nevver:
Victor Hugo
… okay? i can’t help but be bothered by this quote attributed to hugo. true, he wrote it, but taking this specific clause away from the context is unjust. the full passage is as follows:
"I admire Enjolras," said Bossuet. "His impassive temerity astounds me. He lives alone, which renders him a little sad, perhaps; Enjolras complains of his greatness, which binds him to widowhood. The rest of us have mistresses, more or less, who make us crazy, that is to say, brave. When a man is as much in love as a tiger, the least that he can do is to fight like a lion. That is one way of taking our revenge for the capers that mesdames our grisettes play on us. Roland gets himself killed for Angelique; all our heroism comes from our women. A man without a woman is a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman that sets the man off. Well, Enjolras has no woman. He is not in love, and yet he manages to be intrepid. It is a thing unheard of that a man should be as cold as ice and as bold as fire."
Enjolras did not appear to be listening, but had any one been near him, that person would have heard him mutter in a low voice: “Patria.”
the sentence is pronounced by bossuet. BOSSUET, who thought it apt to make a jibe about enjolras’s sex life in the heat of battle. BOSSUET, who is one of the few characters in les mis in a healthy, romantic, non-codependent relationship. he would be the last person to proclaim that the validity of one being depends on another. he set it up as a form of a joke, and not one to endorse unbalanced relationships.
also, the point of the whole passage, including enjolras’s stealthy response, is that it IS entirely possible to be passionate without having a partner. the quote above is part of a larger argument against itself.
normally, i would scroll past this but it’s dear old vhugs’s birthday, and misquoting him like this in this day of all days is just too sad.
