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Novelist, poet, anddramatist, themost importantof French Romantic writers. Victor Hugo developed his own version ofthe historical novel, combining concrete, historical details withvivid, melodramatic, even feverish imagination. His best-known worksincludeThe Hunchback of Notre Dame(1831) andLesMisérables (1862). Victor-Marie Hugo was born in Besançon, the son ofJoseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie Trébuchet. Hugo's father wasan officer in Napoleon's army, an enthusiastic republican and ruthlessprofessional soldier, who loved dangers and adventures. After themarriage of his parents had collapsed, Hugo was raised by his mother.In 1807 Sophie took her family for two years from Paris to Italy, whereLéopold served as a governor of a province near Naples. When GeneralHugo took charge of three Spanish provinces, Sophie again joined herhusband. Sophie's lover, General Victor Lahorie, her husband's formerCommandin Officer, was shot in 1812 by a firing-squad for plottingagainst Napoleon. General Hugo died in 1828; at that time Hugo startedto call himself a baron. From 1815 to 1818 Hugo spend in the Pension Cordier in Paris,but most of the classes of the school were held at the Collège Louis-leGrand. He began in early adolescence to write verse tragedies andpoetry, and translatedVirgil. At the age ofsixteen he noted: "Many a great poet is often / Nothing but a literarygiraffe: / How great he seems in front, / How small he is behind!" Withhis brothers he founded in 1819 a review, theConservateurLittéraire. Inspired by the example of the statesman and authorFrançois René Chateaubriand, Hugo published his first collection ofpoems, Odes et poésies diverses (1822). It gained him aroyal pension from Louis XVIII. As a novelist Hugo made his debut withHan d'Islande(1823),which appeared first anonymously in four pocket-sized volumes. It wastranslated two years later in English and a Norwegian translation waspublished in 1831. The style of SirWalter Scottlabelled several of his works, among themBug-Jargal (1826), aboutfriendship between an enslaved African prince and a French militaryofficer. In 1822 Hugo married Adèle Foucher (d. 1868), who was thedaughter of an officer at the ministry of war. His brother Eugéne, whohad mental problems, was secretly in love with her and lost his mind onHugo's wedding day. Engéne spent the rest of his life in aninstitution. In the 1820s Hugo come in touch with liberal writers, buthis political stand wavered from side to side. He wrote royalist odes,cursed the memory of Napoleon, but then started to defend his father'srole in Napoleon's victories, and attack the injustices of themonarchist regime.Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné(1829, The Last Day of a Condemned Man), written in the form of aninterior monologue, was a plea for the abolition of the capitalpunishment. This was the work that the Russian authorFyodor Dostoevsky recalled in 1849 before a firing squad, waiting to be executed forrevolutionary activities. Dostoevsky suffered the same agonies asHugo's narrator. Hugo's foreword for his playCromwell (1829),a manifesto for a new drama, started a debate between French Classicismand Romanticism. However, Hugo was not a rebel, and not directlyinvolved in the campaign against the bourgeois, but he influenceddeeply the Romantic movement and the formulation of its values inFrance. "The Victor I loved is no more," said Alfred de Vigny, "... nowhe likes to make saucy remarks and is turning into a liberal, whichdoes not suit him..." Hugo gained a wider fame with his playHernani(1830), in which Hernani, a bandit, and other conspirators, planning tokill the the Spanish king Don Carlos, use the phrase "Ad augusta perangusta" (Through difficulties to honours) as password. At the endHernani and his newly wed wife Doña Sol drink poison and die. Of all of Hugo's dramas,Le roi s'amuse(1832), on which Verdi based his operaRigoletto,andRyu Blas (1838) have been the most popular amongfilmmakers. Hugo's historical workNotre-Dame de Paris was aninstant success. Since its appearance the story has became part of thepopular culture. The novel, set in 15th century Paris, tells a movingstory of a gypsy girl Esmeralda and the deformed, deaf bell-ringer,Quasimodo, who loves her. Esmeralda aroses passion in Claude Frollo, anevil priest, who discovers that she favors Captain Phoebus. Frollostabs the captain and Esmeralda is accused of the crime. Quasimodoattempts to shelter Esmeralda in the cathedral. Frollo finds her andwhen Frollo is rejected by Esmeralda, he leaves her to theexecutioners. In his despair Quasimodo catches the priest, throws himfrom the cathedral tower, and disappears. Later two skeletons are foundin Esmeralda's tomb – that of a hunchback embracing that of a woman. In1831 Hugo also wrote the libretto for Louise Bertin'sEsmeralda,an opera based on the novel. In the 1830s Hugo published several volumes of lyric poetry,which were inspired by Juliette Drouet (Julienne-Joséphine Gauvain), anactress with whom Hugo had a liaison until her death in 1882.Possibly Mlle Juliette taught him the actress's proverb, "A womanwho has one lover is an angel, a woman who has two lovers is a monster,and a woman who has three lovers is a woman." Hugo, himself, wasnever a faithful lover. Adéle had an affair with Hugo's friendCharles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve. "Let us not bury our friendship," Hugowrote to him, but later described him as a man, who 'lifts hisloathsome skirt and says, "Admire me!"' Hugo himself was seen by hisfans a Gargantuan, larger-than-life character, and rumors spread thathe could eat half an ox at a single sitting, fast for three days, andwork non-stop for a week. Hugo's lyrical style was rich, intense and full of powerfulsounds and rhythms, and although it followed the bourgeois populartaste of the period it also had bitter personal tones. Hugo's 'MmeBiard poems' – he had an affair with Léonie d'Aunet (Mme Biard's maidenname) in the 1840s – are intensely sexual. According to Verlaine atypical Hugo love poem was "I like you. You yield to me. I love you. –You resist me. Clear off..." In his later life Hugo became involved in politics as asupporter of the republican form of government. After threeunsuccessful attempts, Hugo was elected in 1841 to the AcadémieFrancaise. This triumph was shadowed by the death of Hugo's daughterLéopoldine. She had married Charles Vacquerie in February 1843, and inSeptember she drowned with her husband. In a poem, 'Tomorrow, AtDaybreak', written on the fourth anniversary of her death, Hugodepicted his walk to the place where she was buried: "I shall not lookon the gold of evening falling / Nor on the sails descending distanttowards Harfleur, / And when I come, shall lay upon your grave / Abouquet of green holly and of flowering briar." It took a decade beforeHugo published again books. After Hugo was made apairde France in 1845, he sat in the Upper Chamber among the lords. Healso began to work with a new novel, first titledJean Tréjean,thenLes Misères. Following the 1848 revolution, with theformation of the Second Republic, Hugo was elected to theConstitutional Assembly and to the Legislative Assembly. When workersstarted to riot, he led soldiers who stormed barricades in brutalassaults. When the coup d'état by Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) tookplace in 1851, Hugobelieved his life to be in danger. "Louis-Napoléon is a traitor," hehad declared. "He had violated the Constitution!" Hugo fled to Brusselsand then to Jersey. When he was expelled from the island, he moved withhis family to Guernsey in the English Channel. In a poem, 'Memory ofthe Night of the Fourth,' focusing on the overthrown of the SecondRepublic and the death of a young child, killed by bullets, Hugo wroteabout the new emperor: "Ah mother, you don't understand politics. /Monsieur Napoleon, that's his real name, / Is poor and a prince; lovespalaces; / Likes to have horses, valets, money / For his gaming, histable, his bedroom, / His hunts, and he maintains / Family, church andsociety, / He wants Saint-Clod, rose-carpeted in summer, So prefectsand mayors can respect him. That's why it has to be this way: oldgrandmothers / With their poor gray fingers shaking with age / Must sewin winding-sheets children of seven." Hugo's partly voluntary exilelasted 20 years. During this time he wrote at Hauteville House some hisbest works, including LesChâtiments (1853, Castigations) andLesMisérables(1862), an epic story about social injustice.LesChâtimentsbecame one of the most popular forbidden poetry books. Les Misérables is set in the Parisianunderworld. The protagonist, Jean Valjean, is sentenced to prison for19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. After his release, Valjean plansto rob monseigneur Myriel, a saintlike bishop, but cancels his plan.However, he forfeits his parole by committing a minor crime, and forthis crime Valjean is haunted by the police inspector Javert. Valjeaneventually reforms and becomes under the name of M. Madeleine asuccessful businessman, benefactor and mayor of a northern town. Tosave an innocent man, Valjean gives himself up and is imprisoned inToulon. He escapes and adopts Cosette, an illegitimate child of a poorwoman, Fantine. Cosette grows up and falls in love with Marius, who iswounded during a revolutionary fight. Valjean rescues Marius by meansof a flight through the sewers of Paris. Cosette and Marius marries andValjean reveals his past. - The story has been filmed several times andmade into a musical by the composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and thelibrettist Alain Boublil, opening in 1980 in Paris. The English versionwas realised in 1985 and the Broadway version followed two years later. Like other Romantic writers, Hugo was interested in Spiritism,and he experimented with table-tapping. After a number of fruitlessefforts, his table gave him the final title ofLes Misérables.Among Hugo's most ambitious works was an epic poem,La Fin de Satan,a study of Satan's fall and the history of the universe. Satan ispresented more complex character than merely the embodiment of theEvil, but when Milton saw inParadise Lost in Satan's revolttragic, cosmic grandeur, Hugo brings forth the horror elements. Thepoem was never completed. Although Napoleon III granted in 1859 an amnesty to allpolitical exiles, Hugo did not take the bite.Les Misérablesappeared with an international advertising campaign. The book dividedcritics but masses were enthusiastic. Pope Pius IX added it withMadameBovary and all the novels of Stendhal and Balzac to the Index ofProscribed Books. Hugo's fleeting affairs with maids and country girlsinspired hisLes Chansons desrues et des bois (1865). "The creaking of a trestlebed / Is one of the sounds of paradise," he wrote. Hugo's daughterAdèle, whose apathy and unsociability caused him much worries, wentafter Lieutenant Albert Pinson to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where hisregiment was stationed, and followed also him to Barbados. Les Travailleurs de la Mer(1866,Toilersof the Sea),about betrayal, love, and a passive suicide,became a bestseller, but has fallen into obscurity in theEnglish-speaking world. Hugo himself never worked at sea. The firstEnglish editions were illustrated by Gustave Doré. Reviewing the bookHenry James said that the "story is a very small one in spite of itsenormous distensions and inflations." Not all of Hugo's works from this creative periodwere critically and commercially successful. One of them wasL'Homme qui rit(1869, The Man Who Laughs), the story of a boy called Gwynplaine, setin the 18th century England. The title character has been abducted inhis infancy by a band ofComprachicos(child-buyers), whose surgeon has cut off his lips and slit his mouthfrom ear to ear. Allegedly the disfigured face provided inspiration forthe Joker's perpetual grin in Bob Kane'sBatman comics. Kane recalled in his autobiographyBatman and Me(1989), that his collaborator Bill Finger, an early uncredited Batmanwriter, had a copy of a photoplay edition of the 1928 silentfilm adaptation of the novel, with photos of Conrad Veidt asGwynplaine. (Noteworthy, Hugo's tragic hero is not a monster, or a villain, buteventually turns out to be actually a peer of England, who after takinghis rightful seat in the House of Lords, defends the rights of thepoor. Adèle Hugo's biography of her husband appeared in 1863; shedied in 1868. Political upheavals in France and the proclamation of theThird Republic made Hugo return to France. The unpopular Napoleon IIIfell from power the Republic was proclaimed. In 1870 Hugo witnessed thesiege of Paris. "There is only enough sugar in Paris for ten days," hewrote in his diary on 8 October. "Meat rationing began today." Duringthe period of the Paris Commune of 1871, Hugo lived in Brussels, fromwhere he was expelled for sheltering defeated revolutionaries. Hugo'sattitude to the Commune was ambivalent: "An admirable thing, stupidlycompromised by five or six deplorable ringleaders." After a short time refuge in Luxemburg, he returned to Parisand was elected as a senator of Paris in 1876. Sexually he was stillactive and his maid, Blanche Lanvin, was the constant target of hispassions, but not the only one. "Take care not to wound that tenderheart and great soul," he wrote in his diary, to remember himself ofhis principal mistress, Juliette Drouet. Hugo told Blance that peniswas a lyre, "and only poets know how to play them." After an exhaustiveperiod with her, Hugo suffered a mild stroke in June 1878. Theinfuriated Juliette, his faithful companion form the 1830s, wrote toher nephew: "You must try to track down the creature [Blanche] who hasdestroyed my happiness.." Victor Hugo died in Paris on May 22, 1885. His last wordswere: "I see black light." Hugowas given a nationalfuneral, attended by two million people, and buried in the Panthéon.Representatives of most European countries came to the ceremony. Thecritic Roger Shattuck wrote inThe Banquet Years: The Arts in France 1885-1918 (rev. ed. 1968) that "By this orgiastic ceremony France unburdened itself of a man, a literary movement, and century." Selected works:
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