Hernani. Victor Hugo
their writings! This is Sainte-Beuve's secret. He makes us see the man he is talking about, he makes us know and appreciate his productions, and then, with a few brief, luminous suggestions, leaves the whole matter to settle itself properly in our minds. Sainte-Beuve also wrote poetry of no inconsiderable merit, but passes this severe condemnation upon all the poetry of himself and his friends, at this epoch, saying: «Il est résulté de ce concours de talent, pendant plusieurs saisons, une très-riche poésie lyrique, plus riche que la France n'en avait soupçonné jusqu'alors, mais une poésie très-inégale et très-mêlée. La plupart des poëtes se sont livrés, sans contrôle et sans frein, à tous les instincts de leur nature, et aussi à toutes les prétentions de leur orgueil, ou même aux sottises de leur vanité. Les défauts et les qualités sont sortis en toute licence, et la postérité aura à faire le départ. Rien ne subsistera de complet des poëtes de ce temps.»
But Victor Hugo outlived all parties and groups and associations of which he was a member in that early time, and his life subsequent to the exciting days of 1830 was a steady development and contains in itself a reflection of nearly everything that was going on in France.
We may consider him under three aspects: as dramatist, novelist, and lyric poet. He is greatest under the last aspect. Through all his life he expressed himself in song. Perhaps no other poet has done this so thoroughly, so beautifully, and for so long a period. So I shall speak of his personality and actual experiences when I come to consider his lyric poetry, and shall first give an account of his work for the stage and in prose fiction.
In 1827 appeared a so-called historical drama, «Cromwell», which was not remarkable for much except its lack of historical truth, and its preface, in which the young man outlined his theories and laid down the programme of attack upon the classical ideas. This attack was in reality first made with «Hernani» in 1830. «Marion De Lorme», which appeared in 1831, is a much weaker play, and abounds in all the excesses to which Romanticism was prone. Apart from the substance, which is repulsive and harrowing, when not trivial and weak, the form of the drama is loose, and one can very easily understand how such a production would offend an ear trained to the stately, chaste, and elegant dialogue of the elder poets. If this is all Romanticism has to offer, let us have back our Corneille and Racine. «Le Roi s'amuse» (1832) suffers from the same faults, and offends even more against good taste. These pieces are both strong in the main, though there are weak passages in both, but their strength is not healthy or beautiful. Victor Hugo himself called attention to the fact that he depended for his effect, in these two plays, upon the principle of contrast. It is a principle which he has employed in nearly all his work, and which is indeed one of the strongest elements of artistic effect, always and everywhere, with all writers. Hugo, however, uses it too deliberately and too exclusively. In «Le Roi s'amuse», for example, he has chosen a most repulsive figure, Triboulet, whom lie makes hideous both externally and internally, by every device known to art, and in this character he implants a pure flower of paternal love. Then he stands off and says: «Behold what I have done! How deformity looks black behind that white virtue!» The principle is useful, but he makes a forced application of it. In his novels, too, every reader will recall instances where a contrast has been insisted upon till one's patience is exhausted.
«Lucréce Borgia» (1833) illustrates the same point. It is a piling of horror upon horror for the sake, apparently, of bringing into sufficient relief a few passages of great moral beauty. This is as undignified as it is useless. Virtue needs no such setting. M. Vinet says that in this drama Hugo pandered to the false taste of the age, which demanded horrors and violence and sensuous appeals, instead of leading it, as he could, to follow better principles of taste.
«Marie Tudor» (1833) is, like «Cromwell», unhistorical. It is not one of Hugo's greatest plays, nor is «Angelo» (1835), another drama, in prose, founded on history; but «Ruy Blas» (1838) is generally acknowledged to be, after «Hernani», the best of his dramas. It was followed, in 1843, by «Les Burgraves», the last of his plays written for the stage. My judgment may be too unenthusiastic, and I acknowledge that only time can sift the true from the false, the excellent from the second-rate; but I would not exchange the little volume of Musset's unpretending «Comédies et Proverbes» for all the «Hernanis» and «Ruy Blas» in the world, and that for the simple reason that Musset is more sincere.
We have seen that at a very early age Victor Hugo wrote two stories, «Bug Jargal» and «Han d'Islande». In 1831, while in the full heat of his dramatic activity, he yet found time, by shutting himself up and going out but once for six months, to write «Notre Dame de Paris», which is one of his masterpieces of prose, an historical novel built on a scale of gigantic proportions, and presupposing exhaustive archaeological research. It is a vast picture, full of glaring lights and awful shadows, of Paris in the Middle Ages, with the cathedral of Notre Dame as background, and indeed as one of the characters.
A man who had produced so many strong plays and this remarkable novel, not to mention his lyric poetry, could not longer be refused admission into the national galaxy of great men, and in 1841 Hugo was elected a member of the Academy. Two years later he was created a peer of France. In spite of these anchors to conservatism, as one would suppose them, a title of rank and a seat among the immortals, Hugo became more and more radical in politics, drifting gradually towards the conception of an ideal republic, and bending his course thitherward. When Louis Bonaparte, not content with his election to the presidency in 1848, overthrew the government, and proclaimed himself Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, by the infamous coup d'état of December 1851, there was no enemy more irreconcilable than Victor Hugo. The brave poet was banished, and did not touch the soil of France again till 1870, after Sedan, when the wicked Empire had ignominiously dissolved. Although included in an amnesty, he had not been willing to return until the Babylonian woe was past. Most of his exile he spent on the island of Jersey, under the English flag. From there he issued a political pamphlet, «Napoléon le Petit», and a succession of volumes of poetry. His second great work of fiction, «Les Misérables», appeared in 1862, followed by «Les Travailleurs de la Mer», in 1866, and by «Quatre-vingt-treize», in 1874. «L'Homme qui Rit», 1866, was an unsuccessful attempt at an historical novel, with the scene in England. Of his novels «Les Misérables» is incomparably the best. «Les Travailleurs de la Mer», while powerful in its unity and intensity, is too full of technical terms and of idiosyncrasies to be either easy or pleasant reading. «Notre Dame de Paris» and «Quatre-vingt-treize» are the most popular, next to «Les Misérables». In «Les Misérables» Hugo employed that short, choppy style which has come to be known as Hugoesque. To many readers it is decidedly wearisome, though by others it is considered the acme of nervous, terse expression.
But it is as a lyric poet, I fancy, far more than as a dramatist, a novelist, or a political pamphleteer, that Victor Hugo will be known,
«When time has swept both friends and foes.»
Unfortunately, foreign students of French literature are less likely to seek acquaintance with his poems than with his plays and novels. The peculiar character of French versification repels us. We, accustomed to a more heavily accented line, cannot quickly sharpen our ears to the delicate modulations we encounter there. But when once the ear is attuned to these fainter harmonies, a wonderful revelation is made to us in the long succession of songs that rose from the lips of Victor Hugo; and I think it is safe to say that lie is at least the greatest French lyric poet.
His poetry is so intimately the product of his life, that to appreciate it we must know something more of that life, especially the emotions and incidents connected with his home and family. His marriage relation was one of perfect harmony, if one may judge of such matters; and he was happy in his home. His wife was evidently the companion of his thought. His children were two sons and a daughter. In this daughter the poet's deepest love was centred, and her graces are the theme of many of his loveliest songs, while her premature death by drowning, with her young husband, in 1843, was the occasion for that one of his lyrics which contains the fullest portion of moral grandeur, «A Villequier». It is the heartbroken cry of a strong man whom the hand of God has at last led back to faith and submission along paths of darkest sorrow. For it must be remarked that Victor Hugo, intoxicated with success and the atmosphere of protest which he himself had done so much to create, had for many years apparently lost sight of his young manhood's conviction of the immanence of a God in the lives of men. After his