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Club NinetyThree, Part 1 Book 1, Chapter 1, (1.1.1) The Wood of La Sandraie
GOOD MORNING EVERYONE! It's the first day of the readalong for Victor Hugo's Ninety-Three! Anyone who's joining us, please tag your posts with ClubNinetyThree; and/or, if you'd like, join the discussion on the day's thread at Dreamwidth!
It's still kind of inevitable that I'm going to compare this to Les MIs, though. I compare EVERYTHING to Les Mis these days. So I'm wondering if we'll get another slow burn opening like the Bishop or
--of the first regiment of Paris, which had numbered six hundred volunteers, there remained twenty-seven men; of the second, thirty-three; and of the third, fifty-seven.
WELL GOOD MORNING TO YOU TOO HUGO, I GUESS THAT'S A NO ON THE SLOW BURN THING.
At the end of May, of the twelve thousand who left Paris eight thousand were dead.
SWEET FLAPPING WAFFLE HALOS it's like we're starting right in the middle of Waterloo
The forest of La Sandrie was tragic.
...It's EXACTLY like we're starting in the middle of Waterloo. Wow, 2 pages in and already this is a Very Hugo Novel.
In former times La Sandrie was a favorite place for the hunting of birds by night; now they hunted men there.
EVERYTHING IS BIRD. A Very Victor Hugo Novel indeed.
Really though, the birds are part of the scene here, and wow, Hugo is on the BALL with his Interactive Scenery, as always; I don't know from France, but I an imagine exactly the setting here, and the quiet of the forest, and the way the inderbrush makes it hard to move and how it would be a perfectly lovely place for anyone not WORRIED ABOUT GETTING SHOT BY AMBUSH and all and hggg apparently I'm gonna have nightmares about more Hugo Scenery and this time it's going to be about a lovely little forest scene with birds singing all around and blood on the leaves and did I mention I live in the country and it's spring and there are birds singing all around WHILE I TYPE THIS and yeah,I'm kind of feelin' the scene here, GOOD MORNING INDEED.
But aside from the bloody shadow nightmare that constitutes a Hugo Woodlandscape, I really love this chapter? Or maybe because of the bloody Woodlandscape? Because, okay, this is some kinderundhausmarchen stuff, serious fairy tale time, and I fully realize that Grimm's collection wasn't put out until 1812 but the whole POINT of those stories is that they're around all OVER the place from way way back, and here's one of them: the mother and children fleeing the brutality of civilization, being taken in by the wild/dangerous denizens of the forest. And of COURSE it's another woman from outside the pale of the 'civilized' -- a Witch, basically, as these things go. who's comfortable in the wild places-- who reaches out to the mother first, and explains the rules of this new liminal place (because the Wild ALWAYS has rules) and yeah, I don't know how intentional any of this resonance is but I DID grow up on such fairy tales and I can't help feeling it. I MEAN. The children are ADOPTED BY THE REGIMENT, the wolves take in the twins, the fairies take in the lost princess, the children who've had their civil home taken are given one back by the wild.
Cimourdain turned towards Radoub,—
"Do you vote that the accused be absolved?"
"I vote," said Radoub, "to have him made generaL"
"I ask if you vote to have him acquitted."
"I vote to have him made the first in the Republic."
"Sergeant Radoub, do you vote to have the Commandant Gauvain acquitted,—yes or no?"
"I vote to have my head cut off instead of his."
"Acquittal," said Cimourdain. "Write, clerk."
The clerk wrote, "Sergeant Radoub: acquittal."