Thread by @the_eva_seyler

I’ve begun reading Les Mis (it’s been years) and the second sentence starts

“Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, ...”

dude, half this book is superfluous, but you do you

#EvaLesMis

petition to bring back the word “diaphaneity” into regular use #EvaLesMis

please appreciate the sheer monumentalness of this undertaking #EvaLesMis

Ah, the bishop has dismounted his ass and the first words out of his mouth are “i perceive i have shocked you”

language evolution is fun #EvaLesMis

in a similar vein, “his conversation was gay and affable” #EvaLesMis

ah yes it’s now “necessary” to describe M Myriel’s house in detail, almost 1 hour down, 62 to go #EvaLesMis

We’re still expounding on good old M Myriel, 2.5 hours in #EvaLesMis

I love how he again said “not to go into detail on X, because this is not the point of the book” and then went into an exposition on politics #EvaLesMis

this chapter is called “one last word”... but about what? #EvaLesMis

Ok i guess that “one last word” was a long-winded summation of this section on M Myriel bc now, almost 3 hours in, Jean Valjean is showing up

“His shirt of coarse yellow linen, fastened at the neck by a small silver anchor, permitted a view of his hairy breast”

#EvaLesMis

(gotta admit i’m team chest hair so) #EvaLesMis

Now we’re having a Smol* Analysis of Valjean’s mind

*anything but smol #EvaLesMis

also, great line: “Can the heart become misshapen and contract incurable deformities and infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate unhappiness, as the vertebral column beneath too low a vault?”

#EvaLesMis

“we will confine ourselves to the statement that” takes 24 more lines to be stated. #EvaLesMis

he really likes the word “lugubrious”, which means: “mournful, looking sad or dismal” #EvaLesMis

to paraphrase a square one TV skit: “enough wit da [history] lesson, I just wanna get troo dis [book]

🤣🤣🤣

#EvaLesMis

Ok so for real... when he’s actually writing about what’s going on with Valjean, the writing is really excellent and profound. But I legit don’t care about an exhaustive “summary” of events of 1817. #EvaLesMis

“This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it.”

Well, you’ve just expounded lavishly upon it, so SOMEONE hadn’t forgotten. #EvaLesMis

“a whole bohemia of butterflies”

i like this collective noun

#EvaLesMis

ok these dudes fantine and her friends hang out with are real prizes 😑 for that matter her friends aren’t much better #EvaLesMis

Oh yay we have come to the Thénardiers’ inn, which ofc must be described thoroughly #EvaLesMis

“for [Thénardier] knew how to do a little of everything, and badly” 🤣🤣 #EvaLesMis

“imperturbable veracity” #EvaLesMis

“Imma tell you about this Champ Mathieu affair in lots of detail but first let me tell you about this nun and find a reason to use the word perspicacity” #EvaLesMis

Ok now we’re at another Valjean Introspection Section™️ and I’m here for that 100%. 10 hours down, 52.5 to go #EvaLesMis

“It is certain that people do talk to themselves; there is no living being who has not done it. It may even be said that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when it goes from thought to conscience within a man, and when it returns from conscience to thought”

To be honest I’m amazed at how the musical so very brilliantly distilled this lengthy passage into “who am i”

#EvaLesMis

also what a SERIOUSLY effed up “justice system” that dooms people to the galleys for such petty thievery

in case you wondered, he’s still introspecting

#EvaLesMis

now he’s brought Fantine into his musings

(speaking of Fantine I remember on first reading being so horrified about the bit where she sold her teeth. it was more awful to me somehow than the hair and the whoring)

#EvaLesMis

along with lugubrious, he really digs the word “epoch” #EvaLesMis

It’s been half an hour and he’s still introspectin

Now he’s having a trippy dream where everything is the hue of dirt

oh ok basically dirt zombies

“yellow fleshless hands” 😬

“All at once she began to sing in a voice as feeble as a breath.” I’d have stopped right there but Hugo does not. “The nun listened. This is what Fantine was singing:—” and then 26 lines of her delirious rambling #EvaLesMis

I’m just thinking of having to set literal type for this book (and others like it) and marvelling that we’re more into brevity now, when we just have to type it into a computer, than back when typesetting was the only way

ok i have absolutely memory at all of this whole Valjean Attending the Faux Valjean’s Trial thing

Oh man he’s totally pulling a Sydney Carton Could Be Mistaken for Charles Darnay, HOW DO I NOT REMEMBER THIS

i said this elsewhere, pasting it into this thread: to be fair part of the charm of Les Mis is really “this dude writes like he’s telling a long involved story to his buddies with lots of asides and rambling”

look at that, victor, i can do asides too, in less than 240 characters

anyway I can’t wait to get back to the book today, it’s SO much easier to get through tomes like this when someone else is doing the reading, thank God for audiobooks #EvaLesMis

George Washington has nothing on Sister Simplice

I wonder if Javert’s full name is Vert Javert

“On arriving at Fantine’s chamber, Javert turned the handle, pushed the door open with the gentleness of a sick-nurse or a police spy, and entered.” I dunno why but this line tickles me

Imma do a search and find out how many times he uses “lugubrious” because this is getting ridiculous

*cmd+F*

Huh. Only 33 times. It feels like I hear it every five minutes. #EvaLesMis

Sister Simplice gonna be a badass and lie for Fantine’s sake, isn’t she. I kind of feel like I remember her doing some sort of power move like that

No I guess not, cause Fantine just hit the headboard*

*a much more appealing way to say kick the bucket

It’s heartbreaking the way all but like 2 people don’t stick up for Valjean

we interrupt this thread to remind the world my cat is cute

Oh YEAH it’s Valjean she’s gonna lie for

so volume 1 is 13.5 hours long

...and oh noooooo volume 2 begins with the ominous words “book first: waterloo”

nice knowing everyone

“Hougomont,—this was a funereal spot, the beginning of the obstacle, the first resistance, which that great wood-cutter of Europe, called Napoleon, encountered at Waterloo, the first knot under the blows of his axe.”

ok this is a great line but could we just stop there victor

“Kellermann’s balls were exhausted on this heroic section of wall”

as if I’m not already hearing about this place in exhaustive detail, I had to look it up on wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hougoumont

Ok I didn’t remember Waterloo happened in Belgium* so I guess I’ve learned something today

*listen, i literally could not be more bored than when we’re talking about anything napoleon-related

“Let us turn back,—that is one of the story-teller’s rights,—and put ourselves once more in the year 1815, and even a little earlier...”

if i wasn’t such a completist i’d exercise the story-reader’s right to turn forward

“If it had not rained in the night between the 17th and the 18th of June, 1815, the fate of Europe would have been different. A few drops of water, more or less, decided the downfall of Napoleon.”

let me rephrase that

🎶a little fall of rain
will really hurt you now🎶

I just scrolled on Gutenberg and there are EIGHTEEN CHAPTERS OF THIS WATERLOO NONSENSE before he’ll finally get to the point, which is to introduce Thénardier back into the narrative. Thénardier is hardly worth this.

“Of course, we do not here pretend to furnish a history of the battle of Waterloo; one of the scenes of the foundation of the story which we are relating is connected with this battle, but this history is not our subject”

ONCE AGAIN I SAY, EIGHTEEN CHAPTERS

“Those persons who wish to gain a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo must...”

I am not those persons

“It is almost superfluous here to sketch the appearance of Napoleon on horseback, glass in hand, upon the heights of Rossomme, at daybreak, on June 18, 1815”

drop the almost, victor

“Every one is acquainted with the first phase of this battle”

I’m not and I don’t really care to be acquainted but you’re gonna tell me anyway aren’t you

*deep sigh*

i knew it

4 down, 14 to go, i can do this.

i hope

ok can’t snark whilst i’m driving so switching to the les mis soundtrack to clear my heid

I AM HOME TIME FOR MORE WATERLOO

“Ponsonby had fallen, riddled by seven lance-thrusts.”

🤣🤣🤣

if you know you know

yanno the only thing victor left out here is the bathroom breaks these soldiers must have taken

based on the responses this section isn’t just about waterloo, it’s your personal literary waterloo as well

five more chapters of this nonsense

it’s so dull i can’t even snark properly

remember, remember the eighteenth of june 1815

if you forget the date don’t worry he says it again and again and again

just trample me already and put me out of my misery

Literally *three entire hours* of this book is Waterloo and he’s used “lugubrious” at least three more times

HE JUST SAID LUGUBRIOUS *AGAIN*

“Let us return—it is a necessity in this book—to that fatal battle-field.”

I wasn’t aware we ever left it (in the last three hours of my life that I’ll never get back, ta Victor)

OK BUT AT LEAST THIS CHAPTER IS THE POINT WHITHER ALL I JUST ENDURED WAS TENDING

i move that anyone who has made it through this section of the book should automatically be eligible for the Légion d’honneur

at this juncture in time i am awarding myself a virtual one

ok i’m stopping for a breather, my head is about to explode

I’m about to pick up the book again as I cut out a dress

unfortunately I have “h e l p”

😑

Anyway it feels really good to be back to Valjean instead of wallowing in waterloo

“this is just a smol detail,” he says, but he’s throwing very detailed shade at the celebratory cannonblasts that are wasting money the poor could use

“with the exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul means. The words passive obedience indicate this. An army is a strange masterpiece of combination where force results from an enormous sum of impotence.”

ah i thought we were back to valjean but no we’re talking about floating forests aka ships

man he’s really waxing poetic

Valjean’s devotion to helping people is super hot

“One inhales the effluvia of the great black void.”

well that’s one way to describe being alone in the dark

“a highly spiced and wanton song”

“Collectors of petty details, who become herbalists of anecdotes, and prick slippery dates into their memories with a pin”

so, basically you, aye, victor?

So I stopped last night at the point when Valjean and Cosette are fleeing from Javert and I’m thinking maybe this is what drives them to the convent?

tbh after waterloo the convent tangent will be an absolute delight

anyway for all his foibles i really do love this story a lot. i’ve often thought if any classic could benefit from a careful, thoughtful abridgement, it would be this book. in the same way that the abridged version of hans brinker i had as a kid was way better than the original.

I remember being like “what does this skating party of boys have to do with literally ANYTHING” and it took up such a huge chunk of the book. but i’ll stop because otherwise this thread will turn into a hugo-esque maze of rabbit trails

Valjean is basically Javert’s white whale isn’t he

Ok i admit i really enjoy this nunnery tangent

“Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the Petit-Picpus was in former times ... the reader will permit us one other little digression, utterly foreign to this book, but characteristic and useful”

... there are ten chapters left devoted to the convent

i love the word “sepulchral”

Book Seventh: Parenthesis, or Eight Chapters of Musings on Monasticism

“The leprosy of monasticism has gnawed nearly to a skeleton two wonderful nations, Italy and Spain”

well tell us what you really think, victor

this is a very long parenthesis

ooooh are we gonna have a coffin escape 👀⚰️

Reverend Mother is almost as wordy as Hugo himself

aAaaaAAHhh I am working on a thing as I listen and I can’t wait to show you

also, ⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️

I’ve reached volume 3! We are waxing poetic about street urchins and now I’m being subjected to a history lesson.

37.5 hours left to go.

Ok I had no remembrance of Marius living in the same building as the Thénardiers

*heaves a sigh* now he’s rambling about this Gillenormand dude and I have no recollection how or if he actually is relevant to anything

“when both are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier”

My mind was starting to wonder last night so I turned it off. now I’m starting again. i have no idea what’s going on.

*wander

ah, apparently it’s about politics

Marius: do you have a moment to discuss our lord and saviour napoleon bonaparte

New word (that’s been used a ton but i only just now looked up):

diligence: large, four-wheeled, closed French stagecoach employed for long journeys. It was also used in England and was popular in both countries in the 18th and 19th centuries.

“not to confound the mighty cherub of Ezekiel with the gallant Cherubino of Beaumarchais”

oh, enjolras, what even ARE you

“All contemporary social crimes have their origin in the partition of Poland. ... There has not been a despot, nor a traitor for nearly a century back, who has not signed, approved, counter-signed, and copied, ne variatur, the partition of Poland.”

“Laigle de Meaux was to be seen leaning in a sensual manner against the doorpost of the Café Musain. He had the air of a caryatid on a vacation.”

“a wasps’ neat of wits” 🤣🤣

ok surely this rambling of Grantaire is the longest paragraph ever

*has to zoom way out to fit it all on one screen*

what day did the battle of waterloo happen again /s

MARIUS

chill out bro

I’m picturing the other guys being like

then be like

your aunt sends you 600 francs and you return it because you have sufficient funds*

why are men
____
*3 francs

Ya might wanna not be quite so determined to find Thénardier, Marius, just throwing that out there

“As we shall see [Marius’ buddy] M. Mabeuf again, later on, a few words will not be SuPeRfLuOuS.”

The modern obsession with backstory isn’t new, clearly it was invented by Victor Hugo, because there’s not a character here that doesn’t get a considerable biography upon their entrance into the story

Ah yes, the thing I love best, rants by cranky old men 🙄

th are "well-opened and passionate nostrils"

haha Courfeyrac says "Good morning, Monsieur l'Abbé" and my brain interpreted it as "Good morning, Monsieur l'Abeille" and i was... confused

Ah yes we're working up to the dropped handkerchief

s l o w l y

Man, what a mooning moron Marius is.

this is Erik of the Paris Opera, change my mind

ok do we HAVE to be shown the full contents of these four letters Marius picked up

Marius ya dope you’ve just walked into the 1820s version of the Nigerian prince spam email

ÉPONINE

the gutenberg has illustrations!

I have always adored Éponine. But now I must go to bed.

petition to describe more decrepit furniture as “infirm”

over halfway through!!

Oh great, Marius is gonna bring Javert into this, isn’t he

“steady and tender eyes, not unlike the eyes of the boa-constrictor”

oh thénardier

AHAHAHA WHAT A WAY FOR MARIUS TO FIND THÉNARDIER

Javert sure ejaculates a lot.

VOLUME FOUR OPENS: “a few pages of history”

*looks at Gutenberg*

“five long CHAPTERS of history”

this section should be called “The Ideal Revolution, or Why the 1830 Revolution Was the Best”

“make revolutions great again”

So, backtracking a tad, that bit where Marius was watching the whole Valjean-in-the-hands-of-the-Thénardiers was pretty epic (-and again I have no memory of it). I love watching Thénardier be outfoxed.And Javert be all like “huh where’d the prisoner go”

🤣🤣

I’m sitting in the school car park waiting for OlderGirl so I’m taking a smol break from the book, since my brain is glazing over with these “few words on history”.

ok not much to say there’s been a lot of flowery prose about Valjean’s houses and the invisible mystery of effluvia, whatever that is

OH WAIT but there was that hilarious bit where Grantaire is all “I CAN HAS ROUSING BATTLE SPEECH” and Enjolras walks in to check on him and sees “Grantaire holding a dialogue with an adversary” and he’s ARGUING ABOUT A HECKIN DOMINOES GAME

It was a masterpiece of humour, almost on par with Javert and the lot-casting hat.

Ah now we’re expounding on Cosette’s virgin beauty

There was a coincidence between the taste for the toilet which had recently come to Cosette.......

“then came April, that daybreak of summer, fresh as dawn always is, gay like every childhood; a little inclined to weep at times like the new-born being that it is” 😍

ok i think this lecture of valjean’s might beat out grantaire’s ramblings for Longest Paragraph

i mean

“gnawing at a horrible loaf of darkness which dogs would not touch, eating beans that the worms have eaten before you”

“[marius] would have expired with grief”

get a hold of yourself, dude

Ahaha

Valjean in the garden with an iron cudgel

ok i’m feeling less embarrassed by my florid teenaged diary entries about love after being subjected to this absolute tosh from Marius

“Oh! would that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, gently caressing a finger,—that would suffice for my eternity!”

ok another word to add to lugubrious is chimera/chimerical

Wow he’s only just spoken to her for the first time and already they’re smooching, wow

“In that dark free-masonry of evil”

Gavroche has found his bros

Where are we at this moment? In the land of slang.

“...still quivering, upon the pavement that abject dialect which is dripping with filth when thus brought to the light, that pustulous vocabulary each word of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire and the shadows”

well victor i dunno about you but i’m ready to leave the land of slang and get back to the point

and behold, they were almost gay

marius and cosette up in a tree

Wow he just called éponine a bitch

insurrection
uprising
revolt
revolution
bla
bla
bla

“The less spread of sail in the phrase, the more intensity in the blow.”

*side eyes the waterloo section, the slang section, the you name it section*

🎶Lamarque

is dead🎶

I feel like someone said Hugo was involved in this particular uprising—is that true?

ah yes well he basically just said he was involved 🤣

“All the four-footed furniture comported itself as though it had but three legs”

Grantaire is rambling again

“Whatever your opinion may be in favor of the lean cock, ... or in favor of the fat cock”

#OutOfContext

the opposite of sobriety is inebriety, apparently

Javert be like

WOW I ONLY HAVE ONE VOLUME LEFT, about 13 hrs

nice optimism about the 20th century there, enjolras

he says they tore up the pavement like it’s something totally normal and easy to do

thanks for the technobabble about projectiles combeferre

oh, good, the missing thénardier kids are still alive

for now

Ok now we’re rhapsodising about spring? forever? oh, he’s finally getting back to the kids

Oh boy Javert and Valjean faceoff time

It’s interesting how in the musical letting Javert go is pure forgiveness (and why he’s even at the barricade at all doesn’t seem clear), but in the book it’s way more complex. Yes, there’s forgiveness... but he’s also being defeatist and whingey about losing Cosette to Marius...

He doesn’t seem to care whether he lives anymore, and yet he’s not really participating in the fight either.

Anyway, leaving the lads preparing for their last gasp, cause i am tired and, not stupidly throwing my life away for a lost cause, i shall retire to Bed

ten more hours

ok so

a few thoughts on enjolras because I am more Awake now

the book description says blue eyes, golden hair, woman’s face. I guess appearance wise that’s one thing the 2012 film sorta got right?

could not be more different from michael maguire, however (my musical enjolras of choice because 🔥):

also apparently enjoltaire is a thing?

(the first image is by wigs draws junk, other two didn’t have artist names attached, if you know pls tell me)

ANYWAY here’s my crazy theory/headcanon, enjolras is actually a girl in drag and if any of the other amis have twigged him they keep quiet about it bc Mad Respect

this would explain why s/he’s so aloof and virginal and doesn’t go out with girls because s/he doesn’t want to be found out

anyway we all know i am an absolute sucker for badass girls in drag doing Manly Things™️ so

we can now return to our regularly scheduled livetweeting

the real question is CAN I FINISH THIS **TODAY** so I can count it on my March list 👀

here is our street all riddled with balls

“it is, perhaps, in failure, that they possess the most majesty”

i hereby require all to bow before my unrivalled majesty

marius is shot

i love how wine shops are basically literary centres of rebellion

grantaire slept like a “torpid bear or a satiated leech”

IM DED

so they basically died holding hands, ok i see why ppl ship them

“The reader will recall this angle which formed a sort of cape on the street”

actually i don’t, sorry victor, i kind of tuned out that bit

at any rate, we’re about to get to the sewer bit since Valjean is currently rescuing Marius

“What is its intestine? The sewer”

“Science, after having long groped about, now knows that the most fecundating and the most efficacious of fertilizers is human manure”

“HUMAN DUNG”

“A great city is the most mighty of dung-makers”

“If our gold is manure, our manure, on the other hand, is gold”

“What is done with this golden manure? It is swept into the abyss”

IM TWELVE OK

i mean let’s face it,if you’re gonna rhapsodise about poop, let’s not... hold it in, so to speak

let the flowery prose flow like diarrhoea

“Let the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover, the subterranean network of sewers, from a bird’s-eye view, will outline on the banks a species of large branch grafted on the river.”

ok i take it back about the nunnery, this is my favourite digression

it’s beautiful

“performed the toilet of its sewer”

doing eyelets by hand as i listen to the saga of valjean in the sewer

very effective use of the word viscous, victor

🤮

QUICKSAND ALERT

out of the sewer, into the javert

has anybody written a fix-it fic where Javert doesn’t throw himself in the river and he and Valjean become best buds? bc someone should

javert is, ultimately, a really heartbreaking character.

what he could have been.

The two vomitous lovebirds are reunited

Only 5 hours left. I already feel kind of like I’m about to lose a constant companion.

this is the eighth day since i began this journey

ok gillenormand you can shut up now, i literally don’t care about how much better things were in your day

get him, aunty G

Ugh Marius it’s really ok to not worry about Thénardier, you owe him Z I L C H

watching marius search for his lifesaver like

meanwhile valjean be like

Finally a wedding

and an “accident” happened to Valjean

lolllll

Ok this is a lot of talk about the shrove tuesday “chaos of shamelessness” ... to what end? 🤨

I can’t imagine who these people are that are dialoguing 😑

ah yes i was right

YoungerGirl appropriated my phone an hour ago and I'm sitting here tapping my foot impatiently for her to be done with her call or whatever

listening to the dream cast concert whilst i wait

as one does

Oh yeah so I discovered Audible Plus includes a different audio version of Les Mis and... I gotta say... I'm kinda tempted to just start over again with that one? SOMEONE TALK SOME SENSE INTO ME

ok i got my phone back

“i am madame thou”

“and that their griefs were but so many handmaidens who were preparing the toilet of joy”

yes i’m such a twelve year old boy

The dining-room was full of gay things. ... all was sparkling and gay

Oh yay gillenormand is holding forth **again**

“A little after midnight, the Gillenormand house became a temple. ... Love is the sublime crucible wherein the fusion of the man and the woman takes place; the being one, the being triple, the being final, the human trinity proceeds from it.”

Why is it always the virgin bride who’s gently alarmed and sweetly terrified? Gimme the alarmed virgin boys!!!!

also, “pearl in the shadowy folds of life” made me snort

Valjean, you’re such a sentimental hunk.

Valjean, you’re also a bit of a drama queen

three hours left

yeah i don’t remember this confession scene with marius at all.

and i’m annoyed at marius for being like everyone else and making assumptions about valjean the minute he knows the truth

“You no longer need a father, you have a husband.”

this whole deliberately making Cosette no longer regard Valjean as father is... really weird to me. Like, why.

1. Ah yes “Thénard”

2. Come on Marius, un-jerkify yourself pls

Thénardier: Pay me for a secret
Marius: Already know the secret
T: That’s what you think

Marius’ assumptions about to be

this is the only time i’m going to give Thénardier any credit for anything becaMarius absolutely deserves this come-uppance

And Marius about to blow Thénardier’s mind as well

🤣🤣

T: so there was this dead guy in the sewers and we picked his pockets of their paltry contents
T: he was super dead
T: I have a piece of his coat

M: it’s me, i’m the super dead guy

Thénardier: ...

of course thénardier became a slave dealer

because of course

😑😑😑

Marius has SEEN THE LIGHT

Now you are here
Again beside me
Now I can die in peace
For now my life is blessed

“It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.”

ok well i skated in at the end just a few minutes before midnight and that was A Trip, thank you for tolerating my nonsense

pls do tell me what Doorstop Classic you would like me to live tweet next, i just might do it

have a smol Enjolras Doodle and go buy my books

*fin*