milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Spring has come to Milliways, in full warmth. The grass is greening, and the trees are in bud, and so forth. There are even trees in the mountains that are covered in pink flowers.

Were they there last year? Were they, in fact, there last week? Enjolras is not entirely certain on either count.

On the other hand: Milliways. He'll ask Bahorel, or Combeferre or Joly, if he thinks to bother, but he may not.

At any rate, he's sitting at the base of one of the pink trees, on a convenient flat rock. He has a book with him, as usual, but he's currently ignoring it in favor of an abstraction of thought.

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Sinric smiles warmly, "Between the warmth in the air and the cherry blossoms, it is certainly a day to enjoy."

He reaches out to catch a falling petal, letting it drift into his open palm. "The spring celebrations are my favourite festivals in the East."

"Is that your home?"

The East of where, he wonders. It's Milliways; hard to say.

"For now. I grew up in Constantinople but what made it my home is gone now. I am a traveler, a wanderer."

He smiles and shakes his head. "Forgive me, how rude." He bows, not curtsies. "My name is Sinric."

A bow, and no feminine endings on those nouns (in French, which is what Enjolras is hearing this conversation in), so -- okay! Good to know. Enjolras will proceed accordingly. And he's certainly not going to be disconcerted by Sinric's face, now that he knows how to mentally categorize him.

(Yeah the mun continues to apologize for her character's cultural assumptions.)

Enjolras inclines his head in a seated bow back. "I'm Jean-Sébastien Enjolras. Late of France, in 1832."

(Nothing to apologize for. Sinric lives to confuse people's cultural assumptions.)

"A pleasure to meet you. I have not yet traveled to the Frankish court but I hope to one day."

He folds his legs to sit with the grace of a dancer. "May I ask what you're reading?"

[OOC: Sorry, got pulled away unexpectedly for a while! And hee, yeah, I figured Sinric could deal. I was mostly apologizing to any readers bugged by the relentless binary categorizing.]

The Frankish court? Well, that dates it somewhat. Enjolras, interested, is about to pursue that question, but then Sinric asks his own.

"Henri Lefebvre," he says, offering the book for Sinric to look over or leaf through, as he likes. "Criticism of Everyday Life. He's a thinker of the twentieth century -- after my day, and fascinating."

Enjolras doesn't agree with everything Lefebvre says, but that's never the point.

(Enjolras is maybe kind of a nerd.)

Sinric tucks his blonde tresses back behind his ear and he accepts the book with a nod of thanks. He handles it as a precious thing, as all books are and opens it to scan the title page. "It looks fantastic. But the French of your day seems different from the written Frankish of my own time."

{ooc: no worries, I'm at work so my tagging will be sporadic for the next few hours anyway. And don't worry, I really enjoy the way Sinric's non-binary nature messes with people from different times.}

Edited 2016-03-29 02:54 (UTC)

All books are, indeed. It speaks well of him that he handles it so.

"Very likely. I don't know much about it, but I do know it changed somewhat."

And that's about all he knows. But Prouvaire could doubtless talk about it at length!

"In my day, some scholars still write in Greek and Latin, but French is common too. Later, more and more. It's a pity it led to greater difficulty in speaking across national borders, but all the same I think it's good to have scholarship in the tongue of the people."

He browse the page, following some if not quite all of the words. "I think with practice I could work this out. Perhaps Lady Bar will allow me a copy to study."

He smiles at that, warmly and gladly. "Greek and Latin are my mother and father tongues. It's a pleasure to know that are still used, that the legacy of the great Empires hold some sway."

Yyyyyyeah, well, great Empires.

Enjolras is not such a fan of those. But he is a fan of that kind of warm glad pride in a homeland, and of the foundations of democracy and republicanism that Greece and Rome provided in their day for later generations, and anyway those great Empires ended centuries ago, for him. It's not as personal a matter as, say, Napoleon Bonaparte.

"Very likely," is what he agrees. "She gives out books often, and there's the library too."

Enjolras is very fond of the library.

"And yes -- they do last, both of them. Any educated man in my day is taught the tongues of Greece and Rome, and their histories too."

Which he also has mixed feelings about, because that's its own kind of gatekeeping: that only someone whose family could afford to spend years schooling a child in classical antiquities instead of putting him to work can count as an educated man and attend university. But he won't get into that just now, not unless he's asked. Not with this man who smiles with such sudden gladness at the idea of Greek and Latin surviving into the 19th century. Enjolras is a man who responds to sincerity.

Sinric's eyes light up at mention of the library. Well done, Enjolras! You've found one of Sinric's passions.

"Oh, the library! It's exquisite, isn't it? I've lost myself for days in there and had to be rescued by my friends. Histories, philosophies, languages!" He bites his lip, pulling his enthusiasm back under control. "And free for everyone to access - regardless of rank or position."

"I'm very glad of that. The histories of great empires have lessons, both good and bad, than everyone should learn from. How can we move forward if we don't learn from the past?"

"Yes." That's to all of this; Enjolras is leaning forward slightly now, his own enthusiasm sparking.

"It's wonderful. That it's free for all -- as it should be; as all knowledge should be. You're quite right, I entirely agree, that we must learn from the past and move forward, with an eye to both its glories and its errors. And did you know, for those who can't read, Bar can give out learning materials? Not just primers, but recordings of the future, lesson-books made by people who studied how exactly to teach people best. Recordings of books too, like having a friend read a book aloud. All sorts of ways to make learning and knowledge available to everyone."

"Is it not wonderful!" His own eyes shine. "And primers too that mix both the written word and the spoken on a board no thicker than a wax tablet. The lady Bar has been so kind to me to lend me one such to speed the learning of languages unfamiliar to me in the roots."

"It's what every society should have. Equal access to learning and opportunity, and the liberty to pursue them, each as far as his interest carries him. But here, the resources go far beyond what we ever could have imagined."

True for him, at the dawn of the 19th century. How much more so for someone who lived centuries before Gutenberg made his printing press?

"If noble and slave alike could read together." He chuckles warmly. "What a world it would be. But even so - I have known many with all the means and opportunities any man could want who wouldn't bother to glance at a page. And those with nothing hunger for every word, every advancement. And vise versa. The desire must be within as well as the opportunities without."

"Of course. But the opportunity should be open to all. Some will flower with it, some will be content to only learn a bare minimum and turn away. But that chance should be a matter of each individual's interest. Not birth, or rank, or the choice between school fees and bread."

"Too true." Sinric nods sadly. "I count myself very luck to have had a master who provided me with both and chastised those who turned their noses up at teaching a mere slave."

"No one," says Enjolras, low and intense and utterly, palpably sincere, "should ever have to count himself lucky for that."

"And no one is a mere anything, no matter what chains others have unjustly inflicted upon him. Each of us is born equal in soul and in rights."

"Well, I do." Sinric answers with equal sincerity. "I was sold at a very young age. Things could have gone... very, very badly for me. But I was bought by a good man who loved me as a son and raised me with every advantage possible. His protection and patronage kept me safe and his edict freed me on his death. Because all he taught me, I'm free and able to travel more of the world than anyone else of my age has."

He lowers his eyes softly. "I know there are many here with passionate and sometimes forceful views on slavery but I will never be ashamed to have loved he who owned me. To my dying day."

Enjolras sits back slightly, though his intensity hasn't dimmed in the least. He wants to pick his words carefully.

Especially because he wants to persuade; he doesn't want, at all, ever, to bully. And it might be very easy to, here.

"I'm glad that he was a good man, and kind to you. I'd never want to tell you how to feel about him, or about anything. Your heart and mind are your own."

(It may or may not be clear in the language Sinric is hearing him in. But Enjolras switched from the familiar tu version of 'you' that he uses with nearly everyone, in egalitarian republican style, to the respectful vous, as soon as it became clear that Sinric was or had been a slave. He won't switch back, now or ever, unless explicitly asked to do so.)

"But I will never accept slavery as anything but abhorrent. A good man can be put in a position that forces him to injustice. He freed you, that's very good; but to free a man, one has the power to withhold freedom too. No one should have that power over another, just by right of birth or sale. It's wrong. He used that power kindly, I'm glad to hear it. You loved him, that's your right, to love wherever you love. But no one should ever have had that power over you or anyone else, however kind."

"They did. Of course it happened, I don't deny that. In my day there are slaves too, though future centuries will finish the work of abolishing slavery, thank God. But it shouldn't."

"Thank you for that." Sinric nods with a small smile. "Not everyone here has been as kind, or as wise as to separate my love for my master for the repression of slavery. Some have been... almost cruel about it." A shadow crosses his expression at the memory.

He listens, his head softly cocked as Enjolras speaks. "My master often said that what should be is the hardest act to enact, especially when what is conflicts with it bitterly. Centuries of custom and privilege acts like an anchor at sea, slowing down change. That anchor must either be cut free or reeled in."

"Cut free of a trailing anchor, the ship surged forward - unpredictable and wild, risking all. The change of an anchor reeled in is slow and may not be recognised at once but it is change. That was what he tried to do - to bring about stable change. Even he didn't have to power to end slavery but he did enact laws protecting slaves from harm and punishing those who hurt them. His progress wasn't great in his own time and much of that ground has since been lost by his son's disregard of his wisdom. But the good any man does in his life should not be disregarded. Even by history."

The risks and merits of gradual change versus violent upheaval is an old familiar discussion to Enjolras: well trodden, and complex, and always worth debating further.

But there are several things to potentially discuss, in what Sinric's just said. He listens to the end, and considers what to reply to first.

"It's certainly true that centuries of custom and privilege are hard to overturn, and resistant to change. It can be done. It has been. That's always a dilemma: to try for slow and gradual change, in hopes that it will be more stable, more lasting? Even if the present reality is all violence and suffering? An injustice like slavery or feudalism or poverty harms with every moment it continues. Or to cut the anchor, overthrow the injustice at a blow, meet the violence of the smoldering embers with the violence of the revolutionary volcano? The people of each society must answer that for themselves."

But not only the leaders.

"And which of these do you choose?" Sinric asks softly. "You speak as a man of passion and conviction. And no little learning on the subject."

"I?" Enjolras half-smiles. "The volcano, if it's necessary. Too often small gradual steps become smaller and smaller, until they're moving backward."

"But above all, the will of the people. Not Empire, but Republic."

"The open forum rather than the high throne. Yes, I think in his heart my master wanted that too. But he knew even the wisest council wouldn't hold, until they were strong as well was wise."

He breathes a sigh and rubs his eyes. "Forgive me. My memories make me maudlin sometimes. I suspect he would have taken great joy in your discourse. I, on the other hand, never had a head for politics. But spent many honours listening to men who did."

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