Victor Hugo, French novelist, in exile in Guernsey, 1866. Victor Hugo with, amongst others, Juliette Drouet, and his grandchildren Georges and Jeanne Hugo.
Juliette Drouet was a French actress. She abandoned her career on the stage after becoming the mistress of Victor Hugo, to whom she acted as a secretary and travelling companion.
Wife: Adèle Foucher
Adèle Hugo, the author's wife, as a young woman, by Louis Boulanger
Daughter: Adèle Hugo
Portrait d'Adèle Hugo
Son: François-Victor Hugo
François-Victor Hugo, fourth child of Victor Hugo, known for his translations of Shakespeare into French.
Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist. He is noted for the breadth of his creation, the versatility that made him as much at ease in the novel as in the short lyric, and the mystical grandeur of his vision.
Background
Victor Hugo was born on 26 February 1802 in Besançon, France, the son of Joseph Leopold Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie Trebuchet. He had a nomadic and anxious childhood. Victor was the third-born and the youngest son of the family. His elder siblings were Abel Joseph Hugo and Eugene Hugo.
His father, Joseph was a freethinking republican and an important officer in the army of Napoleon and considered him his idol. On the other hand, his mother Sophie was a devoted Catholic Royalist. The political incompatibility of his parents adversely affected their family life.
Joseph’s job required him to move constantly from one place to another. Travelling with his father to different countries, young Hugo developed a liking for nature and beauty. By 1803, his mother was exhausted by travelling and decided to stay back in Paris while his father went to Italy.
Education
Victor Hugo’s education in his childhood was largely supervised by his mother who was a devout Catholic Royalist. He was erratically schooled, a fact which accounts in part for the eclectic and unsystematic aspect of his poetic thought.
For a short time he attended the College of Nobles in Madrid, and in France he was tutored by a former priest, Pere de la Rivière.
In 1814, Victor entered the Pension Cordier, which sent its more advanced students to take courses at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand. When in 1817 he received an honorable mention from the French Academy for a poem on "The Happiness to be Derived from Study in All Circumstances of Life," he was generally recognized as a child prodigy.
Hugo began to write in every poetic genre-odes, satires, elegies, riddles, epics, madrigals-and to receive recognition while still in his adolescence, never having to fact the long years of obscurity and struggle that are the lot of most poets. In 1822 he published his first signed book, Odes et poésies diverses.
Hugo's work may be roughly divided into three periods. First in time is the intimate lyrical vein typical of the odes. Second is an involved or committed poetry speaking directly to political and social conditions. The epic novel Les Misérables, for example, fits into this group. In the last phase of his career Hugo rose to the heights of mysticism and poetic vision, as in La Fin de Satan.
In 1824 some of Hugo's friends founded a review called Muse française which claimed as its contributors Alfred de Musset, Charles Nodier, and Hugo himself. All were young writers who were beginning to break with neoclassicism. After his visit to Alphonse de Lamartine and his discovery of German balladry, in 1826 Hugo published Odes et ballades, in which his rejection of neoclassicism became increasingly clear.
The years 1826 and 1827 were triumphant ones for the Cénacle, the name given to the young romantics who recognized Hugo as their chief and called him the "prince of poets". What Lamartine and the Vicomte de Chateaubriand had begun, Hugo was dedicated to complete. He ceased writing complimentary odes to King Charles X and began praising Napoleon I instead.
With critics like Nodier and Charles Sainte-Beuve to advise him and with the support of geniuses such as the painter Eugène Delacroix and the poets Musset and Gerard de Nerval, Hugo formulated the doctrine of romanticism. This doctrine was expressed in the preface to his unproduced play, Cromwell, published in October 1827. Where classics and neo-classics had repudiated the Middle Ages as "barbaric," Hugo saw richness and beauty in this period, and he called for a new poetry inspired by medieval Christianity. He vindicated the ugly and grotesque as elements of the "new beauty." Poetry, he said, should do as nature does. The vivifying sources of this new literature were to be the Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare.
Convinced that the new vision must prove itself in the theater, Hugo followed Cromwell with a number of other plays. On February 25, 1830, the famous "battle of Hernani" took place, with Hugo's supporters outshouting the neoclassicists and antiromantics who had come to hiss the play. Hernani was performed 45 times, an unusual success for those days, and brought Hugo the friendship of such notable figures as Dumas père and George Sand.
But Hugo did not confine himself to the drama. In 1831 he published his magnificent novel Notre Dame de Paris. He was originally inspired by Sir Walter Scott, on whom he hoped to improve by adding "sentiment" and "poetry" to the historical novel. In addition, he wished to convey the true spirit of the late Middle Ages through his evocation of the Cathedral of Notre Dame and his characters: Frollo the archdeacon, Quasimodo the hunchback, and Esmeralda the gypsy girl. Hugo wrote the novel nonstop during the fall and early winter of 1830 in order to meet his publisher's deadline. Théophile Gautier compared it to Homer's Iliad.
Also in 1831 Hugo published one of his most beautiful collections of poetry, Les Feuilles d'automne. This volume expressed the sadness of things past as the poet approached his significant thirtieth birthday. The tone was personal and elegiac, sometimes sentimental. It was not merely the passage of time that accounted for Hugo's melancholy.
With the advent of the July Monarchy, which ended the Bourbon succession and brought Louis Philippe of the house of Orléans to power, Hugo achieved wealth and recognition, and for 15 years he was the official poet of France. During this period a host of new works appeared in rapid sequence, including three plays: Le Roi s'amuse (1832), Lucrézia Borgia (1833), and the triumph Ruy Blas (1838).
In 1835 came Chants du crépuscule, which included many love lyrics to Juliette, and in 1837 Les Voix intérieures, an offering to the memory of his father, who had been a Napoleonic general. Les Rayons et les ombres (1840) showed the same variety of inspiration, the same sonorous harmony, the same brilliance of contrasting images.
Hugo published no more lyric poetry until 1853. He was now seized with a new ambition: he wished to become a statesman. When Louis Philippe was deposed in the Revolution of 1848, Hugo at first found it hard to identify himself with the provisional government of Lamartine, for he still believed that a constitutional monarchy was the best form of government for France. Nevertheless, he allowed himself to be elected a deputy to the Assembly. When Louis Napoleon, the nephew of the great man Hugo had always idolized, began to achieve notoriety, Hugo supported him. But his enthusiasm for the new president was short-lived. He made a stirring plea for freedom of the press and clemency to the rebel elements. At last, in 1849, he broke with Napoleon III.
Louis Napoleon seized power by a coup d'etat on the night of December 2, 1850, and proclaimed himself emperor. Hugo called for armed resistance and, witnessing the ensuing slaughter, Hugo believed the "Little Napoleon" to be a murderer. At great peril to her own life, Juliette saved the poet, found him shelter, and organized his escape to Brussels. From there he went to the British Channel islands of Jersey and Guernsey.
In November 1853 Hugo's fiercely anti-Napoleonic verse volume, Les Châtiments, was published in Belgium. Two different editions - one published under a false name with rows of dots in place of the individuals attacked, and the other, which was complete, with only "Geneva and New York" in place of the author's name-were culled from the 6, 000 verses of the original manuscript. Though banned in France, the books were smuggled in and widely circulated. The definitive edition of Les Châtiments, with numerous additions, was published in 1870, when Hugo returned to Paris after the fall of Napoleon III.
In 1856 Hugo published Les Contemplations. Many of these poems anticipate Hugo's next major work, the epic cycle La Légende des siècles (1859), conceived as part of an enormous uncompleted work whose mission was to "express humanity".
In 1862 Hugo published Les Misérables, an immense novel, the work of many years. His guiding interest was similar to that of Charles Dickens, a social and humanitarian concern for the downtrodden. The book was meant to show the "threefold problem of the century": the degradation of proletarian man, the fall of woman through hunger, and the destruction of children. The sympathetic portrayal of the waif, Gavroche, and the escaped convict, Jean Valjean, won a vast readership for Hugo. The book was not merely an adventure story but a love story and a mystery as well. It crystallized Hugo's concern for social injustice and once again astounded the reading public with the scope of his literary powers.
Hugo's death from pneumonia on 22 May 1885, at the age of 83, generated intense national mourning. A state funeral, which paid tribute to his greatness and which in itself was a glorification of republican France, was climaxed by burial in the Pantheon beside Voltaire and Rousseau.
Victor Hugo was the supreme poet of the French romanticism. Though regarded in France as one of that country’s greatest poets, he is better known abroad for such novels as Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables. His works continue to be widely read, studied, and adapted in the modern-day. Hugo was one of those rare writers who excites both popular and academic audiences alike.
Even in his own time, Victor Hugo's work had influence beyond just literary audiences. His work was a strong impact in the music world, particularly given his friendship with composers Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz, and many operas and other musical works were inspired by his writing. Les Misérables became one of the most well-known novels of the 19th century and remains influential in contemporary culture. It became a popular Broadway musical and was also adapted for film and television more than 40 times in many countries, with the best-known film versions being made in 1995 and 2012. The 1996 animated version of his book The Hunchback of Notre Dame was nominated for an Oscar.
Victor Hugo was among the most important cultural figures of his time. He was also acknowledged for his political work in shaping democracy and the Third Republic.
Most large French towns and cities have a street named after him. His residences - Hauteville House, Guernsey and 6, Place des Vosges, Paris have been preserved as museums. The house where he stayed in Vianden, Luxembourg, in 1871 has also become a memorial museum. His portrait was also placed on French Franc banknotes. He is respected as a saint in the Vietnamese religion of Cao Đài.
In his youth and under the influence of his mother, Hugo identified as a Catholic and professed respect for Church hierarchy and authority. From there he became a non-practicing Catholic and increasingly expressed anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views. He frequented spiritism during his exile (where he participated also in many séances conducted by Madame Delphine de Girardin), and in later years settled into a rationalist deism similar to that espoused by Voltaire.
A census-taker asked Hugo in 1872 if he was a Catholic, and he replied, "No. A Freethinker".
After 1872, Hugo never lost his antipathy towards the Catholic Church. He felt the Church was indifferent to the plight of the working class under the oppression of the monarchy. Perhaps he also was upset by the frequency with which his work appeared on the Church's list of banned books. Hugo counted 740 attacks on Les Misérables in the Catholic press. When Hugo's sons Charles and François-Victor died, he insisted that they are buried without a crucifix or priest.
Politics
At first a royalist, then a moderate, Hugo moved steadily toward liberalism. He claimed that he had a "crystal soul" that reflected the same evolution as that the French people had gone through: from royalism to opposition to royalism, from the cult of Bonaparte to republicanism.
Views
During his exile Hugo gave vent to the mystical side of his personality. There were many séances in his home, first on Jersey, then in his splendid Hauteville House overlooking the coast of Guernsey. For Hugo, the supernatural was merely the natural. He had always felt premonitions, always heard premonitory sounds and messages during the night. Now, under the influence of a female voyante, he believed that he was communicating with spirits, among them Dante, Shakespeare, Racine, and even Jesus. But the "visit" that touched him most was that of his favorite daughter, Léopoldine, tragically drowned in the Seine with her young husband in 1843.
Hugo continued his experiments with the supernatural until stopped by the threatened insanity of his son, Charles. He never abandoned, however, the syncretic and magical religious views that he reached at this time. He believed that all matter was in progress toward a higher state of being, and that this progress was achieved through suffering, knowledge, and the love that emanates from God. Evil was not absolute but rather a necessary stage toward the Good. Through suffering and the experience of evil, man made progress toward higher states of being.
Quotations:
"I want to be Chateaubriand or nothing."
"I hate oppression with a profound hatred…."
"Upon the barricades I defended order. Before dictatorship I defended liberty."
"Because we have had a Great Napoleon must we now have a Little one?"
"Thanksgiving has wings and flies to its right destination. Your prayer knows its way better than you do."
"I am not one of these sweet-tempered old men. I am still exasperated and violent. I shout and I feel indignant and I cry. Woe to anyone who harms France! I do declare I will die a fanatic patriot."
"Poetry speaks to man, to man as a whole…"
"Les Contemplations are the memoirs of a soul; they are life itself beginning with the dawn of the cradle and finishing with the dawn of the tomb, they are a spirit which marches from gleam to gleam through youth, love, work, struggle, sorrow, dreams, hope, and which stops distraught on the brink of the infinite."
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Hugo, like a priest, always has his head bowed - bowed so low that he can see nothing except his own navel." - Charles Baudelaire
"Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo." - Jean Cocteau
Interests
Writers
Victor Hugo was originally inspired by Sir Walter Scott, on whom he hoped to improve by adding "sentiment" and "poetry" to the historical novel.
Connections
In 1822 Hugo married his childhood sweetheart, Adèle Foucher, one and a half years after the death of his mother, who opposed the match. They later had four children. Their first child, Léopold, was born in 1823, but the boy died in infancy. In 1824, the couple's second child, Léopoldine was born, followed by Charles in 1826, François-Victor in 1828, and Adèle in 1830. Hugo's family was stricken with multiple tragedies. His favorite daughter, Léopoldine, tragically drowned in the Seine in 1843. While exile refreshed and nourished his poetry, his wife and children languished. They longed for their friends and the familiar surroundings of Paris. His daughter, Adèle, retreated into a fantasy world, till at last she ran away in pursuit of an English officer who was already married. Hugo's wife left him to live in Brussels, where she died in 1868.
A married man, Hugo had a relationship with the young actress and courtesan Juliette Drouet and took it upon himself to "redeem" her. He paid her debts and forced her to live in poverty, with her whole being focused entirely upon him. For the next 50 years Juliette followed the poet wherever he went. She lived in his shadow, unable to take a step without his permission, confined to a room here, a mere hovel there, but always near the magnificent houses where Hugo settled with his family. She lived henceforth solely for the poet and spent her time writing him letters, of which many thousands are extant.
Mistress:
Juliet Drouet
(10 April 1806 – 11 May 1883)
Juliet Drouet abandoned her career on the stage after becoming the mistress of Victor Hugo, to whom she acted as a secretary and travelling companion. Juliette accompanied Hugo in his exile to the Channel Islands, and wrote thousands of letters to him throughout her life.
Wife:
Adèle Foucher
(27 September 1803 – 27 August 1868)
Daughter:
Adèle Hugo
(24 August 1830 – 21 April 1915)
Daughter:
Léopoldine Hugo
(28 August 1824 – 4 September 1843)
Léopoldine died at the young age of 19, shortly after her marriage to Charles Vacquerie. She drowned in the Seine at Villequier when her boat overturned. Her husband also died trying to save her. Her death left Hugo devastated.
Son:
François-Victor Hugo
(28 October 1828 – 26 December 1873)
François-Victor is best known for his translations of the works of William Shakespeare into French, which were published in 18 volumes between 1859 and 1866.
Son:
Léopold Victor Hugo
Son:
Charles Hugo
References
Wise Words from Victor Hugo
For many people in the English-speaking world, Victor Hugo’s name immediately brings up his novels The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables. Their enduring success has overshadowed his many other achievements, he was a playwright, poet, politician, and philosopher. And above all, he was a constant campaigner for social justice, prison reform, the abolition of the death penalty and the rights of women.
