#GAVROCHE'S DEATH

[bluntandsaucy]

just saw les mis live and i cried six different times oh my god it was so good

[thepiecesofcait]

The Death of Gavroche

[someofitwastrue]

wait i love how everyone else is also freaking out about kyle adams as grantaire bc his performance is the reason why im back on les mis tumblr

[unloneliest]

@butchboromir thank you for showing me this. im now ~800 words into making my ocs lives worse

[cosmicangst]

just came out of the us tour for les mis. kyle adams my new standard for grantaire fr he has this joke w his bottle where he pretends its his penis during red and black and he directs it to enjolras's face he's my hero

[secretmellowblog]

hey love your blog!

i’ve got a really random specific question.

so I read les mis over 10 years ago and there was a passage in it i’ve been trying to find since but i just can’t… it was a description of a garden and i remember it being soooo lyrical and beautiful but for the life of me i can’t find it again …. any chance it rings a bell????

Gardens are a big motif in Les Mis, and there are lots of lyrical descriptions of gardens in the book! So it is hard to say, but- I'll put other possibilities in the tags, but I think the most likely candidate is probably the longest and most lyrical garden description we get in the book-- the description of the garden in the Rue Plumet, where Jean Valjean lives with Cosette. This is Volume IV, Book 3, Chapter 3, "Foliis Ac Frondibus":

There was a stone bench in one corner, one or two mouldy statues, several lattices which had lost their nails with time, were rotting on the wall, and there were no walks nor turf; but there was enough grass everywhere. Gardening had taken its departure, and nature had returned. Weeds abounded, which was a great piece of luck for a poor corner of land. The festival of gilliflowers was something splendid. Nothing in this garden obstructed the sacred effort of things towards life; venerable growth reigned there among them. The trees had bent over towards the nettles, the plant had sprung upward, the branch had inclined, that which crawls on the earth had gone in search of that which expands in the air, that which floats on the wind had bent over towards that which trails in the moss; trunks, boughs, leaves, fibres, clusters, tendrils, shoots, spines, thorns, had mingled, crossed, married, confounded themselves in each other; vegetation in a deep and close embrace, had celebrated and accomplished there, under the well-pleased eye of the Creator, in that enclosure three hundred feet square, the holy mystery of fraternity, symbol of the human fraternity. This garden was no longer a garden, it was a colossal thicket, that is to say, something as impenetrable as a forest, as peopled as a city, quivering like a nest, sombre like a cathedral, fragrant like a bouquet, solitary as a tomb, living as a throng.

In Floréal this enormous thicket, free behind its gate and within its four walls, entered upon the secret labor of germination, quivered in the rising sun, almost like an animal which drinks in the breaths of cosmic love, and which feels the sap of April rising and boiling in its veins, and shakes to the wind its enormous wonderful green locks, sprinkled on the damp earth, on the defaced statues, on the crumbling steps of the pavilion, and even on the pavement of the deserted street, flowers like stars, dew like pearls, fecundity, beauty, life, joy, perfumes. At midday, a thousand white butterflies took refuge there, and it was a divine spectacle to see that living summer snow whirling about there in flakes amid the shade. There, in those gay shadows of verdure, a throng of innocent voices spoke sweetly to the soul, and what the twittering forgot to say the humming completed. In the evening, a dreamy vapor exhaled from the garden and enveloped it; a shroud of mist, a calm and celestial sadness covered it; the intoxicating perfume of the honeysuckles and convolvulus poured out from every part of it, like an exquisite and subtle poison; the last appeals of the woodpeckers and the wagtails were audible as they dozed among the branches; one felt the sacred intimacy of the birds and the trees; by day the wings rejoice the leaves, by night the leaves protect the wings.

In winter the thicket was black, dripping, bristling, shivering, and allowed some glimpse of the house. Instead of flowers on the branches and dew in the flowers, the long silvery tracks of the snails were visible on the cold, thick carpet of yellow leaves; but in any fashion, under any aspect, at all seasons, spring, winter, summer, autumn, this tiny enclosure breathed forth melancholy, contemplation, solitude, liberty, the absence of man, the presence of God; and the rusty old gate had the air of saying: “This garden belongs to me.”

It was of no avail that the pavements of Paris were there on every side, the classic and splendid hotels of the Rue de Varennes a couple of paces away, the dome of the Invalides close at hand, the Chamber of Deputies not far off; the carriages of the Rue de Bourgogne and of the Rue Saint-Dominique rumbled luxuriously, in vain, in the vicinity, in vain did the yellow, brown, white, and red omnibuses cross each other’s course at the neighboring crossroads; the Rue Plumet was the desert; and the death of the former proprietors, the revolution which had passed over it, the crumbling away of ancient fortunes, absence, forgetfulness, forty years of abandonment and widowhood, had sufficed to restore to this privileged spot ferns, mulleins, hemlock, yarrow, tall weeds, great crimped plants, with large leaves of pale green cloth, lizards, beetles, uneasy and rapid insects; to cause to spring forth from the depths of the earth and to reappear between those four walls a certain indescribable and savage grandeur; and for nature, which disconcerts the petty arrangements of man, and which sheds herself always thoroughly where she diffuses herself at all, in the ant as well as in the eagle, to blossom out in a petty little Parisian garden with as much rude force and majesty as in a virgin forest of the New World.

Nothing is small, in fact; any one who is subject to the profound and penetrating influence of nature knows this. Although no absolute satisfaction is given to philosophy, either to circumscribe the cause or to limit the effect, the contemplator falls into those unfathomable ecstasies caused by these decompositions of force terminating in unity. Everything toils at everything.Algebra is applied to the clouds; the radiation of the star profits the rose; no thinker would venture to affirm that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calculate the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes in the precipices of being, and the avalanches of creation? The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision for the mind. There are marvellous relations between beings and things; in that inexhaustible whole, from the sun to the grub, nothing despises the other; all have need of each other. The light does not bear away terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths, without knowing what it is doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers. All birds that fly have round their leg the thread of the infinite. Germination is complicated with the bursting forth of a meteor and with the peck of a swallow cracking its egg, and it places on one level the birth of an earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars. The same promiscuousness, and yet more unprecedented, exists between the things of the intelligence and the facts of substance. Elements and principles mingle, combine, wed, multiply with each other, to such a point that the material and the moral world are brought eventually to the same clearness. The phenomenon is perpetually returning upon itself. In the vast cosmic exchanges the universal life goes and comes in unknown quantities, rolling entirely in the invisible mystery of effluvia, employing everything, not losing a single dream, not a single slumber, sowing an animalcule here, crumbling to bits a planet there, oscillating and winding, making of light a force and of thought an element, disseminated and invisible, dissolving all, except that geometrical point, the I; bringing everything back to the soul-atom; expanding everything in God, entangling all activity, from summit to base, in the obscurity of a dizzy mechanism, attaching the flight of an insect to the movement of the earth, subordinating, who knows? Were it only by the identity of the law, the evolution of the comet in the firmament to the whirling of the infusoria in the drop of water. A machine made of mind. Enormous gearing, the prime motor of which is the gnat, and whose final wheel is the zodiac.

[ofpd]

obviously i understand why everyone goes so especially crazy over exr like i do too but sometimes i forget that they ALL died. all of them. oh my god

[amber-angel]

Watched the 2018 les mis adaptation but like, just the barricade scenes because yk. Brainrot. And I'll be honest idk how I feel. Maybe it's just because I started with episode 5/6 but... were the other amis just not in the show? There were only Enjolras, Grantaire, and Courfeyrac. And marius, but idc about him

[actuallyfingolfin]

saw les mis on tour tuesday and BOY did i think i was emotionally prepared (was not) and still have not recovered

[wow-its-jester-hat]

I saw a video of the ‘subtle foreshadowing’ trend with gavroches death😭

I don't know what the subtle foreshadowing trend is but djdjdbjddj

[cometomecosette]

I know that most viewers of this will be focused on Grantaire... yes, all the Grantaire business is good... but...

The fact that when Grantaire grabs and hugs Marius after "A Little Fall of Rain," Marius is trying to run after the boys who carried Éponine's body away because they left her hat behind. And he keeps holding out the hat in the direction they went, even as Grantaire hugs him. It's as if he's melting down like Vada at Thomas J.'s funeral in My Girl: in the same tone as her "Where are his glasses? He can't see without his glasses!" I can imagine this Marius sobbing "Wait, you forgot her hat! She'll be cold without her hat! Put her hat on!"

This is the best German production I have found so far and it does many things right, such as Grantaire having long hair

[hearty-an0n]

they mirrored grantaire and enjolras’s deaths it was so cool!!!! enjolras stood up with his fist raised with his back to the audience and then fell forward and off the barricade. then grantaire stood in the same place and raised his drink then fell back in the classic enjolras death position it was crazy

[colourmesurprised894]

spoilers for Les misérables below

I haven’t read the novel yet and I was just reading some summaries of Les Misérables on sparknotes and I found out that GAVROCHE DIED???? I watched the 2007 shojo anime as a child and Gavroche played a bigger part in it and he was best friends with Cosette but he didn’t die! He just got injured but then he got to see Cosette and Marius and there was a beautiful scene where Marius was hugging him and crying because he survived, AND JUST NOW IM FINDING OUT THAT GAVROCHE ACTUALLY DIED IN THE NOVEL!??!!? WHAT THE HELL VICTOR??? YOU CANT DO THAT TO MY BOY 😭😭😭 I’m actually so distraught I can’t believe this :((( GAVROCHE DESERVED HAPPINESS!!! I’m glad I got to see the slightly happier version where Gavroche lives and gets to live with Cosette for a while, because that meant so much to me 🥺

[fatecanberewritten]

He played some ghastly game of hide-and-seek with death.

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (transl. C. Donougher)

[cometomecosette]

The filmed 1991 performance from the US 1st National Tour uses the same martyrdom pose for Fantine, Gavroche, and Enjolras.

(Sorry about the bad image quality.)

In Brick Club and Les Mis Letters posts, various people have written about the parallels Hugo creates between Fantine and Enjolras. Both are beautiful blue-eyed blondes. Both are likened to Greek deities and mythical figures in their looks and demeanor. Both are described at first as epitomes of chasteness and purity (though Enjolras is obviously the more virginal of the two). Both are likened to marble at certain points (Fantine in her hardness and coldness after she becomes a prostitute, Enjolras in general). Despite their delicate appearance, both have fierce courage. Both die in their mid-to-late 20s. Both sacrifice everything for love (Fantine for love of her daughter, Enjolras for love of his country and his ideals). And both are crushed by society and the law.

I don't know if anyone involved in the earlier productions of the musical thought of these parallels. But I've noticed a certain minor detail in videos of productions from the '90s and early 2000s:

In several of these performances – especially from the US tours – at the end of "Fantine's Arrest," Fantine faints as the constables are picking her up to carry her to the hospital. As they carry her upstage to exit, her limp head and arms hang over their shoulders in almost the exact same position that Enjolras's lifeless body will later hang from the barricade in Act II.

It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but I still wonder if that could have been an intentional parallel between the two martyrs.

@quarryquest