A Prologue to the Upcoming Poetry Paper

“Two friends who met here and embraced are gone/ Each to his own mistake”

--W.H. Auden “The Crossroads”

            After reading this epigraph of Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam, I immediately thought of Les Miserables and a song in it called “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.” For those of you who don’t know, Les Miserables is a quite long epic musical, based on an even longer book by Victor Hugo, set in France during the revolution.  In retrospect, the show probably came to the forefront of my subconscious during our discussion of Amsterdam’s redlight district, Les Miserables, too, features a prostitute as one of the leads, Fantine.  Aside from that weak connection, and the fact that both have settings in Europe, the two seem to have very little in common.  Except that quote.  I related it to one point in the show when Marius mourns the loss of his fellow revolutionaries after their failure of an uprising.  He sings, “Empty chairs at empty tables/ where my friends will meet no more.” While I think the “two friends” McEwan refers to in his epigraph will eventually represent the same “two lovers” that begin his novel: Clive and Vernon, I believe a lot of the same emotions relay between Marius’ thoughts in his song and Clive and Vernon’s many feelings.  They all seem to reflect back on the past with regret and pain.  They see some irreversible event, such as Molly Lane’s death or the deaths in the French revolution, and conjecture “what if?” filling their lives with the pain of reliving the past instead of living for the moment.  Judging by these slight parallels, Ian McEwan might do well to take a leaf out of Victor Hugo’s book and be more upfront about such a hopeless and grief-stricken plot in choosing a title.



The musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables



A photo of Victor Hugo: judge away!
I personally believe he looks like a Santa Claus that's
just been told he doesn't exist. Your thoughts?