OLD MAN who is UNUSUALLY STRONG, “who could this be ;)” he asks us! “why! its jean valjean!” as if we’re supposed to be surprised, as if we didn’t guess this 100 pages ago VIC, i love him so much i could DIE
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