English translations

[lannamichaels]

I've got a weekend family thing happening, so naturally I want to bring the Brick with me and hopefully finish the parts of it I haven't read yet. I've been reading the Hapgood translation on Project Gutenburg, but that's an ebook. I've got the following dead tree translations on hold at the library and was wondering which is considered the best/you like better?

• Charles E. Wilbour
  
• Julie Rose
  
• Norman Denny
  

(no subject)

[skygiants]

So I keep wondering why Enjolras expects Marius to show up and be helpful in the Barriere du Maine scene; after all, we're told that after the Great Napoleon Debacle, Marius essentially storms off in a huff and never goes back to revolutionland again. Also, he is Marius. Myself, I can think of about four reasons:

1. Unreliable/ambiguous narrator: Marius had been hanging out with the gang before Napoleongate way more than the text implies.

2. Marius has not been hanging out with the gang, but Courfeyrac trusts him enough that he asks him to run errands sometimes when it would be useful to have an unfamiliar face show up, which he does because of the debt he feels he owes Courfeyrac, and Enjolras interprets this as Marius being way more interested in revolution than he actually is. This would actually be an interesting fic-premise -- Marius Pontmercies his way through a revolutionary errand he knows nothing about; hijinks ensue!

3. Enjolras really is JUST THAT DESPERATE. Maybe all the redshirt revolutionaries have gone home for the summer holidays. Or are dying of cholera.

4. Enjolras is not actually talking about our Marius at all, but about a friend of his named Jean or Pierre or Guifford Marius. Jean Marius has been very lax about showing up to meetings recently and we are VERY DISAPPOINTED in him.