Born in Besançon, France in 1802, Victor Hugo became a champion of French letters and the father of Romanticism. Although he was conservative during his youth, in his later years he became a proponent of Republicanism. He settled in Paris with his mother in 1812 after 10 years of traveling with his father who was a general under Napoleon. In 1822 he married Adele Foucher, his childhood sweetheart. Four years later Hugo published his third collection of poems, Odes and Ballads. That year was the start of an intense 17 year period of creativity that was interrupted by the death of his daughter Leopoldine in 1896. After a period of exile in Brussels and the Channel Islands, Hugo returned to France where he was embraced as a national hero. He stayed active in politics and letters until his health began to fail in 1878. He died in 1885 at age 83 and he is buried in the Panthéon.
Rêverie
Oh ! laissez-moi ! c'est l'heure où l'horizon qui fume |
Fonction du poète
Dieu le veut, dans les temps contraires,
Chacun travaille et chacun sert.
Malheur à qui dit à ses frères :
Je retourne dans le désert!
Malheur à qui prend ses sandales
Quand les haines et les scandales
Tourmentent le peuple agité!
Honte au penseur qui se mutile
Et s'en va, chanteur inutile,
Par la porte de la cité!
Le poète en des jours impies
Vient préparer des jours meilleurs.
Il est l'homme des utopies,
Les pieds ici, les yeux ailleurs.
C'est lui qui sur toutes les têtes,
En tout temps, pareil aux prophètes,
Dans sa main, où tout peut tenir,
Doit, qu'on l'insulte ou qu'on le loue,
Comme une torche qu'il secoue,
Faire flamboyer l'avenir!
Il voit, quand les peuples végètent!
Ses rêves, toujours pleins d'amour,
Sont faits des ombres que lui jettent
Les choses qui seront un jour.
On le raille. Qu'importe! il pense.
Plus d'une âme inscrit en silence
Ce que la foule n'entend pas.
Il plaint ses contemplateurs frivoles ;
Et maint faux sage à ses paroles
Rit tout haut et songe tout bas! [...]
Peuples! écoutez le poète!
Ecoutez le rêveur sacré!
Dans votre nuit, sans lui complète,
Lui seul a le front éclairé.
Des temps futurs perçant les ombres,
Lui seul distingue en leurs flancs sombres
Le germe qui n'est pas éclos.
Homme, il est doux comme une femme.
Dieu parle à voix basse à son âme
Comme aux forêts et comme aux flots.
C'est lui qui, malgré les épines,
L'envie et la dérision,
Marche, courbé dans vos ruines,
Ramassant la tradition.
De la tradition féconde
Sort tout ce qui couvre le monde,
Tout ce que le ciel peut bénir.
Toute idée, humaine ou divine,
Qui prend le passé pour racine
A pour feuillage l'avenir.
Il rayonne! il jette sa flamme
Sur l'éternelle vérité!
Il la fait resplendir pour l'âme
D'une merveilleuse clarté.
Il inonde de sa lumière
Ville et désert, Louvre et chaumière,
Et les plaines et les hauteurs ;
A tous d'en haut il la dévoile ;
Car la poésie est l'étoile
Qui mène à Dieu rois et pasteurs.
Although Victor Hugo wrote across several genres including novels, plays, and poetry, his contributions to the field of poetry are notable because his work can be viewed as visionary and revolutionary. His body of work allowed for the integration of subject matter and substance that were previously unacceptable in the poems of the romantics. His liberties with subject allowed the poets who followed (Baudelaire, Rimbaud) a freedom of expression that they pushed to even further limits towards the end of the nineteenth century. In his early work such as the collection Les Orientales, Hugo showed his understanding of the poet to be an intermediary between humans and God, humans and History, etc. While this may seem a pompous attitude to contemporary readers, the French public embraced him and catupulted him to his status of a literary leader, so much that when he died millions lined the streets of Paris for his funeral. In the poem "Fonction du poète," Hugo describes the role of poet as one who is charged with changing the world, one who can observe what the general public cannot. In later years his use of didactic voice gave way to a more personal and humanitarian tone.
Betz, Dorothy M. "Orientalism as Freedom in Hugo's Les Orientales." Romance Quarterly 52.1 (Winter2005 2005): 54-63.
Lunn-Rockliffe, Katherine. "DEATH AND THE AESTHETIC OF CONTINUITY: READING VICTOR HUGO'S CONTEMPLATIONS." French Studies 62.1 (Jan. 2008): 13-25.
Riffaterre, Michael. "HUGO'S ORIENTALES REVISITED." Romanic Review 93.1/2 (Jan. 2002): 173.
Smart, Ariane. "The darkness and claustrophobia of the city: Victor Hugo and the myth of Paris." Modern & Contemporary France 8.3 (Aug. 2000): 315-324.