That Ridiculous, Beautiful Radical

When I imagine Enjolras, I picture a constant breeze blowing through his golden hair. I see his hair billowing through some corner of the ABC Cafe, right by the “GIRLS KEEP OUT” sign. As he moves to the center of the room, I imagine him angling his head—that ridiculous, beautiful radical—not for stupid, vain, or girly reasons, but because he must. His golden locks wave like a flag in the wind, a flag that will signal the way to revolution. Therefore, he must look beautiful with his head angled just so—for the people! For Grantaire! 

However, in my imaginings, the one thing I could not fathom was how Enjolras took himself and his golden hair so seriously. To me, he seemed smart enough to see how insular he was, and that the microcosm he dominated was simply that—a microcosm. I could not see why he was so intent on exclusivity. Wasn’t his revolution in the name of “the masses”? Why exclude them? 

Even though I could not pronounce Enjolras’s name, I went to the Rue Sufflot in search of him. I called out On-shawl-ruh, and a golden head popped out of the window of a tiny cafe. I looked through the window into a cramped room, and I had my first answer: the masses simply would not have fit in The ABC Cafe. This is why “the Friends of the ABC were few in number. It was a secret society in embryo, we would say almost a clique, if cliques culminated in heroes” (584). The physical space necessitated a type of exclusion. In terms of physical room, there could not have comfortably been an ever-growing group. Especially because they are talking—talking about revolution, ideas, and life—the space is being filled in terms of breath and noise. The more people that breathe, the more heat fills the room. The more noise from talking, the less you can hear. To function as a group where ideas can be exchanged for a long period of time, there could not be a group large in number. Not to mention, there needed to be space for Enjolras’s hair. 

However, this is not to justify the “GIRLS KEEP OUT” sign metaphorically posted up at the doorway. As The Friends of the ABC were a university group, I would draw a direct line from whom they exclude to whom the university excludes. Thus, I went to the Sorbonne! 

I could not get into the Sorbonne. Entering into a university and seeing who is there, observing if people are friendly or competitive, and sensing if their noses are in books because they are precocious or passionate, felt essential to understanding Enjolras. But the walls of the Sorbonne are high. 

Not one to appreciate a wall, I tried to google “how to enter into the university’s libraries as a non-student.” Oddly enough, my search autocorrected to “how to break into the Sorbonne,” which was truly, tragically out of my control and I simply had no choice but to pursue the route of a “break in.” Pursue I did! After an hour of clicking, I stumbled upon an intricate, secret map in the depths of the Sorbonne’s website. It showed me that if I take the back path, turn right, turn right four more times, and hop over the lava mote, I will reach a secret door with a sign that says “Nice try.” 

I tell this story not because of its truth, but because it captures the energy of exclusivity around the University. In my difficulty accessing even the library, I saw Enjolras’s exclusivity in a new light. It seemed to me that there is a deep pride in exclusivity around any university space, and for Enjolras I saw the pride in exclusivity was also pride in purity. Exclusivity meant he was encouraged to weed out those not in line or likeness. He sought out “one true purity,” but as I walked around a university I could not even access, I saw who this excluded. As “most of the friends of the ABC were students who had an amiable understanding with a number of workers,” (584) it became clear to me that their exclusivity meant that university students of the 19th century—people who had access to certain ways of talking about revolution, time to spare where they could not be working, and were men—were an elite class often not grounded in reality. The guardedness of both of these spaces, the Sorbonne and The Friends of the ABC Cafe, made me question who “thought purity” was invented by, and whom it serves. 

I understood that Enjolras was able to take himself beyond seriously because he saw the microcosm he was leading to be made up of the only people capable of being leaders, thinkers, and revolutionaries. He did not see it as a microcosm, but as a “clique made up of heroes.” I do not observe this as a way to dismiss their revolution—I am not anti-intellectualism, nor do I think their actions were purely selfish. I think the exchange of ideas is essential to social progress; my issue is the idea that these conversations can only be had in academic spaces. What would their revolution have been if it had begun not in The ABC Cafe, but in a factory? On the street? In a home? In a shop? 

In university spaces, I often find there to be an emphasis on “belief.” What do people think, what do they read, what do they write? Enjolras is an “only son” and “well off” (585). He is approaching revolution with an air of belief—what does he think? What does he see? He deeply believes in the revolution. Yet, I observed within him and these spaces, a sense of belief rather than need. He does not need resources: food, water, or shelter. He needs a following, he needs belief. He wants to die for something grand bolstered by the purity of his thought. Without a revolution, his hair blows aimlessly in the wind. With a revolution, it is a glorious flag. 

Their revolutionary thought is bolstered by space—they are made to believe their thoughts are deeply important and essential. They are institutionally backed by the university and are told they are capable of great thought. I do not make this observation to insinuate their observations or beliefs are not important, but rather to consider who universities continue to bolster and protect. It seems the “GIRLS KEEP OUT” sign is always posted but constantly evolving. Who loses out when learning is confined to certain years, certain spaces, and certain roles? What do we gain when we create physical spaces that necessitate inclusion? What is the difference between a  microcosm and a community? How do we recalibrate to focus on bringing people in rather than leaving them out? How do we continue to cultivate revolutionary spaces? 

Although the ABC Cafe is a highly imperfect model of exclusion, there is such a truth for me within it. It shows the importance of physical spaces where people feel safe to exchange ideas, change their way of thinking, and let these discussions lead to action. With one sentence, Marius allows himself to rethink his relationship with Napoleon. How many spaces have I been in where I witnessed someone change their thinking rather than defend it? 

For me, Enjolras ultimately becomes a sort of cautionary tale. There are so many things I want to fight for with my community. I relate to the fervor of wanting change. I understand seeing what needs to be destroyed and reborn, and believing it can be done. The ability to fight is a sort of deep optimism and hope. What I don’t relate to, however, is Enjolras’s joyless pursuit of revolution. Hugo writes, “He was serious; he seemed unaware that there was on earth a creature called woman. He had only one passion: rightfulness. Only one thought: to remove any obstacle to it” (585). Enjolras was dead long before he was murdered. I do not want to be loveless in my pursuit of revolution. I do not want my passion to be “rightfulness” rather than “community.” 

I wonder what the revolution would have been if Enjolras had taken himself and that golden hair less seriously. What would have been if the fierce leader fell in love—with a woman or community or dark hair? Who would have been let into the space? Who would have made it out alive? 

Drawing by Vidya Iyer

Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?

I’m not sure. But, here are a few watercolors I have done to focus on smaller elements of Bookpacking. I have used them to better understand our authors’ perceptions, spend time with specific details I would have missed with only one glance, and encourage myself to quietly reflect.

Chapels and Snails

The Sainte-Chapelle is contrast. It is built by workers’ hands, but enjoyed only by the monarchy’s eyes. It is damaged by revolutionaries in the name of all that is wrong with France, yet restored in the 19th century in the name of all that is beautiful in France. When there is murmuring, there is a shout asking for quiet. There is a side of stained glass illuminated by the sun, then there is a side nobody faces. Even colors that aren’t complementary find a way to sharply contrast, red and blue emerging against each other as they fight and rest. It is a place Jean Valjean—the convict—would have been refused entry; it is a place Marius’s grandfather—the staunch monarchist—would have refused to enter. Yet, this is only what it is. 

The magic of the Saint-Chapelle is in what it does. There is a line in Les Mis when Victor Hugo describes perhaps the most profound character in the novel (yet the only character to “parish” in the musical) as someone who “knew when to remain silent, so also he knew when to speak. O wonderful comforter! He did not try to blot out sorrow through oblivion but to magnify and dignify it through hope. He said, ‘Mind which way you look at the dead. Don’t think of what perishes. Look hard. You’ll see the living light of your dead departed up there in heaven.’ He knew that faith is healing. He sought to transform the grief that dwells on the grave by teaching the grief that dwells on a star” (Hugo 19). This character is the Bishop, and this is what the Sainte-Chapelle does.

“Mind which way you look at the dead.” I sit facing the sunny side. I feel close to a current as I gaze up at the stained glass; I feel far from religion. I always feel the farthest when I am in the closest. I do not go into churches or chapels anymore—only for funerals. Suddenly, I see Death everywhere in the stained glass.  It is too beautiful to be absent of grief. There is loss within the reds and blues, acute and infinite. There is fear for all you have left to lose. How lucky is that? Death is everywhere. But, that means so is life. I mind which way I look at Death. 

“Don’t think of what perishes. Look hard. You’ll see the living light of your dead departed up there in heaven.” I have a headache from staring at the bright light, but I do not want to wear sunglasses and dim the colors. It reminds me of Jean Valjean’s passing. In contrast, I imagine him sitting in the light of candles. I imagine Cosette got a headache from squinting, from trying to watch his face through shadows. I hear her saying it is “too soon, too soon to say goodbye.” She does not say it is too soon “to die,” but refocuses on the “goodbye.” It is “too soon” for her to be without him. Her head already hurts from trying to see through darkness; the living light of her dead departed would blind her. I turn to look at the side without the sun. The colors are muted, but my eyes ease. There is a beautiful piece of poetry from one of my favorite songs, If We Were Vampires by Jason Isbell.  My eyes do not hurt as badly from light, so I put on the song. He sings, “If we were vampires and death was a joke//We’d go out on the sidewalk and smoke// And laugh at all the lovers and their plans//I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand//Maybe time running out is a gift//I’ll work hard 'til the end of my shift//And give you every second I can find//And hope it isn't me who's left behind.” I feel the current run through my hands, but I do not try to catch it. 

“He knew that faith is healing.” The longer I stare, the more I become a part. I Flânuer my way through thoughts of religion and loss and the bishop and Cosette. I sit for some time with my head empty. I breathe and it is nice. I think and I feel angry. Cosette has so little characterization beyond perfection and that is not real. This chapel is visually perfect but it is not real. The Bishop is good and selfless and caring and healing. He is not a real man, but I choose to believe he is. Cosette is an archetype, but her asking her father to stay feels so real. The chapel is intertwined with the religion I resent, and I love it. It makes me choke up, and that is real. Death is everywhere, and sometimes I don’t know what to do with Life. 

“He sought to transform the grief that dwells on the grave by teaching the grief that dwells on a star.” There is contrast in everything, meaning Life and Death can only emerge against each other as they fight and rest. When I observe this contrast, I want to clarify that I do not mean I see it as existing on an axis or set of scales. They are not weighing against each other, nor are they unconnected in their opposition. I see contrast as hands holding—not forces pushing. I left the chapel thoughtful and tearful and content. 

That night, I walked through the streets. The characters of Les Mis were easier to imagine as I wandered in fading light through smells of piss. I imagined Jean Valjean walking, thinking of the Bishop’s gift as he tried to find peace and look over his shoulder. I jump at the sound of approaching footsteps. They are my own—I am walking through a tunnel and they are echoing. I continue, brought back from my mind, and I realize I have found my way into a garden. It is filled with tunnels and trees and leaves and even two snails, one named Enjolras and one named Gavroche. The Bishop is not in the garden. He, in his ethereal forgiveness, feels far removed from my realm of living. I am often sad and angry, and often for significant reasons. I am no prophet or mage. I am just a girl who went to the Sainte-Chapelle and loved it, and is now walking through a garden feeling at home and paranoid. I contrast myself and the Bishop.

Gavroche the snail slugs by. He has a piece of paper with him. He looks up at me with his little antennas, and I realize the paper is for me. I pat his shell and say thank you. He moves along, and I think of the magic of the Sainte-Chapelle. The paper reads, “There was nothing of the prophet and nothing of the mage about him. This humble soul loved, that is all” (Hugo 55).

Hidden Human Beings and Elevated Stone

The infrastructure of London serves to elevate and hide. It elevates the power of “the law,” the Royal Courts of Justice obtrusive and opulent as you walk along the streets of Holborn. Written into the stone of this building, home of the highest court in England, is the promise to “defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer.” By intertwining the punishment of “the wrongdoer” with the defense of the most vulnerable, the stone asserts the separation of these two icons, casting people into a binary of vulnerability or moral corruption. By defining the people the law is punishing as “wrongdoers,” rather than someone who has committed a “wrongdoing,” the stone inscription asserts that one side of this binary is defined by their “punishable act.” It sensationalizes the idea of the “wrongdoer” and, perhaps most sinisterly, I find there to be an underlying assertion that we are not all capable of being “wrongdoers.” These ideas are elevated and threaded throughout the city with sounds and visuals. I hear police sirens, the clopping of hooves, and see the shadow of police. I find myself thinking about those who have been labeled as “wrongdoers,” in both the Dickensian time and in our contemporary moment. As I walk through Soho Square, all I find myself remembering is the phrase by Bryan Stevenson, the idea that “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

Then there is the hidden infrastructure. We move from one side of the street with noise and life, turning the corner to where people were incarcerated in Dickens’s time. Life becomes silence, dark brick eats the sun rather than reflects it, and walls close in rather than enclose. The alley that previously held a prison seems to hide the city from the alley. I think about all the people who were hidden here, reflecting on the idea that Tellson’s, an allegory for Britain, “had taken so many lives, that if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had” (Dickens 57). If the law did not hide people away within its infrastructure, would we feel comfortable looking? Who is qualified to decide who deserves light and who doesn’t? Where do you place a culture within your heart when it shoves you on the other side of the dark brick wall?

Yet, as I pass through the alley and return to the street, I remember that I find the city beautiful. I found the Royal Courts of Justice beautiful, too. However, I find people the most beautiful. I feel sad for all those that had the city stolen from them. A siren passes, and I cross the street.

I think it is important to note that I do not find “the crime” a person commits to be relevant to my observations of police states. Within an infrastructure that elevates and hides, I also see that “the wrongdoer” is simultaneously hidden and elevated. Those such as Jack the Ripper are elevated, sensationalized, and meant to show us the “deep necessity of prisons.” There are tours throughout London of old prisons and the streets where Jack the Ripper murdered women. These stories being elevated turns a profit. However, the acknowledgment that those whom the law labels “wrongdoers” are disproportionately Black people, brown people, and “the children of the poor” is hidden. It ignores the idea that “crime” does not exist in a vacuum, that colonization is deemed “lawful” and therefore moral, but a colonized people merely existing, makes them “nearly twice as likely as white people to die either during or immediately after contact with police” (Fitzpatrick). We must be in a constant process of elevating our sense of humanity—of remembering who creates the law, who wields the law, and whom the law hurts.

Walking through the streets of London, I do not find it naive to believe in empathy nor to see “the wrongdoer” as a construct rather than a person. I am operating from a different vantage point. I am thinking of the bishop in Les Mis, who gives mercy and understanding freely and without hesitation. I think of Javert, who elevates the law above all and hides his humanity below. I think of Dickens, who worked as a child laborer to survive. I think of the trial of Charles Darnay and the sensationalized need for prosecution. I do not see myself as incapable of being a “wrongdoer,” or being deemed “a wrongdoer” by the state. Although there is complexity in empathy, and often discomfort in what it asks of us, I think it is far more encompassing than the idea that “we must have police and prisons.”

As I walked through Russel Square Park, I realized that although I could point any passerby in the direction of the old Dickensian prisons, The Royal Courts of Justice, or draw a police car from memory, I did not know where current prisons were in London. In my observation of what was elevated, I saw the gaping hole of the hidden. Reading the guidebook on UK prison and probation, “DoingTime,” I learned there are three major prisons within the city of London: Wormwood Scrubs, Isis, and Wandsworth. For those incarcerated, the journey to the prisons is “slow, noisy, and uncomfortable,” and upon arrival, people are subjected to a search that is described as “humiliating and intrusive.” Upon arrival into their cells, those incarcerated find that “most [cells] are filthy when you arrive as the turnover of prisoners is rapid and nobody has time to clean their cell when they are moved out […] the cells have a loo but there is little or no privacy and ventilation is poor or non-existent” (DoingTime). I read this sitting in Russel Square Park among tourists and dogs and locals rolling cigarettes. I read this an hour after reading A Tale of Two Cities. I think, too often, the idea of “progress” falls into the category of the elevated, and reality into the hidden.

When a self-declared “impartial law” locks away person after person at an alarming rate, we have to ask ourselves what problems prisons are truly solving. For the remainder of my journey, I will be elevating the wise words of Angela Davis within my observations: “Prisons do not disappear social problems; they disappear human beings.”

Sources:

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Penguin Classics, 2012.

Fitzpatrick, Flora. “Guide: Police Brutality in the UK.” A News Education, 22 Dec. 2021, www.anewseducation.com/post/police-brutality-in- the-uk.

DoingTime. DoingTime, a Guide to Prison and Probation, 31 Jan. 2014, doingtime.co.uk/how-prisons-work/the-first-weeks-in-custody/transport-to-the-prison/.