'
'The History of a Crime,' published in 1877, was not new: it was
that history of the coup d'état of December 2d, 1851, which he had
written before publishing 'Napoleon the Little' in 1852.
'The History of a Crime,' published in 1877, was not new: it was
that history of the coup d'état of December 2d, 1851, which he had
written before publishing 'Napoleon the Little' in 1852.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
bethought themselves that the charac-
ter of his ancestor Louis XIII. was presented in the drama in a way
## p. 7713 (#531) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7713
The per-
not calculated to increase the public respect for royalty.
formance was forbidden. The manager was almost heart-broken. But
within a few weeks, under the excitement produced by the royal
government's arbitrary act, the poet wrote his immortal drama of
'Hernani'; full of the passions of love and honor, one of the great
poems of youthful enthusiasm for what is lovable and beautiful.
'Hernani' was performed on February 25th, 1830, on the last day
of the poet's twenty-eighth year. The date is considered one of the
great dates in the history of French literature. It is known as the
"Battle of Hernani. " The advocates of the old and new schools met,
determined to give decisive battle to each other. Applause and hiss-
ing mingled; more direct arguments were used; blows even were
given and received. On each night the fight was renewed, with this
result that the applause grew stronger every time the play was
given, until criticism was finally silenced and drowned under the
majestic flow of poetry that came from the lips of Hernani and
Doña Sol, Don Carlos and Ruy Gomez de Silva.
<
Attention has often been called to the fact that in their most
poetical plays, both Corneille and Hugo treated Spanish subjects. But
while Corneille found in the plays of Guilhen de Castro the plot of his
'Cid, the plot of Hernani' is entirely original. No incident in the
life of Hugo's Don Carlos- that is, of the Emperor Charles V. -ever
happened, upon which to build such a drama as the one in which the
French poet gives him such a conspicuous part. But Hugo had re-
tained a very vivid memory of his stay in Spain as a boy, and both
the country and time in which he places the development of his plot
were favorite ones with the Romanticists. Both offered great oppor-
tunities for the display of that local color in scenery, costumes, and
even speech, upon which the new school so much depended; and by
the impression left in the minds of men they also somewhat justified
and made acceptable to the public the exaggerations, the sharp con-
trasts, which had from the start formed an important part of Hugo's
literary equipment. Hernani' presents to us a struggle between a
bandit and a king, both in love with the same woman. The king
experiences within his own heart a struggle of no mean importance,
in which his better nature finally triumphs, when by his election as
Emperor he is called to higher responsibilities. The girl who is loved
by him and by Hernani, Doña Sol, is also loved by an old uncle, a
pattern of nobility and loftiness, and none the less passionate because
of his years; so that we have the contrast not only of king and
bandit, but also of old age and youth. The poet carries us through
the phases best calculated to set off his scenes of love and his con-
tests of passions: the castle of Silva, Charlemagne's tomb, the illumin-
ated palace of the former bandit, now "Don Juan of Aragon,” on the
XIII-483
## p. 7714 (#532) ###########################################
7714
VICTOR HUGO
night of his bridal fête. But more than any of the features of the
plot, which after all is hardly more than a very skillfully constructed
melodrama, that which caused the success of the play, and makes it
one of the masterpieces of literature, is the enchanting poetry of all
the love passages.
All the joys and all the torments, all the hopes
and all the doubts, the triumph and the despair of this eternally
young passion, find there melodious expressions which remain for-
ever in the mind and ear of readers and spectators. When Hernani
and Doña Sol, their vital parts already withered by the deadly poi-
son which old Silva had prepared for one of them, and which both
have absorbed, say,- one had almost written sing,-"Toward new
and brighter lights we shall expand our wings. With even flight
we set forth towards a better world," we all envy their happiness;
and in their final embrace, Death disappears under the tread of all-
conquering Love.
It need hardly be said that in the construction of his play Hugo
departed entirely from the old classical system: there was no unity of
time, no unity of place. But he is, it must be admitted, still further
away from Shakespeare than from Racine and Corneille. Nothing
differs more from Shakespearean simplicity of style than Hugo's
majestic, harmonious, and dazzlingly rhetorical, metaphorical, dodeca-
syllabic lines. Indeed, the beauties of this play are decidedly more
lyrical than dramatic. But the fact remained that a French play
which is a masterpiece had been written in a system different from
the old one; and the victory had been won for the "new school. "
The triumph of 'Hernani' was nothing less than a literary revolu-
tion. It was soon followed by a political revolution. In July 1830,
the government of the Bourbons, which had been reinstated in France
by the victorious foreigners after the defeat and fall of Napoleon,
was brought to an end by a rising of the Paris population, enthusias
tically applauded by the whole of France. Hugo, who had been in
youth a stanch supporter of the Bourbons, had like many others
been estranged, little by little, by the contempt which the Bourbons
and the court circles showed for the glorious soldiers of the Revo-
lution and the Empire, and by a succession of arbitrary measures
which showed that the spirit of the ancien régime was far from dead
and still threatened the dearly bought liberty of France. He shared
the popular enthusiasm for the Revolution of 1830, hailed it as a
promise of greatness for France and of enfranchisement for the peo-
ple, and returned to his literary labors with a faith in his own powers
increased by the ever growing applause of the public.
The thirteen years that followed may be called Hugo's happy
years. They were years of remarkable productiveness. In 1831 he
published his first great novel, 'Notre Dame de Paris. ' The same
## p. 7715 (#533) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7715
year witnessed the first performance of 'Marion Delorme'; and ix
other dramas-three in prose, Marie Tudor,' 'Lucrèce Borgia,' and
'Angelo, Tyran de Padua,' and three much greater in verse, 'Le Roi
s'Amuse' (The King's Diversion), 'Ruy Blas,' and 'Les Burgraves'-
followed each other between 1832 and 1843. In the same period
appeared four collections of lyrics, in no way inferior to those that
had preceded them: Les Feuilles d'Automne' (Autumn Leaves), 'Les
Chants du Crépuscule (Twilight Songs), 'Les Voix Intérieures' (Inner
Voices), and 'Les Rayons et les Ombres' (Sunbeams and Shadows).
This alone would suffice for the glory of a great writer. It is only a
small part, and assuredly not the highest, of Hugo's magnificent pro-
duction.
―
Perhaps the most successful of these works was 'Notre Dame de
Paris, the great novel often bearing the English title 'The Hunch-
back of Notre Dame'. a title to some extent misleading. Quasimodo
the Hunchback, though undoubtedly a very important character, is
certainly not the centre of the novel. The bewitching gipsy girl,
Esmeralda, plays as important a part in it as he does; and perhaps
the same may be said of the terrible priest, Claude Frollo. In Hugo's
mind the centre of the novel was the church of Notre Dame itself.
True to the tendencies of the literary school which acknowledged him
as its head, after seeking inspiration in the East and in Spain he
undertook to do for the Middle Ages what Châteaubriand, in 'Atala'
and in Les Martyrs,' had attempted to do for Christianity. Both
of these themes had been kept out of French literature by the Clas-
sical School. Their right to be in it was one of the tenets of the
Romanticists, and 'Notre Dame de Paris' gloriously established the
soundness of their position. The Gothic cathedral is the centre
of the novel, as it was the centre of mediæval life: everything and
everybody, king and poet, priest and Bohemian, the knight clad in
brilliant armor and Clopin Trouillefou the hideous truand, Quasimodo
the hunchback and La Sachette the bestialized lunatic,-in whom
still survives the saintliest feeling of mankind, maternal love,— move
in and around the majestic building whose uplifted towers carry up
to heaven the prayer and lamentation of suffering humanity. The
central character is the relentless force under which every human
destiny bends: the Fate of the ancients, whose Greek name, Anankè,
deciphered by the poet on an old forgotten wall, is taken as title of
one of the most astonishing chapters of this prodigious work.
The dramas were not all equally successful. Marion Delorme'
did not win, and did not deserve, the same popularity as 'Hernani. '
'Le Roi s'Amuse' - the plot of which has become so popular with
opera-goers in Verdi's 'Rigoletto,' and with theatre-goers under its
English name of 'The Fool's Revenge' — was taken from the boards
-
## p. 7716 (#534) ###########################################
7716
VICTOR HUGO
after its first performance, by order of the government, which de-
clared it to be an immoral play. The real reason was that an
immoral part in it is ascribed to a king of France, Francis I. ; the
proscription being one of the signs that though crowned by a revolu-
tion, King Louis Philippe the citizen king cared more for his crown
than for the liberal aspirations to which he owed it. The poet claimed
redress from the courts, without any satisfaction save the opportunity
of delivering a superb oration in defense of the rights of authors.
The drama was at last revived, under the Third Republic, fifty years
after its first performance.
The prose dramas were not very favorably received. It seemed
that the public could hardly conceive of Hugo's characters expressing
themselves otherwise than in verse. One of these dramas, 'Lucrèce
Borgia,' provided Donizetti with the libretto of his famous opera.
'Ruy Blas' was a decided success, and with Hernani' and 'Les
Burgraves' represents the best work that Hugo has done as a dram-
atist. Like Hernani,' 'Ruy Blas' is a Spanish play; that is, the
action takes place in Spain, and the characters are Spanish. But
there is this difference between the two dramas: that while in 'Her-
nani' Hugo drew everything from his imagination, in Ruy Blas he
made use of a great deal of historical material. The plot itself - the
story of the lackey who under an assumed name rises to the high-
est dignities of the State, and who, filled with the purest love and
reverence for the unhappy queen, is rewarded by the gift of her
heart-is entirely imaginary; but the picture of the court of Spain
under Charles II. is in many respects a historical picture, except
that everything which Hugo ascribes to Charles II. 's second wife was
true not of her, but of his first wife, a French princess, daughter of
Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orléans, who died but a short time
after her marriage with the King of Spain.
-
In 'Ruy Blas,' as in 'Hernani,' the means chiefly used by the
poet to produce emotion in the spectator is contrast. The characters
are a queen, who is no better than a prisoner; a nobleman, Don
César de Bazan, who is a beggar and a tramp; a lackey, Ruy Blas,
who loves a queen. The mover of the plot, Don Salluste de Bazan,
is a disgraced nobleman, who, after being dismissed by the influence
of the queen, suddenly disappears, and while moving in the darkness
tries to ensnare her into a situation in which her honor and reputa-
tion are bound to perish. She is saved by the devotion and readi-
ness of Ruy Blas, but not until he has given up his life with the last
sigh of his love for her. 'Ruy Blas' is perhaps a better constructed
drama than 'Hernani,' and yet it does not hold the spectator as
powerfully as its predecessor. The reason is that while the love
passages are supremely poetical, the situation is too impossible to be
## p. 7717 (#535) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7717
made credible. But with all its shortcomings, 'Ruy Blas' remains a
beautiful drama, which may perhaps share with 'Hernani' the honor
of remaining on the stage long after the other dramas of Hugo shall
be known only by the reading public.
Can we say the same of 'Les Burgraves'? It is hard to answer.
When first performed, in 1843, the drama was a failure. It has never
been revived since; and yet it is a favorite with Hugo's greatest
admirers, and every year some of its scenes are successfully pre-
sented in France by the young men and women who are preparing
to enter the dramatic profession. The lassitude of the public toward
a drama full of the most extraordinary contrasts may well be under-
stood. Would it, however, strike in the same way spectators who
had not had presented to them in a dozen years all the dramatic
works of Hugo? The question is likely to receive some day a prac-
tical answer, for 'Les Burgraves' holds such a place in the affections
of lovers of French poetry that it is sure to be put upon the boards
again. Some of the characters of this play are almost too great and
too powerful to be human. Barbarossa, Job, Magnus, the relentless
old woman Guanhumara, might be accepted in a music drama; but
when they use the words and the voice which are used in every-day
life, we cannot but see in them men and women like ourselves, while
their actions are impossible for such men and women. And yet there
is a logic in the drama, a nobleness of inspiration, that compel ad-
miration. Side by side with the gigantic and the degenerate figures
that battle against each other, and call up before our eyes the robber
barons of mediæval Germany, we have the fresh love idyl of Otbert
and Regina, which casts a ray of sunshine over the darkness of the
background. Whatever verdict may be ultimately passed upon 'Les
Burgraves' as a drama, it is certainly a powerful poem, and in parts
an exquisite one.
But for the highest poetical outpourings of Victor Hugo during
this period of his life, we must turn to his collection of lyrics. He
is essentially a lyric poet; and his glory rests more upon such pro-
ductions as 'Les Feuilles d'Automne' and 'Les Chants du Crépus-
cule than upon any of his dramas save 'Hernani. '
The lyric poems published between 1830 and 1843 cover as wide
a range of private and public events as anything a poet ever wrote.
All the qualities for which Hugo has been praised appear in them,
carried to the highest degree. His poems on childhood, a theme
which perhaps no poet ever treated so felicitously, are especially
notable. Later in life, in 1877, he published a volume of verse
entirely devoted to children, 'L'Art d'Être Grand-père' (The Art of
Grandfatherhood), the heroes of which were his grandchildren George
and Jeanne.
In the earlier book the children were his own children,
## p. 7718 (#536) ###########################################
7718
VICTOR HUGO
Charles and François-Victor, Adèle and Léopoldine,-fated, alas! all
to precede him to the grave save one, whose fate was sadder than
death itself, since her vanished reason did not even allow her to
know whether her illustrious father remained among the living or
slept among the dead! But the greatest poems undoubtedly are
those that deal with themes of public interest. It is the period in
which the worship of Napoleon reached its highest point. It came to
its climax on December 15th, 1840, when, under a dazzling sky and
through the crispest and coldest air Paris ever knew, the remains of
the great soldier, given back to France by England, were carried to
the home of the old soldiers of France, and laid under the dome of
the Invalides, giving fulfillment at last to the wish of the Emperor:
"I wish to rest on the banks of the Seine, among those Frenchmen
whom I have loved so much! " No writer so constantly and fervently
joined, or rather led, in this Napoleonic worship as Victor Hugo; and
we must add that in no subject was he so much at ease as in these
Napoleonic themes. The greatness of the man, the greatness of the
events, the contrast between the height of power to which he attained
and the depth of misery which succeeded the splendor of his tri-
umphs, all these elements admirably blended with the love of the
gigantic, the admiration for contrast and antithesis, the gorgeous
imagery which distinguished Hugo's muse. The poet took hold of
every occasion that presented itself of celebrating the hero of the
century. When Napoleon's son died, he wrote his 'Napoleon II. . '
one of his most perfect productions; when the Chamber of Deputies
refused to replace Napoleon's statue on the top of the Vendôme
column, he wrote his second 'Ode to the Column of the Place Ven-
dôme'; when Napoleon's remains returned to France, the 'Return of
the Emperor's Ashes,' etc. These various pieces, which at a later
period culminated in the Expiation,' form together a Napoleonic epic
of great splendor and stateliness, in every way worthy of the prodi-
gious man around whom it centres.
For nearly ten years after the performance of 'Les Burgraves'
Hugo published very little. He wrote a great deal, for he was an
indefatigable worker; but completed no drama, no novel, brought no
collection of verse to that point of perfection which he required of
his productions before submitting them to the public. The reason
we find in a terrible domestic calamity which befell him in the fall
of 1843. His oldest daughter, Léopoldine, who had but a few months
before become the wife of a young man of great promise, M. Charles
Vacquerie, was with her husband drowned in the Seine, at Villequier,
not very far from the mouth of the river. The exact circumstances
of the catastrophe have never been discovered. Its effect was to
destroy in the poet, so happy till then, this joy of life which some
1
## p. 7719 (#537) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7719
natures need as much as the air which they breathe. Hugo sought
diversion from his grief in the study of public questions and in
political activity. Louis Philippe made him a peer of France; and
the people, after the fall of Louis Philippe and the establishment of
the Republic (1848), made him a member of the National Assembly.
There Hugo for a while hesitated between the Conservatives and
the Democrats. The savage measures which, after the socialistic in-
surrection of June 1848, were adopted and enforced by the victorious
bourgeoisie against the deluded, rebellious, but thoroughly honest and
moreover starving workingmen of Paris, put a stop to his hesitations.
He cast in his lot with the party of mercy, that is, with the advanced
Republicans. In their camp he soon became one of the foremost
leaders. He soon discerned in Louis Bonaparte an ambition which
foreboded evil to the republic of which, as the nephew of Napoleon
the Great, he had been elected President, and in a memorable and
fiery oration dubbed him Napoleon the Little.
The military coup d'état of December 2d, 1851, by which the re-
publican constitution was violently destroyed, found Hugo among the
citizens most energetically determined to resist by force the violation
of the supreme law. He risked his life in defending the rights of
the people against the imperial usurper, and after the final defeat
of the Constitutionalists had to flee from the country, swearing not
to return as long as liberty itself remained an exile from France.
His exile lasted longer than he had expected, but was not an un-
fruitful one. During the eighteen years 1853-1870-which he spent
first in Brussels, whence he was soon expelled by the Belgian govern-
ment; then in the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, where he
finally bought an estate, Hauteville House, which became to him a
real home - he published a political pamphlet, 'Napoleon the Little,'
four great collections of verse,- - 'Les Châtiments (The Chastise-
ments), 'Les Contemplations,' 'La Légende des Siècles' (The Legend
of the Ages), 'Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois' (Songs of the
Streets and Woods); and three novels, of which 'Les Misérables' is
considered one of the masterpieces of the century, the other two
being 'Les Travailleurs de la Mer (The Toilers of the Sea), and
'L'Homme Qui Rit' (The Man Who Laughs).
This does not include all that he wrote during his exile. Indeed,
the first work which he composed after leaving France, the History
of a Crime,'-which, begun on December 13th, 1851, was completed
on May 5th, 1852,—was not published until twenty-five years later, in
1877. Instead of the history of the political crime committed by Louis
Bonaparte on December 2d, 1851, Hugo published in 1852 his immortal
pamphlet 'Napoleon the Little,' every page of which reads as though
his pen had been dipped in incandescent lava; and a year later
## p. 7720 (#538) ###########################################
7720
VICTOR HUGO
(1853) The Chastisements,' which must perhaps rank in the whole
range of poetry as the highest masterpiece of political invective.
These two works, Napoleon the Little' and 'The Chastisements,'
are inseparable from each other; the latter is the poetical comment-
ary of the former. As long as Napoleon III. reigned, their circula-
tion was absolutely forbidden in France, and nearly every Frenchman
who took a trip out of the country was asked by his friends to
smuggle in some copies of the forbidden books on his return.
The chief beauty of The Chastisements,' the most perfect produc-
tion of Hugo's poetical genius, lies in the incredible variety of the
book. It is not all political invective: it contains superb pieces of
pure narrative poetry, like the Memory of the Night of the Fourth,'
the simple story of the death and burial of a child killed by a stray
bullet of Napoleon's soldiers; comic songs; pieces of poetical fancy,
like the 'Imperial Mantle'; weird and severe dialogues between man
and his conscience, like 'The Seaside'; humorous dialogues, like 'The
Three Horses'; and amid this profusion of minor pieces one composi-
tion of truly epic grandeur, 'L'Expiation,' where the greatness of the
first Napoleon is contrasted with the unworthiness of his successor,
and where the poet, discovering by the light of events the stain on
his former hero's escutcheon,- that is, the insatiable ambition which
led him early in his career to the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire of
the year VIII. (November 9th, 1799), by which he substituted his own
personal power for the free republican institutions then possessed by
France, shows in the success of the nephew's nefarious deed the
punishment of the uncle's insufficiently requited sin.
―――――――――――
'Contemplations,' which followed in 1856, is a very different work.
The book contains pieces belonging to various and widely distant
years of the poet's life. Some pieces are dated 1834, some 1854. It
is a record of the poet's inner being. A whole division of the work,
'Pauca Meæ,' consists of pieces devoted to the memory of his dead
daughter. Hugo never wrote anything finer, purer, more touching,
than these verses. And in another part of the book we find an
'Answer to an Impeachment,' which is an admirably witty (we had
almost said saucy), poetical, and lucid explanation of what he had
considered his literary mission to be.
In 1859 he published the 'Legend of the Ages,' or rather a vol-
ume containing a number of the pieces which now form, in the com-
plete collection of his writings, a much larger work by the same title.
The finest pieces of the 'Legend of the Ages'-'The Consecration of
Woman,' 'The First Meeting of Christ at the Tomb,' 'Roland's Mar-
riage,' 'The Little King of Galicia,' 'Aymerillot the Satyr'— belong
to the collection of 1859. It is of this book alone that Theodore de
Banville, a poet himself, was thinking when he said that nothing finer
## p. 7721 (#539) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7721
in French poetry has been written than the 'Legend of the Ages. '
Hugo's purpose had been to select in the historical and imaginative
life of mankind a number of episodes sketching out the development
of the race in the past, and opening some vistas into the farthest
distant future. The Bible both in the Old and New Testaments, the
traditions of classical Greece, the medieval poems, the heroic deeds
of the great discoverers and conquistadores of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, provided him with themes, the treatment of which
affords a singularly striking combination of his personal gifts with
the spirit of his sources of inspiration. In the 'Legend of the Ages'
his power of verbal invention and arrangement is almost beyond
belief, while yet the expression is always as translucid as the waters
of the purest mountain spring.
The universal applause with which the 'Legend of the Ages' was
received was still audible when in quick succession, between April 3d
and June 30th, 1862, appeared the five parts of Hugo's longest work,
his novel 'Les Misérables. ' The success of the work was astounding.
For the great mass of the reading public it has a decided superiority
over all the other productions of Hugo, in that it is entertaining.
Even for one who does not care for Hugo's magnificence of style, or
for his striking way of presenting humors and social problems, or for
the stream of poetry that runs through everything he wrote, the story
told in 'Les Misérables' is as fascinating as anything written by that
greatest of amusers, Alexandre Dumas. Jean Valjean—who appears
at the beginning of the work as a kind of ticket-of-leave man, who
has just served his term in a penitentiary where he had been sent
for a theft committed under stress of starvation; who several times
builds up anew for himself the modest edifice of a small social posi-
tion, and every time is thrown ruthlessly down when his antecedents
are discovered - passes through so many strange adventures that
he who does not want to think need not think, while simply looking
upon the succession of incidents. He thus visits Monseigneur Myriel,
the venerable bishop, the very incarnation of Christian philanthropy;
as well as the old member of the National Convention, now shunned
by all for having conscientiously declared Louis XVI. guilty of a cap-
ital crime. He roams over the battle-field of Waterloo, and witnesses
the whole of that gigantic military tragedy; he stops at the infamous
inn of the Thénardiers, and passes through all sorts of emotions until
he utters a sigh of relief at the failure of the murderous thieves'
dastardly plot. Calmer but none the less touching scenes await him
in hospital wards, or in the halls, gardens, and class-rooms of the
quiet Picpus convent. He is thrilled with the enthusiasm of young
republicanism on the Paris barricades erected against the govern-
ment of Louis Philippe; he meets strange acquaintances,- Javert the
police official, who, placed between his professional duty of arresting
## p. 7722 (#540) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7722
an offender and the moral and sentimental impulse to save the man
who had saved him and as to whose real guilt he is far from satisfied,
sees no solution to the riddle and rushes into suicide; Gavroche, the
gay, sentimental, heroic, but decidedly cynical Paris street urchin;
Fantine, the Quartier Latin girl; and Cosette, the waif. He has
no time to be bored. If he wishes to think, he has social problems
placed before him that may well occupy his mind. Are these people,
whom society cannot but declare law-breakers, really guilty? Are
they responsible for their deeds, or does the responsibility belong
elsewhere? Is the real offender the man who performs the deed, or
the man who places him in a position whence he could hardly escape
sinning against social and moral order? Above all, are not those
people to be pitied,— that is, Miserable, in the full etymological sense
of the word?
And if such a reader has a taste for the beautiful in literature,
how many admirable descriptions, how many fine touches in the
dialogue, how many quaint or powerful combinations of words, come
to the surface here and there, such as could appear only under Vic-
tor Hugo's pen!
The other works published by the master during his exile
collection of verse, 'Songs of the Streets and the Woods,' and two
novels, The Toilers of the Sea' and 'The Man Who Laughs'— were
only indifferently successful, and did not add much to his fame;
although there are a few charming poems in the first, some beau-
tiful pages in the second, and in the last a curious idea,- that of
the man whose disfigured features take the appearance of laughter
as soon as he opens his mouth, while he never raises his voice save
for the defense of the noblest and loftiest ideas.
―――
a
Another work of the same period must be mentioned, a work of
literary criticism: the book on Shakespeare. A short time after set-
tling in the Channel Islands, the poet's younger son, François-Victor,
had determined to undertake a complete French translation of Shake-
speare's works. For this translation, which the son carried to com-
pletion, and which is a remarkable piece of work, the father wrote
an introduction intended to set forth his view of the nature of the
great English poet's genius. This introduction, which fills a whole
volume, is a very brilliant and suggestive performance, which shows
how high he might have risen as a literary critic.
Politics, which now occupied a great deal of Hugo's time and
thought, had stirred him much during the last years of Napoleon
III. 's reign. He assailed the alliance, every day more manifest, of
the imperial with the papal government. His poems Guernsey's
Voice' and 'Mentana' were fierce invectives against the attempts of
the French government to bolster up the tottering administration of
Pio Nono. The poet was soon to speak to France not from Guernsey,
## p. 7723 (#541) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7723
but from Paris itself. But the price of his return was a high one.
He returned to the city as soon as France was again a republic
(September 5th, 1870); but the revolution which made it again a
republic was produced by the disasters which culminated in the sur-
render to the victorious Prussians of a whole French army, after the
battle of Sedan (September 2d, 1870). Victor Hugo spent in Paris the
five months of the siege; and at the close of the war the Parisians
rewarded him for his stanch opposition to the government of Napo-
leon III. by a triumphant election to the National Assembly, which
met at Bordeaux in February 1871, with the sad mission of making
peace with the conquerors on the best obtainable terms. He did not
stay there long. That Assembly, which was strongly royalist, was
hostile to nearly all the ideas which he defended. He was listened
to with but scant respect, and he soon resigned his seat. Before he
had time to return to Paris, a terrible domestic affliction added to
the sadness which was then, on public grounds, so deep in every
French heart. His eldest son, Charles, suddenly dropped dead of
heart disease (March 13th, 1871). He carried the dead body back to
Paris, there to bear it to the grave on the very day when the insur-
rection of the Commune broke out (March 18th).
He was soon again on foreign soil, but for a few weeks only,
witnessing with an aching heart the terrible events in which not a
few people thought that the French nation was disappearing forever.
What he felt during all these months of public and private suffering
he has recorded in a strong book of poems, 'L'Année Terrible' (The
Terrible Year).
Victor Hugo was then nearly seventy years old, but he had
become so used to regular work and he preserved such remarkable
health that he could not think of rest. He lived about fourteen
years longer, and during these fourteen years added no less than ten
works to the already long list of his productions. The first to appear
was also the most remarkable of the list: his historical romance of
'Ninety-three,' in which, by simply narrating an imaginary incident
of the wars of the Revolution against the royalist insurrections in
the West of France, he revives again the spirit of that grand and
terrible epoch. His aristocratic marquis Lantenac, his liberal noble-
man Gauvain, his revolutionary priest Cimourdin, are all instinct
with the fierce energy of the struggle out of which modern France
emerged. 'Ninety-three' is certainly a far from unworthy successor
to Notre Dame de Paris' and 'Les Misérables.
'
'The History of a Crime,' published in 1877, was not new: it was
that history of the coup d'état of December 2d, 1851, which he had
written before publishing 'Napoleon the Little' in 1852. The most
surprising of these later books was certainly his 'Art of Grandfather-
hood,' because it is the one which, entirely composed during this
## p. 7724 (#542) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7724
period of his life, shows no decay whatever of his remarkable powers.
A collection of poems, it is a glorification of childhood.
The poet,
who then had no son or daughter of his around him (François-Victor
had died not very long after Charles, and Adèle was demented),
expresses in a thousand different ways the joy with which he watches
every motion, hears every word, notices every progress of his two
grandchildren. The book is full of simplicity and sincerity, and equal
to the best of the 'Autumn Leaves,' though written more than forty
years later.
This cannot be said of the second part of the 'Legend
of the Ages,' of 'The Pope,' of 'Supreme Mercy,' or even of 'The
Four Winds of the Mind'; though the fourth part of the last-named
work, the Epic Book representing the statues of Henry IV. , Louis
XIII. , and Louis XIV. face to face with the scaffold of Louis XVI. ,
contains some of the most striking passages Hugo ever wrote.
The last works he published were a drama written many years
before, Torquemada,' and the third part of the Legend of the Ages. '
He died on May 22d, 1885. His last years had been surrounded
by universal admiration, amounting almost to worship. As soon as
the republican constitution had been adopted, the city of Paris had
elected him one of its senators. The street in which he lived had
had its name changed to Avenue Victor Hugo. On February 27th,
1881, his entrance into his eightieth year had been celebrated almost
as a national holiday. His death caused national mourning. It was
decided to give him obsequies such as no Frenchman had ever had.
His coffin was placed under Napoleon's Triumphal Arch, draped in
black, and for the first time in nearly seventy-five years Soufflot's
Pantheon, again turned into a kind of French Westminster Abbey,
opened its doors for the reception of the illustrious dead.
But though dead, the indefatigable worker had not ceased to pro-
duce. His literary executors discovered an enormous mass of unpub-
lished manuscripts almost equal in bulk to that which he had published
during his life, and at intervals something new has been added to
the list of Victor Hugo's posthumous works: The Theatre at Liberty,'
'Things Seen,' 'The End of Satan,' and especially 'God,' a remark-
able book of poems, are among the works thus published. The public
has recently been permitted to read the first volume of his corre-
spondence. It may safely be said that at least ten years more will
elapse before the whole of his literary production is known. Pos-
terity, in placing Victor Hugo among the greatest writers of all ages,
will single out 'Hernani' as his dramatic masterpiece; 'Les Miséra-
bles' as his best novel; and far above all the rest his most stupen-
dous collection of lyrics, 'Les Châtiments.
Adolphe Cohe
## p. 7725 (#543) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7725
THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN
From Les Orientales >
wo cities, strange, unknown in history's page,
Up to the clouds seemed scaling, stage by stage.
Noiseless their streets; their sleeping inmates lie,
Their gods, their chariots, in obscurity!
Like sisters sleeping 'neath the same moonlight,
O'er their twin towers crept the shades of night,
Whilst, scarce distinguished in the black profound,
Stairs, aqueducts, great pillars gleamed around,
And ruined capitals; then was seen a group
Of granite elephants 'neath a dome to stoop,
Shapeless, giant forms to view arise,
Monsters around, the spawn of hideous ties!
Then hanging gardens, with flowers and galleries;
O'er vast fountains bending grew ebon trees;
Temples, where, seated on their rich tiled thrones,
Bull-headed idols shone in jasper stones;
Vast halls, spanned by one block, where watch and stare
Each upon each, with straight and moveless glare,
Colossal heads in circles; the eye sees
Great gods of bronze, their hands upon their knees.
Sight seemed confounded, and to have lost its powers,
'Midst bridges, aqueducts, arches, and round towers,
Whilst unknown shapes fill up the devious views
Formed by these palaces and avenues.
Like capes the lengthening shadows seem to rise
Of these dark buildings, pointed to the skies,
Immense entanglement in shroud of gloom!
The stars which gleamed in the empyrean dome,
Under the thousand arches in heaven's space,
Shone as through meshes of the blackest lace.
Cities of hell, with foul desires demented,
And monstrous pleasures, hour by hour invented!
Each roof and home some monstrous mystery bore,
Which through the world spread like a twofold sore!
Yet all things slept, and scarce some pale late light
Flitted along the streets through the still night,—
Lamps of debauch, forgotten and alone,
The feast's lost fires left there to flicker on.
The walls' large angles clove the light-lengthening shade
'Neath the white moon, or on some pool's face played.
## p. 7726 (#544) ###########################################
7726
VICTOR HUGO
Perchance one heard, faint in the plain beneath,
The kiss suppressed, the mingling of the breath;
And the two sister cities, tired of heat,
In love's embrace lay down in murmurs sweet!
Whilst sighing winds the scent of sycamore
From Sodom to Gomorrah softly bore!
Then over all spread out the blackened cloud,—
'Tis here! " the Voice on high exclaimed aloud.
Translated by J. N. Fazakerley.
THE SACKING OF THE CITY
"La flamme par ton ordre, O roi! »
HY will, O King, is done! Lighting but to consume,
THY
The roar of the fierce flames drowned even the shouts and
shrieks;
Reddening each roof, like some day-dawn of bloody doom,
Seemed they in joyous flight to dance about their wrecks.
Slaughter his thousand giant arms hath tossed on high,
Fell fathers, husbands, wives, beneath his streaming steel;
Prostrate the palaces, huge tombs of fire, lie,
While gathering overhead the vultures scream and wheel!
Died the pale mothers, and the virgins, from their arms,
O Caliph, fiercely torn, bewailed their young years' blight;
With stabs and kisses fouled, all their yet quivering charms
At our fleet coursers' heels were dragged in mocking flight.
Lo! where the city lies mantled in pall of death;
Lo! where thy mighty hand hath passed, all things must bend!
Priests prayed, the sword estopped blaspheming breath,—
Vainly their cheating book for shield did they extend.
Some infants yet survived, and the unsated steel
Still drinks the life-blood of each whelp of Christian-kind;
To kiss thy sandaled foot, O King, thy people kneel,
And golden circlets to thy victor-ankle bind.
Translation of John L. O'Sullivan.
## p. 7727 (#545) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
OLD OCEAN
"J'étais seul près des flots »
COME
STOOD by the waves, while the stars soared in sight;
I
Not a cloud specked the sky, not a sail shimmered bright;
Scenes beyond this dim world were revealed to mine eye;
And the woods, and the hills, and all nature around,
Seemed to question with moody, mysterious sound,
The waves, and the pure stars on high.
And the clear constellations, that infinite throng,
While thousand rich harmonies swelled in their song,
Replying, bowed meekly their diamond blaze;
And the blue waves, which nothing may bind or arrest,
Chorused forth, as they stooped the white foam of their crest,
"Creator! we bless thee and praise! "
Translation of R. C. Ellwood.
PRAYER
"Ma fille, va prier! »
I
OME, child, to prayer; the busy day is done,
A golden star gleams through the dusk of night;
The hills are trembling in the rising mist,
The rumbling wain looms dim upon the sight;
All things wend home to rest; the roadside trees
Shake off their dust, stirred by the evening breeze.
The sparkling stars gush forth in sudden blaze,
As twilight open flings the doors of night;
The fringe of carmine narrows in the west,
The rippling waves are tipped with silver light;
The bush, the path-all blend in one dull gray;
The doubtful traveler gropes his anxious way.
7727
O day! with toil, with wrong, with hatred rife;
O blessed night! with sober calmness sweet:
The sad winds moaning through the ruined tower,
The age-worn hind, the sheep's sad broken bleat-
All nature groans opprest with toil and care,
And wearied craves for rest and love and prayer.
At eve the babes with angels converse hold,
While we to our strange pleasures wend our way;
## p. 7728 (#546) ###########################################
7728
VICTOR HUGO
Each with its little face upraised to heaven,
With folded hands, barefoot kneels down to pray;
At self-same hour with self-same words they call
On God, the common father of them all.
And then they sleep, and golden dreams anon,
Born as the busy day's last murmurs die,
In swarms tumultuous flitting through the gloom,
Their breathing lips and golden locks descry;
And as the bees o'er bright flowers joyous roam,
Around their curtained cradles clustering come.
O prayer of childhood! simple, innocent;
O infant slumbers! peaceful, pure, and light;
O happy worship! ever gay with smiles,
Meet prelude to the harmonies of night:
As birds beneath the wing enfold their head,
Nestled in prayer the infant seeks its bed.
Translation of Henry Highton, M. A.
II
To prayer, my child! and oh, be thy first prayer
For her who many nights with anxious care
Rocked thy first cradle; who took thy infant soul
From heaven and gave it to the world; then rife
With love, still drank herself the gall of life,
And left for thy young lips the honeyed bowl.
And then-I need it more then pray for me!
For she is gentle, artless, true like thee;
She has a guileless heart, brow placid still;
Pity she has for all, envy for none;
Gentle and wise, she patiently lives on;
And she endures, nor knows who does the ill.
-
In culling flowers, her novice hand has ne'er
Touched e'en the outer rind of vice; no snare
With smiling show has lured her steps aside:
On her the past has left no staining mark;
Nor knows she aught of those bad thoughts which, dark
Like shade on waters, o'er the spirit glide.
She knows not - nor mayst thou-the miseries
In which our spirits mingle: vanities,
Remorse, soul-gnawing cares, Pleasure's false show;
## p. 7729 (#547) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7729
Passions which float upon the heart like foam,
Bitter remembrances which o'er us come,
And Shame's red spot spread sudden o'er the brow.
I know life better! When thou'rt older grown
I'll tell thee - it is needful to be known-
-
Of the pursuit of wealth, art, power; the cost,—
That it is folly, nothingness; that shame
For glory is oft thrown us in the game
Of Fortune, chances where the soul is lost.
The soul will change. Although of everything
The cause and end be clear, yet wildering
We roam through life, of vice and error full.
We wander as we go; we feel the load
Of doubt; and to the briers upon the road
Man leaves his virtue, as the sheep its wool.
Then go, go pray for me! And as the prayer
Gushes in words, be this the form they bear:—
"Lord, Lord our Father! God, my prayer attend;
Pardon - Thou art good! Pardon - Thou art great! "
Let them go freely forth, fear not their fate!
Where thy soul sends them, thitherward they tend.
There's nothing here below which does not find
Its tendency. O'er plains the rivers wind,
And reach the sea; the bee, by instinct driven,
Finds out the honeyed flowers; the eagle flies
To seek the sun; the vulture where death lies;
The swallow to the spring; the prayer to Heaven!
And when thy voice is raised to God for me,
I'm like the slave whom in the vale we see
Seated to rest, his heavy load laid by:
I feel refreshed; the load of faults and woe
Which, groaning, I drag with me as I go,
Thy winged prayer bears off rejoicingly!
XIII-484
Pray for thy father! that his dreams be bright
With visitings of angel forms of light,
And his soul burn as incense flaming wide.
Let thy pure breath all his dark sins efface,
So that his heart be like that holy place,
An altar pavement each eve purified!
Translation of C, in Tait's Magazine.
## p. 7730 (#548) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7730
MY THOUGHTS OF YE
«À quoi je songe? »
WH
HAT do I dream of? Far from the low roof
Where now ye are, children, I dream of you;
Of your young heads that are the hope and crown
Of my full summer, ripening to its fall.
Branches whose shadow grows along my wall,
Sweet souls scarce open to the breath of day,
Still dazzled with the brightness of your dawn.
I dream of those two little ones at play,
Making the threshold vocal with their cries,—
Half tears, half laughter, mingled sport and strife,
Like two flowers knocked together by the wind.
Or of the elder two-more anxious thought –
Breasting already broader waves of life,
A conscious innocence on either face,
My pensive daughter and my curious boy.
Thus do I dream, while the light sailors sing,
At even moored beneath some steepy shore,
While the waves, opening all their nostrils, breathe
A thousand sea-scents to the wandering wind,
And the whole air is full of wondrous sounds,
From sea to strand, from land to sea, given back:
Alone and sad, thus do I dream of you.
Children, and house and home, the table set,
The glowing hearth, and all the pious care
Of tender mother, and of grandsire kind;
And while before me, spotted with white sails,
The limpid ocean mirrors all the stars,
And while the pilot from the infinite main
Looks with calm eye into the infinite heaven,
I, dreaming of you only, seek to scan
And fathom all my soul's deep love for you,-
Love sweet and powerful, and everlasting,-
And find that the great sea is small beside it.
Translation in Dublin University Magazine.
## p. 7731 (#549) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7731
NAPOLEON
"Tu domines notre âge; ange ou démon, qu'importe! "
NGEL or demon! thou-whether of light
Α
-
The minister, or darkness - still dost sway
This age of ours; thine eagle's soaring flight
Bears us, all breathless, after it away.
The eye that from thy presence fain would stray,
Shuns thee in vain; thy mighty shadow thrown
Rests on all pictures of the living day,
And on the threshold of our time alone,
Dazzling, yet sombre, stands thy form, Napoleon!
Thus, when the admiring stranger's steps explore
The subject-lands that 'neath Vesuvius be,
Whether he wind along the enchanting shore
To Portici from fair Parthenope,
Or, lingering long in dreamy revery,
O'er loveliest Ischia's od'rous isle he stray,
Wooed by whose breath the soft and am'rous sea
Seems like some languishing sultana's lay,
A voice for very sweets that scarce can win its way:
Him, whether Pæstum's solemn fane detain,
Shrouding his soul with meditation's power;
Or at Pozzuoli, to the sprightly strain
Of tarantella danced 'neath Tuscan tower,
Listening, he while away the evening hour;
Or wake the echoes, mournful, lone, and deep,
Of that sad city, in its dreaming bower
By the volcano seized, where mansions keep
The likeness which they wore at that last fatal sleep;
Or be his bark at Posilippo laid,
While as the swarthy boatman his side
Chants Tasso's lays to Virgil's pleasèd shade,-
Ever he sees throughout that circuit wide,
From shaded nook or sunny lawn espied,
From rocky headland viewed, or flow'ry shore,
From sea and spreading mead alike descried,
The Giant Mount, tow'ring all objects o'er,
And black'ning with its breath th' horizon evermore!
Translation in Fraser's Magazine.
## p. 7732 (#550) ###########################################
7732
VICTOR HUGO
THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW
"Il neigeait »
T SNOWED. A defeat was our conquest red!
I'
For once, the eagle was hanging its head.
Sad days! The Emperor turned slowly his back
On smoking Moscow, blent orange and black.
The winter burst, avalanche-like to reign
Over the endless blanched sheet of the plain.
Nor chief nor banner in order could keep,—
The wolves of warfare were 'wildered like sheep.
The wings from centre could hardly be known
Through snow o'er horses and carts o'erthrown,
Where froze the wounded. In the bivouacs forlorn
Strange sights and gruesome met the breaking morn:
Mute were the bugles, while the men bestrode
Steeds turned to marble, unheeding the goad.
The shells and bullets came down with the snow
As though the heavens hated these poor troops below.
. Surprised at trembling, though it was with cold,
Who ne'er had trembled out of fear, the veterans bold
Marched stern; to grizzled mustache hoar-frost clung
'Neath banners that in leaden masses hung.
It snowed, went snowing still. And chill the breeze
Whistled upon the grassy endless seas,
Where naked feet on, on forever went,
With naught to eat, and not a sheltering tent.
They were not living troops as seen in war,
But merely phantoms of a dream, afar
In darkness wandering, amid the vapor dim,-
A mystery; of shadows a procession grim,
Nearing a blackening sky, unto its rim.
Frightful, since boundless, solitude behold,
Where only Nemesis wove, mute and cold,
A net all snowy with its soft meshes dense,
A shroud of magnitude for host immense;
Till every one felt as if left alone
In a wide wilderness where no light shone,
To die, with pity none, and none to see
That from this mournful realm none should get free.
Their foes the frozen North and Czar-that, worst.
Cannon were broken up in haste accurst
## p. 7733 (#551) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7733
To burn the frames and make the pale fire high,
Where those lay down who never woke, or woke to die.
Sad and commingled, groups that blindly fled.
Were swallowed smoothly by the desert dread.
'Neath folds of blankness, monuments were raised
O'er regiments. And History, amazed,
Could not record the ruin of this retreat,-
Unlike a downfall known before, or the defeat
Of Hannibal-reversed and wrapped in gloom!
Of Attila, when nations met their doom!
Perished an army - fled French glory then,
Though there the Emperor! He stood and gazed
At the wild havoc, like a monarch dazed
In woodland hoar, who felt the shrieking saw-
He, living oak, beheld his branches fall, with awe.
Chiefs, soldiers, comrades died. But still warm love
Kept those that rose all dastard fear above,
As on his tent they saw his shadow pass-
Backwards and forwards; for they credited, alas!
His fortune's star! It could not, could not be
That he had not his work to do-a destiny?
To hurl him headlong from his high estate
Would be high treason in his bondman, Fate.
But all the while he felt himself alone,
Stunned with disasters few have ever known.
Sudden, a fear came o'er his troubled soul:
What more was written on the Future's scroll?
Was this an expiation? It must be, yea!
He turned to God for one enlightening ray.
"Is this the vengeance, Lord of Hosts? " he sighed;
But the first murmur on his parched lips died.
"Is this the vengeance? Must my glory set? "
A pause: his name was called; of flame a jet
Sprang in the darkness;- -a Voice answered: "No!
Not yet. "
Outside still fell the smothering snow.
Was it a voice indeed? or but a dream?
It was the vulture's, but how like the sea-bird's scream.
Translation of Toru Dutt.
## p. 7734 (#552) ###########################################
7734
VICTOR HUGO
THE LIONS
"Les lions dans la fosse étaient sans nourriture »
F^
AMISHED the Lions were in their strong den,
And roared appeal to Nature from the men
Who caged them-Nature, that for them had care.
Kept for three days without their needful fare,
The creatures raved with hunger and with hate,
And through their roof of chains and iron grate
Looked to the blood-red sunset in the west:
Their cries the distant traveler oppressed,
Far as horizon which the blue hill veils.
Fiercely they lashed their bodies with their tails
Till the walls shook; as if their eyes' red light
And hungry jaws had lent them added might.
By Og and his great sons was shaped the cave;
They hollowed it, in need themselves to save.
It was a deep-laid place wherein to hide,
This giant's palace in the rock's dark side;
Their heads had broken through the roof of stone,
So that the light in every corner shone,
And dreary dungeon had for dome blue sky.
Nebuchadnezzar, savage king, had eye
For this strong cavern, and a pavement laid
Upon the centre, that it should be made
A place where lions he could safely mew,
Though once Deucalions and khans it knew.
The beasts were four most furious all. The ground
Was carpeted with bones that lay all round;
While as they walked, and crunched with heavy tread
Men's skeletons and brutes', far overhead
The tapering shadows of the rocks were spread.
The first had come from Sodom's desert plain;
When savage freedom did to him remain
He dwelt at Sin, extremest point and rude
Of silence terrible and solitude.
Oh! woe betide who fell beneath his claw,
This Lion of the sand with rough-skinned paw.
The second came from forest watered by
The stream Euphrates. When his step drew nigh,
Descending to the river, all things feared;
Hard fight to snare this growler it appeared.
## p. 7735 (#553) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7735
The hounds of two kings were employed to catch
This Lion of the woods and be his match.
The third one dwelt on the steep mountain's side.
Horror and gloom companioned every stride:
When towards the miry ravines they would stray,
And herds and flocks in their wild gambols play,
All fled the shepherd, warrior, priest -in fright
If he leaped forth in all his dreadful might.
The fourth tremendous, furious creature came
From the sea-shore, and prowled with leonine fame,
Before he knew captivity's hard throes,
Along the coast where Gur's strong city rose.
Reeking its roofs - and in its ports were met
The masts of many nations thickly set.
There peasants brought their manna fine, and gum,
And there the prophet on his ass would come;
And folks were happy as caged birds set free.
Gur had a market-place 'twas grand to see;
There Abyssinians brought their ivories rare,
And Amorrhiens amber for their ware,
And linens dark. From Assur came fine wheat,
And from famed Ascalon the butter sweet.
The fleet of vessels stir on ocean made.
This beast in revery of evening's shade
Was fretted by the noisy town so near,-
Too many folks lived in it, that was clear.
Gur was a lofty, formidable town:
At night three heavy barriers made it frown
And closed the entrance inaccessible;
Between each battlement rose terrible
Rhinoceros horn, or one of buffalo;
The strong, straight wall did like a hero show.
Some fifteen fathoms deep the moat might be,
And it was filled by sluices from the sea.
Instead of kenneled watch-dogs barking near,
Two monstrous dragons did for guards appear:
They had been captured 'mong the reeds of Nile,
And by magician tamed to guards servile.
One night, the gate thus kept the Lion neared:
With single bound the guarding moat he cleared;
Then with barbaric teeth the gate he smashed
And all its triple bars; and next he crashed
―
## p. 7736 (#554) ###########################################
7736
VICTOR HUGO
The dragons twain, without so much as look
At them, and bolts and hinges all he shook
Into one wreck. And when he made his way
Back towards the strand, remained there of the fray
Only a vision of the peopled town,
Only a memory of the wall knocked down,
'Neath spectral towers fit but for vulture's nest,
Or for the tiger wanting timely rest.
This Lion scorned complaint, but crouching lay
And yawned, so heavily time passed away.
ter of his ancestor Louis XIII. was presented in the drama in a way
## p. 7713 (#531) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7713
The per-
not calculated to increase the public respect for royalty.
formance was forbidden. The manager was almost heart-broken. But
within a few weeks, under the excitement produced by the royal
government's arbitrary act, the poet wrote his immortal drama of
'Hernani'; full of the passions of love and honor, one of the great
poems of youthful enthusiasm for what is lovable and beautiful.
'Hernani' was performed on February 25th, 1830, on the last day
of the poet's twenty-eighth year. The date is considered one of the
great dates in the history of French literature. It is known as the
"Battle of Hernani. " The advocates of the old and new schools met,
determined to give decisive battle to each other. Applause and hiss-
ing mingled; more direct arguments were used; blows even were
given and received. On each night the fight was renewed, with this
result that the applause grew stronger every time the play was
given, until criticism was finally silenced and drowned under the
majestic flow of poetry that came from the lips of Hernani and
Doña Sol, Don Carlos and Ruy Gomez de Silva.
<
Attention has often been called to the fact that in their most
poetical plays, both Corneille and Hugo treated Spanish subjects. But
while Corneille found in the plays of Guilhen de Castro the plot of his
'Cid, the plot of Hernani' is entirely original. No incident in the
life of Hugo's Don Carlos- that is, of the Emperor Charles V. -ever
happened, upon which to build such a drama as the one in which the
French poet gives him such a conspicuous part. But Hugo had re-
tained a very vivid memory of his stay in Spain as a boy, and both
the country and time in which he places the development of his plot
were favorite ones with the Romanticists. Both offered great oppor-
tunities for the display of that local color in scenery, costumes, and
even speech, upon which the new school so much depended; and by
the impression left in the minds of men they also somewhat justified
and made acceptable to the public the exaggerations, the sharp con-
trasts, which had from the start formed an important part of Hugo's
literary equipment. Hernani' presents to us a struggle between a
bandit and a king, both in love with the same woman. The king
experiences within his own heart a struggle of no mean importance,
in which his better nature finally triumphs, when by his election as
Emperor he is called to higher responsibilities. The girl who is loved
by him and by Hernani, Doña Sol, is also loved by an old uncle, a
pattern of nobility and loftiness, and none the less passionate because
of his years; so that we have the contrast not only of king and
bandit, but also of old age and youth. The poet carries us through
the phases best calculated to set off his scenes of love and his con-
tests of passions: the castle of Silva, Charlemagne's tomb, the illumin-
ated palace of the former bandit, now "Don Juan of Aragon,” on the
XIII-483
## p. 7714 (#532) ###########################################
7714
VICTOR HUGO
night of his bridal fête. But more than any of the features of the
plot, which after all is hardly more than a very skillfully constructed
melodrama, that which caused the success of the play, and makes it
one of the masterpieces of literature, is the enchanting poetry of all
the love passages.
All the joys and all the torments, all the hopes
and all the doubts, the triumph and the despair of this eternally
young passion, find there melodious expressions which remain for-
ever in the mind and ear of readers and spectators. When Hernani
and Doña Sol, their vital parts already withered by the deadly poi-
son which old Silva had prepared for one of them, and which both
have absorbed, say,- one had almost written sing,-"Toward new
and brighter lights we shall expand our wings. With even flight
we set forth towards a better world," we all envy their happiness;
and in their final embrace, Death disappears under the tread of all-
conquering Love.
It need hardly be said that in the construction of his play Hugo
departed entirely from the old classical system: there was no unity of
time, no unity of place. But he is, it must be admitted, still further
away from Shakespeare than from Racine and Corneille. Nothing
differs more from Shakespearean simplicity of style than Hugo's
majestic, harmonious, and dazzlingly rhetorical, metaphorical, dodeca-
syllabic lines. Indeed, the beauties of this play are decidedly more
lyrical than dramatic. But the fact remained that a French play
which is a masterpiece had been written in a system different from
the old one; and the victory had been won for the "new school. "
The triumph of 'Hernani' was nothing less than a literary revolu-
tion. It was soon followed by a political revolution. In July 1830,
the government of the Bourbons, which had been reinstated in France
by the victorious foreigners after the defeat and fall of Napoleon,
was brought to an end by a rising of the Paris population, enthusias
tically applauded by the whole of France. Hugo, who had been in
youth a stanch supporter of the Bourbons, had like many others
been estranged, little by little, by the contempt which the Bourbons
and the court circles showed for the glorious soldiers of the Revo-
lution and the Empire, and by a succession of arbitrary measures
which showed that the spirit of the ancien régime was far from dead
and still threatened the dearly bought liberty of France. He shared
the popular enthusiasm for the Revolution of 1830, hailed it as a
promise of greatness for France and of enfranchisement for the peo-
ple, and returned to his literary labors with a faith in his own powers
increased by the ever growing applause of the public.
The thirteen years that followed may be called Hugo's happy
years. They were years of remarkable productiveness. In 1831 he
published his first great novel, 'Notre Dame de Paris. ' The same
## p. 7715 (#533) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7715
year witnessed the first performance of 'Marion Delorme'; and ix
other dramas-three in prose, Marie Tudor,' 'Lucrèce Borgia,' and
'Angelo, Tyran de Padua,' and three much greater in verse, 'Le Roi
s'Amuse' (The King's Diversion), 'Ruy Blas,' and 'Les Burgraves'-
followed each other between 1832 and 1843. In the same period
appeared four collections of lyrics, in no way inferior to those that
had preceded them: Les Feuilles d'Automne' (Autumn Leaves), 'Les
Chants du Crépuscule (Twilight Songs), 'Les Voix Intérieures' (Inner
Voices), and 'Les Rayons et les Ombres' (Sunbeams and Shadows).
This alone would suffice for the glory of a great writer. It is only a
small part, and assuredly not the highest, of Hugo's magnificent pro-
duction.
―
Perhaps the most successful of these works was 'Notre Dame de
Paris, the great novel often bearing the English title 'The Hunch-
back of Notre Dame'. a title to some extent misleading. Quasimodo
the Hunchback, though undoubtedly a very important character, is
certainly not the centre of the novel. The bewitching gipsy girl,
Esmeralda, plays as important a part in it as he does; and perhaps
the same may be said of the terrible priest, Claude Frollo. In Hugo's
mind the centre of the novel was the church of Notre Dame itself.
True to the tendencies of the literary school which acknowledged him
as its head, after seeking inspiration in the East and in Spain he
undertook to do for the Middle Ages what Châteaubriand, in 'Atala'
and in Les Martyrs,' had attempted to do for Christianity. Both
of these themes had been kept out of French literature by the Clas-
sical School. Their right to be in it was one of the tenets of the
Romanticists, and 'Notre Dame de Paris' gloriously established the
soundness of their position. The Gothic cathedral is the centre
of the novel, as it was the centre of mediæval life: everything and
everybody, king and poet, priest and Bohemian, the knight clad in
brilliant armor and Clopin Trouillefou the hideous truand, Quasimodo
the hunchback and La Sachette the bestialized lunatic,-in whom
still survives the saintliest feeling of mankind, maternal love,— move
in and around the majestic building whose uplifted towers carry up
to heaven the prayer and lamentation of suffering humanity. The
central character is the relentless force under which every human
destiny bends: the Fate of the ancients, whose Greek name, Anankè,
deciphered by the poet on an old forgotten wall, is taken as title of
one of the most astonishing chapters of this prodigious work.
The dramas were not all equally successful. Marion Delorme'
did not win, and did not deserve, the same popularity as 'Hernani. '
'Le Roi s'Amuse' - the plot of which has become so popular with
opera-goers in Verdi's 'Rigoletto,' and with theatre-goers under its
English name of 'The Fool's Revenge' — was taken from the boards
-
## p. 7716 (#534) ###########################################
7716
VICTOR HUGO
after its first performance, by order of the government, which de-
clared it to be an immoral play. The real reason was that an
immoral part in it is ascribed to a king of France, Francis I. ; the
proscription being one of the signs that though crowned by a revolu-
tion, King Louis Philippe the citizen king cared more for his crown
than for the liberal aspirations to which he owed it. The poet claimed
redress from the courts, without any satisfaction save the opportunity
of delivering a superb oration in defense of the rights of authors.
The drama was at last revived, under the Third Republic, fifty years
after its first performance.
The prose dramas were not very favorably received. It seemed
that the public could hardly conceive of Hugo's characters expressing
themselves otherwise than in verse. One of these dramas, 'Lucrèce
Borgia,' provided Donizetti with the libretto of his famous opera.
'Ruy Blas' was a decided success, and with Hernani' and 'Les
Burgraves' represents the best work that Hugo has done as a dram-
atist. Like Hernani,' 'Ruy Blas' is a Spanish play; that is, the
action takes place in Spain, and the characters are Spanish. But
there is this difference between the two dramas: that while in 'Her-
nani' Hugo drew everything from his imagination, in Ruy Blas he
made use of a great deal of historical material. The plot itself - the
story of the lackey who under an assumed name rises to the high-
est dignities of the State, and who, filled with the purest love and
reverence for the unhappy queen, is rewarded by the gift of her
heart-is entirely imaginary; but the picture of the court of Spain
under Charles II. is in many respects a historical picture, except
that everything which Hugo ascribes to Charles II. 's second wife was
true not of her, but of his first wife, a French princess, daughter of
Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orléans, who died but a short time
after her marriage with the King of Spain.
-
In 'Ruy Blas,' as in 'Hernani,' the means chiefly used by the
poet to produce emotion in the spectator is contrast. The characters
are a queen, who is no better than a prisoner; a nobleman, Don
César de Bazan, who is a beggar and a tramp; a lackey, Ruy Blas,
who loves a queen. The mover of the plot, Don Salluste de Bazan,
is a disgraced nobleman, who, after being dismissed by the influence
of the queen, suddenly disappears, and while moving in the darkness
tries to ensnare her into a situation in which her honor and reputa-
tion are bound to perish. She is saved by the devotion and readi-
ness of Ruy Blas, but not until he has given up his life with the last
sigh of his love for her. 'Ruy Blas' is perhaps a better constructed
drama than 'Hernani,' and yet it does not hold the spectator as
powerfully as its predecessor. The reason is that while the love
passages are supremely poetical, the situation is too impossible to be
## p. 7717 (#535) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7717
made credible. But with all its shortcomings, 'Ruy Blas' remains a
beautiful drama, which may perhaps share with 'Hernani' the honor
of remaining on the stage long after the other dramas of Hugo shall
be known only by the reading public.
Can we say the same of 'Les Burgraves'? It is hard to answer.
When first performed, in 1843, the drama was a failure. It has never
been revived since; and yet it is a favorite with Hugo's greatest
admirers, and every year some of its scenes are successfully pre-
sented in France by the young men and women who are preparing
to enter the dramatic profession. The lassitude of the public toward
a drama full of the most extraordinary contrasts may well be under-
stood. Would it, however, strike in the same way spectators who
had not had presented to them in a dozen years all the dramatic
works of Hugo? The question is likely to receive some day a prac-
tical answer, for 'Les Burgraves' holds such a place in the affections
of lovers of French poetry that it is sure to be put upon the boards
again. Some of the characters of this play are almost too great and
too powerful to be human. Barbarossa, Job, Magnus, the relentless
old woman Guanhumara, might be accepted in a music drama; but
when they use the words and the voice which are used in every-day
life, we cannot but see in them men and women like ourselves, while
their actions are impossible for such men and women. And yet there
is a logic in the drama, a nobleness of inspiration, that compel ad-
miration. Side by side with the gigantic and the degenerate figures
that battle against each other, and call up before our eyes the robber
barons of mediæval Germany, we have the fresh love idyl of Otbert
and Regina, which casts a ray of sunshine over the darkness of the
background. Whatever verdict may be ultimately passed upon 'Les
Burgraves' as a drama, it is certainly a powerful poem, and in parts
an exquisite one.
But for the highest poetical outpourings of Victor Hugo during
this period of his life, we must turn to his collection of lyrics. He
is essentially a lyric poet; and his glory rests more upon such pro-
ductions as 'Les Feuilles d'Automne' and 'Les Chants du Crépus-
cule than upon any of his dramas save 'Hernani. '
The lyric poems published between 1830 and 1843 cover as wide
a range of private and public events as anything a poet ever wrote.
All the qualities for which Hugo has been praised appear in them,
carried to the highest degree. His poems on childhood, a theme
which perhaps no poet ever treated so felicitously, are especially
notable. Later in life, in 1877, he published a volume of verse
entirely devoted to children, 'L'Art d'Être Grand-père' (The Art of
Grandfatherhood), the heroes of which were his grandchildren George
and Jeanne.
In the earlier book the children were his own children,
## p. 7718 (#536) ###########################################
7718
VICTOR HUGO
Charles and François-Victor, Adèle and Léopoldine,-fated, alas! all
to precede him to the grave save one, whose fate was sadder than
death itself, since her vanished reason did not even allow her to
know whether her illustrious father remained among the living or
slept among the dead! But the greatest poems undoubtedly are
those that deal with themes of public interest. It is the period in
which the worship of Napoleon reached its highest point. It came to
its climax on December 15th, 1840, when, under a dazzling sky and
through the crispest and coldest air Paris ever knew, the remains of
the great soldier, given back to France by England, were carried to
the home of the old soldiers of France, and laid under the dome of
the Invalides, giving fulfillment at last to the wish of the Emperor:
"I wish to rest on the banks of the Seine, among those Frenchmen
whom I have loved so much! " No writer so constantly and fervently
joined, or rather led, in this Napoleonic worship as Victor Hugo; and
we must add that in no subject was he so much at ease as in these
Napoleonic themes. The greatness of the man, the greatness of the
events, the contrast between the height of power to which he attained
and the depth of misery which succeeded the splendor of his tri-
umphs, all these elements admirably blended with the love of the
gigantic, the admiration for contrast and antithesis, the gorgeous
imagery which distinguished Hugo's muse. The poet took hold of
every occasion that presented itself of celebrating the hero of the
century. When Napoleon's son died, he wrote his 'Napoleon II. . '
one of his most perfect productions; when the Chamber of Deputies
refused to replace Napoleon's statue on the top of the Vendôme
column, he wrote his second 'Ode to the Column of the Place Ven-
dôme'; when Napoleon's remains returned to France, the 'Return of
the Emperor's Ashes,' etc. These various pieces, which at a later
period culminated in the Expiation,' form together a Napoleonic epic
of great splendor and stateliness, in every way worthy of the prodi-
gious man around whom it centres.
For nearly ten years after the performance of 'Les Burgraves'
Hugo published very little. He wrote a great deal, for he was an
indefatigable worker; but completed no drama, no novel, brought no
collection of verse to that point of perfection which he required of
his productions before submitting them to the public. The reason
we find in a terrible domestic calamity which befell him in the fall
of 1843. His oldest daughter, Léopoldine, who had but a few months
before become the wife of a young man of great promise, M. Charles
Vacquerie, was with her husband drowned in the Seine, at Villequier,
not very far from the mouth of the river. The exact circumstances
of the catastrophe have never been discovered. Its effect was to
destroy in the poet, so happy till then, this joy of life which some
1
## p. 7719 (#537) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7719
natures need as much as the air which they breathe. Hugo sought
diversion from his grief in the study of public questions and in
political activity. Louis Philippe made him a peer of France; and
the people, after the fall of Louis Philippe and the establishment of
the Republic (1848), made him a member of the National Assembly.
There Hugo for a while hesitated between the Conservatives and
the Democrats. The savage measures which, after the socialistic in-
surrection of June 1848, were adopted and enforced by the victorious
bourgeoisie against the deluded, rebellious, but thoroughly honest and
moreover starving workingmen of Paris, put a stop to his hesitations.
He cast in his lot with the party of mercy, that is, with the advanced
Republicans. In their camp he soon became one of the foremost
leaders. He soon discerned in Louis Bonaparte an ambition which
foreboded evil to the republic of which, as the nephew of Napoleon
the Great, he had been elected President, and in a memorable and
fiery oration dubbed him Napoleon the Little.
The military coup d'état of December 2d, 1851, by which the re-
publican constitution was violently destroyed, found Hugo among the
citizens most energetically determined to resist by force the violation
of the supreme law. He risked his life in defending the rights of
the people against the imperial usurper, and after the final defeat
of the Constitutionalists had to flee from the country, swearing not
to return as long as liberty itself remained an exile from France.
His exile lasted longer than he had expected, but was not an un-
fruitful one. During the eighteen years 1853-1870-which he spent
first in Brussels, whence he was soon expelled by the Belgian govern-
ment; then in the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, where he
finally bought an estate, Hauteville House, which became to him a
real home - he published a political pamphlet, 'Napoleon the Little,'
four great collections of verse,- - 'Les Châtiments (The Chastise-
ments), 'Les Contemplations,' 'La Légende des Siècles' (The Legend
of the Ages), 'Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois' (Songs of the
Streets and Woods); and three novels, of which 'Les Misérables' is
considered one of the masterpieces of the century, the other two
being 'Les Travailleurs de la Mer (The Toilers of the Sea), and
'L'Homme Qui Rit' (The Man Who Laughs).
This does not include all that he wrote during his exile. Indeed,
the first work which he composed after leaving France, the History
of a Crime,'-which, begun on December 13th, 1851, was completed
on May 5th, 1852,—was not published until twenty-five years later, in
1877. Instead of the history of the political crime committed by Louis
Bonaparte on December 2d, 1851, Hugo published in 1852 his immortal
pamphlet 'Napoleon the Little,' every page of which reads as though
his pen had been dipped in incandescent lava; and a year later
## p. 7720 (#538) ###########################################
7720
VICTOR HUGO
(1853) The Chastisements,' which must perhaps rank in the whole
range of poetry as the highest masterpiece of political invective.
These two works, Napoleon the Little' and 'The Chastisements,'
are inseparable from each other; the latter is the poetical comment-
ary of the former. As long as Napoleon III. reigned, their circula-
tion was absolutely forbidden in France, and nearly every Frenchman
who took a trip out of the country was asked by his friends to
smuggle in some copies of the forbidden books on his return.
The chief beauty of The Chastisements,' the most perfect produc-
tion of Hugo's poetical genius, lies in the incredible variety of the
book. It is not all political invective: it contains superb pieces of
pure narrative poetry, like the Memory of the Night of the Fourth,'
the simple story of the death and burial of a child killed by a stray
bullet of Napoleon's soldiers; comic songs; pieces of poetical fancy,
like the 'Imperial Mantle'; weird and severe dialogues between man
and his conscience, like 'The Seaside'; humorous dialogues, like 'The
Three Horses'; and amid this profusion of minor pieces one composi-
tion of truly epic grandeur, 'L'Expiation,' where the greatness of the
first Napoleon is contrasted with the unworthiness of his successor,
and where the poet, discovering by the light of events the stain on
his former hero's escutcheon,- that is, the insatiable ambition which
led him early in his career to the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire of
the year VIII. (November 9th, 1799), by which he substituted his own
personal power for the free republican institutions then possessed by
France, shows in the success of the nephew's nefarious deed the
punishment of the uncle's insufficiently requited sin.
―――――――――――
'Contemplations,' which followed in 1856, is a very different work.
The book contains pieces belonging to various and widely distant
years of the poet's life. Some pieces are dated 1834, some 1854. It
is a record of the poet's inner being. A whole division of the work,
'Pauca Meæ,' consists of pieces devoted to the memory of his dead
daughter. Hugo never wrote anything finer, purer, more touching,
than these verses. And in another part of the book we find an
'Answer to an Impeachment,' which is an admirably witty (we had
almost said saucy), poetical, and lucid explanation of what he had
considered his literary mission to be.
In 1859 he published the 'Legend of the Ages,' or rather a vol-
ume containing a number of the pieces which now form, in the com-
plete collection of his writings, a much larger work by the same title.
The finest pieces of the 'Legend of the Ages'-'The Consecration of
Woman,' 'The First Meeting of Christ at the Tomb,' 'Roland's Mar-
riage,' 'The Little King of Galicia,' 'Aymerillot the Satyr'— belong
to the collection of 1859. It is of this book alone that Theodore de
Banville, a poet himself, was thinking when he said that nothing finer
## p. 7721 (#539) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7721
in French poetry has been written than the 'Legend of the Ages. '
Hugo's purpose had been to select in the historical and imaginative
life of mankind a number of episodes sketching out the development
of the race in the past, and opening some vistas into the farthest
distant future. The Bible both in the Old and New Testaments, the
traditions of classical Greece, the medieval poems, the heroic deeds
of the great discoverers and conquistadores of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, provided him with themes, the treatment of which
affords a singularly striking combination of his personal gifts with
the spirit of his sources of inspiration. In the 'Legend of the Ages'
his power of verbal invention and arrangement is almost beyond
belief, while yet the expression is always as translucid as the waters
of the purest mountain spring.
The universal applause with which the 'Legend of the Ages' was
received was still audible when in quick succession, between April 3d
and June 30th, 1862, appeared the five parts of Hugo's longest work,
his novel 'Les Misérables. ' The success of the work was astounding.
For the great mass of the reading public it has a decided superiority
over all the other productions of Hugo, in that it is entertaining.
Even for one who does not care for Hugo's magnificence of style, or
for his striking way of presenting humors and social problems, or for
the stream of poetry that runs through everything he wrote, the story
told in 'Les Misérables' is as fascinating as anything written by that
greatest of amusers, Alexandre Dumas. Jean Valjean—who appears
at the beginning of the work as a kind of ticket-of-leave man, who
has just served his term in a penitentiary where he had been sent
for a theft committed under stress of starvation; who several times
builds up anew for himself the modest edifice of a small social posi-
tion, and every time is thrown ruthlessly down when his antecedents
are discovered - passes through so many strange adventures that
he who does not want to think need not think, while simply looking
upon the succession of incidents. He thus visits Monseigneur Myriel,
the venerable bishop, the very incarnation of Christian philanthropy;
as well as the old member of the National Convention, now shunned
by all for having conscientiously declared Louis XVI. guilty of a cap-
ital crime. He roams over the battle-field of Waterloo, and witnesses
the whole of that gigantic military tragedy; he stops at the infamous
inn of the Thénardiers, and passes through all sorts of emotions until
he utters a sigh of relief at the failure of the murderous thieves'
dastardly plot. Calmer but none the less touching scenes await him
in hospital wards, or in the halls, gardens, and class-rooms of the
quiet Picpus convent. He is thrilled with the enthusiasm of young
republicanism on the Paris barricades erected against the govern-
ment of Louis Philippe; he meets strange acquaintances,- Javert the
police official, who, placed between his professional duty of arresting
## p. 7722 (#540) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7722
an offender and the moral and sentimental impulse to save the man
who had saved him and as to whose real guilt he is far from satisfied,
sees no solution to the riddle and rushes into suicide; Gavroche, the
gay, sentimental, heroic, but decidedly cynical Paris street urchin;
Fantine, the Quartier Latin girl; and Cosette, the waif. He has
no time to be bored. If he wishes to think, he has social problems
placed before him that may well occupy his mind. Are these people,
whom society cannot but declare law-breakers, really guilty? Are
they responsible for their deeds, or does the responsibility belong
elsewhere? Is the real offender the man who performs the deed, or
the man who places him in a position whence he could hardly escape
sinning against social and moral order? Above all, are not those
people to be pitied,— that is, Miserable, in the full etymological sense
of the word?
And if such a reader has a taste for the beautiful in literature,
how many admirable descriptions, how many fine touches in the
dialogue, how many quaint or powerful combinations of words, come
to the surface here and there, such as could appear only under Vic-
tor Hugo's pen!
The other works published by the master during his exile
collection of verse, 'Songs of the Streets and the Woods,' and two
novels, The Toilers of the Sea' and 'The Man Who Laughs'— were
only indifferently successful, and did not add much to his fame;
although there are a few charming poems in the first, some beau-
tiful pages in the second, and in the last a curious idea,- that of
the man whose disfigured features take the appearance of laughter
as soon as he opens his mouth, while he never raises his voice save
for the defense of the noblest and loftiest ideas.
―――
a
Another work of the same period must be mentioned, a work of
literary criticism: the book on Shakespeare. A short time after set-
tling in the Channel Islands, the poet's younger son, François-Victor,
had determined to undertake a complete French translation of Shake-
speare's works. For this translation, which the son carried to com-
pletion, and which is a remarkable piece of work, the father wrote
an introduction intended to set forth his view of the nature of the
great English poet's genius. This introduction, which fills a whole
volume, is a very brilliant and suggestive performance, which shows
how high he might have risen as a literary critic.
Politics, which now occupied a great deal of Hugo's time and
thought, had stirred him much during the last years of Napoleon
III. 's reign. He assailed the alliance, every day more manifest, of
the imperial with the papal government. His poems Guernsey's
Voice' and 'Mentana' were fierce invectives against the attempts of
the French government to bolster up the tottering administration of
Pio Nono. The poet was soon to speak to France not from Guernsey,
## p. 7723 (#541) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7723
but from Paris itself. But the price of his return was a high one.
He returned to the city as soon as France was again a republic
(September 5th, 1870); but the revolution which made it again a
republic was produced by the disasters which culminated in the sur-
render to the victorious Prussians of a whole French army, after the
battle of Sedan (September 2d, 1870). Victor Hugo spent in Paris the
five months of the siege; and at the close of the war the Parisians
rewarded him for his stanch opposition to the government of Napo-
leon III. by a triumphant election to the National Assembly, which
met at Bordeaux in February 1871, with the sad mission of making
peace with the conquerors on the best obtainable terms. He did not
stay there long. That Assembly, which was strongly royalist, was
hostile to nearly all the ideas which he defended. He was listened
to with but scant respect, and he soon resigned his seat. Before he
had time to return to Paris, a terrible domestic affliction added to
the sadness which was then, on public grounds, so deep in every
French heart. His eldest son, Charles, suddenly dropped dead of
heart disease (March 13th, 1871). He carried the dead body back to
Paris, there to bear it to the grave on the very day when the insur-
rection of the Commune broke out (March 18th).
He was soon again on foreign soil, but for a few weeks only,
witnessing with an aching heart the terrible events in which not a
few people thought that the French nation was disappearing forever.
What he felt during all these months of public and private suffering
he has recorded in a strong book of poems, 'L'Année Terrible' (The
Terrible Year).
Victor Hugo was then nearly seventy years old, but he had
become so used to regular work and he preserved such remarkable
health that he could not think of rest. He lived about fourteen
years longer, and during these fourteen years added no less than ten
works to the already long list of his productions. The first to appear
was also the most remarkable of the list: his historical romance of
'Ninety-three,' in which, by simply narrating an imaginary incident
of the wars of the Revolution against the royalist insurrections in
the West of France, he revives again the spirit of that grand and
terrible epoch. His aristocratic marquis Lantenac, his liberal noble-
man Gauvain, his revolutionary priest Cimourdin, are all instinct
with the fierce energy of the struggle out of which modern France
emerged. 'Ninety-three' is certainly a far from unworthy successor
to Notre Dame de Paris' and 'Les Misérables.
'
'The History of a Crime,' published in 1877, was not new: it was
that history of the coup d'état of December 2d, 1851, which he had
written before publishing 'Napoleon the Little' in 1852. The most
surprising of these later books was certainly his 'Art of Grandfather-
hood,' because it is the one which, entirely composed during this
## p. 7724 (#542) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7724
period of his life, shows no decay whatever of his remarkable powers.
A collection of poems, it is a glorification of childhood.
The poet,
who then had no son or daughter of his around him (François-Victor
had died not very long after Charles, and Adèle was demented),
expresses in a thousand different ways the joy with which he watches
every motion, hears every word, notices every progress of his two
grandchildren. The book is full of simplicity and sincerity, and equal
to the best of the 'Autumn Leaves,' though written more than forty
years later.
This cannot be said of the second part of the 'Legend
of the Ages,' of 'The Pope,' of 'Supreme Mercy,' or even of 'The
Four Winds of the Mind'; though the fourth part of the last-named
work, the Epic Book representing the statues of Henry IV. , Louis
XIII. , and Louis XIV. face to face with the scaffold of Louis XVI. ,
contains some of the most striking passages Hugo ever wrote.
The last works he published were a drama written many years
before, Torquemada,' and the third part of the Legend of the Ages. '
He died on May 22d, 1885. His last years had been surrounded
by universal admiration, amounting almost to worship. As soon as
the republican constitution had been adopted, the city of Paris had
elected him one of its senators. The street in which he lived had
had its name changed to Avenue Victor Hugo. On February 27th,
1881, his entrance into his eightieth year had been celebrated almost
as a national holiday. His death caused national mourning. It was
decided to give him obsequies such as no Frenchman had ever had.
His coffin was placed under Napoleon's Triumphal Arch, draped in
black, and for the first time in nearly seventy-five years Soufflot's
Pantheon, again turned into a kind of French Westminster Abbey,
opened its doors for the reception of the illustrious dead.
But though dead, the indefatigable worker had not ceased to pro-
duce. His literary executors discovered an enormous mass of unpub-
lished manuscripts almost equal in bulk to that which he had published
during his life, and at intervals something new has been added to
the list of Victor Hugo's posthumous works: The Theatre at Liberty,'
'Things Seen,' 'The End of Satan,' and especially 'God,' a remark-
able book of poems, are among the works thus published. The public
has recently been permitted to read the first volume of his corre-
spondence. It may safely be said that at least ten years more will
elapse before the whole of his literary production is known. Pos-
terity, in placing Victor Hugo among the greatest writers of all ages,
will single out 'Hernani' as his dramatic masterpiece; 'Les Miséra-
bles' as his best novel; and far above all the rest his most stupen-
dous collection of lyrics, 'Les Châtiments.
Adolphe Cohe
## p. 7725 (#543) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7725
THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN
From Les Orientales >
wo cities, strange, unknown in history's page,
Up to the clouds seemed scaling, stage by stage.
Noiseless their streets; their sleeping inmates lie,
Their gods, their chariots, in obscurity!
Like sisters sleeping 'neath the same moonlight,
O'er their twin towers crept the shades of night,
Whilst, scarce distinguished in the black profound,
Stairs, aqueducts, great pillars gleamed around,
And ruined capitals; then was seen a group
Of granite elephants 'neath a dome to stoop,
Shapeless, giant forms to view arise,
Monsters around, the spawn of hideous ties!
Then hanging gardens, with flowers and galleries;
O'er vast fountains bending grew ebon trees;
Temples, where, seated on their rich tiled thrones,
Bull-headed idols shone in jasper stones;
Vast halls, spanned by one block, where watch and stare
Each upon each, with straight and moveless glare,
Colossal heads in circles; the eye sees
Great gods of bronze, their hands upon their knees.
Sight seemed confounded, and to have lost its powers,
'Midst bridges, aqueducts, arches, and round towers,
Whilst unknown shapes fill up the devious views
Formed by these palaces and avenues.
Like capes the lengthening shadows seem to rise
Of these dark buildings, pointed to the skies,
Immense entanglement in shroud of gloom!
The stars which gleamed in the empyrean dome,
Under the thousand arches in heaven's space,
Shone as through meshes of the blackest lace.
Cities of hell, with foul desires demented,
And monstrous pleasures, hour by hour invented!
Each roof and home some monstrous mystery bore,
Which through the world spread like a twofold sore!
Yet all things slept, and scarce some pale late light
Flitted along the streets through the still night,—
Lamps of debauch, forgotten and alone,
The feast's lost fires left there to flicker on.
The walls' large angles clove the light-lengthening shade
'Neath the white moon, or on some pool's face played.
## p. 7726 (#544) ###########################################
7726
VICTOR HUGO
Perchance one heard, faint in the plain beneath,
The kiss suppressed, the mingling of the breath;
And the two sister cities, tired of heat,
In love's embrace lay down in murmurs sweet!
Whilst sighing winds the scent of sycamore
From Sodom to Gomorrah softly bore!
Then over all spread out the blackened cloud,—
'Tis here! " the Voice on high exclaimed aloud.
Translated by J. N. Fazakerley.
THE SACKING OF THE CITY
"La flamme par ton ordre, O roi! »
HY will, O King, is done! Lighting but to consume,
THY
The roar of the fierce flames drowned even the shouts and
shrieks;
Reddening each roof, like some day-dawn of bloody doom,
Seemed they in joyous flight to dance about their wrecks.
Slaughter his thousand giant arms hath tossed on high,
Fell fathers, husbands, wives, beneath his streaming steel;
Prostrate the palaces, huge tombs of fire, lie,
While gathering overhead the vultures scream and wheel!
Died the pale mothers, and the virgins, from their arms,
O Caliph, fiercely torn, bewailed their young years' blight;
With stabs and kisses fouled, all their yet quivering charms
At our fleet coursers' heels were dragged in mocking flight.
Lo! where the city lies mantled in pall of death;
Lo! where thy mighty hand hath passed, all things must bend!
Priests prayed, the sword estopped blaspheming breath,—
Vainly their cheating book for shield did they extend.
Some infants yet survived, and the unsated steel
Still drinks the life-blood of each whelp of Christian-kind;
To kiss thy sandaled foot, O King, thy people kneel,
And golden circlets to thy victor-ankle bind.
Translation of John L. O'Sullivan.
## p. 7727 (#545) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
OLD OCEAN
"J'étais seul près des flots »
COME
STOOD by the waves, while the stars soared in sight;
I
Not a cloud specked the sky, not a sail shimmered bright;
Scenes beyond this dim world were revealed to mine eye;
And the woods, and the hills, and all nature around,
Seemed to question with moody, mysterious sound,
The waves, and the pure stars on high.
And the clear constellations, that infinite throng,
While thousand rich harmonies swelled in their song,
Replying, bowed meekly their diamond blaze;
And the blue waves, which nothing may bind or arrest,
Chorused forth, as they stooped the white foam of their crest,
"Creator! we bless thee and praise! "
Translation of R. C. Ellwood.
PRAYER
"Ma fille, va prier! »
I
OME, child, to prayer; the busy day is done,
A golden star gleams through the dusk of night;
The hills are trembling in the rising mist,
The rumbling wain looms dim upon the sight;
All things wend home to rest; the roadside trees
Shake off their dust, stirred by the evening breeze.
The sparkling stars gush forth in sudden blaze,
As twilight open flings the doors of night;
The fringe of carmine narrows in the west,
The rippling waves are tipped with silver light;
The bush, the path-all blend in one dull gray;
The doubtful traveler gropes his anxious way.
7727
O day! with toil, with wrong, with hatred rife;
O blessed night! with sober calmness sweet:
The sad winds moaning through the ruined tower,
The age-worn hind, the sheep's sad broken bleat-
All nature groans opprest with toil and care,
And wearied craves for rest and love and prayer.
At eve the babes with angels converse hold,
While we to our strange pleasures wend our way;
## p. 7728 (#546) ###########################################
7728
VICTOR HUGO
Each with its little face upraised to heaven,
With folded hands, barefoot kneels down to pray;
At self-same hour with self-same words they call
On God, the common father of them all.
And then they sleep, and golden dreams anon,
Born as the busy day's last murmurs die,
In swarms tumultuous flitting through the gloom,
Their breathing lips and golden locks descry;
And as the bees o'er bright flowers joyous roam,
Around their curtained cradles clustering come.
O prayer of childhood! simple, innocent;
O infant slumbers! peaceful, pure, and light;
O happy worship! ever gay with smiles,
Meet prelude to the harmonies of night:
As birds beneath the wing enfold their head,
Nestled in prayer the infant seeks its bed.
Translation of Henry Highton, M. A.
II
To prayer, my child! and oh, be thy first prayer
For her who many nights with anxious care
Rocked thy first cradle; who took thy infant soul
From heaven and gave it to the world; then rife
With love, still drank herself the gall of life,
And left for thy young lips the honeyed bowl.
And then-I need it more then pray for me!
For she is gentle, artless, true like thee;
She has a guileless heart, brow placid still;
Pity she has for all, envy for none;
Gentle and wise, she patiently lives on;
And she endures, nor knows who does the ill.
-
In culling flowers, her novice hand has ne'er
Touched e'en the outer rind of vice; no snare
With smiling show has lured her steps aside:
On her the past has left no staining mark;
Nor knows she aught of those bad thoughts which, dark
Like shade on waters, o'er the spirit glide.
She knows not - nor mayst thou-the miseries
In which our spirits mingle: vanities,
Remorse, soul-gnawing cares, Pleasure's false show;
## p. 7729 (#547) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7729
Passions which float upon the heart like foam,
Bitter remembrances which o'er us come,
And Shame's red spot spread sudden o'er the brow.
I know life better! When thou'rt older grown
I'll tell thee - it is needful to be known-
-
Of the pursuit of wealth, art, power; the cost,—
That it is folly, nothingness; that shame
For glory is oft thrown us in the game
Of Fortune, chances where the soul is lost.
The soul will change. Although of everything
The cause and end be clear, yet wildering
We roam through life, of vice and error full.
We wander as we go; we feel the load
Of doubt; and to the briers upon the road
Man leaves his virtue, as the sheep its wool.
Then go, go pray for me! And as the prayer
Gushes in words, be this the form they bear:—
"Lord, Lord our Father! God, my prayer attend;
Pardon - Thou art good! Pardon - Thou art great! "
Let them go freely forth, fear not their fate!
Where thy soul sends them, thitherward they tend.
There's nothing here below which does not find
Its tendency. O'er plains the rivers wind,
And reach the sea; the bee, by instinct driven,
Finds out the honeyed flowers; the eagle flies
To seek the sun; the vulture where death lies;
The swallow to the spring; the prayer to Heaven!
And when thy voice is raised to God for me,
I'm like the slave whom in the vale we see
Seated to rest, his heavy load laid by:
I feel refreshed; the load of faults and woe
Which, groaning, I drag with me as I go,
Thy winged prayer bears off rejoicingly!
XIII-484
Pray for thy father! that his dreams be bright
With visitings of angel forms of light,
And his soul burn as incense flaming wide.
Let thy pure breath all his dark sins efface,
So that his heart be like that holy place,
An altar pavement each eve purified!
Translation of C, in Tait's Magazine.
## p. 7730 (#548) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7730
MY THOUGHTS OF YE
«À quoi je songe? »
WH
HAT do I dream of? Far from the low roof
Where now ye are, children, I dream of you;
Of your young heads that are the hope and crown
Of my full summer, ripening to its fall.
Branches whose shadow grows along my wall,
Sweet souls scarce open to the breath of day,
Still dazzled with the brightness of your dawn.
I dream of those two little ones at play,
Making the threshold vocal with their cries,—
Half tears, half laughter, mingled sport and strife,
Like two flowers knocked together by the wind.
Or of the elder two-more anxious thought –
Breasting already broader waves of life,
A conscious innocence on either face,
My pensive daughter and my curious boy.
Thus do I dream, while the light sailors sing,
At even moored beneath some steepy shore,
While the waves, opening all their nostrils, breathe
A thousand sea-scents to the wandering wind,
And the whole air is full of wondrous sounds,
From sea to strand, from land to sea, given back:
Alone and sad, thus do I dream of you.
Children, and house and home, the table set,
The glowing hearth, and all the pious care
Of tender mother, and of grandsire kind;
And while before me, spotted with white sails,
The limpid ocean mirrors all the stars,
And while the pilot from the infinite main
Looks with calm eye into the infinite heaven,
I, dreaming of you only, seek to scan
And fathom all my soul's deep love for you,-
Love sweet and powerful, and everlasting,-
And find that the great sea is small beside it.
Translation in Dublin University Magazine.
## p. 7731 (#549) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7731
NAPOLEON
"Tu domines notre âge; ange ou démon, qu'importe! "
NGEL or demon! thou-whether of light
Α
-
The minister, or darkness - still dost sway
This age of ours; thine eagle's soaring flight
Bears us, all breathless, after it away.
The eye that from thy presence fain would stray,
Shuns thee in vain; thy mighty shadow thrown
Rests on all pictures of the living day,
And on the threshold of our time alone,
Dazzling, yet sombre, stands thy form, Napoleon!
Thus, when the admiring stranger's steps explore
The subject-lands that 'neath Vesuvius be,
Whether he wind along the enchanting shore
To Portici from fair Parthenope,
Or, lingering long in dreamy revery,
O'er loveliest Ischia's od'rous isle he stray,
Wooed by whose breath the soft and am'rous sea
Seems like some languishing sultana's lay,
A voice for very sweets that scarce can win its way:
Him, whether Pæstum's solemn fane detain,
Shrouding his soul with meditation's power;
Or at Pozzuoli, to the sprightly strain
Of tarantella danced 'neath Tuscan tower,
Listening, he while away the evening hour;
Or wake the echoes, mournful, lone, and deep,
Of that sad city, in its dreaming bower
By the volcano seized, where mansions keep
The likeness which they wore at that last fatal sleep;
Or be his bark at Posilippo laid,
While as the swarthy boatman his side
Chants Tasso's lays to Virgil's pleasèd shade,-
Ever he sees throughout that circuit wide,
From shaded nook or sunny lawn espied,
From rocky headland viewed, or flow'ry shore,
From sea and spreading mead alike descried,
The Giant Mount, tow'ring all objects o'er,
And black'ning with its breath th' horizon evermore!
Translation in Fraser's Magazine.
## p. 7732 (#550) ###########################################
7732
VICTOR HUGO
THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW
"Il neigeait »
T SNOWED. A defeat was our conquest red!
I'
For once, the eagle was hanging its head.
Sad days! The Emperor turned slowly his back
On smoking Moscow, blent orange and black.
The winter burst, avalanche-like to reign
Over the endless blanched sheet of the plain.
Nor chief nor banner in order could keep,—
The wolves of warfare were 'wildered like sheep.
The wings from centre could hardly be known
Through snow o'er horses and carts o'erthrown,
Where froze the wounded. In the bivouacs forlorn
Strange sights and gruesome met the breaking morn:
Mute were the bugles, while the men bestrode
Steeds turned to marble, unheeding the goad.
The shells and bullets came down with the snow
As though the heavens hated these poor troops below.
. Surprised at trembling, though it was with cold,
Who ne'er had trembled out of fear, the veterans bold
Marched stern; to grizzled mustache hoar-frost clung
'Neath banners that in leaden masses hung.
It snowed, went snowing still. And chill the breeze
Whistled upon the grassy endless seas,
Where naked feet on, on forever went,
With naught to eat, and not a sheltering tent.
They were not living troops as seen in war,
But merely phantoms of a dream, afar
In darkness wandering, amid the vapor dim,-
A mystery; of shadows a procession grim,
Nearing a blackening sky, unto its rim.
Frightful, since boundless, solitude behold,
Where only Nemesis wove, mute and cold,
A net all snowy with its soft meshes dense,
A shroud of magnitude for host immense;
Till every one felt as if left alone
In a wide wilderness where no light shone,
To die, with pity none, and none to see
That from this mournful realm none should get free.
Their foes the frozen North and Czar-that, worst.
Cannon were broken up in haste accurst
## p. 7733 (#551) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7733
To burn the frames and make the pale fire high,
Where those lay down who never woke, or woke to die.
Sad and commingled, groups that blindly fled.
Were swallowed smoothly by the desert dread.
'Neath folds of blankness, monuments were raised
O'er regiments. And History, amazed,
Could not record the ruin of this retreat,-
Unlike a downfall known before, or the defeat
Of Hannibal-reversed and wrapped in gloom!
Of Attila, when nations met their doom!
Perished an army - fled French glory then,
Though there the Emperor! He stood and gazed
At the wild havoc, like a monarch dazed
In woodland hoar, who felt the shrieking saw-
He, living oak, beheld his branches fall, with awe.
Chiefs, soldiers, comrades died. But still warm love
Kept those that rose all dastard fear above,
As on his tent they saw his shadow pass-
Backwards and forwards; for they credited, alas!
His fortune's star! It could not, could not be
That he had not his work to do-a destiny?
To hurl him headlong from his high estate
Would be high treason in his bondman, Fate.
But all the while he felt himself alone,
Stunned with disasters few have ever known.
Sudden, a fear came o'er his troubled soul:
What more was written on the Future's scroll?
Was this an expiation? It must be, yea!
He turned to God for one enlightening ray.
"Is this the vengeance, Lord of Hosts? " he sighed;
But the first murmur on his parched lips died.
"Is this the vengeance? Must my glory set? "
A pause: his name was called; of flame a jet
Sprang in the darkness;- -a Voice answered: "No!
Not yet. "
Outside still fell the smothering snow.
Was it a voice indeed? or but a dream?
It was the vulture's, but how like the sea-bird's scream.
Translation of Toru Dutt.
## p. 7734 (#552) ###########################################
7734
VICTOR HUGO
THE LIONS
"Les lions dans la fosse étaient sans nourriture »
F^
AMISHED the Lions were in their strong den,
And roared appeal to Nature from the men
Who caged them-Nature, that for them had care.
Kept for three days without their needful fare,
The creatures raved with hunger and with hate,
And through their roof of chains and iron grate
Looked to the blood-red sunset in the west:
Their cries the distant traveler oppressed,
Far as horizon which the blue hill veils.
Fiercely they lashed their bodies with their tails
Till the walls shook; as if their eyes' red light
And hungry jaws had lent them added might.
By Og and his great sons was shaped the cave;
They hollowed it, in need themselves to save.
It was a deep-laid place wherein to hide,
This giant's palace in the rock's dark side;
Their heads had broken through the roof of stone,
So that the light in every corner shone,
And dreary dungeon had for dome blue sky.
Nebuchadnezzar, savage king, had eye
For this strong cavern, and a pavement laid
Upon the centre, that it should be made
A place where lions he could safely mew,
Though once Deucalions and khans it knew.
The beasts were four most furious all. The ground
Was carpeted with bones that lay all round;
While as they walked, and crunched with heavy tread
Men's skeletons and brutes', far overhead
The tapering shadows of the rocks were spread.
The first had come from Sodom's desert plain;
When savage freedom did to him remain
He dwelt at Sin, extremest point and rude
Of silence terrible and solitude.
Oh! woe betide who fell beneath his claw,
This Lion of the sand with rough-skinned paw.
The second came from forest watered by
The stream Euphrates. When his step drew nigh,
Descending to the river, all things feared;
Hard fight to snare this growler it appeared.
## p. 7735 (#553) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7735
The hounds of two kings were employed to catch
This Lion of the woods and be his match.
The third one dwelt on the steep mountain's side.
Horror and gloom companioned every stride:
When towards the miry ravines they would stray,
And herds and flocks in their wild gambols play,
All fled the shepherd, warrior, priest -in fright
If he leaped forth in all his dreadful might.
The fourth tremendous, furious creature came
From the sea-shore, and prowled with leonine fame,
Before he knew captivity's hard throes,
Along the coast where Gur's strong city rose.
Reeking its roofs - and in its ports were met
The masts of many nations thickly set.
There peasants brought their manna fine, and gum,
And there the prophet on his ass would come;
And folks were happy as caged birds set free.
Gur had a market-place 'twas grand to see;
There Abyssinians brought their ivories rare,
And Amorrhiens amber for their ware,
And linens dark. From Assur came fine wheat,
And from famed Ascalon the butter sweet.
The fleet of vessels stir on ocean made.
This beast in revery of evening's shade
Was fretted by the noisy town so near,-
Too many folks lived in it, that was clear.
Gur was a lofty, formidable town:
At night three heavy barriers made it frown
And closed the entrance inaccessible;
Between each battlement rose terrible
Rhinoceros horn, or one of buffalo;
The strong, straight wall did like a hero show.
Some fifteen fathoms deep the moat might be,
And it was filled by sluices from the sea.
Instead of kenneled watch-dogs barking near,
Two monstrous dragons did for guards appear:
They had been captured 'mong the reeds of Nile,
And by magician tamed to guards servile.
One night, the gate thus kept the Lion neared:
With single bound the guarding moat he cleared;
Then with barbaric teeth the gate he smashed
And all its triple bars; and next he crashed
―
## p. 7736 (#554) ###########################################
7736
VICTOR HUGO
The dragons twain, without so much as look
At them, and bolts and hinges all he shook
Into one wreck. And when he made his way
Back towards the strand, remained there of the fray
Only a vision of the peopled town,
Only a memory of the wall knocked down,
'Neath spectral towers fit but for vulture's nest,
Or for the tiger wanting timely rest.
This Lion scorned complaint, but crouching lay
And yawned, so heavily time passed away.
