Victor Hugo

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20 Feb 2024

Relationship with music[edit]

Although Hugo's many talents did not include exceptional musical ability, he nevertheless had a great impact on the music world through the inspiration that his works provided for composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hugo himself particularly enjoyed the music of Gluck, Mozart, Weber and Meyerbeer. In Les Misérables, he calls the huntsman's chorus in Weber's Euryanthe, "perhaps the most beautiful piece of music ever composed".[54] He also greatly admired Beethoven and, rather unusually for his time, appreciated works by composers from earlier centuries such as Palestrina and Monteverdi.[55]
Two famous musicians of the 19th century were friends of Hugo: Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt. The latter played Beethoven in Hugo's home, and Hugo joked in a letter to a friend that, thanks to Liszt's piano lessons, he learned how to play a favourite song on the piano – with only one finger. Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin, writing the libretto for her 1836 opera La Esmeralda, which was based on the character in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.[55] Although for various reasons the opera closed soon after its fifth performance and is little known today, it has enjoyed a modern revival, both in a piano/song concert version by Liszt at the Festival international Victor Hugo et Égaux 2007[56] and in a full orchestral version presented in July 2008 at Le Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon.[57] He was also on friendly terms with Frederic Chopin. He introduced him to George Sand who would be his lover for years. In 1849, Hugo attended Chopins funeral.
On the other hand, he had low esteem for Richard Wagner, whom he described as "a man of talent coupled with imbecility."[58]
Well over one thousand musical compositions have been inspired by Hugo's works from the 19th century until the present day. In particular, Hugo's plays, in which he rejected the rules of classical theatre in favour of romantic drama, attracted the interest of many composers who adapted them into operas. More than one hundred operas are based on Hugo's works and among them are Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia (1833), Verdi's Rigoletto (1851) and Ernani (1844), and Ponchielli's La Gioconda (1876).[59]
Hugo's novels, as well as his plays, have been a great source of inspiration for musicians, stirring them to create not only opera and ballet but musical theatre such as Notre-Dame de Paris and the ever-popular Les Misérables, London West End's longest running musical. Additionally, Hugo's poems have attracted an exceptional amount of interest from musicians, and numerous melodies have been based on his poetry by composers such as Berlioz, Bizet, Fauré, Franck, Lalo, Liszt, Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Rachmaninoff, and Wagner.[59]
Today, Hugo's work continues to stimulate musicians to create new compositions. For example, Hugo's novel against capital punishment, The Last Day of a Condemned Man, was adapted into an opera by David Alagna, with a libretto by Frédérico Alagna and premièred by their brother, tenor Roberto Alagna, in 2007.[60] In Guernsey, every two years, the Victor Hugo International Music Festival attracts a wide range of musicians and the premiere of songs specially commissioned from such composers as Guillaume Connesson, Richard Dubugnon [fr], Olivier Kaspar, and Thierry Escaich and based on Hugo's poetry.
Remarkably, not only has Hugo's literary production been the source of inspiration for musical works, but also his political writings have received attention from musicians and have been adapted to music. For instance, in 2009, Italian composer Matteo Sommacal was commissioned by Festival "Bagliori d'autore" and wrote a piece for speaker and chamber ensemble entitled Actes et paroles, with a text elaborated by Chiara Piola Caselli after Victor Hugo's last political speech addressed to the Assemblée législative, "Sur la Revision de la Constitution" (18 July 1851),[61] and premiered in Rome on 19 November 2009, in the auditorium of the Institut français, Centre Saint-Louis, French Embassy to the Holy See, by Piccola Accademia degli Specchi featuring the composer Matthias Kadar [nl].[62]

Declining years and death[edit]

Caricature of Hugo in the London magazine Vanity Fair, September 1879Funeral procession of Victor Hugo arriving at the Panthéon
When Hugo returned to Paris in 1870, the country hailed him as a national hero. He was confident that he would be offered the dictatorship, as shown by the notes he kept at the time: "Dictatorship is a crime. This is a crime I am going to commit," but he felt he had to assume that responsibility.[63] Despite his popularity, Hugo lost his bid for re-election to the National Assembly in 1872.
Throughout his life Hugo kept believing in unstoppable humanistic progress. In his last public address on 3 August 1879 he prophesied, in an over-optimistic way, "In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, hatred will be dead, frontier boundaries will be dead, dogmas will be dead; man will live."[64]
Within a brief period, he suffered a mild stroke, his daughter Adèle was interned in an insane asylum, and his two sons died. (Adèle's biography inspired the movie The Story of Adele H.) His wife Adèle had died in 1868.
Hugo on his deathbed (photographed by Nadar)Tomb of Victor Hugo at the Panthéon
His faithful mistress, Juliette Drouet, died in 1883, only two years before his own death. Despite his personal loss, Hugo remained committed to the cause of political change. On 30 January 1876, he was elected to the newly created Senate. This last phase of his political career was considered a failure. Hugo was a maverick and achieved little in the Senate. He suffered a mild stroke on 27 June 1878.[65][66] To honour the fact that he was entering his 80th year, he received one of the greatest tributes to a living writer ever held. The celebrations began on 25 June 1881, when Hugo was presented with a Sèvres vase, the traditional gift for sovereigns. On 27 June, one of the largest parades in French history was held.
Marchers stretched from the Avenue d'Eylau, where the author was living, down the Champs-Élysées, and all the way to the centre of Paris. The paraders marched for six hours past Hugo as he sat at the window at his house. Every inch and detail of the event was for Hugo; the official guides even wore cornflowers as an allusion to Fantine's song in Les Misérables. On 28 June, the city of Paris changed the name of the Avenue d'Eylau to Avenue Victor-Hugo.[67] Letters addressed to the author were from then on labelled "To Mister Victor Hugo, In his avenue, Paris". Two days before dying, he left a note with these last words: "To love is to act."
On 20 May 1885, le Petit Journal published the official medical bulletin on Hugo's health condition. "The illustrious patient" was fully conscious and aware that there was no hope for him. They also reported from a reliable source that at one point in the night he had whispered the following alexandrin, "En moi c’est le combat du jour et de la nuit."—"In me, this is the battle between day and night."[68] Le Matin published a slightly different version: "Here is the battle between day and night."
The Catafalque of Victor Hugo under the Arc de Triomphe on 1 June 1885.
Hugo's death from pneumonia on 22 May 1885, at the age of 83, generated intense national mourning. He was not only revered as a towering figure in literature, he was a statesman who shaped the Third Republic and democracy in France. All his life he remained a defender of liberty, equality and fraternity as well as an adamant champion of French culture. In 1877, aged 75, he wrote, "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."[69]
Crowd of mourners at the funeral,
1 June 1885.
Although he had requested a pauper's funeral, by decree of President Jules Grévy he was awarded a state funeral, an event described by Nietzsche as a "veritable orgy of bad taste".[70] More than two million people joined Hugo's funeral procession in Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon, where he was buried. He shares a crypt within the Panthéon with Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola. Most large French towns and cities have a street or square named after him.
Hugo left five sentences as his last will, to be officially published:

Je donne cinquante mille francs aux pauvres. Je veux être enterré dans leur corbillard.
Je refuse l'oraison de toutes les Églises. Je demande une prière à toutes les âmes.
Je crois en Dieu.
I leave 50,000 francs to the poor. I wish to be buried in their hearse.
I refuse [funeral] orations from all Churches. I ask [for] a prayer to all souls.
I believe in God.

Drawings[edit]

Hugo produced more than 4,000 drawings, with about 3,000 drawings still in existence. Originally pursued as a casual hobby, drawing became more important to Hugo shortly before his exile when he made the decision to stop writing to devote himself to politics. Drawing became his exclusive creative outlet between 1848 and 1851.[71][72]
Hugo worked only on paper, and on a small scale; usually in dark brown or black pen-and-ink wash, sometimes with touches of white, and rarely with colour.[73]

Personal life[edit]

Family[edit]

Hugo with his grandchildren Jeanne and Georges, 1881

Marriage[edit]

Hugo married Adèle Foucher in October 1822. Despite their respective affairs, they lived together for nearly 46 years until she died in August 1868. Hugo, who was still banished from France, was unable to attend her funeral in Villequier where their daughter Léopoldine was buried. From 1830 to 1837 Adèle had an affair with Charles-Augustin Sainte Beuve, a reviewer and writer.[74]

Children[edit]

Adèle and Victor Hugo had their first child, Léopold, in 1823, but the boy died in infancy. On 28 August 1824, the couple's second child, Léopoldine, was born, followed by Charles on 4 November 1826, François-Victor on 28 October 1828, and Adèle on 28 July 1830.
Hugo's eldest and favourite daughter, Léopoldine, died in 1843 at the age of 19, shortly after her marriage to Charles Vacquerie. On 4 September, she drowned in the Seine at Villequier when the boat she was in overturned. Her young husband died trying to save her. The death left her father devastated; Hugo was travelling at the time, in the south of France, when he first learned about Léopoldine's death from a newspaper that he read in a café.[75]
Léopoldine reading. Drawing by her mother Adèle Foucher, 1837
He describes his shock and grief in his famous poem "À Villequier":
Hélas ! vers le passé tournant un œil d'envie,
Sans que rien ici-bas puisse m'en consoler,
Je regarde toujours ce moment de ma vie
Où je l'ai vue ouvrir son aile et s'envoler!

Je verrai cet instant jusqu'à ce que je meure,
L'instant, pleurs superflus !
Où je criai : L'enfant que j'avais tout à l'heure,
Quoi donc ! je ne l'ai plus !
Alas! My envious eye, turning toward the past,
Without anything else down here able to console me,
I look continually at that moment of my life
Where I saw her spread her wings and fly away!

I will see that instant until I die,
That instant, nothing beyond!
Where I cried: "The child I had a short time ago,
What! I have her no more!"
He wrote many poems afterward about his daughter's life and death. His most famous poem is "Demain, dès l'aube" (Tomorrow, at Dawn), in which he describes visiting her grave.

Exile[edit]

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Hugo decided to live in exile after Napoleon III's coup d'état at the end of 1851. After leaving France, Hugo lived in Brussels briefly in 1851, and then moved to the Channel Islands, first to Jersey (1852–1855) and then to the smaller island of Guernsey in 1855, where he stayed until Napoleon III's fall from power in 1870. Although Napoleon III proclaimed a general amnesty in 1859, under which Hugo could have safely returned to France, the author stayed in exile, only returning when Napoleon III was removed from power by the creation of the French Third Republic in 1870, as a result of the French defeat at the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War. After the Siege of Paris from 1870 to 1871, Hugo lived again in Guernsey from 1872 to 1873, and then finally returned to France for the remainder of his life. In 1871, after the death of his son Charles, Hugo took custody of his grandchildren Jeanne and Georges-Victor.

Other relationships[edit]

Juliette Drouet[edit]

Juliette Drouet
From February 1833 until her death in 1883, Juliette Drouet devoted her whole life to Victor Hugo, who never married her even after his wife died in 1868. He took her on his numerous trips and she followed him in exile on Guernsey.[76] There Hugo rented a house for her near Hauteville House, his family home. She wrote some 20,000 letters in which she expressed her passion or vented her jealousy on her womanizing lover.[77] On 25 September 1870 during the Siege of Paris (19 September 1870 – 28 January 1871) Hugo feared the worst. He left his children a note reading as follows:
"J.D. She saved my life in December 1851. For me she underwent exile. Never has her soul forsaken mine. Let those who have loved me love her. Let those who have loved me respect her. She is my widow." V.H.[78]

Léonie d’Aunet[edit]

For more than seven years, Léonie d’Aunet, who was a married woman, was involved in a love relationship with Hugo. Both were caught in adultery on 5 July 1845. Hugo, who had been a Member of the Chamber of Peers since April, avoided condemnation whereas his mistress had to spend two months in prison and six in a convent. Many years after their separation, Hugo made a point of supporting her financially.[79]

Others[edit]

Hugo gave free rein to his sensuality until a few weeks before his death. He sought a wide variety of women of all ages, be they courtesans, actresses, prostitutes, admirers, servants or revolutionaries like Louise Michel for sexual activity. Both a graphomaniac and erotomaniac, he systematically reported his casual affairs using his own code, as Samuel Pepys did, to make sure they would remain secret. For instance, he resorted to Latin abbreviations (osc. for kisses) or to Spanish (Misma. Mismas cosas: The same. Same things). Homophones are frequent: Seins (Breasts) becomes Saint; Poële (Stove) actually refers to Poils (Pubic hair). Analogy also enabled him to conceal the real meaning: A woman's Suisses (Swiss) are her breasts—because Switzerland is renowned for its milk. After a rendezvous with a young woman named Laetitia he would write Joie (Happiness) in his diary. If he added t.n. (toute nue) he meant she stripped naked in front of him. The initials S.B. discovered in November 1875 may refer to Sarah Bernhardt.[80]

Nicknames[edit]

Victor Hugo acquired several nicknames. The first one originated from his own description of Shakespeare in the introduction to his eponymous work. In this introduction to William Shakespeare (essay), he tried to delve into what constituted the genius of certain artists and described Shakespeare as an "Ocean Man":[81][82][83]

There were indeed ocean men.
[...] all of this could exist within a mind, and then that mind is called genius, and you have Aeschylus, you have Isaiah, you have Juvenal, you have Dante, you have Michelangelo, you have Shakespeare, and it is the same thing to gaze upon these souls or to gaze upon the Ocean.

During his lifetime and in the 1870s, the expression to describe him entered popular culture.[84][85] It was later adopted by authors and literary critics, including Joseph Serre, who identified it with an expression he himself coined.[86][87] This nickname became widespread during the 20th century and was used by the National Library of France when organizing an exhibition about him.[81] Since then, it has been frequently used in research and literary critics.[88][89][90][91] Alongside "Ocean Man," the nickname "Horizon Man" was sometimes used during Hugo's lifetime as well.[84] Finally, researchers and literary critics, such as Henri Meschonnic, proposed the nickname "Century Man" to refer to Victor Hugo.[92]

Gallery[edit]

Victor Hugo's drawings
Ville avec le pont de Tumbledown, ("Town with Tumbledown Bridge"), 1847.
Pieuvre avec les initiales V.H., ("Octopus with the initials V.H."), 1866.
Le Rocher de l'Ermitage dans un paysage imaginaire ("Ermitage Rock in an imaginary landscape")
Le phare ("The Lighthouse")
Gavroche à onze ans ("Gavroche at eleven years old").
Portraits of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo with his son François-Victor by Auguste de Châtillon, 1836.
Marble bust of Victor Hugo by Auguste Rodin
Victor Hugo by Charles Hugo c. 1853
Photogravure

Memorials[edit]

Avenue Victor-Hugo in Paris.Statue of Victor Hugo in Rome, Italy. It is across from the Museo Carlo Bilotti on Viale Fiorello La Guardia.
His legacy has been honored in many ways, including his portrait being placed on French currency.
The people of Guernsey erected a statue by sculptor Jean Boucher in Candie Gardens (Saint Peter Port) to commemorate his stay in the islands. The City of Paris has preserved his residences Hauteville House, Guernsey, and 6, Place des Vosges, Paris, as museums. The house where he stayed in Vianden, Luxembourg, in 1871 has also become a commemorative museum.
The Avenue Victor-Hugo in the 16th arrondissement of Paris bears Hugo's name and links the Place de l'Étoile to the vicinity of the Bois de Boulogne by way of the Place Victor-Hugo. This square is served by a Paris Métro stop also named in his honour. In the town of Béziers there is a main street, a school, hospital and several cafés named after Hugo, and a number of streets and avenues throughout France are named after him. The school Lycée Victor Hugo was founded in his town of birth, Besançon in France. Avenue Victor-Hugo, located in Shawinigan, Quebec, was named to honour him. A street in San Francisco, Hugo Street, is named for him.[93]
A 1959 French banknote featuring Hugo
In the city of Avellino, Italy, Victor Hugo lived briefly stayed in what is now known as Il Palazzo Culturale when reuniting with his father, Leopold Sigisbert Hugo, in 1808. Hugo would later write about his brief stay here, quoting "C'était un palais de marbre..." ("It was a palace of marble").
There is a statue of Hugo across from the Museo Carlo Bilotti [it] in Rome, Italy.
Victor Hugo is the namesake of the city of Hugoton, Kansas.[94]
In Havana, Cuba, there is a park named after him.
Soviet stamp in Hugo's honour (1952)
A bust of Hugo stands near the entrance of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.
A mosaic commemorating Hugo is located on the ceiling of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.
The London and North Western Railway named a 'Prince of Wales' Class 4-6-0 No 1134 after Hugo. British Railways perpetuated this memorial, naming Class 92 Electric Unit 92001 after him.
Hugo is venerated as a saint in the Vietnamese religion of Cao Đài, a new religion established in Vietnam in 1926.[95]
A crater on the planet Mercury is named after him.

Works[edit]

Prose fiction[edit]

Hans of Iceland (Han d'Islande – novella - 1820, novel - 1823, revised until 1833)
Bug-Jargal (short story – 1820, novel – 1826)
The Last Day of a Condemned Man (Le Dernier jour d'un condamné – 1829) - prototype for Les Misérables
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris – 1831, definitive unabridged edition: 1832)
- La Esmeralda (the only libretto of an opera written by Victor Hugo himself) (1836) – the ending was altered for the play
Claude Gueux (1834) - prototype for Les Misérables
The Rhine (Le Rhin – 1842) - also contains essays and a political manifesto
The Poor People (1854) - short story included in La Légende des siècles, later rewritten or retold by Leo Tolstoy in Russian (1908)
Les Misérables (1862) - mega-novel, initially begun as Les Misères. 7 chapters from Book 7 of Part 3 were excised by Albert Lacroix at the time of publication.
- Les Misères (1845-48) - 2 draft versions of Les Misérables
Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la Mer – 1866)
The Man Who Laughs ( L'Homme qui rit – 1869)
Ninety-Three (Quatrevingt-treize – 1874)