#also robespierring it up

[jarenka]

some Grantaire meta

I think I saw all this things in separate tumblr posts so I don't claim to be original here. Just sum things up.

     1) "Grantaire is a cute supportive friend for everyone and an asshole for Enjolras" is totally incorrect. Actually he is mostly nice with Enjolras and mocking his friends.

Grantaire to Laigle:  "Are you going to drink those two bottles?" Laigle inquired of Grantaire. Grantaire replied:— "All are ingenious, thou alone art ingenuous. Two bottles never yet astonished a man."

"So you have a hole in your stomach?" began Laigle again. "You have one in your elbow," said Grantaire. And after having emptied his glass, he added:— "Ah, by the way, Laigle of the funeral oration, your coat is old." “Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that bald-head, offends my sight. It humiliates me to think that I am of the same age as that baldy”. Grantaire about Marius:  "Marius' love affairs!" exclaimed Grantaire. "I can imagine it. Marius is a fog, and he must have found a vapor. Marius is of the race of poets. He who says poet, says fool, madman, Tymbraeus Apollo. Marius and his Marie, or his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariette. They must make a queer pair of lovers. 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."

Grantaire to Enjolras:  "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."

But he also loves his friends very much: “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”.

       2) Grantaire doesn't actually argue with somebody. He never says "wow your beliefs are shit fight me", he mostly uses valuable things for jokes.

“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”.

”He said of the crucifix: "There is a gibbet which has been a success."”

“when I see humanity ripped apart and events patched up, and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in the moon, when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up. He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose money-box is empty gives a ball”.

“I do not understand how people can habitually take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points; respect for the inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only religion which is ornamented with a hen-roost!”

(I think it's may be way more infuriating than a regular controversy with other person. Because you can prove nothing to person who thinks you speak about invaluable things. All Grantaire’s speeches are just shitposting in a verbal form)

Actually the only time he argues with Enjolras he tries to prove his use for the Revolution. So ironic.

"What will you say to them?" "I will speak to them of Robespierre, pardi! Of Danton. Of principles." "You?" "I. But I don't receive justice. When I set about it, I am terrible. I have read Prudhomme, I know the Social Contract, I know my constitution of the year Two by heart. 'The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins.' Do you take me for a brute? I have an old bank-bill of the Republic in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a Hebertist. I can talk the most superb twaddle for six hours by the clock, watch in hand." "Be serious," said Enjolras. "I am wild," replied Grantaire.

Also Hugo calls him libertine, so he can be just a rake or the part of this movement. 

       3) Grantaire was an apprentice of famous painter mostly known by portraying Napoleon and his army. According Grantaire’s own words he wasn't a hard-working student. “when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched little pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples”

        4) Grantaire knows a huge amount of cafes and spends a lot of money on food and alcohol. 

“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”

"Matelote and Gibelotte, dod't gib Grantaire anything more to drink. He has already devoured, since this bording, in wild prodigality, two francs and ninety-five centibes." “I eat at Richard's at forty sous a head” (Maruis spends 20 sous per day for food for example)

         5) He is not “I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me” type. He is actually “look at me I’m an alpha male” type:  “Grantaire's fatuity was not to be disconcerted. He stared tenderly and fixedly at all women, with the air of saying to them all: "If I only chose!" and of trying to make his comrades believe that he was in general demand”.

         6) Grantaire has no idea about the nature of his feelings towards 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”.  

        7) In the Brick Grantaire is the one who wears red waistcoat:  “He had gone home to put on a Robespierre waistcoat. "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”.

(you are free to imagine Enjolras wearing Grantaire’s waistcoat :333)

Bonus: Marius not a cheesy romantic guy, he is a awkward poor goth freelancer with daddy issues, who refuses to leave his apartments in a daylight because he can't afford another set of black clothes and has only green one (borrowed from Courfeyrac). No kidding: “Courfeyrac, to whom he had, on his side, done some good turns, gave him an old coat. For thirty sous, Marius got it turned by some porter or other, and it was a new coat. But this coat was green. Then Marius ceased to go out until after nightfall. This made his coat black. As he wished always to appear in mourning, he clothed himself with the night”.

#les mis #grantaire #marius