“VICTOR HUGO” in 19TH-CENTURY FRENCH LITERATURE by Abigail

Home , 19th century, Alfred de Vigny, Casimir Delavigne, Charles Baudelaire, Dieu, Eternal Best

NAMING THE MASTER:

THE EVOLVING SIGNIFICANCES OF “VICTOR HUGO”

IN 19TH-CENTURY FRENCH LITERATURE

by Abigail Alexander

A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the

requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Baltimore, Maryland March, 2016

Abstract

No name dominates the literature of the French 19th Century—and after—as pervasively as Victor Hugo’s. Thanks to this ubiquity, the evolving meanings of this name are visible in works by Hugo and by those who wrote under Hugo’s shadow. This study foregrounds the power of the act of naming to modify the significance of the name

“Hugo,” from Sainte-Beuve and Gautier to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and

Mallarmé. The meanings of Hugo’s name, a name that both demands respect and yet also inspires dissent and revolution, depend upon its myriad interpretations from a community of namers that stretches as far as his renown. The import of “Hugo” lies in the hands of the namer, quite like the name of “God.” Through close readings of prefaces, poetry, novels, and essays, this dissertation analyzes these writers’ incorporations and projections of particular meanings of Hugo’s name in their works.

While staking out their own subsequent literary revolutions, these writers often incorporate Hugo’s name to express both recognition for his contributions and resistance to their perceptions of his literary mission. By relying upon the philosophical approaches to “naming” offered by Plato, Lacan, Althusser, Genette, and Kripke, this investigation traces the creations and dissolutions of different meanings of the name “Hugo” that he and other 19th-century French writers projected. What does a signature signify? What kind of authority do such references implied in creation itself possess? These are questions developed in this study, which distance it from analyses of “influence” and

“reception.” Examining the aftermath of what has been named illuminates how names come to be more dramatically re-appropriated or reductively understood over time.

While Hugo’s death immediately renders his name more vulnerable to scathing critique

from some writers, it also marks the beginning of the immortalization of his name as one to be both honored and confronted by others. Engaging with the conflicting combinations of promulgation, erasure, reverence, and profanation with regard to Hugo’s name leads to a reflection of “authorial authority” in History and on figures of “literary immortality.”

Advisor: Professor Jacques Neefs

Reader: Professor William Egginton

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Copy of Madame Bovary sent from Flaubert to Hugo

Au Maître: Acknowledgements & Avertissement

There are many people to thank for their continued support of this project. I would rather not imitate Flaubert’s dedication of “Au Maître” (without the name of the maître) seen on the copy of Madame Bovary that he sent to Hugo. Instead, I happily name my maîtres. Professor Jacques Neefs has offered endless generosity in the face of the nebulous ideas I have brought him over the years. It was through the reading for his seminars at JHU that I stumbled upon this project, and it was thanks to his simultaneous openness and ability to elegantly reformulate ideas, with gracious reorientations and a myriad of invaluable sources I never would have found alone, that this project became what it is. Comme toujours, merci, Professeur! As a reader for this project, Professor William Egginton gave me very helpful comments and suggestions for theoretical incorporations. Many family members and friends have put up with hearing far more than they wanted to hear about Hugo over these last few years, and for that I thank them. My heartfelt gratitude goes to my husband, Dr. Christopher RayAlexander, who has been my faithful companion, reader, encourager, and love. As Rumi wrote in The Book of Love, “A pen went scribbling along. When it tried to write love, it broke.” A dissertation is also a labor of love, and a dissertation writer, that inconnu riddled with self-doubt, needs many forms of love, guidance, and care, which these people have given in unique ways and which is pen-breakingly impossible to adequately describe.

All references for Hugo’s works come from the Laffont Bouquins editions of his Œuvres Complètes unless otherwise noted. All emphases are original unless otherwise noted.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Fabric of Names 1 I. The Study of Names 6 A. Law & God 6 B. Fiction & Flux 12 C. Recognition & Reference 18 II. The Authorial Name 23 A. De-Capitalizing with Barthes 23 B. Exploring Authorial Onomastic Spaces with Foucault 26

Chapter I: Becoming by Naming: Hugo’s Hugos 33 I. Introduction 34 II. A Brief Study of the Prolegomenon 36 III. L’Enfant Sublime: Hugo between Chateaubriand and Napoleon 38 IV. 31 Years of Odes: Odes et Ballades 44 V. OGUH: Han d’Islande and Bug-Jargal 51 VI. Contradictions: A la Colonne, Préface de Cromwell, and Amy Robsart 59 VII. In the Name of Many: Les Orientales and Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné 67 VIII. Revolution: Hernani 75 IX. A Monument to Erasure: Notre-Dame, Marion de Lorme, and Les Feuilles d’automne 79 X. “[Hugo], c’est nous tous”: Le Roi s’amuse, Lucrèce Borgia, and Marie Tudor 85 XI. “Réformons, ne déformons pas”: Littérature et philosophie mêlées and Les Chants du crépuscule 92 XII. Les Mois Intérieurs: Les Voix Intérieures 98 XIII. Hugo l’immortel: Ruy Blas and l’Académie 102 XIV. A man of many names: Le Rhin, Les Burgraves, Pair, and Exile 109 XV. Author of “nous” and “Dieu”: Napoléon-le-petit, Les Châtiments, and Les Contemplations 116 XVI. Master and Satan: William Shakespeare, La Légende des siècles, Les Misérables, and Les Chansons des rues et des bois 123 XVII. The (banned) name of Paris: Les Travailleurs de la mer, Paris-Guide, and Le Rappel 133 XVIII. A Hugo’s Return: Actes et Paroles 141 XIX. Naming Hugo, Naming a Century: L’Art d’être grand-père, L’Histoire d’un crime, and a pre-posthumous Hugo 146 XX. The Deaths of Masters and Gods 155 XXI. Naming God: Dieu and Post-scriptum de ma vie 161

Chapter II: The Critical Name: Sainte-Beuve’s and Gautier’s Hugos 167 I. Introduction 167 II. A Mon Ami…: Cenacular Names in Dedication 168 III. Naming Hugo in Joseph Delorme 180 IV. From V.H. to YHVH: Les Consolations 193 V. In Love and War: 1830 202

VI. Hugo the god: Gautier’s Hugo 210 VII. Ceci tuera cela: Sainte-Beuve’s later reviews of Hugo’s works 225 VIII. Making Public Enemies with Private Details 241 IX. Reviewing Many Hugos: the Revue des deux mondes 254 X. A Stubbornly Hugolian Hugo 268

Chapter III: The génie and the sot: Baudelaire’s public and private Hugos 274 I. Introduction 275 II. A Hugo to Love: Baudelaire’s early letters 279 III. A New Name Rising: Les Fleurs du Mal and the first Figaro article 281 IV. Stacking Masters: The Gautier Article 285 V. Frissons fraternels: Baudelaire’s Hugos in Les Fleurs du Mal 296 A. Introduction 296 B. “Le Cygne” 302 C. “Les Sept Vieillards” 309 D. “Les Petites Vieilles” 321 E. Imitation, Plagiarism, and Dépassement 331 VI. The Stupidity of Believing Praise: Other Articles on Hugo 336 VII. The Stupidity of Genius: Shakespeare article and Brussels letters 340 VIII. The End of “grands hommes” and a “cré nom” 344 IX. The Many Baudelairean Hugos 349

Chapter IV: Hugo the nearly voyant but cabochard idealist: Rimbaud’s Hugo’s 355 I. Introduction 355 II. A Forbidden Hugo 356 III. Voyance: Hindsight is 20/20 360 IV. A Vieillard in Parody 375 V. Seeking more radical liberty: “Le Bateau ivre” 379 VI. De profundis: Une saison en enfer 394 VII. Seeing is disbelieving 402

Chapter V: A Faltering Crown of Names: Verlaine’s Hugos 406 I. Introduction 407 II. The First Maître: Early letters and a poem 408 III. Tempered Defenses 412 IV. Clashing Hugos: Poèmes saturniens and Le Parnasse contemporain 420 V. Recasting 1830 in 1867 424 VI. Doublement hugolâtre: Friendship in radicalism and dreams of poetic unity 431 VII. Le Rappel and the return of the Maître 439 VIII. Conjugal Trouble, Prison, and Conversion to Hugophobia 446 IX. “On change, n’est-ce pas?”: Transforming Namers and Names 453 X. The death of a false god 457 XI. A Satanic Hugo 470 XII. Do Unto (the Names of) Others 474

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Chapter VI: Abdicating Names: Mallarmé’s Hugos 482 I. Introduction: Naming without Names 483 II. “Hugo! Hugo!”: Early Writings 486 III. Siding with Baudelaire against Hugolian utility 490 IV. The Mystery of a Name: “Toast funèbre” and “Sonnet” 497 V. Meeting the living and naming the dead: “Le vierge, le vivace, et le bel aujourd’hui” 507 VI. A Veil-Tearing Name: “Théodore de Banville” and “Solennité” 515 VII. Proust’s Hugo vs. Mallarmé’s Hugo: A Foray into Obscurantism 519 VIII. “Une inquiétude du voile dans le temple”: The Death of a god 524 IX. A Constellation 535

Conclusion: In His Name 540

Bibliography 548

Curriculum Vitae 561

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Daumier, Honoré. Victor Hugo. Le Charivari 10 July 1849. Paris: Maison Victor Hugo.

INTRODUCTION: THE FABRIC OF NAMES

“What’s in a name?” - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Few names reach the heights of acclaim that Victor Hugo’s attained. From his early renown as a poetic prodigy; to his revolutionary fame in the theater following the preface to Cromwell and Hernani; to his status as an Académicien; to his political influence, power, and opposition as a long-time exile; to his prominence as an author of towering novels; to his triumphant return to Paris and momentous funeral, Hugo comes to embody 19th-century France. Many even see him as overshadowing this century and all of the other writers within it. As Hugo’s name became increasingly monumental, its significance concurrently became more open to drastic reduction and reformulation. The more the community of namers of Hugo grew, the more radically the meaning of this name could change.

This name was not created ex nihilo. On Hugo’s part, it required constant modification and justification as the person named Hugo changed over time and as his onomastic signifier grew in prominence. Critics, friends, and other writers all also greatly impacted the significance of this name. Poets writing in the French literary world after this realm was forever marked by the maître had to contend with the shadow cast by his name. To this end, other writers often project different meanings of “Hugo” in order to both recognize its importance and resist its dominance as they stake out their own literary revolutions. Some writers deploy the authority of Hugo’s name in order to give credence to their own works. On the other hand, some writers (often the same ones) disparage Hugo as an overblown figure with what they consider to be inferior artistic aims. Hugo’s name performs a central role in numerous contemporary works of literary

criticism (e.g. Gautier’s Histoire du Romantisme), in groundbreaking poetry (e.g.

Baudelaire’s “Le Cygne”), and in manifestos for novel literary movements (e.g.

Rimbaud’s “lettres du voyant” and Mallarmé’s “Crise de vers”). Moreover, Hugo’s name acts as a frequent personal reference for many other writers of this period, both in their letters and in their publications. For example, one may consider his complex relationships with Sainte-Beuve and with Verlaine as well as his less complicated rapport with Gautier. The means by which these writers name Hugo—publicly and privately— often reveal as much about the namer as they do about the named.

As is etymologically evident in the French noun “renommée”, renown relies upon re-naming.1 When studying a renown as great as Hugo’s, it is crucial to bear in mind that this name has been passed through the hands, interpretations, and aims of many namers.

So, when Mallarmé names Hugo in his 1897 “Crise de vers”, one may trace reflections of

Baudelaire’s projected meaning of Hugo’s name in his 1861 Les Fleurs du Mal, which one may also find alternately tinged by Sainte-Beuve’s or Gautier’s very different constructions of the meaning of Hugo’s name. For a name to grow in renown, it must undergo this process of sedimentary modification that results from the many namers who hold, mold, and pass down the meaning of a name.

This study of the name of Hugo is neither a Bloomian study of anxiety and influence, nor a Groupe Hugo study of Hugo’s relationships with different writers, nor an examination of the reception of Hugo. Instead, this work analyzes how a name functions

1 The Online Etymology Dictionary offers the following entry for the English noun “renown”: “renown (n.). c. 1300, from Anglo-French renoun, Old French renon “renown, fame, reputation,” from renomer “make famous,” from re- “repeatedly” […] + nomer “to name,” from Latin nominare “to name” […]. The Middle English verb reknouen “make known, acknowledge” has been assimilated to the noun via renowned. In old German university slange, a reknowner (German renommist) was “a boaster, a swaggerer” (1). 2

as a powerful reference in poetic and literary invention. Each namer of Hugo emphasizes different aspects of the giant to whom this name is attached (or the giant that results from this extraordinary renommée), whether to extoll a meaning of this name, to resist it, or to enact some combination of the two moves. By exploring a selection of the naming events that “Hugo” undergoes in 19th-century French literature, three main processes involved in naming Hugo become apparent: a reduction of this name (to emphasize certain traits), a possession of this name by other writers (often in pursuit of their own renown), and an expansion of this name to stand for many of a certain kind (e.g. “Romantics”). Hence the possessives in the chapter titles: each Hugo is the Hugo of someone else at a particular point in time. One may imagine each namer of Hugo as akin to a funnel that reduces and reshapes the significance of this name, possesses or holds it, and expands and disseminates a new significance for this signifier, one that hinges upon projections that these poets simultaneously transmit of themselves. The meaning of a name can indeed be as malleable as the shape of a liquid. This onomastic fluidity allows for some to refer to

Hugo as a god while others contemporaneously refer to him as an agent of the devil.

Certain factors enter into the naming events of the maître by other poets: appreciation

(often tied to youth) for Hugo’s innovation, for some inherited literary liberty, and an expression of resulting homage on the one hand; and resistance, revolution, and new poetic innovation on the other hand.2 By focusing on the function of Hugo’s name

2 The Japanese martial arts concept of Shuhari reflects certain tendencies in the changing attitudes of younger 19th-century French poets with regard to the maître. This term approximately translates to “first learn, then detach, and finally transcend”: “Shu: In this beginning stage the student follows the teachings of one master precisely. He concentrates on how to do the task, without worrying too much about the underlying theory. If there are multiple variations on how to do the task, he concentrates on just the one way his master teaches him. Ha: At this point the student begins to branch out. With the basic practices working he now starts to learn the underlying principles and theory behind the technique. He also starts learning from other masters and integrates that learning into his practice. Ri: Now the student isn’t learning 3

throughout this century as it is interpreted and projected by multiple namers, this study departs from works on reception or influence by analyzing the means by which naming can change the course of poetic and literary developments.

This study begins with an exploration of the means by which Hugo named himself, primarily in his prefaces. For Hugo, such a project spans his career and continues in his posthumous publications, allowing him to continue naming himself in death. Moreover, by focusing on these auto-naming events as tied to the prefaces published alongside his literary works, this study illuminates the complexities and tensions at play in a specific type of name—the authorial name.3 The dissertation then turns to two of Hugo’s closer contemporaries—Sainte-Beuve and Gautier—to analyze the means by which this name was formulated as a current event that would define the direction of French Romanticism. While Sainte-Beuve contends with the changing face of Hugo over time, Gautier forever fixes the significance of “Hugo” in 1830. An ardent admirer of Gautier’s, Baudelaire offers projections of “Hugo” that serve as a pivotal point in the trajectory of this name. This name both inspires contradictions within Baudelaire that would become typical of his followers and serves as a paramount poetic reference point when it appears in dedication. The modernity within Baudelaire’s three poems dedicated to Hugo relies upon an incorporation and subversion of Hugolian tropes and themes. Following Baudelaire, another generation of poets inherits and modifies these preceding—and continuously changing—understandings of a still-active Hugo.

from other people, but from his own practice. He creates his own approaches and adapts what he’s learned to his own particular circumstances” (Tong 3). 3 Boulard studies the secrets of onomastics with regard to Hugo: “Telle se scelle la faute d’origine; écrire, c’est signer le nom et, par conséquent, être lié aux secrets qui l’accompagnent” (346). 4

The projections of the meaning of “Hugo” in the works of Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé all expose the poetic displacement of this signifier within the context of post-Baudelairean budding literary movements. Within the scope of an onomastic study of Hugo, one must bear in mind the extraordinary longevity of this figure who was born in 1802 and died in 1885. It is also for this reason that “Hugo” is sometimes considered capable of standing for an entire century. Of the primary writers following Hugo studied in this work—Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé—all of whom were born after Hugo, only the latter three survive the maître. This constellation of namers of Hugo affords readers with a view of the shift in the treatment of this name from its initial fame all the way to the period immediately following Hugo’s death. Nevertheless, Rimbaud’s early departure from the literary world does not provide readers with his written interpretations of “Hugo” after the mid-1870s. Rimbaud’s brief period as a writer offers a concentrated glimpse into his youthfully retroactive view of

Hugo as an old predecessor of Baudelaire’s. Once the “god” is dead, Verlaine and

Mallarmé obtain more liberty to express themselves freely and without fear of direct offense to the maître; and yet, Verlaine’s treatment of Hugo’s name after his death differs greatly from that of Mallarmé. While the former aims to dismantle the overwhelming fame of “Hugo”, the latter calls for authorial anonymity.

By allotting namers of Hugo a separate, chronologically-arranged analysis, this study furnishes a series of unique visions of this maître and accompanying projections of the meaning of this name after it is filtered through the possession of different writers at different points in time. This methodological framework also provides for an interdisciplinary perspective on the cultural, historical, literary, and political factors at

work in the production of this 19th-century onomastic behemoth. A name is comparable to a story that depends on context; a name like “Hugo” is comparable to a legend that spans multitudinous contexts. Tracing Hugo’s name illumines a cross-section of “his” century. Moreover, this approach offers a novel view of the literary and poetic developments that emerge in this century under the domain of Hugo’s name.

I. The Study of Names

“And the knowledge of names is a great part of knowledge.” - Plato, Cratylus

From the diversity of meanings conjured by this one name, one may be tempted to find that what is signified by “Hugo” never existed at all. The plurality of significances attributed to “Hugo” both over-determine the signifier and risk emptying the name of meaning. The complexity surrounding the name of Hugo gives rise to a series of questions: how can a name overwhelm, overcome, or eradicate a person? Or, in other words, can a signifier supplant, dominate, or “kill” a signified? Does such a threat act as an integral component to a sign? What power does a name hold over a being, and how does this power change after the death of what has been named? What is the cost of the immortality of a name? To begin exploring such inquiries, a turn to the theory of names helps ground this project. This theoretical introduction provides a backdrop of onomastic inquiry—first in general, then for authorial names in particular—for the case study to follow.

A. Law & God

“In the case of some terms, people might have doubts as to whether they’re names or descriptions; like ‘God’ – does it describe God as the unique divine being or is it a name of God? But such cases needn’t necessarily bother us.” - Kripke, Naming and Necessity

Studies of names often incorporate study of the law. For example, the relationship between naming and legislation appears in the trailblazing Cratylus. Written in the 5th Century BC, Plato’s Cratylus takes names as its main subject of analysis. This dialogue questions after the correctness, makers, origins, and natures of names through the voices of Socrates, Hermogenes, and Cratylus. It begins with a mention of Cratylus’ claim that names are natural rather than conventional, meaning there is some essential quality to names. Names are considered as instruments of instruction: “A name is, then, an instrument of teaching and of separating reality […]” (23).4 Namers are thus teachers who use names to instruct, but namers are also shown in this work to have originally been legislators: “Then it is not for every man, Hermogenes, to give names, but for him who may be called the name-maker; and he, it appears, is the lawgiver, who is of all the artisans among men the rarest” (25).5 According to this dialogue, a namer is then both a teacher and a legislator, an educator and a maker of laws.6

Naming and the law also coincide in Lacan’s theorization of the split or barred subject. To elucidate the split subject, Lacan incorporates Saussure’s depiction of the

4 Sedley offers insight into the Greek terms for naming and separating being in his study of the Cratylus: “There is no indication in what follows that instructing on the one hand, and separating being on the other, are two independent functions that a name has, and the Greek permits the preferable interpretation, often advocated, that it is by separating being that a name instructs” (60-61). 5 Sedley comments on the term “legislator” in this work: “With surprising speed and ease, Socrates and Hermogenes agree at 388d-309a that the name-making craftsman is to be identified as a ‘lawmaker’ or ‘legislator’ (nomothetēs). Why? We can set the ball rolling by returning to Hermogenes’ original statement of his linguistic conventionalism. The terms of art for ‘convention’ in this context are synthēkē (agreement) and thesis (assignment, fixing, setting, imposition, coining): all that makes a name a name is the fact that it has been fixed, assigned and agreed on, irrespective of any natural fit to its nominatum, so that no one name is inherently better than any other” (67). 6 Gray claims that Plato’s Socrates therefore defines the name as a law: “Socrates defines the naming process as agreed information given to distinguish things, and uses the word legislation, a word used mainly to describe lawmaking, to describe it. In establishing this, he defines the name as a law which must be followed in order to convey intended meaning” (61). 7

sign as the capitalized S (signifier) separated from the lower-case s (signified) by a bar.7

In the Lacanian configuration, the “sujet barré” has diverse theoretical applications.

Lacan holds that the subject depends upon an inherent division between S1 (an idea of the subject as a unified entity) and S2 (the subject as an ideal form as it is influenced by external forces like the desire of the Other, the Name of the Father, etc.).8 In a patronymic society, the name of the father is given to the child at birth. Lacan indicates that this process imposes an Oedipal, paternal injunction upon the child, which Lacan illuminates with the phonic similarities of “nom du père” and “non du père”, and through which he finds a connection between naming and the law: “C’est dans le nom du père qu’il nous faut reconnaître le support de la fonction symbolique qui, depuis l’orée des temps historiques, identifie sa personne à la figure de la loi” (Ecrits I 276). Part of what splits the Lacanian subject lies in the law of the paternal name. For both Plato and Lacan, the assignment of names holds intimate ties with the law.9 In the act of naming, there exist inherent commands or injunctions for the entity that is named.

7 Saussure studies the relationship between a sign, a signified, and a signifier: “Nous proposons de conserver le mot signe pour désigner le total, et de remplacer concept et image acoustique respectivement par signifié et signifiant; ces derniers termes ont l’avantage de marquer l’opposition qui les sépare soit entre eux, soit du total dont ils font partie” (99). 8 Lacan writes the following on the involvement of the Name of the Father and the Other in signification: “Terme où culmine le processus par quoi le signifiant est ‘déchaîné’ dans le réel, après que la faillite fut ouverte du Nom-du-Père,–c’est-à-dire du signifiant qui dans l’Autre, en tant que lieu du signifiant, est le signifiant de l’Autre en tant que lieu de la loi” (Ecrits II 61). Swales reformulates this thought: “The Name-of-the Father is the vehicle of the Law that regulates the desire of the first Other and the child” (44). Žižek succinctly compares the roles of the first and last names in Lacanian thought with reference to i(o), or ideal ego, and I(O), or ego-ideal: “[…] The first name designates the ideal ego, the point of imaginary identification, while the family name comes from the father—it designates, as the Name-of-the-Father, the point of symbolic identification, the agency through which we observe and judge ourselves. The fact that should not be overlooked in this distinction is that i(o) is always already subordinated to I(O): it is the symbolic identification (the point from which we are observed) which dominates and determines the image, the imaginary form in which we appear to ourselves likeable” (120). Žižek also explains the role of the Other in Lacanian subjectivity: “Here we have finally arrived at identification: I(O) stands for symbolic identification, for the identification of the subject with some signifying feature, trait (I), in the big Other, in the symbolic order” (116). 9 Gray underscores the similarities of these two words in Greek when explicating the Cratylus: “This becomes more clear when one compares the original Greek words onoma (name), and nomos (law), taking 8

Studies of names often also turn to the role of God as an entity whose name presents the greatest clarity concerning onomastic complications. Because there are so many different interpretations of the role, character, and significance of a monotheistic deity, the names and meanings of the name of this being vary wildly. Moreover, communications from God concerning the nature or name of God are highly debated amongst followers of different faiths. In his 1993 work Sauf le nom, Derrida writes of the names of God as an exemplary field for onomastic study:

Un nom de Dieu, dans une langue, une phrase, une prière, devient un exemple du nom et des noms de Dieu, puis des noms en général. Il faut choisir le meilleur des exemples (et c’est nécessairement le bien absolu, l’agathon, qui se trouve être, donc, epekeina tes ousias), mais c’est le meilleur en tant qu’exemple: pour ce qu’il est et pour ce qu’il n’est pas, pour ce qu’il est et pour ce qu’il représente, remplace, exemplifie. (96)10

As Derrida here clarifies, the name of God is exemplary both in its onomastic successes and failures. When exploring the names of gods, Plato’s Socrates finds that, through the act of naming, one can discern more about a namer than an entity that is named:

By Zeus, Hermogenes, we, if we are sensible, must recognize that there is one most excellent kind, since of the gods we know nothing, neither of them nor of their names, whatever they may be, by which they call themselves, for it is clear that they use the true names. But there is a second kind of correctness, that we call them, as is customary in prayers, by whatever names and patronymics are pleasing to them, since we know no other. Now I think that is an excellent custom. So, if you like, let us first make a kind of announcement to the gods, saying that we are not going to investigate about them—for we do not claim to be able to do that—but about men, and let us inquire what thought men had in giving them their names, for in that there is no impiety. (63-65)

The interest here is not in the signifying power of the names that gods assign to themselves, but rather what the names of gods signify for—and about—the mortals who

care to notice the similarity between the two words and how Socrates plays on this to illustrate his point” (61). 10 This phrase acts as a reference to Plato’s Republic: “Agathon” is the word here translated as “Good” (Rosen 28). Rosen studies this phrase in its original context: “Socrates is saying that the Good is not itself ousia but is epekeina tēs ousias. The traditional translation of this phrase is “beyond being.” If ousia refers to the nature of being altogether, then “beyond” must mean here either that the Good is not, that is, not only is it not a particular being (on), it does not exist in any sense of that difficult word; or else the Good does exist, that is, “be,” but it also goes beyond ousia into some higher domain” (262). 9

name them. This distinction is imperative, as names are most often given. Since namers give names, these signifiers often expose what the namers project onto the name and can thereby reveal as much or more about the namer than they do about what is named.

To demonstrate his concept of interpellation in his 1970 essay “Les appareils idéologiques d’Etat”, Althusser also turns to religious ideology and the relation between the names of religious followers (or “subjects”) and the name of God (or “Subject”):

Il apparaît alors que l’interpellation des individus en sujets suppose l’“existence” d’un Autre Sujet, Unique et central, au Nom duquel l’idéologie religieuse interpelle tous les individus en sujets. Tout cela est écrit en clair dans ce qui s’appelle justement l’Ecriture. “En ce temps-là, le Seigneur-Dieu (Yahweh) parla à Moïse dans la nuée. Et le Seigneur appela Moïse: “Moïse!” “C’est (bien) moi!, dit Moïse, je suis Moïse ton serviteur, parle et je t’écouterai!” Et le Seigneur parla à Moïse, et il lui dit: “Je suis Celui qui Suis”. Dieu se définit donc lui-même comme le Sujet par excellence, celui qui est par soi et pour soi (“Je suis Celui qui suis”), et celui qui interpelle son sujet, l’individu qui lui est assujetti par son interpellation même, à savoir l’individu dénommé Moïse. Et Moïse, interpellé-appelé par son Nom, ayant reconnu que c’était “bien” lui qui était appelé par Dieu, reconnaît qu’il est sujet, sujet de Dieu, sujet assujetti à Dieu, sujet par le Sujet et assujetti au Sujet. La preuve: il lui obéit, et fait obéir son peuple aux ordres de Dieu. (118)

In this instance of interpellation—through God’s deployment of Moses’ name—Moses recognizes himself as being recognized by God. Nevertheless, Althusser skips part of the biblical passage in this citation.11 God’s response of “I am that I am” is the common

English translation of God’s answer to Moses when Moses asks for God’s name: “And

Moses said unto God, Behold, I shall come to the sons of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you; and they will say to me, What is His name? What shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13). God’s response offers a tautological name:

And God said to Moses, I AM THAT I AM; and He said, You shall say this to the sons of Israel, I AM has sent me to you. And God said to Moses again, You shall say this to the sons of Israel, Jehovah the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,

11 However, Althusser does include a footnote that acknowledges his creative license: “Je cite d’une manière combine, non à la lettre, mais ‘en esprit et en vérité’” (118). 10

and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is my Title from generation to generation. (Exodus 3:14-15)12

Perhaps this divine auto-nomination represents a tautological ideal toward which names strive.13 “I AM THAT I AM” is a name without a name, a name based in being that expresses both nothing and everything. Nevertheless, a tautological definition of Hugo as

Hugo, for example, breaks down: “Hugo” cannot identically refer to all that is “Hugo” for everyone who names him. Can such an ideal name only function for the name of God because of a recognized mystery and unknowability at the center of conceptions of God?

Is there a similar mystery at the center of all names, an unknowable and unnamable enigma? The name of God, which also sometimes appears in Judaism as HaShem

(Hebrew for “the Name”),14 also depends upon interpellation in this biblical passage: God self-identifies as the God of different people, including Abraham, Isaac, etc. Althusser calls this the “structure spéculaire redoublée de l’idéologie” (120). So, for both Moses and God in this passage, naming indicates a state of being possessed: Moses is the “sujet de Dieu”, just as God is the “God of Isaac”, etc.

These studies of the names of gods and God show that, while the mystery or unknowability or referential failure inherent to names is more palpable when considering

12 Schild studies the different translations and interpretations of this line: “In all these versions, the first ‘am’ denotes identity; the second expresses identity according to some interpretations; existence according to others” (296). One may also find a reformulation of this statement as a question in Žižek’s interpretation of the Lacanian hysterical: “Lacan formulates the hysterical question as a certain ‘Why am I what you’re telling me that I am?’—that is, which is that surplus-object in me that caused the Other to interpellate me, to ‘hail’ me as... [king, master, wife…]?’” (126). 13 Žižek discusses the tautological nature of names: “Here we encounter the dogmatic stupidity proper to a signifier as such, the stupidity which assumes the shape of a tautology: a name refers to an object because this object is called that—this impersonal form (‘it is called’) announces the dimension of the ‘big Other’ beyond other subjects. The example evoked by Searle as an epitome of parasitism—the example of speakers who know nothing about the object of which they are speaking and whose ‘only intentional content might be that they are using the name to refer to what others are using it to refer to’—indicates, on the contrary, a necessary constitution of every ‘normal’ use of names in language as a social bond—and this tautological constituent is the Lacanian master-signifier, the ‘signifier without signified’” (103). 14 See Mailer. 11

deific onomastics, these names are still subject to the same intersubjective determinations as the names of mortals. In other words, all namers exert possessive power over the beings named, even if (or especially if) that being is called God. The name of God and

God’s role as a namer are intertwined are intertwined with Moses’ willingness to not only obey the law of God but also to enforce God’s orders on others. Not only is the name of

God an emblematic onomastic case, but it is also the authorizing force for the law of God.

Through these theoretical treatments of naming, one passes from the role of the namer as legislator to the effect of the Nom-du-père on the named to the case and power of the hallowed Name of God.

B. Fiction & Flux

“Les non-dupes errent.” - Lacan, Séminaire XXI

The external influence over the significance of names exerted by the namers of names causes a certain suspicion to arise surrounding the truth of names. Namers may lead their audiences astray, which possibility Socrates summarizes at the close of the

Cratylus:

[…] But surely no man of sense can put himself and his soul under the control of names, and trust in names and their makers to the point of affirming that he knows anything; nor will he condemn himself and all things and say that there is no health in them, but that all things are flowing like leaky pots, or believe that all things are just like people afflicted with catarrh, flowing and running all the time. Perhaps, Cratylus, their theory is true, but perhaps it is not. Therefore you must consider courageously and thoroughly and not accept anything carelessly […]. (191)

The uncertainty that one notes in this passage is reflected in the flux of names themselves: “Names, we said, indicate nature to us, assuming that all things are in motion and flux” (Plato 179). In the Cratylus, names seem to possess an inherent mutability, instability, and tendency to fluctuate. Moreover, names emerge as suspicious and possibly unreal. The possible unreality of names stems in part from the externality of 12

their source. Fictionalizing a name becomes possible due to this distance between the namers and the entities named.15

Near the end of his 1949 Stade du miroir, Lacan describes “cette inertie propre aux formations du je” (Ecrits I 99). For the study at hand, the idea of inertia proves pertinent for considerations of identification. In physics, inertia indicates “a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force”.16 The definition of inertia encompasses both stillness and movement as defining characteristics; in other words, inertia embraces movement as a form of stability. Moreover, inertia ends when an external force acts upon the inert. Such a concept aligns with the motion of significance in naming and identification: they are already in movement or flux as a rule, and they are subject to modifications by others. This ability to modify the “reality” or trajectory of another being forefronts the fictional nature of identity and names. Flux, movement, or inertia within names exposes the defining susceptibility of names to fictionalization.

Where there is movement, there is some manner of space traversed. The presence of a movement therefore indicates a space traversed between a signifier and a signified that in turn indicates a shuttling between the two, similar to Derrida’s notion of “différance”.17

15 In her study of Hugo’s works, Boulard comes to a similar conclusion: “Car n’est-ce pas de là, de l’onomastique, tout naturellement, que surgit ainsi la fiction, et donc l’écriture?” (327). 16 See Oxford Dictionary. 17 “Shuttling” is the word utilized by Egginton to describe the “bipolar logos”: “If classical interpretive modes can be called monologic in that they assume a unidirectional relation between a surface text to be read and an underlying meaning to be revealed, psychoanalysis, along with the hermeneutic practice inspired by Heidegger, suggests that the psychoanalytic subject or Dasein be understood as a bipolar logos, a shuttling back and forth between terms that produces meaning in its movement rather than finding meaning already there” (Phil. 3). Derrida writes that “différance” opens the space of philosophy: “La différance est non seulement irréductible à toute réappropriation ontologique ou théologique—onto- théologique—mais ouvrant même l’espace dans lequel l’onto-théologie—la philosophie—produit son système et son histoire, elle la comprend et l’excède sans retour” (Diff. 44). He goes on to clarify the temporal and spatial senses of différer (Diff. 46) and claims that replacing the “e” with an “a” exposes the simultaneously active and passive nature of this word: “Mais tout en nous rapprochant du noyau infinitive 13

This shuttling makes visible the failure of names to perfectly refer to the beings named.

From this space, be it internal, external, or an internalized externality, emerges the fiction inherent to all names.

And yet, such modifying or fictionalizing alterity exists within an individual identifying or naming itself as well. This is visible in the relationship that one holds with one’s own name, a relationship that resembles that which one maintains with one’s I or with the image of oneself. In Stade du miroir, Lacan studies the jubilatory reaction of a toddler upon seeing its reflection in a mirror as an early point of fictionalization in identification:

Il y suffit de comprendre le stade du miroir comme une identification au sens plein que l'analyse donne à ce terme: à savoir la transformation produite chez le sujet, quand il assume une image, - dont la prédestination à cet effet de phase est suffisamment indiquée par l'usage, dans la théorie, du terme antique d'imago. […] Mais le point important est que cette forme situe l'instance du moi, dès avant sa détermination sociale, dans une ligne de fiction, à jamais irréductible pour le seul individu, - ou plutôt, qui ne rejoindra qu'asymptotiquement le devenir du sujet, quel que soit le succès des synthèses dialectiques par quoi il doit résoudre en tant que je sa discordance d'avec sa propre réalité. (Ecrits I 93-94)

Fiction links Plato’s study of the name with Lacan’s analysis of the moi identified in one’s image. By separating an entity from its name or its image, one opens the way for fiction to enter into the process of identification. Lacan notes that Gestalt, a psychological term that implies that a whole made of many parts is also somehow

et actif du différer, ‘différance’ (avec un a) neutralise ce que l’infinitif dénote comme simplement actif, de même que ‘mouvance’ ne signifie pas dans notre langue le simple fait de mouvoir, de se mouvoir ou d’être mu” (Diff. 47). At the end of this work, Derrida turns to names: “‘Il n’y a pas de nom pour cela’: lire cette proposition en sa platitude. Cet innommable n’est pas un être ineffable dont aucun nom ne pourrait s’approcher: Dieu, par exemple. Cet innommable est le jeu qui fait qu’il y a des effets nominaux, des structures relativement unitaires ou atomiques qu’on appelle noms, des chaînes de substitutions de noms, et dans lesquelles, par exemple, l’effet nominal ‘différance’ est lui-même entraîné, emporté, réinscrit, comme une fausse entrée ou une fausse sortie est encore partie du jeu, fonction du système. […] Mettre en question le nom de nom. […] Telle est la question: l’alliance de la parole et de l’être dans le mot unique, dans le nom enfin propre. Telle est la question qui s’inscrit dans l’affirmation jouée de la différance. Elle porte (sur) chacun des membres de cette phrase: ‘L’être/ parle/ partout et toujours/ à travers/toute/langue /’” (Diff. 65-66). 14

different from this combination of parts, “symbolise la permanence mentale du je en même temps qu’elle préfigure sa destination aliénante […]” (Ecrits I 94).18 Lacan’s je shares many commonalities with names: it has different instantiations and yet must function as though it were a unified whole. Spatial, temporal, societal, and internal separations contribute to this alienation at the center of the je;19 nevertheless, the heart of this inherent division lies in the breach between an inner world (Innenwelt) or organism, and its environment (Umwelt) or “reality”: “Ainsi la rupture du cercle de l’Innenwelt à l’Umwelt engendre-t-elle la quadrature inépuisable des récolements du moi” (Ecrits I 96).

Society serves as a primary force of fictionalization within an entity’s conceptions of itself as it navigates the relationship between itself as organism and its environment.

Each member of an external society has a different understanding of the meaning of the individual’s moi—an entity that these external beings will not call moi but will call by the individual’s name. The rupture of an individual with its surrounding reality leads to the unending stocktaking or counting of the moi as it is understood—and named—by others.

Attached to the moi or the name are infinite interpretations, making the moi and the name, like Gestalt, different from the mere combination of all of these understandings.

In his 1957 L’Instance de la Lettre, Lacan analyzes how a signifier, a signified, and signification (or meaning) can all impact one another: “[…] Le signifiant ait à répondre de son existence au titre de quelque signification que ce soit” (Ecrits I 495).

18 See Merriam-Webster Dictionary, wherein Gestalt is defined as “something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts” (1). The phrase “greater than” or “more than” is often mistranslated from the original phrase of Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, which original version simply stated that the whole is “other than” the parts. See Hothersall, 246-47. 19 Garabedian comments upon the fragmented and mobile nature of the “I” and of names: “Language is not only vital to the organization of our memories, it also functions as a necessary temporal, spatial, and, accordingly, existential anchoring. The word ‘I’, but also names, suggest a (centralized) unity, an autonomous individual, that we are all of one piece, while our self is (highly) complex, fragmented, multiple, in perpetual flux and movement, and containing contradictions” (611). 15

The significance that others bestow upon an entity have an impact on its signifier. Lacan refers to this process as “le débat nominaliste” and justifies his exploration of this debate as an analysis that can “montrer comment le signifiant entre en fait dans le signifié”

(Ecrits I 497). An identitary permeability between the signifier and the signified is embodied in the name. Lacan refers to this necessary permeability as “un glissement incessant du signifié sous le signifiant” (Ecrits I 499) and as a “double flux” (Ecrits I

500), harkening back to Plato’s description of names as in flux. Because of this constitutive plasticity of signification, signifiers can both signify in wildly different manners for different interlocutors and impact the meaning of the signifier for the signified. In other words, if a critic publicly projects a certain meaning of Hugo, Hugo could then adopt or refute this significance attached to his name.

Some namers may even purposefully manipulate or modify the significance of a name. It is in this realm that Lacan locates poetry: “C’est donc entre le signifiant du nom propre d’un homme et celui qui l’abolit métaphoriquement, que se produit l’étincelle poétique […]” (Ecrits I 505). There is an emptiness at the heart of the verb to be, which

Lacan calls “le vide du verbe être” (Ecrits I 517), that underlies onomastic inquiry. The failure of a name to refer to a particular and whole thing is analogous to the failure of the verb to be to fully communicate being. The act of naming reveals both a lack inherent to being and a constitutive division between the signifier and the signified that allows for the barred sign. In this study of Lacan’s, poetry, and specifically metonymy and metaphor, depend upon the questions of being and lack, respectively: “[…] Ce qui lie la métaphore à la question d’être et la métonymie à son manque” (Ecrits I 526). Naming, being, and lacking all intertwine in this work that locates poetry between the name and its

metaphorical or metonymical destruction. So, while fiction is an inherent possible property of names on account of the externality of names, poetry surfaces in the destruction of names. Such a view aligns with the study of Mallarmé to come and reductively reflects the difference between Hugo as an onomaturge and Mallarmé as a proponent of anonymity.

In L’Instance de la Lettre, Lacan also explores the position of the name in his analysis of signification and the split subject:

Allons-nous serrer dans le langage la constitution de l’objet, nous n’y pourrons que constater qu’elle ne se rencontre qu’au niveau du concept, bien différent d’aucun nominatif, et que la chose, à se réduire bien évidemment au nom, se brise en le double rayon divergent de la cause où elle a pris abri en notre langue et du rien à qui elle a fait abandon de sa robe latine (rem). (Ecrits I 495)

When a thing is signified by a name, it undergoes a process of reduction that alienates it from itself. The name manages to distort the thing through reduction. This process resembles metonymy. A figure of speech analogous to Gestalt, metonymy relies upon an ability to indicate the whole by referring to a part that is closely linked to the thing. From the Latin meta, or change, and onoma, or name, metonymy indicates a change of name.20

Lacan identifies metonymy as the “fonction proprement signifiante qui se dépeint ainsi dans le langage” (Ecrits I 502). One can thereby name a thing by using the name of another thing. The meaning of a name may always be partly metonymic, always partly caught up in a game of naming one thing with the name of another, always involved in a process of identitary fictionalization or misfiring by both internal and external forces. A name says something but never says the whole thing. One may consider naming by making reference to both metonymy and Gestalt: while individual naming events expose the reductive process of naming and more resemble a metonymic process, the name itself,

20 See Online Etymology Dictionary, 1. 17

composed of each naming event and some unnamable something else, emerges as comparable to Gestalt in its expansive capacity, its ability to become something different from the combination of its parts. By changing the meaning of names, fiction and flux both play key roles in these processes that render naming similar to metonymy and

Gestalt.

C. Recognition & Reference

“Comme toutes les évidences, y compris celles qui font qu’un mot ‘désigne une chose’ ou ‘possède une signification’ […], cette ‘évidence’ que vous et moi sommes des sujets—et que ça ne fait pas problème—est un effet idéologique, l’effet idéologique élémentaire.” - Althusser, “Les appareils idéologiques d’Etat”

Names also entail a more basic conception of expansion: that of increasing one’s body of referees, which provides for greater recognition. Perhaps due to the intersubjective nature of naming, a certain yearning for recognition is at play in onomatic studies. Lacan describes this combination of desire and recognition: “Si j’ai dit que l’inconscient est le discours de l’Autre avec un grand A, c’est pour indiquer l’au-delà où se noue la reconnaissance du désir au désir de reconnaissance” (Ecrits I 522).

Recognition of one’s own desires and the desire for recognition intermingle in the study of names. Peoples’ actions, including those that result from a desire to signify to others in a certain way, impact the significance of their names for others. In this manner, people can modify the meaning of their signifiers—to a degree—making auto-nomination an internally intersubjective process. As earlier mentioned, fictionalization is possible in this process of auto-nomination: “C’est qu’à toucher si peu que ce soit à la relation de l’homme au signifiant, ici conversion des procédés de l’exégèse, on change le cours de son histoire en modifiant les amarres de son être” (Ecrits I 524). One can consider the name as the title of a collective work of fiction, “based on a true story”, written by many

pens, all of which impart different interpretations of this name. Moreover, when a person who is not Hugo refers to Hugo, this person may simultaneously be reckoning with many types of recognition: a perceived desired recognition on the part of Hugo, a significance of “Hugo” that this namer desires to project, and a desired further recognition for the namer of Hugo as separate but still linked to a meaning of this name. For example, when a poet dedicates a poem to Hugo, one may trace many such combinations of desire and recognition: poets may wish for Hugo to recognize them in some manner, they may wish to project a particular meaning of Hugo’s name and see Hugo be recognized by others in a certain way, and they may wish for this name to help authorize them as poets with their own renown.

Recognition also plays a central role in Althusser’s thought on naming. Althusser explores the ideological status of names before laying out his explanation of interpellation. He finds that names represent an “obviousness” (évidence) that is an effect of ideology (111). Recognition is crucial to the functioning of this intersection of ideology and onomastics: “Dans cette réaction s’exerce la fonction de reconnaissance idéologique qui est une des deux fonctions de l’idéologique comme telle (son envers

étant la fonction de méconnaissance)” (111).21 In Althusser’s work, names emerge as the markers of subjects’ recognition of themselves as such, and it is through the name that

21 Žižek studies the Lacanian split subject (specifically as it is elaborated in Graph I of desire) as it relates to Althusser’s study of interpellation: “The product of this quilting (what ‘comes out on the other side’ after the mythical – real – intention goes through the signifier and steps out of it) is the subject marked by the matheme $ (the divided, split subject, and at the same time the effaced signifier, the lack of signifier, the void, an empty space in the signifier’s network). This minimal articulation already attests to the fact that we are dealing with the process of interpellation of individuals (this pre-symbolic, mythical entity—with Althusser, too, the ‘individual’ which is interpellated into subject is not conceptually defined, it is simply a hypothetical X which must be presupposed) into subjects. The point de capiton is the point through which the subject is ‘sewn’ to the signifier, and at the same time the point which interpellates individual into subject by addressing it with the call of a certain master-signifier (‘Communism’, ‘God’, ‘Freedom’, ‘America’)—in a word, it is the point of the subjectivation of the signifier’s chain” (112). 19

one may be specifically interpellated as a unique individual that understands itself as recognized as a unique individual in a society. For example, Moses recognizes himself as being recognized by God.

The power of the names of both the Subject and the subjects depends upon a mutual recognition of their ideological roles as such and their interpellative interdependence. The name of Hugo will hold similar sway over the name of his 19th- century “subjects subjected to the Subject”, be they adoring and obedient or otherwise.

Regardless of whether they revere or defy Hugo, these followers must grapple with their position as subjects inferior to Hugo. It is for this reason that many 19th-century French writers deploy Hugo’s name in their own works in order to lend authority to themselves.

For example, when Baudelaire asks Hugo for a letter to introduce his work on Gautier, the recognition that Hugo exhibits for Baudelaire by providing this letter allows for

Baudelaire to be recognized by his readers as authorized by Hugo.

By serving as a referent for many different people over a long period of time, a name like “Hugo” can move far from what one may consider to be its “true” referent. In his 1980 work Naming and Necessity, Kripke introduces the thesis that names are rigid designators, meaning that they designate the same object in every possible world (48).22

22 Clarkson contextualizes Kripke’s thought on rigid designators: “Kripke’s argument is one of formidable subtlety, and in making his case for ‘rigid designation,’ he goes against a seductive line of argument made famous by Bertrand Russell’s ‘theory of descriptions.’ Russell argued that ordinary proper names are abbreviated or disguised descriptions […]” (36). Žižek ties Kripke’s rigid designator to Lacan: “The basic problem of antidescriptivism is to determine what constitutes the identity of the designated object beyond the ever-changing cluster of descriptive features—what makes an object identical-to-itself even if all its properties have changed; in other words, how to conceive the objective correlative to the ‘rigid designator’, to the name in so far as it denotes the same object in all possible worlds, in all counterfactual situations. What is overlooked, at least in the standard version of antidescriptivism, is that this guaranteeing the identity of an object in all counterfactual situations—through a change of all its descriptive features—is the retroactive effect of naming itself: it is the name itself, the signifier, which supports the identity of the object. That ‘surplus’ in the object which stays the same in all possible worlds is ‘something in it more than itself’, that is to say the Lacanian object petit a: we search in vain for it in positive reality because it 20

More importantly for the work at hand, Kripke also therein analyzes the role of the community in naming an entity: “In general our reference depends not just on what we think ourselves, but on other people in the community, the history of how the name reached out, and things like that. It is by following such a history that one gets to the reference” (95). Kripke’s explanation of naming and reference succinctly summarizes the project to come with regard to the name of Hugo: by tracing different treatments of

“Hugo” through the 19th Century in France, this study approaches the reference of this name through its communal history. Later in this work of Kripke’s, he reformulates his community conceptualization as a “chain” that determines a reference for future referees by “passing the name from link to link” (135). In this way, people with little to no intimate familiarity with the reference(s) attached to a referent may still utilize this referent:

Usually, when a proper name is passed from link to link, the way the reference of that name is fixed is of little importance to us. It matters not at all that different speakers may fix the reference of the name in different ways, provided that they give it the same referent. […] The interesting fact is that the way the reference is fixed seems overwhelmingly important to us in the case of sensed phenomena: a blind man who uses the term ‘light’, even though he uses it as a rigid designator for the very same phenomenon as we, seems to us to have lost a great deal, perhaps enough for us to declare that he has a different concept. […] The fact that we identify light in a certain way seems to us to be crucial, even though it is not necessary; the intimate connection may create an illusion of necessity. (139)

Kripke’s chain illustrates the temporality of naming. What namers of “Hugo” may have meant by this reference in 1830 cannot be the same as the common meaning of “Hugo” in

2015, if only because of the distance traversed on the temporal chain and the fact that namers of Hugo in 2015 could not have possibly met Hugo. And yet, people who have never encountered the person named Hugo still have the ability to name or refer to Hugo.

has no positive consistency—because it is just an objectification of a void, of a discontinuity opened in reality by the emergence of the signifier” (104). 21

However, that ability is not unconditional. As modern-day namers of Hugo, we have also inherited certain prevailing notions pertaining to this referent. It is by tracing the referent’s references (or the signifier’s signifieds) that one can gather the inherited significances attached to a name.

Is Hugo the revolutionary of 1830? The exile of 1852? The grandfatherly politician of the 1870s? Such proposals for the meaning of “Hugo” produce what Kripke calls a “cluster of descriptions” (57), and he denies this as an appropriate means of fixing the reference of a name because more than one referent could potentially satisfy the properties described (86).23 In the work at hand, “Hugo” becomes many references all tied to the same referent. Searching for the “true” Hugo is not the goal of this investigation. Instead, by gathering a “cluster of descriptions” bound together by references to the name of Hugo, a vision arises of many Hugos, differently imagined in each case. Because his community of namers was so extensive, his name undergoes a great amount of modification over time as it passes through the hands of many generations. What’s more, within each naming event lies a web of prior references and contemporary combinations of desire and recognition. The resulting plurality of meanings of “Hugo” reveals the fact that a singular “Hugo” does not exist—and it never did. And yet, the reference “Hugo” still functions. As this name is passed from link to link on the chain of reference, it is both distanced from its original referent and guaranteed a temporal persistence. A reference walks a fine line when both undergoing modification and still functioning within a referential chain. To reformulate a Lacanian

23 Žižek summarizes Kripke’s work with the terms “descriptivist” and “antidescriptivist”: “This is the core of the dispute: descriptivists emphasize the immanent, internal ‘intentional contents’ of a word, while antidescriptivists regard as decisive the external causal link, the way a word has been transmitted from subject to subject in a chain of tradition” (99). 22

thought on woman, “[…] Il n’y a pas la femme” (Seminaire XX 13)), one could say of

Hugo: Il n’y a pas le Hugo, mais il y a des Hugos. And yet, there is still only one name attached to this being of manifold meanings. Simultaneously capitalized and plural nouns like “Hugos” expose a necessary onomastic paradox. The immortality of a name relies upon this referential chain that extends, distorts, and disfigures the meaning of a name, but without making it unrecognizable.24

II. The Authorial Name

A. De-Capitalizing with Barthes

“Etre d’avant-garde, c’est savoir ce qui est mort; être d’arrière-garde, c’est l’aimer encore.” - Barthes, Tel Quel interview, 1971

The law and God; fiction and flux; recognition and reference; and possession, reduction, and expansion all factor into the specific onomastic case concerning authorial names. Nevertheless, the field of authorial names gives rise to certain unique concerns as well. On the one hand, the content of the productions attached to authorial names makes them a special case. Buisine writes of the importance of naming for Barthes and for other authors:

Pour Barthes qui a “même pensé que la réussite d’un roman tenait à la réussite de son onomastique” comme pour Flaubert qui, selon Zola, “poussait […] la religion du nom jusqu’à dire que, le nom n’existant plus, le roman n’existait plus” et considérait qu’“On

24 Derrida writes that the name immediately survives the being named, which is here a cat: “[…] Car dès lors qu’il a un nom, son nom lui survit déjà. Il signe sa disparition possible” (L’animal 26). He goes on to extend this logic to humans, making reference to Benjamin: “Etre nommé (Bennant zu sein), dit Benjamin, et même quand celui qui nomme est un égal des dieux, un bienheureux, se voir donner son propre nom, c’est peut-être se laisser envahir par la tristesse, par la tristesse même (qui aurait donc toujours pour origine cette passivité de l’être-nommé, cette impossibilité de se réapproprier son propre nom), ou du moins par une sorte de pressentiment obscur de la tristesse. Il faudrait mieux dire encore, par un pressentiment de deuil (eine Ahnung von Trauer). Deuil pressenti car il y a, me semble-t-il, comme dans toute nomination, de la nouvelle d’une mort à venir selon la survivance du spectre, la longévité du nom qui survit au porteur du nom. Celui qui reçoit un nom se sent mortel ou mourant, justement parce que le nom voudrait le sauver, l’appeler et assurer sa survivance” (L’animal 39). Lefort qualifies a type of immortality as residing in the power of a name: “Immortels demeurent à nos yeux des écrivains, des artistes, des philosophes ou bien des hommes d’Etat ou de grands capitaines dont le nom paraît gravé dans la mémoire de l’humanité” (179). 23

ne peut pas plus changer un personnage de nom que de peau. C’est vouloir blanchir un nègre”, le patronyme est indissociable de la fiction: écrire, c’est d’abord nommer; raconter, c’est suivre les aventures d’un nom. Le romancier est avant tout onomaturge […]. (74)

The centrality of fiction to the work of writers makes the fiction of naming more prevalent when considering authorial names, as these names grow in renown alongside their signed and often fictional works. In other words, fiction plays a heightened role in feeding the renown of authorial names.

Barthes in particular pays careful heed to the role of the authorial name. In his well-known 1968 article entitled “La mort de l’auteur”, the relationship between the author and God is central. Barthes refers to “l’Auteur-Dieu” as the antiquated idea of

Authors that, according to Barthes, should be resisted and desacralized (66). This capitalization of “Auteur” occurs throughout Barthes’ essay and makes the common noun proper, emphasizing its onomastic character. In this article, Barthes insists that a superior means of reading a work pays no heed to authorial intent or to biographical information surrounding the author. Moreover, he distinguishes the Author from the “modern” writer along temporal lines. Whereas the Author is seen as the past of the work and the parental

(here paternal, read: nom du père/ legislative) force nourishing the work, the scripter is born at the same time as the work (64). In a patronymic society, this would make the

Author the giver of the name and the scripter a temporally-fixed holder of the name, the meaning of which is bound only to the work. Scripters differentiate themselves from

Authors by stripping off all of their “passions, humeurs, sentiments, impressions” (65), all that makes them unique individuals. By failing to capitalize “scripteur”, Barthes refuses to elevate a scripter to the proper noun status of an Author. Transitioning from thinking of writers as godlike, capitalized Authors to thinking of writers as uncapitalized

scripters who do not exist beyond the text indicates an unburdening of the authorial name. It is through the name—or the signature—that authors traditionally stamp a reference to themselves upon their works.25 If one reads a work that one knows to have been written by Hugo, one may read it differently than if one did not know the name of the author. Instead of considering Hugo’s various roles and personal missions and their impacts upon his work, one may endeavor to read a work without the interpretative stamp of the authorial name.

Barthes goes on to describe thinking of the Author while interpreting a text as placing a “stop clause” on the text and thereby limiting its potential significance and effect. Such a description of arrested meaning underscores the need for flux in the field of signification (though Barthes here fails to note the flux inherent in naming itself).

Liberating a work from the figure of the Author becomes something akin to extirpating oneself from affiliation with God:

Donner un Auteur à un texte, c’est imposer à ce texte un cran d’arrêt, c’est le pourvoir d’un signifié dernier, c’est fermer l’écriture. Cette conception convient très bien à la critique, qui veut alors se donner pour tâche importante de découvrir l’Auteur (ou ses hypostases: la société, l’histoire, la psyché, la liberté) sous l’œuvre: l’Auteur trouvé, le texte est “expliqué” […]. Par là même, la littérature (il vaudrait mieux dire l’écriture), en refusant d’assigner au texte (et au monde comme texte) un “secret”, c’est-à-dire un sens ultime, libère une activité que l’on pourrait appeler contre-théologique, proprement révolutionnaire, car refuser d’arrêter le sens, c’est finalement refuser Dieu et ses hypostases, la raison, la science, la loi. (65-66)

Letting go of the hunt for hypostases of the Author leads to a refusal of the hypostases of

God. Here, Barthes identifies the law as a hypostasis of God. Barthes finds that by refusing to insist upon the presence of the Author (which presence is most often made manifest by an authorial signature), readers may analogously refuse the law and therefore

25 For studies of the signature, see Burke and Martens. 25

God. By denying some underlying and potentially unknowable secret of a text, readers de-sacralize the work and reject a unified, deific vision of the Author.

As the creator of a work, an author may come to resemble God, making the readers potential subjects of the Subject, to borrow Althusserian terms. If readers remove the Author from the work, they enact an auto-liberation from this readerly interpellation.

The final move of Barthes’ article involves stripping readers of their singularities, their names, and therefore their ability to be individually interpellated, in order to give birth to a new form of reader:

[…] Le lecteur est un homme sans histoire, sans biographie, sans psychologie; il est seulement ce quelqu’un qui tient rassemblées dans un même champ toutes les traces dont est constitué l’écrit. […] La naissance du lecteur doit se payer de la mort de l’Auteur. (67)

Only when the Author-God dies can a former Althusserian subject (subjected to the

Subject of the Barthesian Author-God) become a reader, an unnamed and un-capitalized someone capable of reading a piece of writing without interpreting it according to the connotations attached to the Author’s name. The death of the Author (and birth of the reader) can be enacted through the death (or revolutionary transformation) of the significance of the authorial name. So the old formula of “Jane Doe, reader of Hugo, the

Auteur” becomes “someone, reader of no one, the scripter”. Both readers and authors must lose their names in order to allow for this Barthesian transformation of reading and writing.

B. Exploring Authorial Onomastic Spaces with Foucault

“L’auteur est le principe d’économie dans la prolifération du sens.” - Foucault, “Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?” (variant)

In his 1969 essay “Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?”, Foucault also studies the name of the author in particular. He finds that this name differs from other proper nouns because

of the lingering idea that there exists some unity between authors and their works.

Whereas Barthes turns to a more temporal logic in his distinction between the Author and the scripter, Foucault incorporates numerous spatial images in this work to delineate his topic: “Dans l’écriture […] il est question de l’ouverture d’un espace où le sujet écrivant ne cesse de disparaître” (793). Foucault tends away from a temporal view of writing in an attempt to avoid the religious echoes of such a view: “En effet, prêter à l’écriture un statut originaire, n’est-ce pas une manière de retraduire en termes transcendantaux, d’une part, l’affirmation théologique de son caractère sacré, et, d’autre part, l’affirmation critique de son caractère créateur?” (795). Another religious vestige of conceptions of the author lies precisely in the birth of the authorial name:

Les textes, les livres, les discours ont commencé à avoir réellement des auteurs (autres que des personnages mythiques, autres que de grandes figures sacralisées et sacralisantes) dans la mesure où l’auteur pouvait être puni, c’est-à-dire dans la mesure où les discours pouvaient être transgressifs. Le discours, dans notre culture (et dans bien d’autres sans doute), n’était pas, à l’origine, un produit, une chose, un bien; c’était essentiellement un acte—un acte qui était placé dans le champ bipolaire du sacré et du profane, du licite et de l’illicite, du religieux et du blasphématoire. (799)26

According to Foucault, if pieces of writing are placed on a scale between the sacred and the profane, the author’s name originally serves as a means of identifying the person to prosecute in the case of blasphemy. In this way, Foucault holds that the name of the author came into popular usage in order to allow the law to punish authors who are seen to have committed sacrilege against God.

26 Žižek compares Lacanian subjectivity to Foucauldian subjectivity: “Here, however, we must distinguish carefully between this Lacanian notion of the divided subject and the ‘post-structuralist’ notion of the subject-positions. In ‘post-structuralism’, the subject is usually reduced to so-called subjectivation, he is conceived as an effect of a fundamentally non-subjective process: the subject is always caught in, traversed by the pre-subjective process (of ‘writing’, of ‘desire’ and so on), and the emphasis is on the individuals’ different modes of ‘experiencing’, living’ their positions as ‘subjects’, ‘actors’, ‘agents’ of the historical process. For example, only at a certain point in European history did the author of works of art, a painter or a writer, begin to see himself as a creative individual who, in his work, gives expression to his interior subjective richness. The great master of such analysis was, of course, Foucault: one might say that the main point of his late work was to articulate the different modes by which individuals assume their subject- positions” (197). 27

Communities also play a role in Foucault’s thought on the name of the author.

Due to its dependence upon societal recognition, the name of the author becomes susceptible to the editing process of this society:

Mais en fait, ce qui dans l’individu est désigné comme auteur (ou ce qui fait d’un individu un auteur) n’est que la projection, dans des termes toujours plus ou moins psychologisants, du traitement qu’on fait subir aux textes, des rapprochements qu’on opère, des traits qu’on établit comme pertinents, des continuités qu’on admet, ou des exclusions qu’on pratique. (801)

The people naming the author may seek to project certain consistencies that are defied by diversities within an author’s corpus. Foucault finds that the author is actually that which rises above such inconsistencies: “L’auteur, c’est encore ce qui permet de surmonter les contradictions qui peuvent se déployer dans une série de textes […]” (802). He discusses a “pluralité d’ego” (803) that authors may possess and that paradoxically seems to both produce and defy the simplistic ontological union of authors and their works. In other words, this plurality of egos can either be cause for namers to forge all of the instantiations of an author into one authorial name, a process that requires reductivism and disregard for identitary flux, or it can provide a way out of viewing authors as strictly onomastico-ontologically unified with their works and therefore in need of such reduction.

In this work, Foucault locates a distinction that he claims arose in the 19th Century and leads to conceptions of certain authors as founders of discursivity:

Mais il me semble qu’on a vu apparaître, au cours du XIXe siècle en Europe, des types d’auteurs assez singuliers et qu’on ne saurait confondre ni avec les ‘grands’ auteurs littéraires, ni avec les auteurs de textes religieux canoniques, ni avec les fondateurs de sciences. Appelons-les, d’une façon un peu arbitraire, ‘fondateurs de discursivité’. (804)

Foucault offers Marx and Freud as examples of such founders of discursivity, whom he contrasts with the novelist Ann Radcliffe. While he finds that Radcliffe’s innovations

lead others to imitate novelty within the confines of a singular genre, Foucault describes the works of Marx and Freud as opening themselves up to more radical ensuing differences:

Ils ont produit quelque chose de plus: la possibilité et la règle de formation d’autres textes. En ce sens, ils sont fort différents, par exemple, d’un auteur de romans, qui n’est jamais, au fond, que l’auteur de son propre texte. (804)

Another means of describing this would be to say that Marx and Freud open their works to expansive interpretations. The case of Hugo offers an example that resists Foucault’s dismissal of novelists as possible founders of discursivity. Foucault’s following claim about Marx and Freud can in fact also apply to Hugo:

En revanche, quand je parle de Marx ou de Freud comme ‘instaurateurs de discursivité’, je veux dire qu’ils n’ont pas rendu simplement possible un certain nombre d’analogies, ils ont rendu possible (et tout autant) un certain nombre de différences. Ils ont ouvert l’espace pour autre chose qu’eux et qui pourtant appartient à ce qu’ils ont fondé. (805)

One also here finds that space reappears as a central thematic of Foucault’s study of the authorial name and the author function. The authorial name attached to an establisher of discursivity here seems to return to something of a parental function. If a writer opens a space in which followers may differentiate themselves from this writer, then ensuing writers who seem very different from this establisher may still be seen as belonging to the same literary family. Do names become stronger—or more capable of naming more than just one individual—if they bend rather than break? If, rather than presenting itself as a rigid tree in a forest, a name instead comes to stand for the space of the forest inhabited by other trees, what role does this name now play? What happens if a name that once referred to an author becomes the reference for a space, be it generic (e.g.

“Romanticism”) or spatio-temporal (e.g. “the French 19th Century”)? What happens when such a name must host and accommodate the names of so many others? Does it

become empty through overfilling? Or does it become a name of a different nature than that of the standard mortal? Can this process of expansion make an authorial name more similar to conceptions of the name of God?

For Foucault, allowing for a space in which a writer may disappear leads to exactly the opposite result: this process acts a means of de-sacralizing the figure of the writer, a means of un-capitalizing the authorial name. Foucault argues that this space left in the author’s wake must be explored as well as proclaimed:

Mais il ne suffit pas, évidemment, de répéter comme affirmation vide que l’auteur a disparu. De même, il ne suffit pas de répéter indéfiniment que Dieu et l’homme sont morts d’une mort conjointe. Ce qu’il faudrait faire, c’est repérer l’espace ainsi laissé vide par la disparition de l’auteur, suivre de l’œil la répartition des lacunes et des failles, et guetter les emplacements, les fonctions libres que cette disparition fait apparaître. (796)27

And yet, even if a void has been left after the disappearance of the author, the onomastic trace of the author remains. The name comes to stand for this void. The pages that follow will explore the space surrounding the authorial name and the process by which this space is paradoxically emptied out even as it is filled by naming an author.

Depending on who named him, “Victor Hugo” simultaneously meant vastly different things. By tracing different naming events for Hugo and by contextualizing these events in their socio-historical situations, this study explores the many sacralizations and profanations of this name in 19th-century France.

In response to the query as to whether or not a signifier can “kill” a signified, one may now be more prone to ask if a signifier can ever perform its supposed function and

27 Buch-Jespen contrasts the texts of Barthes and Foucault with reference to this “vide”: “Le texte de Barthes est à moitié un argument historiciste (la notion d’auteur est une figure moderne et ‘un produit de notre société’) et à moitié un manifeste de la Nouvelle Critique française. Par contre, le texte de Foucault a pour ambition d’examiner le vide que la disparition de l’auteur avait laissé dans les disciplines littéraires, et malgré ses arguments également historicistes (premièrement l’appropriation intellectuelle au niveau des droits d’auteur et deuxièmement l’appropriation pénale au niveau de la censure), ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?’ montre des préoccupations très différentes de celles de Barthes, ce qui explique pourquoi la discussion du nom ici se met en évidence” (51). 30

refer solely to a signified. If a signifier can “kill” a signified (and if it even must do so, to a degree), it is by making the signified simultaneously plural and host to others, thereby making the signifier increasingly abstract, exalted, or divine. This is the final step in the reduction-possession-expansion dynamic I propose as a productive means of studying the name of Hugo. Considering the monumental renown of the name “Hugo”, the repeated reductions of its significance, its possessions by namers, and its manifold expansions to host many other beings, does this name fail to refer to the individual referent? This aspect of Hugo’s onomastic divinity—his ability to stand for many—threatens the efficacy of his signifier: if “Hugo” comes to stand for all, can “Hugo” stand for any one?

Intended to be blank.

CHAPTER I

BECOMING BY NAMING: HUGO’S HUGOS

Hugo, Victor. Les Travailleurs de la mer. Manuscript. Bibliothèque Nationale de la France, NAF 24745, folio 2.

I. Introduction “Un nom est un moi.” - Hugo, Les Misérables

Victor Hugo’s prefaces act as a staging space for Hugo’s projections of his own name. Studying the evolving significances of “Hugo” through these prefaces produces something of a “literary autobiography” of Hugo as the preface writer projects the author over time. These projections convey some image of both Hugo and his works to the public. By treating topics that traditionally fall under the umbrella of literary history from a theoretical point of view, this “literary autobiography” is riddled with the problems inherent to naming. The writer of a preface is not equivalent to the voice of the person behind (or within, or composing) the author’s name, and yet it presents itself as coming closer to this being than what is conveyed solely by an authorial signature.

Simply put, the writer of a preface inhabits a space somewhere between the authorial signature and its signified. To add another complication, all of these voices are inherently plural and subject to change over time and through interpretation and interpellation. The layer of onomastic interpretation currently under examination is that of the preface-writing Hugo with regard to the authorial name “Victor Hugo”.

Hugo’s attention to naming in his non-preface, creative works is ubiquitous.

Perhaps the best-known example is Jean Valjean and his many aliases, which include two numeric names. The recurrent trope of characters possessing more than one name and identity, one of which is often unknown to them, is also a common thread in Hugo’s works, frequently leading to Aristotelian anagorisis and perepeteia. Just to mention a few such examples, one may name Hernani/ Jean d’Aragon, Esmeralda/ Agnes

Guybertaut, Gwynplaine/ Fermain Clancharlie, etc. One could certainly write extensively upon the intricacies of character names in Hugo’s works, and many scholars

who study Hugo’s creative works do so.1 However, that fascinating topic lies beyond the scope of this work.

The name of interest in this study is that of the author. Just as Hugo epitomizes an author who pays significant heed to the naming of his characters, he also epitomizes an author who spends considerable time and energy on his own public image: “Yet more than just his chef d’œuvre, Hugo’s life is perhaps […] a sort of œuvres complètes in progress, a monumental and seemingly totalizing vessel for braving posterity […]”

(Garval 166). Hugo’s construction of an epic Hugolian monument during his own lifetime leads Cocteau to make his famous proclamation: “Victor Hugo était un fou qui se croyait Victor Hugo.”2 The present study may take the form of the following adaptation of this well-known statement: “Victor Hugo était un fou/génie/maître qui se nommait

Victor Hugo.” How does Hugo name himself, as the author of the work, in his writing?

What do these presentations of himself show contemporary and modern readers? What can studying an authorial projection reveal about identity construction within an onomastico-ontologico-semantic framework? What are the lasting effects of “branding” oneself, so to speak? How does this process of self-creation take on a divine aspect?

1 For example, Roche analyzes the pattern of depletion and erasure that Hugo’s characters’ names often undergo: “In this way, the semiotic process through which characters take on meaning through the progressive completion of the name assigned to them is paralleled by a simultaneous process of depletion, as a great number of Hugo’s characters are discharged of both their fictional identities and roles during the course of their itineraries, which often culminate in their (anonymous) death and erasure from the fictional worlds that are put in place in the novels” (8). Boulard also finds the central mystery of Hugo’s works to lie in naming: “Le mystère, chez Hugo, c’est le mystère du nom” (328). 2 Cocteau later clarifies what he meant by this statement: “Rien de plus anormal qu’un poète qui se rapproche de l’homme normal: Hugo, Goethe… C’est le fou libre. Le fou qui n’a pas l’air fou. Le fou qui n’est jamais suspect. Quand j’ai écrit que Victor Hugo était un fou qui se croyait Victor Hugo, je ne plaisantais pas. Le péché-type contre l’Esprit n’est-il pas d’être spirituel? Ce n’était pas une boutade, c’était une synthèse; le résumé d’une étude que je refuse d’écrire et que d’autres écriront un jour. Le rôle du poète n’est pas de prouver, mais d’affirmer sans fournir aucune des preuves encombrantes qu’il possède et d’où résulte son affirmation. Par la suite, la lente découverte de ces preuves donne au poète sa place de devin” (77). 35

And finally, what are the limits of this process? Namely, what does death do to (or for) a name, and vice versa?

II. A Brief Study of the Prolegomenon

“Si vous savez changer de nom, vous savez écrire.” - Genette, Seuils

In Seuils, Genette offers a detailed study of the forms, tropes, and roles of a preface. Through this paratextual device, authors can reveal themselves in a way that they cannot within the work itself. For example, in a preface, an author can approve or disapprove of the work that the reader is about to encounter:

Retenons au moins, de l’existence de ces attributions posthumes, l’idée que le destinateur du nom d’auteur n’est pas nécessairement toujours l’auteur lui-même; et c’est, nous le verrons, une des fonctions ordinaires de la préface que de donner à l’auteur l’occasion d’assumer (ou de rejeter) officiellement la paternité de son texte. (Seuils 46)3

Despite this allowance for multiple addressees of the authorial name, Genette does not delve into this aspect of the preface in his work: “[…] L’auteur réel, dans sa préface, revendique ou, plus simplement, assume la responsabilité du texte, et ceci, bien sûr, constitue l’une des fonctions de ce type de préface […]” (Seuils 171). Genette’s rather straightforward idea of “l’auteur réel” as equivalent to the writer of a preface begs complication. As earlier mentioned, authors (“real” or otherwise) and preface writers are distinct and plural paratextual entities.4 This differentiation serves as a springboard for

3 In the preface to his book of prefaces, Prólogos con un prólogo de prólogos, Borges similarly defines the preface: “Une préface, quand elle est réussie, n’est pas une manière de toast; c’est une forme latérale de la critique” (13). Borges makes such a lateral critique of his own work in this preface and allows for himself to be plural: “J’ai relu attentivement mes textes et, l’homme d’aujourd’hui n’étant plus l’homme d’hier, je me suis permis d’ajouter des notes qui confirment ou réfutent certains passages” (12). 4 One may here consider Cervantes’ preface to the Quixote, in which the author divides his voice into two speakers—that of the author and that of the author’s friend—to consider the pros and cons of prefaces, epigraphs, and citations. 36

the study of Hugo’s presentations of his preface-writing name and his relationship with his works through the medium of his prefaces.

Genette’s study does approach this complication when he analyzes the self- reflexivity involved in the process of writing a preface:

J’écris une préface—je me vois écrire une préface—je me représente me voyant écrire une préface—je me vois me représenter… Cette réflexion infinie, cette autoreprésentation en miroir, cette mise en scène, cette comédie de l’activité préfacielle, qui est une des vérités de la préface, la préface fictionnelle la pousse à son ultime accomplissement en passant, à sa façon, de l’autre côté du miroir. Mais cette autoreprésentation est aussi, très éminemment, celle de l’activité littéraire en général. (Seuils 269)

Before his dismissal of this study of the auto-reflexivity of prefaces as inconsequential because also reflective of literary activity in general, Genette’s thought begins to resemble that of Lacan’s in his Stade du miroir or in his inverted vase diagram.5 The writer of a preface is ensnared within an intersubjective chain: the writer presents him or herself (“cette autoreprésentation en miroir”) so as to signify in some way to an imagined public; in other words, writers see themselves through the eyes of others while constructing their images in a preface. Moreover, as Lacan illustrates with his inverted vase, this image is artificial yet necessary. It is a “mensonge véridique” that results from

5 I owe thanks to William Egginton for pointing this piece of Lacanian thought out to me, and I therefore find it fitting to here cite Egginton’s astute explanation of this Lacanian image: “The schema to which Lacan refers is the famous, and famously obscure, ‘diagram of the inverted vase’ familiar to most from its inclusion in Seminar XI. This diagram, which appears on one page of the eleventh seminar and even there is barely explained, was the subject of some one hundred pages of analysis in the seminar of ten years earlier, Seminar I, on Freud’s Papers on Technique. The point of the diagram and this lengthy, detailed, and exceedingly clear exposition was to develop a way of thinking about the ego as a scopic phenomenon, and elaboration of Lacan’s famous mirror-stage theory developed in the late 1940s. In the diagram, Lacan reproduces a parlor trick cum experiment in optics in which an observer can be made to see a vase with some flowers in a mirror where such an object, as least so arranged, does not in fact exist. […] The scenario is Lacan’s metaphor for the constitution of the ideal ego. This image (the vase) attains its coherence in a virtual world, what Lacan calls the space of the Other. It is where the Other sees us, and where we see ourselves as seen by the Other” (How 25-26). Genette makes no reference to Lacan in Seuils, aside from one mention of the title Ecrits (83) and a note about the popularity of citing Lacan in epigraphs at a certain point in time (148). 37

viewing oneself from the perspective of the Other (Séminaire XI 132).6 Hugo repeatedly emerges as exemplary of Genette’s idea of a simple preface writer who does not create any fictional character or alter ego as the writer of the work’s preface. For Genette, Hugo the preface writer is identical to Hugo the author. Two factors muddle Genette’s equation: firstly, the mere multiplicity of the Hugolian figures, and secondly, the fictionality at play in the act of writing a preface.7

III. L’Enfant sublime: Hugo between Chateaubriand and Napoléon

“Napoléon! soleil dont je suis le Memnon!” - Hugo, “Lui”

The major source of the earliest naming events of Hugo is not a preface, and it needs some contextualization, as its authorship is somewhat contested. Victor Hugo

Raconté (1863) (VHR), the first major biography of Hugo and source of many Hugolian naming events, was initially published anonymously but later received the authorial signature of Adèle Hugo, Victor’s wife. This work was to aid future biographers: “Les biographies sont presque toujours inexactes, et j’en voudrais laisser une qui approchât de la vérité. […] Ceux qui voudront après écrire sur mon mari, ceux qui auront le talent, s’en serviront comme de documents” (VHR 84). The question of the actual authorship of this biography still provides material for debate. Adèle herself says that she consulted

6 Cited in Egginton, How, 25. 7 According to Derrida, in addition to its status as in-between with relation to the name of the author and the work to follow, the preface also holds an unusual temporal status: “[Une préface] énoncerait au futur (“vous allez lire ceci”) le sens ou le contenu conceptuels […] de ce qui aurait déjà été écrit. Donc assez lu pour pouvoir être rassemblé en sa teneur sémantique et d’avance proposé. Pour l’avant-propos, reformant un vouloir-dire après le coup, le texte est un écrit—un passé—que, dans une fausse apparence de présent, un auteur caché et tout-puissant, en pleine maîtrise de son produit, présente au lecteur comme son avenir. […] Le pré de la préface rend présent l’avenir, le représente, le rapproche, l’aspire et en le devançant le met devant. Il le réduit à la forme de présence manifeste” (Diss. 13).

her husband during the creation of the work, but she clarifies that readers should not assume that he is the author:

Pour cela, il ne faudrait pas croire que je reproduis ce qu’il m’a dit. Il ne faut attribuer à certains esprits que leur parole exacte. La faculté de retenir me manque: je saisis le fond seulement. Si même je dis que l’histoire vient de mon mari, c’est pour lui donner crédit. (VHR 147)

Robb points to two other figures, Hugo’s son Charles and Auguste Vacquerie, for the majority of the editing and polishing of this work ostensibly written by Adèle; moreover,

Robb goes on to make the strong claim that, “despite what the hagiographical amendments suggest”, Hugo only read this biography after its publication (VH 419).

Regardless of where one stands on the issue of the authorship of this work, Adèle herself writes that many of Hugo’s stories certainly come from Hugo. In this manner, VHR partially acts as another literary autobiography. Ubersfeld and Rosa offer a more universal reading of the original anonymity of the author of this work: “Anonymat à demi levé par la presse, mais qui avait motif et raison. Qui aurait eu le droit d’y mettre son nom? Personne parce qu’un peu tout le monde” (VHR 57). The events in the life of such a figure as Victor Hugo become so mythologically potent that they escape authorship and become public domain. Each member of the public who knows his name becomes a part of the centuries-long conglomerate naming of Hugo.

Citing from VHR, Robb recounts how Hugo claimed that he was named by the

General Lahorie, the man his mother would later shelter from Napoleon’s regime at her home in the Feuillantines garden:

He later considered himself to have been baptized symbolically by the substitute father, Lahorie, “who witnessed my birth”. Lahorie may indeed, as Hugo claims, have suggested the Germanic “Hugo” be softened by the Latin “Victor”. But when the baby was born, Lahorie was in Paris. (Robb VH 11)

This attention to his own name will persist throughout Hugo’s life and career. As was included in Adèle’s biography Victor Hugo Raconté, his name embodied tensions within his parents’ marriage, including the presence of this Lahorie figure. Robb neatly summarizes these tensions surrounding naming in Hugo’s early life, when he and his family followed his father and the Napoleonic Army to Spain:

The eight months of domestic misery and social grandeur in occupied Spain can be seen as the start of Hugo’s peculiar relationship with his own name. “A name is an identity,” he claims in Les Misérables; but for the ten-year-old Visconde Hugo, which name was the real one? He shared in the glory of his father’s title, just as he was used to hearing his mother addressed as “Mme la Générale”. But now, when she travelled, she called herself Mme Trébuchet, sometimes aristocratically appending her aunt’s little property in Brittany to her maiden name: Mme Trébuchet de la Renaudière—a complete rejection of the General, marital, social and geographical. Victor’s Christian name, on the other hand, was a souvenir of the man in the Feuillantines garden. With such a choice of signposts at the beginning, it is hardly surprising that the map of Hugoland should become increasingly complex. (VH 39)

The manifold changes in ruling power over the 19th Century in France come hand-in- hand with changes in naming practices and means of address.8 This connection between politics and onomastics is visible in the many names of Hugo.

One of the earliest means of naming himself that Hugo will employ and continue to enact for many years to come involves naming himself as the member of an elite group. Garval refers to this group as “a flattering chain of substitutions, a self-glorifying metonymy, a genealogy of his own greatness” that “[makes] the march of western civilization culminate in Victor Hugo” (175). By naming his own precursors, Hugo maps out his politico-literary lineage and offers context and models for comparison to those who may just be getting to know about Hugo, which would have initially been mostly everyone. In Hugo’s earlier days, the two major members of this genealogical group of

8 See Wilson. 40

predecessors were Chateaubriand and Napoleon.9 In 1816, at the age of 14, Hugo famously wrote in his journal, “Je veux être Chateaubriand ou rien” (VHR 366).10 Robb calls this “as common a desire in the 1810s as a desire to be Victor Hugo was in the

1830s or 1840s” (VH 59). This early “aspiration vers la renommée” takes the shape of an eclipse: Hugo will either become Chateaubriand—implying a replacement of this predecessor—or be nothing at all (VHR 296).11 The following year, 1817, saw Hugo honored at the literary competition les Jeux floraux, which appears as a life-altering event for Hugo: “L’existence de Victor était transfigurée. Il s’épanouissait, il était libre, applaudi, il voyait se lever sa renommée. C’était son aube” (VHR 304). Adèle thus identifies Hugo’s rise of renown as his dawning, making public knowledge of his name a prerequisite for her husband’s true beginning. Other biographers agree that this prize began the process of making Hugo a household name, as he was then an “officially recognized child prodigy” (Robb VH 63).

It takes three more years for Chateaubriand to possibly have called Hugo “l’enfant sublime”. The story goes that in March 1820, Chateaubriand read Hugo’s highly royalist poem “Ode sur la mort du duc de Berry” and then either did or did not dub Hugo

“l’enfant sublime”. Chateaubriand denies this naming event, but Adèle (et. al.) identifies this precise (if here slightly more convoluted) naming event as Hugo’s entry into glory:

9 Hugo writes a letter to Chateaubriand in December 1840 in which he makes this juxtaposition clear: “Après vingt-cinq ans, il ne reste que les grandes choses et les grands hommes, Napoléon et Chateaubriand. Trouvez bon que je dépose ces vers à votre porte. Depuis longtemps, vous avez fait une paix généreuse avec l’ombre illustre qui les a inspirés. Permettez-moi de vous les offrir comme une nouvelle marque de mon ancienne et profonde admiration” (Corr. 37). Hugo here refers to Le Retour de l’empereur. 10 Schlanger writes that it was Chateaubriand’s glory that inspires this aim to imitate: “En littérature, par exemple, admirer un écrivain peut signifier des choses assez différentes. Il se peut qu’on soit ébloui par le type du succès exemplaire, une œuvre magistrale, un nom omniprésent, la renommée, la gloire (comme le tout jeune Hugo devant la gloire de Chateaubriand)” (71). 11 It was also in this year that Hugo competed in a poetry competition run by the Académie Française, les Jeux floraux, and failed to win because the judges believed he was lying about his age, thinking he must have been much older than 14 to have written such poetry. This led to a clearly possessive name bestowed upon him by the académiciens: “Les académiciens l’appelaient ‘leur poète’” (VHR 303). 41

Le député [M. Agier] écrivait dans le Drapeau blanc. Il fit un article sur le jeune poète et répéta l’épithète que Chateaubriand avait laissé tomber sur Victor. Introduit par cet illustre parrain, ‘l’enfant sublime’, entouré d’une auréole, prit place dans la gloire. (VHR 333)

While such an event constitutes Hugo being named by another and not by himself, it also involves Hugo’s dissemination of this naming event by another; in this manner, Hugo names himself via the names he received from other members of his projected literary lineage. The Hugo family thereby authorizes Hugo by referring to his naming event by his maître. Léon Séché’s work Victor Hugo et les poètes opens with a recapitulation of this debate surrounding whether or not Chateaubriand actually called Hugo “l’enfant sublime” (51). The public also latched onto this possibly-romanticized changing of the

Romantic guard: “In any case, the burgeoning French press noticed the older writer’s encouragement of the young aspirant, and the phrase ‘enfant sublime’ was widely circulated, marking the beginning of Hugo’s true celebrity […]” (Garval 175). The ascension of Hugo’s name from the Jeux floraux’s “prodigy” to Chateaubriand’s

“sublime” opens the way for Hugo’s renown to flourish.12

Chateaubriand thus occupies the royalist, literary pole of Hugo’s early self-made lineage (which Robb aligns with reflections of Hugo’s mother); for the empiricist, militant pole (which Robb sees as echoes of Hugo’s father), why not go for the emperor

12 However, according to Adèle’s account, Hugo was disappointed with Chateaubriand’s demeanor because of his sovereign attitude, which made Chateaubriand appear to be “un génie et non un homme” (VHR 336). Nevertheless, Hugo did still name his 1819 newspaper Le Conservateur Littéraire in homage to Le Conservateur, an ultra-royalist mouthpiece for which Chateaubriand frequently wrote. After studying Hugo’s poems dedicated to Chateaubriand, “À M. de Chateaubriand” and “Le Génie”, Robb concludes that Hugo saw “a vacancy for the job of greatest living French writer” (VH 84), which he intended to fill. Porter also studies “À M. de Chateaubriand” and finds in it a combination of humility and self- aggrandizement that will characterize many of the prefaces studied in this chapter: “And the ambiguity of agency in the last line (is Genius passively embodied in symbols outside itself, or does it actively find and use them?) tries to shelter the paradoxically humble superiority of the prophetic poet from our possible suspicions of his self-aggrandizement” (8). 42

himself? Garval also notes this dual presence in the young Hugo’s vision of himself and in the older Hugo’s projection of his lineage:

[Chateaubriand] was the contemporary paragon of glory itself having, in large measure, filled a vacuum created by Napoleon’s decline and death. Through the early and mid 1820s Hugo looked not only toward the memory of Napoleon, but toward the living example of Chateaubriand as well, to sanction his own ambitions. (175)

Hugo’s father’s service to Napoleon occupies a considerable amount of the early pages of

VHR. In 1811 (five years before the diary entry concerning Chateaubriand), while a student in a religious institution in Madrid, Hugo went so far as to call himself Napoleon

(VHR 280). Robb explains that around 1818, the game comparable to “cowboys and

Indians” was at that time “Napoleon against the Rest of the World”, and amongst his schoolyard playmates, “the boy who most often got to be the leader of the civilized world was the precociously authoritative and authoritarian Victor Hugo” (VH 46). While

Hugo’s vision of himself as a replacement of Chateaubriand eventually either dissipates or succeeds so resoundingly that Hugo eclipses Chateaubriand, Napoleon remains a figure in Hugo’s mythological treatment of himself.

The many genealogies to be found in Hugo’s prefaces reformulate this early projection of himself as falling in line with renowned predecessors.13 These prefaces show Hugo presenting himself as the author of individual works in a variety of manners that evolve over time. Hugo’s attention to his own name in these prefaces serves as the basis of this study and reveals the seemingly infinite intricacies, revolutions, and signifying powers of the name “Hugo”.

13 I will study Hugo’s prefaces in a particular chronological fashion. I will treat all editions and accompanying prefaces of a work at the same time, but I will order the works based upon their initial publication dates. So, for the first work to be studied, Odes et Ballades, the prefaces stretch from 1822 to 1853. Then, the second work to be studied, Han d’Islande, was first published in 1823 and received its final preface in 1833. 43

IV. 31 Years of Hugo: Odes et Ballades

“[…] Mais il faut toujours parler comme si l’on devait être entendu, écrire comme si l’on devait être lu, et penser comme si l’on devait être médité.” - Hugo, 1823 preface to Odes et Ballades

The series of six prefaces to Odes et Ballades spans 31 years (1822-1853) and thereby offers a uniquely semi-panoramic vision of the evolution of Hugo’s projection of the meaning of his name as attached to one work in particular. These prefaces expose

Hugo’s shift from monarchist Catholicism to a less religious republicanism. Hugo’s mother dies in 1821, and in 1822, he wins a pension from the government (then under

Louis XVIII), marries Adèle (when his name was supposedly recorded as “Victor Hugot”

(Robb VH 95)), and publishes the first edition of Odes et Ballades. In order to marry

Adèle, Hugo had to forge his own baptism, which had never taken place: “The ‘orphan’ had turned himself into a decent proposition almost single-handed” (Robb VH 96). So, in one very bureaucratic sense, Hugo projected a not-entirely-truthful image of himself via his name and first official auto-naming event. In the 1822 preface to Odes et Ballades, then called Odes et poésies diverses, Hugo’s first clause (of his first published preface) sets the tone for many of his works and prefaces to come; however, the part of this sentence following the semi-colon clearly places Hugo in the early politico-religious camp of his life, that of monarchist Catholicism:

Il y a deux intentions dans la publication de ce livre, l’intention littéraire et l’intention politique; mais, dans la pensée de l’auteur, la dernière est la conséquence de la première, car l’histoire des hommes ne présente de poésie que jugée du haut des idées monarchiques et des croyances religieuses. (Poésie I 54)

The following year, 1823, sees the publication of a second and still very religiously- minded preface to this collection.14 This second preface includes ideas about the utility of poetry as providing lessons to futurity by communicating the principle memories of

14 While this preface is published in 1823, it is dated December 1822 (Poésie I 55). 44

“notre époque” (Poésie I 55); namely, the poet should be of use by supporting the monarchy and the Church. Hugo is already naming himself as an authority of his time.

The author of this second preface claims that only now is he able to reveal the thought behind his work because this collection had already undergone “l’épreuve hasardeuse de la publication” (Poésie I 55). He claims that his greatest wish is “qu’on ne lui croie pas la prétention de frayer une route ou de créer un genre” (Poésie I 55). Hugo’s attention to public perception of “Victor Hugo”, the author whose works are mediated by the works of the preface writer, becomes clear in this modest insistence that the public not think he has the “pretention” of creating a genre. And yet, asking the public to not believe that he believes he is creating a genre is not the same request as asking the public to not believe that he is creating a genre. This attention to the public’s view of his view of himself underscores the intersubjective point of view inherent to a preface. The preface writer becomes a separate Hugo who presents the author-Hugo’s projected image.

In 1824, Hugo publishes a third preface to Odes et Ballades, in which he claims that both the Romantic and Classical schools are capable of supporting the monarchy and of being reconciled. Moreover, he claims that religion consecrates the liberty that follows a revolution, thereby marrying religion and revolution, which are often (and certainly during the French Revolution) at odds with one another.15 Hugo here espouses the desire to be a conciliator, a role that he will pursue in differing manners throughout his life. Beginning with marks of humility and claims that he believes very little in his talent, this preface writer goes on to compare the author of this collection of poems and

15 Naming practices also underwent a change during the French Revolution that mirrors this separation from the Church, as people began naming themselves and their children after Revolutionary instead of religious figures. See Wilson, 209. Hugo’s own father renamed himself Brutus during the Revolution. See Robb, VH, 8. 45

conciliator between the dueling schools of poetry to none other than Hercules, famed for strangling the lion whose pelt he wore thereafter: “Il agitera, sans hésitation, les questions les plus délicates, et, comme le petit enfant thébain, il osera secouer la peau du lion”

(Poésie I 57). After this comparison of the 3rd-person “il” author of the work to a infantile version of Hercules, the author of the preface lists Homer, Virgil, Tasso, Milton, and Corneille as authors who represent a poetry and a nation, have nothing in common but genius, and are all animated by truth. The point of this diverse list is to show that such qualifiers as “romantic” and “classic” are pointless and vague.16 While the name

Hugo does not appear in this list, one can find in this group the outline of a literary lineage to which one may eventually add the name Hugo. This move will recur repeatedly in Hugo’s prefaces.17 A second poetic family emerges in this same preface as the family of the greatest poets of the world who write subsequent to “de grandes calamités publiques” (Poésie I 59). This family is comprised of Homer (after the fall of

Troy); Virgil (after the triumvirate); Dante (after the Guelphs and Ghibellines); Milton

(during Cromwell); Corneille (after the murder of Henri IV); Racine, Molière, and

Boileau (after the Fronde); and finally Chateaubriand (after the French Revolution).

Given the public knowledge of Chateaubriand’s naming of Hugo, the succession of Hugo after Chateaubriand (and after the political unrest following Napoleon) would naturally complete this list for 19th-century France. These writers also share the spark of genius, which entails a holy mission: “Telle est la mission du génie; ses élus sont ces sentinelles

16 Borges makes an analogous point in Prólogos con un prólogo de prólogos: “En France, pays de si riches traditions, Voltaire n’est pas moins classique que Ronsard, ni Hugo que La Chanson de Roland” (148). 17 Daudet comments upon the presence of such lists within Hugo: “Le peuple d’ancêtres, qui est en tout homme, était, en Hugo, particulièrement vigilant et dressé. La conséquence naturelle de cette pluie d’images, de mots et de reviviscences, intellectuelles et sensibles, est l’orgueil: un orgueil d’autant plus crêté que le peuple intérieur est plus frémissant et plus vaste. En revanche, la personne intérieure propre à Hugo, son soi, son prénom, si vous voulez, n’était pas de taille, ni de force, à ordonner, ni mater cette foule intérieure, en nettoyant l’orgueil par l’humilité” (46). 46

laissées par le Seigneur sur les tours de Jérusalem, et qui ne se tairont ni jour, ni nuit”

(Poésie I 60). The final passage of the 1824 preface elaborates the role of poets to light the way for the people of their nation, to echo only the word of God, to remember their religion and homeland, and to make it so that “dans la postérité, les autres peuples ne disent pas de lui: ‘Celui-là chantait dans une terre barbare’” (Poésie I 62).18 In other words, the preface writer informs the readers of the following collection of poetry that ideal poets (or the ideal to which this poet aspires) should act as a flattering reflection of their contemporary societies.

In Hugo’s fourth preface to Odes et Ballades, dated 1826, the monarchical support of the poet is not mentioned. Adèle refers to this time as the period when the division between the Romantics and the Classics was becoming more pronounced: “Avec

Bug-Jargal, le poète donna au public dans le courant de 1826 les Odes et Ballades. Les

Romantiques et les Classiques commençaient à se compter, et la polémique à s’animer”

(VHR 413). The writer of the preface defines and differentiates odes from ballads, reiterates the view that bickering over genres is a waste of time, and alludes to

Shakespeare’s example of barbarism. The combination of barbarism and literary masters is addressed by the newspaper Le Globe:

Le journal dit aux vénérables folliculaires, il est pieux à vous de maintenir sur leur piédestal les auteurs consacrés, mais à certaines époques l’Art se transforme, et loin d’être abâtardie et déçue, la génération dans laquelle s’incarne ce renouvellement continue la lignée de nos maîtres. Continuez à honorer les aïeux, mais reconnaissez la légitimité des enfants. (VHR 414)

18 The adjective “barbare” will come to haunt Hugo later in life. As will reappear in the following chapter, Sainte-Beuve recounts M. Dubois’ naming of Hugo as a talented “jeune barbare” upon reading Odes et Ballades (Causeries 531). Robb singles out the publication of this preface as a turning point in the inspiration behind Hugo’s prefaces: “From now on, attacks on Hugo’s writing would be an essential element of his art: the final, irritating incantation which turned his words into a screen on which he saw himself projected. A good reason to be as famous as possible. As each book appeared, he would see his recent self exposed to a hundred professional analysts” (VH 109). 47

This idea that a respectful continuation of a line of masters necessitates some form of revolution foreshadows what would become the rallying cry of Hugolian Romanticism.

To obtain glory, one must pass through tribulations and revolt against the “maîtres” while also maintaining respect and recognition for them. Originality, which Hugo identifies as another word for genius, emerges as the excuse for writing differently than one’s precedents in this preface:

Celui qui imite un poëte romantique devient nécessairement un classique, puisqu’il imite. Que vous soyez l’écho de Racine ou le reflet de Shakespeare, vous n’êtes toujours qu’un écho et qu’un reflet. Quand vous viendriez à bout de calquer exactement un homme de génie, il vous manquera toujours son originalité, c’est-à-dire son génie. Admirons les grands maîtres, ne les imitons pas. Faisons autrement. Si nous réussissons, tant mieux; si nous échouons, qu’importe? (Poésie I 66)

Hugo’s comments here resemble an encouragement to be an original follower of a

Foucauldian founder of discursivity. A quick turn to Compagnon connects the name of the author to this emphasis on originality: “Le nom d’auteur s’associe à la qualité d’originalité, et constitue une qualification possible de l’écrivain” (Cours 1). For

Compagnon, originality is the basis of the authorial name. Put within Hugo’s framework, this thought allows genius to be the basis of the authorial name (as Hugo equates originality and genius in the passage cited above). Additionally, it is genius that offers entry into a genealogical family of geniuses in Hugo’s descriptions. The dependence of a name on genius becomes twofold: one must have genius and originality to have a renowned name, and with this genius, one may claim the family “name” of genius passed down through the ages.

The fifth and penultimate preface to Odes et Ballades is published in 1828. The

Hugo writing this preface explains that the author Hugo corrects an older work in a new work and presents a novel version of himself in each work:

[…] Sa méthode consistant à amender son esprit plutôt qu’à retravailler ses livres, et, comme il l’a dit ailleurs, à corriger un ouvrage dans un autre ouvrage, on conçoit que chacun des écrits qu’il publie peut, et c’est là sans doute leur seul mérite, offrir une physionomie particulière à ceux qui ont du goût pour certaines études de langue et de style, et qui aiment à relever, dans les œuvres d’un écrivain, les dates de sa pensée. […] Le second corrige le premier; le troisième corrige le second. Ainsi le petit nombre de personnes que ce genre d’études intéresse pourra comparer, et pour la forme et pour le fond, les trois manières de l’auteur à trois époques différentes, rapprochées, et en quelque sorte confrontées dans le même volume. On conviendra peut-être qu’il y a quelque bonne foi, quelque désintéressement à faciliter de cette façon les dissections de la critique. (Poésie I 51-52)19

By reading these prefaces, one becomes privy to the modifications that Hugo makes to

Hugo over time by modifying his poetry. Turning to the prefaces, this preface-writing

Hugo also comments upon the evolution of Hugo to be found therein: “On pourra remarquer, dans les idées qui y sont avancées, une progression de liberté qui n’est ni sans signification ni sans enseignement” (Poésie I 52). In 1828, a 26-year-old Hugo comments upon his changing nature and how this nature can be studied by posterity through his poetry and prefaces. This young man shows awareness of his own evolutions leading to a multiplicity of identities. The final paragraph of this preface displays Hugo’s

Romantic allegiance: “Une forte école s’élève, une génération forte croît dans l’ombre pour elle. […] Espérons qu’un jour le dix-neuvième siècle, politique et littéraire, pourra

être résumé d’un mot: la liberté dans l’ordre, la liberté dans l’art” (Poésie I 53). Liberty becomes the central element of Hugo’s hope for the future’s summary of the 19th

Century. This liberty should also be internal and allow or even require this writer to change over time. The writer of this preface pays great heed to the means by which individuals (Victor Hugo), movements (Romanticism), and centuries (the French 19th) will be retrospectively viewed. This framework lends itself to a Derridean formulation:

Hugo the preface writer says that Hugo(s) will have been understood as…evolving.

19 Hugo is here referring to the division of the poems into three physical books at this point of the publication. 49

A quarter of a century after this 1828 preface, the final preface to Odes et

Ballades is published in 1853 by a very different Hugo, a Hugo in exile on Jersey. This final preface begins with a remark upon how people are fascinated by rags-to-riches stories like that of Murat, who rose from being a lowly stable boy to king of Naples.

While this preface writer deems such evolutions to be “rare” and “beau”, he also claims that rising from error to truth is even more so because, instead of gaining material things, one loses material things in this second sort of inverse ascension: “De toutes les échelles qui vont de l’ombre à la lumière, la plus méritoire et la plus difficile à gravir, certes, c’est celle-ci: être né aristocrate et royaliste, et devenir démocrate” (Poésie I 407). While

Murat can boast of having come from humble socio-economic origins, Hugo can boast of having come from non-democratic Catholic and monarchical origins:

Aussi, ce labeur accompli, est-il permis d’en être fier; et — s’il est vrai que Murat aurait pu montrer avec quelque orgueil son fouet de postillon à côté de son sceptre de roi, et dire: Je suis parti de là! — c’est avec un orgueil plus légitime, certes, et avec une conscience plus satisfaite, qu’on peut montrer ces odes royalistes d’enfant et d’adolescent à côté des poëmes et des livres démocratiques de l’homme fait; cette fierté est permise, nous le pensons, surtout lorsque, l’ascension faite, on a trouvé au sommet de l’échelle de lumière la proscription, et qu’on peut dater cette préface de l’exil. (Poésie I 407)

As an inverted Murat, Hugo portrays himself as surpassing this politico-economical social climber by himself becoming a simultaneous moral climber and social descender.

One here finds a Hugo so distant from the first preface-writing Hugo for Odes that he has become capable of classifying these poems as the work of his youth and separating them from what the exiled Hugo considers to be his later, more evolved contributions to

French letters. Moreover, this preface writer implies that, while “Hugo” once meant

“aristocrat” and “royalist”, it now means “democrat”.

In these changing prefaces reflecting Hugo’s changing opinions and projections of himself, Hugo becomes an outlier to Genette’s statement that retrospective prefaces often

propagate the theme of “Je n’ai pas changé” (Seuils 236). Instead, Hugo allows himself to change over time. Fortunately for him, this older Hugo approves of the changes he has made to himself and to his works, which he sees as a map of his moral ascent. Just as genius often emerges from social revolution, so must genius be open to revolutions within itself. These internal revolutions also impact the literary revolutions of Hugo.

While Hugo names himself, he alternately fleshes himself out as a “maître” of the word, of History, and of God. As a result, the changing significances of Hugo’s name affect the imports of his revolutions.

V. OGUH: Han d’Islande and Bug-Jargal

“On ne savait pas plus l’origine du nom que l’origine du monument.” - Hugo, Han d’Islande

Different meanings of “Hugo” for Hugo over time become maximally visible when an older Hugo comments upon a younger version of this name. While the preface- writing Hugo of 1853 allows the younger version of Hugo to differ from succeeding versions of himself, a preface-writing Hugo of 1833 will dismiss a work of a younger

Hugo as just that, the work of a very young man. Han d’Islande was first published in

1823, during which year it received two different prefaces. Then Hugo wrote another preface for this novel ten years later, in 1833. Written as a roman à clé full of private messages to Adèle, to whom Hugo was secretly engaged despite his mother’s prohibition of their courtship, Han d’Islande has as its main character Ordener Guldenlew, Baron de

Thorvick, which last name is phonetically Victor in verlan. Robb lists other characters within this novel that share aspects of Hugo’s name:

His whole complicated self could not after all be crammed into the elegant frame of Ordener, and almost half the motley cast of characters is tattooed with the totemic letters

of Hugo’s name: Gormon, Guldenlew, Guldon, Guth, Oglypiglap, Orugix, Spiagudry. (VH 90)20

Hugo’s penchant for placing traces of his own name in the names of his fictional characters bolsters the close connection that the public made between Hugo and his personages. Moreover, by injecting his own name into his fictional characters, Hugo multiplies the means by which his name may achieve immortality: first, as the name of the author; second, as the name or initials signing the preface; and last, as echoes in the names of his characters. In this particular instance, Hugo’s authorial signature also undergoes an analogous inversion. The novel is first published anonymously in early

1823; then, in July of 1823, the second edition is published with the signature “Oguh”:

“Pour que l’écrivain eût des garanties, il signa les volumes. Le roman ne fut qu’à moitié reconnu. L’auteur mit le mot Oguh, ce qui était retourner son nom” (VHR 365).21

Attached to a roman à clé, one here finds a nom à clé. Perhaps Hugo reversed his name for this novel because of a premonition that his style would change and that “Hugo” would mean something different from the meaning attached to “Oguh” after Han d’Islande. Many critics indeed find that Han d’Islande and Bug-Jargal represent a phase of Hugo’s work that contrasts starkly with his other novels.

20 Brombert underscores Hugo’s remarks about the “outlandishness” of his characters’ names as an indicator of the ironic and parodic elements to be found in these three prefaces to Han d’Islande (15). Boulard offers a list of appearances of Hugo’s name in characters’ names in many of his works (367). 21 Genette states that the practice of initially publishing a work anonymously only to follow the first edition closely with a second edition that reveals the authorship of the work was a common practice at this time, and he names many of Hugo’s works as such examples: “De fait, la pratique, orgueilleuse ou non, de l’anonymat ne s’éteint pas, au XIXe siècle, aussi vite qu’on pourrait le croire. En témoignent, pour s’en tenir à la France, ces quelques buttes: les Méditations poétiques (1820), Han d’Islande (1823), Bug-Jargal (“par l’auteur de Han d’Islande”, 1826), Armance (1827), Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné (1829), Notre- Dame de Paris (1831). Dans tous ces cas, le nom d’auteur vient très vite, dès la deuxième ou troisième édition, de sorte que l’anonymat y apparaît comme une sorte de cachotterie réservée à l’originale” (Seuils 44-45). Robb makes a ludic suggestion as to how to best translate the title and therefore character name of Han into English to preserve this onomastic self-reflexive tendency: “Since the monster is named after his grunt (‘han!’ is the standard French interjection for the noise made when lifting a heavy object), the correct name is ‘Han’, not ‘Hans”. Directly translated, the title would be Oof of Iceland. However, given Hugo’s habit of toying with the letters of his own name, Ugh of Iceland would be preferable” (VH 101). 52

In the first preface of Han d’Islande, dated January 1823, the preface writer conceals his name and admits that it was while writing this preface and seeking an “idée fondamentale” within the work that he understood the inherent frivolity of this genre. So, in a move of prolegomenous preterition,22 Hugo writes a preface in which he says that he will not write a preface—and will reveal neither the name nor biographical information of the author:

Il se résout donc sagement, après avoir fait amende honorable, à ne rien dire dans cette espèce de préface, que monsieur l’éditeur aura soin en conséquence d’imprimer en gros caractères. Il n’informera pas même le lecteur de son nom ou de ses prénoms, ni s’il est jeune ou vieux, marié ou célibataire, ni s’il a fait des élégies ou des fables, des odes ou des satires, ni s’il veut faire des tragédies, des drames ou des comédies, ni s’il jouit du patriciat littéraire dans quelque académie, ni s’il a une tribune dans un journal quelconque: toutes choses, cependant, fort intéressantes à savoir. (Roman I 5)

In a move foreshadowing Barthes’ thought, the author surrenders the work to be read separately from any impression that knowledge of the author may give its readers.23

Even if this information is interesting, the author decides to not offer it to the readers

(while calling attention to this decision).

The second preface to Han d’Islande, dated April 1823 and signed “Oguh”, repeatedly compares a work and its author to a child and its father (the patronymic source of the child’s surname).24 For example, while explaining that the first publisher of the

22 See Seuils pg. 217. Block de Behar also studies preterition: “On the basis of the semantic ambivalences that any figure brings together, preterition unites the dualities that every word implies, the aptitude to say and negate that is proper to language up to the annihilation or the faculty of negating and, nevertheless, to say at the same time, to negate and re-negate, although one continues to say” (387). 23 In the final passage of this preface, Hugo mentions that one will frequently find the letters K, Y, H, and W in this work. One could argue that, in these letters, he hints at his name (W-V, K-C—Vic(tor); H-H, Y- U—Hu(go)). 24 Grossman identifies this novel as the one in which Hugo forges his new Romantic school: “It might be possible to conclude that the sublimely egoistic Victor here affirms his originality by disdaining a romantic movement that rejects its classical heritage and by insisting on an integration of the two. […] In the very process of writing Han d’Islande, Hugo had forged a revolutionary definition of romanticism and become its first—and most ardent—convert” (56-57). As the father of this novel-child and the founder of a new form of Romanticism, Hugo sires both a work and a school, to which his name will be attached. Brombert, on the other hand, disagrees with Grossman, pinpointing Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné as the first novel 53

work bungled many pages, Hugo the preface writer correlates this experience to that of a father receiving a mutilated child: “[…] Que le déplorable auteur, en parcourant sa méconnaissable production, était incessamment livré au supplice d’un père auquel on rendrait son enfant mutilé et tatoué par la main d’un Iroquois du lac Ontario” (Roman I

8). Hugo the preface writer directly addresses the issues of anonymity and incognito as an author while again comparing authorship to parenting: “Quelqu’un l’exhortait encore—car il doit tout dire ingénument à ses lecteurs—à placer son nom sur le titre de ce roman, jusqu’ici enfant abandonné d’un père inconnu” (Roman I 9). The comparison of an author to a parent adds another facet to this study of authorial naming. As it is through progeniture that one may pass one’s name on to the next generation, it is similarly by publishing a work that one may pass one’s own name into both the immediate future and, one hopes, the distant future as well. When given the recognition and legitimacy of an author’s name, a work may in turn be taken more seriously. So the works must first give authority to an author’s name, which can then authorize future works.

This preface writer goes on to more closely analyze the significance of placing one’s name upon a work:

Il faut avouer qu’outre l’agrément de voir les sept ou huit caractères romains qui forment ce qu’on appelle son nom, ressortir en belles lettres noires sur de beau papier blanc, il y a bien un certain charme à le faire briller isolément sur le dos de la couverture imprimée, comme si l’ouvrage qu’il revêt, loin d’être le seul monument du génie de l’auteur, n’était que l’une des colonnes du temple imposant où doit s’élever un jour son immortalité, qu’un mince échantillon de son talent caché et de sa gloire inédite. Cela prouve qu’on a au moins l’intention d'être un jour un écrivain illustre et considérable. Il a fallu, pour triompher de cette tentation nouvelle, toute la crainte qu’a éprouvée l’auteur de ne pouvoir percer la foule de ces noircisseurs de papier, lesquels, même en rompant l’anonyme, gardent toujours l'incognito. (Roman I 9)

in which Hugo finds his voice; however, Brombert does agree that the two earlier novels of Hugo include motifs that will recur throughout the rest of Hugo’s corpus (15). 54

Multiple issues arise in the above passage. First of all, why would Hugo or “Oguh” claim that his name contains seven or eight letters when the author’s partial name (Victor

Hugo) contains 10 characters, and his full name, “nom et prénoms” (Victor Marie Hugo) contains 15 characters. However, if one counts only the vowels of Hugo’s full name,

IOAIEUO, the total comes to seven characters; moreover, the consonants of Hugo’s full name, VCTRMRHG, total to eight characters. It is by treating Hugo’s names in the same way that some religions treat the name of God, by making something of an inverse tetragrammaton (or, more precisely, an eptagrammaton) and a tetragrammaton (or an octogrammaton) of Hugo’s full names, that one arrives at this strange range of seven or eight characters.25 One here finds a means of reading the author’s name as similar to the name of God because of its incognito, its kenotic character, and its potential immortality.

This citation also points to immortality when discussing why writers enjoy seeing their names on the cover of books. In this situation, the writer would enjoy seeing his name on the cover because it would allow him to imagine a future moment when this work would be just one of many “colonnes du temple imposant où doit s’élever un jour son immortalité”; in other words, authorial names in print on the cover of a book allow authors to envision their immortality, an immortality dependent upon a sacralization of these writers, via their names, constructed upon multiple works.26 The implication is that

25 Additionally, G is the 7th letter of the alphabet, and H is the 8th letter of the alphabet. The name “Oguh” reverses the order of the H and G in Hugo’s name to a G (#7) followed by an H (#8). 26 Bénichou strongly associates the creation of a sacerdotal poetic mission with Hugo: “Un éternel lignage de hauts esprits, formant comme une libre Eglise universelle sans hiérarchie ni dogmes, atteste la mission du poète et autorise ses enseignements. Ce qui concerne cette Corporation des Esprits est aussi important pour Hugo que la définition de l’Eglise et de son ministère pour un théologien catholique. Tout le romantisme humanitaire pense de même: partout une théorie générale de la mission de l’Esprit accrédite, d’une part, une nouvelle vision de l’univers, d’autre part la position sacerdotale du Moi qui la conçoit. Cette triple composante est seulement plus apparente et plus largement développée chez Hugo” (1429). 55

it was the fear of sinking into oblivion that convinced “Oguh” to at least break with anonymity if not incognito.

In this preface, one also finds commentary upon the imaginations of the public as to the preface writer’s characteristics before he revealed himself as the work’s author:

Il lui reste à remercier les huit ou dix personnes qui ont eu la bonté de lire son ouvrage en entier, comme le constate le succès vraiment prodigieux qu’il a obtenu; il témoigne également toute sa gratitude à celles de ses jolies lectrices qui, lui assure-t-on, ont bien voulu se faire d’après son livre un certain idéal de l’auteur de Han d’Islande; il est infiniment flatté qu’elles veuillent bien lui accorder des cheveux rouges, une barbe crépue et des yeux hagards; il est confus qu’elles daignent lui faire l’honneur de croire qu’il ne coupe jamais ses ongles; mais il les supplie à genoux d'être bien convaincues qu’il ne pousse pas encore la férocité jusqu’à dévorer les petits enfants vivants; du reste, tous ces faits seront fixés lorsque sa renommée sera montée jusqu’au niveau de celles des auteurs de Lolotte et Fanfan ou de Monsieur Botte, hommes transcendants, jumeaux de génie et de goût, Arcades ambo; et qu’on placera en tête de ses œuvres son portrait, terribiles visu formæ, et sa biographie, domestica facta. (Roman I 10)

He will wait until his renown has grown before not only putting his real name on his works but also allowing his portrait and biographical information to accompany his work.

The prerequisite for a name and an attached idea of an author to accompany a work seems to be the eminence and celebrity of this name, which would presumably stem from the success of the works. The Gordian knot of authorial renown tightens around this interdependence of the meaning of an author’s name and the reception of his or her works. “Oguh” cannot be officially recognized as “Hugo” until the latter’s glory far surpasses that of the former. Hugo seems to understand that he cannot become Hugo— that he cannot attach his identity to his work—until he has written much more, garnered far more success, and joined the ranks of his renowned predecessors. Before that time,

“Hugo” would have no meaningful impact upon readers. And yet, before that time, while still in anonymity or at least incognito, imaginations of the author can run wild. This possibility for fictional creation surrounding an idea of an author reflects the capacity for

and dependence on fictionalization inherent to a name. Hugo’s discussion of readers’ portrayal of “Oguh” as the incarnation of his cannibalistic character Han reveals this process of fictionalizing onomastic interpretation. Naming Hugo, therefore, is not so different from naming a character in a novel.27 A name—or a lack thereof—has the same potential as fiction in general: one can fill the significance or mystery of a name with invented stories and thereby impact the meaning of name without the basis of historical or biographical facts.

Ten years after this second preface, a third preface is published and dated in May

1833, in which the now incognito-less preface writer calls the novel “un livre de jeune homme, et de très jeune homme” (Roman I 3). The opinion that this 31-year-old author has of his much younger self fulfills the hopes of this younger self for his older self. The

Hugo of 1833 is far more well-known and views his younger self as inexperienced:

On sent en le lisant que l’enfant de dix-huit ans qui écrivait Han d’Islande dans un accès de fièvre en 1821 n’avait encore aucune expérience des choses, aucune expérience des hommes, aucune expérience des idées, et qu’il cherchait à deviner tout cela. (Roman I 3)

This older Hugo then comments upon his passage into the second phase of his life, the

“sommet” phase during which an author’s great works should be written, implying that his earlier works like Han d’Islande do not count among the greats:

Il y a des artistes souverains qui se maintiennent à ce sommet toute leur vie, malgré le déclin des années. Ce sont là les suprêmes génies. Shakespeare et Michel-Ange ont laissé sur quelques-uns de leurs ouvrages l’empreinte de leur jeunesse, la trace de leur vieillesse sur aucun. (Roman I 4)

Another list here emerges of geniuses that could potentially one day be seen as Hugo’s literary ancestors. This list, a common sight in Hugo’s prefaces, only appears in the

27 One of Dante’s damned, Count Ugolino, who Hugo later mentions in Les Misérables, bears some cannibalistic resemblance to this legendary idea of the author of Han d’Islande. In the second round of the ninth circle of The Inferno, Ugolino is portrayed gnawing on the head of his enemy, Ruggieri (Dante Canto 33). 57

preface written after he has been publicly named as the author of the work. In the prior preface, he did mention the authors of Lolotte et Fanfan and Monsieur Botte without naming these authors, allowing the titles of their works to stand in as markers of their identities. However, in this final preface to Han d’Islande, Hugo’s geniuses become much more famous than Ducray-Duminil and Pigault-Lebrun, and they are referenced by their names rather than by a single work. Like the second list of geniuses, Hugo has now risen to the point of renown at which his name authorizes his works and not vice-versa.

In the final passage of this preface, the preface writer notes that readers will insist upon comparing phases of an author’s works and that all this author can do is allow the readers to decide if he has progressed or regressed in his trajectory from Han d’Islande to

Notre-Dame de Paris. As Hugo aged, his works changed in turn, leading to a change in the popular significance of “Hugo”. The preface writer recognizes that some readers will prefer one Hugo-as-attached-to-a-particular-work over another, and he allows for this possibility while still utilizing an example of a later work of his that makes it difficult to justify a preference of the younger Hugo to the older Hugo. Nevertheless, the existence of a multiplicity of Hugos is now officially ordained by the bearer of the name.

The two prefaces to Bug-Jargal do not contain much material on the name of the author. The first, dated January 1826, indicates that this work was also initially published anonymously.28 The second, dated March 1832, tells the tale of a 16-year-old Hugo who wrote Bug-Jargal on a bet that he could not write a volume in 15 days. This anecdote serves as a premise to allow Hugo to again imply this work to be that of a young mind.

28 Hugo wrote the first version of this novel (set in Santo Domingo at the time of the Slave Revolt of 1791) in 1818, when he was sixteen years old. Then, he edited and expanded this novel in 1825, when France recognized the independence of Haiti and demanded exorbitant reparations in return that, despite being reduced in 1838, were not considered to have been paid until 1947. 58

An older Hugo excuses a very young Hugo for his “si immense projet” undertaken in

Bug-Jargal. As opposed to the prefaces, the novel itself does contain some revealing material concerning Hugo’s name. Robb, a faithful hunter of the Hugolian name, notes its echoes within the characters’ names again in this work’s first book publication (as opposed to its initial periodical publication in the Conservateur littéraire):

The white hero had a new name, Léopold (his father’s Christian name) d’Auverney (a place-name from Mme Hugo’s region and one of Hugo’s early pseudonyms): an ideal composite of both parents, which might explain why the character is so psychologically unconvincing. But it is the Black hero who owns the emblematic “ug”, like the Negro mentioned fleetingly in Les Misérables: Homère Hogu. He also has the face of a Black Hugo […]. (VH 123)29

Such reflections of an author within a character can be considered as invited by the insertion of pieces of the author’s name into that of the characters. But again, conflations of characters and authors remind one of the possibility for fiction within the creation of meanings of an author’s name. By naming a character Thorwick, Léopold d’Auverney, or Bug-Jargal, Hugo underscores the necessary fiction underlying all names, including his own. In a sense, the space of fiction opens when authors can turn themselves into characters and name themselves as fictional, a process that often occurs in prefaces.

VI. Contradictions: A la Colonne, Préface de Cromwell, and Amy Robsart

“A quoi bon s’attacher à un maître, se greffer sur un modèle?” - Hugo, Préface de Cromwell

Names are projections of stories, reference points that can never encompass the entire truth of the being to which one refers. When the person behind a name changes as much as Hugo, the stories carried by this name abound in contradictions. In 1825, Hugo was named a chevalier de la Légion d’honneur by Charles X, which event shows his

29 Porter also comments upon Hugo’s modifications to the protagonist’s name in this novel: “Marking his reconciliation with his father, Léopold, in 1823, the author changed the hero’s name in 1826 to Léopold, the same name that Hugo also gave to his first child” (12). 59

continued titular ties to the monarchy. Adèle identifies 1827 as the year that her husband points to as the turning point in his political beliefs: “Le militant auteur cite l’année 1827 comme la date où, éclairé par la réflexion, d’une situation transitoire, il passa au libéralisme” (VHR 416). An ode of Hugo’s that came out in February of 1827, “À la

Colonne de la place Vendôme”, acted as a response to an incident at the Austrian embassy in Paris that concerned peoples’ titles. Four French dukes were introduced at a reception at the embassy without their titles because these titles stemmed from

Napoleonic victories over Austria, during which battles many Austrians were killed.

Through his ode, published in many newspapers, Hugo proclaims the names of these dukes, begins to symbolically split with royalism, and “comes out” as the proud son of a

Napoleonic general. The Germanic name Hugo was once part of Napoleon’s war cries, which gives the narrator a pride that he says he will now stop hiding from others. The narrator here invites readers to find reflections of his father, from whom he received at least his surname, within his “nom saxon”.30

Hugo’s best-known preface, the Préface de Cromwell, dated in October 1827, became the piece most associated with Hugo’s name for a time (and perhaps still is for some).31 Hugo claims therein that with each new religion and society comes a new poetry.32 This work, like “À la colonne”, also strikes a militaristic chord.33 This preface

30 In his public course, Deschamps remarks upon the significance of this publication and its signal for Hugo’s future stance on national glory: “C’est là une des premières protestations, parmi celles que ne manquera pas de faire notre poète, toutes les fois qu’il verra l’étranger toucher aux gloires de la patrie” (857). 31 The celebrity of this preface far exceeds that of the play: “La célébrité de l’une et l’oubli de l’autre ont en effet accrédité l’idée que la pièce redouble inutilement la Préface” (Rosa 903). 32 Frey reminds readers that this preface “was not composed in a vacuum”, but had numerous preceding examples, primarily from Mme de Staël and Stendhal, in his Racine et Shakespeare (77). However, Hugo’s preface is widely recognized as having been integral to the victory in this war on classical rules. Frey claims as much: “Hugo’s manifesto, however, and the triumph of Hernani bring to a conclusion the 60

would come to serve as the sacred writ of the Romantic war in theater by combining religious and military imagery:

Le pays était alors affadi par la politique incolore de la Restauration et avait besoin d’un excitant. Le drapeau rouge du Romantisme, qu’on entrevoyait, passionnait sans effrayer. On était à l’affût des publications qui prêtaient à la controverse. La Préface de Cromwell ouvrait le champ clos aux discussions. Elle fit blêmir les rédacteurs de vieux journaux. Cette déclaration de principes était subversive des lois d’Aristote et de M. de Laharpe, et le tocsin fut sonné dans les respectables feuilles. Le retentissement ne fut pas moins grand dans la jeunesse romantique. L’étude du poète, accueillie religieusement devint pour les adeptes une espèce de catéchisme, et beaucoup en récitaient des passages par cœur, Pétrus Borel en particulier. (VHR 420)

This juxtaposition of the military and the holy finds a pneumonic device in Hugo’s first names, Victor Marie. In this preface, Hugo states that Christianity introduced the dual nature of humanity, thereby emphasizing the “harmonie des contraires” (Critique 17) that

Hugo encourages and that can be seen as embedded in his first names.

Genette singles Hugo out in this preface in particular as exemplary of a writer of an authentic preface in the voice of the “real” author, a “préface auctorial authentique”

(Seuils 167). In this manner, Genette presents the idea of a “real” preface writer as indistinguishable from the author of the work and the person behind the name. There is no room for fictionalization of the author in Genette’s “real” author. Robb recalls

Cocteau’s famous remark about Hugo while studying this preface and finds that, while old seventeenth-century dispute over imitation of Greek and Roman models as opposed to modern subjects” (80). 33 This preface is well-known for its resistance to classical French theatrical rules as well as its historical schema that organizes poetry and civilization tendencies into three periods: the “temps primitifs”, characterized by the ode and colossal figures; the “temps antiques”, during which the epic dominated with its gigantic characters; and the “temps modernes”, when drama takes the reins to portray humanity. Count Ugolino makes an appearance in this work as well (prior to his appearance in Les Misérables): “Croit-on que Françoise de Remini et Béatrix seraient aussi ravissantes chez un poëte qui ne nous enfermait pas dans la tour de la Faim et ne nous forcerait point à partager le repoussant repas d’Ugolin?” (Critique 12) Hugo here assumes, as many others did (and do), that Ugolino must have eaten his own childen; however, scholars debate this interpretation of Dante’s work. After Ugolino’s children offer their flesh as food to save their starving father’s life, the conclusion of this tale is difficult to interpret with certainty: “Ugolino’s own narrative takes its revenge against him by remaining forever ambiguous, despite his obsessive determination to fix its meaning. Its last line (‘Poscia, più che ’l dolor poté ’l digiuno’, XXXIII. 75) could mean either that despite his sorrow hunger drove him to consume the corpses of his sons or simply that he starved” (Franke 33). 61

the preface does contain “some gorgeous self-compliments”, a change emerges beginning with this particular preface: “But Hugo was also a madman who had come out on the other side of madness with a kind of super-rationality. He now believed that he could also convince other people that he was Victor Hugo” (VH 136). Hugo here presents himself in a certain light for a particular purpose, as is the case in every piece of writing, as Booth argues in Rhetoric of Fiction.34 Bearing in mind the multiplicity of Victor

Hugos (the man, the author, and the preface writer convincing others that he is Hugo) remains crucial, especially when studying such famous texts as this preface, as some readers are tempted to adopt a singular vision of Hugo as the leader of Romanticism who wrote the Préface de Cromwell.35

One striking tension arises in the Préface de Cromwell. The writer of this preface explicitly reiterates that he is not aiming to create a system (“parce que Dieu nous garde des systèmes”) but rather to break constraining molds:

[L’auteur] a d’abord eu bien plutôt l’intention de défaire que de faire des poétiques. Ensuite, ne vaudrait-il pas toujours mieux faire des poétiques d’après une poésie, que de la poésie d’après une poétique? Mais non, encore une fois, il n’a ni le talent de créer, ni la prétention d’établir des systèmes. […] Ce qu’il a plaidé, au contraire, c’est la liberté de l’art contre le despotisme des systèmes, des codes et des règles. Il a pour habitude de suivre à tout hasard ce qu’il prend pour son inspiration, et de changer de moule autant de fois que de composition. Le dogmatisme, dans les arts, est ce qu’il fuit avant tout. À Dieu ne plaise qu’il aspire à être de ces hommes, romantiques ou classiques, qui font des ouvrages dans leur système, qui se condamnent à n’avoir jamais qu’une forme dans l’esprit, à toujours prouver quelque chose, suivre d’autres lois que celles de leur organisation et de leur nature. L’œuvre artificielle de ces hommes-là, quelque talent qu’ils aient d’ailleurs, n’existe pas pour l’art. C’est une théorie, non une poésie. (Critique 31)

34 This passage from Booth goes as follows: “Just as one’s personal letters imply different versions of oneself, depending on the differing relationships with each correspondent and the purpose of each letter, so the writer sets himself out with a different air depending on the needs of particular works” (71). 35 Rosa studies this problem: “Faut-il pour autant,–c’est en ce sens que vont certains commentateurs– ,sacrifier la Préface et n’y voir que l’occasion, pour Hugo, de s’affirmer en chef de l’école romantique? Sans doute pas; car le drame y aurait suffi” (903). 62

This Hugo calls for radical liberty, including the freedom to innovate both the forme and the fond of one’s works and then to alter these innovations over the course of one’s career as an artist. He thereby justifies his own multiplicity. However, some of the recommendations in this preface resemble system-building prescriptions. For example, even though Hugo here argues against the usage of the unities of time and place, he does still find worth in the unity of action, which view he tempers by saying that this should not be confused with an endorsement of simplicity. Additionally, his call for combinations of comedy and tragedy in modern drama can also appear to sanctify a new system. Nevertheless, the general call for liberty dominates the message within this defense of modern drama. However, as the century progresses and new generations of writers interpret the name of Victor Hugo differently, one more often finds a public belief that Hugo was in fact constructing a system—a system from which other writers would eventually seek liberation.

An analysis of the usage of juxtapositions of old and new names to chastise novelty arises in this preface, the preface in which Hugo was most clearly representing a novel name seen to be bucking against those of respected traditional playwrights:

Ainsi, les précédents ouvrages d’un homme de génie toujours préférés aux nouveaux, afin de prouver qu’il descend au lieu de monter, Mélite et la Galerie du Palais mis au-dessus du Cid; puis les noms de ceux qui sont morts toujours jetés à la tête de ceux qui vivent: Corneille lapidé avec Tasso et Guarini (Guarini!), comme plus tard on lapidera Racine avec Corneille, Voltaire avec Racine, comme on lapide aujourd’hui tout ce qui s’élève avec Corneille, Racine et Voltaire. (Critique 21)

This image of the names of the dead being thrown at the heads of the living reflects the treatment that Hugo received from the Classics in contemporary reception, who argued that following models was a necessary component of theatrical production. The dead names serve as weapons intended to induce shame and inspire respect for the dead in the

living. Newcomers to a literary lineage must respect the names of the past or risk being attacked by the living who wield the names of the dead.

In this preface, Hugo presents a deific vision of true poets who possess the divine power of omnipresence in the text: “Comme Dieu, le vrai poëte est présent partout à la fois dans son œuvre” (Critique 26). Such a view of the poet contrasts with Hugo’s earlier encouragement of readers to resist seeking authors in their works (as expressed in the

1823 preface to Han d’Islande). This new anti-Barthesian view merges the creator with the creation and invites readers to see true poets as divinely present within every corner of their works. Nevertheless, revelations of the name of the author come at a price, as

Hugo here explains while describing the author of this work (in the third person) as one who expects his play to be booed:

Fasse Dieu qu’il ne se repente jamais d’avoir exposé la vierge obscurité de son nom et de sa personne aux écueils, aux bourrasques, aux tempêtes du parterre, et surtout (car qu’importe une chute?) aux tracasseries misérables de la coulisse […].36

It is the exposition of an author’s name and the ensuing barrage of critique that degrades theater into an arena for attack. Hugo goes on to ask the public to ignore the lack of renown of the author’s name attached to this preface and play in order to better consider the ideas alone:

[…] [Que ce public] suive cette impulsion [d’avancer sur la route du vrai] sans s’occuper si elle lui vient d’un homme ignoré, d’une voix sans autorité, d’un ouvrage de peu de valeur. C’est une cloche de cuivre qui appelle les populations au vrai temple et au vrai Dieu. (Critique 37)

Through this repetition of “vrai”, one here finds the implication that Hugo belongs to the group of true poets. The humility in the expression “voix sans autorité” becomes a bit

36 Garval sees Hugo’s claim that he would remove himself from the theater (which claim immediately precedes the citation above) as an example of Hugo’s falseness: “This was a stunning example of bad faith, for Hugo offered himself up to the public gaze, not simply naked, poor, and alone, but rather in the most heroic guise possible; he always worried about the fate of his works; from the beginning, he hurled himself headlong into the world of letters; and so forth” (174). 64

tainted when one realizes that this voice is in fact doing God’s work for the public and thus acting as a “vrai poëte” who enjoys another divine right, that of creation: “Ainsi, le but de l’art est presque divin: ressusciter, s’il fait de l’histoire; créer, s’il fait de la poésie”

(Critique 26). Downplaying the significance of his own name in favor of God’s adds a note of humility, albeit faint, to this call to artists and the public alike to listen to God

(through Hugo).

The final passage of this preface, which follows two citations, presents an example of a Hugolian preterition concerning the power and danger of name-dropping between writers, artists, and geniuses:

Qui dit cela? c’est Aristote. Qui dit ceci? c’est Boileau. On voit à ce seul échantillon que l’auteur de ce drame aurait pu comme un autre se cuirasser de noms propres et se réfugier derrière des réputations. Mais il a voulu laisser ce mode d’argumentation à ceux qui le croient invincible, universel et souverain. Quant à lui, il préfère des raisons à des autorités; il a toujours mieux aimé des armes que des armoiries. (Critique 39)

Hugo here claims to not hide behind great names immediately after doing just this. The final militant and anti-royalist note of this preface injects a republican note into the study of names: now, each anonymous citizen should be able to take up arms and no longer serve those who boast a name that comes accompanied by a coat of arms. Instead of pursuing an individual mark of achievement that would augment his renown, this preface writer claims that Hugo is instead preparing for a battle to benefit far more than just himself. Had he wished to just bolster his own renown, the implication is that he would have juxtaposed his name with more names of other renowned predecessors. It is a public mission rather than an enterprise for personal glory.

The following year, Hugo will contradict this sentiment concerning his own name. When Hugo’s father died in January of 1828, Hugo’s name appeared for the first time as the “Baron Victor Hugo” in the general’s death announcement:

This announcement of General Hugo’s death—and not the invitation to an audience with Charles X in 1829—was the first public appearance of ‘Baron Victor Hugo’, an adopted title which has generated hundreds of pages of pious sneering, perhaps confirming Baudelaire’s sarcastic aphorism: “The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.” The commonest sneer is that Hugo dubbed himself a baron just when he had supposedly woken up to the injustice of the monarchist regime. But the paradox is illusory. The General’s hereditary title, which had never been recognized by the Restoration, represented what Hugo’s funeral oration pointedly called “the glorious wars of the Revolution” and “that marvelous history of the Empire”. (Robb VH 131)

One here finds sardonic reactions to Hugo’s seizure of the power to name himself. Of course, politics plays a role in these reactions. The title of baron was bestowed upon

Hugo’s ancestors by Napoleon as one of the titles of nobility given to create a stable imperial elite. While Hugo’s ancestors received this title from Napoleon, Hugo anachronistically conferred it to himself. Traditionally, names come from others, primarily parents. Naming oneself indicates a more blatant wielding of the power to influence how others are to view this newly-named being. In a move reminiscent of

Napoleon’s seizure of the crown from the Pope during his coronation, Hugo’s self-titling event did not do wonders for his public image. Even though this title reflects Hugo’s pride in an honor bestowed upon his family, it seems that the act of naming is best left to all but the one being named.

Hugo’s 1828 play Amy Robsart has no preface and was only performed once, but it does come accompanied by a story involving the dramatist’s name—or lack thereof.

Instead of attaching his name to this play, Hugo asked Paul Foucher, Adèle’s brother, to claim authorship of the play. While Foucher’s name was announced at the curtain call, amidst hisses of disapproval of the play, people guessed that Hugo was the real author behind the work. Adèle gives her explanation of this authorial cloaking:

Paul Foucher demanda à son beau-frère quel motif il avait d’enfouir ainsi le drame. Les raisons étaient pour Victor les mêmes que pour le passé: ayant besoin d’argent, il avait collaboré avec Walter Scott, mais se sentant peu de goût pour les mariages littéraires, il 66

avait abandonné son idée. Sa personnalité s’était, avec le temps, dégagée davantage, il lui convenait moins que jamais d’associer son nom à un autre nom. (VHR 428)

This dramatic interpretation of Walter Scott’s Kenilworth would have associated (or

“married”) Hugo’s name with Scott’s, which would directly contradict Hugo’s stance against associations of authorial names that he put forward in the Préface de Cromwell.

However, his delegation of public perception of authorship of this failed play to Foucher was seen as a betrayal of his brother-in-law (Robb VH 128). Hugo was compelled to write a letter to be published in the Journal des Débats on February 15, 1828, in which he stated that he was not a complete stranger to the play. Robb interprets the fact that this story is included in full in Victor Hugo Raconté as an indication that Hugo must have believed that he was acting in Foucher’s best interests by bestowing this play upon him

(VH 128). More importantly, this event exposes the amount of control that Hugo exercised over the appearance of his name in public. Amy Robsart was a risky play that embraced Romantic elements in drama before that war had been won.37 Had he claimed authorship of this play before knowing how it would be received, Hugo would have put his name and the school for which it could one day stand at risk. Hugo’s concern with the impact of the reception of his works on the significance of his name comes to the fore in this onomastic authorial drama behind Amy Robsart.

VII. In the Name of Many: Les Orientales and Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné

“Je me suis levé et j’ai promené ma lampe sur les quatre murs de ma cellule. Ils sont couverts d’écritures, de dessins, de figures bizarres, de noms qui se mêlent et s’effacent les uns les autres. Il semble que chaque condamné ait voulu laisser trace, ici du moins.” - Hugo, Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné

37 Frey notes Romantic characteristics of this play: “The play is notable for its many scene changes (characteristic of the new drame) and for its reliance on what are to become stock characters of the new Romantic historical theatre” (7). 67

By aligning himself with the literary revolutionaries, Hugo attempts to make his name stand for many forms of liberty. In January of 1829, Hugo publishes Les

Orientales, in which he breaks with the more traditional forms and subject matter, embraces the popular Orientalism of his time, and, according to many, exhibits a breakthrough in his poetic innovation that will influence future poetic revolutionary movements like the Parnassians.38 The first preface to this collection, also dated January

1829, echoes aspects of his Préface de Cromwell by insisting upon the absolute necessity of liberty for poets. One month later, after the immense success of this work and multiple re-printings, a second preface is published.39 The first sentence of this second preface manifests the critical hugophilic/hugophobic divide that Hugo would continue to face throughout his career: “Ce livre a obtenu le seul genre de succès que l’auteur puisse ambitionner en ce moment de crise et de révolution littéraire: vive opposition d’un côté, et peut-être quelque adhésion, quelque sympathie de l’autre” (Poésie I 415). In times of revolution, a leader widely recognized as attached to one side can enjoy the love of supporters but must also endure the loathing of enemies.

After attacking contemporary literary criticism but saying it is not his place to confirm or refute the views of critics (that final say, according to Hugo, belongs to time), the last paragraphs of this second preface reveal Hugo’s persistent concern for his public

38 Frey explains this impact: “The revolutionary innovations in both poetic measure and rhyme (a true feat of verbal acrobatics, especially in Les Djinns and Sara la baigneuse) will be just the beginning of Hugo’s mastery of modern poetic form, and will make him the most important poetic innovator of the nineteenth century in France. Les Orientales represents the true unlocking of the poetic genius of Hugo” (191). 39 Robb comments upon the speed at which this work was apparently re-published: “Modern editions of Les Orientales still show the original preface dated January 1829 and the preface to the “Fourteenth Edition” dated February 1829—which would mean that a new edition of Les Orientales came out every forty-eight hours for a month…When the happiness of the human race was at stake, honourable obscurity was a crime” (Robb VH 377). 68

image and warn about the misunderstandings of the public and the misrepresentation and reduction of his person in the eyes of some:

Cependant il regrette que quelques censeurs, de bonne foi d’ailleurs, se soient formé de lui une fausse idée, et se soient mis à le traiter sans plus de façon qu’une hypothèse, le construisant a priori comme une abstraction […]. Il ose affirmer que ceux qui le voient ainsi le voient mal. Quant à lui, il n’a nulle illusion sur lui-même. Il sait fort bien que le peu de bruit qui se fait autour de ses livres, ce ne sont pas ces livres qui le font, mais simplement les hautes questions de langue et de littérature qu’on juge à propos d’agiter à leur sujet. Ce bruit vient du dehors et non du dedans. Ils en sont l’occasion et non la cause. Les personnes que préoccupent ces graves questions d’art et de poésie ont semblé choisir un moment ses ouvrages comme une arène, pour y lutter. Mais il n’y a rien là qu’ils doivent à leur mérite propre. Cela ne peut leur donner tout au plus qu’une importance passagère, et encore est- ce beaucoup dire. Le terrain le plus vulgaire gagne un certain lustre à devenir champ de bataille. Austerlitz et Marengo sont de grands noms et de petits villages. (Poésie I 415- 16)

This Hugo follows his regret about being misunderstood with an infusion of humility, claiming that his works just happen to be the battleground for this literary revolution, through no particular merit of their own. The final sentence of this preface draws the reader’s attention back to the power of a name. Such names as Austerlitz and Marengo became extremely well-known at that time on account of the Napoleonic battles that took place there, not because of the extraordinary nature of these small European villages.

Hugo applies this logic to his works, saying that their renown comes from the fact that they hosted battles. One could extend this line of thinking to the name of Hugo as well: since his authorial name depends upon the works attached to it, his personal fame would also be an instance of a comparatively insignificant signified becoming widely known because its signifier also conjures images of war. In this light, Hugo’s first name bodes well for his cause. The list of names that Hugo gives in the first preface to Les Orientales aligns significantly with the above-cited final passage of the second preface: “Les autres peuples disent: Homère, Dante, Shakespeare. Nous disons: Boileau” (Poésie I 413).

Perhaps, as Robb suggests, Hugo was hinting that his name would make a far more 69

appropriate French exemplar than Boileau’s: “The fact that the person who indicates the vacancy more memorably than anyone else is most likely to be asked to fill it seemed to be purely incidental” (VH 143). Hugo’s name just happens to be attached to the less- than-extraordinary works that have become the fighting ground of the literary revolution of his time. The construction of a new literary movement comes with the construction of the significance of his name; moreover, the two names will be joined and even seem capable of mutual synechdoche (“Hugo” can stand for “Romanticism”, and vice versa).

In continuation with his liberal agenda (in politics and in literature), Hugo’s Le

Dernier Jour d’un condamné recounts the final day of an unnamed protagonist condemned to death. The first publications of Hugo’s short novel, including the first anonymous publication in 1829 just three weeks after Les Orientales appeared, had just a brief, unsigned paragraph serving as a prefatory note. The anonymous “je” in this preface denies knowledge as to the origins of this work and leaves speculation up to the reader.

In the time that passes between 1829 and the publication of the two prefatory introductions to Le Dernier Jour in March of 1832, a governmental upheaval occurs in

1830, when Charles X is forced to abdicate in the aftermath of the Trois Glorieuses, and

Louis Philippe ascends to the position of king. Before the preface, Hugo includes an unusual dialogue-based preface entitled “Une comédie à propos d’une tragédie”.

Together, these paratextual materials make up more than one-third of the work. In the

“comédie”, Hugo presents a group of people in a salon discussing this new novel, Le

Dernier Jour, which title they never name properly. Most of those present find it abhorrent, primarily on account of the pain it causes its readers, but also because of its

Romantic tendency to break with traditional expectations of lofty vocabulary and subject matter. Twice, someone asks after the identity of the author. Hugo is never named in this scene, but the poet in the salon ridicules the sound of his name: “Il a un nom aussi difficile à retenir qu’à prononcer. Il y a du goth, du wisigoth, de l’ostrogoth dedans”

(Roman I 423). This discussion of his name leads to a questioning of his personality, as a means of asking what kind of a person could write such an abominable book. The character “La jeune femme” claims to know an acquaintance of the author’s—which mere tangential rapport with Hugo shocks another character—who says he is “un homme doux, simple, qui vit dans la retraite, et passe ses journées à jouer avec ses petits enfants”

(Roman I 423). The idea that such a disgusting writer could also be a father is, again, shocking to her audience. Within this exchange, the risk of radically reducing authors because of an interpretation of one of their works is dramatized.40 The possibility for synechdoche here extends to the names of writers and their works (“Le Dernier Jour” can reductively communicate all that is “Hugo”).

In the lengthy 1832 preface to this work, no longer anonymously published, the author writes that he could not reveal “toute sa pensée” in the earlier editions.41 Now that

40 Grossman comments upon the hypocrisy of the final note of this prefatory play, which presents some of its characters as holding the power to put others to death, before analyzing how Hugo’s name is also “truncated” by these characters: “To remain disinterested, the law must be indifferent. The profound hypocrisy of this position is revealed by the author at the end of his morality play. Two characters who have judged Le Dernier Jour d’un Condamné the most harshly are indirectly identified as magistrates involved in a capital case. It so happens, therefore, that Hugo’s book is considered tasteless, immoral, and cruel by the very men it censures, those who think nothing of sending another to his death. […] At the moment their long-awaited meal is announced, the reader understands that these proponents of elegance are especially adept at truncating whomever and whatever they deem de trop. Hugo’s name, the title of his book, the head of a man—all undergo the abbreviating ax in this ‘comedy’ about the terribly polite world of modern cannibals” (115). 41 Grossman sees the addition of so much prolegomenon as influencing the effect of this publication of the work: “In the case of Le Dernier Jour d’un Condamné, the novel itself remains untouched, but its position and direction are certainly modified by the disproportionate mass of its appendage. Indeed, the new preface attacks the question of capital punishment so vehemently and from so many angles as to suggest 71

he sees that his work has been understood, he can emerge from anonymity and reveal that this work “n’est autre chose qu’un plaidoyer, direct ou indirect, comme on voudra, pour l’abolition de la peine de mort” (Roman I 401).42 The revelation of the author’s identity and publication of his name as the source of the work accompanies an explanation of intent. In this way, the author’s name opens the door for another Hugo, the preface writer, to address the public and explain himself. While providing this explanation, the preface writer states that he acts in the name of a group of people in order to address another group:

Il le déclare donc, et il le répète, il occupe, au nom de tous les accusés possibles, innocents ou coupables, devant toutes les cours, tous les prétoires, tous les jurys, toutes les justices. Ce livre est adressé à quiconque juge. (Roman I 402)

The phrase “in the name of” is traditionally used to inject borrowed authority into a speaker’s voice.43 Hugo’s declaration of his authorial name is quickly followed by a claim that this name embodies many anonymous potential victims of injustice who give him the authority to accuse its enactors. This move adds a complication to Foucault’s thought that the rise of the authorial figure is coeval with the point at which the author is put on trial.44 Instead of just pleading for himself, Hugo claims to plead for all of the accused before their judges at the same time he signs this work. Of course, according to

that the original work had been left undone” (113). Hugo mentions in this preface that when Le Dernier Jour appeared, some people tried to guess the author’s identity in order to contest the work (Roman I 402). 42 Robb adds a different perspective on Hugo’s reasons for waiting to write this preface: “Cynics might have added that he had also waited until there was a popular and parliamentary majority in favour of abolition” (VH 137). Additionally, the usage of the word “plaidoyer” here connects this preface to his second 1829 preface to Les Orientales, in which Hugo claims to have always hated pleas (Poésie I 415). It seems that a plea on behalf of others is more appealing to Hugo than a plea on behalf of one’s work. 43 Derrida studies the power of the name in such formulations, especially when they concern religion: “[…] Ne jamais traiter comme un accident la force du nom dans ce qui arrive, se fait ou se dit au nom de la religion” (cited in Nault 131). Nault goes on to align Derrida’s study of the usage of borrowed onomastic power in religion to war: “Sans s’engager lui-même dans l’analyse dont il définit le cadre et souligne la nécessité, Derrida fait remarquer, en passant, que ce qui se fait au nom de la religion, c’est la guerre. […] Mais Derrida se demande s’il y a pas aussi d’autres guerres de religion inavouées, si—à la limite—toute guerre n’est pas une guerre de religion” (131). 44 See Dits et Écrits, v. 1, 799. 72

the morality of this work, the graver transgressions are those committed by said judges who condemn people to death. The Foucauldian authorial transgression here lies in the accusation of unjust judges. Hugo thus implicitly emerges as both the accused and the accuser, the judged and the judge.

One then finds this logic extended to society at large. This preface writer makes it clear that the means by which society can enact change is not through vengeance or punishment because of the collectivity and humanity of society:

Mais, reprend-on, – il faut que la société se venge, que la société punisse. – Ni l’un, ni l’autre. Se venger est de l’individu, punir est de Dieu. La société est entre deux. Le châtiment est au-dessus d’elle, la vengeance au-dessous. Rien de si grand et de si petit ne lui sied. Elle ne doit pas “punir pour se venger”; elle doit corriger pour améliorer. (Roman I 410)

The novel attempts to correct in order to improve by inviting readers to sympathize with the condemned man without knowing either his name or his crime. The refusal to furnish readers with these details concerning the protagonist emphasizes the point that this question is not to be considered on a case-to-case basis, which argument reappears in the preface: “Il y en a d’autres qui n’aiment la peine de mort que parce qu’ils haïssent tel ou tel qui l’attaque. C’est pour eux une question quasi-littéraire, une question de personnes, une question de noms propres” (Roman I 410).45 Hugo here scoffs at those who only oppose the death penalty because they actually oppose certain interpretations of other names. However, in this preface, he does single out one man who was put to death,

45 According to Adèle, Hugo refused to obey his editor’s insistence that he provide the missing background information on this condemned character: “Dans le roman l’auteur dit que ‘les feuilles contenant le récit de la vie et du crime du condamné se sont égarées’. Victor Hugo voulait donner plus de force à son idée de façon qu’on ne s’intéressât pas à l’être s’appelant un tel, ayant commis tel crime, dans telles conditions, mais à appeler la pitié sur tous les criminels. Gosselin […] lui conseilla, dans l’intérêt de la vente du livre, ‘de retrouver les feuillets perdus’. M. Victor Hugo répondit qu’il avait pris M. Gosselin pour éditeur et non pour collaborateur” (VHR 444). 73

Louis Ulbach, as the final condamné that inspired him to write this work, though each one he saw or heard of also collectively inspired this work.

A complicated correlation thus arises between the original anonymities of the author and his protagonist and their onymities that surface in 1832. The protagonist’s lack of name allows him to stand for the masses and attempts to prevent readers from judging capital punishment on an individual basis. On the other hand, the author’s revelation of his name comes accompanied by an assertion that he speaks on behalf of all of the accused. Why does Victor Hugo’s onymity allow him to stand for many while his protagonist’s anonymity does the same? How can an individualization via naming event lead to a collectivization? Firstly, by revealing the author’s name of the work, the name

“Hugo” undergoes an aggrandizement. This is another work to add to this writer’s corpus, which will add—in one way or another—to the renown of Hugo’s name and potentially to his body of readers. Secondly, by revealing his name, Hugo shows his willingness to become an accused. Now that people have the author’s name in publication, the author can be charged if the work is seen as criminal. By becoming a potentially-accused writer, Hugo can more legitimately speak in the name of the accused.

Brombert sees this paradoxical status as Hugo’s primary aim: “Hugo’s most lasting ambition was to be at once unique and representative. Perhaps that is why he felt that his life could be summed up by two words: solitaire, solidaire” (13). Through this simultaneously individualizing and collectivizing enactment upon his name, Hugo gives himself the right to stand for many thanks to the authority implied in his assertion that he speaks in their name.46 Victor Hugo can now stand for Louis Ulbach.

46 As Brombert goes on to qualify, Hugo was not alone in this attention to the tension between individuals and society in general: “Hugo is not the only writer to concern himself with the struggle between the 74

VIII. Revolution: Hernani

“En révolution, tout mouvement fait avancer.” - Hugo, preface to Hernani

Hugo’s 1830 play Hernani continues to be recognized today for what it was thought to be at the time of its opening: the fight for the French Romantic cause on stage and the decisive installation of Hugo as the leader of this cause.47 The February 25, 1830 opening night of Hernani made Hugo the religio-militant leader of the Romantic dramatic movement. In Adèle’s account, the audience demanded Hugo at the curtain call of the opening night:

On demanda l’auteur à grand cris. Firmin parut. Le public était arrivé à son paroxysme d’enthousiasme lorsque Firmin, s’avançant au bord de la rampe, nomma Victor Hugo. Le Journal des Débats mit le soir même une note qui finissait ainsi: “Le nom de l’auteur a été écrasé sous les applaudissements”. (VHR 468)

The treatment of Hugo’s name after Hernani becomes another major event of Hugo’s ascension into glory for Adèle (the first of which was his naming event by Chateaubriand as “l’enfant sublime”), when an important literary figure and bonapartist, Madame

Hamelin, also names Hugo: “‘C’est Homère! c’est le Cid enfant!’ Mme Hamelin serra la main à Victor Hugo à sa première soirée de gloire” (VHR 466). From being called the sublime child by a royalist to being called the child Cid by a bonapartist, Hugo has now achieved naming-related glory emphasizing his youth from two opposing political

individual and society, the intellectual’s glorification and latent fear of the masses, the guilt and hope associated with the memory of regicide and all challenges to authority, the awareness of historical discontinuities; but in his work the symptomatic themes take on a particularly haunting and even mythical form” (14). 47 The title and eponymous protagonist of this play is the subject of an enduring mistaken assumption that Hugo attached his first initial to a Spanish town that was actually named Ernani. Adèle refers to this town in which Hugo once slept as a child as Ernani but does not link the addition of the letter H to Hugo’s name (VHR 189). However, some scholars have done so. For example, this belief is put forth by Anne Ubersfeld in her notes to the 1987 Librairie Générale Française edition of Hernani (216). Robb sets the record straight in Victor Hugo: “Along with everyone who has written about it, Hugo was under the impression that he had endowed the little town of Ernani with the totemic ‘H’ of his own name. In fact, it was always Hernani” (36). This myth shows the general recognition of Hugo’s habit of adding aspects of his name to his works. 75

sides.48 Both sides of this national political discord have now called a young Hugo into fame. That night, after the production of Hernani, Adèle recalls a rarely-seen action of

Hugo’s within this biography. She shows Hugo sleeping soundly:

Toutes les conditions qui constituent un succès éclatant et incontesté se trouvaient réunies: bouquets jetés, nom d’auteur acclamé, pièce achetée à l’avance, reconduite triomphale, logis empli à une heure de nuit, scène de la pièce déjà illustrée, billet écrit la toile à peine baissée. Victor Hugo s’endormit donc en repos. Son succès était de bon aloi, bien en règle, signé, contresigné, visé, scellé. (VHR 469)

Two of the conditions for a sound night of sleep after a successful evening of glory are the acclaim given to the author’s name and his success’ official authentication via countersignature. Hugo’s name is thereby officially authorized. However, the peace

Hugo feels following this explosion into renown soon devolves into its opposite:

Le pauvre auteur était excédé. Il ne dormait plus. Il ne mangeait plus. Hernani, affiché à toutes les boutiques de libraire, à tous les coins de rue, son portrait exposé chez les marchands d’images, son nom qui était dans toutes les bouches, tout ce bruit qui en somme est la renommée, n’était pas une compensation à cette perpétuelle tension d’esprit, à cette fatigue incessante. (VHR 470-71)

When Hugo’s name became synonymous with literary revolution, demands were put upon him to act as such, to embody this revolution. As more people became familiar with this significance of Hugo’s name, more people then expected him to fully stand for this revolution and called upon him to do so.

In the preface to Hernani, Hugo indicates the kind of revolution that the author of

Hernani supports: “Le romantisme, tant de fois mal défini, n’est, à tout prendre, et c’est là sa définition réelle, que le libéralisme en littérature” (Théâtre I 540). This preface writer elaborates that liberty in art and liberty in society must go hand in hand and that

48 Adèle insists upon Hugo’s side of the Hernani battle as being that of the youthful and the novel when recounting what her husband said to his supporters: “Victor leur dit: ‘[…] La bataille qui va s’engager à Hernani est celle des idées, celle du progrès. C’est une lutte en commun. Nous allons combattre cette vieille littérature crénelée, verrouillée. […] Ce siège est la lutte de l’ancien monde et du nouveau monde, nous sommes fous du nouveau monde’” (VHR 459). 76

literary liberty is the daughter of political liberty. He also explains that each generation’s beliefs both become outdated and create their own followers who will inaugurate novelties in literature. This idea will certainly prove true for the generations following

Hugo, who tend to regard him as a former maître who must be overturned in one way or another. The preface writer again denies the creation of a new system here and asserts that his project is one of liberation—not in art, as he claims the play itself is “trop peu de chose”, but in the public (Théâtre I 540). The role of the poet becomes that of a provider of a poetry who has the same aims as a people who come to resemble God in their noble political desires: “Cette voix haute et puissante du peuple qui ressemble à celle de Dieu, veut désormais que la poésie ait la même devise que la politique: tolérance et liberté.

Maintenant, vienne le poète! Il y a un public” (Théâtre I 540). This Hugo suggests that the acclaim and significance of his name would not be what it has become if there were not such a divine public that called him into this consequently divine form of being.

In response to the play’s detractors, Hugo deploys another list of canonically- approved names as an appeal:

Il prierait volontiers les personnes que cet ouvrage a pu choquer de relire le Cid, Don Sanche, Nicomède, ou plutôt tout Corneille, et tout Molière, ces grands et admirables poètes. Cette lecture, si pourtant elles veulent bien faire d’abord la part de l’immense infériorité de l’auteur d’Hernani, les rendra peut-être moins sévères pour certaines choses qui ont pu les blesser dans la forme ou dans le fond de ce drame. (Théâtre I 541)

Hugo places himself as inferior to his predecessors but as still belonging in this list of famous names. He goes on to describe Hernani as just a part of his construction, as “la première pierre d’une édifice qui existe tout construit dans la tête de son auteur” and as

“une porte presque moresque à sa cathédrale gothique” (Théâtre I 541). Hugo ends this preface with an explanation as to why he must construct such a monumental collective

œuvre. It is because he is not like the “poètes privilégiés” who have the luxury of ceasing

writing or dying before they have finished, “sans péril pour leur mémoire” (Théâtre I

542). This Hugo sees the enduring renown of “Victor Hugo” as dependent upon the completion of this collection of works which together will form one edifice, one multi- faceted construction of its author, in which he could be found in every corner thanks to his poetic divine power of omnipresence.

In July of 1830, the Trois Glorieuses take place, after which, according to Robb, the people expected a statement from Hugo. His ode “À la Jeune France”, preceded by an anonymous note from Sainte-Beuve, satisfied this desire and was published widely in newspapers after its first publication in Le Globe on August 19, 1830.49 This poem lauds the noble acts of all the political ancestors of France alongside such acts of the dead in the Trois Glorieuses: “Adoptons héros et victimes./ Emplissons de ces morts sublimes/

Les sépulcres du Panthéon./ Que nul souvenir ne nous pèse;/ Rendons sa tombe à Louis seize,/ Sa colonne à Napoléon!” (Poésie I 687). Robb reads this as a means of justifying the political flip-flopping that Hugo performs over the century:

In other words, history was a force which ignored political loyalties. From a sufficiently lofty point of view, the Victor Hugo who celebrated the coronation of Charles X, the Hugo who glorified Napoleon and the Hugo who hailed the July Revolution—the son of Sophie and the son of Brutus—had all been right. (Robb VH 156)

Robb’s identification of multiple Hugos here aids in this study of a gathering of many facets of one entity. Revolutions are not confined to literature and politics, but can happen within individuals as well, which allows Hugo to not only change the current and future significance of “Hugo” over time, but which also allows him to modify and unify the past meanings of this name. In order to do this more convincingly, it would seem that certain details of the past must be erased.

49 This poem is later entitled “Dicté après juillet 1830” and published in Les Chants du crépuscule. 78

IX. A Monument to Erasure: Notre-Dame, Marion de Lorme, and Les Feuilles d’automne

“D’hommes tu nous fais dieux.” - Régnier; epigraph to Hugo’s poem “À M. David, Statuaire”

Erasure and the threat of erasure play a central role in onomastics. The process of naming necessitates some erasure of the being named, since a name can never signify the entirety of this being. However, names have the potential to survive the beings named.

In this way, a name can resist the complete erasure of a signified. Hugo’s novel Notre-

Dame de Paris, which appeared in 1831 with a preface dated February 1831, made this physical monument so linked to Hugo that it inspired readers to modify the actual

Parisian cathedral in order to make it better resemble Hugo’s edifice.50 Like Han d’Islande, Bug-Jargal, and Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné, Notre-Dame was first published anonymously. But the author’s name was published shortly thereafter in the second edition. Hugo’s preface to Notre-Dame, the brevity of which is typical of his prefaces to novels, begins with an account of the author’s visit to the cathedral one day when he found the Greek word ANAГKH scratched into a dark nook. For Hugo, this term, translated as “necessity” or “fatality”, becomes the link between three of his novels,

Notre-Dame, Les Misérables, and Les Travailleurs de la mer, each of which treats some form of anankè.51 The preface writer describes how the author was struck by these capital letters and wondered who had engraved them. The eventual erasure of both the

50 The name Hugo also makes an appearance in this novel: “And it is revealing that Hugo goes to the trouble of informing his reader that Frollo’s cell, on top of the tower, among the ravens’ nests, has been built many years earlier by one Hugo de Besançon—a doubly meaningful signal, since the homonym (Hugo) is coupled with the name of Hugo’s own birthplace” (Brombert 62). 51 Merriam-Webster defines Ananke in terms of its role in Greek religion, “a personification of compelling necessity or ultimate fate to which even the gods must yield”, and provides its origin: “Greek Anankē, from anankē necessity” (1). 79

engraver and the word becomes the basis of this novel, as the writer explains in the final passage of the preface:

L’homme qui a écrit ce mot sur ce mur s’est effacé, il y a plusieurs siècles, du milieu des générations, le mot s’est à son tour effacé du mur de l’église, l’église elle-même s’effacera bientôt peut-être de la terre. C’est sur ce mot qu’on a fait ce livre. (Roman I 491)

This preface sparked a great influx of tourists who visited the cathedral in search of this word. A decade after the publication, many iterations of “anankè” had been scratched into Notre-Dame.52 The conclusions of all three of these novels tied together by anankè emphasize erasure.53 The role of the author becomes that of a story-teller who, in the story, preserves something seemingly doomed to disappear.54 The publication of this novel shot Hugo into greater international fame than he had ever known before, and it remains, with Les Misérables, one of his works still internationally recognized as stemming from Hugo’s pen—or, in other words, it is still popularly known to be connected with Hugo’s name. In this manner, Hugo’s monuments to erasure help ensure the survival of his own name. Like the tourists who flooded into the cathedral to scratch their own versions of anankè on its walls, so will the readers of Hugo’s works prevent the

52 See Robb, VH, 161. 53 In the final sentence of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo’s skeleton, found embracing that of La Esmeralda, falls into dust: “Quand on voulut le détacher du squelette qu’il embrassait, il tomba en poussière” (Roman I 859). The final sentences of Les Misérables describe the erasure of the inscription on Jean Valjean’s grave: “On n’y lit aucun nom. Seulement, voilà bien des années déjà, une main y a écrit au crayon ces quatre vers qui sont devenus peu à peu illisibles sous la pluie et la poussière, et qui probablement sont aujourd’hui effacés: Il dort. Quoique le sort fût pour lui bien étrange,/ Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n’eut plus son ange,/ La chose simplement d’elle-même arriva,/ Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s’en va” (Roman II 1151). And the final sentences of Les Travailleurs de la mer describe the disappearance of Gilliatt’s head under the water: “A l’instant où le navire s’effaça à l’horizon, la tête disparut sous l’eau. Il n’y eut plus rien que la mer” (Roman III 343). 54 Robb also finds that Hugo injects himself into the novel as a disparate character: “The oddest character of all is the narrator himself: the pedantic Hugo, shattered into a thousand images and reconstituted as a linguistic rubbish-heap—dog Latin, medieval French and shaky Spanish, culled from a handful of old books and an astonishingly verbal memory, fed through the collective brain of a historian, a town-crier and a population of demented gossips, brilliantly evoking a chaotic melting-pot of a Middle Ages” (VH 159). 80

erasure of this authorial name from memory by propagating their own, varied versions of this name.

A new association between the monumental Hugo and the monuments of Paris begins to take hold of the popular imagination after the publication of Notre-Dame de

Paris. For example, many caricatures of Hugo began to include this cathedral. At the conclusion of his biography on Hugo, Maurois claims that the towers of Notre-Dame not only form but “sont l’H de son nom” (567).55 Maurois extends this association of

Parisian monuments with Hugo to the dome of the Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, and the column at the Place Vendôme: “[…] Paris tout entier nous apparaît comme une ode à

Victor Hugo, poème de pierre, dont les hauts lieux de notre histoire seraient les strophes”

(567). Garval critiques Maurois’ claim:

In one sense, Maurois overstates his case, for it is far-fetched to think that we still see Paris as Hugo’s property; indeed, the idea of Notre-Dame as the “H” in Hugo now seems more laughable than inspiring. In another, Maurois understates things, for Hugo’s literary assault on Paris aimed wider even than his biographer suggests, encompassing high and low, light and dark, rich and poor, strong and weak, as he attempted to make his conquest of the French nation’s glorious heart all the more complete. (168)

This view espoused by Garval reflects a common view of Hugo’s growing reputation.56

Hugo is indeed strongly associated with the monuments of Paris, and yet most (aside from die-hard hugophiles) find it a bit of a stretch to allow Hugo to determine the meaning of all of Paris. Nevertheless, the mere impulse to project the H of Hugo’s name

55 Boulard studies the letter H for Hugo: “H, dit Hugo, ‘c’est la façade de l’édifice avec ses deux tours’ (V, VI, 715). […] Et le bel édifice, vraiment que cet édifice en H. Rien de moins que Notre-Dame de Paris. Tant qu’à faire, il aura choisi le plus vaste, le plus complexe et le plus monumental de Paris. […] Mais pourquoi se limiter à un monument quand on peut, sans la moindre difficulté, mettre son H sur tous les édifices? Ce que va faire tout naturellement Hugo” (374). She goes on to note a homophone (that Cixous also studies, which Boulard recognizes) within the letter H: “On écrit H, on entend hache” (374-75). 56 The publication of this novel also inspired Lamartine to dub Hugo “the Shakespeare of the novel” (Brombert 2). 81

onto the outline of Notre-Dame shows the power that this name held at this point in

Hugo’s career.57

In August of 1831, Marion de Lorme was performed, 6 months after the publication of Notre-Dame de Paris. As Hugo explains in the preface, he had actually written this play in 1829, a few months before he wrote Hernani, only to encounter censorship. When he tried to have the play performed in 1829, it was suspended because of its negative portrayal of a king that risked reminding the public of their then-current king, Charles X. Hugo obtained a meeting with the king to protest the censor’s dismissal of the play, after which meeting Charles X promised to read the play.58 A week later, the king’s decision to suspend the play was made known. At the same time, Charles X offered Hugo a consolation prize: an augmentation to his royal pension and a position on the Council of State. Hugo’s outraged letter refusing the pension and position was widely published in Parisian newspapers:

This first symbolic encounter of the young Romantics with the generation in power made a hero of Victor Hugo: “The youth of France,” wrote Le Constitutionnel, “is not as corruptible as Ministers could hope”. (Robb VH 145)

By refusing this royal offering, Hugo came to be seen as a scrupulous representative of the entire youth of France.

The final lines of the preface to Marion de Lorme set up an incomplete analogy with a missing link that Hugo could potentially fill (harkening back to the second preface

57 Today, when one visits the cathedral, one will find a plethora of surrounding cafés and restaurants named after characters from Hugo’s novel, including Le Quasimodo Notre Dame (11 rue d’Arcole), La Réserve de Quasimodo (4 rue Colombe), and Esmeralda (2 rue Cloître Notre Dame). Though these two characters were erased from existence in the final passage of Hugo’s novel, their names live on—at least at the time of my writing—near this Hugo-stamped monument. 58 Adèle claims that Hugo’s introduction to the king was the first instance when Hugo’s title “le baron Victor Hugo” was used: “Il n’avait jamais pris son titre, et c’était la première fois qu’on le lui donnait” (VHR 453). We have already seen Robb’s correction to this. Additionally, Adèle claims that the king told Hugo: “Il n’y a pour moi que deux poètes, vous et Désaugiers” (VHR 454). 82

of Les Orientales, in which the preface writer notes the shame of France’s pointing to

Boileau as their poet comparable to Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare). These lines come after Hugo’s praise of the young generation in France:

L’auteur de ce drame, qui est bien fier de leur appartenir, qui est bien glorieux d’avoir vu quelquefois son nom dans leur bouche, quoiqu’il soit le moindre d’entre eux, l’auteur de ce drame espère tout de ses jeunes contemporains, même un grand poëte. Que ce génie, caché encore, s’il existe, ne se laisse pas décourager par ceux qui crient à l’aridité, à la sécheresse, au prosaïsme des temps. Une époque trop avancée? pas de génie primitif possible?… — Laisse-les parler, jeune homme! Si quelqu’un eût dit à la fin du dix- huitième siècle, après le régent, après Voltaire, après Beaumarchais, après Louis XV, après Cagliostro, après Marat, que les Charlemagnes, les Charlemagnes grandioses, poétiques et presque fabuleux, étaient encore possibles, tous les sceptiques d’alors, c’est- à-dire la société tout entière, eussent haussé les épaules et ri. Hé bien! au commencement du dix-neuvième siècle, on a eu l’empire et l’empereur. Pourquoi maintenant ne viendrait-il pas un poëte qui serait à Shakespeare ce que Napoléon est à Charlemagne? (Théâtre I 685)

This preface writer attributes his glory to the fact that the young generation “sometimes” pronounces his name. His glory again stems from his renown amongst the youth. He then goes on to express humility as the least amongst them before communicating the hope that from this group will arise a great poet, that from a still-hidden genius may emerge a successor to Shakespeare. Politics and literature converge in this formula that lends itself to the form of an analogy: Charlemagne: Napoleon:: Shakespeare: ? Despite his assurance that this genius to come is still hidden, one can see the implication that

Hugo could fill this role. Hugo’s self-modelling after both Napoleon and Shakespeare strengthens this possible encouragement of his readers to place Hugo’s name within this eminent list.

In Les Feuilles d’automne, the preface to which is dated November 24, 1831,59 the preface writer presents the author in a stance of humility:

59 This work is seen as the first of Hugo’s 4 collections of poetry known as the collections of the July monarchy, which include Les Feuilles d’automne, Les Chants du crépuscule, Les Voix intérieures, and Les Rayons et les ombres. See Frey, 97. 83

Il ressent, en abandonnant ce livre inutile au flot populaire qui emporte tant d’autres choses meilleures, un peu de ce mélancolique plaisir qu’on éprouve à jeter une fleur dans un torrent, et à voir ce qu’elle devient. Qu’on lui passe une image un peu ambitieuse, le volcan d’une révolution était ouvert devant ses yeux. Le volcan l’a tenté. Il s’y précipite. Il sait fort bien du reste qu’Empédocle n’est pas un grand homme, et qu’il n’est resté de lui que sa chaussure. Il laisse donc aller ce livre à sa destinée, quelle qu’elle soit, liber, ibis in urbem, et demain il se tournera d’un autre côté. (Poésie I 561-62)

According to legend, Empedocles died by throwing himself into Mount Etna in order to convince humanity that he had ascended as a god, only to have his spat-out sandal give the ruse away.60 Hugo seems to deny both the merit of this book and perceptions of himself as capable of ascending to godlike status, even if he did jump into the volcano of literary revolution. As often occurs in Hugo’s prefaces, this image leaves an ambiguous impression of the preface writer’s projection of the author by mingling humility with near-egotism, or with egotism by association. And yet, in this association of the author with Empedocles, the preface writer acknowledges the author’s possible and yet doomed pursuit of the reputation of a god. However, Hugo also describe the author of these poems as someone who allows himself to change over time by answering to his conscience rather than personal interests:

[…] Il croit avoir le droit de dire d’avance que ses vers seront ceux d’un homme honnête, simple et sérieux, qui veut toute liberté, toute amélioration, tout progrès, et en même temps toute précaution, tout ménagement et toute mesure […]. (Poésie I 562)

This preface writer also assures his readers that the author will not forget the opinions, beliefs, and errors of his “première jeunesse”. (Poésie I 563) The mutability of “Hugo” again comes to the fore in this preface, and Hugo extends his fight for liberty to himself, giving “Hugo” the right to change allegiances as long as he follows his conscience. In

60 See Critchley, 14. Additionally, the partial line in Latin that Hugo quotes is from the first verse of Ovid’s Tristia and translates to “book, you will go to the city”. The following is the opening sentence of Tristia: “Parve—nec invideo—sine me, liber, ibis in urbem:/ ei mihi, quod domino non licet ire tuo!” (1). 84

this manner, Hugo comes to treat the conglomerate meanings of his name as a monument to non-erasure, a project of preservation of selves that have every right to vary.

X. “[Hugo], c’est nous tous”: Le Roi s’amuse, Lucrèce Borgia, and Marie Tudor

“Il y a quelques jours, tous, les mêmes qui êtes ici, vous disiez ce nom avec triomphe. Vous le dites aujourd’hui avec épouvante.” - Hugo, Lucrèce Borgia

Just a few months after the anti-monarchist June Rebellion in Paris, Hugo’s play

Le Roi s’amuse had its opening and final performance on November 22, 1832 until its revival exactly 50 years later.61 Because of its unflattering portrayals of popular and beloved French historical figures like Francis I; the unconventional time lapse of a month between the third and fourth acts; and its unusual portrayal of a grandiloquent and tragic conversation between the play’s protagonist, a fool, and a sack containing a corpse, this play faced great criticism. Adèle recounts Hugo’s response to being asked whether or not he would like to be named after the opening show:

Cet avis qu’il venait demander voulait dire: vous voulez garder l’anonymat? L’auteur réplique à cette question mentale et dit: “Nommez-moi, Monsieur. Mais en dépit de sa chute, la pièce qui vient d’être jouée est une des celles dont je m’enorgueillis. Les sifflets n’ôtent rien à l’opinion que j’en ai. Nommez-moi, Monsieur Ligier, nommez l’auteur.” Ce qui s’était déjà présenté à Marion se renouvela cette fois: le nom de l’auteur fut nommé au milieu du plus grand silence. Le tumulte recommença aussitôt; on ne voulut pas laisser reparaître les acteurs. (VHR 509)

This event shows Hugo being named despite his presumption that his name would not be applauded. Through this version of Hugo, one finds a dramatist who names himself because of his pride in a work that the public does not appreciate. The trial that Hugo brought to the Tribunal du Commerce against the Théâtre Français on behalf of this play

61 Robb describes Hugo’s proximity to the fighting during this Rebellion: “Hugo flattened himself against the wall, between the half-columns which divided the shop-fronts, trapped between the forces of order and anarchy. For a quarter of an hour, bullets flew both ways down the alley” (VH 173). 85

was itself comparable to an opening night and garnered literary political support, even from the play’s critical detractors. Nevertheless, Hugo lost this trial.

Hugo defends his right to present Le Roi s’amuse in his preface: “Il ne dépend, lui poëte, d’aucun ministre” (Théâtre I 830). This preface writer chastises his enemies through the power of his name:

Expliquons-nous pourtant, non pas avec la police à laquelle, moi, honnête homme, je défends de parler de ces matières, mais avec le petit nombre de personnes respectables et consciencieuses qui, sur des ouï-dire ou après avoir mal entrevu la représentation, se sont laissé entraîner à partager cette opinion, pour laquelle peut-être le nom seul du poëte inculpé aurait dû être une suffisante réfutation. (Théâtre I 831)

This Hugo claims that the mere name of the author of the play should have informed its audience of the good intentions and morality behind the work. Often in 19th-century literary trials, appeals to the good character and intent of the author were a means of defending one’s work against accusations of indecency. In order to defend the author’s character, this preface writer offers a lengthy description of the man behind the name:

Et en effet, quel est l'homme auquel ce pouvoir myope s’attaque si étrangement? C'est un écrivain ainsi placé que, si son talent peut être contesté de tous, son caractère ne l'est de personne. C’est un honnête homme avéré, prouvé et constaté, chose rare et vénérable en ce temps-ci. […] C’est un homme sincère et modéré, qui a déjà livré plus d’un combat pour toute liberté et contre tout arbitraire, […] conduite bien simple sans doute, que tout homme d’honneur eût tenue à sa place, mais qui aurait peut-être dû le rendre inviolable désormais à toute censure […]. Jugez maintenant. Vous avez d’un côté l’homme et son œuvre; de l’autre le ministère et ses actes. (Théâtre I 833-34)

Foucault’s thoughts on the emergence of the authorial name as coeval with transgressions are again reflected here. Self-aggrandizement and humility also intermingle in this preface writer’s description of the author. Hugo’s “Hugo” is here both a man who tempers himself in difficult political situations and fights for liberty. The preface writer claims that any man of honor would have done the same. The faith of the public in the morality of the author depends on their knowledge of this author’s actions. Convincing

the public of the morality of the author is also here expected to convince them of the morality of the work, which logic conflates authors with their works. A chain of signification thus emerges: public judgments of the actions of the authorial figure should impact their judgments of the authorial name, which should in turn color their view of the author’s works. So, because the name “Victor Hugo” carries a moral biographical past and was announced as attached to the play Le Roi s’amuse, the preface writer here argues that the audience of the play should assume that the play, like the author, conveys a tempered, decent message. The author’s name here emerges as the central link to these three levels of signification.

The preface writer goes on to add one more level of import to this onomastically- linked chain. Namely, Hugo’s cause should stand for more than just his individual case:

Mais si l’on s’élève plus haut, on verra qu’il ne s'agit pas seulement dans cette affaire d’un drame et d’un poëte, mais, nous l’avons dit en commençant, que la liberté et la propriété sont toutes deux, sont tout entières engagées dans la question. […] Il espère que sa cause sera aux yeux de tous une grande cause […]. (Théâtre I 835)

This espouser of a particular vision of the author encourages readers to see Hugo as standing for many, in a move that recalls the preface to Le Dernier Jour, in which the writer proposes the author as an individual capable of standing for all of the accused.

Also analogously to the author of Le Dernier Jour, the dramatist of Le Roi s’amuse is both the accused (of indecency) and the accuser (of illegality). Hugo more fully embraces his new self-appointed role of untainted writer by giving up his pension in the aftermath of Le Roi s’amuse:

[…] He was marking the transferal of the artist’s allegiance from the traditional patron, the King, to a more lucrative sponsor, the people. Essentially, this was the speech he was to give for the rest of his public life […]. (Robb VH 178)

The name of Hugo was now officially separated from its strongest affiliation with the king and freed to fully jump camp into that of the people.

A few months later, in February of 1833, Hugo’s very successful play Lucrèce

Borgia saw its opening night and acted as a counterpart to Le Roi s’amuse in terms of reception. When Harel, the director of the Porte-Saint-Martin theater where the play was showing, asked Hugo at the behest of the audience to appear on stage after the curtain fell, Hugo refused, saying “Je donne ma pensée au public, mais je ne livre pas ma personne” (VHR 528).62 This separation between the thought and person of Hugo exposes a conception of himself that contradicts his plea for the public to see the morality of Le Roi s’amuse given their knowledge of its author.

In the preface to Lucrèce Borgia, the preface writer states that he is putting this play on as an exercise of liberty after the banning of Le Roi s’amuse.63 He writes that he does not have the right of a Molière or a Corneille to debate with his critics in his prefaces, but he does this in a somewhat supercilious manner (saying that it now looks

“curious” to see these geniuses debating with critics) that shows a possible implication of the superiority of Hugo to these illustrious predecessors. Part of his explanation for refraining from critical debate within his prefaces is that he finds himself inferior to such

“hommes pleins d’autorité” (Théâtre I 972); however, another aspect of this rejected function of the preface also appears to be that such comportment becomes risible to future generations who see such authorial names as Corneille and Molière as being

62 Hugo and Harel nearly had a duel after Hugo called Harel a “drôle” when the Porte-Saint-Martin tried to stop productions of Lucrèce Borgia in order to present another play that most likely would not make nearly as much money as Hugo’s play (VHR 535). 63 On a biographical note, one may also bear in mind a common reading of Le Roi s’amuse as Hugo’s adaptation of Sainte-Beuve’s affair with Adèle (Robb VH 176) alongside the commencement of Hugo’s long-lasting affair with Juliette Drouet during the preparations for Lucrèce Borgia (Robb VH 185). 88

somewhat beyond reproof and consequently comical when subjugated to the names of lesser-known critics. One could read Hugo’s refusal to imitate Corneille and Molière as a performance indicating that he too would become (or already is) a “géant” and above the need to respond to such silly nit-picking. The judge that this preface writer does feel the need to please emerges as the people, before whom he says the author feels small and without great talent. However, the author emerges as beholden to a didactic obligation to the people: “[…] Il s’interroge avec sévérité et recueillement sur la portée philosophique de son œuvre; car il se sait responsable, et il ne veut pas que cette foule puisse lui demander compte un jour de ce qu’il lui aura enseigné” (Théâtre I 973). Humility and self-aggrandizement again come together, as the preface writer claims that the author feels pressure to properly teach the people (from a position of superiority) despite his own lack of great talent (from a position of projected inferiority to more talented literary predecessors).

Public perception of Hugo’s aggrandizement of his own name takes a new shape in the interval between Lucrèce Borgia and Marie Tudor, which appeared on November

7, 1833. A week before, on November 1, an article appeared in the Journal des Débats, in which Dumas was compared to Hugo in such a way as to make the former look horrible and the latter look wonderful. According to Adèle, the author of this article,

Granier de Cassagnac, signed only with his initials, which made people think that Hugo had actually written the article (when in fact, by Adèle’s account, Hugo had asked for the article to not be published when he read it prior to publication):

Il fallait vraiment un bien profond aveuglement pour supposer que l’auteur d’Hernani, en admettant chez lui cette indignité grossière de faire son propre éloge aux dépens d’un confrère, commettrait cette stupidité de livrer à la publicité un article d’une donnée semblable, à la veille de se faire jouer. C’était ameuter à plaisir une partie de la jeunesse, se faire mal voir du public. […] C’était une provocation adressée aux spectateurs. […]

Cet article aura été de la part de Granier un moyen de se rappeler au souvenir de Victor Hugo, une espèce de carte de visite. (VHR 541)

Adèle here remarks upon her husband’s attention to his own public image and the ability of his celebrity to cause hopefuls like Granier to seek his good graces by complimenting

Hugo at the expense of other writers. This public suspicion as to the identity of the article’s author became so pronounced that the Journal des Débats published a note declaring that Hugo was not the author of this article, which Adèle explains was an unusual action for this paper (VHR 542). Overly complimentary reviews intended to bolster the appeal of a writer perform a paradoxical disservice by instead instilling incredulity and misgivings within readers. The prefaces that Hugo up to this point wrote and signed in his name consistently include some self-belittlement, showing his recognition of this need to incorporate self-effacement into the very project of building one’s own onomastic monument. Such an auto-constructed, name-based monument necessitates a certain number of cracks and weaknesses. The public suspicion that he was pseudonymously reviewing himself in this overly-laudatory piece indicates some suspicion that the self-effacement in his prefaces was artificial.

Marie Tudor was not received nearly as well as Lucrèce Borgia. Nevertheless, this did not prevent Hugo’s name from being recognized:

Cependant comme la pièce portait, elle ne fut guère contestée et ne tomba pas. […] Pour la première fois, l’auteur fut nommé dans les sifflets. Il arriva ce qui n’était jamais arrivé, même au Roi s’amuse, où les huées avaient fait trêve quand on nomma l’auteur. (VHR 545)

Adèle is here careful to note that, while the play was booed, its author’s name was not.

The preface to Marie Tudor, dated November 17, 1833, begins with a view of

Shakespeare as a combination of Corneille and Molière into a zenith of dramatic poetry that attains the great in the true and the true in the great. This represents another list of

names with a possible insertion of Hugo at the end as their successor. Still treating

Shakespeare, Hugo offers a striking reading of Hamlet: “Hamlet, par exemple, est aussi vrai qu’aucun de nous, et plus grand. Hamlet est colossal, et pourtant réel. C’est que

Hamlet, ce n’est pas vous, ce n’est pas moi, c’est nous tous. Hamlet, ce n’est pas un homme, c’est l’homme” (Théâtre I 1079). One may remember that Hugo, too, has been implied (by Hugo) as being capable of standing for many. However, in this instance,

Hugo the preface writer places Hugo the author within the collective “nous”—previously divided into “vous” and “moi”—that is incorporated within the greater collective being of

Hamlet. An ensuing description of the eponymous character of Marie Tudor bears mentioning for this study of how Hugo situates himself between the collective “nous” and the list of illustrious names: “Quelle est, en effet, la pensée qu’il a tenté de réaliser dans Marie Tudor? La voici. Une reine qui soit une femme. Grande comme reine. Vraie comme femme” (Théâtre I 1080). So while Hugo is included in the representation of

“l’homme” offered by Hamlet, Hugo also composed a character capable of representing the other half of humanity in Marie Tudor; in this manner, Hugo presents himself as attempting to equal Shakespeare. But, true to form, he goes on to claim that, of the two qualities needed to write such a play, conscience and genius, this author only has the first:

“L’auteur qui parle ici n’a que la première, il le sait. Il n’en continuera pas moins ce qu’il a commencé, en désirant que d’autres fassent mieux que lui” (Théâtre I 1080). The first phrase of this quotation, “l’auteur qui parle ici”, encapsulates the tensions surrounding the authorial name within a preface. Even while identifying himself as the author speaking here, this preface writer will continue to refer to the author in the third person.

Within this genre of prefaces, the tensions and pluralities inherent to the relationship

between authors and their names become maximally visible as Hugo the preface writer comments upon Hugo the author as Hugo the author but in the third person. This subject appears to be not just split but split and reconstituted without being able to hide the gap between the pieces, which gap in fact constitutes its coherence. Like a cracked monument or a broken heart necklace brought together to form the full heart, it is the divides between the many Hugos that create “Hugo”. These printed accounts of his view of himself combined with the immense readership that he held and all of the ensuing, necessarily reductive and fractured visions of Hugo together constitute the multi-faceted meaning of “Hugo”. One can thusly reformulate Hugo’s statement on Hamlet: “Hugo, c’est nous tous.”

XI. “Réformons, ne déformons pas”: Littérature et philosophie mêlées and Les Chants du crépuscule

“A onze ans d'intervalle, voilà le même esprit, transformé.” - Hugo, preface to Littérature et philosophie mêlées

The 1834 publication of Littérature et philosophie mêlées presents what Robb calls “a brilliant experiment in autobiography” (VH 194), in which Hugo attempts to unify the many versions of Hugo discernible over time. Robb singles out this text as the one in which Hugo discovers that he does not have to “remain faithful to a particular personality” of his past (VH 195). This “discovery” both allows Hugo to modify his prior writings (both in terms of their contents as well as their dates of composition) and to rewrite his own life story in a way that explains his progressions through different versions of himself.64 Hugo thereby becomes the (rather indulgent) critic and judge of

64 Biré, an uncomplimentary biographer of Hugo, states in the 1894 preface to the second edition of his Victor Hugo après 1852 that it was the discovery of Hugo’s tendency to re-write himself that made Biré cease desiring to write a flattering biography of Hugo: “Cette fois, je ne le cache pas, le charme était rompu. Nulle illusion n’était possible. Si rayonnante qu’eût été la jeunesse de Victor Hugo, des ombres singulières s’épaississaient autour d’elle; mais qui les avait amassées, sinon le poète lui-même?” (vii). 92

his former selves. The texts included in this document are presented in the preface as a revelation of the progression of the author. This Hugo describes these changes to himself as “révolutions sur lui-même” and singles out two major versions of himself over time: the “jeune jacobite de 1819” and the “révolutionnaire de 1830” (Critique 48).65

According to the preface writer, the revolutions within the author act as an appendix to the greater politico-historical revolutions. In this manner, Hugo presents himself as a microcosm of his century. Nevertheless, he goes on to say that it would have been better if a greater name than his were attached to this work that is now representative of

History:

En se plaçant à ce point de vue, tout ce que renferme ce Journal des idées d'un royaliste adolescent d'il y a quinze ans, acquiert, à défaut de la valeur biographique qu'un nom plus considérable en tête de ce livre pourrait seul lui donner, cette sorte de valeur historique qui s'attache à tous les documents honnêtes où se retrouve la physionomie d'une époque, de quelque part qu'ils viennent. (Critique 48)

Such a conflation of Hugo’s story to general History and the wish for a greater authorial name suggests that Hugo’s name, in the absence of a “more considerable” one, can suffice as a monicker for his epoch.

Robb notes that one device Hugo employs in this work is to project himself directly onto Mirabeau (VH 195). Such a reading seems to be invited by Hugo’s drawing attention to the Voltaire/Mirabeau pieces bookending this semi-autobiographical work:

“C'est d'ailleurs peut-être la seule chose frappante de ce volume, à la composition duquel

65 Robb divides Hugo into two beings in conversation with each other when studying one of the works in this collection: “He concocted a spurious diary, the ‘Journal des Idées et des Opinions d’un Révolutionnaire de 1830’—meaning himself. 1830 Hugo was given a quiet lesson by 1833 Hugo. He took a jittery letter written to Lamartine in the aftershock of the Revolution. The first part was excised—‘In this dizzying whirlwind which envelops us, I have been unable to collect my thoughts…’—and a new section tacked on in its place: ‘Men of art in particular are utterly stupefied and haring about in all directions in pursuit of their scattered thoughts. Let them set their minds at rest.’ ‘We are in 1830,’ he reminded himself” (VH 194).

n'a été mêlé aucun arrangement artificiel, qu'il commence par le nom de Voltaire et finisse par le nom de Mirabeau” (Critique 50). This work that unifies “Hugo” begins and ends with two other renowned names. Hugo here implies his right to self-revolutionize by referring to the different authorial names he chose to align with his own. Hugo then argues that, even while recognizing that modern writers may not surpass the geniuses of the past, new generations can still equal their predecessors: “Nous ne sommes pas ainsi, dans les secrets de Dieu. Celui qui a créé ceux-là ne peut-il pas en créer d’autres?”

(Critique 51). Turning his attention back to his own name, Hugo offers another combination of humility and hope for what his name could accomplish:

Réformons, ne déformons pas. Si le nom qui signe ces lignes était un nom illustre, si la voix qui parle ici était une voix puissante, nous supplierions les jeunes et grands talents sur qui repose le sort futur de notre littérature, si magnifique depuis trois siècles, de songer combien c'est une mission imposante que la leur, et de conserver dans leur manière d'écrire les habitudes les plus dignes et les plus sévères. (Critique 56)

Hugo’s preference for reformation over deformation applies to his own name as well in this imagined futurity. This reading shows that this Hugo of 1834 recognizes the eventual reformations that future writers will make to literature—even to the literature that Hugo himself revolutionized and for which his name stands to some. His earlier- studied goal of instilling liberty into literature nicely accompanies this more global vision of time by primarily insisting upon freedom from molds. And yet, the recognition and respect that this Hugo encourages young writers to maintain for their literary ancestors applies to himself as well. Rather than attempting to strike down the importance of literary giants of the past, the new generations should add their novelties to this tradition of literary revolt. Hugo here claims that, if his name were illustrious, he would beg this

of the talented youth while handing over the reins of the mission to maintain the excellence of French literature.

Within this study of the inheritance that accompanies genius, Hugo boils down a long list of famous people, here only cited in part, into conflations: “Dans tout grand

écrivain il doit y avoir un grand grammairien, comme un grand algébriste dans tout grand astronome. Pascal contient Vaugelas; Lagrange contient Bezout” (Critique 56). Literary genius becomes a shared trait that groups these figures together, while their style is what gives them lasting renown: “C’est le style qui fait la durée de l’œuvre et l’immortalité du poëte. […] Le style sur l’idée, c’est l’émail sur la dent” (Critique 56). In the following passage that resembles a how-to guide for literary immortality, this preface writer also informs readers that a person seeking this form of immortality must be able to adapt him or herself to the state of humanity throughout time: “[…] Plus il s’adaptera grandement à l’homme de tous les temps et de tous les lieux; plus il aura la forme de l’avenir” (Critique

58). It is by entering into the great body of genius and becoming one with every other instance of mankind while maintaining their individual style that writers may become immortal via their works, to which their names are attached. Such a writer serves as an intermediary link between two collectives: the intellectual elite and the everyday people:

“[…] Donner aux grands le respect des petits et aux petits la mesure des grands”

(Critique 59). Such a writer’s name, therefore, carries the power of both groups. And as both groups together compose all of human life, such a writer’s name stands for everyone. Hugo, c’est nous tous. It is because of his self-reformations that “Hugo” will be able to stand for “nous tous”, even long after the writer’s death.

In the final paragraph of this preface, Hugo explicitly modifies his vision to that of a projected retrospection:

En fait de masses, le génie s'adresse encore plus aux siècles qu'aux multitudes, aux agglomérations d'années qu'aux agglomérations d'hommes. Cette lente consécration des temps fait ces grands noms, souvent moqués des contemporains, cela est vrai, mais que la foule, un jour venu, accepte, subit et ne discute plus. Peu d'hommes dans chaque génération lisent avec intelligence Homère, Dante, Shakespeare; tous s'inclinent devant ces colosses. Les grands hommes sont de hautes montagnes dont la cime reste inhabitée, mais domine toujours l'horizon. (Critique 60-61)

The ascension of such names as Dante and Shakespeare to the height of literary peaks depends on their renown over time.66 The heights that they reach make these names not just visible but focused upon by the people below for centuries on end. Hugo accentuates the changes of perception over time as a defining characteristic of these writers in futurity; even though they often face critique while they are alive, this preface writer sees the greatest literary names as being accepted long after their deaths and thereby capable of offering future readers a vision of their own epochs.

In October of 1835, Hugo’s collection of poetry Les Chants du crépuscule is published with a preface dated October 25, 1835 that expands the author’s personal traits to reflect those of the general public:

Quant à ce volume en lui-même, l’auteur n’en dira rien non plus. A quoi bon faire remarquer le fil, à peine visible peut-être, qui lie ce livre aux livres précédents? C’est toujours la même pensée avec d’autres soucis, la même onde avec d’autres vents, le même front avec d’autres rides, la même vie avec un autre âge. Il insistera peu sur cela. Il ne laisse même subsister dans ses ouvrages ce qui est personnel que parce que c’est peut-être quelquefois un reflet de ce qui est général. Il ne croit pas que son individualité, comme on dit aujourd’hui en assez mauvais style, vaille la peine d’être autrement étudiée. (Poésie I 677)

66 The opening passage of Robb’s biography of Hugo treats the story of Hugo’s conception, which was reportedly on top of a mountain: “Victor-Marie Hugo, according to his father, was conceived ‘almost in mid-air’, by which he meant ‘one of the highest peaks of the Vosges mountains’. […] Anyone who climbs the 3000-foot Donon mountain today will find the exact spot of Hugo’s conception marked by a block of sandstone in section 99 of the Donon forest, just below the summit, near the ruins of a Celtic temple […]” (VH 3). 96

This claim that the personal aspects of Hugo may be no more than reflections of the general is here presented as a reason to avoid describing these traits. However, as we have just seen in his preface to Littérature et philosophie mêlées, it is for this precise reason that the preface writer saw value in publishing some of his more personal writings.

The same message here appears, just in a different light: “Hugo” stands for all. In this case though, such a communal identity translates to a projected perception of the public’s lack of interest in his personal details. Finally, by belonging to this same thing, this same wave, this same “front” (a recognizably Hugolian body part that often defined him in caricature),67 Hugo belongs to a collective that resembles the group of geniuses that together make up one being. On its face, this again looks like humility; however, put into context with his other writings, one can find traces of a propulsion of himself into the ranks of genius through such claims.

This preface writer goes on to argue that a reader should not look to learn about the writer of a work within the work:

Aussi, quelque idée qu’on veuille bien s’en faire, n’est-elle que très-peu clairement entrevue dans ses livres. L’auteur est fort loin de croire que toutes les parties de celui-ci en particulier puissent jamais être considérées comme matériaux positifs pour l’histoire d’un cœur humain quelconque. Il y a dans ce volume beaucoup de choses rêvées. (Poésie I 677)

Hugo the preface writer separates Hugo the poet from the poems themselves.

Contradicting many earlier prefaces, this Hugo leans toward the New Critical viewpoint avant la lettre. Such changes and contradictions in his self-presentation over time reveal the vast plurality of “Hugo”s projected by Hugo. His internal revolutions can happen quickly and may have underlying motivations, but gleaning conclusions from such forms of interpretation based in biography and intent depend upon a familiarity with Hugo that

67 See Pouchain. 97

a modern reader (and maybe even Hugo himself) cannot objectively obtain. Hugo frees his readers from such pursuits and assures them that much of what is in this volume is composed of dreams. In this preface, Hugo frees his authorial self to not be found in his works.

XII. Les Mois Intérieurs: Les Voix Intérieures

“Et moi je vais rester, souffrir, agir et vivre; Voir mon nom se grossir dans les bouches de cuivre De la célébrité […].” - Hugo, “ À Eugène Vte H.”

A mere 2 years later, Hugo dedicates his 1837 collection of poems entitled Les

Voix Intérieures to his father, whom he names in a lengthy manner in order to reprimand his nation’s lack of recognition for his father’s service:

A Joseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Comte Hugo Lieutenant-Général des Armées du Roi Né en 1774 Volontaire en 1791 Colonel en 1803 Général de Brigade en 1809 Gouverneur de Province en 1810 Lieutenant-Général en 1825 Mort en 1828 NON INSCRIT SUR L’ARC DE L’ETOILE Son fils respectueux, V.H. (Poésie I 800)

Genette refers to this dedication as an example of a “dédicace in memoriam” (Seuils

123). If the government did not see fit to inscribe Hugo’s father’s name on the Arc de

Triomphe de l’Étoile, as it did with many who fought for France in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, then Hugo would rectify this lack of recognition by inscribing his father’s name and many titles at the heading of this collection. This replacement engraving allows Hugo’s work to act as a monument for his father. Unlike Notre-Dame de Paris or “À la Colonne de la Place Vendôme”, this work stands unattached to an

actual physical monument in Paris and instead becomes one ostensibly constructed in order to preserve the name and memory of Hugo’s father, the least ambiguous and most patronymically traditional source of Hugo’s own name. In the preface, Hugo makes this replacement clear: “Il donne à son père cette pauvre feuille de papier, tout ce qu’il a, en regrettant de n’avoir pas de granit. Il agit comme tout autre agirait dans la même situation” (Poésie I 803).68 The chapter “Ceci tuera cela”, from Notre-Dame de Paris, here comes to mind, as Hugo here seems to embrace the replacement of architecture with the printed word by creating a monument of paper. Architects of printed monuments differ notably from those of granite monuments in that authors’ names are far more visibly attached to these published edifices.

This preface writer supports the right of poets to incorporate political events into their works if they can raise them to the level of importance of historical events.

Continuing in this advisory vein to poets, the preface writer here says that they should try to remain impartial and ignore the “petites colères” and “petites vanités” of their personal lives (Poésie I 802). There is a goal for this impartiality:

Il faut qu’il soit attentif à tout, sincère en tout, désintéressé sur tout, et que, nous l’avons déjà dit ailleurs, il ne dépende de rien, pas même de ses propres ressentiments, pas même de ses griefs personnels; sachant être, dans l’occasion, tout à la fois irrité comme homme et calme comme poète. Il faut enfin que, dans ces temps livrés à la lutte furieuse des opinions, au milieu des attractions violentes que sa raison devra subir sans dévier, il ait sans cesse présent à l’esprit ce but sévère: être de tous les partis par leur côté généreux, n’être d’aucun par leur côté mauvais. La puissance du poète est faite d’indépendance. (Poésie I 802)

68 The preface writer goes on to differentiate what a nation owes to the memory of an individual from what a family owes this memory: “Après tout, la France peut bien, sans trop de souci, laisser tomber une feuille de son épaisse et glorieuse couronne; cette feuille, un fils doit la ramasser. Une nation est grande, une famille petite; ce qui n’est rien pour l’une est tout pour l’autre. La France a le droit d’oublier, la famille a le droit de se souvenir” (Poésie I 803).

According to this preface writer, poets must maintain their independence in order to garner the best qualities of all parties. One here finds a refinement to the Hugolian genius capable of containing humanity: here, poets can select which aspects of each side that they see fit to incorporate within themselves. In order to be able to thus revolutionize themselves, poets must maintain their independence. For Hugo to be able to continuously change the literary and political significance of his name, he must remain free from ties that entail immediate associations in public perception.

Within the poetry collected in this work, a new figure emerges as a faction of the poet Hugo. Named “Olympio”, this figure first appears in this collection (in “À

Olympio”) and reappears in later poetry of Hugo’s. It is commonly recognized as an embodiment of Hugo’s amorous and sexual side:69

In fact, Olympio was just one of several alter-Hugos: ‘My self is made up of:/ Olympio: the lyre/ Herman: love/ Maglia: laughter/ Hierro: combat’. This filing system for the psyche was a highly practical arrangement. Not only did it give Hugo a set of sub- personalities to which thoughts and deeds of a compromising nature could be ascribed, it also supplied him with an alternative to the seemingly inevitable ‘I’: ‘the moi, that weed which always sprouts afresh under the pen of the writer given to familiar outpourings’. […] Each separate Hugo would now be able to carry on its business without getting in the way of the others. (Robb VH 197)

Frey’s analysis of this choice of name proves pertinent: “It may have something to do, however, with superiority, suggesting Olympus, dwelling place of the gods” (188). This reading of Hugo’s choice of name for his amorous alter-ego finds a harsh echo in

Planche’s contemporary article on Hugo, which appeared on July 15, 1837 in the Revue

69 Frey offers an alternative view of Olympio in order to dispute it: “Hugo used this fictive name to project his own personality, and usually its amorous side, into his poetry, especially in Les Voix intérieures and Les Rayons et les ombres. It is best associated with the romantic liaison with Juliette Drouet as expressed in Tristesse d’Olympio (Olympio’s sadness) found in Les Rayons et les ombres. While it has been suggested that this name could indicate the classical calm which is found in both the heart and mind of those who rise above human agitations, this could hardly be the case in this poem or elsewhere in the emotional lyrics of Hugo” (188). 100

des Deux Mondes, just a few weeks after the first publication of Les Voix Intérieures.70

In this article, Planche states that it would be too boastful of Hugo to simply place himself upon a throne, so he does this instead with Olympio: “M. Hugo, à l’exemple de

Sully, se divise en deux personnes. Il se met sur un trône, et s’appelle, sans respect pour la langue italienne, Olympio […]” (177). Planche goes on to write sardonically that anyone who does not bow down before Olympio is ungrateful, and anyone who dares critique the work of Olympio is unbelievably audacious: “Il est temps que les nations connaissent toute la profondeur de leur crime; il est temps que les impies renversent leurs idoles et reviennent au vrai Dieu” (178). This true God, according to Planche’s reading of Hugo’s sub-text, is of course Olympio (a.k.a. Hugo). Critics should therefore be wary of critiquing God’s (Hugo’s) works:

Quand la critique, effrayée du vertige qui emportait le poète, a voulu réparer par la franchise le mal qu’elle avait fait; quand elle a voulu changer le rôle d’auxiliaire pour celui de conseiller, M. Hugo n’était plus capable de clairvoyance; il avait déjà trouvé en lui-même un prêtre et un autel; il avait fondé une religion qui, malheureusement, a trouvé des prosélytes ardens, et que je propose d’appeler autothéisme; car, s’il faut en croire le témoignage des Voix intérieures, M. Hugo est depuis plusieurs années habitué à l’adoration de sa pensée. Il se contemple dans sa splendeur solitaire, et il est heureux de se contempler. Peut-être cette religion nouvelle, qui ne s’est jamais manifestée sous une forme si éclatante que dans les Voix intérieures, est-elle dès à présent une maladie incurable; peut-être la franchise n’a-t-elle plus rien à espérer d’un poète qui voit des ennemis dans tous ses juges, qui accuse de haine et de trahison les conseils les plus sincères. (Planche 180-81)

A perception of auto-reverence receives some proof in the context of Hugo’s contemporary revelation of his alter-ego Olympio, whose name, chosen by Hugo, carries echoes of the ancient Greek divine. Once again, the public bristles when Hugo dares name himself.

According to Planche, the followers of Hugo’s religion are diminishing at a rate that will soon force to Hugo to look within himself to find his only audience member. In

70 It is thanks to Robb’s brief mention of this article that I here include an analysis of it (VH 197). 101

the final piece of advice that Planche offers to Hugo in this article, he considers the future of Hugo’s name:

Si amoureux qu’il soit de la parole, M. Hugo ne peut abolir en lui-même la faculté de sentir et de penser. Si par l’application persévérante de la méthode qu’il a créée, et qui consiste à considérer la parole comme vivant par elle-même, et pouvant se suffire sans le secours de l’idée, il arrivait à effacer cette faculté, son nom serait bientôt rayé de la liste des poètes. (183-84)

According to Planche, the only things keeping Hugo’s name on the “list of poets” are his remaining shreds of humanity: his capacity for feeling and thought. Should Hugo continue down this road of autotheism and solitude, Planche says his name will be struck from this list. The perception of Hugo’s solitude here reflects an aspect of auto-naming: since names typically come from others, by naming himself, Hugo also emphasizes his isolation of himself. Both arrogance and withdrawal emerge as critiques of Hugo when he engages in auto-naming.

XIII. Hugo l’immortel: Ruy Blas and l’Académie

“La vérité absolue n’est que dans l’ensemble de l’œuvre. Que chacun y trouve ce qu’il y cherche, et le poète, qui ne s’en flatte pas du reste, aura atteint son but.” - Hugo, preface to Ruy Blas

In 1837, Hugo brings a trial against the Comédie-Française for breach of contract and for inappropriate treatment of his name:

The Comédie Française refused to revive his earlier plays as agreed, while the director of the Porte-Saint-Martin inexplicably printed Hugo’s name in very small letters on play- bills and replaced his Lucrèce Borgia with far less lucrative offerings. Hugo retaliated by suing the Comédie Française in 1837—‘I need a trial to vent my fury’ […]. But the literary establishment had decided that Victor Hugo had had his fair share of success. (Robb VH 198)

This attention to the typography of reproductions of his name reveals the importance

Hugo attached to his signifier. Hugo wins this trial and the ensuing appeal case. Robb identifies this as a decisive moment in public opinion of Hugo: “For the rest of the

102

century, virtually all French writers can be divided into those who were for or against

Victor Hugo” (Robb VH 199). Here it is not the process of auto-naming but Hugo’s insistence that his name be properly aggrandized that instigates ire.

Also in 1837, Hugo was promoted to officer of the Légion d’honneur by Louis

Philippe. The first royal (though originally imperial) honor of “chevalier” bestowed on him by Charles X in 1825 is thus upgraded to “officier” twelve years later by a different royal family, which shows Hugo’s continued popularity amongst French rulers over time.

Adèle recounts how Dumas’ place on the list of the Légion d’honneur depended on

Hugo’s intervention (VHR 573); additionally, Adèle claims that Mme la duchesse d’Orléans told Hugo, “J’ai visité votre Notre-Dame” (VHR 574). Hugo’s claim over this physical monument is thereby recognized by the duchess. This juxtaposition of “votre” and “notre” can be seen as an echo of the Hugolian “nous” studied throughout this chapter, a “nous” that invites many in but is still always stamped with and defined by

Hugo’s name.

The duc d’Orléans gives Hugo and Dumas permission and aid to open a new theater that same year. Hugo then makes good on a plan that had been in the works for some time: the introduction of a modern theater under the directorship of Anténor Joly.

Named the théâtre de la Renaissance, this theater put on Hugo’s play Ruy Blas for its first production on November 8, 1838. According to Adèle, Hugo agreed to write this play for Joly because the future director claimed that “il fallait absolument le nom de M.

Victor Hugo” (VHR 579).71 After emphasizing the importance of her husband’s name for

71 Balzac’s dedication of Illusions Perdues to Hugo also claims a need for the power of his name to bolster this work, a request that will reappear in the chapters to follow: “À Monsieur Victor Hugo. Vous qui, par le privilège des Raphaël et des Pitt, étiez déjà grand poète à l’âge où les hommes sont encore si petits, vous avez, comme Chateaubriand, comme tous les vrais talents, lutté contre les envieux embusqués derrière les 103

the success of such an endeavor, Adèle goes on to discuss the difference of support for

Hugo in the theater during Ruy Blas compared to productions of Hernani. She writes that the old guard were all changed by age, some having left the arts, and others having left bohemian ways for the bourgeoisie: “Une nouvelle génération arrivait” (VHR 581).

Auguste Vacquerie becomes the main member of this new generation of Hugo supporters. According to Robb, many of the old guard had had enough of Hugo’s name by this time:

Relations with men of his own profession and generation were now at their lowest ebb. There was a feeling among critics and theatre directors that Hugo had upset a balance: one man was hogging all the prestige that should have been shared out among his fellow writers. (VH 215-16)

Calling upon a new generation makes sense for Hugo at this point. In the preface to Ruy

Blas, Hugo acknowledges that different readers and spectators have different reactions to a work, if the work is complex enough: “Et ce que nous venons de dire de Ruy Blas nous semble évident de tout autre ouvrage. Les œuvres vénérables des maîtres ont même cela de remarquable qu’elles offrent plus de faces à étudier que les autres” (Théâtre II 7).

This placement of Ruy Blas alongside the venerable works of masters implies Hugo’s belonging on this list more directly than previously seen in a preface of Hugo’s.

Moreover, Hugo explains the divisiveness his works instill in the public by asserting the merit of the works. Analogously, the discordant effect of Hugo’s authorial name stems from the complexity of Hugo the person.

colonnes, ou tapis dans les souterrains du Journal. Aussi désiré-je que votre nom victorieux aide à la victoire de cette œuvre que je vous dédie, et qui, selon certaines personnes, serait un acte de courage autant qu’une histoire pleine de vérité” (1). Garval writes that Balzac later regrets this dedication (158). Though Balzac later regretted dedicating this work to Hugo, one clearly sees in this dedication the success that adding Hugo’s name to one’s work could offer (Garval 158). Part of Balzac’s regret stems from Hugo’s having allowed his protégé Édouard Thierry to write a negative article on the novel, which inspired Balzac to write in a letter to Mme Hanska that Hugo was both a “grand poète” and a “petit homme” (Garval 166- 67). 104

Whichever camp one ascribed to, whether one was hugophilic or hugophobic, the power of Hugo’s name was difficult to dispute. In 1839, Hugo’s name saves a man’s life.

Following the attempted coup of May 1839, Armand Barbès was sentenced to death.

Hugo intervened on his behalf by sending a letter to the king. Adèle recounts what the doorman related to Hugo:

Monsieur, dit-il, le roi a lu votre lettre, mais vous avez bien fait d’écrire votre nom sur l’enveloppe. Il paraît que M. France d’Houdetot, qui est l’aide de camp de service, connaît monsieur; il allait jeter la lettre sur la table, lorsqu’il a vu votre nom. Alors il a porté tout de suite votre lettre, et l’huissier a vu, par la porte vitrée, que le roi la lisait. (VHR 448)

Adèle insists upon the role of her husband’s name in this intervention: it is his renown that gives him audience with the powerful. Barbès’ sentence was changed to life imprisonment after the king read this letter signed by Hugo.72

This same name capable of saving lives could also open formidable doors. Adèle includes many accounts of Hugo being admitted to present himself to Académiciens only after he announced his name to the person who met him at the door (VHR 612). In 1841, after three failed attempts, Hugo garnered a title when he was accepted to the Académie

Française to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Népomucène Lemercier. When applying for the first time in 1836, Hugo had visited Chateaubriand who, despite artistic and political disagreements with Hugo, promised to support Hugo by naming him during the votes: “Tant que vous vous présenterez, je ne nommerai que vous. Il y aurait dix tours de scrutin que les dix fois j’écrirais votre nom” (VHR 606).73 Chateaubriand fulfilled this promise during all of Hugo’s attempts to enter the Académie and even told

72 Barbès was released from prison in 1848 and shortly thereafter received another life imprisonment sentence in 1849, to be released again by Napoleon III in 1854, when he went into exile. 73 Mouchard writes about Chateaubriand’s decision to take leave of society in general: “Après 1830, Chateaubriand se pose en survivant. Il date de la Révolution de Juillet sa rupture avec la vie publique” (147). 105

him, according to Adèle, that he would make Hugo’s election his final act in this body:

“Tout cela me dégoûte tellement que je suis décidé à ne plus mettre les pieds à l’Académie. Aussitôt que vous serez nommé je n’irai plus.” (VHR 628). In a way,

Hugo’s election to the Académie fulfills his childhood dream of becoming

“Chateaubriand ou rien”, with this former master’s stamp of approval.

Before explaining public perception of this new role and title of Hugo’s, Robb conveys an amusing anecdote concerning Salvandy’s (the then-president of the

Académie) speech following Hugo’s reception discourse:

Salvandy snidely congratulated Hugo on having “courageously defended your poetic vocation against all the seductions of political ambition” and complimented him on the impetus he had given to “l’art scénique” – a synonym for “theatre” which caused a lot of sniggering because it sounded like “l’arsenic”. Mme Lafarge had just been sentenced to death for poisoning her husband. The suggestion was that the anti-establishment heroes of Hugo’s plays had somehow been accessories to this crime. In this strangely petty and monumental fashion, Victor Hugo and the Académie Française “effected their laborious and memorable conjunction”. Since no new collection of poems had been announced and since Hugo had not produced a play since 1838, it was assumed by many people that this was also a funeral service for the Romantic poet. In one sense, they were right. (VH 226)

The association of Hugo’s name with the Académie was difficult and faced resistance.

This alliance and conference of title looked like Hugo joining forces with the anti- revolutionary camp. Adèle’s biography of Hugo, which would not be published (initially anonymously) until 1863, ends with this 1841 event, giving the impression that this acceptance and title offer a concluding point in Hugo’s career (and life, as Adèle’s work is a biography). Adèle’s final words in her biography treat not the impact of this organization on her husband’s name but the impact of her husband’s name on this event:74

74 The final words of the biography are not from Adèle, but are from from an article written by Mme de Girardin that Adèle cites immediately after the “final” lines cited above (VHR 634-38). 106

Sa réception devint, dès lors, une rencontre de l’opinion avec la résistante compagnie. Le nom sonore de l’élu s’ajoutait au retentissement de cette solennité, dont chacun voulait être, et il circula de faux billets d’entrée. L’Académie, avertie, fit timbrer les cartes d’une tête de Minerve, et l’austère emblème prévint la fraude. (VHR 634)

The echoes of Hugo’s name, “le nom sonore de l’élu”, in affiliation with this event created such a public desire to attend that, according to Adèle, a market for fake tickets sprang up.

Hugo’s acceptance speech before this traditionally conservative body (and an audience that contained an unusual number of young women)75 includes an abnegation of his own authority as tied to his title: “Que suis-je, d’ailleurs, messieurs, pour m’arroger ce droit de critique suprême? Quel est mon titre?” (Politique 91). Following this self- belittlement, Hugo calls upon the established maîtres to recognize the legitimacy of the new budding renowns in France:

Honneur donc aux travaux des jeunes générations! Les puissants écrivains, les nobles poëtes, les maîtres éminents qui sont parmi vous, regardent avec douceur et avec joie de belles renommées surgir de toutes parts dans le champ éternel de la pensée. (Politique 103)

Hugo thus asserts that both sides of a generation gap owe each other respect. After again recalling the fact that each generation stems from its antecedents, he encourages the old guard to understand the enthusiasm of the youth and to honor their resistance. This Hugo seems to be crossing the gap from young to old in this speech, as he advises both parties on how to treat one another. This is also a Hugo becoming sanctioned after earlier garnering his renown through revolution. When receiving this title of official acceptance,

Hugo calls for this body to likewise sanction the literary revolutionaries to come.

When praising his predecessor to this seat, Hugo identifies a division within

Lemercier: “C’est ainsi qu’en ces années-là […] naquirent et se développèrent dans M.

75 See Robb, VH, 225. 107

Lemercier, pour faire face à toutes les rencontres de la vie, deux hommes, deux hommes libres, –un homme politique indépendant, un homme littéraire original” (Politique 97).

Such recognitions of duality within his predecessor reflects the similar study of himself that Hugo as well as many other scholars all put forward when analyzing “Hugo”.

Within this praise of Lemercier, this Hugo says he could offer some critique of his predecessor’s style, but that this job is best left to posterity: “La postérité seule –et c’est là encore une de mes convictions –à le droit définitif de critique et de jugement envers les talents supérieurs” (Politique 100). Because of the larger temporal perspective that posterity holds with regard to past figures, it is up to the future to judge the past.

However, posterity has a habit of reducing these names of the past to simpler significations and losing sight of their internal multiplicities. And neither side is distant enough from their contemporary scene to pass judgment on the eventual significance of a contributor to French literature.

Hugo includes in this speech a lengthy description of what he finds to be the mission of the poet, combining many aspects from earlier prefaces:

Dévouer sa pensée, — permettez-moi de répéter ici solennellement ce que j’ai dit toujours, ce que j’ai écrit partout, ce qui, dans la proportion restreinte de mes efforts, n’a jamais cessé d’être ma règle, ma loi, mon principe et mon but; –dévouer sa pensée au développement continu de la sociabilité humaine; […] faire pénétrer la nature dans l’art comme la sève même de Dieu; en un mot, civiliser les hommes par le calme rayonnement de la pensée sur leurs têtes, voilà aujourd’hui, messieurs, la mission, la fonction et la gloire du poëte. (Politique 104)

The transition from the 3rd person to the 1st person voice in the beginning of this sentence projects Hugo’s principles as the model for all poets. In this mission statement for himself and for all poets, Hugo presents a view of his ideas as unified over time. This move resists perceptions of division in Hugo, divisions that Hugo himself has identified in such works as Littérature et philosophie mêlées. He offers a vision of himself as

108

poetically unified throughout time. Moreover, he conveys a divinity to poets by comparing their ability to establish nature in art to the sap of God. Mortal interpretations of the form, inspiration, and intent of God may change over time, but the mission of God does not. Despite this comparison of poets to God, Hugo clarifies in this speech that only

God can fix the broken mirror of truth in society. A sage can put the pieces together and see the totality, but God is needed to actually mend this mirror. While poets may be godlike, Hugo clarifies that they do not have the power of God. And yet, admission to the Académie confers the status of immortality upon its members.76 Hugo’s poetic ascension towards the divine takes a step forward in this reception, and his projected significance of his name increasingly stands not just for that of all poets, but those who aim to be ideal poets.

XIV. A man of many names: Le Rhin, Les Burgraves, Pair, and Exile

“[…] Enfin les ans, l’oubli, L’effaçaient, quand un jour le maître, homme fantasque, Ayant changé de nom comme on change de masque, Y revint.” - Hugo, Les Burgraves

In his 1842 Le Rhin, a collection of travel documents cast as letters to his family,

Hugo portrays a seemingly more intimate “Hugo” to his readers. Robb describes this as a work in which Hugo carefully presents himself as a private Hugo here exposed: “This was Victor Hugo en déshabillé, even if he did spend a long time arranging his state of

76 On the Académie Française website, this offering of immortality is explained: “La qualification d’immortels, propre aux élus de l’Académie française, peut prêter à sourire, mais les académiciens en mesurent sagement la portée. Ils doivent leur surnom d’immortels à la devise ‘À l’immortalité’, qui figure sur le sceau donné à l’Académie par son fondateur, le cardinal de Richelieu et qui se réfère à leur mission, porter la langue française. C’est celle-ci qui est immortelle. L’ordonnance de 1816 qui rétablit les académies précise—art. 10—que ‘l’Académie française reprendra ses anciens statuts’; la devise décidée par Richelieu en fait partie” (1). A certain caricature of Hugo gives a humorous vision of Hugo’s immortality: “Already in 1871, a Cham caricature that appeared on January 24, in Le Charivari, showed an admirably statuesque Victor Hugo passing a boy who attempts to sell him a bullet-proof vest as an old woman exclaims, ‘Imbécile, pas à lui, Victor Hugo est immortel!’” (Garval 194). 109

undress” (VH 227). In the preface, dated January 1842, the preface writer describes the author’s mission as that of comprehending and explaining the events, objects, and difficulties encountered during these voyages. The preface writer also explains that had he published these documents “dans un but purement personnel”, he would have altered and suppressed much of the contents, including “le moi, cette mauvaise herbe qui repousse toujours sous la plume de l’écrivain livré aux épanchements familiers” (Voyages

7). Nevertheless, he presents a work full of this moi, implying a revelation of his personal self in its rapport with his family, impressions, and thoughts. In this work, Hugo specifies that “le moi, ici, est une affirmation” and to modify these documents would be to “remplacer la vérité par la façon littéraire” (Voyages 7). However, as Robb emphasizes and Hugo also admits in this preface, he did modify these documents at least slightly. If, as Booth claims, each letter contains a unique presentation of oneself, the idea of a publication entirely capable of honestly communicating a moi unfettered by its possessor’s intersubjective auto-projection is impossible. The moi is always a fabricated peinture of one sort or another.77

The effect of renown on authorial independence within a writer’s personal life appears in this preface to Le Rhin:

On le sait, la prodigieuse sonorité de la presse française, si puissante, si féconde et si utile d’ailleurs, donne aux moindres noms littéraires de Paris un retentissement qui ne permet pas à l’écrivain, même le plus humble et le plus insignifiant, de croire hors de France à sa complète obscurité. Dans cette situation, l’observateur, quel qu’il soit, pour peu qu’il se soit livré quelquefois à la publicité, doit, s’il veut conserver entière son indépendance de pensée et d’action, garder l’incognito comme s’il était quelque chose et l’anonyme comme s’il était quelqu’un. (Voyages 9)

77 Hugo thusly describes the “moi” in his preface to Les Rayons et les ombres: “[…] Enfin il y mettrait cette profonde peinture du Moi qui est peut-être l’œuvre la plus large, la plus générale et la plus universelle qu’un penseur puisse faire” (Poésie I 919). 110

Acknowledging that this precaution may seem vainglorious, Hugo goes on to say that this is the only way he could maintain the “liberté” required to collect his notes in peace

(Voyages 9). The fame of his name has grown by this time to affect his experiences even beyond the borders of France. Once again, one finds the combination of self- aggrandizement and humility in the form of a proof of his renown and a positing of supposed constitutive conditions (“comme si…”) that imply a denial of the legitimacy of this renown. And yet, this Hugo sees fit to include this detail of his voyages, thereby communicating the fact that he has—even if it is to his own surprise, as possibly one of these “moindres noms littéraires de Paris”—become such a well-known name that he must hide this name if he wishes to be left in peace.

Part of the reason for this incognito was also his travel partner. It would have been frowned upon for Hugo to openly travel with Drouet, so to mask the indiscretions of his “Olympio” alter-ego, Hugo and Drouet traveled under false names. In his pseudo- biography of Hugo that includes a great amount of invention, Ionesco ridicules Hugo’s usage of pseudonyms like M. Georget during these voyages with Drouet, “Mme.

Georget”.78 The following is an imagined conversation presented as fact in this work of

Ionesco’s:

Furieux, il dit à Juliette: “Les gens ne veulent pas me reconnaître?... Ils font semblant de ne pas me reconnaître?... Personne ne se présente à moi pour me dire avec admiration: ‘Monsieur Georget, ce n’est pas vous monsieur Victor Hugo? Je vous admire!’… Ces illettrés se permettent de prendre mon incognito au sérieux!” (52)

After suggesting that Hugo may have preferred to be M. Georget, Ionesco offers his own interpretation of Cocteau’s pronouncement (“Victor Hugo était un fou qui se croyait

Victor Hugo”): “Mais sur Victor Hugo pesait une malédiction: celle de ne jamais oublier

78 Hugo would also utilize the pseudonym “M. Go” and leave the spelling up to his interlocutor (Voyages 757). 111

qu’il était Victor Hugo” (48). According to Ionesco, the curse upon Hugo is his inability to escape being Hugo. While Ionesco here refers to Hugo’s pride, it is also true that

Hugo expresses an occasional need to separate himself from this name and all that it stood for to so many others. While revealing his moi to the reading public, Hugo admits to occasionally hiding and falsifying his identity. The exposure of a moi becomes in part the exposure of a multi-faceted construction of a moi from under which the carrier of the name Hugo must sometimes escape.

In March of 1843, Les Burgraves debuts and flops, marking what most scholars identify as both the end of Hugo and the end of Romanticism in the theater.79 Adèle’s explanation of the failure of this play, which was competing with Ponsard’s neoclassical play Lucrèce, lies in the excessive popularity of her husband’s name:

Le public se laisse faire. Depuis vingt-cinq ans, il entendait toujours le même nom, il en était fatigué, il n’était pas fâché d’entendre un nom nouveau. M. Edouard Thierry, alors feuilletoniste d’un journal disparu depuis, le Messager, expliqua très bien, dans un article intitulé Aristide, cet ostracisme dont Paris, comme Athènes, punit les renommées qui durent trop. Tout fut donc contre M. Victor Hugo et pour M. Ponsard. (VHR 595)

Here, Adèle points to the popularity and domination of the name “Hugo” as having led to a public fatigue with this name and the play’s ensuing downfall. According to Adèle,

Paris was punishing a renown that had overstayed its welcome.80

79 See Frey, 42. 80 A few months later, in September of 1842, Hugo’s eldest living child Léopoldine drowns in the Seine with her husband Charles Vacquerie, whom she had married in February of the same year. Loss and mourning enter into the public imagination as definitive components of “Hugo” from then on: “From this point onward moreover, his profound tristesse and admirable grandeur in the face of personal tragedy entered into the public’s myth of Victor Hugo and came to figure prominently in his iconography, gaining new currency with each successive, wrenching loss: the deaths of his wife (1867), of his sons Charles (1871) and François-Victor (1872), and of Juliette Drouet (1883), or for that matter his daughter Adèle’s insanity, for which she was interned from 1872 until her death in 1915” (Garval 176). Ionesco offers a scathing critique-cum-invention of Hugo’s reaction to the news of his daughter’s death by suggesting that he was more worried about the verses he created from his sorrow than about the loss itself (56). 112

Following the flop of Les Burgraves, Hugo entered a more politically-oriented portion of his career and gained a new title when he was named pair de France in 1845:

On 13 April 1845, the rise of the Hugos was complete—from labourer to lord in two generations. At the age of forty-three, Viscount Hugo was made a pair de France. […] On 28 April, he took the sacred oath and went to sit among the lords who helped to forge the destiny of the nation. Fans of the old, Romantic Hugo considered it a betrayal, the second nail in the coffin after the Académie Française. As Alphonse Karr put it, “What was the point of going to all the trouble of becoming Victor Hugo?” (Robb VH 252)

The once-revolutionary figure was receiving a great deal of institutional and governmental approval. These marks of official approval came accompanied by titles decorating Hugo’s name and impacting its significance. The changes in title saw an accompanying change in public opinion of Hugo.81

In 1848, Hugo was called upon to serve his city. During the February Days, Hugo became a leader of his quartier and was mayor for 8 days, during which time he gave speeches from his balcony. Without officially running for election, he still received nearly 60,000 votes in the Paris elections of April 1848 (Robb VH 267). Then, on June 4,

1848, Hugo was elected as a Paris representative. The barricades went up on June 23, and Robb considers the following events to be central to Hugo’s life:

What happened next was a turning-point in French history equal in importance to Waterloo; it was also the central event in the life of Victor Hugo. […] Hugo and fifty- nine other representatives were chosen to go and inform the insurgents that a state of siege existed and that Cavaignac was in control. Their mission was “to stop the spilling of blood”. (Robb VH 269)

Despite this mission of peace, Hugo led an assault on the barricades, which resulted in the deaths of many Parisian workers and insurgents. Hugo would also later adjust his

81 Shortly after receiving this title, Hugo also faced something of a scandal when he was caught having an affair with a married woman: “No sooner had he become a peer in 1845 than he embarrassed the monarchy: a police agent led by the aggrieved husband caught him having adulterous sex in a love nest. As a peer, Hugo was immune to prosecution on such charges, however; and once released, he promptly redeemed himself politically by speaking in defense of the institutions of the throne and the hereditary peerage” (Porter 66). 113

account of the event to imply that he had not voted for a temporary dictatorship during this Revolution, which he had in fact done (Robb VH 269). To add one more act that

Hugo would later sorely regret to this year, he was seen as resoundingly supporting

Louis-Napoleon’s candidacy for President through his son’s newspaper: “On the eve of voting, [L’Événement] published a one-page supplement consisting of three words printed 100 times: ‘Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’” (Robb VH 283).82 A Daumier caricature printed on December 11, 1848 in Charivari shows Hugo (recognizable by his very pronounced forehead) and Émile de Girardin unsteadily hoisting “Prince Louis” up into the air on a shield. While this association of the names Hugo and Louis-Napoleon would continue, it would change significantly in connotation after the 1851 coup. For example, in January of 1850, Hugo makes a speech in the Assemblée legislative against the Loi

Falloux (presented by the Minister of Public Instruction, Alfred de Falloux, and approved by Louis-Napoleon), which gave the clergy great power over the public education.83

Hugo’s name thus begins to be strongly connected with his support for the separation of

Church and State.84

Six months later, Hugo pronounces a funeral discourse for Balzac in which he says that Balzac’s works, which collectively compose one work, establish the monument from which his renown will emanate:

82 Ironically, in 1851, this newspaper would be put on trial after Louis-Napoleon hears that Hugo referred to him as “Napoléon-le-petit”. Hugo’s son Charles receives the brunt of the then-president’s ire, via an unrelated charge concerning an article the paper published. Victor Hugo acts as his son’s lawyer: “He was tried on 11 June 1851, defended by a lawyer as exuberant as he was inexperienced: Victor Hugo. ‘Continuing his father’s tradition! Some crime!’ said Hugo, pointing to the crucified Christ on the wall at the back of the court […]” (Robb VH 291). 83 Hugo reminds his audience of past intances of the clergy using the “au nom de” formula for unjust persecution: “C’est [le parti clérical] qui a anathématisé Pascal au nom de la religion, Montaigne au nom de la morale, Molière au nom de la morale et de la religion” (Politique 222). 84 Hugo makes a clear stance to this effect in this speech: “En un mot, je veux, je le répète, ce que voulaient nos pères, l’église chez elle et l’état chez lui” (Politique 220). 114

Voilà l’œuvre qu’il nous laisse, œuvre haute et solide, robuste entassement d’assises de granit, monument! œuvre du haut de laquelle resplendira désormais sa renommée. Les grands hommes font leur propre piédestal; l’avenir se charge de la statue. (Politique 327)85

He goes on in this speech to insist that such coffins as Balzac’s impart immortality because one cannot imagine that a genius in life could not be a soul after death.

Authorial immortality relies upon the monument of writing that the author constructs, which spreads the writer’s renown. It is the survival of the name of Balzac that will give him immortality amongst the living: “Messieurs, le nom de Balzac se mêlera à la trace lumineuse que notre époque laissera dans l’avenir” (Politique 326). Many see this speech as an example of Hugo actually speaking of himself despite ostensibly speaking of

Balzac.86

Like 1848, 1851 is a watershed year for France and for Hugo alike. Nine days after the coup d’état of December 2, 1851, when Louis-Napoleon declares the Second

French Empire (and when a Parisian theater was showing Hernani (Robb VH 291)),

Hugo begins his exile that will last for 19 years.87 This exile will become such a defining event in Hugo’s presentation of himself that his Actes et Paroles, published in 1875, divides the writings collected therein into three sections dependent upon his exile: Avant l’exil, Pendant l’exil, and Depuis l’exil. Adèle reveals the importance of Hugo’s exile that they imparted upon their children by describing their father’s exile as the mark of a new nobility into which they had now entered: “Votre noblesse à vous, c’est l’exil. Vous avez pour devise: ‘Victor Hugo expulsé’, pour couleurs ce fier deuil porté avec votre

85 Balzac’s funeral proceedings actually almost killed Hugo: “At the steepest point of the Père Lachaise cemetery, the horses faltered and he was nearly crushed between a tombstone and the runaway hearse: ‘Without a man who clambered on to the tomb and hoised me up by the shoulders, I should have presented the curious spectacle of Victor Hugo killed by Honoré de Balzac’” (Robb VH 289). 86 See Garval, 181. 87 The pseudonym that Hugo utilized to escape was Jacques Lanvin (Robb VH 305). 115

père. […] Ce que voulait votre grand-père est fait: vous êtes des privilégiés” (VHR 168).

With a new role comes a new source of title. According to Adèle, the nobility attached to

Hugo’s name and handed down to his children now stems from his exile and his resistance to Louis-Napoleon.

XV. Author of “nous” and “Dieu”: Napoléon-le-petit, Les Châtiments, and Les Contemplations

“Tout destin montre et nomme.” - Hugo, “Un jour je vis…”

Hugo’s political stances—and particularly his resistance of Louis-Napoleon— begin not only to dominate the significance of his name but also to align his life with his works in a new way. For example, with full knowledge that he would be expelled from

Belgium upon the release of Napoléon-le-petit, Hugo moved to Jersey on the day of this work’s publication, August 5, 1852.88 This work contains no preface, but it makes mention of the author very directly. Presented as a collection of accounts from the events of Louis-Napoleon’s coup, Hugo explains that he cannot reveal the identity of those who recount these tales, but that their truth is guaranteed by the fact that the author knows the names of these sources: “Il n’est pas un fait de ce récit derrière lequel, quand l’ouvrage sera publié, l’auteur ne puisse mettre un nom” (Histoire 46). Hugo here emerges as the unafraid holder of secret names and stories, many of which he collected in Brussels, which appear published under the umbrella of his name. He stands for the accused who cannot risk voicing such invective against Louis-Napoleon. Hugo clarifies this position in a note written after his exile for an unfinished preface to Histoire d’un crime:

88 When Louis-Napoleon saw the title of this work after it was smuggled into France (by many creative means), he reportedly said “‘Voyez, messieurs, voici Napoléon-le-petit, par Victor Hugo-le-grand’” (Garval 178). 116

Il y a dans ma fonction quelque chose de sacerdotal: je remplace la magistrature et le clergé. Je juge, ce que n’ont pas fait les juges; j’excommunie, ce que n’ont pas fait les prêtres. (Cahier Complémentaire 246)89

This sacerdotal mission aligns with Bénichou’s thought on Hugo: “C’est bien parce qu’il a incarné dans toute son amplitude, d’un pôle à l’autre, l’aspect conquérant du sacerdoce poétique, qu’il en est resté le symbole aux yeux des générations suivantes” (366).

Conquering priesthood, Victor Marie, these two realms of war and religion repeatedly combine within Hugo.

While in exile, Hugo begins his practice of including his location at the time of writing his prefaces alongside his signature. In 1853, a collection of poems primarily denouncing Louis-Napoleon appeared in the form of Les Châtiments.90 Accordingly, the preface to this work, dated 1853, also includes a geographical indication of Hugo’s location in Jersey. This practice of time-and-place-dating his signature emphasizes the connection between Hugo’s political persecution and his name. The final line of this preface casts human conscience as the thought of God: “Rien ne dompte la conscience de l’homme, car la conscience de l’homme, c’est la pensée de Dieu” (Poésie II 4). By going into exile and publishing these poems against the contemporary ruler of France, the author is following his conscience and is therefore obeying the thought of God. With the authority of God, Hugo presents himself as the just judge of the ruler of France. His

89 Hugo gathered testimonies in Brussels for Histoire d’un crime, which he rethought and repackaged as Napoléon-le-petit. Histoire d’un crime does not appear in publication until 1877. 90 This collection was of course banned in France, making Hugo a literary bad boy once again, or, as Robb puts it, a “fifty-one-year-old enfant terrible” (VH 328). Robb comments upon the impact of this banning on Hugo’s image for younger generations of poets and writers: “With Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, it was the most popular forbidden poetry book in the generations of schoolboys which included Zola, Verlaine and Rimbaud. ‘We felt that simply by reading his works, we were contributing to some silent victory over tyranny,’ remembered Zola. Every schoolboy knew that France’s greatest living poet and patriot was Victor Hugo; but they also knew that he disapproved of the nation as it now existed” (VH 327-28). 117

absence from this patria underscores the lengths to which Hugo will go to follow his conscience.91

During his time in Jersey, at the Marine Terrace house, Hugo added “mystic” to the many significations of his name by engaging in numerous séances with the help of

Madame Delphine de Girardin. According to Garval, it was these experiences that

“catalyzed his personal myth-making” and “set the grandiose tone for the rest of the period [of exile]” (179). Many famous religious, historical, and literary figures purportedly came to visit the Hugos during these sessions.92 Hugo’s renown amongst these well-known figures bolsters the legitimacy of his belonging in the lists of great geniuses:

Hugo’s fame had spread further than anyone suspected. Dante announced himself with the words “Caro mio” and congratulated Hugo on his recent poem, “La Vision de Dante”. When Napoleon I called, he was asked if he had read Napoléon-le-Petit. He had, and deemed it “an immense truth, a baptism for the traitor”. Chateaubriand also left his island tomb and expressed a more poetic view: “My bones moved.” (Robb VH 334)

A personification named “Death” even offered Hugo some advice on how to publish his works posthumously in order to rise from the tomb many more times than Jesus did. This surpassing of Jesus also takes another form during this phase of Hugo’s life:

If there is madness in the table-turning Hugo, it lies in his presumption that the publication of these texts would “found a new religion which will swallow up Christianity just as Christianity swallowed up paganism”—a view wholeheartedly espoused by the founder of Christianity himself on 11 February 1855. (Robb VH 338)93

91 The means by which Hugo presents himself (to Paris, France, and the world) during his exile draws great scholarly attention. Garval notes that Hugo put into circulation “carefully composed portraits of himself as banished hero” (187). It is in Jersey that Hugo poses for the now-iconic photographs of himself taken by his son Charles that present Hugo perched upon the Rocher des proscrits, looking towards France from his rock of exile. 92 Some of the visitors include Jesus, Moses, Cain, Judas, Mohammed, Joan of Arc, Shakespeare, Molière, Racine, the Marquis de Sade, Napoleon I, Mozart, Walter Scott, and Chateaubriand, just to name a few. The first visitor to communicate with the Hugos was Léopoldine, who had drowned ten years earlier. 93 One of Jesus’ quotations in the table-turning record about this future religion goes as follows: “Dieu est la grande urne de parfums qui lave éternellement les pieds de la créature, il répand le pardon par tous les pores, il s’épuise à aimer; il travaille à absoudre; l’Évangile du passé a dit les damnés, l’Évangile future dira les pardonnés” (Tables 246). 118

Robb’s interpretation of this transcript pushes the conclusion a bit: while Jesus does criticize Christianity and says that there will be an “Évangile de l’avenir”, he does not name Hugo as the creator of this new Gospel. Nevertheless, now that Hugo can commune directly with Jesus, he can still at least act as a transmitter of exactly this, a new Gospel, a new record of the word of the Christian son of God.94 The transcripts of these conversations would not be published until 1923, making Hugo’s Gospel a posthumous contribution.

Some saw Hugo’s prolonged absence from France as an indication that time was running out for him.95 Due to his protests against the British involvement in the Crimean

War, Hugo was expelled from Jersey in 1855. Robb mentions a remark Hugo makes concerning the connection between his name and his series of exiles:

A few years later, he noticed that his unofficial mandate from the oppressed peoples of the world was mystically inscribed in the two syllables of his name. Merely to say the name Hugo was to cheer him on his way: “Wherever I go on Earth, I hear…the Hu! of France and the Go! of England.” (Robb VH 350)

Hugo thereby reduces the significance of the syllables of his name to reflect the repeated expulsions he faced. This necessity to venture into the unknown aligns with a thought of

Derrida’s on the name:

94 Sadly enough, Jesus is one of the few personages to appear in these conversations who has not read a work about which Hugo inquires: “VICTOR HUGO: Connais-tu des vers que j’ai faits il y a dix-huit mois et termine ces jours-ci et qui sont par le fond et par beaucoup de détails identiques à ce que tu viens de nous dire? Il est arrivé plus d’une fois que les êtres mystérieux qui nous parlent par la table nous ont dit connaître nos travaux. Dis-nous si tu as connaissance de ces vers.” –Non. Victor Hugo sort” (Hugo Tables 254). 95 In 1854, Eugène de Mirecourt publishes an article on Hugo that belongs to his controversial collection entitled Galerie des Contemporains. Early in this article, Mirecourt emphasizes the way that people say the name Hugo and expresses a view of Hugo in exile as comparable to Hugo in death that we will see recur throughout this project: “C’est une tâche délicate, presque impossible, et que nous n’eussions jamais osé aborder peut-être, si Hugo (nous disons Hugo comme nous dirions Dante ou Shakespeare) n’était pas un de ces esprits heureux, un de ces rares écrivains qui assistent vivants à leur apothéose, et pour lesquels, sur le cadran de la postérité, l’aiguille avance toujours” (6). 119

Ce secret […] dénonce en enjoignant, il prescrit de déborder cette insuffisance, il ordonne: il faut faire l’impossible, il faut aller (Geh, Va!) là où on ne peut aller. Passion du lieu, encore. Je dirai en français: il y a lieu de (ce qui veut dire ‘il faut’) se rendre là où il est impossible d’aller. Là-bas, vers le nom, vers l’au-delà du nom dans le nom. Ver ce (celui ou celle) qui reste—sauf le nom. (Sauf 63)

Hugo’s forced need to make many different places his home while still recognizing

France as his patrie offers a very literal illustration of Derrida’s point. With each exploration of novelty within himself and each new resulting projection of the meaning of “Hugo” to those around him, Hugo adds significance to his name, which act of referential agglomeration makes this name impossible to define. In pursuit of his own name and renown (and while being pursued by former hosts), Hugo makes “Hugo” a secret or an enticing unreality, comparable to the proverbial pot of gold at the end of a rainbow composed of Hugo’s temporal, political, geographical, and literary trails.

By October of 1855, Hugo publishes Les Contemplations with a preface time-and- place-dated March 1856, Guernesey, in which Hugo embraces a new perception of himself as somehow dead: “Si un auteur pouvait avoir quelque droit d’influer sur la disposition d’esprit des lecteurs qui ouvrent son livre, l’auteur des Contemplations se bornerait à dire ceci: Ce livre doit être lu comme on lirait le livre d’un mort” (Poésie II

249). As if foretelling the 20th-century debate concerning the author, Hugo liberates his readers by pronouncing himself as a dead implied author.96 He invites readers to find

96 Genette also makes this connection between Hugo and Barthes: “C’est là, sans doute, l’information suprême, mais il en est d’autres, plus humbles, qui peuvent ainsi contribuer à guider un lecteur docile. Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, non exactement en préface, mais, nous l’avons vu, cliché d’autographe sur revers de couverture: ‘Tout ceci doit être considéré comme dit par un personnage de roman.’ Pour qui avait décrété, après bien d’autres, la ‘mort de l’auteur’, voilà une consigne bien auctoriale—pour ne pas dire bien autoritaire. Nul, il est vrai, ne l’a prise à la lettre.” (Seuils 194). Jenny spotlights this request of Hugo’s that readers approach this work as that of a dead person in order to study the multiplicity and evolutions of Hugo via his name: “L’identité visible de ce poète réside en son nom. Encore ne faut-il pas le confondre avec un autre Victor Hugo, le Victor Hugo du premier romantisme et de la vie parisienne. Cet Hugo-là n’est plus. La préface des Contemplations le stipule clairement en mars 1856: ‘Ce livre doit être lu comme on lirait le livre d’un mort’” (38). One may also find a correlation between Hugo and Chateaubriand on this point, as the latter’s posthumous work Mémoires d’outre-tombe 120

their own reflections within his works rather than those of the author. This preface writer then declares that all involved parties compose the “nous” drawn together in this work:

Est-ce donc la vie d’un homme? Oui, et la vie des autres hommes aussi. Nul de nous n’a l’honneur d’avoir une vie qui soit à lui. Ma vie est la vôtre, votre vie est la mienne, vous vivez ce que je vis; la destinée est une. Prenez donc ce miroir, et regardez-vous-y. On se plaint quelquefois des écrivains qui disent moi. Parlez-nous de nous, leur crie-t-on. Hélas! quand je vous parle de moi, je vous parle de vous. Comment ne le sentez-vous pas? Ah! insensé, qui crois que je ne suis pas toi! (Poésie II 249)

Hugo here asserts that his individuality encompasses that of all people, as is the case with each moi. A nearer prophecy than that of the death of the author emanates from this statement, as 15 years after the publication of Les Contemplations, Rimbaud would write a well-known letter declaring his own je to be an autre. Despite this act of onomastic expansion to encompass all of “vous”, Hugo goes on to explain that the divide in this collection of poems into two volumes, Autrefois and Aujourd’hui, is demarcated by a tomb, commonly understood as that of his daughter Léopoldine. By not naming his daughter in this preface, though, Hugo makes his loss more universal and open for readers to see their own losses therein. In death, both his own and his daughter’s, Hugo finds a way to open himself to all others and forge this universal nous. By and large,

France accepted this invitation to oneness with Hugo and made Les Contemplations a great commercial success.97 Robb identifies this work as the beginning of Hugo’s

“influence” on a new generation of poets (and the names that Robb picks out from this

was published in two volumes in 1849 and 1850: “Les Mémoires d’outre-tombe se donnent comme émanant d’un temps d’après la vie. La prétention est exorbitante. Plus encore que la chance, déjà insolente, de parler depuis cette lumineuse longévité que nous avons vu se mêler, parfois, à l’éclat posthume de l’œuvre…Sortant de la tombe, la parole s’arrache à toute configuration, refuse la réciprocité, elle s’érige en exception” (Mouchard 148). 97 Thanks to the great success of Les Contemplations, Hugo was able to purchase Hauteville-House on Guernsey in 1855. A myriad of representations of Hugo’s name (aside from the double “H” in the name of the house) were inscribed into the house itself, including the inscription “Ego Hugo” on the “Fauteuil des Ancêtres” that Hugo had built. See Garval, 191. Robb offers the following evaluation of visiting this house: “Hauteville House gives one the distinct impression of having been swallowed alive by Victor Hugo […]” (VH 389). 121

generation happen to coincide with the final four poet-centered chapters of my work).98

By opening his name to house many others, Hugo invites his readers to put their own individual twist of interpretation on his works. Some reader-cum-poets may have temporarily entered Hugo’s moi via Les Contemplations in order to forge their own unique moi in their own works. In this way, these future writers arguably carry a piece of the Hugo monument within them as well. And yet, as open as Hugo may make his name, it is still his name that is singled out as housing the names of many in this preface.

On the back cover of this publication of Les Contemplations, Hugo advertises a forthcoming poem entitled “Dieu”. The author pays very careful attention to the typography of such a paratextual phrase as “Dieu, par Victor Hugo”, recognizing how this claim of authorship could be interpreted as blasphemous. In reference to an April 6,

1856 letter from Hugo to Paul Meurice, Neefs and Mouchard offer insight into this dilemma:

Mais Hugo a très vite conscience du caractère exorbitant d’un tel titre. Ainsi, dans cette même lettre à Meurice, donne-t-il, à propos de l’annonce qui devait être faite de ce poème au revers des Contemplations, quelques recommandations de présentation typographique: “mettre Dieu très gros et: par Victor Hugo, très petit; car on ne saurait trop atténuer ce que ce titre, le seul possible d’ailleurs pour ce poëme, présente d’étrange à cause du par.” (152)

Indeed, the “par” presents the problem here, and Hugo here exhibits a careful attention to the hierarchy of names conveyed in this title-and-author onomastic combination via the

98 Robb includes Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé in this list of poets “influenced” by Les Contemplations: “Les Contemplations marks the beginning of his influence on a fourth generation of poets, which explains why the book appears to have been written by someone who lived simultaneously in both halves of the century: the états d’âme (‘soulscapes’) of Mallarmé and Verlaine, symbols which seem to detach themselves from wherever they might have symbolized; the cultivation of what Baudelaire was alone in recognizing as deliberate obscurity and an unFrench avoidance of the mot juste; the cosmic visions which impressed Rimbaud and revitalized the creaking tradition of astronomical poetry which, before Hugo’s colliding galaxies and planets torn asunder by rogue comets, had celebrated the spectacle of a Newtonian universe on its eternal best behavior” (Robb VH 356). The influence of Hugo is not the focus of the present work. However, noting the effect of this collection of poems on the generations to follow Hugo alongside Hugo’s explicit invitation for readers to find themselves both within his work and within his moi complicates conceptualizations of influence. 122

size of the font. And yet, every interpretation and representation of God is given by someone else. Analogously, each representation of Hugo is given either by an instantiation of Hugo the preface writer or by another person interpreting this name.99

The significance of such names as God and Hugo—and names in general—depends upon interpretation and casting by a second party, even if this second party is another version of the entity being named (as Hugo the preface writer names Hugo the author). Despite this possessive aspect inherent to naming, claiming authorship of God certainly presents a risky position for Hugo’s name, which Hugo tried to temper by paying careful attention to the means by which his name would appear alongside that of God.100 With this advertisement, one may note a reversal of the typographical attention Hugo gave to his name on play-bills in 1837. The “Hugo” author of Lucrèce Borgia should be displayed in large letters, while the “Hugo” author of Dieu should be downplayed. Perhaps this later

Hugo remembers how the public tends to react to his auto-naming events.

XVI. Master and Satan: William Shakespeare, La Légende des siècles, Les Misérables, and Les Chansons des rues et des bois

“Je me suis caché sous un nom […].” - Hugo, Les Misérables

In 1858, Hugo publishes an introduction to his son François-Victor’s translations of Shakespeare’s works that thereby offers onomastic support and authorization for his namesake. This introduction later grows to become a lengthy treatise on such topics as genius and Romanticism. The first line of this 1858 preface claims that for such a

99 Through their study of the manuscripts of this “texte”, Neefs and Mouchard find layers of interpretation therein: “C’est ainsi que l’on peut lire plusieurs Dieu, par Victor Hugo, par ses éditeurs” (154). 100 Porter studies Hugo’s poem “Les Mages” as giving its narrator superiority over other prophets of God, though Porter conflates the narrator with the author here: “But as ‘Les Mages’ (The Seers) makes clear in a poem cycle that more than once mentions John of Patmos, author of the Apocalypse, other prophets may not know what they are doing; they may be only involuntary instruments of God (part 3). Implicitly Hugo remains superior to all of them, owing to his lucidity” (104). 123

translation of Shakespeare to have been possible, the literary movement of 1830 was necessary. Thus Shakespeare’s works needed Hugo père’s revolution in order to allow

Hugo fils the liberty to provide such a literal translation. This preface writer underscores the juxtaposition of his name with that of his son:

Nouvelle par la forme, nouvelle par les compléments, nouvelle par les révélations critiques et historiques, notre traduction est nouvelle encore par l’association de deux noms. Elle offre au lecteur cette nouveauté suprême: une préface de l’auteur de Ruy Blas. Victor Hugo contresigne l’œuvre de son fils et la présente à la France. (Shakespeare 36)

Hugo père offers authority to his son through the power of his signature.101

The subsequent outgrowth of this preface, William Shakespeare, is published in

1864 with a dedication to England time-and-place-dated Hauteville House, 1864.102 The preface to this work (so the preface to what was formerly just a preface) is dated

Hauteville-House, April 1865. This preface appears in print with the final tome of

Hugo’s son’s translations. In this preface, Hugo makes a claim about Hamlet that can also be understood as a claim about Hugo and naming in general: “Fixer Hamlet, c’est le supprimer” (Critique 459). Such a claim echoes Plato’s consideration of names as necessarily in flux. Considering what Hugo writes about himself evolving over time (and their shared emblematic first initial), one could analogously say, “Fixer Hugo, c’est le supprimer.” Literary pigeonholing delineates the realm of significance of a writer’s work and risks preventing their works from metamorphosing (or, to borrow a Barthesian term, risks placing a “stop clause” on the meaning of the work). The same applies to the name

101 Genette studies such prefaces: “La deuxième fonction est sans doute, surtout pour les allographes originales, de très loin la plus importante; c’est surtout la plus spécifique, et qui motive le recours à un préfacier: c’est la fonction de recommandation: ‘Moi, X, je vous dis qu’Y a du génie, et qu’il faut lire son livre’” (Seuils 246). 102 Boulard analyzes the orthographic variations of Shakespeare’s name in a passage of this work: “C’est bien, en tout cas, ce qu’il faut entendre à considérer le nom de Shakespeare écrit par Hugo. Ce n’est pas un nom, mais les noms dans le nom qui font événement sur la page de l’écriture ou, plus exactement, les différentes lectures d’un nom que l’on peut faire […]” (337). 124

of a writer, which often comes to stand for their works. If one fixes or makes static the meaning of “Hugo”, one suppresses all of the other possible Hugos that could emanate from this name. This preface writer again emphasizes the importance of considering all of a writer’s works as a collective unit: “Un livre contrôle l’autre. Les textes s’entr’éclairent. Rien à négliger dans ce travail” (Critique 461). If one places these two thoughts within the confines of this study, the following message emanates: the name

Hugo is multiform and best left unfixed, and each work of Hugo’s benefits from all of the others. When describing his son’s translation, Hugo likens the construction of such a monument to a religion: “Il a senti, en accomplissant cette tâche, la religion de construire un monument” (Critique 462). It is for the glory of Shakespeare that François-Victor offers this translation-cum-monument, and such building-up of a writer’s glory becomes comparable to religious activity.

Many scholars underscore the visibility of Hugo’s “long-standing obsession with precursors” (Garval 180) in this work. Robb views William Shakespeare as a development of Hugo’s 1824 obituary for Byron, “in which Hugo had imagined the great names of literature forming a new family around him” (VH 181).103 While Hugo of course does not name himself as belonging to this list, he is not explicitly excluded,

“since ‘this is not a closed series’” (Robb VH 399). Robb here refers to the following lines that close Book II of Part I of William Shakespeare: “Ces suprêmes genies ne sont point une série fermée. L’auteur de Tout y ajoute un nom quand les besoins du progrès

103 Hugo does not gives names in this obituary but does posit the existence of such a family: “La nature lui avait donné une famille, la poésie lui en crée une seconde. […] Une douce communauté de pensées l’attache, comme un lien invisible et indissoluble, à ces êtres d’élite, isolés dans leur monde ainsi qu’il l’est dans le sien […]” (Critique 155). 125

l’exigent” (Critique 289).104 The power to add a name to this open genealogy of geniuses lies in the hands of God. Moreover, the cause for such an addition is explained as stemming from a need for progress, one of Hugo’s favorite dearths to fill. Public reception to this work was cold and suspicious of the implication that Hugo belonged on this list of names: “William Shakespeare was laughed to pieces in France. Victor Hugo was a lunatic. Victor Hugo should have used a different title: Myself” (Robb VH 401).

Such public perception of Hugo’s desire to see his own name rise to the height of renown enjoyed by that of Shakespeare reappears in Baudelaire’s anonymous and disparaging article that appears in Le Figaro in 1864.105 Bénichou identifies this work as the point at which Hugo’s idea of a “sacerdoce poétique moderne” takes root (355). One factor in this holy mission that may have been risible to the public was the attention given to the divine need for promotion of the names of geniuses. In other words, Hugo was seen to be authorizing his name and his mission with the name of God.

In 1859 (between the preface to Hugo’s son’s translations and his own work

William Shakespeare), Louis-Napoleon offers amnesty to Hugo, which he declines. This is also the year that the first series of La Légende des siècles is published with a preface time-and-place-dated Hauteville house, September, 1859.106 In this preface, Hugo says that this work should be seen as a beginning. The mission of the work is classified as a

104 Rosa studies geniuses in Hugo’s thought: “Souvent exilés, toujours suspects—‘un génie est un accusé’—les génies ne sont reconnus, s’ils le sont, qu’après leur mort. ‘Ce n’est pas le césar, c’est le penseur qui peut dire en mourant Dios fio’. Cela s’explique: la mort délie l’esprit des contingences, le rend à sa nature idéale et divine, et laisse le génie rayonner sur l’humanité entière. Il n’est pas an-historique, mais omni-historique. Reste que, souvent, l’histoire l’ignore” (“Histoire” 30). 105 According to Robb, a placeholder planned for Hugo during the tricentennial celebration of Shakespeare’s birth ruffled some political feathers: “‘Old Will’’s tricentenary was to be celebrated in the Grand Hôtel in Paris: a launch-pad for Hugo’s book and his son’s translation. The committee, which included Berlioz, Dumas, Gautier and Janin, decided to have Hugo represented by an empty chair draped in black. The Government heard about it and informed the management of the Grand Hôtel that the celebration was off” (VH 401). I will study Baudelaire’s article in detail in the chapter dedicated to his treatments of Hugo’s name. 106 Hugo often changes the spelling of this house’s name throughout his prefaces. 126

cyclical expression of humanity in order to make “l’Homme”, “cette grande figure une et multiple” appear under all of its aspects (Poésie II 565). Such a combination of singularity and multiplicity harkens back to Hugo’s presentations of himself as capable of hosting all people within himself. As a member of humanity, Hugo the author comes to resemble “cette grande figure une et multiple”. He reiterates this idea by describing “le genre humain” as “considéré comme un grand individu collectif” (Poésie II 566). These groupings are typical of Hugolian thematics and even titles, as in Les Burgraves, Les

Misérables, Les Travailleurs de la mer, and even Religions et religion. A line from this last work, which will not be published in its unfinished state until 1880, succinctly encapsulates this idea: “Tout n’est qu’Un” (Poésie III 990).

In La Légende des siècles, the preface writer states his aim as that of showing the legendary aspect of humanity throughout the centuries. He explains that two other works will complement this publication: “[…] L’Etre, sous sa triple face: l’Humanité, le Mal, l’Infini; le progressif, le relatif, l’absolu; en ce qu’on pourrait appeler trois chants, la

Légende des siècles, la Fin de Satan, Dieu” (Poésie II 568). Genette studies this projected plan as a double invitation for readers: “Invitation, d’avance, à lire deux fois: une première fois, dès maintenant, comme ‘tout’, une deuxième plus tard, comme ‘partie d’un ensemble’” (Seuils 204). This recognition of a changing view of a work over time can also be applied to the changing view of “Hugo” over time: each piece to which he attaches his name or in which he names himself can be read alone or within the legend of

Hugo as it evolves.

127

In 1861, Hugo grows a beard. This may seem like a very minor addition to the legend of Hugo, but Georgel sees this change in appearance as a crucial point for Hugo’s self-representation:

Le coup de génie se situe en 1861, lors de la brusque apparition de la barbe et de la tête blanche, coïncident avec l’achèvement des Misérables et le mort [sic] d’ordre de “l’art pour le progrès”. Nous renvoyons plus loin, à la séquence sur “le père Hugo”, qui raconte et en dégage les conséquences […]. (Gloire 74)

Garval aligns a bearded Hugo with the Bible: “This, together with the concurrent whitening of his hair, lent Hugo a distinctively patriarchal, Old Testament air, consonant with the public image as prophet and demiurge that he was promoting at the time” (188).

Hugo the father and Hugo the prophet become principal significances of Hugo’s name reflected in his physical self-fashioning in exile.

Georgel also mentions the dominance of Hugo’s name during this time, comparing the shadow it casts to that of his famous forehead:

Comme son “crâne géant” “crevait le plafond” de l’époque, le nom de Victor Hugo a obstrué l’horizon de trois ou quatre générations. Associant un prénom triomphal à une initiale monumentale, imprimé sur les couvertures de livres, placardé sur les murs, répété à l’infini par les médias et par la rumeur publique, il fait plus qu’identifier celui qui le porte: il le symbolise, le désigne à la fois comme personne et comme écrivain, reprend à son compte les propriétés héroïques qui lui sont attribuées. (Gloire 90)

Hugo’s own depictions of his name in his cartes de visite, postcards traditionally sent as a holiday greeting for the celebration of a new year, most of which date from his time in exile, also offer insight into how he envisioned his name’s reception during this time. He often drew his name around, amongst, and as constitutive of ruins.107 One even finds a

107 Jenny analyzes the presence of Hugo’s name in his drawings: “Et les encres ne doivent pas moins être regardées comme si l’artiste avait disparu de ce monde. Figurant cette mort symbolique, le nom du poète n’apparaît dans les dessins que sous forme de ruine monumentale, aux dimensions de sa gloire poétique passée. Mais, on l’a vu, cette ruine n’est pas anéantissement. En elle subsistent une sourde affirmation et une familiarité avec la lumière et les ténèbres qui lui confèrent une vocation médiatrice. C’est parce que le nom est exposé au drame de l’au-delà (la mort n’est pas vaincue, la ‘fin de Satan’ n’a pas encore été prononcée) qu’il peut en faire apercevoir des lueurs, jouant le rôle à la fois de filtre et d’écran réfléchissant” 128

carte de visite in which Hugo makes the “H” of his name out of the towers of Notre-

Dame.108 In this drawing, the smaller “VICTOR” is obscured by the shadow made by the towers of the “H”, while the “UGO” grows out of the cathedral and ascends into the light of the sky.109 Georgel studies the role of his name in these cards:

Singuliers messages! La volonté de puissance qui paraît s’y développer, accusée par le dynamisme des formes et par l’analogie avec les techniques publicitaires, s’accompagne des signes d’une gigantesque souffrance: ruines, chaînes, éclairs, taches de sang… Émile Verhaeren, dans un article de 1888, a bien perçu cette tonalité: “Quelques dessins, barrés de la titanique signature, n’existent que par elle, violente, tragique, pareille à des menaces divines…”. Souvent interprétées comme les témoignages d’un orgueil délirant (la caricature d’André Gill qui représente Vacquerie adorant le nom divinisé illustre avec bonhomie cette thèse), les “cartes de visite” traduisent en fait un message bien plus complexe, qui prend en compte le tragique de la gloire, les haines, les méprises, les échecs. Dès 1835, Hugo associait ainsi l’image de “son nom ravagé” à celle de “son nom rayonnant”, et, dans les années mêmes où il dessine la plupart des “cartes de visite”, voici comment il définit son nom, à la fois tout-puissant et persécuté: “…dire mon nom, c’est protester; dire mon nom, c’est nier le despotisme; dire mon nom, c’est affirmer la liberté…ce nom militant, ce nom déchiré, ce nom proscrit…”. (Gloire 90)110

Hugo presents his name as an act. The act of pronouncing Hugo’s name equates an act of protest, denial of despotism, and affirmation of liberty. By graphically depicting his name as embroiled in ruins, Hugo continues this vision of his name as one born in struggle—be it political, temporal, or literary—and one that deforms and reforms over time. This name can now serve as a tool for freedom for all others in similar struggles.

(38). Boulard also studies names and ruins: “Car telle est bien la caractéristique du nom, d’être hanté de sa ruine” (382). 108 This image can be found on pg. 90 of Georgel’s Gloire. 109 Garval also studies these postcards: “As we have seen with Balzac, the proper name was commonly understood, in nineteenth-century France, as the quintessence of the self, and in many of Hugo’s hand- drawn cards his name sprawls out, in giant letters, across largely imaginary architectural backdrops or landscapes, dominating the represented space […]. Hugo’s name is not simply incorporated into the landscape; rather, elements of the landscape are incorporated into Hugo’s name, as in the drawing in which the cathedral of Notre-Dame becomes the “H” in Hugo […]. His cartes de visite thus provide a model, a mise-en-abîme, of his struggle to secure lasting fame by both setting the stage for and starring in a grand spatial drama, by amplifying and imposing his name—and, in the largest sense, his self—through a symbolic geography of exile” (191). 110 The lines “son nom ravagé” and “son nom rayonnant” are from Hugo’s poem “À Olympio” in Les Voix Intérieures. Jenny also studies Hugo’s relationship with his name in ruins in his drawings from the early period of his exile: “Ainsi, chez le Hugo des premières années de l’exil, les encres parlent-elles ou – vaudrait-il mieux dire – donnent-elles à penser. Différemment des tables, elles ouvrent un espace de conjecture entre Hugo et lui-même, à travers une spéculation sur la forme détruite de son nom.” (39) 129

One here finds that it is not the poet, not the moi/nous voice of a preface, that can incorporate and stand for many, but it is the act of speaking Hugo’s name that can lend power to the weak. Of course, this declaration of Hugo’s that his name was an act was not sent to the public as an article or preface but was sent privately to Janin.111 The scope of Hugo’s intended projection of himself in this claim must therefore be considered as a more private one. However, Georgel’s juxtaposition of this assertion alongside Hugo’s cartes de visite does offer insight into a thought behind his depictions of his name. The struggle for liberty becomes emblematized in this name that Hugo claims is capable of fighting for freedom by its mere decree. In this manner, Hugo offers his name as an entity that can detach from its signified and that can act independently on behalf of others who struggle.

In 1862, Les Misérables was published with a short preface time-and-place-dated

Hauteville-House, 1862 that makes clear the call for an art engagé. To briefly examine the less paratextual presence of this author, certain incorporations of the name “Hugo” make their way into this novel.112 For example, in the beginning of the Waterloo historical divagation (which opens the “Cosette” book of the novel), the author appears to name himself as “celui qui raconte cette histoire” (Roman II 241) in order to describe a voyage to Hougomont:

C’était un château, ce n’est plus qu’une ferme. Hougomont, pour l’antiquaire, c’est Hugomons. Ce manoir fut bâti par Hugo, sire de Somerel, le même qui dota la sixième

111 The final citation from Georgel cited above comes from a letter Hugo wrote to Jules Janin on August 16, 1856. 112 Robb also finds that Hugo offers descriptions of himself within his characters, which study does not fit into the parameters of this work: “In Les Misérables, Hugo manages the unusual feat of describing himself seven times over in the various members of ‘The ABC Society’ […] who each share several moral and physical traits with the author” (VH 69-70). Robb goes on to call this novel an autobiography of sorts: “Like Les Contemplations, Les Misérables is a Great Pyramid with two routes to the centre: ‘the historical drama of the nineteenth century’, and the occult autobiography of Victor Hugo” (VH 384). 130

chapellenie de l’abbaye de Villiers. […] L’aspect monumental naît souvent de la ruine. (Roman II 242)

One would normally assume that it is the narratorial voice naming itself as the entity telling the story, but because this interjection is very closely followed by so many forms of “Hugo”, a conflation between the narrator and the author is here invited.113 The inclusion of the antiquated spelling of this castle’s name brings home its connection with

Hugo. Moreover, Hugo’s assertion that monumentality often stems from ruins calls to mind the drawings in which his name is intertwined with various forms of ruins. As

Hugomons became Hougomont, so may the components of Hugo’s name and their significances disintegrate and reform over time.

This novel was an enormous economic success, and it established Hugo as a “man of the people” who cared for the oppressed.114 On the other hand, others considered it dangerous, to the point that one Madrid newspaper, La España, contested its authorship by claiming that it was not written by Victor Hugo but instead was written by “a creature called Satan” (Robb VH 32). The New York Tribune of October 11, 1862 presents a very different review of this novel:

Such works as this appear but once in a century; Les Misérables is too humbly designated a novel by its author, for the novel is but a screen behind which the master sits proclaiming, as with authority, the grandest and most vital truths… Les Misérables is not a protest against Civilization, it is a call for a nobler and wiser Civilization, one which shall be at heart thoroughly Christian—that is full of Truth and Mercy. It is a hero’s plea for the outcast, the criminal, the spurned, the scorned, the revolting—it is Human Justice arraigned at the bar of Divine Benignity. (Rosselet 39)

113 Very early in the novel, Hugo also makes mention of a Hugo relative that bolsters this reading through the onomastic link of “Hugo”: “Dans une autre dissertation, il examine les œuvres théologiques de Hugo, évêque de Ptolémaïs, arrière-grand-oncle de celui qui écrit ce livre, et il établit qu’il faut attribuer à cet évêque les divers opuscules publiées, au siècle dernier, sous le pseudonyme de Barleycourt” (Roman II 18). See Boulard 361-62. 114 When the first installment of this novel was released, Hugo made a world record for the shortest telegram exchange with his publisher. To Hugo’s query of “?”, his publisher responded “!” (McWhirter 216). 131

“Hugo” became an international household name that conjured images spanning from

Satan to a “master” and “hero” who reveals great Christian truths.

Three years later, when he writes a letter that is read at the 600-year celebration of Dante’s birth (just one year after the tricentennial celebration of Shakespeare’s birth, fortifying the association of Hugo’s name with these precursor geniuses), Hugo was again seen as implicitly referring to himself when he praised popular reconnaissance of

“les grands hommes” as proof of a nation’s conscience (Politique 569):

Similarly, he, Victor Hugo, would be the conscience of the great French nation during what he saw as the dark hours of the Second Empire, and he anticipates his own people’s overwhelming gratitude upon their inevitable liberation. (Garval 181)

One may also recall Hugo’s description of the conscience as stemming from God. This makes recognition and respect for “les grands hommes” a divine mission for the masses.

He goes on to say that it is through the “fraternité des génies” that different national groups of people become unified (Politique 570). In this way, by aligning themselves in fraternal equality, geniuses become far more capable than politicians or rulers of unifying people. The resulting international alliance of peoples would form in the name of such geniuses and their progressive messages that stem from their divinely-endorsed consciences.

In October of this same year, Hugo publishes a collection of poetry entitled Les

Chansons des rues et des bois,115 in which preface (time-and-place-dated Hauteville

House, October 1865) Hugo divides himself temporally: “C’est d’ailleurs une sérieuse et mélancolique leçon que la mise en présence de deux âges dans le même homme, de l’âge

115 A poet of 63 years of age, Hugo includes many amorous poems in this work. Robb notes the ridicule that such poems received: “The frisky nature of the poems delighted reviewers and almost made Hugo regret publishing them prehumously. They were seen as the fruit of his dotage. The songs of ‘M. Vertigo’ were parodied, and almost lovingly ridiculed by Barbey d’Aurevilly (who had the grace to recognize them as a supreme example of French verse art) […]” (VH 409). 132

qui commence et de l’âge qui s’achève; l’un espère dans la vie, l’autre dans la mort”

(Poésie II 833). The preoccupation with death in this preface will reappear in future works. Hugo’s age (of 63 at this time) becomes a pivotal point in the changing significance of his name. This preface writer depicts the author as temporally divided into a youthful instantiation (reflected in the first division within this collection entitled

Jeunesse) and an aged entity (reflected in the much shorter second division entitled

Sagesse). This preface writer invites a shift in his readers’ interpretation of the author as divided. As opposed to the Autrefois/Aujourd’hui (separated by a tomb) and the

Avant/Pendant/Depuis l’exil divisions of other works, this work is organized according to the temporal aging of its author.116 “Hugo” is thus divided into “Hugo the young” and

“Hugo the wise”.

XVII. The (banned) name of Paris: Les Travailleurs de la mer, Paris-Guide, and Le

Rappel

“Deux petits pieds s’y étaient imprimés, et à côté il lut ce mot tracé par elle dans la neige: Gilliatt. Ce mot était son nom. Il s’appelait Gilliatt. Il resta longtemps immobile, regardant ce nom, ces petits pieds, cette neige, puis continua sa route, pensif. ” - Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la mer

In Hugo’s 1866 novel Les Travailleurs de la mer, the author inscribes the shape of an H into his fictional lanscape by wrecking the steamer, la Durande, between two giant rocks: “L’espèce d’immense H majuscule, formée par les deux Douvres ayant la

116 Robb notes the difference in reception between Hugo’s generation and that of his “grandchildren”: “The powerful effect of Hugo’s Chansons on Verlaine, Rimbaud and the Symbolists suggests that influences passed more purely and freely between the generations of grandfather and grandchild. […] Morally, Hugo sounded like a relic of the eighteenth century; aesthetically, he was a giant of the avant-garde. Neither quality was likely to endear him to his own generation” (Robb VH 410). Such generational divisiveness on the meaning of “Hugo” is not new (one will remember the similar differentiation during and immediately after 1830), but its nature changes here. Instead of a Hugo who explicitly calls for liberty, one here finds a Hugo of formal innovation in practice without great prefatory emphasis upon the need for poetic freedom. As Hugo ages, he seems to take up this magisterial voice that requires less justification for liberties taken. 133

Durande pour trait d’union, apparaissait à l’horizon dans on ne sait quelle majesté crépusculaire” (Roman III 194).117 The dedication writer of this novel, “V.H.”, more embodies the Hugo of “sagesse” rather than “jeunesse” by looking to the grave: “Je dédie ce livre au rocher d’hospitalité et de liberté, à ce coin de vieille terre normande où vit le noble petit peuple de la mer, à l’île de Guernesey, sévère et douce, mon asile actuel, mon tombeau probable” (Roman III 44). By placing a wrecked ship between two rocks five leagues’ distance from these islands to form the shape of an “H” in his novel, Hugo constructs an imaginary and ineffaceable tombstone for himself.118 For a frontispiece for this novel, Hugo draws precisely this moment in the novel and inscribes his signature in block letters falling off the cliff. Neefs underscores the erosion of this signature:

In contrast, Victor Hugo’s name is written in vertical letters that have depth and volume; each stands like a construction, but one that is bound to crumble. […] The name is caught up in its own cataclysm: the writing and the signature have been invaded, devoured, by the violent visibility they dispense—absorbed by the battle of the page. (“Written” 122)

Alongside his fictional ship that creates an “H” upon wrecking appears a disintegrating

“Hugo”. This signature is drawn in the form of a doomed construct—by the person to whom the name is attached. Like the ship, Hugo seems to imply that his name will also wreck and sink; or, perhaps this wreckage is the natural state of the signature. Perhaps this wreckage supports the monumentality of this signature.

117 A note of Hugo’s on the images created by this letter appears in the posthumous publication Tas de pierres: “Les mots ont une figure. Bossuet écrit thrône, selon cette magnifique orthographe du XVIIe siècle que le XVIIIe a si sottement mutilée, écourtée, châtrée. Oter l’h de trône, c’est en ôter le fauteuil. H majuscule c’est le fauteuil vu de face, h minuscule c’est le fauteuil vu de profil” (Tas de pierres, IV, 939). 118 Robb also argues that Hugo’s insistence upon preserving the misspelled “bug-pipe” (which should have been “bag-pipe”) stems from Hugo’s desire to incorporate echoes of his name in his works: “[…] It should be remembered that the creator of Bug-Jargal was tenaciously attached to the hieroglyphs of his name as if, like a child, he felt that a significant part of his personality was invested in it. Mere usage was trying to rob him of his UG” (VH 418). 134

Garval claims that Hugo makes this island of Guernsey his mausoleum while waiting for it to become his tomb (191). Who could have known that this death would not take place until 19 years later? In the short preface to this novel, time-and-place- dated Hauteville House, March 1866, Hugo explains that this is the third piece of a trilogy begun by Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables. The great unities of his works that earlier Hugolian preface writers hoped to one day explain are beginning to take shape, and as Hugo prepares for the grave (albeit a bit prematurely), he tidies up a loose end in his project of unifying his works and accompanying authorial images over time.

This same year of 1867, Hugo was asked to write the preface to the encyclopedic guide for the Paris Universal Exhibition, a choice revelatory of Hugo’s persistent fame in

Paris despite his exile. As Garval puts it, “[…] Hugo was honored as the voice of Paris itself […]” (182). In this preface, Hugo writes that Paris is the anvil of renown but that this “distributeur de popularité a parfois des avarices” (Politique 29). He goes on to discuss the names of contributors to this work as capable of being Paris itself if only other names had been included: “Si à tous les noms dont il offre la pléiade, il réunissait les autres noms lumineux qui, pour des raisons diverses, lui manquent, ce livre, ce serait

Paris même” (Politique 34). In reference to the list of names gathered in this publication

(including Sainte-Beuve and Gautier), Hugo also expresses a contradictory collective humility: “Si quelqu’un dans ce livre est peu de chose, c’est nous” (Politique 34). One here finds another blend of humility and self-aggrandizement. After the table of contents in this publication, the autographs of the contributors are printed, beginning with the largest and by far the thickest: Victor Hugo. If any of these names Hugo mentions was

135

given the spotlight, it was Hugo’s. Showing off Paris to the world begins with and depends upon showcasing this signature.

Writers’ names again emerge as capable of standing for far more people than just the single person referred to by the name. It is also in this preface to Paris-Guide that

Hugo envisions something akin to the European Union: “Cette nation aura pour capitale

Paris, et ne s’appellera point la France; elle s’appellera l’Europe” (Politique 6). He ends this preface with a call for France to become the world: “Subis ton élargissement fatal et sublime, ô ma patrie, et, de même qu’Athènes est devenue la Grèce, de même que Rome est devenue la chrétienté, toi, France, deviens le monde” (Politique 43). The categories in play in these three citations are an individual, a list of names, a city, a nation, a continent, a religion, and the world. These proposals for a list of names to stand for

Paris, for the continent of Europe to step down into the role of a nation, and for a nation to step up into the role of ubiquity represent categorical shifts of perceptive inflation (or expansion) and deflation (or reduction): not only can writers’ names stand for cities, but a continent can become a nation, and a nation can become the world. An ode that Hugo wrote in this same year, entitled “La Voix de Guernesey”, has a dedication that performs a similar categorical shift: “À Garibaldi. Un français c’est la France, un romain contient

Rome/ Et ce qui brise un peuple avorte aux pieds d’un homme” (Poésie II 1041).119 The categorical shift in this dedication allows one person to contain a city or a nation and have more strength than a people. Hugo presents these lines between categories as permeable. Within this schema, if one puts these shifts in conversation with each other, an individual (say, the person who writes the preface to the guide to Paris) can both stand

119 Hugo wrote this ode to honor Garibaldi after he was defeated by French-Papal troops at the Battle of Mentana in November 1867. The epigraph comes from Les Châtiments, Book III, poem IV (Poésie II 68). 136

for and contain Paris; and, since Paris can be the capital of a unified European nation, this one person can, by the transitive property, become the capital of a continent-turned- nation. Moreover, an individual-turned-capital can be stronger than the collection of many individuals who populate a capital city. An individual’s name can become akin to a city, a complex area full of history, peppered with monuments, and housing millions of lesser-known individuals whose combined strength as a people is sometimes weaker than their strength via this proxy individual. The possibility for Hugo’s name to stand for

Paris, for the capital of Europe, for France, and for the world is open. “Hugo” too can undergo such an “élargissement fatal et sublime” to eradicate its singularity and encompass all of humanity.

During this time, Hugo’s name also becomes increasingly associated with his longstanding opposition of the death penalty. In July of 1867, before the ode for

Garibaldi, both Hugo and this Italian general wrote to Mexico to plead for the life of

Maximilian I, a monarch placed on the throne of the Second Mexican Empire by

Napoleon III. Hugo had earlier sent a similar plea for the life of John Brown after his

1859 attempt to raid the armory at Harpers Ferry to begin a large-scale slave revolt. Both of these pleas of Hugo’s failed. Nevertheless, Robb notes one dominant meaning for

Hugo’s name following such acts: “For many, his name was synonymous with the campaign to abolish the death penalty” (VH 402). One here finds a public interpretation of Hugo’s (more aged) name that echoes his (youthful) preface to Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné by allowing the name of Hugo to stand for all of the accused facing institutionalized death. Another unifying thread thereby connects the significances of

Hugo’s name over time.

137

Hugo’s name had by this time garnered enough power to receive an official governmental ban for a literary event:

Hugo was delighted to follow the weekly adventures of his image. The issue for 13 June 1868 reported the Government’s decision to authorize a lecture series on French theatre, ‘on condition that the name of Victor Hugo not be uttered’. Rochefort imagined a bureaucrat briefing the Minister of Education: ‘Excellency, bad news. It has come to my attention that the name of Victor Hugo has been uttered 4852 times this week. I believe it advisable to reinforce the Paris garrison.’ ‘A worrying sign indeed,’ the Minister must say. ‘Last month, that baneful name was uttered only 2700 times.’ In August 1868, Rochefort fled from a flurry of fines and prison sentences totaling 16,250 francs, two years and five months and moved his Lanterne to Brussels. When he arrived at the Place des Barricades, Hugo’s Christ-like greeting was, ‘Sit here at my side, for you are also one of my sons.’ (Robb VH 426)120

The fact that utterances of Hugo’s name could be banned by the Government exhibits the fear that this government had with regard to the revolutionary power of this name and that inspired this body to treat Hugo’s name with a measure of trepidation usually reserved for the names of gods. Hugo’s “Christ-like greeting” for Rochefort projects an embracing of this image as powerfully divine. Again in 1869, Hugo rejected an offer for amnesty that would have allowed him to return to France. Garval proposes he did so in order to maintain his image as an enemy of the state, as such a compromise would have made Hugo “[lose] the considerable moral authority and public attention he enjoyed as the preeminent foe of the regime” (180).121

Still in 1869, Hugo’s sons, Paul Meurice, Henri Rochefort, and Auguste

Vacquerie founded the newspaper Le Rappel, to which Hugo’s name was not officially attached. Hugo claimed he was just a reader of this paper, but people suspected he was

120 From May of 1868 to November of 1869, La Lanterne, Henri Rochefort’s newspaper, was published. Robb cites above from this newspaper. 121 Hugo’s novel L’Homme qui rit was published in this same year. The brief preface does not offer much for this study of naming. It does, however, present this novel as part of another trilogy, encouraging a temporal suspension in the reader’s judgments of the entirety of this work, as the other works promised to follow this one had not yet appeared. 138

more involved than that.122 The first article that appears on the first page of the first publication of this newspaper is a letter to the editors of Le Rappel, signed VICTOR

HUGO, and time-and-place-dated Hauteville-House, April 25, 1869. At the outset of this article, Hugo explains that he cannot be affiliated with this paper because France denies him the necessary liberty.123 He goes on to say that, because of the “complications de la double vie politique et littéraire qui [lui] est imposée” (Politique 619), he never wrote for l’Evénement either. This Hugo praises the founders and editors of this journal as the vigorous youth compared to his augmenting senescence: “Vous allez combattre en riant.

Moi, vieux et triste, j’applaudis” (Politique 620). Hugo thereby presents himself as an aged witness who can no longer be embroiled in combat; however, he still points to 1830 as the decisive literary revolution of his time. The revolution remains germane, but the revolutionary is growing old (at least in the image he here projects of himself). There is another iteration of categorical expansion in this article, here applied to literature over time: “Le quinzième siècle, c’est le Pape; le seizième, c’est l’Empereur; le dix-septième, c’est le Roi; le dix-neuvième, c’est l’Homme” (Politique 620). This century stands out by failing to elect an exceptional sub-category of humanity as its focus and instead spotlighting the category to which all humanity belongs. The term “l’Homme” here acts as another capitalized singularity that encompasses all other people.

When recalling his defense of his son on trial in 1851 in this letter to the editors,

Hugo makes a remark about the reputation he held that shows an intersubjective self- awareness: “J’ai, heureusement pour moi, la réputation d’être bête. Ceci me sauva. M.

122 See Robb, VH, 422. 123 While Hugo may not write for this paper, he certainly dominates this first page of the first publication, through his letter to the editors and the devotion of the lower quarter of the page to printing the preface and the first chapter of L’Homme qui rit. 139

Victor Hugo ne sait ce qu’il dit! cria un membre compatissant de la majorité” (Politique

621).124 While studying Hugo’s name in the works of others throughout this century, one will indeed encounter the description of Hugo as being at least partially “bête”. Here,

Hugo embraces this reputation as conducive to the freedom to speak his mind. These two reminders of watershed moments in Hugo’s past (1830’s Hernani and 1851’s trial and beginning of exile), in which Hugo’s literary and biographical revolutions echo their coetaneous political upheavals, act as something of a summary of the major significances of Hugo’s name. The author then calls for the editors of this newspaper to provide a rallying cry for the youth, a youth that Hugo here claims to know and love: “Mes amis, et vous, mes fils, allez! Combattez votre vaillant combat. Combattez-le sans moi, et avec moi. Sans moi, car ma vieille plume guerroyante ne sera pas parmi les vôtres; avec moi, car mon âme y sera” (Politique 622). Once again, Hugo turns to a new generation of literary and political revolutionaries and presents himself as a grandfatherly figure who witnesses and approves from afar: “Du reste, je ne suis plus guère bon qu’à vivre tête à tête avec l’Océan, vieux homme tranquille et inquiet, tranquille parce que je suis au fond du précipice, inquiet parce que mon pays peut y tomber” (Politique 622). Comparing this projection of himself to the preface writer’s message of an author still promising many works to come, Robb finds Hugo is again split into two self-made images:

In other words, there were now two Victor Hugos running on parallel tracks: the writer who was racing against death to excavate and record the remaining contents of his brain, and the republican who was biding his time as if all eternity lay before him. (VH 422)

The final sentence of this article presents an expression of humility that risks being understood as another instance of Hugolian preterition: “Quant à moi, pendant qu’à l’occasion de sa noce d’or l’église couronne le pape, j’émiette sur mon toit du pain aux

124 See footnote 82. 140

petits oiseaux, ne me souciant d’aucun couronnement, pas même d’un couronnement d’édifice” (Politique 622). Some may interpret this remark about not asking for a crown as actually performing the opposite by calling attention to his lack of crown. This passage implies that it is still a shame that this revolutionary figure, who certainly is not asking for a crown, still does not have this mark of prestige.

XVIII. A Hugo’s Return: Actes et Paroles

“C’était un nom, un nom répété par mille voix […].” - Hugo, Quatrevingt-treize

In 1870, Hugo could, in accordance with his political conscience, again become an inhabitant of the nation for which he had become the representative voice. French forces were defeated by the Prussians, leading to the dissolution of the Second French

Empire, the abdication of Louis-Napoleon, and the rise of the Third Republic. The timing of Hugo’s return further aligns the significance of his name with the political state of France. Hugo returns to France on September 5, 1870, one day after the proclamation of the Third Republic. The writer held true to his narrator’s promise in “Ultima Verba”, from Les Châtiments, to remain exiled until the bitter end, even if he was the last one to do so.125 Gautier’s daughter Judith met Hugo at the Gare du Nord and led him to an open carriage that paraded him through the streets of Paris, giving him a hero’s return.126 Part

125 The poem ends with the following stanzas: “J’accepte l’âpre exil, n’eût-il ni fin ni terme, Sans chercher à savoir et sans considérer Si quelqu’un a plié qu’on aurait cru plus ferme, Et si plusieurs s’en vont qui devraient demeurer.

Si l’on n’est plus que mille, eh bien, j’en suis! Si même Ils ne sont plus que cent, je brave encor Sylla; S’il en demeure dix, je serai le dixième; Et s’il n’en reste qu’un, je serai celui-là!” (Poésie II 198) Robb draws a parallel between Hugo’s resistance and that of his father, who was the last general standing in Napoleon’s Empire (VH 45). 126 See Robb, VH, 447. 141

of the Boulevard Haussmann was temporarily renamed Boulevard Victor Hugo, enacting a tangible inscription of Hugo on Paris and allowing people to actually walk through

Paris/Hugo, bringing to fruition Hugo’s vision that a person could stand for and become an inhabitable city. Hugo wrote in his diary on November 27, 1870 that people were reciting his works without permission, of which act Hugo approved as he announced that his works were part of the public domain. Now that Paris has shed its shameful ruler,

Hugo sees himself inscribed upon the streets and recognizes his works as belonging to the people. Such marks of gratitude for public figures as naming streets and the entry of literary works into the public domain usually happen after the figure’s death. Throughout the rest of his time in Paris, more such events offer Hugo the aspect of living in death, of living in the time of the consecration of his name that is almost exclusively reserved for a time that writers do not witness during their lifetimes.

During this period of return, Hugo briefly becomes active in French politics once again, giving his name the political power to represent many. Upon being elected to the

Assemblée in 1871, Hugo travels to Bordeaux for a session on February 13. On the way, crowds formed to greet him by proclaiming his name as though it were that of a monarch, shouting “Vive Victor Hugo!”127 Two symbolic republican crowns—his elected title and such oral naming events appropriate for rulers—now adorn Hugo’s head and renown. In

Bordeaux, Hugo proposes a surprising and controversial solution to the Franco-Prussian

War that can be described as violent or even “genocidal”, as Robb puts it (VH 461).128

On March 8, when the Assemblée voted to annul the election of Garibaldi, Hugo resigned. A few days later, his son Charles died, which death required Hugo to travel to

127 See Robb, VH, 458. 128 Robb interprets this speech as Hugo’s embodiment of Gwynplaine, in which he makes “it impossible for his own policies to be taken seriously” (VH 461). 142

Brussels, where he would remain throughout the remainder of the Paris Commune.

When Hugo offered asylum to the Communards in Belgium, a different tone was taken with reference to Hugo’s name:129

That night (27-28 May 1871), a well-dressed mob gathered outside his home in the Place des Barricades, shouting ‘Death to Victor Hugo! Death to Jean Valjean! ...String him up!’ The windows were smashed. A large stone narrowly missed Jeanne [Hugo’s granddaughter]. The door downstairs shuddered under the blows of what Hugo assumed to be a battering-ram. Little Georges [Hugo’s grandson], struggling to keep up with events, was saying, ‘It’s the Prussians!’ (Robb VH 467)

The contrast is striking: in February, French crowds scream “Vive Victor Hugo”, and in

May, Belgian crowds call for his death. The conflation of Hugo and Jean Valjean here is also telling. Hugo’s character’s name now also serves to refer to the author. The blurring of the lines between authors, narrators, and characters becomes visible in this naming event. Like Valjean, Hugo is now seen as a criminal by some but as a hero by others. He was expelled from Brussels and embarked on his brief “fourth exile” in Luxembourg, where the local priest cautioned his parishioners that “Satan had a new religion—

Hugoism” (Robb VH 467). In this image, Hugo emerges as so evil that he represents

Satan and leads the demon’s followers. At 69 years of age, Hugo still finds his name eliciting starkly opposed interpretations: Hugo the heroic and Hugo the demonic.

The organizers of the 1874 centenary celebration of Petrarch’s birth invited Hugo to the event, asking him to serve as a “main glorieuse et véritablement fraternelle” that could “au nom des républicains de France, serrer la main que vont nous tendre les enfants d’une nation à laquelle nous voudrions témoigner de sincères sentiments de sympathie”

(Politique 879). Hugo was therefore called to speak in the name of French republicans.

Unable to attend, Hugo instead sent a letter in which he situates Petrarch below Dante

129 Hugo would continue this fight for total amnesty for Communards until it was granted in 1880. 143

because the former was more appreciated and less persecuted than the latter: “Il lui manque l’insulte, le deuil, l’affront, la persécution. Dans la gloire Pétrarque est dépassé par Dante, et le triomphe par l’exil” (Politique 881). If one applies these criteria to Hugo, one finds that he attains both of these types of glory, as he both lived in exile and returned in triumph.130

Hugo’s tendency to not only speak in his own voice but to also incorporate his biographical information into his writing continues with the publication of Mes fils this same year, which piece later appears in Actes et paroles. As the frequency of prefaces declines, the presence of Hugo’s authorial and autobiographical voice within his works increases. The man, his printed words, his biographical events, the legend the public receives and propagates of him, the monument, and the name Hugo are progressively conflating into one giant entity, guided by the hand of the signified attached to the name.

In this work, Hugo describes his and his sons’ return from exile in a manner that implicitly aligns himself more with the suffering of Dante than the glory of Petrarch: “Au bout de dix-neuf ans l’exil cesse, ils rentrent, les voilà dans la patrie; ils sont attendus en effet, eux par la tombe, lui par la haine” (Politique 54). Glossing over the hero’s welcome, Hugo here focuses on the other extreme of France’s reaction to his return. As earlier mentioned, Hugo’s personal exile becomes a determining factor in the means by which Hugo organizes his writings for Actes et paroles, which is divided into three sections: “Avant l’exil” (1875), “Pendant l’exil” (1875), and “Depuis l’exil” (1876).

130 During this same year, Hugo’s final novel Quatrevingt-treize is published. The name of one of the main characters in this work, Gauvain, is Juliette Drouet’s maiden name. Drouet offers a more private naming event for Hugo during this time: “Juliette, who lived on a cycle of ignorance and rude reawakening, was coming to the end of a phase of blind worship. Copying out Quatrevingt-treize with an arthritic hand brought her to her knees with admiration: ‘In the coming age, the calendar will be dated from Victor Hugo as it is from Jesus’” (Robb VH 484). According to Drouet, Hugo will surpass Christ and mark the commencement of calendar time. 144

Actes et paroles presents speeches and articles of Hugo’s that simultaneously expose a political and a personal Hugo by organizing these statements around a major life event.

An invitation is thus extended to contextualize Hugo’s works and allow the man and the writer to be mutually imbricated. The signature “Victor Hugo” should also impart knowledge of the writer’s life and the consequently shifting ideas of this figure.

The initial articles of these sections are often considered as prefatory, and all three treat some aspect of naming.131 The first piece of “Avant l’exil”, entitled “Le Droit et la

Loi”, includes a passage concerning the source of Hugo’s name:

Nous les enfants, nous ne savions rien de [Lahorie], sinon qu’il était mon parrain. Il m’avait vu naître; il avait dit à mon père: Hugo est un mot du nord, il faut l’adoucir par un mot du midi, et compléter le germain par le romain. Et il me donna le nom de Victor, qui du reste était le sien. (Politique 74)

In 1875, one here finds a Hugo fortifying his image as multiple, which is reflected in the duality of his onomastic baptism. The first piece of “Pendant l’exil”, entitled “Ce que c’est que l’exil”, describes this experience and its effect on the author’s name: “Toutes les persécutions des maîtres se déchaînaient sur lui, et il y avait, et il y a encore, sur son nom une inexprimable condensation de haine […]” (Politique 416). By positing his name as the site of condensation for all of this hatred, Hugo suggests a misunderstanding: because his name has reached so many people, many of whom do not know the man to whom the name refers, they may more easily hate this detached name than they would hate someone they knew personally. The first piece of “Depuis l’exil”, entitled “Paris et

Rome”, makes explicit the inhabitation of this work by a person:

Une vie entière est dans ces trois volumes. Elle y est complète. Dix ans dans le tome premier; dix-neuf ans dans le tome second; six ans dans le tome troisième. Cela va de 1841 à 1876. On peut dans ces pages réelles étudier jour par jour la marche d’un esprit

131 See Robb, VH, 499. 145

vers la vérité; sans jamais un pas en arrière; l’homme qui est dans ce livre l’a dit et le répète. Ce livre, c’est quelque chose comme l’ombre d’un passant fixée sur le sol. Ce livre a la forme vraie d’un homme. (Politique 699)

According to Hugo, one will find “une vie” in this work. His avoidance of hammering home the point that it is Hugo’s life and the man Victor Hugo that one will find in this collection allows for another expansion of the significance of this name. This description of the true form of a person as comparable to the shadow of a passer-by cast upon the ground likens this being to a silhouette, an outline whose precise features are indistinguishable.132 Such an image erases the individuality of this figure. By not naming the life contained in this work, the writer opens this life to freedom from the hatred attached to the name “Hugo” since his exile. While Hugo’s exile acts as his means of dividing this collection, one also finds that naming events also do so: in the first introductory piece, he describes the origins of his name and his double baptism; in the second, the hatred that this name inspires; and in the third, the disappearance of the name into an anonymous shadow person comparable to a life. The limitations on a name’s capacity for signification here come to the fore: a name cannot contain a life, but a

(signed) book can contain the shadow of a life.

XIX. Naming Hugo, Naming a Century: L’Art d’être grand-père, L’Histoire d’un crime, and a pre-posthumous Hugo

“La vie de Victor Hugo contient tous les enseignements, tous les exemples. La raconter, c’est écrire l’histoire de la nation française pendant les cent années dernières, c’est résumer l’histoire de tous les peuples et celle de la civilisation humaine.” - Barbou, La vie de Victor Hugo

132 Brombert notes that Hugo considered naming Part I of Les Misérables “Un Passant”: “The recurrent trope of the passer-by is in fact wedded to the larger themes of passage, transition, effacement, and becoming. […] And effacement, for Hugo, is always part of a process of transformation” (91). 146

In 1877, Hugo publishes L’Art d’être grand-père, which collection of poetry has no preface but does impact the public perception of this writer by “[establishing] him as the national ancestor par excellence” (Garval 197). The poems in this work primarily stem from Hugo’s observations of his two grandchildren (Georges and Jeanne), and they play a significant role in Third Republic school curricula for several decades.133 One poem’s title plays with Hugo’s name. Entitled “Victor, sed victus”, which in Latin means

“Victor, but defeated”, the narrator describes all of the enemies he has conquered with his

“vers sombre” only to finally be “vaincu par un petit enfant” (Poésie III 720). Hugo’s self-presentation as an indulgent grandfather offers another shade of significance to the popular perception of this aging name.

This same year, Hugo projects an image of himself that contrasts with this grandfatherly persona in Histoire d’un crime. Déposition d’un témoin, which had evolved into Napoléon-le-petit in 1852. Histoire d’un crime harkens back to an earlier political accusation of Hugo’s and emphasizes its contemporary relevance. The following year, 1878, sees the publication of the second volume. The very short preface to this work insists upon its relevance: “Ce livre est plus qu’actuel; il est urgent. Je le publie. V.H. Paris, 1er octobre 1877” (Histoire 154).134 An 1878 review of Hugo’s testimony of the crime of Louis-Napoleon’s coup d’état, from the American magazine

The Nation, criticizes this work on the grounds of its anachronistic projection of “Hugo”:

133 Garval states that Hugo organized this work as a didactic volume by presenting progressively more difficult poetry, just four years before the lois Jules Ferry that made primary school free in 1881 and non- religious in 1882 (197). 134 In May of 1877, a constitutional crisis occurrs in France when the royalist president Patrice MacMahon dismisses the Prime Minister and dissolves Parliament when they fail to support the president. The ensuing elections announce a resounding victory for the republicans and defeat of the royalists. Hugo had been reelected to the Senate in 1876, but his initial speech’s pleas for the Communards “ensured that his influence in the Senate would be negligible” (Robb VH 500). He soon thereafter returns to Guernsey because of his poor health. 147

If the historian of a crime could have told calmly the story of the Coup d’état he might both have covered the criminal with infamy and have shown the strength of the Republic of 1878. Victor Hugo, however, who is still at heart the Republican of 1848, if he has revived the memory of Louis Napoleon’s crimes, has also recalled to the recollection of the world the follies of the Republicans which made possible the triumph of the President. One object of the work has been missed, and the book will remain for ever a monument of the failure to which even genius is exposed when attempting tasks unsuited for its powers. (391)

This American account of a multiplicity of Hugos from different temporal and political contexts identifies the failure of Histoire d’un crime as stemming from Hugo’s anachronistic conjuring of a former self and a past political context. From this review, one senses that at least this public preferred an aging Hugo more reflective of his contemporaneous status to a throwback to a former Hugo; in other words, Hugo should stick to being a grandfather now and not a revolutionary.

The 1878 ceremony commemorating the centenary of Voltaire’s death included a speech from Hugo which many view as indicative of the means by which Hugo himself desired to be perceived.135 Hugo’s begins his speech by asserting that Voltaire died immortal:

Il y a cent ans aujourd’hui un homme mourait. Il mourait immortel. […] Il s’en allait maudit et béni, maudit par le passé et béni par l’avenir, et ce sont là, messieurs, les deux formes superbes de la gloire. (Politique 984)

Like Dante (and Hugo), Voltaire experienced the persecution and exile that Hugo claims lead to a superior, lasting glory. Hugo also confers onto Voltaire the role of standing for far more than just one person: “Il était plus qu’un homme, il était un siècle” (Politique

984). Moreover, Hugo claims that Voltaire fought the war of Jesus in this speech,

135 Garval takes this stance: “Once again, he invoked these precursors to talk about himself, beginning the speech with this portrait of Voltaire as Victor Hugo […]. This is how Hugo wanted himself to be seen, upon the threshold of the hereafter: as already immortal, and as both the fertile creator of ‘works’ and virtuous guardian of human conscience’s sacred flame. He also wrestled once again with the potential liability of his overwhelming current-day renown” (195). Robb describes this speech as Hugo’s eulogy for himself: “[…] Hugo pronounced what sounded like his own funeral oration” (VH 504). 148

recalling Hugo’s own vocation for enacting holy wars. He then goes on to list many other great men of the 18th Century, building a now-familiar family of geniuses who have passed on their soul, which Hugo names “la Révolution”, to the following generations, including the contemporary “nous” (Politique 984). As seen in certain of his prefaces,

Hugo here very explicitly states that the geniuses of the past create the geniuses that follow them: “[…] On voit derrière Diderot Danton, derrière Rousseau Robespierre, et derrière Voltaire Mirabeau. Ceux-ci ont fait ceux-là” (Politique 989). Having established this means by which importance and renown are inherited and passed on,

Hugo analyzes the significance of naming a century after an individual:

Messieurs, résumer des époques dans des noms d’hommes, nommer des siècles, en faire en quelque sorte des personnages humains, cela n’a été donné qu’à trois peuples, la Grèce, l’Italie, la France. On dit le siècle de Périclès, le siècle d’Auguste, le siècle de Léon X, le siècle de Louis XIV, le siècle de Voltaire. Ces appellations ont un grand sens. Ce privilège, donner des noms à des siècles, exclusivement propre à la Grèce, à l’Italie, et à la France, est la plus haute marque de civilisation. (Politique 984)

One here finds an extension of the earlier claim that an individual can stand for geographical areas like cities, nations, countries, and continents. Here, Hugo discusses the simultaneously temporal and national naming of a country’s century after an individual. In this manner, the power of a person’s name is further expanded to allow it to stand not just for a place and a people, but also for an epoch.

While Hugo does not explicitly propose that his own name come to stand for the

19th Century in France, others do just this:

For the pre-posthumously immortal great man then—Voltaire in the 1770s, Hugo in the 1870s—the present is already conjoined with the glorious future. Much like the Emersonian ‘representative man’ (Emerson 1930), the Hugolian grand homme embodies his time and place. Poised on the brink of posterity, triumphant over the objections of the past, and revered in old age as he promises to be forever after, the grand homme does not just speak for and span his century. Hugo, like Voltaire, is his century. (Garval 195)136

136 Neefs mentions Hugo as an exemplary “grand homme”: “On ne peut cependant pas oublier que le culte des ‘Grands Hommes’ a été abondamment cultivé dans tout le XIXe siècle, autour de la légende 149

In the publication of this speech in Actes et paroles, the reader finds audience responses to Hugo’s statements that support this implication that Hugo will be for the 19th Century what Voltaire is named by Hugo as being for the 18th Century. After the final words,

“[…] Et, puisque la nuit sort des trônes, que la lumière sorte des tombeaux!”, the audience shouts not Voltaire’s but Hugo’s name: “(Acclamation unanime et prolongée.

De toutes parts éclate le cri: Vive Victor Hugo!)” (Politique 991). Since these cries for

Hugo to live immediately follow his wish that the light of such “pre-posthumous immortals” continue to emanate from their graves, and because these cries come after

Hugo dubs the French 18th Century “Voltaire”, the message becomes that “Hugo”, like

Voltaire, is both already immortal before his death and synonymous with the French 19th

Century. Balzac’s earlier statement on Hugo echoes this later belief: “Victor Hugo, mais c’est un monde, n’en parlons plus!” (Barbou 405). In the final paragraph of his 1881 biography of Hugo, Barbou chimes in with this belief:

Quoi qu’il arrive, ce dix-neuvième siècle, qui a vu les prodigieuses conquêtes de la science, les stupéfiantes découvertes de l’industrie, qui a enfanté la vapeur et l’électricité, qui a peuplé la France et le monde de légions d’hommes illustres, qui a vu de si grands et de si terribles évènements, ce siècle, malgré ses savants et malgré ses triomphes, n’aura qu’un nom pour la postérité: il s’appellera le siècle de Victor Hugo. (464)137

Even though there still remained 14 years in this century, and even though Hugo was still alive, his name is already immortalized as the signifier of his nation’s century as early as

1881.

napoléonienne, avec les héros politiques des révolutions, ou encore les grandes figures populaires, comme Victor Hugo” (“Haine” 751). 137 This passage reappears in different wording in the 1886 edition of Barbou’s biography, after Hugo’s death, this time on the first page instead of the last: “Oui, malgré ses prodigieuses conquêtes et ses découvertes scientifiques, malgré ses guerres formidables et glorieuses, notre dix-neuvième siècle s’appellera pour la postérité le siècle de Victor Hugo; il portera le nom de celui qui est entré vivant dans l’immortalité pour avoir, avec un éclat incomparable, servi l’humanité” (3). 150

In Lacanian thought, Hugo at this point exists between the two deaths: he has already endured a symbolic death before undergoing his real death.138 Lacan illustrates this idea with the example of Antigone: “Antigone se présente comme αὐτόνομος

[autonomos], pur et simple rapport de l’être humain avec ce quelque chose dont il se trouve être miraculeusement porteur, à savoir la coupure signifiante, ce pouvoir infranchissable d’être envers et contre tout ce qu’il est” (Sém. VII 328). The autonomy of

Antigone emerges when she finds herself between the two deaths. An etymological comparison of autonomous (from autos, “self ”, and nomos, “law”) and onomastic (from onoma, “name”) accentuates the shared phoneme of “nom”.139 Hugo’s state of existence between the two deaths involves self-legislation and/as naming. While Hugo is between his two deaths (the symbolic and the real), he gains a rare control over the posthumous meaning of his own name. He becomes his own posthumous namer, or, in Platonic terms, his own posthumous legislator. In this case, one can consider autonomy as an auto-legislative onomastic capacity in which one endeavors to establish the law of one’s own name for posterity before one’s real death. Hugo is defining the dead “Hugo” before this death occurs.

Hugo’s paradoxical defiance of normal life progressions (by being both dead and immortal while still alive) reappears the following year, in 1879, when his poem La Pitié suprême is published. In 1878, Hugo had a mild stroke and had his friends publish his works to keep up the appearance of a continued literary vivacity:

138 Lacan utilizes the term “la zone de l’entre-deux-morts” in Séminaire VII (369). Brombert identifies a similar phenomenon at work in Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné: “Alienated from the other prisoners (the death penalty sets him apart from convicts who have been dealt less severe sentences), estranged even from himself, the Condemned Man projects his whole being as an already posthumous reality” (28). 139 See Online Etymology Dictionary, 1. One may recall that Gray underscores this connection when explicating the Cratylus: “This becomes more clear when one compares the original Greek words onoma (name), and nomos (law), taking care to notice the similarity between the two words and how Socrates plays on this to illustrate his point” (61). 151

For the outside world, the illusion of vitality was preserved by Vacquerie and Meurice. The effects of their editorial ventriloquism can be seen in the misleading list of Hugo’s final publications: three long poems—La Pitié Suprême (1879), Religions et Religion and L’Ane (1880); an anthology, Les Quatre Vents de l’Esprit (1881); a play, Torquemada (1882), and the ‘final series’ of La Légende des Siècles (1883). All these works had been written many years before. But since Hugo had often described his writings as messages from the dead to the living, it was appropriate that his ‘posthumous’ works should begin to appear while he was still alive. (Robb VH 509)

One line from Religions et religion crystallizes the combined plurality and singularity of

God(s) and, by extension, Hugo(s): “Tout n’est qu’Un” (Poésie III 990). The seeming reduction of “tout” to “un” is inverted by the capitalization of “Un”. Such reductions of all meanings into the proper noun Un serve to exalt this article to the status of a name.

While this exaltation depends upon a minimization (“n’est que..”), it also sheds light on the nature of names as being a composite of all of the possible significances of this name.

The year following the publication of Religions et religion, 1881, sees the celebration of Hugo’s 80th year of life. On February 26, 1881, Hugo turned 79 years old.

The strange celebration of his “entering” his 80th year indicates a prevailing concern that

Hugo may not actually live to see 80 years. Moreover, as Robb explains, the fact that this celebration occurred on Hugo’s actual birthday also holds significance: “The choice of date was clearly political. In the past, the celebration would have fallen on the saint’s day, the Saint-Victor; but this was the modern, secular Republic, celebrating a strictly pagan apotheosis” (VH 513). The significance of Victor Hugo’s name has surpassed that of the saint whose name he carries.140 This name now belongs to Hugo. The two-day festivities celebrating Hugo included a governmental gift of a Sèvres vase to Hugo, a

140 It is also relevant to note the reason for which people were named after saints: “In a traditional Catholic society, naming after the saints had obvious religious meaning. After the Council of Trent, the Church laid down that children should be given the names of canonized saints, so that those saints might act as models and as special protectors and advocates before God” (Wilson 191). Once again, naming, the law, and God coincide: the saint after whom a person was named was to speak on behalf of the namesake after their inevitable transgressions against God. 152

pardon extended to all schoolchildren with outstanding punishments, performances of

Lucrèce Borgia, and an immense procession, “the longest procession seen in Paris since the days of Napoleon Bonaparte” (Robb VH 514), of over half a million people that moved from the Arc de Triomphe to Hugo’s window as he looked on with his grandchildren. Jules Claretie’s description of this event includes the account of a young boy reading a Mendès poem to Hugo, entitled “Compliment au grand-père” which casts

Hugo as the “ancêtre” and “grand-père” to the lowly larks of the next generation (90).

In his speech from his window during this ceremony, Hugo precisely clarifies the role of the name in which he speaks:

Je salue Paris. Je salue la ville immense. Je la salue, non en mon nom, car je ne suis rien; mais au nom de tout ce qui vit, raisonne, pense, aime et espère ici-bas. Les villes sont des lieux bénis; elles sont les ateliers du travail divin. Le travail divin, c’est le travail humain. Il reste humain tant qu’il est individuel; dès qu’il est collectif, dès que son but est plus grand que son travailleur, il devient divin; le travail des champs est humain, le travail des villes est divin. De temps en temps, l’histoire met un signe sur une cité. Ce signe est unique. L’histoire, en quatre mille ans, marque ainsi trois cités qui résument tout l’effort de la civilisation. Ce qu’Athènes a été pour l’antiquité grecque, ce que Rome a été pour l’antiquité romaine, Paris l’est aujourd’hui pour l’Europe, pour l’Amérique, pour l’univers civilisé. C’est la ville et c’est le monde. Qui adresse la parole à Paris adresse la parole au monde entier. Urbi et orbi. Donc, moi, l’humble passant qui n’ai que ma part de votre droit à tous, au nom des villes, de toutes les villes, des villes d’Europe et d’Amérique et du monde civilisé, depuis Athènes jusqu’à New-York, depuis Londres jusqu’à Moscou, en ton nom, Madrid, en ton nom, Rome, je glorifie avec amour et je salue la ville sacrée, Paris. (Politique 1023-24)141

One will recognize the same three countries that Hugo, in his speech commemorating

Voltaire’s death, finds to have reached the height of civilization enough to name themselves after an individual. Greece, Italy, and France here reappear as unique in their possession, at some time, of a city that encapsulates all of civilization and acts as an

141 Robb interprets Hugo’s pronouncement of “Urbi et orbi” (“to the City and to the World”), the traditional blessing given by the Pope to the people of Rome and the people of the world in general, as his “nodding at his rival in the Vatican” (VH 515). 153

example. According to the logic in this speech, this ability to speak on behalf of so many makes his discourse collective in nature and therefore divine work. Expansion to a collective thereby equates to exaltation. While he claims to be nothing, he also speaks in the name of potentially all civilized people and cities. Hugo’s denial of his own name in this speech signals a transcendence or expansion that this speaker will undergo: no longer just “Hugo”, this speaker embodies all of the cities of the civilized world in order to glorify Paris. In this way, Hugo humbly (“car je ne suis rien”) presents himself as having outgrown his name.

The audience responses of “Vive Victor Hugo!” appear many times in Claretie’s account.142 Part of the Avenue d’Eylau was renamed Avenue Victor Hugo after this celebration.143 Such an inscription of Hugo’s name into the city of Paris, though temporary, trumps the inscription of “H” into the towers of Notre-Dame because of its official nature and because this is an inscription that Hugo cannot make himself. This naming event was a gift bestowed upon him. Garval’s insight into this event again shows

Hugo’s simultaneous status as alive, dead, and immortal:

In July, the street was renamed avenue Victor Hugo, an honor once reserved for kings, and now for dead luminaries […]. This telling rededication assumed immortality in life—indeed, from this point on friends would address mail “A monsieur Victor Hugo, en son avenue”: Victor Hugo in his avenue, like Mausoleus in his tomb. With the morbidly commemorative zeal of a premature burial, the eightieth-year fanfare prefigured the great man’s passing four years later. (13)144

142 One instance is particularly dramatic, as noted by Claretie: “Ce qui a été extraordinaire, intraduisible, c’est le dernier moment de cette inoubliable journée. Lorsque la dernière délégation a eu défilée, –précédée par deux toutes petites filles en robes blanches traversées d’écharpes tricolores, –la foule, jusqu’alors entassée dans les rues avoisinantes et sur les trottoirs de l’avenue, dans un prodigieux mouvement de houle qui ressemblait à l’arrivée d’un flot colossal, toute cette mer humaine est arrivée sous la fenêtre du poète, et là, électriquement, dans un même élan, dans un même cri, a poussé de ses milliers de poitrines, cette acclamation immense: –Vive Victor Hugo!” (96-97). 143 A nearby crossroads was also renamed “Place Victor Hugo” (Robb VH 515). 144 Georgel explains the regal history of street naming: “The subsequent renaming of Hugo’s street in his honor, a privilege once reserved for kings […], exemplifies the displacement of bygone royal glory onto the modern republic’s great man. This vision of Hugo’s grandeur is encapsulated as well by the circa 1904 154

When Hugo gave up his name to address Paris in the name of all other cities of the civilized world, Paris in turn saw fit to rename bits of itself after Hugo. The celebration of Hugo’s entry into his eightieth year acts as a dress rehearsal for the funeral.145 As

Hugo was being “buried” before his death, his name was being immortalized in turn, under the legislative gaze of the entity being pre-posthumously named—and pre- posthumously naming itself—between his two deaths.

In 1882, Le roi s’amuse was revived, marking its second performance following its opening night in 1832 and its author’s official rehabilitation. This event, attended by the then-president of the Republic Jules Grévy, occurs exactly 50 years after the play’s first opening night and symbolizes a sanctioned recognition of the play’s worth.

According to Garval, such events as this also mark the transition from Hugo speaking at events honoring others to the nation sponsoring events honoring Hugo:

This evolution from events honoring Hugo’s precursors to ones honoring Hugo, together with an ever more widespread belief in Hugo’s premature immortality, confirms that he had come to be seen as a ‘precursor’ himself. Now that France had reached the great Republican future Hugo had so long heralded, he increasingly relegated himself, and was relegated by his contemporaries, to the regime’s mythical past as its spiritual ancestor. (196)

Hugo thus becomes a living precursor, recognized as belonging to the lists of geniuses that he so often names.

XX. The Deaths of Masters and Gods

“Et je vis au-dessus de ma tête un point noir.” - Hugo, Dieu

playing card displaying Hugo on its face, accompanied by the notation, ‘REMPLACE LE ROI’ [REPLACES THE KING]” (Georgel 77). 145 Garval uses similar language: “[Hugo] participated often in events that in many ways anticipated his death, even rehearsed his unprecedentedly elaborate state funeral in 1885” (194). 155

On May 22, 1885, Hugo died at the age of 83 from an inflammation of the lungs.146 Garval describes how this death had already been rehearsed for many years:

“By the time Hugo finally died, in 1885, the Third Republic had indeed—in so many ways, and with his blessing—been burying him triumphantly for fifteen years” (187).

His funeral spanned two days. On the first, Hugo’s coffin lay in state at the Arc de

Triomphe, veiled by a piece of black crepe, under the letters “VH”, and it bore witness to an orgiastic celebration that night, during which brothels were closed and prostitutes reportedly wore a small piece of black cloth over their genitalia as a sign of respect.147

The anecdotes associated with this funeral exhibit the legendary status of Hugo that (at least much of) Paris took upon itself to create in the wake of his death. Now it was up to others to define the significance of Hugo’s name.

Gregh describes what the news of Hugo’s death was like for him and his fellow

12-year-old classmates with an emphasis on Hugo’s name:

Victor Hugo, pour nous, c’était avant tout un nom, un grand nom déjà classique, presque aussi lointain, presque aussi merveilleux qu’Homère ou Virgile; et loin de nous étonner que le grand poète fut sur le point de mourir, c’est plutôt de ce qu’il vécut encore que nous étions surpris. (10)

According to Gregh, the Parisian youth indeed thought Hugo was already dead and considered his name as almost as wonderful as certain very early members of Hugo’s genealogical families of geniuses. This reduction of Hugo to just a name before his death had even occurred further emphasizes the perception of Hugo as already dead. Loss of life reduces an entity to a name amongst the living. In death, the signified (generally) loses the power to modify the significance of the signifier.

146 His last words are recorded as follows: “Ceci est le combat du jour et de la nuit… Je vois de la lumière noire” (Maurois 564). 147 See Robb, VH, 528. 156

Hugo’s final testament was published in Le Rappel and cited in Actes et paroles:

Le 2 aout 1883, Victor Hugo avait remis à Auguste Vacquerie, dans une enveloppe non fermée, les lignes testamentaires suivantes, qui constituaient ses dernières volontés pour le lendemain de sa mort: Je donne cinquante mille francs aux pauvres. Je désire être porté au cimetière dans leur corbillard. Je refuse l’oraison de toutes les églises; je demande une prière à toutes les âmes. Je crois en Dieu. VICTOR HUGO. (Politique 1037)

One may notice the typographical change in the transition from Hugo’s notes about the title page for Religions et religion and in this passage expressing his non-ecclesiastical faith. The final line of Hugo’s testament resembles an endorsement of God, countersigned by Hugo’s name and sealed with his death. After the funeral procession, which included more than two million people (more than the population of Paris), Hugo was buried at the Pantheon, which was desconsecrated for its fourth (and as yet final) time expressly for the purpose of Hugo’s burial: “A decree had been rushed through

Parliament, restoring the Panthéon to the cult of ‘great men’. God had been served with an eviction order; Victor Hugo was moving in” (Robb VH 525).148 Where Robb sees a replacement of God by Hugo, Muray finds a naming event for God by Hugo:

Donner un nom c’est faire jaillir du sens; faire jaillir du sens c’est jouir. L’institution du passé qui voudrait bien jouir encore c’est l’Eglise. Celle du présent qui entend fermement aussi être celle de l’avenir c’est l’institution dixneuviémienne de la religion occulto-sociale. Il s’agit de la possession du vrai Nom. Le nom de Dieu évidemment. “Dieu” s’est appelé “Sainte-Geneviève”, il doit s’appeler maintenant “Panthéon”. […]

148 Neefs points to Hugo’s funeral as an indication of the 19th-century French “culte” of “Grands Hommes”: “Le XIXe siècle n’a certainement pas renoncé au culte ‘politique’, et historique, des ‘Grands Hommes’ (les funérailles de Victor Hugo en sont certainement l’exemple le plus probant), le Panthéon trouve un nouvel élan avec la Troisième République” (“Haine” 769). Bonnet identifies Hugo’s death and burial as not just the final word on the Pantheon but also as the indication of the acceptance of the Republic: “Afin que le Panthéon soit restauré dans sa destination de 1791, Raspail lança au Conseil municipal de Paris en 1875 une campagne qui se poursuivit longuement à la Chambre. […] Mais c’est la mort de Hugo lui-même, qui, en 1885, fut l’occasion décisive. […] A propos du concours qui conduit Hugo de l’Etoile au Panthéon, [Barrès] conclut que ‘de l’orgueil de la France, il va au cœur de la France’. C’est le signe que la République est enfin acceptée, qu’une certaine topographie symbolique de la ville parvient à se fixer alors que s’édifient les coupoles rivales du Sacré-Cœur, et qu’il a été pris acte, une fois pour toutes, de ce processus de laïcisation de la mémoire collective qui avait son origine dans la sensibilité des Lumières” (342). 157

Rien n’illustre mieux ce que deviennent, à partir du 19e siècle, les enjeux de tout conflit que ce roman du Panthéon. (101)149

According to Muray’s idea of the rise of a secular cult of great men who replace the figures of Christianity, Hugo’s death enacts a new non-religious role for the Pantheon, which effects an analogously desacralizing re-naming of God as “Panthéon”. According to this logic, Hugo’s posthumous name trumps the name of God and forces it to refer to the monument housing Hugo’s remains. Additionally, the word “pantheon” means

“every god” in Greek. Hugo’s death explodes the name of God to house the names of all gods. God now stands for the memory of what Hugo did to conceptions of God. Such a power to change an immortal name could only take place after Hugo’s death, after his name is released from its association with a living being. Hugo had to pass into this final stage of immortality in order to, in the view of some, surpass God.150

The death of Hugo brings about a widening of the divide between the supporters and detractors of Hugo, the armies pulling his name either into or away from immortality.

Now that only his name remains, people seem to feel more passionately that it is their responsibility to either bolster or tear down the dominance of this name. We will see many examples of this in the chapters to follow, particularly in the chapter concerning

Verlaine. The period immediately following Hugo’s death sees an explosion of his name in print and on memorabilia commodities.151 On May 22, 1885, Edmond de Goncourt

149 Muray sees Hugo’s burial in the Pantheon as the conclusion of the epic of this structure, and he goes on to note the budding renown present at Hugo’s burial: “Mais la véritable épopée du Pantheon se termine en réalité avec l’enterrement de Hugo. […] Dans la foule de l’enterrement de Hugo, il y avait bien des noms qui sont devenus célèbres ensuite pour des raisons variées” (100). 150 I do not mean to here imply that such views of Hugo were widespread at the time of his death. There was of course considerable resistance to the deconsecration of the Pantheon: “Atheists and clergymen were hurling insults at each other in the papers. Extra prayers were ordered for the day of Hugo’s funeral” (Robb VH 525). 151 Garval finds this indicative of the forthcoming cult of celebrity: “Between Hugo’s death and the centenary of his birth, however, as numerous monuments were projected but few realized, his name and 158

writes a description of the French response to Hugo that aligns with Muray’s view:

“Drôle de peuple que ce peuple français! Il ne veut plus de Dieu, il ne veut plus de religion, et vient-il de débondieuser le Christ, aussitôt, il bondieuse Hugo et proclame l’hugolâtrie” (cited in Garval, 200). After Hugo’s death, France becomes dramatically divided into two camps: hugophiles and hugophobes.152 There was even a survey in 1902 entitled “Etes-vous Hugophile ou Hugophobe?” Such stark divisions result from the finality placed on Hugo’s life, his works, and his ability to name himself and modify the significance of this name. Now that Hugo was dead and almost all of his works published, now that the book of Hugo could be read and interpreted almost in its entirety, it was up to the living to decide whether or not he was worthy of such reverence.

Why is there such division surrounding Hugo’s name? Is it because of the combination of humility and self-aggrandizement attached to this name? Is it because of his alternating political affiliations? Is it because Hugo’s works alternately encourage and discourage readers to find the author within them? Is this because Hugo’s name stands for so much or so many and yet so few people reach this height of renown? All of these possibilities find their roots in the means by which Hugo names himself in his

effigy appeared on or in an even greater variety of articles, advertisements, souvenirs, trinkets, and products. While in one sense confirming Hugo’s vast appeal at the time, these developments also heralded a profound shift, both in his fame and in fame itself, from a monumental vision of glory, to the beginnings of a modern mass-media, mass-market brand of celebrity: from monumentality, that is, toward ubiquity” (198). Garval later gives more specific examples of what was sold in connection with Hugo’s name after his death: “During this period, Hugo’s name was used to sell everything from tapioca to cigars, in advertisements, on labels, or on posters for such products as ‘le Savon des Muses, dédié à Victor Hugo’ […], the ‘Elixir Victor Hugo’ (an elixir de longue vie, perhaps?), and also ‘Victor Hugo’ brand ink (for both aspiring poets and civic-minded schoolchildren?)” (202). 152 Garval proposes scholars instead turn to study the general “Hugofolie” of this period: “To be sure, Hugo had both supporters and detractors during his lifetime, but afterward, these tendencies polarized with new intensity. France split among Hugophiles and Hugophobes, as it would as well among Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards—and along much the same ideological lines. Still, on either side of the divide, the French were so obsessed with Hugo that in retrospect, we might best combine Hugophilie and Hugophobie and talk instead of a generalized “Hugofolie,” a collective neurosis in which, whether one approved of Hugo or not, he mattered inordinately all the same” (198). 159

works and primarily in his prefaces. Hugo’s creations and modifications of the significances of his name—which one sees undergoing radical political, aesthetic, religious, and philosophical changes over the course of the century—make him plural.

Even more, they make him autonomously plural. Hugo sometimes enacts auto-reduction to separate out different Hugos. And yet, he also expands the meaning of his name to make it capable of incorporating many entities within himself, be they the condamnés, all

Parisians, a century-long span of time, etc. Finally, the fact that Hugo’s name comes to stand for the 19th Century in France for some and the force capable of changing the name of God for others makes the capabilities of the name “Hugo” beyond immense. This expansion of the significance of his name makes him able to be perceived as omnipresent, even (and maybe especially) after his death. Bestowed with immortality and ubiquity, Hugo’s name competes with the name of God. Hugolâtrie is born. The highly religious nature of opinions concerning Hugo makes what would be considered a

“love him or hate him” division for some writers into a “praise Him or deny Him” division for Hugo. Hugo’s deification—which some see as stemming from his

“autotheistic” self-adulation, some see as a Satanic rising, and others see as a merited gathering of followers of the “maître”—relies entirely upon treatments of his name. It is the attachment of Hugo’s name to his works, prefaces, speeches, etc. that create the endlessly multiform significances of this name.153 Like the name of God, the import of the name of Hugo lies in the hands of the namer, the temporary possessor of the name.

Since so many people had at least some idea of the meaning of the name of Hugo, its

153 Robb discusses this plurality of Hugos at the time of Hugo’s burial: “It was not immediately clear which Victor Hugo had just been enshrined—the poet, playwright and novelist; the socialist, exile, campaigner and philanthropist; the grandfather who upheld family values or the patriarch who made a mockery of them; the pair de France, the député, the Senator, or simply the very famous Frenchman. Was it the Hugo of 1830, 1851, 1870 or 1885?” (Robb VH 533). 160

import stretched as far as his renown. And yet, paradoxically, for both the name of God and that of Hugo, the logic of Hugo’s line “Tout n’est qu’Un” holds: both names still house a pantheon of possible—and often conflicting—significances.

With deification comes systematization and dogmatism. By becoming a religion,

Hugo also risks becoming a prescriptive force, as Zola indicates in his study “Hugo et

Littré,” published in Le Figaro on June 13, 1881:

Victor Hugo est devenu une religion en littérature, je veux dire une sorte de police pour le maintien du bon ordre. Si on disait la vérité sur lui, où irait-on? à tous les abîmes du naturalisme triomphant. On le maintient donc, comme certains bourgeois voltairiens, tout en le blaguant au dessert, maintiennent le bon Dieu, afin que leurs femmes aient des mœurs et ne les trompent pas avec des artistes. Etre passé à l’état de religion nécessaire, quelle terrible fin pour le poète révolutionnaire de 1830! (256)

It seems in Zola’s perspective that the religious Marie eventually wins out over—and to the detriment of—the revolutionary Victor.

XXI. Naming God: Dieu and Post-scriptum de ma vie

“Un nom doit être une figure. Le poète qui ne sait pas cela ne sait rien.” - Hugo, Post-Scriptum de ma vie

Unlike the name of God, the name of Hugo does not signify as powerfully today as it did in 19th-century France.154 However, Hugo did manage to rise from the tomb more than Christ’s one resurrection, as per the specter Death’s advice Hugo received on

Jersey, via numerous posthumous publications.155 Two posthumous publications of

Hugo’s provide two different views of the relationship between poets and the name of

God. In 1891, his unfinished poem Dieu is published. In the first of two sections of this

154 Brombert remarks upon the status of Hugo’s name in the early 20th Century: “There is no denying that Hugo’s name and vast body of writing fell into disfavor during the first half of the twentieth century. […] There was the obvious reaction against his glorification—indeed apotheosis—culminating in the magnificent funeral of a national hero. Yet despite the idolatry, or hugolâtrie, which extended beyond his death in 1885, Hugo remained misunderstood” (5). 155 None of these posthumous publications come accompanied by a completed preface. 161

poem, entitled “Le Seuil du gouffre”, one narrator (or “voix”) states that the one act of which the poet is incapable is that of naming God:

Oui, le poëte peut ce qu’il veut; le poëte […] Calme la foule, endort le flot, dompte le feu, Change l’homme; il peut tout; hors ceci: nommer Dieu. Nommer Dieu de façon que l’abîme comprenne. Il peut tout, hors ceci: faire à l’aube sereine, Au lys, à l’astre, à l’éclair enflammé, Dire dans l’étendue obscure: il l’a nommé! […] L’homme à saisir ce mot s’est parfois occupé; Mais en vain; car ce nom ineffable est coupé En autant de tronçons qu’il est de créatures; Il est épars au loin dans les autres natures; Personne n’a l’alpha, personne l’oméga; Ce nom, qu’en expirant le passé nous légua; Sera continué par ceux qui sont à naître; Et tout l’univers n’a qu’un objet: nommer l’être! […] Le nom infini sort de la bouche éternelle! (OC Poésie IV 604-05)

In this work, Hugo’s narrator claims that the poet is incapable only of naming God and then gives a description of the name of God that reveals its polyvalence as being as varied as all of God’s creatures capable of reducing, possessing, and expanding this name. The phrase “le nom infini” has “infini” as an adjective modifying the noun “nom”. In another posthumous publication of Hugo’s, the author will modify this idea of the name of God.

The title of Hugo’s posthumous work Préface de mes œuvres et post-scriptum de ma vie, which appears in publication in 1901, illuminates a conflation of works and life within the authorial figure.156 From a temporal consideration, this publication acts as a simultaneous preface and post-scriptum.157 Recalling Hugo’s many prolegomenous statements that perhaps one day he would write an explanation of the overarching unity

156 This year sees the birth of the society called “Les Hugophiles”, which group I study in the concluding chapter of this work. 157 Petrarch’s letter “To Posterity” begins with an onomastically-focused consideration: “Greeting. –It is possible that some word of me may have come to you, though even this is doubtful, since an insignificant and obscure name will scarcely penetrate far in either time or space. If, however, you should have heard of me, you may desire to know what manner of man I was, or what was the outcome of my labours, especially those of which some description or, at any rate, the bare titles may have reached you” (59). 162

of his works, the fact that what seems to be just such a document arrives in publication only after Hugo’s death (which timing is implied as necessary in the title) and yet was necessarily written during his life again illuminates the living-in-immortality character of

Hugo’s final years. The afterword of his life does not just accompany the preface to his works: the two are but one (“Tout n’est qu’Un”). In this final preface and final revelation of a meaning of “Hugo” by Hugo, the preface/postscript writer mentions the many names of God before revealing God’s actual name, if such a name exists:

Quant aux facultés, on les lui concède infinies, mais, comme nous venons de le rappeler, on ne lui en donne que trois, reprenant dans le chiffre l’infinitude qu’on accorde dans l’étendue, et sans s’apercevoir que si l’être absolu a un nom, ce n’est pas Trinité, c’est Infinité. (Critique 700).158

This modifies the study of naming God in Dieu: here, the tempered ability of a writer (a preface/post-scriptum writer here, not a poet) to name God becomes stronger. Hugo changes the adjective “infini” into a capitalized nominative, “Infinité”. Only a dead and consecrated preface writing Hugo has the power to name God. He also offers the true name of Being: “L’unité d’essence entraîne l’unité de substance, l’unité de substance entraîne l’unité de loi. Voici le vrai nom de l’Être: Tout Un” (Critique 708). His line from Religions et religion, “Tout n’est qu’Un,” finds a reformulation here. Plurality and singularity are paradoxically simultaneously necessary characteristics for the name of

God, the name of Being, and the name of Hugo. Hugo’s insistence on the infinitude of

God is explained in the following manner:

Chaque culte le met dans un livre; défense à lui d’être ailleurs. Le Talmud est sa gaine, le Zend-Avesta est son étui, le Koran est son fourreau, la Bible est sa boîte. Il a des fermoirs. Les prêtres le gardent sous enveloppe. Ils ont seuls droit d’y toucher. De temps en temps, ils le prennent dans leurs mains et le font voir. Voilà où en est l’illimité. Toutes les religions, anciennes ou actuelles, s’efforcent de finir Dieu. (Critique 700)

158 Brombert studies the role of infinity in Les Misérables (118-23). 163

The limitlessness of God defies the books with which religions attempt to delimit the divine. It is because God escapes this binding—this definitive reduction of being to confinement within pages—that God is limitless. Printed words and a name are similarly incapable of expressing all that is God, unless this name itself indicates God’s infinitude.

Already in this chapter and in the chapters to follow, one sees many different interpretations of Hugo’s name and accompanying projections of the meaning of “Hugo”.

Bearing this in mind, one may reformulate the line from Post-scriptum de ma vie as follow: “Voici le vrai nom de Hugo: Tout Un”. All of the definitions and liberations; constructions and deconstructions; collectivizations and isolations; reductions, possessions, and expansions of the significance of “Hugo” together form the meaning of this name. Names house contrasting meanings, and beings may receive more than one name. It takes a global view of many such naming events to gain a more precise (that is, more precise in recognizing its limitless diffusion) idea of the significance of such a name as Hugo’s. Just as Hugo studies the many naming events of God, one may analogously study the many naming events of Hugo.

Nevertheless, Hugo guards against total equations of humanity with God:

“L’homme est Dieu en petit format. Mais prendre pour Dieu l’homme, c’est la même méprise que prendre pour univers la terre. […] Les choses sont les pores par où sort

Dieu” (Critique 708). Even if humans resemble smaller versions of God, they are no more than openings for the passage of God. Hugo ends this work with a musing on the perfectibility of humanity, “nous”, and the final possession of death: “Où y a-t-il un devoir? où y a-t-il une lutte? où y a-t-il un exil? où y a-t-il une douleur? Courons-y.

Aimer, c’est donner; aimons. Soyons de profondes bonnes volontés. Songeons à cet

164

immense bien qui nous attend, la mort” (Critique 712). Hugo describes death as the

“épanouissement de l’âme que nous appelons la mort” (Critique 708). Death is not the end. Instead, Hugo explains, the end is life: “Fin, c’est-à-dire but. On croit que fin signifie mort. Erreur. Fin signifie vie” (Critique 708). In this logic, death simultaneously allows for his soul to blossom and for his life to begin. A post-scriptum to Hugo’s life, published from beyond the grave, begins a new life, preceded by a new preface, for his works. The end (post-scriptum) of his life thereby also serves as the beginning (préface) of his works’ life: “La vie aussi a son paratexte, et la postérité est une très longue préface, que l’on ne peut écrire soi-même” (Seuils 240). The finitude of Hugo’s mortal life introduces the full life of his works and invites a multitude of new significances for his now-immortal name that can no longer be modified by the person who held it. Hugo recognizes that it will be his namers who will write the preface to his life long after his death.

The man named Hugo had to die in order to publish this postscript to his life/ preface to his works. The “afterlife” of “Hugo” is only made possible by the life of

Hugo, a life in which this writer repeatedly alters the significance of his own name by signing many different works and naming himself in many different ways. And it is only from beyond the grave, when his soul will already have blossomed, that Hugo gives himself the authority to publish his naming of God. Hugo’s projection of his own name after his death instills “Hugo” with the capacity to modify the significance of the name

“God”. In other words, Hugo names himself a namer of God.

165

Intended to be blank.

166

CHAPTER II

THE CRITICAL NAME: SAINTE-BEUVE’S & GAUTIER’S HUGOS

Roubaud, Benjamin. Grand chemin de la postérité. 1842-43. Villequier: Musée Victor Hugo.

I. Introduction

“Nous sommes mobiles, et nous jugeons des êtres mobiles.” - Sainte-Beuve, Portraits Contemporains

Sainte-Beuve’s treatments of Hugo’s name offer modern readers a perspective on the creation of this name as a current event in need of publicity. Two years Hugo’s junior, Sainte-Beuve is a contemporary of Hugo’s generation. And yet, though just two years younger than Hugo, Sainte-Beuve appears to occupy the position of his inferior.

Over the course of his career, Sainte-Beuve’s reputation would grow into that of one of the most respected critical voices of 19th-century French literature during the 19th century.

In 1875, Henry James called him the “acutest critic the world has seen” (669). Robb’s amusing description of Sainte-Beuve hints at his contradictory nature to conclude that

Sainte-Beuve was great:

A traditional character sketch of Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve would be a long list of adjectives cancelling each other out until the negatives prevailed, and ending with the observation that he was the greatest French critic of the nineteenth century. (VH 161)

167

Nevertheless, especially after Proust’s open attack on Sainte-Beuve in his work Contre

Sainte-Beuve (published in 1954), he has dropped out of favor and been commonly found to be simply wrong in his judgments of many writers that many scholars find he misunderstood and therefore under-estimated, including Stendhal, Balzac, and

Baudelaire.1

Perhaps the first thought that comes to mind when considering the relationship between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve is the latter’s well-known affair with the former’s wife,

Adèle Hugo. However, the relationship between these two writers begins as one of a dear friendship grounded in literary discussions and pursuits. The basis of this study of

Hugo and Sainte-Beuve has ties to sociology in that it delves into not only their personal rapport but also the broader dynamics of interpersonal relations in their literary circles and society at large.2 By utilizing this sociological context as a jumping-off point, one may more thoroughly explore the power of authorial and critical names while considering the roles of increasingly well-known personalities’ positions on literature and art. These realms of inquiry lead to a more general onomastico-sociological question: how does a name exist, function, become modified, and depend on other names within a society over time? And to what degree can a name resist the significative alterations that others impose upon it?

II. A Mon Ami…: Cenacular Names in Dedication

1 Compagnon discusses Sainte-Beuve’s reputation over time: “He was purportedly narrow-minded, and closed to his contemporaries, because he under-estimated Stendhal, Balzac, and Baudelaire. He is made responsible for the sclerosis of French literary history, from Taine to Brunetière, and from Lanson to us” (“Sainte-Beuve” 1190). 2 Lepenies notes while studying the rise of the practice of writing to make a living that Sainte-Beuve pays heed to the state of literature during this period: “Sainte-Beuve had foretold the appearance of this ‘literary industry’ as early as 1839; even if one deplored the works representative of it, which were of a boldness unknown to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their existence—they were a phenomenon attending the rise of the daily press and literary democracy—could not be denied” (Between 84). 168

“Tous réunis, s’entendre, et s’aimer, et se dire: ‘Ne désespérons point, poètes, de la lyre, Car le siècle est à nous.’” - Sainte-Beuve, Joseph Delorme, “Le Cénacle”

The two first met after Sainte-Beuve’s review of a work of Hugo’s (Odes et

Ballades) for the January 2, 1827 publication of Le Globe.3 According to Adèle, this collection of poems plays a role in the delimiting of party lines between the Romantics and the Classics.4 As a fresh young literary critic, Sainte-Beuve plays an integral role in the early creation of the name of Hugo by reviewing this collection of poetry:

En janvier 1827, Sainte-Beuve, âgé de 23 ans, publie un article sur les Odes et Ballades d’un jeune auteur (il est né en 1802). Victor Hugo qui, depuis la préface de son ouvrage Cromwell, commence à se faire un nom. (Prah-Perochon 18)

Sainte-Beuve’s work as a critic affects the renown and repute of Hugo, which in turn affects the reputation of the emerging group of Romantics who find a leader and embodiment in Hugo. In this first of his publications on Hugo’s poems, Sainte-Beuve touches upon the role of Hugo’s name for Hugo as an author, after criticizing his passages that bear resemblance to Walter Scott’s lengthy dialogues:

Lorsque M. Hugo parle en son nom dans ses poésies, qu’il ne cherche plus à déguiser ses accents, mais qu’il les tire du profond de son âme, il réussit bien autrement. Qu’on imagine à plaisir tout ce qu’il y a de plus pur dans l’amour, de plus chaste dans l’hymen, de plus sacré dans l’union des âmes sous l’œil de Dieu; qu’on rêve, en un mot, la volupté ravie au ciel sur l’aile de la prière, et l’on n’aura rien imaginé que ne réalise et n’efface encore M. Hugo dans les pièces délicieuses intitulées Encore à toi et Son nom: les citer seulement, c’est presque en ternir déjà la pudique délicatesse. (PL 173)

3 Sainte-Beuve began work as a surgeon who wrote book reviews for Le Globe in his spare time. Séché found Sainte-Beuve’s reviews of Odes et Ballades to be the first articles on Hugo that contained “un réel accent de sympathie et un sens critique aussi juste” (78). 4 See VHR 413. Compagnon offers a historical account of the French words “classique” and “classicisme”: “Classicisme appeared only in the nineteenth century as a match for Romantisme, and to designate the doctrine of the academics or neo-classics, upholders of the classical tradition and opponents of romantic inspiration. On the other hand, the adjective classique existed in the seventeenth century, when it qualified that which deserved to be copied or used as a model, that which had authority. Then, from the end of the seventeenth century, it was used for that which was taught in class—note in passing, this popular and pervasive false etymology: classic, which is taught in class. During the eighteenth century, it came to represent that which belonged to Greek and Latin antiquity. Only later, during the nineteenth century, imported from German as the antonym of romantique, did it come to mean that which belonged to the great writers of the French seventeenth century. All these senses then added up” (“Sainte-Beuve” 1190-91). 169

This compliment of Sainte-Beuve’s exposes his preference for what he considers to be the sincere voice of the author; in other words, Sainte-Beuve writes that Hugo’s verses have greater success when Hugo speaks as Hugo, “en son nom” and “du profond de son

âme”. In this instance, speaking in one’s name indicates revealing oneself within a work rather than presenting a work as separate from its author. Sainte-Beuve’s approach to criticism reflects this preference for authorial revelation. His critical style is marked by a tendency to include considerable biographical information about the authors in order to interpret their works, a tendency to which schools of thought like New Criticism would adamantly object. Even in this first article on Hugo, the critic mentions the details of his childhood and Chateaubriand’s prediction of Hugo’s glory (PL 170). As will become clear, Sainte-Beuve’s attention to Hugo’s glory will not wane over the period of time during which he writes about Hugo, though his attitude concerning this glory will transform.

The 2 poems that Sainte-Beuve singles out as praiseworthy in this article both address names. Hugo’s poem “Son Nom”, dated 1823 in Odes et Ballades, celebrates a sacred name (that of God) without naming this name:5

Le chant d’un chœur lointain, le soupir qu’à l’aurore Rendait le fabuleux Memnon, Le murmure d’un son qui tremble et s’évapore… Tout ce que la pensée a de plus doux encore, O lyre! est moins doux que son nom!

Prononce-le tout bas, ainsi qu’une prière, Mais que dans tous nos chants il résonne à la fois! Qu’il soit du temple obscur la secrète lumière! Qu’il soit le mot sacré qu’au fond du sanctuaire Redit toujours la même voie!

5 Hugo’s epigraph to this poem reads “Nomen, aut numen,” which translates from Latin to “name, or deity” (Poésie I 281). 170

O mes amis! avant qu’en paroles de flamme, Ma muse, égarant son essor, Ose aux noms profanés qu’un vain orgueil proclame, Mêler ce chaste nom, que l’amour dans mon âme A caché, comme un saint trésor,

Il faudra que le chant de mes hymnes fidèles Soit comme un de ces chants qu’on écoute à genoux […]. (Poésie I 281-82)

Sainte-Beuve’s preference for this poem reflects his view that Hugo does better when accepting his humanity rather than pursuing his own glory. The second poem of Hugo’s that Sainte-Beuve lauds in his first article on the maître, “À mes odes,” insists that a poet’s happiness comes from not seeking fame: “Heureux qui de l’oubli ne fuit point les ténèbres!/ Heureux qui ne sait pas combien d’échos funèbres/ Le bruit d’un nom fait retentir!/ Et si la gloire est inquiète,/ Et si la palme du poëte/ Est une palme de martyr!”

(Poésie I 122). The name that Sainte-Beuve enjoys seeing Hugo propagate is that of God

(as seen in “Son Nom”), not that of Hugo (which authorial humility is espoused in “À mes odes”).

Sainte-Beuve expresses this same wish for Hugo to pursue mortal humility rather than divine perfection in his second article on Odes et Ballades, which appears just a few days after the first, and in which he praises Racine’s recognition of his limits in order to encourage Hugo to imitate the humility of this classique:

C’est [que Racine] a senti combien devant l’impuissance humaine, il valait mieux encore se résigner que se débattre: là où il a désespéré d’être excellent, il a mieux aimé rester un peu faible, en voilant sa faiblesse d’une molle et noble douceur, que de s’épuiser en vains efforts pour retomber de plus haut. C’était la seule manière d’être parfait en poésie, autant qu’il est donné à l’humanité de le devenir. (PL 188)

Sainte-Beuve’s preference for a poem in which Hugo’s narrator emphasizes his inferiority by revering a name as hallowed and decidedly above the realm of humanity hints at Sainte-Beuve’s long-lasting (and at times unrequited) desire for Hugo’s humility to shine through his poetry. While Sainte-Beuve encourages Hugo to write in his own 171

name, that is to say without imitating others or reaching beyond himself in pursuit of more epic heights, he also encourages Hugo to resist the siren song of renown. In this manner, Sainte-Beuve contributes to the early monumentalization of Hugo’s name while hinting at a condition of this monumentalization: Sainte-Beuve will, as a critic, monumentalize Hugo as long as Hugo does not work toward the monumentalization of his own name. As long as Hugo stays true to his human and flawed name, Sainte-Beuve will help spread the renown of this name.

At the time of this first review, Hugo and Sainte-Beuve were unaware that they lived just a door away from one another. Their first encounter serves as one of many contested tales in their interpersonal history: while Adèle claims in VHR that Sainte-

Beuve came to their house to meet Hugo, Sainte-Beuve claims that Hugo first called upon him while he was not home, and that he subsequently went to Hugo’s house to repay the missed visit. This may appear to be a negligible detail of their biographical history, but the fact that multiple stories appear surrounding this initial visit and the fact that Sainte-Beuve repeatedly amends Adèle’s account of this story in his publications indicates a simultaneously corrective and competitive element in his later relationship with Hugo, as it would typically have been the less famous individual who would call upon the better-known member of the literary world. One of Sainte-Beuve’s detailed corrections of Adèle’s account of his first meeting with Hugo, from Causeries du lundi, includes two naming events for Hugo:6

Un matin que j’allais voir M. Dubois, il me montra sur sa table les deux volumes d’Odes et Ballades qu’il venait de recevoir et dont il me proposa de rendre compte: “C’est de ce jeune barbare, dit-il, Victor Hugo, qui a du talent, et qui de plus est intéressant par sa vie,

6 Causeries du lundi is the first collected publication of Sainte-Beuve’s weekly literary essays published in various papers over a span of 20 years (1849-1869), always on Monday. For a more detailed account of the publication history of the Causeries du lundi, see Bonnerot. 172

par son caractère; je le connais et je le rencontre quelquefois.” J’emportai les volumes, et quelques jours après je vins lire à M. Dubois mon article, en lui disant que je n’avais pas trouvé l’auteur si barbare. L’article parut dans le Globe du 2 janvier 1827, et c’est même à cette occasion que Goethe, qui recevait le Globe, disait, le jeudi soir 4 janvier, à Eckermann, qui l’a noté dans son Journal: “Victor Hugo est un vrai talent sur lequel la littérature allemande a exercé de l’influence. Sa jeunesse poétique a été malheureusement amoindrie par le pédantisme du parti classique, mais maintenant le voilà qui a le Globe pour lui: il a donc partie gagnée.” Victor Hugo, étant allé remercier M. Dubois, sut de lui mon nom, mon adresse, et vint pour me voir sans me rencontrer. Le hasard voulait que je demeurasse, sans le savoir, porte à porte avec lui: il habitait alors rue de Vaugirard, au n° 90, et moi, je demeurais avec ma mère même rue, au n° 94. Au vu sa carte, je me promis bien de lui rendre sa visite, ce que je m’empressai de faire le lendemain matin à l’heure du déjeuner. L’entrevue fut fort agréable en effet, mais il n’est pas exact de dire que je sois venu lui offrir de mettre le Globe à sa disposition. Cela n’eût point été en mon pouvoir, et d’ailleurs, dès ma jeunesse, j’avais toujours compris la critique autrement. Je ne me suis jamais offert; j’ai attendu qu’on vînt à moi. Il ne put être question non plus, dans cette visite, d’articles à faire sur le Cromwell qui n’avait point paru, et dont je n’entendis une lecture que quelque temps après. Mais ce qui est très-vrai, c’est qu’à dater de ce jour commença mon initiation à l’École romantique des poëtes. (CL 531-32)

Goethe’s comment on Hugo credits Le Globe with ensuring Hugo’s victory. According to this logic, it is thanks to Sainte-Beuve and his articles for this paper that Hugo’s name becomes synonymous with French Romanticism for a time. And yet, Sainte-Beuve goes on to insist that he did not explicitly offer the services and loyalty of this newspaper to

Hugo. The understanding of the role of the critic that Sainte-Beuve puts forward here is not that of a friend but of a writer unafraid to actually criticize a work. If one is the friend of a poet whose work one critiques, some separation between the author and the work is necessary to maintain this critical distance. Whether Adèle’s or Sainte-Beuve’s account is correct, their differing portrayals of the beginning of this friendship and of

Sainte-Beuve’s function as a critic illuminate the differing views of an ideal relationship between critics and the writers whose works they critique.

Adèle’s account of this budding relationship with Sainte-Beuve presents this visitor as having the main role of friendly critic of Hugo’s work (which role Sainte-

Beuve later corrects, insisting that he did not offer his critical services to Hugo):

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Victor Hugo ne fermait jamais sa porte, même aux heures des repas. Un matin qu’il déjeunait avec sa femme, la domestique introduisit dans la salle à manger un étranger. Le visiteur, qui se nomma, était M. Sainte-Beuve. Il demeurait rue Notre-Dame-des- Champs, c’était comme voisin et comme rédacteur d’un journal ami qu’il se présentait. Il avait lu les Odes et Ballades avec un vif intérêt, le Globe ne devait pas s’en tenir à un seul article et reviendrait sur la publication. M. Dubois, esprit facile et élégant, admiratif par accès, mais resté universitaire, avait des retours de froideur; il n’était pas certain qu’il continuât à parler aussi favorablement du recueil, et pour plus de sureté M. de Sainte- Beuve demanderait au journal de faire les prochains articles. L’entrevue ayant été très agréable, on devait se revoir; c’était d’autant plus facile que Victor Hugo se rapprochait encore du nouveau visiteur et allait demeurer lui-même rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. (VHR 414)

Following their first meeting, Sainte-Beuve becomes a very regular visitor to the Hugos’

home, often calling on them twice a day. Robb identifies this proximity as the “start of

the most productive and mutually destructive friendship in French literature” (VH 133).

It is in this apartment that the Hugos hosted the literary group called the Cénacle, in

which Sainte-Beuve took part.7 The contrast between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve within

this group appears to have been both understood and even accepted by Sainte-Beuve

early on:

7 Garval names some of the better-known members of this Cénacle: “True to the Napoleonic model, Hugo came to dominate the contemporary world of letters not only through his extraordinary achievements, but also through his commanding personality. During the 1820s, he led a series of “cénacles”, small groups of like-minded, aspiring writers and artists. The last, most coherent, and influential of these, which united conservative and liberal romantics, including Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Baron Taylor, Balzac, Mérimée, Dumas, and Nerval, met from 1827 through 1830 in Hugo’s apartment on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs” (172-73). Porter locates Hugo’s replacement of Nodier as the leader of Romanticism in the shift of cenacles: “Once he became the acknowledged leader of the French romantic movement in 1827 (displacing Charles Nodier, whose Salon de l’Arsenal was the romantics’ central meeting place from 1824 to 1827), Hugo found himself heading an aesthetic struggle against the conservative literary values of neoclassicism. Contemporaries saw the political and the aesthetic struggles as intimately related” (Porter VH 33). Séché’s studies of the Romantic cénacles bolster this shift: Le Cénacle de la Muse française covers 1823-1827 and highlights the portraits of Soumet, Guiraud, Émile Deschamps, Nodier, Pichat, Taylor, and Talma (though Lamartine, Musset, and de Vigny were also participants), while his Le Cénacle de Joseph Delorme: Victor Hugo et les Poètes I shares its title with Hugo, does not list names of others whose portraits appear within but instead situates itself as from Cromwell to Hernani, and is dated 1827-30. The second installation, Le Cénacle de Joseph Delorme: Victor Hugo et les Artistes does include the following list of artists: David d’Angers, les Deveria, Louis Boulanger, Charles Robelin, Paul Huet, Eugène Delacroix, les Johannot, Célestin Nanteuil, and Charlet. In 1828, the Cénacle meetings often involved an early dinner and conversation followed by a visit to the towers of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, where they would watch the sun set, which Sainte-Beuve describes in a later article on Hugo: “Les soirées de cette belle saison des Orientales se passaient innocemment à aller voir coucher le soleil dans la plaine, à contempler du haut des tours de Notre-Dame les reflets sanglants de l’astre sur les eaux du fleuve; puis, au retour, à se lire les vers qu’on avait composés” (Portraits 342-43). 174

Among all these youths of twenty or thereabouts, Hugo strode like a prince in his court. He was little their senior, a man of twenty-five; but something pure and grave and lofty in mien and manner made him appear older and taller than he was. In this innocent Bohemia he was the only stickler for dignity: the young poets of the Restoration, out of a sort of “mièvrerie” and intimate brotherhood, were given to calling their fellow-singers’ spouses by their Christian names; one of them had once addressed Hugo’s young wife as “Adèle”: “Madame Victor Hugo” corrected the stately husband, and no one transgressed again. He was strikingly handsome—a king of men, as Sainte-Beuve loved to call him— (in Greek)—[…]. No greater contrast can be imagined to the little critic with his mop of foxy hair, his mobile irregular features, and timid ingratiating neophyte’s manner—so proud to be, as he says more than once—“le héraut d’armes, le serviteur, le secrétaire des grands hommes.” (Edinburgh 417)

Hugo’s attention to the name by which his fellow Cénacle members addressed Adèle indicates an elevation of Adèle, and by extension of Victor as well, above the other couples in this group. Within Sainte-Beuve’s descriptions of himself within this literary group, he utilizes primarily subservient nouns, describing himself as the herald, servant, and secretary of the great men. Predictably, Hugo acts as the chief of these greats.

The name of this literary group sheds light on presumptions of superiority and godlike status of members within the group. Originally a term indicating the place where one eats, the word cenacle is also a biblical term that refers to the location of Christ’s

Last Supper with the disciples. The pairing of religious imagery and Hugo will continue throughout the century. When looking for the metaphorical Christ-like figure within the

Cénacle, one repeatedly finds Hugo as the deific epicenter of this group:

Victor Hugo was the centre of a group of young poets, varied by a sculptor, David d’Angers, and by a painter or two, such as Boulanger or Antony Deschamps. The other Deschamps, with Théophile Gautier (a handsome lad fresh from school), and our surgeon of the Press, Sainte-Beuve, formed a public – faithful satellites revolving round a planet of the first rank, Victor Hugo, and visited sometimes by two glorious foreign bodies, Lamartine and Vigny, who not unfrequently traversed the tranquil orbit of the ‘Cénacle.’ (Edinburgh 416)

Robb’s study of the changing meaning of the word Cénacle extends this replacement of

Jesus by Hugo into the popular imagination:

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When Hugo met him, Nodier had just been made librarian of the second library in France, the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal. Its salon, which now smelled of Mme Nodier’s home cooking and was soon to be adorned with a bust of Victor Hugo, had become a refuge for writers from La Muse Française. It was the only non-sectarian salon in Paris. The regulars came to be known as the Cénacle. With a capital ‘C’, the word normally designated the room where the Last Supper took place. Nowadays it is usually taken to refer to Hugo and his disciples. (Robb VH 119)8

In a letter to Hugo, Deschamps even calls Hugo “our God”: “Vous, notre Dieu, venez-y et tout sera parfait” (Girard 136). From the viewpoint of the frequenters of the Cénacle,

Hugo was a God. In the account of Turquéty, a contemporary poet, the contrast between

Hugo and Sainte-Beuve within this group again becomes clear: “Le petit Sainte-Beuve tournait autour du grand Victor” (Bassan 432). While some scholars contest this image of Sainte-Beuve as continuously inferior to Hugo, most accounts of their relationship during this time support such an imbalance of power.9 According to a letter of Sainte-

Beuve’s (supposed by the editor of Nouveaux Lundis v. 12 to have been written around

1869), while Hugo was regarded as the father figure of this group, Sainte-Beuve reports being seen as its uncle: “[…] Quelques-uns même (le bien-aimé Théo[phile Gautier]) continuaient à [appeler Sainte-Beuve] mon oncle comme au temps romantique, lui laissant sa place à côté du père, qui est Hugo” (NL XII 214).

One of the expectations of members of the Cénacle was to support and praise one another in order to propagate the renown of this generation of budding Romantic writers.

Turquéty recounts Dumas père hoisting Hugo on his shoulders at a Cénacle meeting in

1829, following his reading of Marion De Lorme, and shouting, “Nous vous porterons à

8 Robb includes Hugo’s budding interest in Shakespeare as just one of the many manners by which Hugo usurped Nodier: “Hugo engaged in a literary equivalent of asset-stripping. Virtually every new aspect of his work from 1824 until the Romantic putsch of 1830 can be traced back to Nodier: the attack on the classical unities, the deification of Shakespeare (whose works Hugo did not discover for himself until the 1850s), parodies of the classical style in the Nouvelles Odes, an erudite interest in folklore and the supernatural, a subversive sense of humour, and the detection of vanished civilizations in the ruins that were being cleared away in the name of progress or for profit” (VH 121). 9 Brix argues against this hierarchical ordering. See Hugo, 9, 50. 176

la gloire!” (Bassan 432). Because of this expectation for mutual propagation, this group receives contemporary criticism. The saying “Frère, il faut nous louer!” that is associated with the Romantics of this period stems from an 1829 article in Revue de Paris, written by Henri de Latouche and entitled “De la camaraderie littéraire”. This article sparks a literary debate during the period:

Que si vous n’étiez pas doué à un très-haut degré de la faculté d’applaudir en face, d’atteindre à l’exaltation d’un enthousiasme à bout portant, de guinder votre ivresse au degré qui produit l’extase, nous ne vous conseillerions pas d’aborder jamais cette réunion qui s’est dit à elle-même que “le siècle lui appartient,” qui s’appelle modestement un Cénacle, et trouve dans son sein ses martyrs et ses divinités. […] Là, on s’est fait de la louange une servitude, un vasselage de tous les instans; c’est dans la petite église ultra- romantique, la prière du matin et du soir; c’est la dîme que toute lecture, confidence d’un projet, révélation d’un hémistiche auquel on travaille, a droit de lever sur les contribuables. Entre tout adepte rencontré par un autre adepte, il s’échange à toute heure un regard qui veut dire: Frère, il faut nous louer! (104)

The religious imagery here ridicules the pretension of the members of the Cénacle and compares their reverential lip-service offered to one another to a tithe, indicating that it is expected as an accompaniment to one’s membership within this “church” in which mortals can transform themselves into gods:

Des poètes encamaradent des musiciens; des musiciens les peintres, les peintres des sculpteurs; on se chante sur la plume et sur la guitare; on se rend en madrigaux ce qu’on a reçu en vignettes; on se coule en bronze de part et d’autre. Chacun peut, à l’heure qu’il est, se suspendre à sa cheminée, et s’instituer le dieu lare de son foyer. (108)10

Latouche emphasizes that the greatest risk of this practice of “encamaraderie” lies in its impact on the future of the arts. By creating such mutually-laudulatory groups as the

Cénacle, writers, musicians, artists, etc. shape the arts by utilizing their individual acclaim to augment that of their comrades. While Latouche avoids naming the main targets of this critique, he does include certain lines from poems as examples, most of

10 The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia offers the following description of the Lares: “Lares […], in Roman religion, guardian spirits. […] The most common myth, however, identifies them as household gods, beneficent spirits of ancestors, worshiped in close connection with the penates” (1). 177

which are from Sainte-Beuve’s Joseph Delorme. Even though he does not explicitly name the Romantic writers he attacks, Latouche still makes his targets known to the readers familiar with Sainte-Beuve’s works and thereby makes Sainte-Beuve the epitome of this practice of “camaraderie littéraire”. By naming without naming, Latouche both avoids making himself guilty of the name-dropping he reproaches and enters into the

“semantic paradox”, as Retallack describes it, of naming without naming (245).11

In response to Latouche’s article, Planche publishes an article entitled “De la haine littéraire” in an 1831 Revue des deux mondes. Planche is well known as one of the most scathing critics of 19th-century France. And yet, in this article, he uncharacteristically supports the Romantic “camarades littéraires” against Latouche, to whom he ironically refers as “Il” with a capitalized “I”, turning the accusation of self- idolatry back onto Latouche:

Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, ont été ses amis à leurs premiers débuts, et le jour du succès, le jour où leur nom est devenu un symbole glorieux d’enthousiasme et de poésie, Il les a pris en haine, et s’est attaché au char de triomphe pour arrêter la roue. Il a fait pour les Méditations, les Orientales et les Poèmes, ce que Sextus Empiricus a fait pour les Elémens d’Euclide. Il a dépensé toutes les facultés de son esprit à réfuter toutes les renommées qu’Il ne pouvait atteindre. (606)

According to Planche, it is Latouche’s envy of the renown, of the heights reached by the names of his former friends, that pushes him to hatred, a hatred he expresses by attacking the friendship of others. If one remembers that Latouche primarily cites Sainte-Beuve’s poetry, the main names promulgated in Joseph Delorme are those of Lamartine, Hugo, and de Vigny. This entire debate revolves around writers’ treatments of their own names

11 Glinoer comments upon Latouche’s choice to avoid naming individuals in this article: “De la même manière, pas un nom contemporain n’est cité au long de l’article: pourquoi? Souci d’échapper à l’écueil de la diffamation pure et simple ou désir de frapper plus loin en frappant moins ouvertement, ou encore volonté de procéder à l’inverse de ses cibles romantiques, accusées justement de faire trop de place au nom d’auteur dans leur poésie? Peut-être tout cela à la fois” (Querelle 62).

178

and the names of other writers, including Hugo. In reference to Latouche’s tendency to not sign his own creative works, Planche again applies his acerbic wit to Latouche’s name:

Nous devons donc le remercier d’avoir signé en sa vie deux ouvrages pour diminuer d’autant la besogne des bibliographes à venir qui voudront, comme feu Barbier, composer un dictionnaire des anonymes. Il n’est pas bien sûr, il est vrai, que nos neveux songent à lui, ni que son nom soit connu dans dix ans d’ici. (611)

The longevity of the bitter critic’s name does not usually rival the longevity of the genius writer’s name. This prediction will hold true for both the names Latouche and Sainte-

Beuve in comparison to that of Hugo.

Between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve, this expectation to promote the names of comrades becomes a bone of contention. According to Brix, it is Sainte-Beuve’s refusal to offer unmitigated journalistic praise as a literary critic that causes his rift with Hugo.12

Verona writes of Sainte-Beuve’s changing attitude toward this particular Cénacle while discussing the trend of “cercles” during the 19th Century in France:

Le phénomène n’est pas qu’individuel: la soif d’association gagne son siècle, avec une tendance à la “collectivisation” de la vie culturelle, selon le terme de Maurice Agulhon. Le “cercle”–cercles d’amis, de conversation, cercles politiques ou littéraires—ne désigne pas seulement “le fait de fréquenter agréablement ses semblables”, il devient institution. Par là il touche tangentiellement aux “salons” de Sainte-Beuve avec ses nombreuses variantes—“cercles de conversation”, “cénacle”, “école”, “groupes” ou “causeries”. Ces étiquettes, Sainte-Beuve les appose au gré de sa subjectivité: après avoir défini et théorisé le Cénacle romantique des années 1829, et l’avoir élevé au statut d’école—mot qui exprime, dit-il “une certaine communauté de principes et de vues sur l’art”–, c’est toujours lui qui, déçu par le romantisme, le fait descendre au rang de “salon”– “le Cénacle n’était après tout qu’un salon”. (30-31)

Sainte-Beuve’s changing attitude toward Romanticism, Victor Hugo, and the romantic

Cénacle go hand-in-hand. The role of the critic to provide the “definition” and “theory”

12 Brix claims their break was primarily due to literary disagreements: “[…] La personne d’Adèle n’est pas la cause de la rupture entre Sainte-Beuve et Hugo, dont le contentieux était avant tout littéraire” (Hugo 41). 179

behind literary movements emerges here. Because of his post as a critic, Sainte-Beuve wields power over popular understandings of both the names “Cénacle” and “Hugo”.

III. Naming Hugo in Joseph Delorme

“Le génie qui écrit pour l’immortalité, c’est le diamant qui grave, mais il grave sur le verre.” - Sainte-Beuve, Notes

Sainte-Beuve was not just a critical namer of Hugo. He was also a creative writer, and he exhibits another rapport with Hugo’s name by incorporating both his name and echoes of the names of Hugo’s characters into his creative works. In 1829, Sainte-

Beuve publishes Vie, poésies, et pensées de Joseph Delorme.13 Séché comments upon the shared name between this eponymous character of Sainte-Beuve’s and one of Hugo’s:

Quant au titre de Joseph Delorme, je ne crois pas me tromper en disant que Sainte-Beuve l’emprunta au drame même que Victor Hugo était sur le point de commencer. Marion de Lorme, Joseph Delorme! c’est à peine si l’orthographe variait d’un nom à l’autre, encore Sainte-Beuve écrivait-il le nom propre de Marion comme celui de Joseph, sans la particule. (Poètes 153)

This shared name places the two characters within the same literary family: that of

Romanticism, particularly Hugo’s Romanticism.14

Joseph Delorme begins with an account of the life of the fictitious Joseph

Delorme, who shares many qualities and biographical similarities with Sainte-Beuve.15

According to the narrator, Delorme often quoted Lord Ormond (a Hugolian character

13 Adèle recounts the readings of the poems in Joseph Delorme, along with a description of Sainte-Beuve’s shy demeanor, during his visits with the Hugo family: “Sainte-Beuve, comme embarrassé, ne craignant rien plus que d’occuper de lui, recommandait aux enfants de faire du bruit pendant qu’il parlerait. Les parents leur disaient d’être bien sages, qu’ils voulaient écouter, et le silence s’établissait. Les poésies de Joseph Delorme furent ainsi entendues dans le salon de Victor Hugo” (VHR 430). 14 Sainte-Beuve also greatly respected Lamartine, and according to Séché, Lamartine was Sainte-Beuve’s favorite: “Mais il revenait toujours à Lamartine pour qui il avait un faible et qui répondit à ses gracieuses et poétiques avances par la très belle épître qu’il inséra un an après dans ses Harmonies” (Poètes 156-57). Often Hugo and Lamartine are accused of the same faults in Sainte-Beuve’s later writings and private notes, but sometimes Lamartine emerges as a success: “Lamartine règne et plane, Hugo patauge” (Notes 35). 15 Bénichou simply states that Joseph is Sainte-Beuve: “Au contraire, le triste Joseph est bien Sainte-Beuve lui-même, et l’enthousiasme que le Cénacle lui a communiqué en 1829 et 1830 est en lui bien fragile” (École 15). 180

from Cromwell with whom Delorme shares a similar name) when fondly discussing the principles of the French Revolution:

Avec quel attendrissement grave et quel coup d’œil mélancolique jeté sur l’humanité, sa mémoire le reportait alors aux orages des derniers temps! En nous parlant de cette Révolution dont il adorait les principes, et dont il admirait les hommes, combien de fois il lui arrivait de s’écrier avec lord Ormond dans Cromwell: Triste et commun effet des troubles domestiques! A quoi tiennent, mon Dieu, les vertus politiques? Combien doivent leur faute à leur sort rigoureux, Et combien semblent purs qui ne furent qu’heureux! (Poésies 24)

One here finds Hugo’s verse in the mouth of Sainte-Beuve’s Romantic character. Sainte-

Beuve’s narrator goes on to assert that Delorme became a member of Hugo’s “school”:

Par ses goûts, ses études et ses amitiés, surtout à la fin, Joseph appartenait d’esprit et de cœur à cette jeune école de poésie qu’André Chénier légua au dix-neuvième siècle du pied de l’échafaud, et dont Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny, Victor Hugo, Émile Deschamps, et dix autres après eux, ont recueilli, décoré, agrandi le glorieux héritage. Quoiqu’il ne se soit jamais essayé qu’en des peintures d’analyse sentimentale et des paysages de petite dimension, Joseph a peut-être le droit d’être compté à la suite, loin, bien loin de ces noms célèbres. (Poésies 25)

Sainte-Beuve places Joseph in the distant lineage of figures like Hugo. By recognizing the need to place Delorme’s name “loin, bien loin de ces noms célèbres,” Sainte-Beuve’s narrator indicates an onomastically hierarchical ranking that favors names like Hugo’s to

Delorme’s. This treatment of Hugo’s name may seem reasonable and even commonplace to a modern reader. Nevertheless, the fact that this work of Sainte-Beuve’s was published in 1829 calls for some contextualization which renders this choice of Sainte-

Beuve’s as one more of propagation than confirmation. In 1829, Hugo had not yet reached the status of international renown that came after Hernani and Notre-Dame de

Paris. Hugo’s fame was growing at this time, especially after publishing his Odes et

Ballades and Cromwell, but Sainte-Beuve’s incorporation of his name in this list of very famous Romantic writers indicates the critic’s early willingness to promote Hugo’s fame by placing his name on the same echelon as that of older, more established writers.

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Sainte-Beuve’s attention to the importance of a writer’s name continues in the final passage of his section on the life of Joseph Delorme:

[…] Du moins son passage ici-bas dans l’obscurité et dans les pleurs n’aura pas été tout à fait perdu pour l’art: lui aussi, il aura eu sa part à la grande œuvre; lui aussi, il aura apporté sa pierre toute taillée au seuil du temple; et peut-être sur cette pierre, dans les jours à venir, on relira quelquefois son nom. (Poésies 25)

While Sainte-Beuve represents an ultra-contemporary critic who feels compelled to reinforce the presence of Hugo’s “pierre toute taillée au seuil du temple”, one finds that, as the century continues, Hugo becomes increasingly solidified as an example of a writer whose name has been hallowed in this artistic temple. Later, Hugo’s name will no longer be in danger of slipping into oblivion, and other writers (including Baudelaire, Verlaine,

Rimbaud, and Mallarmé) will find themselves fighting for the renown of other writers who are not as canonically revered, just as Sainte-Beuve once did for Hugo and for the fictitious Joseph Delorme. Preservation of the names of lesser-known writers within the memories of reading communities emerges as a recurring goal on the part of these 19th- century French writers who live and write under Hugo’s shadow.

After this account of the life of Delorme, Joseph Delorme continues as a collection of the eponymous character’s poems. The eleventh poem in this collection is entitled “À Mon Ami V.H.”. While it does not represent the first of Delorme’s poem with a dedication (there is one preceding poem, “Rêverie”, dedicated to Victor Pavie), it is the first poem with a title that simultaneously acts as a dedication. Genette’s work on dedications reveals a certain hope or expectation for compensation inherent to this paratextual device: “Il pose enfin une question fort pertinente, et toujours actuelle— dédicace ou non—: si le mécène peut rétribuer les éloges en même monnaie, ou fumée, c’est-à-dire par voie de compliments en retour” (113). Dedications play nicely into the

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Cenacular economy of compliments. Sainte-Beuve’s dedications to Hugo exemplify a type of dedication that is both public and private, as Genette studies: “Le dédicataire public est une personne plus ou moins connue, mais avec qui l’auteur manifeste, par sa dédicace, une relation d’ordre public: intellectuel, artistique, politique ou autre” (123). A dedication acts as both a statement to the dedicatee and a statement to the public.16 Such combinations of private and public relations characterize the link between the names of

Sainte-Beuve and Hugo.

The qualifications of names in dedications underwent change during this period, as exemplified in Joseph Delorme:

The first period of cenacles, until 1827, is relatively sparing in dedications, but starting with the formation of the cenacle of the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, they explode in number and in frequency. The most obvious case is that of the Poésies de Joseph Delorme, a profoundly dedicatory collection […]. Instead of the atonal and traditional “à M. A. de Lamartine” or “à M.***” we see a very original dedicatory form, conceived according to the model “À mon ami X,” in which the primary function is to situate the dedicatee in his/her privileged relation to the dedicator. (Glinoer “Collaboration” 45)

As Glinoer notes, this particular formulation of a dedication moves beyond its precedents because, rather than simply indicating a measure of respect or indebtedness of the poems’ author to the dedicatee, this type of dedication insists upon the personal relationship between the here fictional author Delorme and Hugo. The juxtaposition of names that occurs in a poetic dedication harkens back to the hierarchical ordering of names found in

16 Genette studies this facet of dedications in detail: “Quel qu’en soit le dédicataire officiel, il y a toujours une ambiguïté dans la destination d’une dédicace d’œuvre, qui vise toujours au moins deux destinataires: le dédicataire, bien sûr, mais aussi le lecteur, puisqu’il s’agit d’un acte public dont le lecteur est en quelque sorte pris à témoin. Typiquement performative, je l’ai dit, puisqu’elle constitue à elle seule l’acte qu’elle est censée décrire, la formule n’en est donc pas seulement: “Je dédie ce livre à Untel” (c’est-à-dire “Je dis a Untel que je lui dédie ce livre”), mais aussi, et parfois bien davantage: “Je dis au lecteur que je dédie ce livre à Untel.” Mais, de ce fait, également: “Je dis à Untel que je dis au lecteur que je dédie ce livre à Untel” (autrement dit: “Je dis à Untel que je lui fais une dédicace publique”). Mais du coup, non moins: “Je dis au lecteur que je dis à Untel, etc.” –à l’infini, bien sûr. La dédicace d’œuvre relève toujours de la démonstration, de l’ostentation, de l’exhibition: elle affiche une relation, intellectuelle ou privée, réelle ou symbolique, et cette affiche est toujours au service de l’œuvre, comme argument de valorisation ou thème de commentaire […]” (126). 183

the account of Delorme’s life. By not only dedicating one of his poems to Hugo but by also inserting a mark of his friendship with this rising star, Delorme presents himself as a peer and friend—thus an almost equal—of Hugo’s. While a measure of equality can be arguably considered as inherent to all dedications—which is to say, via a dedication in any form, one may interpret some leveling of the field—this particular form of dedications accentuates the personal relationship between the author and the dedicatee, thereby projecting for the reader a context in which these two people find themselves as equals. The juxtaposition of names, particularly within a title of a poem, can thereby instill a certain equality between these names for the reader.

At this point, a brief exposé of the possible inspiration for this poem of Sainte-

Beuve’s from the fictional poet Joseph Delorme to Hugo becomes pertinent, as Hugo had earlier treated Sainte-Beuve’s name in a similar manner. The year before the publication of this poem of Sainte-Beuve’s, Hugo published a poem with a markedly similar title, “À mon ami S.-B.”, in the 1828 edition of Odes et Ballades. While Hugo’s narrator here encourages S.-B. to ascend to the heights of his destiny and refers to S.-B. as his brother, one still finds a note of superiority in the narrator’s view of S.-B. as youthful and decidedly still in the process of making a name for himself:

La brume de ton aube, Ami, va se dissoudre. Fais-toi connaître, aiglon, du soleil, de la foudre. Viens arracher un nom par tes chants inspirés; Viens; cette gloire, en butte à tant de traits vulgaires, Ressemble aux fiers drapeaux qu’on rapporte des guerres, Plus beaux quand ils sont déchirés!

Vois l’astre chevelu qui, royal météore, Roule, en se grossissant des mondes qu’il dévore; Tel, ô jeune géant, qui t’accrois tous les jours, Tel ton génie ardent, loin des routes tracées, Entraînant dans son cours des mondes de pensées, Toujours marche et grandit toujours! (Poésie I 249)

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S.-B. here appears as something of a poet-in-training. The inclusion of a name in this poem (“Viens arracher un nom par tes chants inspirés”) adds a complication to the role of

Hugo’s name within this example. First, as in Sainte-Beuve’s poem, there is an equalizing juxtaposition of names and indication of personal relationship between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve in the dedicatory title. But one also finds the narrator’s invitation to the dedicatee to come wrest a name for himself. The verb viens [come] indicates that the narrator is already in the place where names and ensuing glory are garnered. Thus the equality that one can interpret through the poem’s title and status as a dedicatory poem of friendship is threatened, and the latent superiority of the narrator to the dedicatee becomes visible. Nevertheless, in the following stanza, the narrator praises the growing genius of the dedicatee. While this is primarily complimentary, the insistence upon the continuous development of this genius (through such phrases as “se grossissant”,

“t’accrois”, and “grandit toujours”) again suggests a subtle superiority on the part of the narrator towards the “jeune géant”. In the economy of dedications, Sainte-Beuve may have been paying Hugo back through the avatar of Delorme.

Sainte-Beuve’s poem spotlights naming in its first stanza:

Entends-tu ce long bruit doux comme une harmonie, Ce cri qu’à l’univers arrache le génie Trop longtemps combattu, Cri tout d’un coup sorti de la foule muette, Et qui porte à la gloire un nom de grand poëte, Noble ami, l’entends-tu? (52)

One may also note the verb arracher that is present in Hugo’s poem (“Viens arracher un nom”) and echoed in Sainte-Beuve’s poem (“Ce cri qu’à l’univers arrache le genie”).

While Hugo’s narrator encourages the addressee to wrest a name, Sainte-Beuve’s narrator replies that genius is what wrests the cry from the silent mob that will carry a poet’s name

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to glory. Such a modification within this poem of near- or non-naming suggests that

Sainte-Beuve again here corrects Hugo’s poetic aims. The implication is that rather than striving to attain a name, poets should allow their genius to naturally induce the recognition it will garner.

The narrator of Sainte-Beuve’s poem describes the budding celebrity of his friend as bittersweet:

Oh! moi, j’entends bien ce monde qui t’admire. Cri puissant! qu’il m’enivre, ami; qu’il me déchire! Qu’il m’est cher et cruel! Pour moi, pauvre déchu, réveillé d’un doux songe, L’aigle saint n’est pour moi qu’un vautour qui me ronge Sans m’emporter au ciel! (55)

While Hugo’s narrator compares genius to an eagle and describes S.-B. as an eaglet still in the process of maturing, Sainte-Beuve’s narrator spurns the sacred eagle as a vulture that refuses to raise him to the heights of general admiration.17 The narrator goes on to compare himself to a caged bird whose flight has been prevented and who must tolerate the smacks as well as the caresses of an “enfant sans pitié” that keeps him caged (56).

This image contrasts starkly with the narrator’s perception of Hugo, whose flight carries him to such great heights as to allow him to hear the voices from above:

A l’étroit en ce monde où rampant les fils d’Eve, Tandis que, l’œil au ciel, tu montes où t’enlève Ton essor souverain, Que ton aile se joue aux flancs des noirs nuages, Lutte avec les éclairs, ou qu’à plaisir tu nages Dans un éther serein;

Poussant ton vol sublime et planant, solitaire, Entre les voix d’en haut et l’écho de la terre, Dis-moi, jeune vainqueur, Dis-moi, nous entends-tu? la clameur solennelle Va-t-elle dans la nue enfler d’orgueil ton aile

17 The eagle is a common poetic fixture, but it is also the bird associated with the French Empire. Political insinuations may therefore be a factor here. See Villefosse and Bouissonouse. 186

Et remuer ton cœur? (52-55)

The sublimity of Hugo comes to the fore in these lines, as Hugo flies above the sons of

Eve, high enough to both hear heavenly voices and risk not hearing those of lesser humans. Depictions of Hugo as both celestial and as capable of flight recur throughout the century. Another echo of Hugo’s poem here appears: while Hugo referred to his addressee as a “jeune géant”, Sainte-Beuve refers to his addressee as a “jeune vainqueur”, a young victor.

In the final stanzas of this poem, the narrator dreams of being recognized by Hugo as a poet of worth and of ascending to the heights of Hugo:

C’est mon emblême, ami;…mais si, comme un bon frère, Du sein de ta splendeur à mon destin contraire Tu veux bien compatir; Si tu lis en mon cœur ce que je n’y puis lire, Et si ton amitié devine sur ma lyre Ce qui n’en peut sortir;

C’est assez, c’est assez: jusqu’à l’heure où, mon âme Secouant son limon et rallumant sa flamme A la nuit des tombeaux, Je viendrai, le dernier et l’un des plus indignes, Te rejoindre, au milieu des aigles et des cygnes, Ô toi, l’un des plus beau! (56)

According to the narrator, all he desires before death is recognition on the part of the addressee of the worth of the narrator’s intended works. All he hopes for is that this friend and brother can see what the narrator meant to write. Then, in death (“la nuit des tombeaux”), the narrator states that he will come join his friend among the eagles and swans. An accentuated hierarchical divide instills itself between the narrator and the addressee in the former’s value judgments of himself and his friend: while he describes himself as the last and one of the least worthy who (still) will join these postmortem ranks, he describes his friend as one of the most beautiful.

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Another poem in Joseph Delorme, entitled “Le Cénacle”, begins with an epigraph that focuses upon the power of sacred names: “Quand vous serez plusieurs réunis en mon nom, je serai avec vous” (62).18 This line reformulates a New Testament verse: “For where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in their midst” (Matthew:

18.20).19 If others gather in the name of the leader, then the leader will be spiritually present. Like the name of Christ, the signifier Hugo can conjure the signified for his disciples: he can be present amongst his believers even when physically absent through the power of his name. The narrator goes on in this poem to famously assert that this century belongs to the “nous” of the cenacle, but he then immediately separates himself from this group:

Tous réunis, s’entendre, et s’aimer, et se dire: ‘Ne désespérons point, poètes, de la lyre, Car le siècle est à nous.’ Il est à vous; chantez, ô voix harmonieuses, Et des humains bientôt les foules envieuses Tomberont à genoux. (63)20

In the following stanzas, the narrator singles out a single “génie” upon whose forehead the insult is imprinted:

Parmi vous un génie a grandi sous l’orage, Jeune et fort; sur son front s’est imprimé l’outrage

18 The religious meaning of the word “cenacle” reappears in the poem itself, as the narrator begins the poem with a comparison of the old cenacles of Athens and Rome in which believers would gather to the new cenacle of believers who join hands: “Puis les soirs quelquefois, loin des moqueurs barbares,/ Entre soi converser, compter les voix trop rares/ Et se donner la main […]” (63). This act of joining hands will continue to resurge as an offer or request Hugo often makes to poets of younger generations, so much so that it will become a means by which Baudelaire will parody Hugo, becoming a “moqueur” in turn. 19 An 1839 edition of Revue des deux mondes includes a passage that cites this Bible verse when discussing Hugo’s acceptance speech upon admission to the Académie: “Quand vous serez plusieurs réunis en mon nom, a dit l’Esprit, je serai avec vous. Cela, dans l’ordre du talent, n’est vrai que d’un très petit nombre. Et la Muse sévère, à son tour, pourrait dire: ‘Quand vous serez plus d’un nombre choisi, et qui vous direz réunis en mon nom, vous mentirez, et je n’y serai pas.’ Au reste (qu’on n’aille pas s’y méprendre), ce n’est point par modestie et par pur oubli d’eux-mêmes que plusieurs vrais talens se commettent de la sorte, c’est par ambition et orgueil. Ils se disent qu’ils peuvent se mêler sans péril, se ménager toutes les alliances, qu’ils sont immaculables, et sauront toujours s’en tirer. Ils se trompent: le talent, si haut qu’il soit, perd à ces gaspillages intéressés. Avec plus d’humilité intérieure, ils seraient plus fiers” (417). 20 My emphases. 188

En éclairs radieux; Mais il dépose ici son sceptre, et le repousse; Sa gloire sans rayons se fait aimable et douce Et rit à tous les yeux.

Oh! qu’il chante longtemps! car son luth nous entraîne, Nous rallie et nous guide, et nous tiendrons l’arène, Tant qu’il retentira; Deux ou trois tours encore, au son de sa trompette, Aux éclats de sa voix que tout un chœur répète, Jéricho tombera! (63)

The mention of this genius’ forehead hints at Hugo because of his large forehead, popular amongst caricaturists. The narrator also goes on to compare this genius to a swan, which harkens back to the presence of swans in the earlier poem “À mon ami V. H.”.

Regardless of whether or not the head genius of the cenacle is definitively identified as

Hugo here, what is important is precisely this lack of naming. In this collection of poetry to which many scholars point as the first to open the floodgates of Romantic name- dropping, especially via dedications, why would the narrator refrain from naming individuals in this poem about the Cénacle?

One possible response to this query stems from a reading of the final stanzas of the poem and a repeated adjective to be found therein:

Alors, si l’un de nous, Le dernier, le plus humble en ces banquets sublimes (Car le sort trop souvent aux plus nobles victimes Garde les premiers coups),

S’il survit, seul assis parmi ces places vides, Lisant, des jeunes gens les questions avides Dans leurs yeux ingénus, Et des siens essuyant une larme qui nage, II dira tout ému des pensers du jeune âge: “Je les ai bien connus;

“Ils étaient grands et bons. L’amère jalousie Jamais chez eux n’arma le miel de poésie De son grêle aiguillon, Et jamais dans son cours leur gloire éblouissante Ne brûla d’un dédain l’humble fleur pâlissante,

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Le bluet du sillon.” (Poésies 65)

The adjective “humble” appears two times in these final lines of the poem, presenting the possibility that names of members of this group are left out to support this idea of the humility of these members. Perhaps by not naming Hugo, Sainte-Beuve endeavors to instill humility in his friend.21

A second possible answer to the question as to why names may be left unspoken in this poem of Sainte-Beuve’s involves certain liberties one may take with names when in the company of close acquaintances. If the people to whom these names refer do not signify in the eyes of readers outside of the group, the sense of belonging for the initiated readers is heightened. Glinoer comments upon this same phenomenon in another poem of Joseph Delorme:

In ‘À Madame Tatsu,’ names are only alluded to […]. The homage here is even more poignant since the reference would seem obscure to uninitiated readers. Without disappearing, the member of the cenacle to whom this poem refers works, freed from family name, hand and [sic] hand with the entire cenacle. At the same time, only the friend, object and privileged recipient of the poem, can know the secret of the disguised name. The feeling of belonging and intimacy, within the cenacular community, is thus reinforced. (“Collaboration” 51)

Whether or not this veiling is intended to instill humility, this is still a complimentary instance of name-disguising. Some later instances of disguising the name of Hugo are far less complimentary. In those disparaging cases, writers may avoid directly naming Hugo because of the possibility of backlash. However, in this complimentary name-silencing,

Sainte-Beuve perhaps both enhances the communion of the members of his group and maintains its humility, despite the earlier assertion that this century belongs to this group.

21 This description of one final member sitting alone amidst empty seats will happen almost verbatim to Gautier later in his life according to his description of an 1867 reprisal of Hernani. 190

Through the poems of Joseph Delorme, Sainte-Beuve delineates his Romantic literary project in a manner that differs from the implicit perception of Hugo’s. 1829 was the year of the publication of both Sainte-Beuve’s Joseph Delorme and Hugo’s Les

Orientales. Sainte-Beuve’s description of his narrator’s muse, given in the opening lines of the poem “Ma Muse”, aims directly at differentiating his muse from “oriental” muses:

“Non, ma Muse n'est pas l'odalisque brillante/ Qui danse les seins nus, à la voix sémillante,/ Aux noirs cheveux luisants, aux longs yeux de houri;/ Elle n'est ni la jeune et vermeille Péri […]” (85). Instead of having an odalisque (a female slave in a harem), a

Péri (a Persian spirit-like mythological creature), or a popular solitary virgin or mourning widow for a muse, Sainte-Beuve’s narrator prefers a much more familiar and humble figure. His muse is a poor but honest woman who lives with her sick father in a thatch hut, washes the dirty laundry, is herself occasionally wracked by a “toux déchirante” that interrupts her singing, and hopes that her father may die before she does (85-86).22

Within this poem, Sainte-Beuve’s muse herself is called upon to focus on names: “O

Muse, alors dis-moi, Muse chère à jamais;/ Les noms mystérieux des âmes que j’aimais;/

Puis porte mes regards à la céleste toile,/ Et par leurs noms aussi nomme-moi chaque

étoile […]” (86). There is a mystery bound within the names of the souls that the narrator loved. His desire to have these names pronounced by the muse indicates that the mystery within these names of loved ones and of stars inspires creative production. Delving into the mysteries of names inspires Delorme’s poetry.

This contrast between Delorme and other Romantic poets—Hugo in particular— resurges in a poem entitled “La Veillée” that Sainte-Beuve dedicates to “mon ami V.H.

22 Brix also identifies this distinction of muses as emblematic of the differences between Hugo and Sainte- Beuve (Hugo 72). 191

(Victor Hugo)”. In 1830, the Hugos asked Sainte-Beuve to act as godfather to their second son, François-Victor.23 Sainte-Beuve writes this poem about the night of the birth of his friend’s child: “Mon ami, vous voilà père d’un nouveau-né” (92). “La Veillée” is divided into two stanzas: in the first, the narrator describes the joys of “mon ami” who spends the night watching over his family and its newest addition; in the second, the narrator describes his own vigil during the same night over the body of a recently deceased neighbor. In his description of Hugo, the narrator again compares him to an eagle, as well as a pastor and a master. The section on Hugo ends with the narrator’s request that Hugo sing of his familial experiences: “Vivez, soyez heureux, et chantez- nous un jour/ Ces secrets plus qu’humains d’un ineffable amour!” (92). This reads like a suggestion from Sainte-Beuve the critic to Hugo to offer more of a “poésie d’intérieur” in his works.24 Brix also claims that it is in his poem “Les Rayons jaunes”, from the Joseph

Delorme collection, that Sainte-Beuve demonstrates the “poésie d’intérieur” that he recommends Hugo produce (Hugo 73). The loneliness of Sainte-Beuve’s narrator again comes to the fore in “Les Rayons jaunes”. As he reflects upon the recent loss of his aunt, he predicts that he will soon find himself alone, with no family whatsoever: “Non, jamais

à mon nom ma jeune fiancée/ Ne rougira d’amour, rêvant dans sa pensée/ Au jeune époux absent;/ Jamais deux enfants purs, deux anges de promesse,/ Ne tiendront suspendus sur moi, durant la messe,/ Le poêle jaunissant” (71). The solitude of the narrator is embodied in the lack of his name’s power both to cause his imaginary fiancée to dream of him and to be continued through progeny, the “anges de promesse”. Within a name reside both

23 See Brix, Hugo, 27. 24 Verona studies this collection of poetry as a combination of the work of the poet and the critic within Sainte-Beuve: “Le Joseph Delorme offre à la fois des vers, leur évaluation critique, et leur classement dans l’histoire littéraire” (43). 192

the power to conjure and the promise for future life and continuation of the name.

However, the narrator’s name does not enjoy these powers held by Hugo’s name because of his lack of family. The contrast between not just Hugo and Delorme but the names— sometimes in absentia—of Hugo and Delorme is accentuated throughout Joseph

Delorme.

IV. From V.H. to YHVH: Les Consolations

“Apollon est le dieu des poètes et des médecins. Pourquoi un médecin ne serait-il pas littérateur?” - Sainte-Beuve, Notes

During 1829, Sainte-Beuve writes a number of poems dedicated to Hugo and to

Adèle, to be published in Les Consolations the following year. The lengthy dedication of this collection is entitled “À Victor H…”, and its first line insists upon the ubiquity of

Hugo’s name in Sainte-Beuve’s poetry: “Mon ami, ce petit livre est à vous; votre nom s’y trouve à presque toutes les pages; votre présence ou votre souvenir s’y mêle à toutes mes pensées” (193). Part of Sainte-Beuve’s stated aim for dedicating these poems to Hugo is to remind him of the loving “vie domestique de l’intérieur” out of which Hugo is propelling himself, “dans le bruit et les orages du drame” (193).25 Remembrance and interiority emerge as two of the main thematics of this collection and of Sainte-Beuve’s version of Romanticism, and Sainte-Beuve claims in this dedicatory preface that these two states are nourished by poetry (194). By scolding Hugo for failing to appreciate his home life, Sainte-Beuve couches his Romantic mission within repeated warnings to

Hugo. Through his own poetry, Sainte-Beuve attempts to serve as an example for Hugo to imitate. Nevertheless, he frequently comments upon the glory of his friend, the embodiment of this movement’s growing legitimacy (if in a direction of which Sainte-

25 This is in reference to the tumult surrounding productions of Hernani. 193

Beuve disapproves). In Les Consolations, Sainte-Beuve encourages the Romantic deification of Hugo while offering suggestions for improvements Hugo could make to his own works and therefore to the movement for which his name is coming to stand.

Sainte-Beuve then moves on in this dedicatory preface to a typological analysis of friendships (e.g. the ideal friendship between the healthy and the sick, the rich and the poor, the happy and the sad). The one true friendship is here named as that between two people who move in the same direction, accompanied by their friendship that must also change and resist complacency. In other words, friendships must also be constantly critiqued. Citing St. Augustine’s The Imitation of Christ, Sainte-Beuve then warns his friend and dedicatee against falling for the charms of deceitful, insincere friendship:

Toute autre amitié que celle-là serait trompeuse, légère bonne pour un temps, et bientôt épuisée: elle mériterait qu’on lui appliquât la parole sévère du saint auteur de l’Imitation: “Noli confidere super amicos et promixos, nec in futurum tuam differas salutem, quia citius obliviscentur tui homines quam aestimas” [“Trust not thy friends and kinsfolk, nor put off the work of thy salvation to the future, for men will forget thee sooner than thou thinkest” (Kempis 236)]. Il ne reste rien à dire, après saint Augustin, sur les charmes décevants et les illusions fabuleuses de l’amitié humaine. A la prendre de ce côté, je puis répéter devant vous, ô mon Ami, que l’amitié des hommes n’est pas sûre, et vous avertir de n’y pas trop compter. (196)

The citation that Sainte-Beuve chooses advises Hugo to cease pursuing such widespread renown, which pursuit embroils him in false friendships. This warning echoes the detractors of the cenacular name-droppers and indicates a shift in the community of the

Cénacle that was beginning around this time in preparation for the Hernani battles.

Instead of putting his faith in false friends to promote his name (which they will forget anyway), Sainte-Beuve recommends—via St. Augustin—that Hugo work instead on his salvation. Two future problems between Sainte-Beuve and Hugo are foreshadowed here.

Firstly, religious disagreements would not end here between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve.

And secondly, given the betrayal that occurs via extramarital affair between Sainte-Beuve

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and Adèle, this warning against trusting in one’s friends offers some dramatic irony to the modern reader.

Despite these equivocations, Sainte-Beuve states explicitly that his friendship with Hugo is exemplary of the ideal friendship in which one’s soul seeks its abode:

L’amitié [que l’âme] implore, et en qui elle veut établir sa demeure, ne saurait être trop pure et trop pieuse, trop empreinte d’immortalité, trop mêlée à l’invisible et à ce qui ne change pas […]. Tel est, mon Ami, le refuge heureux que j’ai trouvé en votre âme. Par vous, je suis revenu à la vie du dehors, au mouvement de ce monde, et de là, sans secousse, aux vérités les plus sublimes. Vous m’avez consolé d’abord, et ensuite vous m’avez porté à la source de toute consolation; car vous l’avez vous-même appris dès la jeunesse, les autres eaux tarissent, et ce n’est qu’aux bords de cette Siloé céleste qu’on peut s’asseoir pour toujours et s’abreuver: Voici la vérité qu’au monde je révèle: Du Ciel dans mon néant je me suis souvenu. Louez Dieu! La brebis vient quand l’agneau l’appelle; J’appelais le Seigneur, le Seigneur est venu. (198-99)

The lines that Sainte-Beuve cites above are from Hugo’s poem “Actions de Grâces” from

Odes et Ballades. In this poem of Hugo’s, the narrator describes himself as an eaglet who was promised glory, love, and pride in his youth but who died while pursuing these aims. Sainte-Beuve presents the glory of Hugo as not of this world; in other words, the action of Hugo’s that Sainte-Beuve praises and thereby encourages is that of relinquishing the pursuit of worldly glory. Like the lamb calling the ewe and the narrator calling God, if Sainte-Beuve interpellates Hugo in this precise manner, maybe this

Sainte-Beuvian ideal version of “Hugo” will come.

Near the end of this dedication, Sainte-Beuve goes on to refer to this collection of poetry as the image of his own soul: “Ce petit livre est l’image fidèle de mon âme […]”

(201). A juxtaposition of this quotation with the first lines of the dedication offers insight on the state of Sainte-Beuve’s soul, according to this dedication: “Mon ami, ce petit livre est à vous; votre nom s’y trouve à presque toutes les pages; votre présence ou votre

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souvenir s’y mêle à toutes mes pensées” (193). If Les Consolations represents Sainte-

Beuve’s soul, and if the book is covered with Hugo’s name, then this dedication-writing

Sainte-Beuve’s soul is also covered with Hugo’s name. The significance of Hugo’s name is altered by its presentation through Sainte-Beuve. By emphasizing the aspects that Sainte-Beuve would like to see Hugo project of himself and by warning Hugo against too strong a pursuit of fame, Sainte-Beuve offers his readers a corrective image of

Hugo that, through these corrections, subtly draws attention to what Sainte-Beuve sees as

Hugo’s faults or weaknesses. The intimate right to critique between these two poets becomes clear in this dedication that modifies the public image of “Hugo” through the public and private rapport he holds with “Sainte-Beuve”.

The following Hugo-centric poem in this collection is entitled “À V.H…”. This poem begins with the narrator questioning its addressee, who has the tellingly large forehead indicative of Hugo (“ton front grand et haut comme s’il était chauve” (237)), as to why he is sweating and trembling. It is then understood by the narrator that this “Ami” has recently exited the sanctuary where he communed and struggled with God. Once again, this poem differentiates the addressee from the narrator through the former’s honor and sovereignty, here embodied in a crown, as opposed to the latter’s lack thereof:

Oh! moi, qui vis en toi, qui t'admire et qui t'aime, Qui vois avec orgueil grossir ton diadème, Moi dont l'aspect t'est cher et dont tu prends la main, Égaré de bonne heure, hélas! du droit chemin, Si parfois mon accent vibre et mon œil éclaire, C'est vaine passion, misérable colère, Amour-propre blessé, que sais-je? — et si mon front Se voile de pâleur, c'est plutôt un affront; C'est que mon âme impure est ivre de mollesse; C'est le signe honteux que le plaisir me laisse. (237)

196

The narrator’s conflicted feelings about the success of his friend are clearly expressed here. He feels pride at the growth of his friend’s diadem, and yet he is also susceptible to moments of hurt personal pride. As opposed to the dedication of this collection, this poem’s title, while still a dedication, does not specify the relationship between the author and the dedicatee as that of a friendship. The address of “Ami” appears multiple times within the poem, but this poem’s focus lies on that which threatens a friendship. As

Hugo’s fame grows, so do the complications between the narrator and the dedicatee. The dedicatee is privy to divine struggles that the narrator cannot experience. Moreover, the dedicatee is becoming more and more sovereign, while “mollesse” characterizes the narrator’s soul. This poem exposes some of the complication behind the celebrity of

V.H., and while it still works to promote Hugo’s renown, it also analyzes the effects of such fame on Hugo’s friends.

The other poem in Les Consolations with the name Hugo in its dedicatory title is

“Sonnet à V.H…”. This sonnet appears to be a complimentary poem for Hugo at first glance, but there are again subtle indications of potential problems:

Votre génie est grand, Ami, votre penser Monte, comme Elisée, au char vivant d'Élie; Nous sommes devant vous comme un roseau qui plie; Votre souffle en passant pourrait nous renverser.

Mais vous prenez bien garde, Ami, de nous blesser; Noble et tendre, jamais votre amitié n'oublie Qu'un rien froisse souvent les cœurs et les délie; Votre main sait chercher la nôtre et la presser.

Comme un guerrier de fer, un vaillant homme d'armes, S'il rencontre, gisant, un nourrisson en larmes, Il le met dans son casque et le porte en chemin,

Et de son gantelet le touche avec caresses: La nourrice serait moins habile aux tendresses; La mère n'aurait pas une si douce main. (254)

197

The capacity for thought and genius of the dedicatory friend are described as making him capable of climbing to Elijah’s (Élie’s) chariot of fire, in which he was said to have ridden to Heaven (2 Kings 2:11).26 The name Elijah means “El (God) is Yahweh”, “El is

Jah”, or “El is YHWH”. This doubly theophoric name (as it contains both El and Jah as names of God) acts simultaneously as a profession of faith and an embedding of the name of God; consequently, Elijah’s name is a reflection of the being he serves rather than a propagation of his own being as separate. In Althusserian terms, this name communicates a status of a subject as subjected to a Subject. The power held by

V.H./Ami in this poem is comparable to that of God: the dedicatee’s breath could bowl over the “nous” of the poem, who are as weak as mere reeds in comparison to the “vous”.

Orthographically, there is a embedding of Hugo’s initials “VH” within the

as the Hebrew letter (יהוה) ”tetragrammaton “YHWH”, often transliterated as “YHVH

Vav bears closer resemblance to a V than a W.27 Seen in this light, the tetragrammaton acts as a theorific name containing the initials of Hugo; in other words, within the name of God one finds the name of Hugo. In the second quatrain, the poem’s dedicatee resembles a brother whose friendships hold great import. Here again, the attention to maintaining friendships, despite the occasional spat, emerges as a crucial quality for a

26 The passage reads as follows in the Bible: “And it happened, as they were going on and speaking, behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire came. And they separated between them both, and Elijah went up in a tempest to Heaven” (2 Kings 2:11). There is no indication in the Bible of the origin of Elijah’s name to my knowledge. 27 Elijah is more specifically a –YH theophoric name. Maclaurin writes of the history of the tetragrammaton within other names: “It is most significant that the full element YHWH never (except as noted above) occurs in proper names: this is most suggestive in view of the importance attached by Semites to names of good omen—if YHWH had been the original potent form of the sacred name it would in ancient times have been incorporated in the names of all persons for whom God’s help was sought and it must be remembered that personal names are most conservative in preserving old forms (e.g. Penuel, Abijam etc.). It seems reasonable to conclude that YW and YH names are used to the exclusion of names incorporating the full YHWH, and that YW names are more ancient than the YH form; it would also seem that YH is in use at an early stage as the Name of God where a later writer would have written YHWH” (447). 198

Hugo to possess. In the jump between the quatrains and the tercets, the narrator shifts from addressing this figure as “vous” to describing this being to his readers as “il”. This pronominal shift reflects the job of a disciple: the narrator’s duty is to spread the gospel of Hugo to others. Over the course of the final two stanzas, the dedicatee of this poem also comes to resemble parental figures, resonating with biblical passages in which God is likened to fathers and mothers. In the first tercet, the dedicatee acts as a father figure: he both fights as a warrior and then picks up a helpless child in his helmet.28 Finally, in the second tercet, he becomes even more maternal than a mother to this child in need.29

This sonnet presents V.H. as YHVH, as almighty yet gentle, as brother, father, and mother all at once. By not fully naming Hugo in its title and never directly naming Hugo in its body, this poem also exhibits respect for this divinity’s name and an unwillingness to blaspheme.

Within the trajectory of the collection Les Consolations, a transition occurs from presenting Hugo as a rising star who needs to carefully choose the friends he trusts (in the dedication “À Victor Hugo”), to Hugo as a friend capable of communing with God and therefore inciting jealousy in his friend (in “À V.H…”), to Hugo as both a friend and God

(in “Sonnet à V.H…”). While these pieces all insist upon the friendship between the narrator and the dedicatee, this friendship increasingly takes a back seat to the growing fame of V.H. Towards the end of 1829, a new generation of Romantics enters the scene, which poses difficulty for Sainte-Beuve and his perceived role within the Hugo-centric cenacular community:

28 God is compared to a father in Psalm: “God in His holy dwelling is a father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows” (Psalm 68:5). 29 God is compared to a mother in Isaiah: “As a man whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you. And you shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 66:13). 199

Dans les derniers mois de 1829, l’appartement des Hugo est devenu le centre de l’agitation littéraire; il est envahi par la génération romantique émergeante – celle de Théophile Gautier et de Gérard de Nerval – qui, bruyante, excentrique, combative, rompt avec l’atmosphère fervente mais feutrée du cénacle de Joseph Delorme. Surtout, ces très jeunes gens sont tout entier acquis à Victor Hugo, qu’ils idolâtrent sans modération. […] Pour [Sainte-Beuve] qui s’était pensé le dauphin de Hugo parce qu’il avait propagé son culte et chanté le cénacle, la déception est grande. (Glinoer “Préface” 21)

Reading Sainte-Beuve’s poetry dedicated to Hugo in Les Consolations reveals reflections of an acceptance of the growing group of disciples surrounding Hugo (indicated by the reverent “nous” in the final poem dedicated to Hugo in this collection), which growth also points to the increasing renown of Hugo.30 This renown would soon explode thanks to Hernani. The power of the recognizability of Hugo’s name also seems to come accompanied by a silencing of honest critique. The title of this collection, Les

Consolations, has as one meaning consolation prizes (which is expressed in French by just “consolations”). While Sainte-Beuve loses the fame competition between himself and Hugo, he does win in the friendship arena, at least for a time. And as an intimate friend of Hugo’s, he has the power to modify the public’s image of this celebrity by incorporating Hugo’s name in his collection and exposing his readers to a V.H. they may never have seen before. Sometimes “Hugo” is a self-absorbed celebrity who endangers himself by befriending sycophants to augment his renown, but he is always a genius and a friend, and sometimes even a god within God. And as the crony of a godlike celebrity,

Sainte-Beuve can encourage his friend to become the kind of god Sainte-Beuve would like him to be. In this manner, Sainte-Beuve encourages Hugo to carefully modify the significance of his own name.

30 I am making this claim based upon the order in which one reads these pieces and not the order in which they are marked by Sainte-Beuve as being written, which appears in Les Consolations as follows: Preface- December 1829, “À V.H…”- September 1829, “Sonnet à V.H…” – October 1829. 200

Despite these suggestions, Sainte-Beuve also claims to imitate Hugo’s works, as in this letter from October 1829, when Sainte-Beuve was traveling with Boulanger:

Moi surtout, mon cher Victor, j’avais bien des raisons pour ne pas quitter un seul instant votre souvenir; car, si je vous l’ai déjà dit en vers, souffrez que je vous le marque ici en simple et vraie prose, je ne vis plus que par vous. Le peu de talent que j’ai m’est venu par votre exemple et vos conseils déguisés en éloges; j’ai fait parce que je vous ai vu faire, et que vous m’avez cru capable de faire; mais mon fond propre à moi était si mince que mon talent vous est revenu tout à fait et après une course un peu longue comme le ruisseau au fleuve ou à la mer; je ne m’inspire plus qu’auprès de vous, de vous et de ce qui vous entoure. Enfin ma vie domestique n’est encore qu’en vous, et je ne suis heureux et chez moi que sur votre canapé ou à votre coin de feu. (Corr. 59)

Sainte-Beuve performs a number of tasks in this letter: he insists upon his position as the ultimate friend of Hugo’s (“Moi surtout”); he (pro)claims Hugo as his poetic model, inspiration, and source of life without whose faith Sainte-Beuve would be incapable of writing; and finally, he injects himself into Hugo’s family by saying that Hugo’s domestic life is also his own and that Hugo’s home is where he feels at home as well.

Sainte-Beuve thereby subtly makes himself a Hugo. His actions in the following years take this idea of belonging a step further and reinforce this idea of Sainte-Beuve attempting to supplant Hugo within his domestic life. However, in 1844, he will publish the following in his essay on Chateaubriand:

Lorsque je publiai Les Consolations en mars 1830, je les envoyai à M. de Chateaubriand, qui répondit à mon envoi par la lettre suivante (30 mars 1830): Je viens, Monsieur, de parcourir trop rapidement vos Consolations: des vers pleins de grâce et de charme, des sentiments tristes et tendres se font remarquer à toutes les pages. Je vous félicite d’avoir cédé à votre talent, en le dégageant de tout système. Écoutez votre génie, Monsieur; chargez votre muse d’en redire les inspirations, et, pour atteindre la renommée, vous n’aurez besoin d’être porté dans le casque de personne.31 […] Cette lettre, dans son compliment, renfermait le conseil indirect de m’émanciper un peu de Victor Hugo et faisait allusion à un sonnet où j’avais dit, parlant au puissant poète […]. La Révolution de 1830 interrompit mes relations avec M. de Chateaubriand. Ses amis ne furent point très contents d’un petit article de moi qui parut dans Le Globe du 19 août 1830 et dans lequel, en félicitant Victor Hugo de se rallier à la nouvelle France,

31 My emphasis. 201

j’acceptais au contraire, comme un fait accompli et légitime, l’abdication politique de M. de Chateaubriand. (Portraits 106)

With this reference to the “casque” in “Sonnet à V.H.”, Chateaubriand attempts to liberate Sainte-Beuve from the shadow, protection, and impulse to imitate Hugo (as a child would a parent). The significance of this message’s emanating from Chateaubriand is amplified in the context of early Hugolian naming events: Hugo named himself in the image of Chateaubriand as a child (“Chateaubriand ou rien”), and Chateaubriand (maybe) named Hugo (“l’enfant sublime”). However, time has passed, and Chateaubriand here encourages Sainte-Beuve to be the one to acquire renommée on his own, without the help of his friend. And yet, in 1830, Sainte-Beuve will choose Hugo, friendship, and intimacy over Chateaubriand, independence, and individual renown.32

V. In Love and War: 1830

“L’orgueil de la vie enivre aisément la jeunesse. Chaque génération à son tour est au haut de l’arbre, voit tout le pays au-dessous et n’a que le ciel au-dessus d’elle. Elle se croit la première, et elle l’est à son heure, pour un moment.” - Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi

The 1830 battles of Hernani and the July Revolution mark this tumultuous year of political and literary turmoil. Hernani premiered on February 25, 1830. In the period of late February/ early March, Sainte-Beuve writes an unusual letter to Hugo in which he says that he will not write a review of Hernani:

Eh bien! je viens de lui répondre que je ne ferai pas l’article Hernani dans la Revue, ni rien désormais. Vous n’en pouvez croire vos yeux, mais cela est bien vrai. Pour raison, je pourrais bien vous dire que ce sont de malhonnêtes gens qui nous veulent pour dupes, et qu’on se doit à soi-même de ne pas jouer entre leurs doigts comme des marionnettes; voilà la seconde fois que j’écris à Véron que je ne mettrai plus un mot dans la Revue. […] Mais je vous dirai la vraie raison: il m’est impossible de faire, dans ce moment-ci, un article sur Hernani qui ne soit détestable de forme comme de fond. Je suis blasé sur

32 Bénichou differentiates Sainte-Beuve from the other members of the Cénacle via his failure to reflect Chateaubriand: “[Sainte-Beuve] n’est pas, comme ses compagnons du Cénacle, fils de Chateaubriand; il n’a pas comme eux ce qu’il faut d’assurance, dans le vague des passions, pour marier glorieusement le ciel et la littérature” (École 14). 202

Hernani, je ne sais plus qu’une chose: c’est que c’est une œuvre admirable; pourquoi? comment? je ne m’en rends plus compte. (Corr. 70)

Instead of an article, Sainte-Beuve offers Hugo his collection Les Consolations, which was to appear in publication for the first time a few days following this letter, and which

Sainte-Beuve describes as an “expiation, comme excuse de ce que je vous refuse aujourd’hui” (71).

Following this confusion-and-excuse-riddled critique, Sainte-Beuve goes on to both congratulate Hugo for the “gloire immense” that emanates from Hernani and also warn Hugo about the ability of power to change popular perceptions of people: “[…]

Bonaparte consul m’était bien plus sympathique que Napoléon empereur” (Corr. 71).33

This Napoleon-based warning reappears in this first argument in correspondence between the two:

Cette comparaison de Napoléon me revient; oui, je crois que, comme lui, vous tentez une entreprise impossible, en ce sens que tout l’Empire était en lui et que tout l’art (dramatique) sera en vous. Vous aurez Austerlitz, Iéna. Peut-être même qu’Hernani est déjà Austerlitz; mais quand vous serez à bout l’art retombera; votre héritage sera vacant et vous n’aurez été qu’un brillant et sublime épisode qui aura surtout étonné les contemporains. Napoléon devait venir au temps de Mahomet; vous deviez venir au temps du Dante. Entre des facultés aussi gigantesques et un temps comme le nôtre, il n’y a pas harmonie. (Corr. 71)

By comparing Hernani to the Battle of Austerlitz (Dec. 1805), Sainte-Beuve suggests that

Hugo has perhaps already reached his literary zenith in 1830. The description of the projects of Napoleon and Hugo as “impossible” indicates the eventual overexpansion and fall of the individual who attempts to embody something as colossal as an empire or all of dramatic art. If Hugo’s name comes to stand for so much, it will both risk inaccurate interpretations and be more prone to topple. In VHR, Adèle cites a different letter to

Hugo from another journalist at Le Globe that renders this comparison favorable: “Au

33 Adèle informs her readers that Hugo dined with Sainte-Beuve on the opening night of Hernani, before the commencement of the “battle” (VHR 463). 203

milieu des félicitations, Victor Hugo reçut une lettre de Duchâtel. Il l’ouvrit et lut: ‘C’est beau. Ceci est votre Austerlitz’” (469). Sainte-Beuve’s description of Hugo’s heritage as at risk of becoming “empty” because of this undertaking holds import for Hugo’s name: if his heritage will be emptied, his name will become meaningless except as a “surprising episode” for his contemporaries. In this letter, Sainte-Beuve warns Hugo about the risks he takes with his renown by authoring this battle in this theater.34

Sainte-Beuve goes on in this letter to complain about the changes that have befallen the Hugo household in all of this tumult and the company that they now keep.

After telling Hugo to destroy and forget this letter, Sainte-Beuve explains that this was the only means by which he could speak with Hugo alone because his “foyer est dévasté”

(Corr. 71). Sainte-Beuve then signs the letter as “Votre inviolable et triste Sainte-Beuve” before turning his attention to Adèle in a telling post-scriptum:

Et madame? Et celle dont le nom ne devrait retentir sur votre lyre que quand on écouterait vos chants à genoux; celle-là même exposée aux yeux profanes tout le jour, distribuant des billets à plus de quatre-vingts jeunes gens à peine connus d’hier; cette familiarité chaste et charmante, véritable prix de l’amitié, à jamais déflorée par la cohue; le mot de dévouement prostitué, l’utile apprécié avant tout, les combinaisons matérielles l’emportant!!! (Corr. 72)

Sainte-Beuve here refers to the theater tickets that Adèle gave to the young Romantics on behalf of her husband in order to encourage their presence and support for Hugo at the showings of Hernani. Sainte-Beuve’s attention to Adèle’s name indicates his reverence for her name as only properly pronounced in certain settings (Sainte-Beuve does not write Adèle’s name here and thus both obeys the Cénacle rule and acts as an example to

Hugo). By spreading his own name throughout Paris—even amongst the less-educated,

34 Sainte-Beuve claims that the mere thought of Hernani depresses him because of the series of struggles and battles that his friend will now undergo, but notes of jealousy can also be read here (Corr. 71). 204

lower class—Hugo is therefore, according to Sainte-Beuve, inflicting the same profanation upon the name of his wife.

Twenty days after the July Revolution, the paper Le Globe (with which Sainte-

Beuve was affiliated and for which he wrote his first review of Hugo’s work) publishes some of Hugo’s poetry. Sainte-Beuve later describes this occurrence in the final passage of Causeries du lundi. The final passage of this publication incorporates Sainte-Beuve’s heading to this 1830 publication of Hugo’s poetry upon which a later-in-life Sainte-

Beuve comments:

C’est ainsi que dans le numéro du 19 août 1830, vingt jours après la Révolution, nous insérâmes dans le Globe une pièce de vers de Victor Hugo; et dans les volumes de Victor Hugo raconté par un témoin de sa vie, l’auteur a cru devoir citer tout au long l’article du journal qui venait à propos en aide au poëte et garantissait le libéralisme de ses sentiments auprès des générations modernes. Voici cet article du Globe, cet en-tête qui est de moi: “La poésie s’est montrée empressée de célébrer la grandeur des derniers événements; ils étaient faits pour inspirer tous ceux qui ont un cœur et une voix. Voici M. Victor Hugo qui se présente à son tour, avec une audace presque militaire, son patriotique amour pour une France libre et glorieuse, sa vive sympathie pour une jeunesse dont il est un des chefs éclatants; mais en même temps, par ses opinions premières, par les affections de son adolescence, qu’il a consacrées dans plus d’une ode mémorable, le poëte était lié au passé qu’il finit, et avait à le saluer d’un adieu douloureux en s’en détachant. Il a su concilier dans une mesure parfaite les élans de son patriotisme avec ces convenances dues au malheur; il est resté citoyen de la nouvelle France, sans rougir des souvenirs de l’ancienne; son cœur a pu être ému, mais sa raison n’a pas fléchi: Mens immota manet, lacrymae, volvuntur inanes.35 Déjà, dans l’Ode à la Colonne, M. Hugo avait prouvé qu’il savait comprendre toutes les gloires de la patrie; sa conduite, en plus d’une circonstance, avait montré aussi qu’il était fait à la pratique de la liberté: son talent vivra et grandira avec elle, et désormais un avenir illimité s’ouvre devant lui. Tandis que Chateaubriand, vieillard, abdique noblement la carrière publique, sacrifiant son reste d’avenir à l’unité d’une belle vie, il est bien que le jeune homme qui a commencé sous la même bannière continue d’aller, en dépit de certains souvenirs, et subisse sans se lasser les destinées diverses de son pays. Chacun fait ainsi ce qu’il doit, et la France, en honorant le sacrifice de l’un, agréera les travaux de l’autre.” (Suivait la pièce de vers de Victor Hugo: A la jeune France.)36

35 This line from The Aeneid translates to the following: “[…] his deeper will stayed, unshakable, and the rolling tears were useless” (Hardie 22). 36 This poem of Hugo’s is alternatively entitled “À la jeune France” and “Dicté après juillet 1830”. It is dated August 10, 1830, and is later published as the first poem after the “Prélude” in Les Chants du crépuscule. The five-part poem partially shares one of its titles, “À la jeune France”, with a newspaper 205

Je suis tout fier aujourd’hui en relisant cet article: dans un détroit difficile et toujours assez périlleux à franchir, je faisais comme le pilote côtier qui donne son coup de main, et qui aide le noble vaisseau à doubler l’écueil ou à trouver la passe. Cet article nous amena des démarches du côté des amis de Chateaubriand. J’avais prononcé le mot malsonnant de vieillard, un peu tôt peut-être. (533-35)

One notes that Sainte-Beuve portrays himself as a savior of the paper by publishing provocative articles that treated Hugo. Additionally, Sainte-Beuve claims that Adèle cites the entirety of his piece in VHR because his heading (rather than Hugo’s works) ensured that Hugo would become a representative of liberalism to the younger generations. Adèle’s account of Hernani includes the final mention of Sainte-Beuve’s name to be found in in VHR; so, when she cites what Sainte-Beuve wrote for Le Globe on

August 19, 1830, a few pages after her account of Hernani, she does so without naming

Sainte-Beuve as the author of these lines because he had published this heading anonymously. It is via a note added to Portraits Contemporains in 1869 that Sainte-

Beuve claims these lines as his (324). Sainte-Beuve’s replacement of Chateaubriand with

Hugo plays into Hugo’s childhood desire to become “Chateaubriand ou rien”. Sainte-

Beuve claims in Nouveaux lundis that, through his work with Le Globe, he stripped Hugo of his royalist image in order to make him a popular figure for the new French youth:

J’y servais aussi mes amis littéraires. L’article du Globe sur Hugo, cité dans le livre Hugo raconté par un témoin de sa vie, et qui est des premiers jours d’août 1830, est de moi. Je revendiquais le poëte au nom du régime qui s’inaugurait, au nom de la France nouvelle. Je le déroyalisais. (10)

Sainte-Beuve claims that he named Hugo as a de-royalized, militaristic “chef” of this new group of youths, in the name of the regime and in the name of France. The significance

founded in 1829, La Jeune France, as well as with a term that soon thereafter comes into usage to refer to the generation of Hugo’s followers, “les Jeunes-France” (which group includes Borel, Gautier, and Nerval). In this poem, Hugo’s narrator applauds the new generation of fighters, emphasizing their resemblance with their ancestors of Napoleon’s army. One of Napoleon’s powers in this poem is to give the name France to other lands, or “adopt” them, to borrow Hugo’s palatable term for colonialism. According to Hugo’s narrator, part of Napoleon’s greatness lies in his capacity to aggrandize the name of France. 206

of “Hugo” in 1830 thereby, according to Sainte-Beuve, depended on the projection of this name’s meaning offered by the critic. Sainte-Beuve thus claims that he named Hugo as the leader of 1830.

In October of 1830, Sainte-Beuve tells Hugo about his feelings for Adèle. This confession is followed by a letter from Sainte-Beuve to Hugo in December of 1830. In this letter, Sainte-Beuve describes the suffering he feels when just the name of Hugo is pronounced near him: “[…] Mais enfin la chose est commencée et je poursuis – si vous saviez, hélas! Ce que j’éprouve toutes les fois que votre nom est prononcé à mes oreilles, toutes les fois qu’il m’arrive sur Madame Hugo et sur vous quelque nouvelle et quelque rapport […]” (Corr. 84). He goes on to admit to feeling murderous rage against Hugo:

“Il y a en moi du désespoir, voyez-vous, de la rage; des envies de vous tuer, de vous assassiner par momens en vérité; pardonnez-moi des horribles mouvemens” (Corr. 84).

Then, in what has become something of a typical move of Sainte-Beuve’s, he weighs his suffering against Hugo’s and finds himself to be far more tortured:

Que ferais-je désormais à votre foyer, quand j’ai mérité votre défiance, quand le soupçon se glisse entre nous, quand votre surveillance est inquiète et que Madame Hugo ne peut effleurer mon regard sans avoir consulté le vôtre; il faut bien se retirer alors et c’est une religion de s’abstenir. Vous avez eu la bonté de me prier de venir toujours comme par le passé; mais c’était de votre part compassion et indulgence pour une faiblesse que vous pensiez soulager par cette marque d’attention; je n’y puis consentir; j’en éprouverais moi- même trop de torture, si, vous, vous en éprouviez seulement quelque gêne. Elle est donc tuée irréparablement cette amitié qui fut de ma part un culte, il ne nous reste plus, mon ami, qu’à l’ensevelir avec autant de piété qu’il se peut. (Corr. 85)

Sainte-Beuve describes abstaining from the company of the Hugos as a “religion” after comparing their ruined friendship to a “culte”.37 His friendship with Hugo can no longer serve as the basis of Sainte-Beuve’s faith, and the ruin of this friendship along with his desire for Adèle makes the name “Hugo” painful for Sainte-Beuve. He says he will bury

37 “Culte” is a faux-ami that means the religious practices of a particular religion, not to be confused with the French “secte” which bears the negative connotations of the English “cult”. 207

this friendship in his heart, and he asks Hugo to do the same and to ask Adèle to follow suit. Sainte-Beuve then recommends that they not speak of one another in the company of others out of fear that they will accidentally insult one another:

[…] Oui, quoi qu’il m’arrive et même si, par impossible il m’arrivait en cette vie des joies, cette pensée triste et muette restera à sa place en mon cœur et ne se dévoilera jamais; tâchez de faire de même au milieu des joies de famille et de gloire qui continueront de descendre sur Madame Hugo et vous; qu’il y ait en tout ceci mystère et silence; parlons désormais le moins possible les uns des autres, mon ami, de peur d’en mal parler de loin, de peur que le dépit n’aigrisse des paroles légères et que l’amitié ensevelie n’en soit troublée. (Corr. 86)

The fact that this request immediately follows his prediction that more glories will rain upon the Hugos exposes the increasing difficulty that the name “Hugo” poses for Sainte-

Beuve as its glory grows.

Sainte-Beuve ends this dramatic letter with the idea that maybe one day, when he is old and no longer hopes for the love of women, and when Adèle is old, maybe they could recommence their friendship. He again describes this friendship with the Hugos in religious terms:

[…] Si je reviens à la piété, à la religion chaste et austère, à la pratique des vertus, peut- être, mon ami, vous me permettrez alors, après quelque expiation que vous m’imposerez, de venir finir mes jours sous votre toit, et vous m’aurez rendu assez de confiance pour me laisser quelquefois seul encore avec celle qui est digne uniquement de vous, mais que je n’ai jamais méconnue, je vous jure. Adieu. (Corr. 86)

In this final passage, Hugo is depicted as the deity of this religion, as the entity with the power to forgive and accept followers back into the fold. The issue of this letter begins a pattern between Sainte-Beuve and Hugo consisting of the former sending lengthy, emotional letters only to receive terse responses from the latter. Additionally, while the tensions between these two occasionally improve, their years-long epistolary goodbye begins with this first of Sainte-Beuve’s letters after his admission of love.

208

In response to this letter, Hugo writes just over a paragraph insisting upon his sincere friendship with Sainte-Beuve and encouraging his friend to continue writing and visiting them (Corr. 87). Hugo maintains in this letter that time will heal their respective wounds, and that he remains Sainte-Beuve’s best friend. On January 2, 1831, Hugo writes to thank Sainte-Beuve after the latter gave the former’s daughter Léopoldine a doll: “Vous avez été bien bon pour mes petits enfans, mon ami. Nous avons besoin de vous en remercier ma femme et moi. Venez donc dîner avec nous après-demain mardi.

1830 est passé!” (Corr. 90). The pivotal year of 1830 is over, and Hugo implies that

1831 brings the turning of a new leaf, or rather the turning-back of the leaf to their prior friendship. This will be the year that Hugo opens the doors of the Revue des deux mondes to Sainte-Beuve (Brix “Intro.” 9). However, 1831 will also bring the start of the physical affair between Sainte-Beuve and Adèle and the further chilling of the once warm friendship between Sainte-Beuve and Hugo.38 Glinoer offers a summary of the pieces of the wedge that would continue to be driven between the two after 1830:

En désaccord sur l’organisation du mouvement romantique, en grave conflit amoureux, Hugo et Sainte-Beuve ne parviennent plus maintenant à s’entendre sur le plan des idées. Passée l’euphorie insurrectionnelle de Juillet, Hugo s’est rapproché de Lamennais et du catholicisme libéral; au même moment, Sainte-Beuve s’est mis sous l’égide de Pierre Leroux, farouche saint-simonien, dans le conflit qui l’oppose au directeur du Globe. Il trouve là un nouveau cercle d’amis bienvenu pour remplacer dans son cœur le cénacle romantique. Il n’en faut pas plus pour faire chanceler leur réconciliation: en mars 1831 il se dit retombé vis-à-vis de Hugo “dans un état intellectuel et d’amitié extérieure” (1.XXXVII). (Glinoer “Préface” 23)

The adjective “exterior” used to describe his 1831 friendship with Hugo becomes an even graver condition of superficiality when one considers the importance of interiority for

Sainte-Beuve—in his vision of Romanticism as well as in his friendships. In this letter

38 Hugo’s 1832 play Le Roi s’amuse is often believed to be revelatory of his knowledge of Sainte-Beuve’s and Adèle’s affair: “Read in the light of Hugo’s life, the plot of Le Roi S’Amuse sounds like a condensed reaction to Sainte-Beuve’s treachery” (Robb Hugo 176). According to Lepenies, nearly 400 letters from Adèle to Sainte-Beuve were burned (Sainte-Beuve 44). 209

that Glinoer cites, Sainte-Beuve explicitly states to Hugo that he is no longer “de votre famille, de votre intérieur”, no longer a “membre de votre être” nor a “fonction de votre vie”, before going on to describe these as the “dispositions morales” that led him to the

“distraction puissante” of Saint-Simonianism (Corr. 95). Sainte-Beuve’s loss of his

Romantic deity, with whom he once felt as one, leads him to embrace a new replacement religion, one that coincidentally contains reflections of his name within its name. Having separated with this deity whose name causes him pain, Sainte-Beuve changes allegiance.

VI. Hugo the god: Gautier’s Hugo

“Si l’on prononce le nom de Théophile Gautier devant un philistine, n’eût-il jamais lu de nous deux vers ou une seule ligne, il nous connaît au moins par le gilet rouge que nous portions à la première représentation d’Hernani, et il dit d’un air satisfait d’être si bien renseigné: ‘Oh oui! le jeune homme au gilet rouge et aux longs cheveux!’ C’est la notion de nous que nous laisserons à l’univers. Nos poésies, nos livres, nos articles, nos voyages seront oubliés; mais l’on se souviendra de notre gilet rouge.” - Gautier, Victor Hugo par Théophile Gautier

Sainte-Beuve views Gautier as defined by his allegiance to Hugo: “Théophile

Gautier a pris les excroissances de Hugo, il les a mises sous cloche, et il est parti de là pour ses potirons” (Poisons 42-43). The complaints that Sainte-Beuve had concerning the new company the Hugos kept around the time of Hernani probably included such figures as Gautier.39 The young Gautier (a mere 9 years younger than Hugo) took part in a literary group that included Gérard de Nerval and Pétrus Borel among others and that named itself after Hugo’s Cénacle, in a diminutive form: the petit cénacle.40 For the

39 See Guégan, 64. 40 Hassel studies the timeline of the petit cénacle and cites Nerval’s letter to Sainte-Beuve: “Gérard de Nerval, in a well-known letter to Sainte-Beuve, wrote to defend the petit cénacle from criticism concerning its functions and to stress the positive qualities of the group: ‘Certes il n’a pas été formé dans l’intention de parodier l’autre, le glorieux cénacle que vous avez célébré, mais seulement pour être une association utile et puis un public de choix où l’on puisse essayer ses ouvrages d’avance et satisfaire jusqu’à un certain point ce besoin de publication qui fait qu’on éparpille un avenir de gloire en petits triomphes successifs. […] Aussi quoi qu’on puisse dire contre les camaraderies je pourrai maintenant citer l’exemple de Théophile 210

members of the petit cénacle, Victor Hugo was their literary god. In Histoire du

Romantisme, Gautier describes Hugo’s Cromwell as the religious text upon which the petit cénacle based their mission:

Sur une modeste étagère de merisier suspendue à des cordons, resplendissait, entre quelques volumes de choix, un exemplaire de Cromwell, avec une dédicace amicale, signée du monogramme V.H. La Bible chez les protestants, le Koran parmi les Mahométans ne sont pas l’objet d’une plus profonde vénération. C’était bien, en effet, pour nous le livre par excellence, le livre qui contenait la pure doctrine. (16)

This group rallied together in February of 1830 to support Hugo during the productions of Hernani. While Nerval, like Sainte-Beuve, would eventually try to distance his name from Hugo’s, Gautier enacted no such revolution against the revolutionary leader.41 For

Gautier, “Hugo” has a singular meaning: the leader of the Romantics in 1830, the chef de bataille for literary and artistic liberty.

Gautier, et de moi, qui étions de grands paresseux et qui depuis deux ans avons fait des ouvrages considérables, s’ils n’ont pas d’autre mérite, et avons eu aussi la vertu de ne rien publier, ou presque rien’” (338). As earlier noted, the name that some used to refer to Hugo’s followers and the title of Gautier’s satirical 1833 work, Les Jeunes-France, finds a source in Hugo’s poem “À la jeune France,” later entitled “Dicté après juillet 1830”.40 For the second time, Hugo’s followers take up a name that reflects either the maître’s past (le Cénacle to le petit cénacle) or his works (“À la jeune France” to Les Jeunes-France). According to Matoré, this moniker of “Jeunes-France” initially appears in Le Figaro on August 30, 1831, to describe the petit cénacle group (115). Lavaud offers insight into this idea of “Jeunes-France” as a generational approach to literary history in the hands of Gautier: “Il semble que la notion de génération, qui réunit à la fois l’idée de jeunesse et celle de sa préemption, soit au centre du ‘problème’ romantique tel que l’exprime le jeune Gautier. Le paradoxe qui d’emblée a miné la communauté jeune-France, c’est le conflit insoluble entre la passion de l’originalité et un narcissisme générationnel uniformisant, sorte de stade du miroir de l’histoire littéraire, à la fois euphorique et stérilisant. Or à ce conflit articulé sur l’idée même de génération le jeune Gautier offre une réponse double et quasi immédiate: non seulement la mise en place d’une nouvelle pratique de l’histoire littéraire, ‘grotesque’ et jubilatoire, grâce à laquelle le narcissisme générationnel des petits romantiques acquiert une rentabilité critique, mais également le rétablissement compensatoire, dans son discours sur l’histoire, des catégories transgénérationnelles des ‘familles d’esprit’, qui permit de sortir, précisément, du vertige spéculaire, et d’échapper à la perspective du vieillissement” (70). 41 Sylvos treats the relationship between Hugo and Nerval: “Or, auparavant, les mentions à Hugo apparaissent surtout au sein des feuilletons dramatiques. D’autre part, Nerval semble avoir voulu mettre à distance une tutelle trop écrasante, comme la plupart des écrivains qui, un jour, s’étaient déclarés fils spirituels de Hugo” (1). Poulet’s study of the works of Nerval and Gautier sheds light on their different treatments of Hugo if one extends this poetic tendency to their lives: “La déification, l’universalisation infinie du type aboutit donc à sa destruction: catastrophe qui, chez Nerval, est non moins grave, peut-être plus grave encore que la pétrification du type chez Théophile Gautier. Si chez ce dernier le type se fige et se dessèche par un excès de précision et de détermination, c’est chez Nerval l’aventure inverse qui lui arrive. Il se perd lui aussi, mais par l’effacement final de toutes ses déterminations. Il s’évanouit, comme dit Nerval, dans sa propre grandeur” (204). 211

Gautier thus represents a hugolâtre who never left his post. This fidelity renders

Gautier’s understanding of Hugo’s name a relatively straightforward study because

Gautier’s reconnaissance for Hugo does not intermingle with a révolution of his own.

This is not to say that Gautier was not innovative in his own right; on the contrary,

Gautier’s poetry and prose inspire multiple future literary revolutionary groups, including in particular the parnassiens.42 In fact, Guégan begins his biography of Gautier with a proposition that perhaps too much emphasis has been put on Gautier’s allegiance to

Hugo.43 Nevertheless, as Guégan writes in the first paragraph of this biography, Gautier played a central role in forging this association between himself and Hugo by propagating the public’s image of Gautier as a long-haired supporter of Hernani:

Il est vrai que la caricature du rebelle hirsute résulte aussi d’une lente sédimentation de la mémoire collective, phénomène dont Gautier fut à la fois l’acteur, le complice, puis l’observateur amusé. Il ne lui restait plus qu’à s’en faire l’historien. (11)

42 Baudelaire and Rimbaud are sometimes described as rooting their literary paths in ideas produced by the petit cénacle. In 1978, Hassel writes, “There has not as yet been a serious, modern, comparative analysis of the literary production of the petit cénacle and, moreover, the only single member of the group to be studied in any depth is Gérard. When these studies are made and, primarily, when an in depth comparison using modern techniques is made, certain definite trends will emerge which will show more clearly that the petit cénacle is not primarily important as the first ‘l’art pour l’art’ as Jasinski suggests but is squarely in the tradition which leads to Baudelaire and Rimbaud. It will be seen that when Baudelaire dedicates the Fleurs du Mal ‘au poète impeccable, au parfait magicien ès lettres françaises,’ he is dedicating them to the ideas and techniques which were developed in the petit cénacle” (492). The parnassiens are also often affiliated with Gautier and his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin in particular. Fournel offers a commentary upon Le Parnasse contemporain and elucidates certain groups seen as emerging from this term “parnasse”: “Trois ou quatre influences se partagent le livre: d’abord celle de Victor Hugo, qui domine tout; puis le genre Gautier, le genre Th. de Banville, le genre Leconte de Lisle, enfin et surtout le genre Baudelaire. Tels sont les chefs et les porte-étendards: le troupeau trotte docilement derrière, en bêlant d’un air belliqueux and des trompettes de fer-blanc” (74). The Larousse online encyclopedia entry for “Parnasse” touches upon the connection between Gautier and Hugo as a point of complication for the parnassiens: “Dès qu’il s’agit de juger Musset ou Hugo, les divergences apparaissent et, si la poésie nouvelle s’érige en réaction contre le romantisme, elle en est cependant, avec un Gautier, l’héritière directe” (1). 43 The main thrust of the differentiation between the two that Guégan proposes lies in the innovations of Gautier’s to Romanticism, particularly in his embracing of the Hoffmannian fantastic: “C’était une autre manière de dire le désenchantement fondamental de la société moderne […]” (60). So, Gautier differs from Hugo in that he does not attempt to remedy the ills of society through his works but instead tends toward a realm beyond “reality”. The letter that Hugo will write for Baudelaire’s work on Gautier underscores this difference between art for progress and art for art’s sake. 212

Gautier supports his public image as a faithful follower of Hugo’s and eventually becomes the “historian” of this meaning of his own name as happily subjected to Hugo’s, much in the manner of a disciple.

Throughout his career, Gautier idolizes Hugo and situates himself firmly in the position of his devoted adherent.44 One of Benjamin Roubaud’s caricatures of Hugo, which appeared in 1842 and is entitled “Le grand chemin de la postérité”, depicts a very large-headed Hugo riding Pegasus and carrying a banner upon which is written in red ink,

“Le laid c’est le beau.”45 Of the 18 other literary figures depicted as following Hugo in this Romantic charge, the very first figure who is riding on Pegasus’ tail immediately behind Hugo is a mustachioed, long-haired, top-hat-sporting Gautier (spelled

“Gauthier”).46 This image portrays Gautier as the first in the line of Hugo’s devotees, the champion of the followers of the “roi des Hugolâtres”. Gautier’s fidelity to Hugo defines the projection of his father-in-law that Émile Bergerat offers in his work entitled

Théophile Gautier: entretiens, souvenirs et correspondence. Bergerat dedicates this biography not to his subject, Gautier, but instead to Hugo:

Le lecteur aurait le droit d’être surpris – et même scandalisé, qu’un ouvrage sur Théophile Gautier ne fût pas dédié à Victor Hugo. Si l’art est le seul dieu auquel mon maître ait sacrifié pendant les soixante ans qu’il a vécu, il voyait en Victor Hugo l’incarnation vivante de ce dieu. L’existence de ce grand homme était pour lui quelque

44 Though one wonders if Gautier’s fidelity to Hugo would have maintained this strength if he had known about Hugo’s affair with his daughter, Judith Gautier. See Maurois, 517-19. 45 Pouchain studies this caricature of Hugo: “La caricature originale de Benjamin Roubaud montre de nombreux personnages qui accompagnent Victor Hugo, ‘roi des Hugolâtres, armé de sa bonne lame de Tolède et portant la bannière du romantisme’, chevauchant Pégase: outre ceux que l’on voit ici (Théophile Gautier, qui arborait le célèbre gilet rouge lors de la première représentation d’Hernani, et qui fait paraître son premier article dans La Presse; Bernard-Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac, collaborateur au Journal des Débats; Francis Wey, ami de Nodier, critique d’art, auteur de romans, de nouvelles et de récits de voyages; Paul Foucher, romancier et dramaturge, beau-frère de Victor Hugo), le caricaturiste a représenté d’autres écrivains, notamment Lamartine, Balzac, Dumas, Eugène Sue, Vigny” (2). Robb asserts that Hugo never said the phrase written on Hugo’s banner in this caricature (“Le laid c’est le beau”) but that it nevertheless became emblematic of Hugo’s work: “The idea was translated by journalists into the famous phrase, which Hugo never wrote: ‘Ugliness is Beauty’” (VH 135). 46 Paul Foucher’s name is also misspelled in this caricature, where it appears as “Fouché”. 213

chose comme une présence réelle de la poésie. C’est à lui que Théophile Gautier, comme le personnage biblique, avait dit: Tu es mon père, ma mère, ma patrie, et ma famille. (xviii)

In this passage, Hugo resembles God and crystallizes his own idea of “Tout n’est qu’Un” in the eyes of his follower. Throughout his career, Gautier’s writing on Hugo maintains him as the maître figure of the young romantiques opposing the classiques, even long after this battle was won. What’s more, as Bergerat notes, this maître often acts as a dieu for Gautier. One finds in Bergerat’s description of Hugo’s role for Gautier a precursor to the incarnation of “le vers” that Mallarmé will find in Hugo. For Gautier, Hugo embodies poetry and the god of art.

Before the opening night of Hernani on February 25, 1830, Gautier and his cronies, other members of the petit cénacle, eagerly anticipated the monumentality of the event. Despite their intense desire to partake in this evening, Gautier states that they considered themselves too unknown to ask Hugo for a ticket: “[…] L’idée de lui demander un billet, nous, rapin inconnu, nous semblait d’une audace inexécutable…”

(Victor Hugo 5). It is this lack of renown, as “rapin inconnu”, that prevents them from approaching such a known name as Victor Hugo in order to ask for tickets. Luckily,

Nerval was closer to Hugo than Gautier at this time, and it is thanks to him that they attended the event. Hugo himself worked to organize the troops, so to speak, into strategic positions during the play.47 Either Hugo or Adèle gave each of the leaders of young romantics a “billet rouge” with the word “Hierro” written upon it (“iron” in

47 Garval emphasizes the militaristic vocabulary used for this event’s preparation: “For the premier, Hugo organized his supporters into ‘tribus’ and ‘bataillons’ [tribes and batallions] whose ‘chefs’ [leaders] were charged with executing ‘leur plan stratégique…leur ordre de bataille’ […]” (Garval 173). Guégan asserts that Gautier was one of the “chefs” of the Hugolian “bataillons”: “Il est significatif que le témoignage de Mme Hugo, plutôt fiable ici, soit aussi net à propos des escouades commandées par Gautier et Nerval. Ils formaient déjà un cénacle dans le cénacle: la bande des Jeune-France, on y reviendra, fut baptisée au vin castillan […]” (35). 214

Spanish and “combat” in Hugo’s code), in reference to the iron swords in the play, the strength of which they aimed to imitate.48 Gautier’s description of their sentiments and behavior following this opening night clarifies the emblematic role of Hugo’s name at this time as well as his godlike status for the hugolâtres of 1830:

Au sortir du théâtre, nous écrivions sur les murailles: ‘Vive Victor Hugo!’ pour propager sa gloire et ennuyer les philistins. Jamais Dieu ne fut adoré avec plus de ferveur qu’Hugo. Nous étions étonnés de le voir marcher avec nous dans la rue comme un simple mortel, et il nous semblait qu’il n’eût dû sortir par la ville que sur un char triomphal traîné par un quadrige de chevaux blancs, avec une Victoire ailée suspendant une couronne d’or au-dessus de sa tête. (Victor Hugo 8-9)

Hugo’s name, written by his fighting disciples on the walls of Paris following the opening night of Hernani, stood for the Romantic Movement for his supporters in 1830, and the act of writing Hugo’s name on the walls exhibited the fervor of his followers for their god.49

In her description of the opening night of Hernani, Adèle spotlights Gautier:

“Dans ce pêle-mêle de costumes bizarres on apercevait jusqu’à des gilets à la

Robespierre. Un, magnifique, rouge écarlate, s’étalait sur la poitrine de Théophile

Gautier” (VHR 462).50 Gautier’s own account of this event, written over 40 years later, appears in a collection of his writings on Hugo, Victor Hugo par Théophile Gautier, and exhibits Gautier’s lifelong fidelity to Hugo as well as his taking up of the role of historian of his own faithfulness to Hugo. The epigraph to this work is a citation from Gautier: “Si j’avais le Malheur de croire qu’un vers de Victor Hugo n’est pas beau, je n’oserais pas me l’avouer à moi-même, tout seul, dans une cave, sans chandelle” (1). While describing

48 See Garval, 173. Guégan calls this “le fer des Orientales, en signe de ralliement” (34). 49 This fervor spread beyond Paris as well: “Un caporal dans un régiment de dragons mourut pendant les représentations d’Hernani. Il écrivit au bas de son testament ceci: ‘Je désire que l’on mette sur ma tombe cette épigraphe: Ci-gît, qui mourut croyant à Victor Hugo.’ Un jeune homme nommé Batlam fut tué en duel à Toulouse parce qu’il avait pris fait et cause pour Hernani” (VHR 475). 50 Robb contends that this fashion detail is more legend than fact: “This was Théophile Gautier and his famous ‘red waistcoat’, which was neither red nor a waistcoat (waistcoats were bourgeois)” (VH 148). 215

the formative events for Gautier as a hugolâtre, this work also incorporates his perspective long after these events: “1830!...Les générations actuelles doivent se figurer difficilement l’effervescence des esprits à cette époque; il s’opérait un mouvement pareil

à celui de la Renaissance” (Victor Hugo 1). Hugo very quickly emerges as the maître of a new literary religion:

Sans être encore affilié à la bande romantique, nous lui appartenions par le cœur! La préface de Cromwell rayonnait à nos yeux comme les Tables de la Loi sur le Sinaï, et ses arguments nous semblaient sans réplique. Les injures des petits journaux classiques contre le jeune maître, que nous regardions dès lors et avec raison comme le plus grand poète de France, nous mettaient en des colères féroces. Aussi brûlions-nous d’aller combattre l’hydre du perruquinisme, comme les peintres allemands qu’on voit montés sur Pégase, Cornélius en tête, à l’instar des quatre fils Aymon dans la fresque de Kaulbach, à la Pinacothèque nouvelle de Munich. Seulement une monture moins classique nous eût convenu davantage, l’hippogriffe de l’Arioste, par exemple. (Victor Hugo 4-5)

Some familiar imagery appears in this passage. Hugo the maître receives a religious description, here presented as Moses delivering the Ten Commandments to his followers.

One also finds the image of a flying mythical creature as representative of Romanticism, echoing Roubaud’s caricature of Hugo and Gautier.

Throughout his writings, Gautier repeatedly aligns Hugo with the image of a hippogriff (which differs from Roubaud’s Pegasus because a hippogriff is a legendary half-eagle half-horse, while Pegasus is a mythological winged horse), and this image will also resurge in others’ imaginative projections of Hugo in the writings of others to follow.51 Moreover, Gautier often describes Hugo as taking his readers upon his wings to lift them to new visionary heights in his works. According to Gautier, this image serves

51 Hugo himself includes Pegasus in two poems related to the Gautier family. First, in his poem “À Théophile Gautier”, Hugo writes of a hippogriff replacing Pegasus: “Tu savais que, ce siècle a son air qu’il respire,/ Et que, l’art ne marchant qu’en se transfigurant,/ C’est embellir le beau que d’y joindre le grand./ Et l’on t’a vu pousser d’illustres cris de joie/ Quand le Drame a saisi Paris comme une proie,/ Quand l’antique hiver fut chassé par Floréal,/ Quand l’astre inattendu du moderne idéal/ Est venu tout à coup, dans le ciel qui s’embrase/ Luire, et quand l’Hippogriffe a relayé Pégase!” (Poésie IV 341). When Hugo wrote a sonnet for Judith Gautier, he also included the image of Pegasus, if in a slightly different mood: “Si vous étiez venue, ô belle que j’admire!/ Je vous aurais offert un repas sans rival;/ J’aurais tué Pégase et je l’aurais fait cuire/ Afin de vous servir une aile de cheval” (Biré 233). 216

Hugo well because the dual capacity of the hippogriff to run and to fly parallels the dual capacity of a writer like Hugo to both operate in prose (running) and in poetry (flight):

M. Hugo ayant résolu de marcher et non de voler, pour que le parterre ne le perdit pas de vue, a prudemment serré ses talonnières dans son tiroir. Car les poètes sont comme les hippogriffes, ils peuvent courir et voler, tandis que les prosateurs, si envieux qu’ils soient, ne peuvent que courir. Tout poète, quand il voudra descendre à cette besogne, fera de l’excellente prose; jamais un prosateur-né, fût-ce M. de Chateaubriand, ne fera de beaux vers. (Victor Hugo 101)

Gautier’s hierarchization of Hugo as superior to Chateaubriand because of his literary versatility validates Hugo’s implicit aim to replace Chateaubriand seen in his early auto- naming event of “Chateaubriand ou rien”. Gautier thereby names Hugo as surpassing

Chateaubriand.

Gautier’s first meeting with Hugo occurs thanks to Nerval and Borel. Gautier emphasizes the timidity of the group going to meet Hugo and recounts how twice they approached the doorbell and twice lost their nerve, to the amusement of Nerval and

Borel. When the hesitant group sat down on the stairs outside of Hugo’s home to gather their courage, Hugo surprised them by appearing in the doorway: “[…] Mais voici que la porte s’ouvrit et qu’au milieu d’un flot de lumière, tel que Phébus-Apollon franchissant les portes de l’Aurore, apparut sur l’obscur palier, qui? Victor Hugo, lui-même dans sa gloire” (Victor Hugo 23). This description of Hugo again compares him to a deity.

Gautier later mentions the fact that he and Hugo lived next door to one another in the

Place Royale (today’s Place des Vosges), which afforded them more intimacy.52

However, Gautier does not dwell upon his personal acquaintance with Hugo and maintains a self-effacing position of humility with regard to this godlike figure:

52 Poulet studies the image of the Place Royale in Gautier’s (and Nerval’s) imagination: “Ainsi, dans le rêve de peintre et de poète, qui est celui de Gautier, la place Royale se métamorphose en un lieu magique” (193). 217

Je ne suis pas de ceux dont la postérité signalera les maisons avec un buste ou une plaque de marbre, mais cette circonstance influa beaucoup sur la direction de ma vie. Victor Hugo, quelque temps après la révolution de Juillet, était venu loger à la place Royale, au n° 6, dans la maison en retour d’équerre. On pouvait se parler d’une fenêtre à l’autre. (Victor Hugo 31)53

Gautier and Hugo did in fact become close friends who aided one another when they could. For example, when Hugo’s belongings were sold off after he went into exile,

Gautier wrote a plea to friends and admirers of Hugo to buy his belongings in order to hopefully one day return them. In this plea, Gautier again utilizes religious vocabulary:

“En tout cas, qu’ils songent que ce ne sont pas des meubles qu’ils achètent, mais des reliques” (Victor Hugo 227).54 Gautier ends Victor Hugo with a letter he received from the maître in 1870, in which Hugo thanks Gautier for his continued support and for his unflagging promotion of a particular version of Hugo, the Hugo of their youth:

Mon Théophile, comment vous dire mon émotion? Je vous lis, et il me semble que je vous vois. Nous revoilà jeunes comme autrefois, et votre main n’a pas quitté ma main. […] Je vous aime bien. Vous êtes toujours le grand poète et le grand ami. (287)55

Gautier emerges as a counterbalance to Sainte-Beuve with regard to Hugo’s name. For

Gautier, both the public “Victor Hugo” and the private “Victor” remain content throughout the duration of their lives. Neither their friendship nor their practice of publicly supporting one another falters, allowing Hugo to trust that Gautier will treat his name well.

53 Contrary to Gautier’s claim here that his home would not be marked out for posterity to see, if one visits the Place des Vosges today, one will see a plaque that reads, “Le poète Théophile Gautier a vécu dans cette maison de 1828 à 1834.” 54 Hugo also helped Gautier by writing laudatory letters about his works and by obtaining a pension for Gautier near the end of his life, when Gautier was in poor health and dire financial straits. Kuwahara comments upon this aspect of their friendship: “Judith, sa fille, qui s’inquiète pour la santé de son père et qui est accablée par la gêne financière n’a d’autre moyen que de se rendre chez le roi Hugo pour lui demander de l’aide. Hugo intervient auprès de l’administration et obtient pour Gautier une pension d’aide de 3000 francs” (202-03). This happened in the early 1870s, before Gautier’s death in 1872. 55 After Gautier’s death, Hugo also composed the first poem in a collection in honor of Gautier, Le Tombeau de Théophile Gautier. His poem, entitled “À Théophile Gautier”, begins with the following lines that, in turn, attend to the survival of Gautier’s name: “Ami, poëte, esprit, tu fuis notre nuit noire./ Tu sors de nos rumeurs pour entrer dans la gloire;/ Et désormais ton nom rayonne aux purs sommets” (Tombeau 1). 218

A poem of Gautier’s includes an explicit inclusion of Hugo’s name within the body of the poem. This 1832 poem, entitled “Notre-Dame”, has its narrator address

“Victor” in the second stanza. After expressing his fatigue with the salons, the “jeunes fats” and the “femmes frivoles” who only exchange “de banales paroles”, the narrator describes the manner by which he attempts to refresh himself:

Pour me refaire au grand et me rélargir l’âme, Ton livre dans ma poche, aux tours de Notre-Dame; Je suis allé souvent, Victor, A huit heures, l’été, quand le soleil se couche, Et que son disque fauve, au bord des toits qu’il touche, Flotte comme un gros ballon d’or. (PC 232)

The narrator thus appears, with presumably Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris (“ton livre”) in his pocket, en route to the eponymous cathedral in order to escape mundane literary encounters. By addressing Hugo here as “Victor”, the narrator exposes a familiarity with

Hugo that is rare in Gautier’s work. However, in Histoire du Romantisme, Gautier explains the cause for such familiar appellations from “disciples” with regard to their leaders: “[…] Un buste de Victor, comme nous l’appelions entre nous avec cette familiarité tendre que les disciples se permettent […]” (Histoire 33). Gautier here calls attention to his relationship with this revered name as a self-avowed disciple. For the young Gautier, Victor’s novel offers a perspective on a Paris monument that allows for his soul to expand and for him to therefore ascend to a personal greatness as well (“me refaire au grand”). Gautier presents himself as choosing to form himself in the image of

Hugo, with Hugo’s works as a catalyst for his self-fashioning. For Gautier, Hugo is fixed in his role as maître, god, leader, and model.

Gautier also refers to Hugo as “un si grand nom” (Histoire 223) and claims that

Notre-Dame de Paris, “si M. Victor Hugo n’eut pas été déjà vingt fois célèbre, eût rendu

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à elle seule son nom à tout jamais illustre” (Histoire 92).56 However, Gautier offers to

Hugo’s name a number of writerly identities via a comparison of his work to those of illustrious painters:

Des Contemplations date la troisième manière de Victor Hugo, car les grands poètes sont comme les grands peintres: leur talent a des phases aisément reconnaissables. […] Ainsi, le Raphaël de Sposalizio, de la Belle Jardinière, de la Vierge au voile n’est pas le Raphaël des chambres du Vatican et de la Transfiguration; le Rembrandt de la Leçon d’anatomie du docteur Tulp ne ressemble guère au Rembrandt de la Ronde de nuit, et le Dante de la Vita nuova fait à peine soupçonner le Dante de la Divine Comédie. Chez Hugo, les années, qui courbent, affaiblissent et rident le génie des autres maîtres, semblent apporter des forces, des énergies et des beautés nouvelles. (Histoire 273-74)

Thus, for Gautier in this passage, the name Hugo can signify differently according to the different phases of this maître’s career. Nevertheless, one quality of this name emerges as cardinal: it will become and remain immortal. This primary aim for Hugo’s name becomes clear in a poem that Gautier states he once shared with Jehan du Seigneur, a sculptor who counted himself among the petit cénacle:

Puis la tête homérique et napoléonienne De notre roi Victor! –que sais-je moi? la mienne, Celle de mon Gérard et de Pétrus Borel, Et d’autres qu’en jouant tu fais d’un doigt agile Palpiter dans la cire et vivre dans l’argile –Assez pour, autrefois, rendre un nom immortel! (33)

In typical Gautier fashion, he here manages to simultaneously compliment and promote both Victor Hugo as well as another lesser-known artist.57 His reason for promoting

56 In his writings on Hugo, Gautier also frequently notes the importance of names within Hugo’s work. He makes note of the source of the name Hernani (Victor Hugo 83), he extolls the “rébarbatif” name of Guanhumara in Les Burgraves (Victor Hugo 182), and he goes on to deem Hugo a master of naming: “Personne n’a la science des noms comme Victor Hugo” (Victor Hugo 283). 57 In fact, his Histoire du Romantisme begins with such preservations as its explicit aim, as the very first lines of the work make clear: “De ceux qui, répondant au cor d’Hernani, s’engagèrent à sa suite dans l’âpre montagne du Romantisme et en défendirent si vaillamment les défilés contre les attaques des classiques, il ne survit qu’un petit nombre de vétérans disparaissant chaque jour comme les médailles de Sainte-Hélène. Nous avons eu l’honneur d’être enrôlé dans ces jeunes bandes qui combattaient pour l’idéal, la poésie et la liberté de l’art, avec un enthousiasme, une bravoure et un dévouement qu’on ne connaît plus aujourd’hui. Le chef rayonnant reste toujours debout sur sa gloire comme une statue sur une colonne d’airain, mais le 220

Seigneur at this particular moment is because of the sculptor’s capacity to help ensure the immortality of names like Victor Hugo’s.

Throughout Victor Hugo, Gautier compares the first production of Hugo’s plays to their later repetitions. By offering the contrasting receptions of Hugo’s work from the beginning of his career to later on in his life, Gautier brings to light the transition from

Hugo’s status as a revolutionary playwright to his later acceptance into the formerly

(primarily) enemy camp of the académiciens, as is evident in this reflection upon the opening night of Hernani: “On demandait, par-ci par-là, la tête de quelque académicien.

Qui eût dit alors que notre chef passerait à l’ennemi et serait académicien lui-même!”

(Victor Hugo 62). Still treating the reception of Hernani, Gautier marvels at the metamorphosis of its reception, as it is later treated like a classical work and listened to with “un religieux respect” (Victor Hugo 149), in contrast to its revolutionary first production, which was constantly interrupted by fiery outbursts from the outraged classiques:

Cet Hernani, si sauvage, si féroce, si baroque, si extravagant, qui a fait soupçonner M. Hugo de cannibalisme par les bonnes têtes de l’époque, est aujourd’hui une œuvre calme, sereine, se mouvant et planant comme l’aigle des montagnes dans cette région d’azur éternel et de neige immaculée que le fumier et les brouillards ne peuvent atteindre. On en met de morceaux dans les cours de littérature, et les jeunes gens en apprennent des tirades pour se former le goût. C’est maintenant une pièce classique. (Victor Hugo 70)

By becoming canonical, Hugo’s work passes from revolutionary and romantique to classique. Gautier’s role as a Hugolian historian becomes clear: because Hernani garners a classical reputation later in the century, this disciple of le maître is compelled to remind his readers of the revolutionary horn that Hernani once sounded. As a historian of

souvenir des soldats obscurs va bientôt se perdre, et c’est un devoir pour ceux qui ont fait partie de la grande armée littéraire d’en raconter les exploits oubliés” (2). 221

Hugo’s, Gautier offers an anachronistic layering of events in order to recall what “Hugo” once meant to many and what this name seems to still mean for Gautier.58

Gautier’s account of his attendance at the later productions of Hugo’s plays also strikes a melancholic note, as he records the dwindling numbers of representatives from the old guard of hugolâtres. For example, his description of the 1867 reprisal of Hernani paints a picture of aged followers returning to see Hugo’s work:

Notre émotion n’a pas été moindre jeudi dernier. Trente-sept ans! […] Hélas! des anciennes phalanges romantiques, il ne reste que bien peu de combattants; mais tous ceux qui ont survécu étaient là, et nous les reconnaissions dans leur stalle ou dans leur loge avec un plaisir mélancolique en songeant aux bons compagnons disparus à tout jamais. Du reste, Hernani n’a plus besoin de sa vieille bande, personne ne songe à l’attaquer. Le public a fait comme don Carlos, il a pardonné au rebelle, et lui a rendu tous ses titres. […] Autrefois ce n’était pas ainsi, et chaque soir Hernani était obligé de sonner du cor pour rassembler ses éperviers de montagne […]. (Victor Hugo 80)

The last known words written by this faithful soldier of Hugo’s Romanticism before his death pertain to Madame Gay, later Madame Delphine de Girardin, a writer and staunch supporter of Hugo’s Romantic movement. Gautier’s tendency to promote Hugo by promoting other Hugolian promoters is visible in the final lines he wrote, describing the torch that Madame Gay carried for this group of writers and only let fall in death:

Lamartine et Victor Hugo étaient ses grands amis; elle se tint en adoration devant leur génie jusqu’au dernier jour, et sa belle main pâle ne laissa tomber l’encensoir que glacée. Ce soir-là, ce grand soir à jamais mémorable d’Hernani, elle applaudissait, comme un simple rapin entré avant deux heures avec un billet rouge, les beautés choquantes, les traits de génie révoltants… (Victor Hugo 50)

58 One may also here consider Challamel’s 1885 Souvenirs d’un hugolâtre: la Génération de 1830, which work he closes with reflections on Hugo’s role for this generation: “Victor Hugo illumine la génération de 1830, et aussi le siècle qui va finir. Le rayonnement de sa gloire a fécondé les esprits, influé sur les écrivains, sur les artistes, sur les savants, même, parfois, sur les hommes politiques, qui l’ont suivi consciemment ou inconsciemment. Chacune de ses œuvres a lancé des flammes, tout au moins jeté de vives et nombreuses étincelles. […] Ceux que l’on appelait hugolâtres se glorifiaient de ce titre, et justement, car ils devançaient l’admiration universelle. Le Maître n’est plus. Mais, immortel dans la mort, vivant dans toutes les mémoires, il a droit de passer sous l’Arc de Triomphe, devant lequel ‘il ne regrettait rien’” (357). 222

Gautier reflects Madame Gay’s allegiance and only lets his own torch drop in death as well. He promoted the name of Hugo as the Romantic leader of 1830 until the moment he lost his ability to write.

Gautier’s viewpoint offers a particularly revelatory glimpse into what it was to be a hugolâtre in 1830; moreover, Gautier stands out in the field of Hugolian followers for apparently never mingling résistance into his purely reconnaissant vision of a godlike

Hugo, even when this allegiance put him into difficult political waters.59 Gautier’s treatment of Hugo’s name aligns with his treatment of many lesser-known names stemming from the same period: Gautier is committed to the immortalization of the names of artists he admires. The most unique characteristic of Gautier’s projection of the import of Hugo’s name lies in its fixedness: for Gautier, while “Hugo” may go through poetic phases, the name Victor Hugo forever maintains its immortal significance as the godlike leader under whose image and name the petit cénacle was born and under whose image and name Gautier enthusiastically remains.

Through his anachronistic account of the former meaning of Hugo, Gautier seems to recognize that such a fidelity to a singular meaning of Hugo’s name goes against the grain. While most others allow the meaning of “Hugo” its constitutive flux over the course of the century, Gautier does not. By retaining such a set significance for this literary god, Gautier may work counter-intuitively. Because he does not allow “Hugo” to change, he also does not allow Hugo to change. This leads Gautier to project a much

59 Bergerat comments upon Gautier’s relief when Mathilde Bonaparte allowed him to freely admire Hugo: “Théophile Gautier, en effet, avait été lié avec les princes de la famille d’Orléans; il avait, comme il l’a raconté lui-même, fait une expédition en Afrique avec le duc d’Aumale. Mais il était surtout et avant tout resté fidèle au poète des Châtiments. Cette fidélité inébranlable, passionnée et idolâtre qui couronne toute sa vie d’un nimbe d’or, était la seule chose qu’il n’eût point fallu demander à Théophile Gautier de sacrifier. Mais le jour où il lui fut démontré qu’il pouvait librement rendre hommage au génie de son maître, même à la table d’une Bonaparte, ce jour-là il fut conquis et il devint mathildien” (16). 223

earlier Hugo fighting a battle that has long since been won. As Kripke writes, the significance of a name depends upon its accepted meaning for a community. Gautier longs for the community surrounding Hugo in 1830 in his writings, and, by continuing to project that antiquated meaning of “Hugo”, he isolates himself from the communities of namers of Hugo later in the century who attach different significances to this name. By fixing the meaning of “Hugo,” Gautier both sets himself apart from the other Hugolian disciples and also fixes the meaning of his own name. By retaining a singular and past significance of “Hugo”, Gautier immobilizes projections of himself as well. Until his

1872 death at the age of 61 and even today, the name Gautier still primarily conjures the image of the long-haired Romantic wearing a gilet rouge at the opening night of Hernani.

By becoming an anachronistic namer of Hugo, Gautier renders the meaning of his name anachronistic as well.

Sainte-Beuve and Gautier represent two very different namers of Hugo. While

Sainte-Beuve swings all the way from a close friend to a lifelong enemy of Hugo’s and comments upon the changes Hugo undergoes as he ages, Gautier maintains the position of a staunch disciple of a particular Hugo, the Hugo of 1830. When modern readers consider juxtapositions of the names Sainte-Beuve and Hugo, they tend to first think of the affair; on the other hand, when modern readers hear the names Gautier and Hugo together, the gilet rouge is conjured. One is a symbol of betrayal, the other a symbol of fidelity. And yet, few would argue that Hugo and “Hugo” did not change over the course of the century. Gautier’s fidelity to a fixed meaning of “Hugo” becomes simultaneously laudable and a touch laughable when one imagines a 61-year-old Gautier imagining himself donning that old red vest to back up his 70-year-old god who no longer needs

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back-up, his aging deity whose once-revolutionary work has now has come to be seen as classical. By temporally fixing the meaning of Hugo’s name, Gautier both constructs a symbolic leader who can offer him protection and loses credibility by refusing to allow

“Hugo” to change.

Sainte-Beuve and Gautier come to represent two poles bookending the community of Hugolian namers. Moreover, for both Sainte-Beuve and Gautier, their treatments of Hugo’s name still impact perceptions of the names of these two followers who projected opposing significances of the maître’s name.

VII. Ceci tuera cela: Sainte-Beuve’s later reviews of Hugo’s works

“Dans mes portraits, le plus souvent la louange est extérieure, et la critique intestine. Pressez l’éponge, l’acide sortira.” - Sainte-Beuve, Mes Poisons

In 1831, Hugo asks Sainte-Beuve to arrange for an excerpt of his recently- published novel, Notre-Dame de Paris, to appear in Le Globe. Sainte-Beuve responds that he cannot publish an excerpt without some sort of accompanying commentary. In a letter to Hugo, Sainte-Beuve offers a critique of Notre-Dame de Paris that discourages

Hugo from speaking in his own name within his work after encouraging Hugo to paint religion in a more flattering light:60

[…] Mais n’auroit-il pas fallu pour compléter le tableau, pour illuminer d’en haut l’action, y faire luire le flambeau de foi qui n’étoit pas éteint alors, l’idée de cette vie éternelle à laquelle tous croiaient; nous montrer cette espérance consolante du paradis et de la cité de Dieu, non pas en votre propre nom, mais dans les bouches et dans les vœux d’agonie de vos personnages? En ce sens, je comprends que M. de la Mennais vous ait reproché de n’avoir pas été assez catholique. (Corr. 103)

60 It should not go without noting that Sainte-Beuve praises this novel as well: “Eh bien, quant au style, je le trouve unique, merveilleux, inventé en tout et pour tout, fin, fort, souple, colossal, opulent” (Corr. 101- 02). 225

This private critique neatly runs contrary to his first published review of Hugo’s work (on

Odes et Ballades in 1827, just 4 years earlier), in which Sainte-Beuve encouraged Hugo to do just the opposite, that is to say, to write in his name and not disguise his presence in his poetry. This about-face in Sainte-Beuve’s recommendations for Hugo indicates a reversal in Sainte-Beuve’s opinion of the presence of Hugo’s “name” within his work.

When critiquing Hugo’s habit of writing in his own name (a habit Hugo could arguably have emphasized following Sainte-Beuve’s earlier advice to do so), Sainte-Beuve critiques the growth of Hugo’s Romantic movement, embodied in the name Victor Hugo.

Hugo’s image of Napoleon expanding the name of France in his poem “À la jeune

France” here comes to mind; while Hugo admires this ability of Napoleon’s, Sainte-

Beuve once warned Hugo against becoming too much like the later Napoleon, as earlier quoted: “[…] Bonaparte consul m’était bien plus sympathique que Napoléon empereur”

(Corr. 71).61 When Napoleon acted just as First Consul, one of three Consuls within the

Consulate (the governing body of France from 1799 to 1804), before becoming the

Emperor in 1804, he was still part of a team. Sainte-Beuve’s preference for the young

Napoleon who did not stand alone for the entirety of the nation of France reflects his preference for an early Hugo who did not stand for the entirety of French Romanticism.

The higher Hugo’s star rises, the less Sainte-Beuve wishes to see this name that so successfully popularizes a version of Romanticism that Sainte-Beuve finds flawed.

61 The lines in Hugo’s poem “À la jeune France” to which I here refer compare the fighters of 1830 to Napoleonic heroes: “Vos pères, hauts de cent coudées,/ Ont été forts et généreux./ Les nations intimidées/ Se faisaient adopter par eux./ Ils ont fait une telle guerre/ Que tous les peuples de la terre/ De la France prenaient le nom,/ Quittaient leur passé qui s’écroule,/ Et venaient s’abriter en foule/ A l’ombre de Napoléon!” (Poésie I 688). Hugo begins his poem “Lui” with an epigraph from Napoleon echoed in “À la jeune France”: “J’étais géant alors, et haut de cent coudées. –Buonaparte.” (Poésie I 533). 226

On July 6, 1831, Hugo writes to Sainte-Beuve asking him to stop visiting him so that they may possibly retain a shred of their friendship: “Nous ne sommes plus ces deux frères que nous étions. Je ne vous ai plus, vous ne m’avez plus, il y a quelque chose entre nous” (Corr. 110). Brix sees this letter from Hugo as a reproach to Sainte-Beuve more for the unflattering details that he includes in this biographical article rather than for the affair either already taking place or about to take place between Sainte-Beuve and Adèle

(Hugo 30-31). Regardless of which wrong bothered Hugo more, both of these threats to their friendship involve Sainte-Beuve’s attempts to either alter the meaning of Hugo’s literary name or usurp the husband’s role in his marital onomastic bond.

In response to a letter in which Sainte-Beuve denies any foul play, Hugo sends

Sainte-Beuve a letter on the same day agreeing with Sainte-Beuve that he had imagined everything: “[…] Tout est dans ma pauvre malheureuse tête, mon ami!” (Corr. 114). He aligns his problems with Sainte-Beuve to those with Adèle: “Je ne sais plus où j’en suis avec les deux êtres que j’aime le plus au monde. Vous êtes un des deux. Plaignez-moi, aimez-moi, écrivez-moi” (Corr. 115). In his response, Sainte-Beuve continues to encourage his “ami” to try to push aside his doubts. He then presents Adèle’s role as

Hugo’s wife in mythological terms:

Tâchez donc, mon ami, de laisser cette eau limpide recommencer à courir à vos pieds sans la troubler et vous y reverrez bientôt votre image. Je ne vous dirai pas: soyez clément, soyez bon – car vous l’êtes, Dieu merci! Mais je vous dirai, soyez bon à la manière vulgaire, facile dans les petites choses; j’ai toujours pensé qu’une femme, épouse d’un homme de génie, ressemblait à Sémélé: la clémence du dieu consiste à se dépouiller de ses rayons, à émousser ses éclairs; là où il croit jouer et briller seulement, il blesse souvent et consume. (Corr. 116)

Sainte-Beuve here compares Adèle to Semele, the Greek mythological mother of

Dionysus by Zeus, who unknowingly confided in Zeus’ disguised wife Hera that she was carrying Zeus’ child. Hera caused Semele to doubt that she was actually carrying the real

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Zeus’ child, which prompted Semele to ask Zeus to reveal himself in his true form and thus prove his divinity. Zeus attempted to spare Semele’s life when she insisted that he reveal himself in this way by tamping down the lightning bolts, but he failed, and Semele died because of this revelation of Zeus’ godly form.62 The message from Sainte-Beuve is clear: for Hugo to be happy at home, he must cease pursuing glory and tone down his general godliness. In 1831, Sainte-Beuve writes the first verses of Livre d’Amour, a collection of poetry that is quite explicit about his relationship with Adèle and that would not be published during either Sainte-Beuve’s or Hugo’s lifetime.63 In such poems as

“L’Enfance d’Adèle”, the narrator describes Adèle’s “maître soupçonneux” as “le sombre

époux” and the “lion jaloux” who “l’enferme” (Livre 31-33). Sainte-Beuve’s choice to refrain from publishing this collection during his lifetime speaks to a hesitancy to so publicly invade this marital union.

Sainte-Beuve’s invasion of this name gains clarity in his poem “À la petite Ad...”, also in Livre d’Amour, dated August 22, 1832, with the initially only partial name of

Adèle, the youngest Hugo daughter, for whom Sainte-Beuve was named the godfather in

1830: “Enfant délicieux que sa mère m’envoie,/ Dernier-né des époux dont j’ai rompu la joie” (107).64 The narrator goes on in this poem to study the child’s name and his role in the giving of this name:

Adèle est ton doux nom, nom de ta mère aussi: Parrain religieux, je t’ai nommée ainsi, Refusant d’ajouter au sein (suivant l’usage) Un de mes noms, pour toi j’eusse craint le présage. Que d’aimables bienfaits tu me rends aujourd’hui! Toi seule, Enfant sacré, me rattaches à Lui: Par toi je l’aime encore, et toute ombre de haine

62 See Ovid, Bk III: 253-338. 63 It is also commonly assumed that Sainte-Beuve and Adèle began their physical affair in the summer of 1831. While Livre d’Amour would not be published, some poems would be leaked. 64 See Prah-Perochon, 19. 228

S’efface au souvenir que ta présence amène. Mon amitié peu franche eut bien droit aux rigueurs, Et je plains l’offensé, noble entre les grands cœurs! (109)

The narrator believes that naming Adèle after him could serve as a bad omen for her, thereby giving credence to nominative determinism. This capitalized “Enfant” serves as the link between the narrator and the capitalized “Lui”. There is a note that appears at the end of this last line, in which Sainte-Beuve refutes any positive image of Hugo that readers could deduce from the adjective “noble”:

Non, il n’est pas un noble cœur: artificieux et fastueux, il est vain au fond: tous ceux qui l’ont pratiqué de près ont fini par le savoir; mais j’ai longtemps été dupe. – J’étais dans l’antre du Cyclope, et je me croyais dans la grotte d’un demi-dieu. (109)65

This deception reveals the fall from grace that Hugo undergoes in Sainte-Beuve’s eyes.

By including this note that contradicts a compliment to Hugo in his poem, Sainte-Beuve offers an indication of the image of Hugo that would come later in his life. While this note is not dated, the imperfect tense in the verbs “j’étais” and “je me croyais” places the note in the future (in comparison to the poem’s temporality) and bestows upon the note the final word in the poem’s judgment of “Lui”. Over the course of this poem, the narrator increasingly takes over the paternal role for this child by claiming he can see some of himself in her (in contrast to Léopoldine, whom he names and says she has too much of “Lui” in her) and by building a dowry for her despite the fact that she may not even remember his name: “A peine tu sauras mon nom” (111). As godfather to the child

Adèle, Sainte-Beuve had the opportunity to modify the name of a Hugo and insert his own, which temptation he resisted. Robb claims that such poems as this impacted public opinion of the paternity of “Adèle II”: “After some copies of Sainte-Beuve’s privately

65 A very early translation of Hugo’s, published under the pseudonym V. d’Auverney in Le Conservateur littéraire on April 1, 1820, is entitled “L’Antre des cyclopes” (Poésie I 31). 229

printed poems leaked out in 1843, it was generally believed that Sainte-Beuve was the father of Adèle II” (VH 164). The practice of incorporating a god-parent’s name into the name of a child was not unusual, as already seen in the source of Hugo’s first name, his godfather Victor Lahorie. However, it is after Sainte-Beuve draws attention to the fact that he could have inserted his name into that of a Hugo child that people begin to suspect the paternity of “Adèle II”. By emphasizing the absence of his name in that of the child,

Sainte-Beuve makes her Hugolian name seem illegitimate.

The only Hugo about whom he speaks in this poem without citing their first name is Victor; even if he refers to him as a vain cyclops, he still does not name him outright within this seemingly confessional piece. Garval analyzes comparisons of Hugo to a cyclops (here in reference to a Baudelaire passage to which I will return):

‘Cyclopéen,’ while it can mean simply enormous or gigantic, is also an architectural term for a primitive type of masonry, made of massive, uneven stones. It thus suggests roughness, irregularity, crudeness, and primitiveness, characteristics harder to see as expressions of unmitigated praise. Following moreover on the heels of ‘mythique,’ ‘cyclopéen’ also conjures up the one-eyed giants of Greek mythology, who supposedly had assembled the rugged walls of ancient Mycenae, and the most famous of whom, Polyphemus, ate six of Ulysses’ men before the hero tricked and blinded him to escape. Likening Hugo to the Cyclops casts him as the source of a powerful but monolithic vision; the lumbering creator of a rough-hewn literary monument; a dangerous, barbaric figure; and, ultimately, a sort of tragic dupe. (161)

Both a demi-god and a cyclops are powerful and dangerous entities who are better left un-poked. Moreover, their constructions can take forms reflective of their immensity and appear to be made of enormous, irregular blocks. The more monumental the construction, the more obvious its flaws become to beings that are far smaller (as

Gulliver is better able to examine and therefore become disgusted by the pores of a giant from Brobdingnag because of his comparatively small size).

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Despite his private (though sometimes leaked) critiques, Sainte-Beuve writes a number of articles containing compliments (of varying degrees of seeming authenticity) for Hugo’s life and works, mostly at Hugo’s behest, between 1831 and 1835. Sainte-

Beuve’s 1831 partly biographical article on Hugo, entitled “Littérature. Poètes modernes.

I. Victor Hugo” when it appeared in Revue des deux mondes on August 1 1831, begins with a full citation of Hugo’s poem “Ce siècle avait deux ans”, which would soon be the first poem in the newest publication of Hugo’s poetry, Les feuilles d’automne (1831).66

“Ce siècle avait deux ans”, a semi-autobiographical poem of Hugo’s (1802 is the year of

Hugo’s birth), focuses on Napoleon’s impact in France and begins with a mention of the multiple significances of Napoleon’s name. The choice to cite this poem becomes increasingly meaningful while tracing Sainte-Beuve’s running comparison of Hugo to

Napoleon. I here cite the first and last lines of this poem:

Ce siècle avait deux ans, Rome remplaçait Sparte, Déjà Napoléon perçait sous Bonaparte […] Fidèle enfin au sang qu’on verse dans ma veine Mon père vieux soldat et ma mère Vendéenne! (Poésie I 565-67)67

In this poem, Hugo both comments upon the double nature reflected in different names of

Napoleon/ Bonaparte as well as the vastly opposing influences that converged within the narrator and his name, from his mother and his father. Hugo situates his biographical story within the frame of Napoleon’s. Sainte-Beuve’s interpretation and projection of

66 Before this article appeared in Revue des deux mondes, it was published in a slightly different format in the Biographie universelle et portative des contemporains, ou Dictionnaire historique des hommes vivans et des hommes morts, most likely published on July 2 (Brix Hugo 30). 67 A connection emerges between this poem of Hugo’s and a statement made in his discourse pronounced upon his acceptance into the Académie in 1841: “Ce n’est qu’en explorant les commencements d’une vie qu’on peut étudier la formation d’un caractère” (Politique 94). This opinion of Hugo’s also aligns with Sainte-Beuve’s emphasis on the biographical when studying an author’s work.

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Hugo as Napoleonic in his power to turn evil should he try to encompass too much under his name is bolstered by this poem in which Hugo too connects “Hugo” with Napoleon.

True to his tendency to study the biographical details of a poet, Sainte-Beuve continues with remarks on this autobiographical work of Hugo’s and comments upon the growing popularity of this writer’s name:

Longtemps mêlée à ces orages des partis, à ces cris d’enthousiasme ou d’anathème, sa jeunesse n’avait pourtant rien à rayer de son livre ni à désavouer de sa vie; le témoignage qu’il se rendait dans la pièce citée plus haut, il peut le redire après comme avant; nul ne lui contestera ce glorieux jugement porté par lui sur lui-même. Pour nous, il nous a semblé que dans ce grand dépouillement du passé, qui se fait de toutes parts et sur toutes les existences, c’était peut-être l’occasion de confier au public ce que depuis longtemps nous savions de la vie première, de l’enfance, des débuts et de l’éducation morale du poète, notre ami, dont le nom se popularise de jour en jour. (Portraits 325)

Part of this “glorieux jugement” of Hugo by Hugo (another backhanded compliment) that Sainte-Beuve finds in “Ce siècle avait deux ans” is Hugo’s judgment of himself as a frail child (supported by Adèle’s account in VHR), “abandonné de tous excepté de sa mère”, but carried by a “haut destin de gloire et de terreur” (Poésie I 566). Sainte-Beuve continues in this article to align Hugo with Napoleon:

En même temps que le culte d’une pâle et morte dynastie s’évanouissait dans l’âme sévère du poète, celui de Napoléon y surgissait rayonnant de merveilles, et Victor Hugo devenait le chantre élu de cette gloire à jamais chère au siècle: Napoléon, soleil dont je suis le Memnon!... A l’Empereur tombe dressant dans l’ombre un temple… (Portraits 338)

In Hugo’s poem “Lui”, which Sainte-Beuve cites above, Hugo’s narrator compares

Napoleon to the sun and draws his own personal connection to him (by making himself a mythological figure):

Eperdu, je ne puis dans ces mondes sublimes Remuer rien de grand sans toucher à son nom; Oui, quand tu m’apparais, pour le culte ou le blâme, Les chants volent pressés sur mes lèvres de flamme, Napoléon! soleil dont je suis le Memnon! (Poésie I 535)

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When Memnon, a half-mortal, half-immortal mythological figure dies at the battle of

Troy, his mother, Eos, persuades Zeus to give him immortality.68 Moreover, the name

Memnon phonetically resembles “même nom”. Hugo’s narrator aligns himself so closely with Napoleon in this poem that he phonetically claims Napoleon’s name as his own and, by extension, grants his own name the omnipresence and ability to stand for many of

Napoleon’s name. By incorporating so many citations from Hugo’s poetry in which he treats (some projected version of) himself and his name, Sainte-Beuve offers a juxtaposition of Hugo with Napoleon through Hugo’s own published words. In this way,

Sainte-Beuve shows his readers that Hugo is the actual source of this not-so-humble judgment and projection.

In congruity with his comparisons of Hugo to larger-than-life entities, Sainte-

Beuve implies similarities between Hugo and Napoleon via a naming of Adèle in this biographical article on Hugo: “[…] C’est aussi dans ce lieu de rêverie qu’il commença de connaître et d’aimer cette autre Pepita non moins charmante, la jeune enfant qui, plus tard, devint sa femme” (Portraits 328). Rather than naming Adèle, Sainte-Beuve utilizes the Spanish nickname Pepita, short for Josefina. In 1811, when Hugo was 9 years old, he spent time with a young girl named Pepita in Spain.69 Robb offers some insight into

Pepita’s relatives and future:

68 The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia gives a brief account of Memnon’s role in Greek mythology: “Memnon […], in Greek mythology, king of Ethiopia, son of Tithonus and Eos. In the Trojan War he fought against the Greeks, and after he had killed Antilochus, he himself was killed by Achilles. Eos obtained immortality from Zeus for her son. Memnon was supposed to have lived in Egypt, and the Greeks gave his name to the great statue of Amenhotep III at Thebes. This statue was said to make a musical sound at daybreak, at which time Memnon greeted his mother, goddess of dawn” (1). 69 The name Pepita appears in Hugo’s Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné (1829), in which the condemned man remembers playing and fighting with a youthful playmate with whom he later falls in love: “La petite Espagnole, avec ses grands yeux et ses grands cheveux, sa peau brune et dorée, ses lèvres rouges et ses joues roses, l’Andalouse de quatorze ans, Pepa. […] Je disputais à Pepita la plus belle pomme du pommier; je la frappais pour un nid d’oiseau” (Roman I 469-70). Sainte-Beuve mentions Pepita in Le Dernier Jour 233

She was the daughter of the pro-French Marqués de Montehermosa. Her mother took her francophilia to the point of becoming Joseph Bonaparte’s mistress. It seems almost too good to be true that Victor Hugo should have been frolicking with the daughter while the elder Bonaparte was enjoying the company of her mother (strangely, Hugo never mentions this) […]. (VH 37)

Napoleon’s first wife was also named Joséphine de Beauharnais. By simultaneously naming Hugo’s wife after Napoleon’s wife and after Hugo’s childhood companion,

Sainte-Beuve here again draws a correlation between Napoleon and Hugo; however, this juxtaposition differs because Sainte-Beuve here asserts his onomastic power over at least a Hugo (this time Adèle I), if not Victor Hugo.

Moreover, the meaning of the name Josefina stems from the Hebrew name Yosef, meaning “Jehovah increases”.70 The name of God is also embedded in this Sainte-

Beuvian nicknaming of Adèle. As Joséphine/ Pepita, Adèle joins herself to the godlike

Hugo (YHVH) and will bear his children, thereby extending the life of his name (and not

Sainte-Beuve’s) into the future. According to this reading of Sainte-Beuve’s naming of

Adèle, she allows Hugo to propel his name into a time beyond his death by acting as the life-bearing force by which this godlike figure is multiplied.

The second article that Sainte-Beuve writes on Hugo in 1831 is a review of Les

Feuilles d’automne, originally published in the Revue des deux mondes on December 15,

1831. When this was republished in 1836 in Critiques et portraits littéraires, Sainte-

Beuve includes a note that underscores the “degradation” of his opinions of Hugo that one will find throughout his articles on this writer and former friend. Sainte-Beuve

d’un condamné in his 1832 article on Hugo’s novels (Portraits 362). Robb claims that Pepita may have inspired Esmeralda (VH 37). Hugo also writes a poem much later for L’Art d’être grand-père (1877) that is entitled “Pepita” and that also communicates the narrator’s memory of a young Spanish playmate that he met in Spain under Napoleonic rule: “Dans cette Espagne que j’aime,/ Au point du jour, au printemps,/ Quand je n’existais pas même,/ Pepita – j’avais huit ans-/ Me disait: -Fils, je me nomme/ Pepa; mon père est marquis. -/ Moi, je me croyais un homme,/ Etant en pays conquis” (Poésie III 787). 70 See Online Etymology Dictionary, 1. 234

identifies 1831 as the high point in terms of his flattery of Hugo. In another note

(included in the 1846 and 1855 versions of Portraits Contemporains), a later Sainte-

Beuve qualifies this article as the “extrême louange” of Hugo, and he writes that the future article on Chants du crépuscule acts as its “restriction” (Portraits 345-46).71 In the first line of this 1831 article on Les Feuilles d’automne, Sainte-Beuve claims that the triumph of the name of writers is due to the heralding of critics:

Il est pour la critique de vrais triomphes; c’est quand les poètes qu’elle a de bonne heure compris et célébrés, pour lesquels, se jetant dans la cohue, elle n’a pas craint d’encourir d’abord risées et injures, grandissent, se surpassent eux-mêmes, et tiennent au delà des promesses magnifiques qu’elle, critique avant-courrière, osait jeter au public en leur nom. (Portraits 345-46)

The critic makes promises to the public in the name of the writer. Sainte-Beuve elaborates on the role of critics at length in this article, claiming that it is the critic’s duty to first recognize and then promote promising lesser-known writers rather than to trail behind well-known, appreciated writers and decorate their monuments. It is the critic’s duty to “nommer ses héros, ses poètes” to readers (Portraits 346). Sainte-Beuve argues that the renown of a poet is due to the promotion this name receives early on from critics; in this way, a name like Hugo would owe its glory to its early critical trumpeter Sainte-

Beuve. One here finds another means by which Sainte-Beuve inserts his name into

Hugo’s. In this case, the critical authority and praise of “Sainte-Beuve” creates the glory of “Hugo”. Sainte-Beuve goes on to explain that poets need such glory (the implication is both morally and financially) in order to be able to continue to write (Portraits 347).

Without the critic’s encouragement, guidance, and promotion, the creative works would neither be produced nor properly appreciated.

71 Hugo’s own description of the poems in his preface to Les Feuilles d’automne clarifies why Sainte- Beuve prefers this collection, as he describes these poems as “vers de la famille, du foyer domestique, de la vie privée; des vers de l’intérieur de l’âme” (Poésie I 562). 235

According to Sainte-Beuve, another duty of the critic is to avoid exaggerating compliments bestowed upon their “plus chers poètes”: “Diderot nous parle d’un éditeur de Montaigne, si modeste et si vaniteux à la fois, le pauvre homme, qu’il ne pouvait s’empêcher de rougir quand on prononçait devant lui le nom de l’auteur des Essais”

(Portraits 347-48). Sainte-Beuve’s concern here is the effect of the name of the author reviewed upon the critic doing the reviewing: if hearing this author’s name makes the critic blush because of the critic’s exaggerations concerning this name, then the critic has failed as a creator of this authorial name’s renown. If a critic continues to write about a poet that they promoted early on, Sainte-Beuve states that the critic must offer a view of the progression of the writer without pulling readers’ attention back to the early works that the critic maybe secretly prefers, “comme un domaine plus privé” (Portraits 348).

Over time, one can imagine that his early promotion of Hugo’s name would make a later

Sainte-Beuve blush (or flush) when hearing this name.

Sainte-Beuve finally directly mentions Hugo for the first time in this article, about a third of the way in, immediately after offering a description of the complications critics face when writing about a poet over the entirety of their career:

Les grands poètes contemporains, ainsi que les grands politiques et les grands capitaines, se laissent malaisément suivre, juger et admirer par les mêmes hommes dans toute l’étendue de leur carrière. Si un seul conquérant use plusieurs générations de braves, une vie de grand poète use aussi, en quelque sorte, plusieurs générations d’admirateurs; il se fait presque toujours de lustre en lustre comme un renouvellement autour de sa gloire. Heureux qui, l’ayant découverte et pressentie avant la foule, y sait demeurer intérieur et fidèle, la voit croître, s’épanouir et mûrir, jouit de son ombrage avec tous, admire ses inépuisables fruits, comme aux saisons où bien peu les recueillaient, et compte avec un orgueil toujours aimant les automnes et les printemps dont elle se couronne!... Le récent ouvrage de M. Victor Hugo, auquel toute notre digression préliminaire ne se rattache qu’autant qu’on le voudra bien et qu’on saisira la convenance, Les Feuilles d’automne nous paraissent, comme à tout le monde, son plus beau, son plus complet, son plus touchant recueil lyrique. (Portraits 348-49)

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Sainte-Beuve here presents Hugo in the context of literary history and claims that poetic glory extended over a long period of time does not always lend itself well to a maintained intimacy between a critic and a poet’s works. If a critic can herald the crowd of admirers that will press around the poet, and if, as a friend, this critic knows how to remain

“intérieur et fidèle” to the poetic project, then the critic can continue to celebrate the poet’s victories and pride. A long-lasting rapport between a poet and a critic can indeed be fraught with complication, and, according to this critic, it seems to require more effort on the part of the critic than from the celebrated poet.

Following this lengthy study of criticism, Sainte-Beuve dives into a highly complimentary review of Les Feuilles d’automne. One small criticism he makes concerns Hugo’s tendency to extend to the exterior of himself, or to the fantastic, rather than remaining concentrated on the interior developments of his soul (Portraits 349).

While studying the general progression of Hugo’s works, Sainte-Beuve also notes that religious skepticism is entering Hugo: “[…] Le poète ne croit plus” (Portraits 351).

Aligning Hugo with tinges of skepticism serves as a manner of deforming the meaning of this poet’s name. Sainte-Beuve’s choice of the word progress in art, lyrical genius, and emotions (but not in religious belief) to positively qualify developments that he notes in

Hugo’s works differs from the meaning Baudelaire will assign to the same word to accuse Hugo of overly emphasizing the need for political change in his works (Portraits

352-53). Near the end of this article, Sainte-Beuve cites Hugo’s poem “Actions de grâces” from Odes et Ballades to show that Hugo did once exhibit religious faith in his poetry. The final strophe that Sainte-Beuve cites from “Actions de grâces” is the same strophe he cited in his dedicatory preface to Les Consolations: “Voici la vérité qu’au

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monde je révèle:/ Du ciel dans mon néant je me suis souvenu./ Louez Dieu! La brebis vient quand l’agneau l’appelle:/ J’appelais le Seigneur, le Seigneur est venu” (Portraits

354). As in the first instance when Sainte-Beuve cited these lines, one can here understand this citation as a means by which Sainte-Beuve calls for a certain version of

Hugo to return (or to finally appear for the first time) to him; here, he calls for a religious

Hugo, a Hugo who would call for God. Hugo’s poetry would improve if only Hugo himself would change and return to religious faith. Despite these comparatively slight critiques, the final note of Sainte-Beuve’s article is one of praise for Les Feuilles d’automne, which he describes as a reflection of the confused century that sees its publication:

[…] Le recueil des Feuilles d’automne est aussi en parfait harmonie avec ce siècle de rénovation confuse. Cette tristesse du ciel et de l’horizon, cette piété du poète réduite à la famille, est un attrait, une convenance, une vérité de plus, en nos jours de ruine, au milieu d’une société dissoute, qui se trouve provisoirement retombée à l’état élémentaire de famille, à défaut de patrie et de Dieu. (Portraits 354)

Robb notes the echoes of Sainte-Beuve’s preferred style of poetry in this collection of

Hugo’s: “Most were happy evocations of family life, ironically showing the influence of

Sainte-Beuve’s domestic poetry […]” (VH 171); moreover, Robb argues that this final comment upon the volume justifies Sainte-Beuve’s “cuckolding” of Hugo, as this act would also be representative of the dissolute times (VH 171). Ever the giver of backhanded compliments, Sainte-Beuve’s characterization of this collection of poetry as a “miroir sincère” of the oppositions of a confused, nationless, and Godless century simultaneously flatters and criticizes Hugo’s work. If Hugo’s name stands for this century, then it stands for a century of sin.

Hugo’s request for a review of Notre-Dame de Paris would not be satisfied by

Sainte-Beuve until 1832. Hugo asks Sainte-Beuve to mention therein the republications

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of Hugo’s works Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné and Bug-Jargal, which would appear with new prefaces and/or content. Hugo also asks Sainte-Beuve to pardon him for such a crass request that is in “l’intérêt matériel de la chose et du libraire” (Corr. 131). Brix sees in such requests the major divisive factor in the relationship between Sainte-Beuve and Hugo:

Pareille demande avait tout pour mettre Sainte-Beuve mal à l’aise: l’évocation, dans un compte rendu, de cette édition future supposait une connivence entre l’auteur et le critique, donnait à l’article un air de réclame et annulait en fait la portée des observations strictement littéraires que celui-ci contenait. (Hugo 32)

While Brix tends to rather majorly downplay the gravity of the affair between Sainte-

Beuve and Adèle as a factor that sped the demise of the friendship between Hugo and

Sainte-Beuve, he does pinpoint a difference of opinion on the role of criticism between

Sainte-Beuve and Hugo. Whereas Hugo continues to believe in the cenacular critical duty to support and boost one’s ilk, Sainte-Beuve supports critics’ being critical regardless of personal relationships with writers. Moreover, Sainte-Beuve proclaims that critics should not lend their own names to increase the glory of the names of others if they do not feel compelled to do so. The announcement that Hugo wants printed with

Sainte-Beuve’s article does appear in the Journal des Débats, but Sainte-Beuve takes it out of the reprinting in Portraits contemporains.72 As Sainte-Beuve transitions away from pursuing a career as a poet towards dedicating himself to literary criticism, his

72 The note that Hugo has inserted is the following: “Nous n’achèverons pas sans signaler au public les perfectionnements notables et les additions importantes qu’offrent ou qu’offriront les divers écrits de l’auteur dans la présente édition. Parmi les nouvelles préfaces, celle du Dernier Jour d’un condamné forme, par son étendu et la vigueur des développements, un digne préambule au récit. Lors de la livraison prochaine de Notre-Dame de Paris, on remarquera trois chapitres inédits fort longs, qui faisaient partie du premier travail de l’auteur, et dans lesquels Louis XI figure. Il sera piquant de comparer le Louis XI complet de M. Hugo avec les autres portraits que nous connaissons de ce roi. En un mot, la publication dont il s’agit, en ajoutant quelque chose au mérite de chaque ouvrage, doit en rajeunir et en multiplier le succès” (Portraits 366). 239

treatment of Hugo’s name takes on a new role and becomes indicative of how Sainte-

Beuve will delineate his vision of the mission of criticism, rather than Romanticism.73

This article on Hugo’s novels was first published in the Journal des débats on

July 24, 1832 and, like others of Sainte-Beuve’s articles on Hugo, it studies the progression of Hugo’s work through his novels. Sainte-Beuve states that there are great inequalities between these works and that there is no clear line of growth. After arguing that novels are not the ideal genre for the youthful, he goes on to claim that studying

Hugo’s novels allows one to better understand Hugo’s mind: “Cette étude, qui nous a servi d’ailleurs à vérifier nos précédentes vues sur le roman, est inappréciable pour faire suivre à la trace et mettre à nu le travail intérieur qui s’est opéré dans l’esprit du poète”

(Portraits 360). As he traces Hugo’s writerly maturation, Sainte-Beuve claims that Hugo began to measure himself against historical “géants” like Napoleon (Portraits 363). The critic offers a very positive review of Notre-Dame de Paris, comparing it to the works of

Cervantes and Rabelais and singling out the character Gringoire, the writer, as very promising:

[…] Gringoire nous promet, au nom de M. Hugo, bien des romans: il nous les promettrait plus attrayants encore, si quelque affection modérée humanisait davantage, interrompait parfois et liait entre elles ses humeurs bizarres. (Portraits 364-65)

In this passage, Sainte-Beuve makes Gringoire the speaker on behalf of Hugo and finds that this fictional mouthpiece promises a bright future in Hugo’s prose. One of Hugo’s fictional characters thereby becomes something of a promissory proxy for Hugo and portends future glories for his author’s name.

73 This is not to say that Sainte-Beuve ceases writing creatively. He continues to publish some poetry and prose, but most of his publications after this period fall under the category of criticism. 240

One critique Sainte-Beuve makes of Notre-Dame de Paris reflects a critique he made of Les Feuilles d’automne and holds the power to alter the significance of Hugo’s name for the public: Hugo is becoming a skeptic. As a remedy to this, Sainte-Beuve wishes for a measure of consolation in the novel: “Je regrette un accent pathétique, un reflet consolateur comme en a Manzoni” (Portraits 365). The choice of the adjective

“consolateur” underscores the connection between what Sainte-Beuve would like to see in Hugo’s novels and what Sainte-Beuve himself offered in his collection of poetry entitled Consolations.74 Brix contrasts the consolatory duty of a writer that Sainte-Beuve finds necessary with the quest for fame of which Brix finds Hugo emblematic:

Par contre, la quête obsessionnelle de la notoriété, dont la vie de Hugo fournit l’exemple, indique que l’auteur d’Hernani trahit la vocation de l’homme de lettres: en effet, le consolateur est par excellence un individu habité par une certaine sagesse et à qui les malheurs ont ouvert les yeux sur la vanité des “grandeurs de chair”, comme la gloire poétique. Ainsi, c’est en janséniste – et non en romantique hugolien – que Sainte-Beuve esquisse en 1837 le portrait idéal de l’écrivain: lors de la publication des Pensées d’août, il publie une note anonyme où il reconnaît à l’auteur – c’est-à-dire à lui-même – une série de qualités, parmi lesquelles la “haute probité critique”, le “culte fervent de l’art”, l’“indépendance” et surtout le “désintéressement”, à coup sûr le trait distinctif des port- royalistes. (Hugo 107)

Sainte-Beuve endeavors to encourage Hugo to become a better Hugo by incorporating more consolation and less skepticism, more intimacy and less authorial preeminence into his works.75 In other words, Sainte-Beuve encourages Hugo to more resemble Sainte-

Beuve.

VIII. Making Public Enemies with Private Details

“Napoléon couchait avec sa sœur Pauline.” - Sainte-Beuve, Notes

74 Brix finds this attention to consolation and désintéressement, or detachedness, indicative of Sainte- Beuve’s continuing rupture with his time as a disciple of Hugo’s (Hugo 96-107). 75 The word “intime” plays an important role in Hugo’s 1822 preface to Odes et Ballades: “La poésie, c’est tout ce qu’il y a d’intime dans tout” (Poésie I 54). 241

In his personal notes, Sainte-Beuve describes a period after 1830 during which he struggled to resist the “charm” of Romanticism in order to become a critic capable of critiquing his former cohort:

Depuis 1830, ce dernier charme a continué de régner en moi durant plusieurs années, et en même temps ma raison était complètement éclairée sur les défauts des hommes de cette École. De là une lutte bien pénible et bien de la contrainte dans l’expression de ma critique. Enfin elle s’est fait jour. (Cahiers 42)

In 1833, Hugo began his first and longest-lasting of many extramarital affairs with

Juliette Drouet, an actress who appeared in his play Lucrèce Borgia. Many of the

Parisian public, including Sainte-Beuve, knew of his activities:

Victor Hugo’s marriage was a popular legend, and the public resented a bad ending to a story it liked. But no one was so resentful and so indignant as Sainte-Beuve. In public, in private, the flick of innuendo darted from his lips. Never was such an onslaught of the Philistines on Samson taken in the toils of Delilah, for by some inexplicable logic of the human heart, Sainte-Beuve was all the bitterer because he felt himself to be the secret cause of the scandal. (Edinburgh 434)

While I do not claim to know Sainte-Beuve’s feelings about this affair, his 1835 article on Les Chants du crépuscule publicly insinuates Hugo’s infidelities and, according to many, serves as the final breaking point of this once close friendship.76

On February 1, 1834, the year before this article appears, Sainte-Beuve writes a review for Revue des deux mondes on Hugo’s booklet (“plaquette”) on Mirabeau. While some claim that the 1835 article enacts the final break in their friendship, others claim it is this 1834 article that sounds the death knell.77 Sainte-Beuve begins this 1834 article with a study of how the image of “grands hommes” has changed in French history. He locates in Bonaparte’s arrival a detrimental shift in the French peoples’ understanding and treatment of such larger-than-life figures:

76 See Brix, Hugo, 38-39 and Lepenies, Sainte-Beuve, 46. 77 See Portraits, 633, Note 1. 242

On les faits grands, très grands, des instruments de fatalité, des foudres irrésistibles, des voix commandées dans l’orage; rien ne les limite, ce semble, que leur pouvoir et leur succès même. On est revenu sur ce point à une idolâtrie, du moins en paroles, qui rappellerait celle des premiers âges; ce ne sont que demi-dieux toujours absous, quoi qu’ils fassent, et toujours écrasants. Bonaparte a gâté le jugement public par son exemple, et les imaginations ne sont pas guéries encore des impressions contagieuses et des ébranlements qu’il leur a laissés. (Portraits 634)

According to Sainte-Beuve, Bonaparte made the French idolize their “grands hommes” to the point of treating them like demi-gods. One may here remember the earlier-cited note of Sainte-Beuve’s in which he reveals that he once considered Hugo as a “demi-dieu”.

Another clue that an unnamed Hugo is the actual entity discussed, aside from the fact that this passage appears in a review of Hugo’s work, lies in the choice of the word “fatalité”, a pivotal term in Notre-Dame de Paris. Familiarity with Sainte-Beuve’s habit of comparing Hugo to Napoleon makes this essay’s harsh critiques of Napoleon more convincingly reflective of the author’s critiques of Hugo: “Bonaparte n’était ni bon ni méchant; il n’aimait ni ne haïssait les hommes; il ne les estimait guère qu’en tant qu’ils pouvaient lui nuire ou le servir” (Portraits 635). Moreover, Sainte-Beuve offers a slew of adjectival phrases to describe the simultaneously inhumane and superhuman aspects of this figure: “[…] Egoïste, sans pitié, sans fatigue, sans haine, un demi-dieu si l’on veut, c’est-à-dire plus et moins qu’un homme” (Portraits 636). Shortly thereafter, Sainte-

Beuve states that what was once the case for political “grands hommes” during

Napoleon’s time has now become the case for the “grands hommes” of the arts (Portraits

637). The greater a figure becomes, the more fictional and exaggerated it becomes, which consequently strips this figure of its humanity.

Sainte-Beuve states that it is because of this national tendency to exaggerate the greatness of “grands hommes” that he enjoys their memoirs, which often offer a

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humanizing window into the intimate and interior lives of these figures.78 These

“personnages” thereby become “meilleurs d’ordinaire que leur renommée” given this

“plus intérieur” view that memoirs can offer a reader (Portraits 639). The usage of the word “personnage” rather than “personne” emphasizes the fictional aspect of such depictions of “grands hommes”. Unsurprisingly, Sainte-Beuve deems the vision of an interior, more human person to be superior to the renown offered by the status of an overblown “grand homme”: “S’il a affaire à un ‘grand homme,’ précisément, Sainte-

Beuve s’attachera à le rendre plus ‘vrai’ et à percer son enveloppe d’irréalité” (Brix Nez

112). Sainte-Beuve promotes the intimate view, the perspective that a friend may have of a personne, as preferable to the monumental glory of the renown of a “grand homme” personnage.

When Sainte-Beuve arrives at his analysis of Hugo’s work on Mirabeau, he suggests that the publication of the first two volumes of Mirabeau’s Mémoires is linked to the publication of Hugo’s brochure on Mirabeau, implying if not technically foul play, at least something that smacks of insider self-service on Hugo’s part:

La publication des Mémoires de Mirabeau a été pour un grand poète l’occasion d’écrire une étude développée sur le grand orateur. L’écrit de M. Victor Hugo, imprimé et vendu à part, grâce à la susceptibilité honorable, peut-être excessive, de M. Lucas-Montigny, a été déjà lu de tout le monde. […] Beaucoup de gens s’apitoyaient récemment sur M. Victor Hugo; les succès fatigués de ses derniers drames s’interprétaient en chutes ou du moins en échecs; la critique avait eu contre son œuvre, contre sa personne, depuis quelques mois, de presque unanimes et vraiment inconcevables clameurs. C’était un hourra contre lui; c’était un accablement pour lui, on pouvait le croire. Point. Voilà qu’en une brochure écrite en huit jours reparaît ce talent puissant dans son allure, j’ai presque dit dans sa crinière la plus superbe. Ces sortes de natures opiniâtres et vigoureuses vont, trébuchent, s’accrochent, se relèvent, et donnent de perpétuels démentis à ceux qui en désespèrent. (Portraits 644-45)

78 A note of Sainte-Beuve’s in Mes Poisons reveals a worry of his that he too committed this error of superficially presenting such “grands hommes”: “Je ne suis qu’un imagier des grands hommes” (134). 244

The backhandedness of Sainte-Beuve’s “compliments” for Hugo becomes increasingly clear in this article. He goes on to explicitly refer to Hugo as a “grand poète”, underscoring the fact that his compliments of Hugo may too here act as aggrandizements of a “grand homme”, exactly the act that Sainte-Beuve critiqued so harshly in his introduction to this article, and which practice he also accuses Hugo of performing on behalf of Mirabeau.79 By insinuating something reminiscent of foul play in the publication of this work of Hugo’s, Sainte-Beuve underscores Hugo’s own self- promotion here as well, on the coattails of Mirabeau. The accusation can be understood as the following: by making Mirabeau into exactly the sort of overblown “grand homme” figure that Napoleon became for France, Hugo works to legitimize this practice of aggrandizement that could in turn ensure his own renown for generations to come.80

While founding “Hugo” as a “grand homme”, Sainte-Beuve encourages humility in the carrier of this name.

According to Sainte-Beuve, two major drawbacks seem to emanate from this over-exaggeration of “grands hommes”: firstly, it overshadows and even demonizes the

“hommes moins grands” who dare criticize the “grands hommes”. As to this first drawback, one can imagine Sainte-Beuve as cast in the role of the misunderstood critic who was privy to Hugo’s flaws. Secondly, such exaggerations create an impossible image of the “grand homme” in question that people are compelled to uphold by making their most mundane characteristics or actions into sublimities:

79 Brix notes the similarity between Sainte-Beuve’s critique of Hugo’s aggrandizement of Mirabeau to Baudelaire’s comments upon Hugo’s aggrandizement of his character Jean Valjean (Nez 108). 80 Sainte-Beuve states this rather explicitly in a note he adds to this text in 1836: “Ainsi plusieurs critiques ont-ils reproché à M. Hugo de s’être trop préoccupé dans le portrait de Mirabeau de sa propre question personnelle et de s’être vu, miré et copié lui-même, en quelque sorte, dans cette figure toute marquetée et couturée, comme dans un miroir à mille facettes. – Lamartine, depuis, a fait de même dans ses Girondins. Il est difficile à ces puissantes organisations subjectives de se détacher de soi” (Portraits 646). 245

Et le grand homme une fois conçu dans cet esprit, voyez quelle est la nécessité à son égard; on veut le maintenir en tout point à cette hauteur forcée, et, comme dans les panégyriques d’empereurs romains, il n’y a plus rien de lui qui ne devienne surnaturel, étrange. (Portraits 650)

Many writers and critics will be accused of hugophilia during the 19th, 20th, and 21st

Centuries, often for exactly the practice that Sainte-Beuve here critiques. Sainte-Beuve here puts his finger on an effect of one meaning of the name Hugo: if one maintains the image of Hugo as a demi-god, as sublime in all he did, sincerity risks becoming compromised when evaluating Hugo’s works (or his love life, for that matter). The position that Sainte-Beuve begins to publicly take on Hugo in this article offers a counterbalance to hugophilia and foreshadows centuries of division amongst readers and scholars into two camps: the hugophiles and the hugophobes. Regardless of which camp one may fall into, the centrality of Hugo remains: as emblematic of the 19th-century

“grand homme”, partly due to his own self-promotion, Hugo’s name continues to indelibly mark 19th-century French literature. Sainte-Beuve perhaps saw this coming and offered his readers an alternative vantage point on the institution of “grands hommes” in this article.

A few days following the publication of this review, Hugo sent Sainte-Beuve a revealing letter on February 4, 1834, in which he separates the public “Victor Hugo” from Sainte-Beuve’s old friend “Victor”:

J’ai lu votre article, qui est un des meilleurs que vous ayez jamais écrits, et il m’en est resté, comme de notre conversation de l’autre jour chez Guttinguer, une impression pénible dont il faut que je vous parle. J’y ai trouvé, mon pauvre ami, (et nous sommes deux à qui il a fait cet effet), d’immenses éloges, des formules magnifiques, mais au fond, et cela m’attriste profondément, pas de bienveillance. J’aimerais mieux moins d’éloges et plus de sympathie. D’où cela vient-il? Est-ce que nous en sommes là? Interrogez-vous consciencieusement, et dites-moi si j’ai raison. Si j’ai tort, dites-le-moi aussi, et aussi durement que vous voudrez. Je serais si heureux que vous me prouvassiez que j’ai tort.

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Avant de clore cette lettre, j’ai voulu relire pour la quatrième fois votre article, et mon impression m’est restée. Victor Hugo est comblé, Victor Hugo vous remercie, mais Victor, votre ancien Victor, est affligé. Je vous serre bien la main. V. (Corr. 188)

Hugo here teases out multiple significances of his own name in the context of his relationship with Sainte-Beuve. While the public figure “Victor Hugo” is grateful to the critic, “Victor” is upset by the old friend’s tone. In his response, Sainte-Beuve denies any lack of sympathy in his article and instead claims that he was just acting as a critic:

Quant à l’article sur Mirabeau, je conviens que l’admiration que j’ai pour certaines de ces grandes pages n’entraîne pas ma sympathie autant que d’autres écrits de vous où je suis à la fois étonné et convaincu […]. Je ne veux pourtant pas que vous disiez que vous n’y voyez pas de bienveillance. J’avoue qu’il y a dans cette nécessité de critique à laquelle je me livre toujours à mon corps défendant et qui finit par devenir mon métier, une attitude sévère et judicatrice qui ne va pas de moi à vous: mais sur ce chapitre de Mirabeau, j’ai cru devoir dire toute cette protestation contre la manière de construire les grands hommes, ce qui s’adresse à beaucoup d’autres, Lerminier, Michelet lui-même, etc. – presque tout le monde de ce temps-ci. (Corr. 189-90)

Sainte-Beuve’s denial that the direction of this critique moves from him to Hugo (“pas de moi à vous”) works to insert distance between this event of his published critique of

Hugo and the (dwindling) friendship between the two. He claims instead that this critique was directed at the manner in which “grands hommes” are being created during this period, which he finds reflected in Hugo’s writing. In response to Hugo’s division of himself into two names, Sainte-Beuve instills a division between Hugo and his works.

By removing Hugo’s name from the entity that Sainte-Beuve privately tells Hugo his article attacked (that is, his writing and not his person), Sainte-Beuve attempts to convince Hugo that the attack was not directed at him. On April 1, 1834, Hugo sends a letter to Sainte-Beuve (following at least one letter that we do not have today) that contains a very final note for their friendship: “Adieu donc, mon ami. Enterrons chacun de notre côté en silence ce qui était déjà mort en vous et ce que votre lettre tue en moi.

Adieu. V” (Corr. 192). Hugo’s request for silence may refer to more than one domain: 247

silence between them as friends—between Sainte-Beuve the friend and the hurt

“Victor”—and silence between them as public figures—between Sainte-Beuve the critic and the flattered “Victor Hugo”.

In 1834, Sainte-Beuve anonymously publishes a semi-autobiographical, semi- fictional novel entitled Volupté that presents a very interior narrative and a possible fictional embodiment of Hugo.81 Its basis in memory and its study of the psychology of the narrator, Amaury, make this work one of Sainte-Beuve’s more highly-regarded works.82 Amaury gives confessional, epistolary advice to a much younger man in an attempt to convince him to abandon the pleasures of the flesh. During his youth, Amaury meets the Couaën couple, befriends the husband, and has a relationship with the wife.

Many see this as a semi-biographical account of Sainte-Beuve’s relationship with the

Hugos.83 By drawing such comparisons between the life of Sainte-Beuve and his novel, one risks making a reductionist reading of Volupté as purely biographical in nature.

81 Grimsley comments upon this interiority: “Amaury is a man almost entirely engrossed in a personal problem which he believes to be so exceptional that it makes him unique or at least includes him among a select group of kindred spirits destined to share the same unhappy lot. […] This subjective factor is reinforced by a persistent habit of self-analysis which robs Amaury’s narrative of any clearly defined ‘plot’, careful portrayal of ‘character’ or detailed study of ‘manners’: everything is seen from the perspective of his own inner life, so that persons and events often appear to belong to a mysterious world of shadows and half-lights far removed from the down-to-earth reality of everyday existence. Furthermore, since the story is presented as a recollection and confession, the narrator himself sees his life through the haze of a distant and often idealized past” (145). 82 See for example Perrin and Grimsley. However, this novel also faced great criticism, including from Balzac, who had himself received scathing criticism from Sainte-Beuve (as in his “De la littérature industrielle”) and who “corrected” his critic’s novel via Lys dans la vallée: “Balzac of course read ‘Volupté’ when it appeared, early in 1834. And no man in literature ever took a more delicate revenge. The novelist had his own history—a history not unlike Sainte-Beuve’s; and he possessed what the critic had not, an extraordinary imagination, a power of making the dry bones live. He pulled the novel to pieces, angry Titan as he was, as he took up the characters and breathed on them one by one—first a bitter, disappointed, elderly conspirator—and of the Marquis de Couaën he made Monsieur de Mortsauf, the most wonderful example of the ‘trauriger ungriechischer Hypochondrist’ that ever lived in any book” (Edinburgh 442). 83 Jameson comments upon this general assumption: “C’est d’ailleurs à peu près le jugement universel, tel que Guyaux l’a résumé: puisqu’on a décidé que Volupté est la transposition des amours de Sainte-Beuve et d’Adèle Hugo, il va de soi que le marquis de Couaën ne peut être autre que le mari gênant dont il s’agit d’avoir raison” (49).

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Nevertheless, by studying his marquis de Couaën as a possible rendering of Hugo, one may more clearly see the changing presentations and projections of the meaning of

Hugo’s (here pseudonymous) name over time.

One image in particular within the novel, an allegorical description of the Couaën couple, includes some already familiar imagery associated with Hugo and other imagery that will become far more commonly associated with Hugo during and after his exile. In this allegory, the marquis de Couaën is the rock, Mme. de Couaën is the lake, and the two streams are their children:

J’avais coutume de me figurer vers ce temps mon idée sur les deux âmes que je contemplais à loisir chaque jour, sur ces âmes de madame de Couaën et du marquis, par une grande image allégorique que je veux vous dire. C’était un paysage calme et grave, vert et désert, auquel on arrivait par des gorges nues, déchirées, au-delà des montagnes, après des ravins et des tourbières. Au sein de ce paysage, un lac de belle étendue, mais non immense, un de ces purs lacs d’Irlande, s’étendait sous un haut et immuable rocher qui le dominait, et qui lui cachait tout un côté du ciel et du soleil, tout l’orient. Le lac était uni, gracieux, sans fond, sans écume, sans autre rocher que le gigantesque et l’unique, qui, en même temps qu’il le commandait de son front, semblait l’enserrer de ses bras et l’avoir engendré de ses flancs. Deux jeunes ruisseaux, sources murmurantes et vives, nées des fentes du rocher, traversaient distinctement le beau lac qui les retardait et les modérait doucement dans leurs cours, et hors de là ils débordaient en fontaines. Moi, j’aimais naviguer sur ce lac, côtoyer le rocher immobile, le mesurer durant des heures, me couvrir de l’épaisseur de son ombre, étudier ses profils bizarres et sévères, me demander ce qu’avait été le géant, et ce qu’il aurait pu être s’il n’avait été pétrifié. J’aimais m’avancer, ramer au large lentement dans le lac sans zéphyr, reconnaître et suivre sous sa masse dormante le mince courant des deux jolis ruisseaux jusqu’à l’endroit où ils allaient s’élancer au dehors et s’échapper sur les gazons. Mais, tandis que je naviguais ainsi, que de merveilles sous mes yeux, autour de moi; que de mystères! Par moments, sans qu’il y eût un souffle au ciel, toutes les vagues du lac limpide, ridées, tendues sur un point, s’agitaient avec une émotion incompréhensible que rien dans la nature environnante ni dans l’air du ciel n’expliquait; ce n’était jamais un courroux, c’était un frémissement intérieur et une plainte. (112-13)

Hugo’s indomitable forehead finds a reflection in the rock’s “front” from which it commands its surroundings. Additionally, Hugo will become increasingly associated with rocks and boulders after he goes into a primarily oceanfront exile in 1851. Later in the novel, Amaury will distinguish himself from the “rocher”: “La foi durable et vivante

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se compose de l’atmosphère et du rocher, et je n’avais eu que l’atmosphère” (231).

Twice in this earlier passage, an image arises of the masculine rock figure giving birth from its sides or slits (“flancs” and “fentes”). This means of giving birth calls to mind

Zeus’ birth of Dionysus from his thigh after Semele’s death, which one will recall occurred on account of her seeing the true godly form of her lover Zeus. As noted,

Sainte-Beuve compared the wife of a genius to Semele in an 1831 letter to Hugo.84 One also notes that this rock is petrified, making it very slow to metamorphose. Perhaps

Amaury (or Sainte-Beuve), after much circling and analyzing of the bizarre and severe profiles of this monolith, recognizes that he cannot fundamentally change this set stone

(or Victor Hugo).85 The publication of this novel further distanced the two former friends; moreover, it made their private problems even more public. Instead of the silence that Hugo requested, Sainte-Beuve gives the reading world a veiled semi- confession through this semi-autobiography. The wrongs known by the old friend

“Victor” are now made more public both to his acquaintances and to those who merely know the famous name “Victor Hugo”.86

84 While he does not name Semele or Zeus here, the image resonates in this passage in Volupté, thereby again recommending that the godlike genius refrain from revealing himself in his full godly form in order to spare the life of the woman who bears his child. Bénichou analyzes another passage in Volupté in which Sainte-Beuve expressly avoids naming God: “‘Et il était au pouvoir de mon sens intérieur, en s’y dirigeant, d’interpréter ou du moins de soupçonner ces signes mystérieux, de dégager quelques syllabes de cette grande parole qui, fixée ici, errante là, frémissait partout dans la nature.’ Verger mystérieux, parole diffuse sont les figures d’une ontologie fuyante autant qu’insistante, qui se garde de nommer expressément Dieu” (École 29-30). 85 Duncan studies the imagery in this passage as gendered: “In Amaury’s Manichean vision, nature, humanity and the universe are divided into two camps. Water, woman, and void oppose material mass, man and God” (233). He continues this description and focuses on the masculine imagery: “This harsh eminence—a master, a father, a God—dominates and contradicts the inherent flux of the lake. The image illustrates the patriarchal order of the family and suggests the strength and detachment of the Marquis” (234-35). 86 Amaury’s escape from temptation and conversion occurs in the same street that Hugo lived in with his mother and siblings from 1808 to 1813, la rue des Feuillantines, which detail furthers both Sainte-Beuve’s allusion to the Hugos as well as his insertion of himself into the name and history of the Hugos: “He was besieged on all sides by temptation. Only beside Mme de Couaën in the cul-de-sac of the Feuillantines, 250

The following year, 1835, Sainte-Beuve’s article on Hugo’s Les Chants du crépuscule is published and definitively ends the literary relationship between these writers. Sainte-Beuve accuses Hugo of being too “exterior” in some of the poems in this collection (Portraits 369). However, he highly praises his poem “À Louis B.”, which he deems both “interior” and religious in nature (Portraits 371). Sainte-Beuve’s encouragement of such poems as this exposes his preference for the poems in which

Hugo emphasizes the name of God rather than his own renown. In this poem of Hugo’s, the narrator laments the blasphemous vandalism of the holy through the image of a clock in a church belfry:

Sur cette cloche, auguste et sévère surface,/ Hélas! chaque passant avait laissé sa trace./ Partout des mots impurs creusés dans le métal/ Rompaient l’inscription du baptême natal./ […] Sur le nom du Seigneur l’un avait mis son nom!” (Poésie I 771)

The narrator goes on to draw a comparison between this profaned bell and his own soul, which is also subject to the modifications of passers-by over time: “Toutes, mêlant ensemble injure, erreur, blasphème,/ L’ont rayée en tous sens comme ton bronze même,/

Où le nom du Seigneur, ce nom grand et sacré,/ N’est pas plus illisible et plus défiguré!”

(Poésie I 772). The final mention of the name of God in this poem emerges as a declaration of the name that will emanate when God makes the bells and souls sing: “Et les monts et les flots proclament à la fois/ Ce grand nom qu’on retrouve au fond de toute voix” (Poésie I 773). Sainte-Beuve’s praise of this poem underscores the humility he likes to see from Hugo, a humility communicated by the narrator’s downplaying of his own name in favor of the name of God.

surrounded by nuns, does Amaury find asylum on what he calls ‘ma nouvelle montagne’ – a spiritual haven, lofty and absolute” (Duncan 236). 251

Sainte-Beuve criticizes certain word choices throughout this collection, certain moments in which poems feel forced or unnaturally arranged, and, famously, the juxtaposition of different types of figures:

En admirant dans le voile l’éclat du tissu, il nous a paru toutefois qu’il y a eu parti-pris de le broder de cette façon pour l’étendre ensuite sur le tout. Cette mythologie d’“anges” qui a succédé à celle des “nymphes”, les “fleurs de la terre” et les “parfums des cieux”, un excès même de charité aumônière et de petits orphelins évoqués, tout cela nous a paru, dans ces pièces, plus prodigue qu’un juste sentiment de poésie domestique n’eût songé à le faire. […] Il n’a pas vu que l’impression de tous serait qu’un objet respecté eût été mieux honoré et loué par une omission entière. (Portraits 378)

Hugo, as well as many of the French reading public, saw in this critique a veiled reference to Hugo’s poems involving Adèle, the “angel”, and Drouet, the “nymph”. For

Sainte-Beuve, as opposed to Gautier, the Hugo with the sacred name is Adèle. The final lines of this collection (from the poem “Date lilia”) are cited in Sainte-Beuve’s critique and are generally presumed to be in reference to Adèle: “Elle! tout dans un mot! C’est dans ma froide brume/ Une fleur de beauté que la bonté parfume!/ D’une double nature hymen mystérieux!/ La fleur est de la terre et le parfum des cieux!” (Poésie I 797).87

Hugo reportedly sent his witnesses to propose a duel with Sainte-Beuve after this review was published, and only his editor and wife could talk him out of it (Prah-Perochon 28).88

One poem that seems to include the “nymph”-like presence is “Oh! pour remplir de moi ta rêveuse pensée”, in which the narrator’s focus is decidedly on his own name

(and not the name of God):

Que ce réseau d’objets qui t’entoure et te presse, Et dont l’arbre amoureux qui sur ton front se dresse

87 For more on Sainte-Beuve’s and Hugo’s poetry concerning Adèle, see Simon. 88 Glinoer hints that Sainte-Beuve may have been slapped, though: “Les motivations peuvent être sujettes à caution, mais le casus belli est clair: il a insulté l’homme tout en niant le travail artistique. La dénonciation du ‘manque de tact littéraire’ de Hugo n’aurait en elle-même pas été très élégante sous la plume d’un adversaire. Venant de Sainte-Beuve, elle est simplement odieuse. Hugo envoie suite à cet article ses témoins au critique. Le duel n’a pas eu lieu, mais il n’est pas impossible que Sainte-Beuve fût souffleté” (Querelle 30). 252

Est le premier chaînon; Herbe et feuille, onde et terre, ombre, lumière et flamme, Que tout prenne une voix, que tout devienne une âme, Et te dise mon nom! (Poésie I 754)89

Similarly to the image of all things in the world proclaiming the name of God in “À

Louis B.”, one finds in this poem a name being communicated by all things in the world; however, in “Oh! pour remplir de moi ta rêveuse pensée”, the name is the narrator’s, and the addressee is the person awaiting the narrator under a tree beside a lake, “loin des yeux importuns” (Poésie I 754).90 Sainte-Beuve’s critique of Hugo’s poems in which he finds hints of Hugo’s lover here coincides with his hatred for Hugo’s pursuit of renown. The seeming praise near the end of Sainte-Beuve’s article can be read as equivocal, especially when considering Sainte-Beuve’s opinion of what he considers to be Hugo’s pursuit and/or acquisition of renown:

Au résumé, et malgré nos critiques, qui se réduisent presque toutes à une seule, à un certain manque d’harmonie parfait et de délicate convenance, Les Chants du crépuscule non seulement soutiennent à l’examen le renom lyrique de M. Hugo, mais doivent même l’accroître en quelque partie. (Portraits 378)

Sainte-Beuve’s statement that, despite “our” critique, this new collection of Hugo’s poetry not only upholds but also expands Hugo’s lyrical renown can be interpreted as either a celebratory or rancorous observation. Despite Sainte-Beuve’s apparently failed wish (the “gré” in “malgré”) to see Hugo focus on the interior and intimate in his poetry and cease pursuits of glory and renown, Hugo’s name continues to grow with each new publication. The problem persists: Sainte-Beuve’s encouragements for Hugo to modify

“Hugo” to Sainte-Beuve’s liking do not take.

89 One poem in this collection, “À Mademoiselle J…”, is presumably dedicated to Juliette Drouet and comes the closest to actually naming her through its dedicatory title. 90 This poem is dated September 19, 1834, placing it a year after the beginning of Hugo’s affair with Drouet. 253

In December of 1835, Sainte-Beuve writes in a letter to Louis Noel, another of

Hugo’s 1830 followers, of his privileged vantage point on and opinion of this celebrity:

Vous vous êtes fait, je crois, un peu d’illusion dans le temps sur Hugo, et vous vous en faites dans un sens contraire aujourd’hui. Il n’était pas tel autrefois que l’amitié le rêvait; il n’est pas tel aujourd’hui que certaine rumeur injuste le ferait être. Peu de personnes savent exactement ces choses intimes et vraies des hommes célèbres. Après avoir été plus que personne sous le premier charme, j’en suis venu à savoir bien le vrai sur ce caractère; je me trouve aussi être du très petit nombre qui sait au juste ce qui en est de sa vie et des causes qui l’ont mené là. Je dois vous dire que c’est en ce que tant de gens blâment si haut en lui que je le trouve le moins blâmable. Son plus grand tort est dans l’orgueil immense et l’égoïsme infini d’une existence qui ne connaît qu’elle: tout le mal vient de là. Quant aux autres faiblesses, elles appellent l’indulgent tant qu’elles ne sont que des faiblesses. Mais c’est assez parler d’un sujet obscur et qui ne doit pas être un obstacle aux personnes qui, comme vous, l’aiment et lui ont quelque obligation d’autrefois, de lui garder un sentiment affectueux et désintéressé. Nous nous sommes tous fait, en entrant dans la vie, des idoles, une maîtresse, un poète; nous avons tracé en lettres d’or un idéal d’avenir et comme un programme à l’usage de ces personnes admirées; elles n’ont pas rempli notre programme; elles vont à leur guise, à notre désappointement. Ne leur en veuillons pas trop de nous être trompés sur elles et de ce qu’elles agissent sans nous consulter. (Nouv. Corr. 33-34)

Sainte-Beuve here recognizes that his problem with Hugo is that this poet did not mold himself into the Hugo of Sainte-Beuve’s idealistic dreams. And yet, Sainte-Beuve also here recognizes Hugo’s right to act and change without consulting others, even if the critic and former friend is disappointed in the path that his famous friend chose. In this letter, Sainte-Beuve gives the authority to decide what the ideal projection of “Hugo” should be back to Hugo.

IX. Reviewing Many Hugos: the Revue des deux mondes

“La critique polie n’est pas moins piquante; plus le glaive est poli, mieux il perce.” - Sainte-Beuve, Notes

After 1835, visits and correspondence between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve all but cease. Following this end to their personal, intimate relationship, Sainte-Beuve stops writing published, signed articles about Hugo. He still writes about Hugo, but most of these items are published either anonymously or posthumously. In 1837, Sainte-Beuve’s

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penultimate collection of poetry, Pensées d’août, is published to less acclaim than his previous collections.91 According to Brix, Sainte-Beuve attributes this diminished success to the lack of the Cenacular seal of approval and sponsorship that he once had:

Le volume de 1837 était-il vraiment bon? Selon l’auteur, c’est un autre facteur qui a été déterminant: Joseph Delorme et Les Consolations ont bénéficié de l’effet ‘Cénacle’ –le succès de recueils de vers émanant d’autres membres du Cénacle et parus avant 1829 disposait favorablement le public vis-à-vis de toute œuvre ultérieure marquée du sceau de ce groupe –, tandis que les Pensées d’août, publiées de longues années après la disparition du Cénacle, sont apparues comme l’œuvre d’un franc tireur, dépourvu de tout parrainage prestigieux. (Hugo 108-09)

The loss of affiliated names due to ruptures in literary friendships can affect the success of one’s works, which can in turn affect the significance and longevity of one’s renown.

Did the end of the “literary” friendship between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve seal the latter’s fate to be far less-known than the former in the future? Such a question cannot be answered with any certainty. Nevertheless, while Sainte-Beuve’s publications chastising

Hugo do not inhibit the rise of Hugo’s renown, the lack of Hugo’s stamp of approval on

Pensées d’août does coincide with a poor public reception of this work. If Sainte-Beuve tried to rewrite the Romantic movement in a direction different from Hugo’s, it today seems that he failed. In fact, Huet-Brichard finds that Pensées d’août clearly expresses the Romanticism that this later Sainte-Beuve promotes. According to Huet-Brichard, the hero of Pensées d’août is André Chénier, the poet in whom Sainte-Beuve found the germ of one line of Romantic writers, as opposed to the other germ stemming from Madame de

Staël:

Remonter à André Chénier, c’est éliminer tout maillon intermédiaire; c’est se prémunir de tout coup de force en ôtant à ses confrères la possibilité de revendiquer le statut d’initiateur et donc le chef (c’est déjà, sur le papier, éliminer Hugo). Car qui, parmi les amis de Sainte-Beuve, a reconnu, dès l’édition de ses œuvres complètes par Henri de

91 This collection is the penultimate because of Livre d’amour, which would not be published publically until after Sainte-Beuve’s death. So Pensées d’août is the final of Sainte-Beuve’s publically published collections of poetry during his lifetime. 255

Latouche en 1819, le génie d’André Chénier? Deschamps l’apprécie, mais ni Hugo, ni Lamartine ne le comprennent. Chénier comme ancêtre du romantisme, c’est la trouvaille de Sainte-Beuve; c’est lui, qui, dans le Tableau, a créé la généalogie: La Pléiade, Chénier, l’école moderne. Lui seul, somme toute, peut revendiquer l’héritage. (39-40)

Sainte-Beuve here attempts to rewrite the history of Romanticism with far more emphasis on Chénier and far less on Hugo. In this manner, Sainte-Beuve tries to create a new Romantic genealogy, one that would not be dominated by the name “Hugo”.

Sainte-Beuve’s affiliation with the Revue des deux mondes and other critics like

Planche who also wrote for this paper places him in an anti-Romantic, anti-Hugolian camp: “Le fait est [que Sainte-Beuve] se rapproche par ce côté-là, qu’il le veuille ou non, de l’école antiromantique commune et bourgeoise, celle de Nisard et de Planche”

(Bénichou École 35).92 Planche’s 1838 article on Hugo entitled “Poètes et romanciers modernes de la France, Victor Hugo”, which appeared in the Revue des deux mondes, pays a great amount of attention to the state of Hugo’s name, as its opening passage makes clear: 93

M. Hugo touche à une heure décisive; il a maintenant trente-six ans, et voici que l’autorité de son nom s’affaiblit de plus en plus. A quelle cause faut-il attribuer ce discrédit? Est-ce que les forces du poète s’épuisent? ou bien le public serait-il ingrat? Oublierait-il ceux qu’il a couronnés, par caprice, par injustice, par satiété? Serait-il condamné à chercher constamment des émotions nouvelles? En voyant l’inattention dédaigneuse qui accueille depuis cinq ans les recueils lyriques de M. Hugo, il est impossible de ne pas poser ces questions, ou plutôt ces questions se posent d’elles- mêmes, et la critique est forcée de les discuter. Nous savons tout ce qu’on peut dire sur l’ingratitude de la foule; mais nous répugnons à penser que l’ingratitude soit la seule cause du discrédit où M. Hugo est aujourd’hui tombé. Tout ce qu’il y a de réel dans le talent du poète est reconnu et proclamé d’une voix unanime; ceux même qui n’éprouvent aucune sympathie pour les strophes dorées des Orientales, pour les descriptions abondantes de Notre-Dame de Paris, ou pour les splendeurs puériles de Lucrèce Borgia, ne peuvent contester à M. Hugo une singulière puissance dans le maniement de la langue. Mais il semble que l’auteur ait besoin d’une lutte acharnée pour exciter l’attention.

92 This is not to say that Planche always pitted himself against Hugo; in fact, according to Adèle, he counted among Hugo’s supporters on the opening night of Hernani (VHR 459). 93 Five years before, in 1833, Planche had published another harsh article on Hugo’s Lucrèce Borgia in Revue des deux mondes, which compelled Hugo to ask Sainte-Beuve if he had been involved. Sainte- Beuve writes to Hugo that he had to refrain from what would seem like a “veto” against Planche’s article (Corr. 162). 256

Depuis que la lutte a cessé, l’attention languit, et le moment n’est pas éloigné peut-être où elle s’endormira sans retour. Nous désirons que l’avenir démente nos prophéties, mais nous croyons sincèrement que nos craintes sont partagées par un grand nombre de lecteurs. Toutefois, ce n’est pas à trente-six ans qu’il est permis de renoncer à se renouveler; il dépend donc de M. Hugo de réfuter nos craintes en commençant une série d’œuvres inattendues. Quant aux œuvres qu’il a signées de son nom depuis vingt ans, il faut qu’il se résigne à les voir disparaître bientôt sous le flot envahissant de l’oubli. (732)

Planche advises Hugo to reinvent himself, to give new meaning and connotations to his literary name by attaching novel, innovative works to it via his signature:

S’il tente une voie nouvelle, s’il se transforme, s’il se régénère, s’il renonce à l’amour des mots pour l’amour des idées, dans dix ans la critique devra prononcer sur un homme que nous ne connaissons pas encore, et qui n’aura de M. Hugo que le nom. (733-34)

Should Hugo successfully radicalize the meaning of his name, Planche states that the

“Hugo” attached to his former, lesser works would become a name attached to an unknown man. Planche thereby asserts that an authorial name can be so changed by its author’s works that it can become unrecognizable, even when the letters composing the name remain intact. Long before Lacan, Planche identifies, if not exactly a split subject, something like a split signifier. The signified can be so dramatically altered that it splits its signifier into two versions and renders one of the formulations unrecognizable.

Planche’s claim that the works that Hugo had published in the preceding 20 years (which list includes Notre-Dame de Paris) would certainly be forgotten has been refuted by these works’ lasting impact. Like Sainte-Beuve’s articles, Planche’s can appear comically unsound to modern readers. The main reason for this modern-day ridicule of such critics lies not just in their miscalculations of the afterlives of writers and their works but more in the negativity of these judgments (that are later popularly considered to be misjudgments). Had Planche instead written an article about a gifted contemporary writer who he claimed would undoubtedly be a household name for generations to come, readers may feel more inclined to look up this unknown writer that a critic tried to help

257

(which critical impact would be in accordance with Sainte-Beuve’s description of the role of critics in his previously-studied 1831 review of Les Feuilles d’automne). Instead, by claiming that a name or a work would not be preserved in memory, Planche and Sainte-

Beuve open themselves to the ridicule of future readers who know that a certain name or work does in fact survive. Even Brix, a fan of Sainte-Beuve’s to say the least, allows for this critic’s shortsightedness:

Et il est clair également que, aussi pertinents fussent généralement ses conseils, Sainte- Beuve était faillible et sujet à se tromper. Il a fait des déçus, et certains de ceux-ci ont manifesté leur dépit en faisant circuler les sobriquets de “Sainte-Bave” et de “Sainte- Bévue”, voire en évoquant—comme Balzac—leur envie de le tuer. (Hugo 51)

Contemporary and future readers alike may bristle at the sight of a critic detracting from a renowned writer’s success. Nevertheless, other readers delight in this, especially when it’s done with a measure of humor, as in Baudelaire’s Salons. Moreover, in the spirit of

“all publicity is good publicity”, such deformations of names can also add to the grandeur of these names: had Hugo not been a target for some critics, and had his name not appeared in print with such overwhelming frequency, his renown may not have spread to the degree that it did.

Sainte-Beuve ceased publishing such critiques of Hugo later in life and instead chose to treat lesser-known writers, a choice that, according to Brix, also met with future disapproval precisely because of this lack of articles on Hugo:

Ce fut en effet un lieu commun, au XXe siècle, de reprocher à l’auteur des Lundis d’avoir parlé d’écrivains aujourd’hui oubliés, plutôt que de mettre sa plume au service d’un Victor Hugo. On trouvait tout naturel d’affirmer que, soit myopie, soit jalousie, le critique s’était “trompé”. (Nez 92)

Sainte-Beuve writes in Mes Poisons, which would not be published until 1926, the reasons for which it would be shameful for him to attack Hugo:

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Pourquoi il serait impardonnable et honteux à moi de jamais attaquer Hugo et d’ouvrir une polémique avec lui. Cicéron l’a dit: Nihil enim est turpius quam cum eo bellum gerere quocum familiariter vixeris [For nothing is more discreditable than to be at war with one with whom you have lived on intimate terms]. (44)94

This explanation of Sainte-Beuve’s reticence hinges on public opinion of him. He describes attacking Hugo as “unpardonable” and “shameful”, two judgments that often require the presence of another person besides the defendant and the victim. Such qualifications show a Sainte-Beuve operating intersubjectively and envisioning what public judgment would be of him were he to speak ill of his former friend. So Sainte-

Beuve’s choice to not write negatively about Hugo exhibits a concern for the impact of such writings on the public’s perception of the critic’s name.

Planche, on the other hand, does not seem to share this concern for the reputation of his own name at the expense of Hugo’s. Planche claims throughout his article that

Hugo’s success is due to his name rather than his works, as in this critique of his “odes royalistes”:

Signées d’un nom qui fût demeuré obscure, elles ne mériteraient aucune attention; signées du nom de M. Hugo, elles prouvent ce qui était prouvé depuis long-temps, qu’il faut avoir vécu avant de publier sa pensée, et que les convictions monarchiques, pas plus que les convictions démocratiques, ne peuvent dispenser du commerce des livres et des hommes. (735)95

It seems that Planche encourages Hugo to stop signing his works in order to more effectively change the meaning of his name or so as to separate himself from this name, releasing the old “Hugo” to sink into oblivion. It is also telling that Planche defended the Cénacle’s habit of naming their friends against Latouche’s article in 1831 (though this

94 Translation from Falconer’s De Amicitia, as cited in Druckenmiller, 29. 95 Planche also writes on Hugo’s poem “À Louis B.”, which Sainte-Beuve so admired in his 1835 article on Hugo. However, Planche finds fault in this poem: “Les passions comparées aux passans qui viennent troubler l’homme pieux dans son asile, la débauche et l’impiété comparées au couteau qui raye le nom inscrit sur la cloche, peuvent-elles être acceptées comme des figures dignes de la poésie lyrique? Je ne le pense pas. […] Mais cette idée, pour devenir vraiment poétique, demandait un ordre de développemens que le poète français ne semble pas même avoir entrevue” (742). 259

was mostly in defense of Sainte-Beuve), and yet 7 years later, after Sainte-Beuve’s break with Hugo, he writes very negatively of Hugo. Planche’s tie to Sainte-Beuve through the paper for which they both write correlates with his changing attitude towards Hugo; in other words, as Sainte-Beuve’s opinion of Hugo changes, so does Planche’s.96

Regardless of the cause in this case, Planche’s examination of Hugo’s name shows that

“Hugo” can drastically change meaning—even if it’s by not changing meaning, as

Planche claims—for even those he obliquely touches during his lifetime. A final citation from Planche’s article analyzes the pros and cons of building such a name as that of

Hugo:

Sans les tempêtes qu’il a traversées, le nom de M. Hugo n’aurait pas eu le retentissement dont le poète se plaint aujourd’hui avec une ingratitude singulière. S’il voulait la paix, il devait ne pas quitter la plaine; il a voulu vivre dans la région où vivent les aigles, qu’il se résigne aux périls de son ambition. (745-46)

The eagle again appears as an image for Hugo and as emblematic of great renown. If someone’s name becomes known by so many, that person is opened to the possible criticism of all who are even vaguely familiar with them. In this way, through the celebrity attached to his name, Hugo becomes vulnerable to the scathing critiques of the likes of Planche, as a condition of obtaining the renown he achieved.

In 1840, Sainte-Beuve writes an article entitled “Des gladiateurs en littérature”.

This article was not published during Sainte-Beuve’s lifetime, as per an erased note at its heading, requesting that the editor either wait to print it until after his death or just burn

96 I do not wish to say with any certainty that this also contributed, but it is possible that Sainte-Beuve’s temporary rupture with Adèle, which began in 1837, may have also inspired Planche to dole out some pain on behalf of his hurt friend. There is also a measure of irony in that so many scathing articles on Hugo came out of the Revues des Deux Mondes when it was Hugo who introduced Sainte-Beuve to Buloz, the editor-in-chief of the paper (Brix Hugo 31). 260

it.97 In this article, Sainte-Beuve gives something of a highlight reel of his favorite images with which to describe Hugo: eagle, cyclops, forehead, etc. His description of the cyclops in particular gains depth. The cyclops here embodies the overblown, monstrous half of Hugo’s muse. Naming this cyclops as Polyphemus, Homer’s man-eating son of

Poseidon and Thoosa,98 Sainte-Beuve differentiates between the versions of Polyphemus to be found within Hugo over time, as this cyclops-muse evolves to become increasingly aggressive and heavy-handed.99 And yet, Sainte-Beuve admits that he once loved a particular version of the Polyphemus within Hugo:

Ainsi au séjour et comme au sein même de la muse de M . Hugo un jeune cyclope habitait; mais d'abord la grotte était fraîche, mille fées et nymphes matinales jouaient alentour; mille bruits de ruisseaux et de cascades la remplissaient; et même quand c'était le berger Polyphème qui paraissait au dehors et s'asseyait sur la cime, c'était Polyphème jeune, amoureux de Galatée, joueur harmonieux de flûte, et digne alors qu'un Théocrite recueillît ses chants. Et erat tum dignus amari. (240)

The Latin citation, from Virgil’s Eclogues, translates as “He was worthy of being loved”

(Robertson 628). Despite this earlier, more loving, and therefore more lovable version of

Polyphemus, Sainte-Beuve finds that this cyclops within Hugo grows worse with age.

Through his utilization of the past tense (“he was worthy”), Sainte-Beuve expresses that the contemporary monster within Hugo is no longer worthy of being loved. He eventually sums up the unlovable writing as Hugo’s “veine grossière” and finds the role of the critic to be that of blinding this cyclops in order to allow for Hugo’s more beautiful poetic deities to emerge (246). By casting Hugo as a vessel for Polyphemus and claiming

97 It appears to have been first published in March 1954 by Revue des deux mondes. The heading reads, “A imprimer après moi. A brûler après moi, je l’exige. Sainte-Beuve” (237). 98 See Homer, Bk IX, 166-83. 99 In his Préface de Cromwell, Hugo uses Polyphemus as a classical example of a figure of the grotesque: “[…] Polyphème est un grotesque terrible […]” (Critique 10). He goes on to comment that Antiquity tended to reduce the enormity of cyclopes and giants, making of them dwarves and gnomes, respectively, a tendency one could compare to Sainte-Beuve’s treatment of Hugo over time; by underscoring the monstrosity of Hugo, Sainte-Beuve attempts to reduce his enormity. 261

critics must blind him, Sainte-Beuve concomitantly casts himself as Odysseus, who, before blinding the monster, identifies himself to the cyclops as “No-one” or

“Nobody”.100 Critics may be more effective at blinding a cyclopean writer if they remain not just pseudonymous but pseudonymously anonymous. In other words, critics may enter into a capitalized collective of “Nobody” in order to resist the semblance of pursuing renown themselves.101 “Nobody” is the name best suited to combat the literary monstrosity of others without facing accusations of hypocrisy and without complicating literary reviews with personal acquaintance.

Hugo’s name is central to this piece because of its usage by the “gladiators” who deploy this name on their flags while fighting for what Sainte-Beuve considers to be anti- literary literature and anti-poetic poetry: “[…] Une chose me frappe et doit, ce me semble, frapper tout le monde, c’est le nom qui se lit d’ordinaire, écrit en très gros caractères, sur le drapeau de ces bandes si peu disciplinées” (237). The cause for writing this unpublished article is revealed as a response to the backlash on the part of the Hugo supporters against the Revue des Deux Mondes after what Sainte-Beuve calls a very flattering review of Hugo’s Les Rayons et les Ombres.102 Sainte-Beuve remains very clear that, while these gladiator supporters act on behalf of Hugo, in his name, Hugo himself very rarely appears on behalf of his own name:

100 West studies the importance of this name-based trick: “The trick of the name is the hallmark of the Odyssey’s story. At 9.355-6, the inebriated Cyclops asks for Odysseus’ name, claiming he wants to give him a guest-gift. Odysseus recognizes that the overture is a trap, and gives his famous response: […] ‘“No- one” is my name; “No-one” is what they call me, my mother and my father and all my other friends’ (Od. 9.366-7)” (142). 101 Nevertheless, in the Odyssey, Odysseus cannot resist revealing his actual name when he and his men escape: “The Odyssey’s version lacks a deliberate attempt to inflame the monster here, postponing it until Odysseus’ ill-advised decision to shout out his name to Polyphemus at 9.473-80 and 491-505, but at this point Odysseus confesses to a certain stubbornness which prevents him from taking his companions’ advice to plunder the cave and leave (Od. 9.224-30)” (137). 102 This review was written by M. Magniti. 262

Il est vrai que l’écrivain qui porte le nom si pompeusement affiché a toujours pris soin de se commettre très peu lui-même; il a plutôt prêté son nom que sa personne; il n’a figuré de sa plume dans les colonnes les plus pleines de lui qu’à la dernière extrémité pour ainsi dire, et jamais pour attaquer, et toujours avec une discrétion proportionnée à l’importance qu’il s’attribue. (237)

In this passage, Sainte-Beuve studies Hugo’s relationship with his own name in public debate concerning his works. According to Sainte-Beuve, it is in the interest of this name and its reflection upon himself that Hugo does not sign pieces that retaliate or attack others. By practicing discretion in signing his name, Hugo protects the public’s idea of his person. This judgment of Sainte-Beuve’s bears truth: it is difficult to find criticisms of Hugo’s directed at his contemporaries throughout the century. Perhaps Hugo was aware that signing his name to a scathing critique of Sainte-Beuve’s works, for example, would have reflected poorly upon him in the future, suggesting a concern for the future significance of his name. Or, perhaps Hugo is following his own advice in his 1833 preface to Lucrèce Borgia, wherein he describes Corneille and Molière as appearing risible when quibbling with their critics. And yet, according to Sainte-Beuve, Hugo is perfectly happy to allow other, younger literary revolutionaries to brandish his name and act on his behalf, sometimes with gladiator-like violence and child-like petulance.

The following year, 1841, Hugo was elected to the Académie. In 1843, Sainte-

Beuve’s Livre d’Amour, the earlier-studied work in which the writer is explicit about his relationship with Adèle, is printed privately. Then, in 1844, Sainte-Beuve is also elected to the Académie. And who would have to give a speech in response to Sainte-Beuve’s acceptance discourse but Hugo, who resisted his former friend’s election. In his

“discours de réception,” Sainte-Beuve thanks his audience for the friendships that have helped him gain acclaim:

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Ces amitiés, Messieurs, s’il m’est permis désormais de leur donner ce nom, ces amitiés précieuses et illustres, en voulant bien me tendre la main du milieu de vous, m’ont enhardi et comme porté; elles m’ont rendu presque facile un succès que d’autres plus dignes ont attendu plus longtemps […]. (Portraits 1566)

Sainte-Beuve does not directly mention Hugo in this speech, but he does praise a character of Delavigne’s in a way that suggests a critique of Hugo even in this discourse of gratitude:

De la pièce si agréable des Comédiens, je veux pourtant relever ce personnage de Victor, type du jeune auteur dramatique tel que le rêvait le poète, et à la faveur duquel il a exprimé, sur le but moral de l’art, sur le rôle du talent dans la retraite, quelques conseils, et préceptes d’une justesse appropriée, dont il est demeuré observateur fidèle; Aimons les nouveautés en novateurs prudents Que le littérateur se tienne dans sa sphère Crains les salons bruyants, c’est l’écueil à ton âge; Nous avons trop d’auteurs qui n’ont fait qu’un ouvrage Et d’autres pareils. Casimir Delavigne resta toujours, à bien des égards, et sauf une certaine fougue qu’il lui prête, le Victor de ses Comédiens, adouci et non amolli par le succès. (Portraits 1571)

Sainte-Beuve recalls the advice that salons (ancestors to the Cénacle) are the pitfalls of young writers, and that this Victor of Delavigne’s was very responsible in how he handled his success. Two aspects of Hugo’s life that Sainte-Beuve has criticized are thus visible in this seeming praise of Delavigne’s character, a better Victor. Sainte-Beuve also makes a veiled reference to Hugo when he imagines what might have happened if a

“classic” would have resisted revolution a bit harder and fought to retain some classical elements. Delavigne is recognized as a playwright who incorporated elements from both schools into his plays.103 Now bearing the same title as Hugo of Académicien, an already highly-regarded title that has the added bonus of offering immortality to its

103 Faguet explains this aspect of Delavigne: “Later on, with ‘Louis XI’ and ‘Les Enfants d’Edouard,’ Casimir Delavigne tried to remain half way between classic tragedy and romantic drama, displaying a good deal of talent and some melancholy. ‘Dumas’s work is not good,’ he used to say; ‘but it prevents the appreciation of mine’” (580). 264

bearers, Sainte-Beuve ends his speech with a study of the importance of the name

Casimir Delavigne, the Académicien whose seat Sainte-Beuve fills.104

In his response, Hugo speaks at length about Delavigne as well before speaking about Sainte-Beuve:

Succéder à un poëte que toute une nation regrette, quand cette nation s’appelle la France et quand ce poëte s’appelle Casimir Delavigne, c’est plus qu’un honneur qu’on accepte, c’est un engagement qu’on prend. Grave engagement envers la littérature, envers la renommée, envers le pays! Cependant, Monsieur, j’ai hâte de rassurer votre modestie. L’Académie peut le proclamer hautement, et je suis heureux de le dire en son nom, et le sentiment de tous sera ici pleinement d’accord avec elle, en vous appelant dans son sein, elle a fait un utile et excellent choix. Peu d’hommes ont donné plus de gages que vous aux lettres et aux graves labeurs de l’intelligence. (Politique 116)

After being highly complimentary of Sainte-Beuve’s works, especially his Port-Royal,

Hugo reminds his audience of the tragedy of Napoleon’s defeat and of the soldiers who died for their leader with no thought to their own glory, which selflessness made their names nearly divine: “Ils étaient morts d’une mort sublime, ces vaincus héroïques, et nul n’osait prononcer leurs noms” (Politique 120). Hugo then cites from Delavigne’s poem

“La Bataille de Waterloo” and says that, through this poem honoring those who died at

Waterloo, Delavigne’s name was engraved into the French mentality:105

Disons-le, parce que c’est glorieux à dire, le lendemain du jour où la France inscrivit dans son histoire ce mot nouveau et funèbre: Waterloo, elle grava dans ses fastes ce nom jeune et éclatant: Casimir Delavigne. (Politique 121)

Then, in the final lines of this speech, Hugo praises poets capable of consoling their nations, which word recalls Sainte-Beuve’s collection Les Consolations and his view of the poet’s role as one of consoling: “Heureux le fils dont on peut dire: Il a consolé sa

104 Sainte-Beuve states, “La population parisienne elle-même y prit sa part [dans les funérailles]: elle connaissait par son nom le poëte, par ce nom amical et familier de Casimir qui disait tout pour elle, et qui circulait autour du convoi dans un murmure respectueux” (Portraits 1579). 105 One here finds Hugo identifying Delavigne’s promotion of those who died at Waterloo as the act that bestows national recognition of Delavigne’s name, which resembles Gautier’s praise of du Seigneur because of his promotion of the immortality of Hugo’s name. 265

mère! Heureux le poëte dont on peut dire: Il a consolé la patrie!” (Politique 121). Hugo resembles Sainte-Beuve to a degree in this statement’s ambiguity: one could understand that he means that Sainte-Beuve, like Delavigne, consoled through his poetry, or one could understand that Delavigne alone holds this honor by consoling beyond the realm of the intimate. Hugo finds that, by glorifying Napoleon and those who died in his name,

Delavigne himself gains glory and sees his name engraved in popular memories. If one remembers Sainte-Beuve’s tendency to align Hugo’s name with Napoleon’s while reading this passage of Hugo’s, then one may conclude that self-sacrificial glorifications

(and not personal renown-seeking detractions) of Hugo’s name would bring glory unto those respectful followers who recognize his greatness and the sublimity of those who fight for him. When Sainte-Beuve did write for the glory of Hugo’s name, he had more success as a poet. The idea that those who work to spread and nourish the renown of others and to remind their readers of peoples’ value rather than to convince their readers to cease appreciating someone tend to do better in the eyes of the public. Such writers bolster their own popular renown by augmenting that of others. Hugo practiced this more faithfully than Sainte-Beuve, and Hugo’s name has retained far more renown than Sainte-

Beuve’s (or Planche’s). Readers may better propagate the renown of writers who use the power of their own names for the names of others.

Hugo did not know about Sainte-Beuve’s Livre d’amour until the following year,

1845, when a visitor who thought he was in the know showed him his pamphlet copy.

Hugo immediately wrote a poem, his last to be dedicated to Sainte-Beuve, entitled “À S-

B”:

Que dit-on? on m’annonce un libelle posthume. De toi. C’est bien. Ta fange est faite d’amertume; Rien de toi ne m’étonne, ô fourbe tortueux.

266

Je n’ai point oublié ton regard monstrueux. Le jour où je te mis hors de chez moi, vil drôle, Lorsque sur l’escalier te poussant par l’épaule, Je te dis: N’entrez plus, monsieur, dans ma maison! Je vis luire en tes yeux toute ta trahison. J’aperçus ta fureur dans ta peur, ô coupable, Et je compris de quoi pouvait être capable La lâcheté changée en haine, le dégoût Qu’a d’elle-même une âme où s’amasse un égout, Et ce que méditait ta laideur dédaignée; On devine la toile en voyant l’araignée. (Séché Revue 311)106

This angry, accusatory poem does not align with the idea of Hugo as a writer who resists attaching his name to attacks. However, the publication regulations for this poem expose his attention to the public judgment of the interplay of his name, his works, and his personal rapport with Sainte-Beuve: “Ces vers ne furent rendus publics que longtemps après la mort de Victor Hugo, et seulement—d’après sa volonté—le jour où les pièces calomnieuses du Livre d’amour furent imprimées avec de plus calomnieux commentaires” (Simon 742). Both writers seemed to fear public disapproval due to their later derogatory pieces on one another. In this case, a shade of difference emerges between the two: while Sainte-Beuve never wanted to be alive while readers of the general public had access to his Livre d’amour, Hugo wanted his poem to be published at the same time as Livre d’amour, as it could then be seen as a justified response. Had

Livre d’amour never been published, Hugo’s poem was to likewise remain concealed from the public. Hugo’s specifications for this publication indicate a belief that the popular love for a Hugo faced with such blatantly adulterous poems had the power to trump the popular appreciation for the critic.

106 The spider web is a well-known image evoking la fatalité in Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris. See Bk VII, Ch 5, “Les deux hommes vêtus de noir”. This chapter immediately follows the chapter entitled “ἈΝΆΓΚΗ”. Additionally, Drouet writes, in reference to this poem, “J’ai copié vos beaux vers sur la trahison et l’hypocrisie d’un ex-faux ami; c’est sublime et triste comme le combat de l’aigle contre la vipère” (Guimbaud 111). 267

X. A Stubbornly Hugolian Hugo

“La synthèse, c’est le syllogisme. Voilà tout.” - Sainte-Beuve, Notes

Early in their careers, these two writers happily joined their names together via dedications, poems, articles, etc. as members of the same group and an initially comparatively similar Romantic mission. However, due to many factors including personal wrongs, differences in taste and visions for Romanticism, and public criticisms,

Hugo and Sainte-Beuve all but cease entirely to comment upon one another after 1845.

Bénichou offers a succinct overview of what Hugo meant to Sainte-Beuve: “La personne de Hugo l’avait fasciné; mais, en l’admirant comme un disciple, il se garda sourdement de le suivre, par l’effet d’une hostilité couverte qui anima, comme on le sait par d’autres preuves, sa relation avec le grand homme” (École 28). In terms of their differing opinions on the ideal direction for Romanticism, Huet-Brichard identifies Sainte-Beuve’s poetic revolution as hinging upon not just a desire for poetic intimacy and interiority but also a certain treatment of the poet’s name:

Sainte-Beuve inscrit sa démarche dans le refus du Romanesque, des fioritures, du clinquant, et circonscrit son champ poétique, celui de l’intime. Mais il ne propose pas l’ouverture d’un domaine inconnu et original qui s’ajouterait aux territoires poétiques déjà existants, il exclut toute autre poésie comme artificielle et inauthentique (relevant du cliché): la poésie est dans le “sans nom” et dans le “sans orage”, épurée, dépouillée. Là est la révolution beuvienne; dans le crime de lèse-majesté qui ramène la poésie à terre pour qu’elle dise la vie, c’est-à-dire rien. (139)

The glory surrounding Hugo’s name rubbed Sainte-Beuve the wrong way from 1830 until the critic’s death in 1869.107

During the year of his death, Sainte-Beuve added many notes to his Portraits

Contemporains, including one lengthy note at the end of his 1835 review of Hugo’s Les

107 Sainte-Beuve died a year after Adèle. The final note in Mes Poisons under the heading “Sur Victor Hugo” is a record of Adèle’s death: “Mme Victor Hugo est morte à Bruxelles, le jeudi 27 août 1868” (64). 268

Chants du crépuscule. In this note, Sainte-Beuve admits that he always wanted Hugo to be a bit different than he was:

Toujours, en le louant ou le critiquant, je l’ai désiré un peu autre qu’il n’était ou qu’il ne pouvait être, toujours je l’ai plus ou moins tiré à moi, selon mes goûts ou mes préférences individuelles; toujours j’ai opposé à la réalité puissante, en face de laquelle je me trouvais, un idéal adouci ou embelli que j’en détachais à mon choix. (Portraits 380)

Sainte-Beuve tried and failed to mold Hugo into the ideal “Hugo” that he desired. The more Hugo’s name grew in celebrity and renown, the more irritated Sainte-Beuve seemed to become with its imperfections. And yet, this late Sainte-Beuve explains—rather graciously—that he really wanted Hugo to be more like what Sainte-Beuve wanted to be or indeed was. Hugo’s name takes center stage in this note of Sainte-Beuve’s, as the critic shares with his readers the story of an occurrence between him and Hugo in 1832 that he finds to be revelatory of what Hugo would become. Just after the June Rebellion of 1832, Sainte-Beuve asked Hugo to sign a petition that would appear in Le National.

Hugo denied this signature in a letter dated June 12, 1832, which Sainte-Beuve cites in full and which justifies this refusal by stating that the time has not yet come for the

Republic:

Nous aurons un jour une république; et quand elle viendra, elle sera bonne. Mais ne cueillons pas en mai le fruit qui ne sera mûr qu’en août. Sachons attendre. La république proclamée par la France en Europe, ce sera la couronne de nos cheveux blancs. (Portraits 382)108

On the letter itself, Sainte-Beuve wrote “de Victor Hugo qui était de l’opposition alors”

(Corr. 138). A modification that Sainte-Beuve attempts to make to the public’s understanding of Hugo here is that he was not as radically liberal at that time as some may have believed. As a witness to and intimate of this early Hugo, Sainte-Beuve endeavors to rewrite his version of the true meaning of “Hugo” in 1832, perhaps as a

108 Nevertheless, Hugo had agreed to sign this a few days earlier, in a letter dated June 7, 1832. 269

corrective to Hugo’s own tendency to rewrite his earlier selves. Hugo ends this letter with a request that Sainte-Beuve still keep Hugo’s name close to his own: “En tout cas, mon ami, maintenez ma signature près de la vôtre” (Portraits 382). Writing in the France of 1869, under the rule of Napoleon III, Sainte-Beuve claims that one could see the exiled

Hugo in this letter: “Le Victor Hugo de Jersey et de Guernesey y était en germe et levait déjà le front: déjà le tribun perçait sous le songeur” (Portraits 382). Sainte-Beuve exhibits his particular ability to see the progression from one Hugo to another, an ability resulting from his personal familiarity with this writer. Immediately after this study of the Hugos throughout time, Sainte-Beuve once again corrects Adèle’s account of his first meeting with Hugo at length. This tendency of Sainte-Beuve’s to repeatedly correct this story of their first encounter comes to resemble a tic (a (cri)tic) when one studies Sainte-

Beuve’s relationship with Hugo.109

However, after this final correction of Victor Hugo Raconté, the last time that

Sainte-Beuve would insist that it was Hugo who came to visit him first, Sainte-Beuve writes his final passage in this 1869 note to the essay that definitively ended his friendship and even compelled his former friend to challenge him to a duel. This passage expresses nostalgia and gratitude to Hugo for being an honest yet kind critic for him:

Une seconde visite acheva de me convertir et de m’initier à quelques-unes des réformes de l’école nouvelle. Rentré chez moi, je fis un choix de mes pièces de vers et les envoyai à Victor Hugo, ce que je n’avais osé jusqu’alors avec personne; car je sentais bien que mes maîtres du Globe, vraiment maîtres en fait d’histoire ou de philosophie, ne l’était point du tout en matière d’élégie. Hugo, en me répondant à l’instant, et en louant mes vers, sut très bien indiquer, par les points mêmes sur lesquels portait son éloge, quelles étaient tout à côté mes faiblesses. J’étais conquis dès ce jour à la branche de l’école romantique dont il était le chef. […] Une vive intimité s’ensuivit. Mon Joseph Delorme, déjà commencé dans la solitude et le silence, s’augmenta d’élégies plus fermes et d’un accent plus précis. Une période tout enthousiaste de trois années commença pour moi

109 For the record, according to an editorial note in Portraits Contemporains, Sainte-Beuve was right: “Une lettre de Hugo à Paul-François Dubois, le directeur du Globe, confirme les souvenirs de Sainte-Beuve; c’est Hugo qui a demandé à rencontrer le critique et non l’inverse […]” (Portraits 384). 270

(1827-1830); elle acheva de se consacrer dans mon culte intérieur par le recueil des Consolations qui est resté à mes yeux comme le sanctuaire ardent et pur des plus belles heures de ma jeunesse. (Portraits 384)

The loneliness of Sainte-Beuve, his comparative lack of renown (aside from being well- known as the critic with whom Proust took issue) compared to Hugo’s lasting celebrity, and his nostalgia for the days of the Cénacle make him a bit more of a rounded figure than may initially seem the case.

Having mentioned this softer side of Sainte-Beuve, I will now offer just a few glances into his later, more familiarly derogatory statements about Hugo from Mes

Poisons:

Victor Hugo est de l’Académie. Allons, allons, c’est bien: l’Académie a besoin de temps en temps d’être déflorée. (52)

Hugo était un jeune roi barbare. Au temps des Consolations j’ai tenté de le civiliser; j’y ai peu réussi. (46)

Hugo se donne à moi comme un homme qui n’a qu’un défaut et qu’un faible, celui de trop aimer les femmes: il prétend qu’il ne songe pas du tout à sa gloire. Il y a toujours deux défauts en nous, celui qu’on avoue et celui qu’on cache. (44)

Le talent puissant de Hugo est devenu de jour en jour plus gros, pour ne pas dire grossier. (54)

Ma relation avec Hugo est très simple désormais; je la résume ainsi: ennemis, ennemis mortels, nous le sommes au fond; nous n’avons plus à observer pour les autres et pour nous-mêmes que ce qui est de dignité et de convenance. (55)

J’aime les auteurs qui ont un mérite susceptible d’être d’autant plus goûté que le monde sera plus civilisé et plus spirituel. Pour Hugo, au contraire, plus le monde deviendra indélicat et grossier, plus il a chance qu’on l’admire. (60)

A force d’être charlatan et déclamateur, Hugo a fini par croire à ses propres phrases: il y a été pris. (60)

Hugo est dans son île du Cyclope: il nous lance des quartiers de rocher qui ne nous atteignent pas. (62)

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Having passed from Hugo’s intimate friend to his sworn enemy, Sainte-Beuve continues to privately compare Hugo to a giant monster that seeks women and glory, throws futile shards of rocks from his island, and becomes more and more uncouth as a writer.

Through Sainte-Beuve’s naming events of Hugo, this monstrous name simultaneously encapsulates both glory and shame—indeed, in Sainte-Beuve’s account,

Hugo’s attitude towards his own glory brings about this shame, as he passes from “gros” to “grossier”. While Sainte-Beuve thought he could change the significance of “Victor

Hugo”, first as a friend, then as a critic, and finally as an enemy, it was more Sainte-

Beuve’s connection to and then rupture from Hugo’s name that influenced his own name for future generations. In this manner, Hugo’s name not only resists but, in a way, rallies the significative modifications attempted by Sainte-Beuve. Because Hugo did not sign his name to public invective targeting Sainte-Beuve to the degree that Sainte-Beuve did with regard to him, Hugo made his name akin to the schoolyard rubber off of which his former friend’s insults bounced to instead stick to Sainte-Beuve’s onomastic glue. Future generations of 19th-century French writers would be familiar with both Sainte-Beuve and

Hugo as well as their personal and professional history that determined and altered the significance of juxtapositions of their names over time. Additionally, especially before

Proust, Sainte-Beuve’s opinions garnered more faith during the 19th Century than they would in the future. The generations immediately following that of Hugo and Sainte-

Beuve may therefore also have had their views of the significance of the name Hugo modified by what Sainte-Beuve wrote (and said) of him.

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Intended to be blank.

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CHAPTER III

THE GÉNIE AND THE SOT: BAUDELAIRE’S PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HUGOS

Hugo, Charles. Victor Hugo dans les rochers, à Jersey. 1853-54. Paris: Maison Victor Hugo.

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I. Introduction

“L’art est plein du frisson des choses qui s’enfuient.” - Baudelaire, “Le Crépuscule du matin”

Following the generation of Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and a slightly younger Gautier,

Baudelaire serves as the pivotal namer of Hugo for his generation and for those to follow in 19th-century French literature. Unlike Gautier’s fixed conception of Hugo as a godlike maître, Baudelaire’s understanding of the name Hugo consistently projects multiple figures. There are instances in which Baudelaire names Hugo as a maître, but as a maître of the past. Another Baudelairean “Hugo” emerges as a far-from-idealized figure, more akin to Sainte-Beuve’s negative projections of the meaning of “Hugo”.1 And yet,

Baudelaire’s Hugos are far more rooted in the poetic rather than the personal. Tracing

Hugo’s name through Sainte-Beuve and Gautier to Baudelaire provides not just a simple chronology of naming events, but a new phase of construction for this name in reference.

Baudelaire’s reformulations of the meaning of Hugo’s name emerge as some of the most striking and highly influential additions to this reference. Many French poetic revolutionaries following Baudelaire inherit and reformulate his conception of “Hugo” as a name containing multiple beings, some of which are due reconnaissance and others of which necessitate révolution on the part of the youth against the old maître.

For Baudelaire’s generation, Hugo’s name is already well established and no longer in need of promotion. Baudelaire begins his career seeking the approval and even

1 Benjamin offers some revelatory commentary upon a difference between Baudelaire and Gautier with regard to their generation: “Unlike Gautier, Baudelaire found nothing to like about the age he lived in, and unlike Leconte de Lisle he was unable to deceive himself about it. He did not have the humanitarian idealism of a Lamartine or a Hugo, and it was not given to him, as it was to Verlaine, to take refuge in religious devotion. Because he did not have any convictions, he assumed ever new forms himself. Flâneur, apache, dandy, and ragpicker were so many roles to him. For the modern hero is no hero; he is a portrayer of heroes. Heroic modernity turns out to be a Trauerspiel in which the hero’s part is available. Baudelaire indicated this, half-hidden in a remarque, in his poem ‘Les Sept Vieillards’” (WML 125). 275

protection of Hugo. However, as his reputation grows and as his literary revolution takes shape, certain (more private) critiques of Hugo emerge in Baudelaire’s writing that attack

Hugo’s emphasis upon progress and his art engagé that entails a view of the poet’s mission as sacerdotal.2 The national literary trend away from Romanticism towards innovative literary movements like Modernity, Symbolism, and Parnassianism is visible through Baudelaire’s resistance to Hugo.3 For the generations following 1830, “Hugo” stands for this dominant Romantic school that many resist. Nevertheless, despite his primarily private révolution against Hugo, Baudelaire maintains a public reconnaissance for the maître and dedicates three of his more well-known and groundbreaking poems to this very powerful figure.

A web of interconnections links Hugo and Baudelaire through Gautier.

Baudelaire writes an 1859 notice on Gautier, entitled “Théophile Gautier par Charles

Baudelaire. Notice littéraire précédée d’une lettre de Victor Hugo”. This letter of

Hugo’s introducing Baudelaire’s article on Gautier will reappear in the pages to follow.

Gautier in turn writes a chapter of his 1862 Poètes français on Baudelaire (which

Baudelaire would use as a preface to his Fleurs du Mal) as well as another article entitled

“Charles Baudelaire”, in 1867. Probably the best-known connection between Baudelaire and Gautier emerges via Baudelaire’s dedication of his Fleurs du mal to Gautier: “Au

2 Dotoli offers his understanding of Baudelaire’s selective Hugo: “La Correspondance de Baudelaire nous confirme que chez Hugo il n’aime pas la poésie politique, l’engagement, l’enseignement, la philosophie, l’humanitarisme, l’inspiration, l’amour pour le progrès, la bataille contre la peine de mort. Baudelaire déteste l’attitude de Hugo sacerdoce et toute hérésie moderne. […] Comme le souligne Cellier, en réalité, c’est un débat sur le romantisme, où le disciple reproche au maître ses égarements vers le fanatisme du progrès. […] Le Hugo de Baudelaire est l’artiste visionnaire, le poète de l’Idéal, cet Idéal que Hugo cite dans ses lettres à son destinataire inquiet” (162). 3 Nevertheless, Borges writes in his preface to his book on prefaces that modernism is inconceivable without Hugo: “En dehors du sang et du langage qui sont eux aussi des traditions, c’est la France, plus qu’aucune autre nation, qui nous a marqués. Le modernisme, dont les deux capitales—au dire de Max Henriquez Ureña—furent Mexico et Buenos Aires, a renouvelé les diverses littératures qui ont pour langage commun l’espagnol, mais il est inconcevable sans Hugo et sans Verlaine” (12). 276

poète impeccable/ Au parfait magicien ès lettres françaises/ A mon très-cher et très- vénéré/ Maître et ami/ Théophile Gautier/ Avec les sentiments/ De la plus profonde humilité/ Je dédie/ Ces fleurs maladives/ C.B.” (FM 47).4 Thus, Gautier appears as

Baudelaire’s maître in a similar fashion to how Hugo acts as Gautier’s maître. What, then, does Baudelaire make of his maître’s maître as the years pass?5

In 1924, Valéry designates the tensions in Baudelaire’s relationship with Hugo as the basis of his problem surrounding révolution and reconnaissance, which Valéry also identifies as the basis of Baudelaire himself:

Au moment qu’il arrive à l’âge d’homme, le romantisme est à son apogée; une éblouissante génération est en possession de l’empire des Lettres: Lamartine, Hugo, Musset, Vigny sont les maîtres de l’instant. Plaçons-nous dans la situation d’un jeune homme qui arrive en 1840 à l’âge d’écrire. Il est nourri de ceux que son instinct lui commande impérieusement d’abolir. Son existence littéraire qu’ils ont provoquée et alimentée, que leur gloire a excitée, que leurs ouvrages ont déterminée, toutefois, est nécessairement suspendue à la négation, au renversement, au remplacement de ces hommes qui lui semblent remplir tout l’espace de la renommée et lui interdire, l’un, le monde des formes; l’autre, celui des sentiments; un autre, le pittoresque; un autre, la profondeur. Il s’agit de se distinguer à tout prix d’un ensemble de grands poètes exceptionnellement réunis par quelque hasard, dans la même époque, tous en plein vigueur. Le problème de Baudelaire pouvait donc, –devait donc, –se poser ainsi: “Etre un grand poète, mais n’être ni Lamartine, ni Hugo, ni Musset.” Je ne dis pas que ce propos fût conscient, mais il était nécessairement en Baudelaire, –et même essentiellement Baudelaire. (132-33)6

4 Genette notes that Baudelaire had written a longer dedication to Gautier, which Gautier rejected: “Le XIXe siècle (au moins) a connu une forme intermédiaire, épître dédicatoire atrophiée si l’on veut, mais je dirais plutôt dédicace motivé—où la motivation prend généralement la forme d’une brève caractérisation du dédicataire, et/ou de l’œuvre dédiée. Ainsi Balzac, les Chouans, à Théodore Dablin […], ou Baudelaire, les Fleurs du mal, à Théophile Gautier: ‘Au poète impeccable, au parfait magicien ès langue française’ [sic]; mais on sait que Gautier avait refusé une première mouture plus développée (aujourd’hui perdue), lui opposant qu’‘une dédicace ne doit pas être une profession de foi’—laquelle risquerait en effet de reléguer au second plan ou, pire, de compromettre le dédicataire” (118). Gautier’s refusal of Baudelaire’s longer dedication because of its resemblance to a profession of faith acts as a refusal on Gautier’s part to be Baudelaire’s public godlike figure, perhaps for Baudelaire’s sake. 5 Put into Bloomian terms, Gautier would be a “weak poet” with regard to Hugo because he idealized him, while Baudelaire would be a “strong poet” with regard to Hugo because he did not (5). It would be remiss to not mention two other master figures for Baudelaire, De Maistre and Poe: “De Maistre et Edgar Poe m’ont appris à raisonner” (Journaux 40). 6 In Benjamin’s notes for his unfinished Arcades Project, he begins the section entitled “J: Baudelaire” with this citation from Valéry about the strained combination of reconnaissance and résistance that Baudelaire felt with regard to Hugo: “Thus Baudelaire’s problem…must have…posed itself in these terms: “How to be a great poet, but neither a Lamartine nor a Hugo nor a Musset.” I do not say that these words were 277

According to Valéry, the worlds of sentiment and literary renown are fields that Hugo dominates during Baudelaire’s time. In order to establish his own renown, Baudelaire must simultaneously become a part of the family of “grands poètes” and maintain his own originality, a formula that chimes with Hugo’s statements on originality and genius in his prefaces.7 In this manner, entering into the family of famous names dominated by

Hugo requires some spark of originality, or some form of revolutionary innovation.

Baudelaire’s auto-differentiation from Hugo becomes a cornerstone of his literary revolution and one of the primary means by which he achieves his own renown.

According to Valéry, Baudelaire bases “Baudelaire” on a differentiation between himself and his literary predecessors like Hugo. In this manner, the meaning of “Baudelaire” relies upon a definition of Hugo internal to—or in the possession of—Baudelaire. In his study of Hugo and Baudelaire, Cellier writes of two major aspects of Baudelaire’s Hugo:

“Le Hugo de Baudelaire est Baudelaire” (179), and “Le Hugo de Baudelaire est un Hugo tronqué” (180). By tracing Baudelaire’s changing understandings and projections of

“Hugo”, one better understands his auto-projected meaning of “Baudelaire”.

At this point, this study may seem comparable to The Anxiety of Influence.

However, in this work, Bloom defines poetic influence, “when it involves two strong, consciously formulated, but they must have been latent in Baudelaire’s mind; they even constituted what was the essential Baudelaire. They were his raison d’état…Baudelaire considered Victor Hugo; and it is not impossible to imagine what he thought of him…Everything that might scandalize, and thereby instruct and guide a pitiless young observer in the way of his own future art,…Baudelaire must have recorded in his mind, distinguishing the admiration forced upon him by Hugo’s wonderful gifts from the impurities, the imprudences,…that is to say, the chances for life and fame that so great an artist left behind him to be gleaned.’ Paul Valéry, Introduction (Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, with an introduction by Paul Valéry [Paris <1926>], pp. x, xii, xiv). Problem of the poncif” (228). Then, in The Writer of Modern Life, he incorporates this quotation again and offers some analysis: “There is something odd about referring to a ‘reason of state’ in the case of a poet. There is something remarkable about it: the emancipation from isolated experiences [Erlebnisse]. Baudelaire’s poetic production is assigned a mission. Blank spaces hovered before him, and into these he inserted his poems. His work cannot be categorized merely as historical, like anyone else’s, but it intended to be so and understood itself as such” (177-78). 7 See Hugo’s earlier-studied 1824 preface to Odes et Ballades. 278

authentic poets,” as stemming from “a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation” (30). Through this definition, Bloom implies that a correct reading or interpretation of a poet or poem exists.

And yet, poets present themselves and their works very differently over time. Bloom’s definition relies upon the existence of some singular, correct interpretation of poets and their works. However, Baudelaire’s interpretation of “Hugo” is not a necessary

“misrepresentation” that allows Baudelaire to become “Baudelaire”. Because there is no correct, definitive reading of “Hugo”, Baudelaire’s versions of this poet can be seen as constructions of the meaning of this name within his own name-building project.

II. A Hugo to Love: Baudelaire’s early letters

“L’être le plus prostitué, c’est l’être par excellence, c’est Dieu, puisqu’il est l’ami suprême pour chaque individu, puisqu’il est le réservoir commun, inépuisable, de l’amour.” - Baudelaire, Mon cœur mis à nu

Born in 1821, Baudelaire was 19 years Hugo’s junior and was only nine years old when Hernani burst onto the stage in 1830. The first mention of Hugo in his correspondence comes in a letter to his mother (Mme. Aupick), written in 1838, in which he tells her about his recent summer reading:

Je n’ai lu qu’ouvrages modernes; mais des ouvrages dont on parle partout, qui ont une réputation, que tout le monde lit, enfin ce qu’il y a de meilleur; eh bien, tout cela est faux, exagéré, extravagant, boursouflé. C’est surtout à Eugène Sue que j’en veux, je [n’ai] lu de lui qu’un livre, il m’a ennuyé à mourir. Je suis dégoûté de tout cela: il n’y a que les drames, les poésies de Victor Hugo et un livre de S[ain]te-Beuve (Volupté) qui m’aient amusé. (Corr. 42)

In this first mention of Hugo, Baudelaire singles him out as one of the few contemporary, popular writers worth reading.

The following year, at the age of 19, Baudelaire composes his first letter addressed to Hugo. His correspondence with Hugo will continue for almost two decades,

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until Baudelaire reaches the age of 38 and Hugo the age of 57. In his first letter to Hugo,

Baudelaire compares his love for Hugo to Hugo’s love for Chateaubriand. The entirety of this letter bears citation because of its power to exhibit the “trembling” approach of the anonymous to a celebrated, renowned name. Additionally, this letter exhibits a combination of onomastic recognition and desire: herein, one clearly sees the eagerness of this still unknown writer to make his name known to the renowned writer:

Monsieur, Il y a quelque temps, je vis représenter Marion de Lorme; la beauté de ce drame m’a tellement enchanté et m’a rendu si heureux que je désire vivement connaître l’auteur et le remercier de près. Je suis encore un écolier et je commets peut-être une impertinence sans exemple; mais j’ignore tout à fait les convenances de ce monde et j’ai pensé que cela vous rendrait indulgent à mon égard. – Les éloges et les remerciements d’un étudiant doivent peu vous toucher, après ceux que vous ont prodigués tant d’hommes de goût. Vous vous êtes sans doute montré à tant de gens que vous devez peu vous soucier d’attirer près de vous un nouvel importun – Pourtant, si vous saviez combien notre amour, à nous autres jeunes gens, est sincère et vrai – il me semble, (peut-être est-ce bien de l’orgueil) que je comprends tous vos ouvrages. Je vous aime comme j’aime vos livres; je vous crois bon et généreux, parce que vous avez entrepris plusieurs réhabilitations, parce que loin de céder à l’opinion, vous l’avez souvent réformée, fièrement et dignement. J’imagine qu’auprès de vous, Monsieur, j’apprendrais une foule de choses bonnes et grandes; je vous aime comme on aime un héros, un livre, comme on aime purement et sans intérêt toute belle chose. Je suis peut-être bien hardi de vous envoyer bon gré mal gré ces éloges par la poste; mais je voudrais vous dire vivement, simplement, combien je vous aime et je vous admire, et je tremble d’être ridicule. Cependant, Monsieur, puisque vous avez été jeune, vous devez comprendre cet amour que nous donne un livre pour son auteur, et ce besoin qui nous prend de le remercier de vive voix et de lui baiser humblement les mains; à dix-neuf ans, eussiez-vous hésité à en écrire autant à un écrivain dont votre âme eût été éprise, à M. de Chateaubriand par exemple? Tout cela n’est pas assez bien dit, et je pense mieux que ma lettre; mais j’espère qu’ayant été jeune comme nous, vous devinerez tout le reste, qu’une démarche si nouvelle, si inusitée ne vous choquera pas trop; et que vous daignerez m’honorer d’une réponse: je vous avoue que je l’attends avec une impatience extrême. Que vous ayez ou non cette bonté, recevez le témoignage d’une reconnaissance éternelle. (Corr. 46-47)

In this early letter, Hugo appears to hold the role of Baudelaire’s maître. A near-total conflation of Hugo and his works appears in Baudelaire’s comparison of his love for

Hugo to his love for this master’s works. One striking difference between Gautier’s primary Hugo and Baudelaire’s first Hugo that becomes apparent through this letter is the

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generational gap dividing Gautier and Baudelaire. For Baudelaire, Hugo was once young and may therefore understand Baudelaire’s desire to write to a beloved older author of great renown. However, for Gautier, Hugo was young in 1830.8 Baudelaire places himself among the youth in this letter, speaking in the first person plural as a mere

“nouvel importun” within the throng of “nous autres jeunes gens”. By mentioning the

“rehabilitations” that Hugo has undertaken, Baudelaire shows his perspective on Hugo as being informed by a plurality of Hugos that become visible over time. His youthful profession of love for Hugo as unsullied (“comme on aime purement et sans intérêt toute belle chose”) will contrast with his later opinions of Hugo and his work. One also notes his call for Hugo to remember his own youth in order to become “indulgent” towards

Baudelaire’s arguable impertinence at sending this letter to Hugo. Baudelaire’s concerns surrounding his own lack of renown make him apprehensive about personally addressing such a known figure.

III. A New Name Rising: Les Fleurs du Mal and the first Figaro article

“Du reste, le succès qu’obtient cette toile prouve que, dans tous les genres, le public aujourd’hui est prêt à faire un aimable accueil à tous les noms nouveaux.” - Baudelaire, Salon de 1846

Les Fleurs du Mal first appears in publication in 1857, to controversial reception.

Foucault’s thoughts on the relationship between the law and the authorial name become a reality for Baudelaire when he is convicted of obscenity and offenses against public

8 As Gautier writes in Victor Hugo: “Dans l’armée Romantique, comme dans l’armée d’Italie, tout le monde était jeune. Les soldats pour la plupart n’avaient pas atteint leur majorité, et le plus vieux de la bande était le général en chef, âgé de vingt-huit ans. C’était l’âge de Bonaparte et de Victor Hugo à cette date” (24). 281

morality.9 That same year, in a letter to his mother, Baudelaire exposes a belief that his own renown following this publication would come to equal Hugo’s:

Le livre met les gens en fureur. –Du reste, épouvanté moi-même de l’horreur que j’allais inspirer, j’en ai retranché un tiers aux épreuves. –On me refuse tout, l’esprit d’invention et même la connaissance de la langue française. Je me moque de tous ces imbéciles, et je sais que ce volume, avec ses qualités et ses défauts, fera son chemin dans la mémoire du public lettré, à côté des meilleurs poésies de V. Hugo, de Th. Gautier et même de Byron. (Corr. 132)

For this Baudelaire, the names alongside which he believes his own will one day remain in popular memory are those of Hugo, Gautier, and Byron. Baudelaire’s early projections of his fame aimed for the heights of Hugo’s renown. After Baudelaire’s conviction of offenses against public morality, Hugo writes him a letter of congratulations:

Une des rares décorations que le régime actuel peut accorder, vous venez de la recevoir. Ce qu’il appelle sa justice vous a condamné au nom de ce qu’il appelle sa morale. C’est là une couronne de plus. Je vous serre la main, poète. (Guyaux 250)

For Hugo, a conviction attached to an author’s name places a crown atop this writer’s head. Moreover, Baudelaire has officially entered the group of accusés for whom Hugo has offered to stand.10

9 Hannoosh offers a succinct recapitulation of the trial concerning certain of Baudelaire’s poems: “[…] On 20 August 1857 a crowded courtroom awaited a duel between ‘modern’ literature and that of the reigning ‘bourgeois’. Instead, the whole affair was over and done with in a single day: the judges heard testimony from the defendant and statements from the prosecution and defence; rather than deliberate over several days, as sometimes happened, they then promptly handed down the verdict, throwing out the charge of religious immorality and retaining the charge of obscenity and offence against public morality. Baudelaire was sentenced to a fine of 300 francs, his publisher and printer to fines of 100 francs, and six poems of the thirteen charged were ordered to be removed from the volume” (374). She also compares this trial to Flaubert’s surrounding Madame Bovary, which occurred a mere six months earlier and saw Flaubert acquitted: “The suit against Baudelaire was widely believed to have been governmental ‘revenge’ for Flaubert’s acquittal […]” (375). In Verlaine’s article on Baudelaire, he excuses the “satanism” found in Les Fleurs du Mal via a quotation from Hugo’s preface to Les Orientales: “[…] Or, pour ce qui est de ces caprices-là, je m’en réfère complètement à ce passage des Orientales: ‘L’espace et le temps sont au poëte, que le poète donc aille où il veut en faisant ce qui lui plait: c’est la loi. Qu’il croie en Dieu ou aux dieux, ou à rien, qu’il acquitte le péage du Styx, qu’il soit du Sabbat; qu’il écrive en prose ou en vers, etc., c’est à merveille. Le poète est libre, mettons-nous à son point de vue, et voyons’” (OPC 604). 10 See the earlier-studied 1832 preface to Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné (Roman I 402). In the 1949 appeal trial that rehabilitates the condemned poems from Les Fleurs du Mal, Council Member Falco twice refers to Hugo’s praise for Baudelaire (in this letter and in Hugo’s later commentary that Baudelaire creates a “frisson nouveau” in these poems) as a means of authorizing these poems once seen as immoral. 282

The following year, some signs emerge of a divide between Baudelaire’s public opinions of Hugo and his private statements concerning the name of this literary and poetic giant. In June of 1858, Baudelaire writes a letter to Villemessant, the director of

Le Figaro, to contest an article entitled “Les Hommes de demain” (written by Jean

Rousseau) in which Baudelaire was accused of being ungrateful to Hugo. As

Baudelaire’s letter was printed in Le Figaro along with a reprint of “Les Hommes de demain” on June 13, 1858, it is important to bear in mind that Baudelaire’s audience for this opinion of Hugo was an extremely public one:

Le Figaro du 6 juin contient un article (“Les Hommes de demain”) où je lis: le sieur Baudelaire aurait dit en entendant le nom de l’auteur des Contemplations: – Hugo! qui ça Hugo? est-ce qu’on connaît ça… Hugo? M. Victor Hugo est si haut placé qu’il n’a aucun besoin de l’admiration d’un tel ou d’un tel; mais un propos qui, dans la bouche du premier venu, serait une preuve de stupidité, devient une monstruosité impossible dans la mienne. Plus loin, l’auteur de l’article complète son insinuation: le sieur Baudelaire passe maintenant sa vie à dire du mal du romantisme et à vilipender les Jeunes-France. On devine le mobile de cette mauvaise action; c’est l’orgueil du Jovard d’autrefois qui pousse le Baudelaire d’aujourd’hui à renier ses maîtres; mais il suffisait de mettre son drapeau dans sa poche; quelle nécessité de cracher dessus? Dans un français plus simple, cela veut dire: M. Charles Baudelaire est un ingrat qui diffame les maîtres de sa jeunesse. Il me semble que j’adoucis le passage en voulant le traduire. Je crois, Monsieur, que l’auteur de cet article est un jeune homme qui ne sait pas encore bien distinguer ce qui est permis de ce qui ne l’est pas. Il prétend qu’il épie toutes mes actions; avec une bien grande discrétion, sans doute, car je ne l’ai jamais vu. L’énergie que le Figaro met à me poursuivre pourrait donner à certaines personnes mal intentionnées, ou aussi mal renseignées sur votre caractère que votre rédacteur sur le mien, l’idée que ce journal espère trouver une grande indulgence dans la justice le jour où je prierais le tribunal qui m’a condamné de vouloir bien me protéger. […] Monsieur, je profite de l’occasion pour vous dire à vos lecteurs que toutes les plaisanteries sur ma ressemblance avec les écrivains d’une époque que personne n’a su remplacer m’ont inspiré une bien légitime vanité, et que mon cœur est plein de reconnaissance et d’amour pour les hommes illustres qui m’ont enveloppé de leur amitié et de leurs conseils, –ceux-là à qui, en somme, je dois tout, comme le fait si justement remarquer votre collaborateur. Veuillez agréer, Monsieur, l’assurance de mes sentiments les plus distingués. (Corr. 145-46)

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Denying knowledge of Hugo’s name is here cast as the ultimate act of ingratitude. The author of this article compares Baudelaire to Jovard, a character in Gautier’s Les Jeunes-

France. While Jovard denies his classical maîtres to become a Romantic overnight,11

Baudelaire’s defiance is of the Romantics.12 So, while Jovard rebels against the Racine he once loved in favor of Hugo, Baudelaire is here portrayed as rebelling against the

Hugo he once loved. Baudelaire’s response identifies Hugo as a maître of his youth.

Because there is no other maître explicitly offered to whom Baudelaire passes his allegiance (despite the references to Gautier), one can see Baudelaire as becoming a follower of himself. By asserting that Baudelaire pretends to not know Hugo’s name, which would have been impossible for a 19th-century French writer, this article presents

Baudelaire as presenting himself as master-less.

A desire of Jovard’s concerning his name encapsulates the desire for self- promotion—instead of recognition for one’s maîtres—that the article implies in

Baudelaire: “Il eut maintes fois le désir d’écrire son nom sur toutes les murailles […]” (J-

F 92). This desire to write his own name on the walls harkens back to Gautier’s account of the members of the petit cénacle writing Hugo’s name on the walls after Hernani.

Jovard’s self-importance is here epitomized in his desire to propagate his own name.13

11 Hence the full title of the story: “Daniel Jovard ou La Conversion d’un Classique”. Hugo’s role in this story is that of the leader of the Romantics: “Tant il est vrai qu’il était passé, du voltairianisme le plus constitutionnel, à l’hugolâtrie la plus cannibale et la plus féroce” (91). Additionally, after his “conversion”, Jovard amusingly decides that he needs to shave a few inches of hair off of his forehead and from his temples in order to give himself a more pronounced forehead, which sounds like a reference to Hugo’s famously caricatured large forehead (92). 12 This reversal exposes the classical aspect of Hugo’s once-revolutionary Romanticism at the time of the publication of this article. 13 The satirically amusing tale of Jovard also recounts how he even considers killing himself or killing another person in order to promote his celebrity. However, Jovard also desires to change his name because of the unfortunately facile alteration it affords, as Gautier explains in the very first line of this account: “J’ai connu et je connais encore un digne jeune nomme, nommé de son nom Daniel Jovard, et non autrement, ce dont il est bien fâché car, pour peu qu’on prononce à la gasconne b pour v, ces deux infortunées syllabes produisent une épithète assez peu flatteuse” (J-F 71). One may also find some similarities between Gautier 284

The final paragraph of this satirical work of Gautier’s explains that, through this story of

Jovard, Gautier affords his readers with the means by which they themselves may become “illustre”, calling Jovard’s story “la recette pour avoir du génie, ou du moins pour s’en passer fort commodément” (J-F 95). So, even if the author of the Figaro article is here implying that Baudelaire’s master is Gautier, he also makes Baudelaire represent a failure or even a fraud in the context of this master’s work. Baudelaire adroitly denies this lack of reconnaissance by claiming that he is flattered just to find himself portrayed as having some ressemblance with such “hommes illustres” to whom he publicly acknowledges that he owes everything in this response. Here, Baudelaire must not only know Hugo’s name. He must also present himself as being formed in

Hugo’s shadow. By placing his own name under the aegis of Hugo’s, Baudelaire attempts to rectify the public perception of his ingratitude towards the maître whose name he reportedly denied.

IV. Stacking Masters: The Gautier Article

“Être un homme utile m'a toujours paru quelque chose de bien hideux.” - Baudelaire, Mon cœur mis à nu

In 1859, Baudelaire publishes his article on Gautier wherein Hugo makes numerous appearances as Gautier’s leader. The article begins with the following rather telling statement: “Je ne connais pas de sentiment plus embarrassant que l’admiration.

Par la difficulté de s’exprimer convenablement, elle ressemble à l’amour” (EL 214). He compares Gautier’s fame with that of Hugo, and he chides the public for not being familiar with “les parties mystérieuses, ombreuses, les plus charmantes de Victor Hugo”

and Jovard (like those earlier mentioned between Gautier and Rodolphe) because Gautier also clads Jovard in a “gilet rouge” and a “habit écarlate”, harkening back to his own garb at the opening night of Hernani (J- F 94). 285

(EL 219). Baudelaire then turns to a period in French literary history in which Hugo’s role was fundamental:

Tout écrivain français, ardent pour la gloire de son pays, ne peut pas, sans fierté et sans regrets, reporter ses regards vers cette époque de crise féconde où la littérature romantique s’épanouissait avec tant de vigueur. Chateaubriand, toujours plein de force, mais comme couché à l’horizon, semblait un Athos qui contemple nonchalamment le mouvement de la plaine; Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de Vigny, avaient rajeuni, plus encore, avaient ressuscité la poésie française, morte depuis Corneille. (EL 224)

Baudelaire’s choice of the phrase “crise féconde” to describe the Romantic period will resound with a similar phrase in Mallarmé’s “Crise de vers”. We here find a

Baudelairean projection of Hugo (one that is again intended for a public audience) that is laudatory but that still situates his period of greatest influence as in the past. Baudelaire goes on to distinguish Hugo from the other writers who contributed to this “nouvelle sève littéraire” because of his incorporation and exploration of the “rire” and of the “sentiment du grotesque” (EL 225).

In his article on Gautier, Baudelaire invokes the name and fame of Hugo to insist that Gautier appear alongside Hugo, at least in his lineage, if not as superior to him:

On voit que, dans les termes où j’ai posé la question, si nous limitons le sens du mot écrivain aux travaux qui ressortent de l’imagination, Théophile Gautier est l’écrivain par excellence; parce qu’il est l’esclave de son devoir, parce que le goût du Beau est pour lui un fatum, parce qu’il a fait de son devoir une idée fixe. Avec son lumineux bon sens (je parle du bon sens du génie, et non pas du bon sens des petites gens), il a retrouvé tout de suite la grande voie. Chaque écrivain est plus ou moins marqué par sa faculté principale. Chateaubriand a chanté la gloire douloureuse de la mélancolie et de l’ennui. Victor Hugo, grand, terrible, immense comme une création mythique, cyclopéen, pour ainsi dire, représente les forces de la nature et leur lutte harmonieuse. Balzac, grand, terrible, complexe aussi, figure le monstre d’une civilisation, et toutes ses luttes, ses ambitions et ses fureurs. Gautier, c’est l’amour exclusif du Beau, avec toutes ses subdivisions, exprimé dans le langage le mieux approprié. (EL 233-34)

The first lines of this quotation distinguish Gautier as “l’écrivain par excellence” because of his commitment to beauty. Without expressly comparing Gautier to Hugo in this respect, Baudelaire’s praise for Gautier’s commitment to Beauty alone foreshadows his

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longstanding bone to pick with Hugo on the incorporation of moral utility into art.14

Nevertheless, Baudelaire does not expressly critique Hugo in this essay. Baudelaire’s description of Hugo as a cyclopean “création mythique” recalls Sainte-Beuve’s usage of this same image to describe Hugo and will also reappear, to a certain degree, in

Mallarmé’s treatment of Hugo.15 Such an image stresses the legendary nature and sheer size of Hugo’s works, reputation, and name.16 Baudelaire attempts to ensure a similar literary monumentality for Gautier by approximating his name with that of Hugo:

“Aimons donc nos poètes secrètement et en cachette. À l’étranger, nous aurons le droit de nous en vanter. Nos voisins disent: Shakespeare et Goethe! nous pouvons leur répondre: Victor Hugo et Théophile Gautier!” (EL 246). This line responds to Hugo’s similar line in an 1829 preface to Les Orientales: “Les autres peuples disent: Homère,

Dante, Shakespeare. Nous disons: Boileau” (Poésie I 413). Baudelaire answers Hugo’s call for a representative of French genius with the name many assumed Hugo was proposing, his own, and Gautier’s name. Baudelaire thereby propels his master’s name

14 Baudelaire also extolls Gautier for focusing on beauty rather than on the moral utility of art: “Le Bien est la base et le but des recherches morales. Le Beau est l’unique ambition, le but exclusive du Goût” (EL 227). 15 A similar word, “créateur”, appears in another of Baudelaire’s works in which he compares Hugo to Delacroix: “M. Victor Hugo, dont je ne veux certainement pas diminuer la noblesse et la majesté, est un ouvrier beaucoup plus adroit qu’inventif, un travailleur bien plus correct que créateur. Delacroix est quelquefois maladroit, mais essentiellement créateur. M. Victor Hugo laisse voir dans tous ses tableaux, lyriques et dramatiques, un système d’alignement et de contrastes uniformes. L’excentricité elle-même prend chez lui des formes symétriques. Il possède à fond et emploie froidement tous les tons de la rime, toutes les ressources de l’antithèse, toutes les tricheries de l’apposition. C’est un compositeur de décadence ou de transition, qui se sert de ses outils avec une dextérité véritablement admirable et curieuse. M. Hugo était naturellement académicien avant que de naître, et si nous étions encore au temps des merveilles fabuleuses, je croirais volontiers que les lions verts de l’Institut, quand il passait devant le sanctuaire courroucé, lui ont souvent murmuré d’une voix prophétique: ‘Tu seras de l’Académie!’” (Critique d’art 91). Baudelaire will also refer to Delacroix and Hugo as the great masters: “C’est ici le lieu de rappeler que les grands maîtres, poètes ou peintres, Hugo ou Delacroix, sont toujours en avance de plusieurs années sur leurs timides admirateurs” (Critique d’art 411). 16 Garval studies the ambivalence in this evaluation of Baudelaire’s: “While ‘grand’ and ‘immense’ seem unambiguously laudatory, at least from Baudelaire’s point of view, ‘terrible’ already introduces a darker, more troubling note” (161). 287

by using Hugo’s as a springboard via juxtaposition.17 Baudelaire also mentions the gaps in literary history in this article:

Et remarquez que presque tous les écrivains importants, dans chaque siècle, ceux que nous appellerons des chefs d’emploi ou des capitaines, ont au-dessous d’eux des analogues, sinon des semblables, propres à les remplacer. Ainsi, quand une civilisation meurt, il suffit qu’un poème d’un genre particulier soit retrouvé pour donner l’idée des analogues disparus et permettre à l’esprit critique de rétablir sans lacune la chaîne de génération. (EL 234)

Baudelaire here employs a word that will become central to Kripke’s thoughts on naming. Perhaps foreseeing the future overshadowing of Gautier by Hugo, Baudelaire here espouses the need to flesh out the chain of poetic generation.

The second publication of Baudelaire’s article on Gautier appears preceded by a letter from Hugo to Baudelaire, which letter Baudelaire requested as a means of authorizing both his voice and that of Gautier. In this manner, Hugo’s letter would act as a seal of approval for the lesser-known writers. The 1859 letter from Baudelaire to Hugo

(the longest letter he writes to Hugo) in which he asks Hugo for this introductory note shows a Baudelaire claiming to need Hugo’s protection and renown, as the first line makes clear: “Monsieur, j’ai le plus grand besoin de vous, et j’invoque votre bonté”

(Corr. 173). Baudelaire goes on to address certain divergences between his and Hugo’s views of poetry, which include Baudelaire’s resistance to the morality that Hugo ties to poetry and explains in his prefaces: “Je sais vos ouvrages par cœur, et vos préfaces me montrent que j’ai dépassé la théorie généralement exposée par vous sur l’alliance de la morale avec la poésie” (Corr. 174). The ambiguity in the verb “dépasser” here leaves some room for debate: Baudelaire’s assertion that he has “dépassé” Hugo’s combination

17 Halary writes in 1908 that this call was answered in the way many presumed Hugo intended: “C’est aussi que nous tous, ses héritiers, avons réalisé le vœu implicitement formé dans la preface des Orientales: ‘Les autres peuples disent Homère, Dante, Shakespeare. Nous disons Boileau.’ Aujourd’hui, nous disons: Hugo. Et combine son autorité dépasse celle du Législateur du Parnasse, puisqu’elle se fonde non sur un Art poétique, mais sur la Poésie même!” (593). 288

of morality and poetry could mean either that he overstepped his bounds (showing a reconnaissance for Hugo) or that he went beyond Hugo (showing a successful révolution for Baudelaire against Hugo). In either case, Baudelaire cites Hugo’s prefaces as the proof of this dépassement. This is a subtle move. Baudelaire here defers to Hugo’s preface-writing voice in order to project an ambiguous image of himself to his master’s master. In the lines that follow, he seems to assume the guilt of the former sense of

“dépasser” and admit fault while simultaneously justifying his actions:

Mais en un temps où le monde s’éloigne de l’art avec une telle horreur, où les hommes se laissent abrutir par l’idée exclusive d’utilité, je crois qu’il n’y a pas grand mal à s’exagérer un peu dans le sens contraire. J’ai peut-être réclamé trop. C’était pour obtenir assez. (Corr. 174)

This difference in opinion between art as needed for progress and art as needing to be stripped of such moralizing agendas will continue to mark the (at least private) views of

Baudelaire concerning Hugo. Baudelaire’s literary revolution against an art engagé is thus rooted in a particular understanding of Hugo.

As this letter continues, Baudelaire claims that, in this essay on Gautier, he aims to remind his readers of a former significance of Hugo’s name as king: “J’ai voulu surtout ramener la pensée du lecteur vers cette merveilleuse époque littéraire dont vous fûtes le véritable roi et qui vit dans mon esprit comme un délicieux souvenir d’enfance”

(Corr. 174). By naming Hugo as a king of the past, Baudelaire injects literary royalty into Hugo’s name via a title. Immediately after this assurance of his recognition of Hugo as the “roi” of this period, Baudelaire goes on to tell Hugo, confidentially, that he is aware of Gautier’s shortcomings:

Relativement à l’écrivain qui fait le sujet de cet article, et dont le nom a servi de prétexte à mes considérations critiques, je puis vous avouer confidentiellement que je connais les lacunes de son étonnant esprit. Bien des fois, pensant à lui, j’ai été affligé de voir que Dieu ne voulait pas être absolument généreux. Je n’ai pas menti, j’ai esquivé, j’ai

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dissimulé. Si j’étais appelé à témoigner en justice, et si mon témoignage, absolument véridique, pouvait nuire à un être favorisé par la Nature et aimé par mon Cœur, je vous jure que je mentirais avec fierté; – parce que les lois sont au-dessous du sentiment, parce que l’amitié est, de sa nature, infaillible et ingouvernable. Mais vis-à-vis de vous, il me semble absolument inutile de mentir. (Corr. 174-75)

Baudelaire writes this simultaneously critical and loving commentary on Gautier while asking Hugo for an introductory letter to the article in which he refers to Gautier as

“l’écrivain par excellence”. By admitting to Gautier’s shortcomings, Baudelaire establishes an intimacy between himself and Hugo that, according to Baudelaire, allows for no falsehoods while assuring Hugo that his royal name of the “roi” of that period ranks higher than Gautier’s. Moreover, Baudelaire presents himself as more respectful of

Hugo’s law than that of a courtroom.

Towards the end of this letter to Hugo, Baudelaire admits that he needs Hugo’s voice (verified by his signature in a published letter) to legitimize both his and Gautier’s voice:

J’ai besoin de vous. J’ai besoin d’une voix plus haute que la mienne et que celle de Théophile Gautier, - de votre voix dictatoriale. Je veux être protégé. J’imprimerai humblement ce que vous daignerez m’écrire. (Corr. 175)

This call for protection is striking. Genette recalls the opening lines of Montesquieu’s

Lettres persanes when studying the power of a dedication or dedicatory letter to protect:

“Je ne fais point ici d’Épître dédicatoire, et je ne demande point de protection pour ce livre” (114). The shared usage of the word “protection” in Baudelaire’s letter to Hugo and in Montesquieu’s lines reveals the commonplace view of such paratextual elements as offering protection to writers and their works. Protection from what, one may ask. To answer this, a reminder of Foucault’s view of the name of the author as originally emerging for legal reasons becomes useful: writers occasionally need protection from the law, as Baudelaire’s personal literary record shows. Moreover, when requesting a

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dedicatory letter, writers may also seek protection from critics or from commercial failure. Baudelaire goes on to assure Hugo that he will also print Hugo’s criticisms of

Baudelaire if that is what he wishes to write for this letter, in a move akin to prostration before this “roi” of a “merveilleuse époque littéraire”, whose deific judgment Baudelaire promises to accept.

Referring to the poems that he adds to the 1861 edition of Les Fleurs du Mal and dedicates to Hugo, Baudelaire continues in this same letter to confide that “le second morceau” (which at this point would have been “Les Petites Vieilles”) was written “en vue de vous imiter (riez de ma fatuité, j’en ris moi-même) après avoir relu quelques pièces de vos recueils, où une charité magnifique se mêle à une familiarité si touchante”

(Corr. 175). Rarely does one find such a direct acknowledgement of poetic imitation.

By stating that he aimed to imitate Hugo, Baudelaire presents himself as solidly placed under Hugo’s influence in this letter to the maître. The parenthetical laughter that follows this admission insinuates superiority on the part of the people laughing, as

Baudelaire explicates in his 1855 work “De l’essence du rire”, which predates this letter by four years: “Le rire est satanique, il est donc profondément humain. Il est dans l’homme la conséquence de l’idée de sa propre supériorité […]” (Critique d’art 192).

Because Baudelaire invites Hugo to join him in laughter at what he presents as his epigonic writing, he not only positions Hugo as superior to the Baudelaire writing emulative poetry, but he also places this letter-writing Baudelaire in a superior position to the poet Baudelaire imitating Hugo. Nevertheless, after this admission, Baudelaire places himself as definitively inferior to Hugo—as least when writing to the maître:

J’ai vu quelquefois dans les galeries de peintures de misérables rapins qui copiaient les ouvrages des maîtres. Bien ou mal faites, ils mettaient quelquefois dans ces imitations, à

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leur insu, quelque chose de leur propre nature, grande ou triviale. Ce sera là peut-être (peut-être!) l’excuse de mon audace. (Corr. 175)

Baudelaire thereby presents himself as an imitator of Hugo’s who may only be excused if some of Baudelaire’s originality accidentally shines through his imitative poetry.

Genette’s remarks on the simultaneous “pour” and “par” inherent to dedications reflect this statement of Baudelaire’s:

“Pour Untel” comporte toujours une part de “Par Untel”. Le dédicataire est toujours de quelque manière responsable de l’œuvre qui lui est dédiée, et à laquelle il apporte, volens nolens, un peu de son soutien, et donc de sa participation. Ce peu n’est pas rien: faut-il rappeler encore que le garant, en latin, se disait auctor? (127)18

This Baudelaire in need of a protective favor has only complimentary words of reconnaissance sent from a “rapin” to a “maître”. And yet, if the Baudelaire writing this letter laughs at the Baudelaire imitating Hugo, is the epistolary Baudelaire also laughing at the poet Hugo who dominates the poet Baudelaire’s imitative work?

Finally, when remarking upon the dedication of these poems of his to Hugo,

Baudelaire writes to Hugo about the significance of the dedicatee’s name:

Quand Les Fleurs du Mal reparaîtront, gonflées de trois fois plus de matière que n’en a supprimé la Justice, j’aurai le plaisir d’inscrire en tête de ces morceaux le nom du poète dont les œuvres m’ont tant appris et ont donné tant de jouissances à ma jeunesse. (Corr. 175)19

According to Baudelaire, Hugo’s name, appearing in dedication for Baudelaire’s poems, shows homage to the writer whose works taught and filled with joy the youthful

18 The usual ordering of this Latin phrase is nolens volens, meaning “whether a person wants or likes something or not” (Oxford 1). One may here recall Althusser’s alignment of “pour” and “par” in his study of God’s definition of himself: “Dieu se définit donc lui-même comme le Sujet par excellence, celui qui est par soi et pour soi (‘Je suis Celui qui suis’) […]” (118). 19 Another reference to Hugo’s name emerges in this letter, which comes shortly after Napoleon III’s 1859 offer to Hugo for amnesty in France, which offer Hugo declines to Baudelaire’s apparent approval: “Il y a quelque temps, l’amnistie mit votre nom sur toutes les lèvres. Me pardonnerez-vous d’avoir été inquiet pendant un quart de seconde? J’entendais dire autour de moi: Enfin, Victor Hugo va revenir! –Je trouvais que ces paroles faisaient honneur au cœur de ces braves gens, mais non pas à leur jugement. Votre note est venue qui nous a soulagés. Je savais bien que les poètes valaient les Napoléon, et que Victor Hugo ne pouvait pas être moins grand que Chateaubriand” (176). Baudelaire claims that by remaining in exile, Hugo maintains his political position as equal of Chateaubriand’s. 292

Baudelaire, during his “jeunesse”.20 Genette’s comments upon the tendency of writers to cease dedicating works as they mature become pertinent:

Si l’on peut construire une courbe à partir de deux points, il semble que l’épître dédicatoire soit alors déjà considérée comme un expédient quelque peu dégradant, qu’un auteur parvenu au faîte de sa gloire, ou assuré d’autres ressources, s’empresse d’oublier. (112-13)

Seen in this light, Baudelaire’s insistence upon his youthful appreciation for Hugo’s works acts as an explanation for this act of dedication. I will study these poems in detail in the following section.

After asking for Hugo’s name to buttress his own, Baudelaire ends this letter with an entreaty for his own name to be spoken kindly in Hugo’s domain: “Adieu,

Monsieur, si quelquefois mon nom était prononcé d’une manière bienveillante dans votre heureuse famille, j’en ressentirais un grand bonheur” (Corr. 176). In this letter requesting the aid of Hugo’s name to publicly bolster the names of Baudelaire and

Gautier, Baudelaire ends with the hope that Hugo’s private view of Baudelaire’s name will be benevolent. The writer presenting his name as inferior exhibits a wish for the superior name to view and pronounce the inferior one with kindness.

Hugo agrees to write this letter to introduce Baudelaire’s article on Gautier and to thereby authorize both writers through the power of his name. The private letter written with the prior knowledge that it would become public is as follows:

Votre article sur Théophile Gautier, Monsieur, est une de ces pages qui provoquent puissamment la pensée. Rare mérite, faire penser; don des seuls élus. Vous ne vous trompez pas en prévoyant quelque dissidence entre vous et moi. Je comprends toute votre philosophie (car, comme tout poète, vous contenez un philosophe); je fais plus que la comprendre, je l’admets; mais je garde la mienne. Je n’ai jamais dit l’Art pour l’Art; j’ai toujours dit l’Art pour le Progrès. Au fond, c’est la même chose, et votre esprit est trop pénétrant pour ne pas le sentir. En avant! c’est le mot du Progrès; c’est aussi le cri de l’Art. Tout le verbe de la Poésie est là. Ite.

20 By presenting his homage to Hugo as a reflection of a youthful admiration, a 38-year-old Baudelaire may here be posturing. 293

Que faites-vous quand vous écrivez ces vers saisissants Les Sept Vieillards et Les Petites Vieilles, que vous me dédiez, et dont je vous remercie? Que faites-vous? Vous marchez. Vous allez en avant. Vous dotez le ciel de l’art d’on ne sait quel rayon macabre. Vous créez un frisson nouveau. L’Art n’est pas perfectible, je l’ai dit, je crois, un des premiers, donc je le sais; personne ne dépassera Eschyle, personne ne dépassera Phidias; mais on peut les égaler; et pour les égaler, il faut déplacer l’horizon de l’Art, monter plus haut, aller plus loin, marcher. Le poète ne peut aller seul, il faut que l’homme aussi se déplace. Les pas de l’Humanité sont donc les pas même de l’Art. — Donc, gloire au Progrès. C’est pour le Progrès que je souffre en ce moment et que je suis prêt à mourir. Théophile Gautier est un grand poète, et vous le louez comme son jeune frère, et vous l’êtes. Vous êtes, Monsieur, un noble esprit et un généreux cœur. Vous écrivez des choses profondes et souvent sereines. Vous aimez le Beau. Donnez-moi la main. Victor Hugo. Et quant aux persécutions, ce sont des grandeurs. — Courage! (Théophile Gautier i-iii)

Hugo’s famous description of Baudelaire’s poetry as creating a “frisson nouveau” appears in this letter. One also finds Hugo’s recognition of dissidence between him and

Baudelaire; however, Hugo recasts these contrasting aims (l’Art pour l’Art and l’Art pour le Progrès) in a light that brings them together as both actually working for progress.

One may imagine Baudelaire’s dislike for this incorporation of his artistic concentration on the beau into Hugo’s agglomeration of struggles for progrès. Additionally, Hugo twice repeats Baudelaire’s ambiguous verb of dépasser from the letter in which

Baudelaire requested this letter from Hugo. In Hugo’s letter, such dépassements of great artists like Aeschylus and Phidias are impossible; however, if writers are committed to progress, they may égaler these past geniuses.

Despite these correctives, Hugo’s letter still appears as the introduction to

Baudelaire’s article on Gautier. Hugo’s comments upon the relationship he finds between Gautier and Baudelaire here accentuate their fraternal bond, which draws even closer these two writers who claim (one continuously, one intermittently) to owe so much

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to Hugo.21 Then, at the letter’s close, Hugo asks Baudelaire for his hand in poetic alliance: “Vous aimez le Beau. Donnez-moi la main” (iii). This summons echoes

Hugo’s 1870 letter to Gautier in which he acknowledges their lasting communion: “[…]

Votre main n’a pas quitté ma main” (Victor Hugo 287). Hugo’s reference to Baudelaire as fraternally bound to Gautier and his call for Baudelaire to give him his hand show signs of an invitation to Baudelaire to occupy a role similar to Gautier’s with regard to

Hugo. While Baudelaire appreciates this letter—at least when responding to Hugo—he does not become the pillar of enduring support for Hugo that Gautier represents.

Baudelaire’s view and projection of the meaning of “Hugo” change according to his audience. For example, a mere two months after a letter to Hugo in which Baudelaire asks him to judge his poetry with his “yeux paternels”,22 Baudelaire writes to Aramand

Fraisse that the truth about Hugo will never be published because of Hugo’s reputation:

Tel qu’il est, votre article est le meilleur et le plus sage que j’aie lu. – Généralement les amis d’Hugo sont aussi bêtes que ses ennemis; il en résulte que la vérité ne sera pas dite. Ici, à part Villemain, mon ami D’Aurevilly, quelquefois, et M.E. Renan, personne n’a la sagesse, la clairvoyance critique. Je n’ai entendu exprimer qu’une seule fois une opinion nette et juste sur La Légende des siècles; c’était, à un souper, par Th. Gautier; jamais les questions les plus obscures de l’esthétique n’ont été si bien débrouillées; jamais ce que l’on appelle qualités et défauts n’a été si bien défini. Mais par le malheur des temps et des circonstances, ces choses ne seront jamais imprimées. (Corr. 195)

Baudelaire thus begins a long tradition of privately associating the adjective “bête” with

Hugo and his admirers. Baudelaire also here intimates that, as the truth about Hugo’s qualities and shortcomings will never be published, his own writing about Hugo will also necessarily be false. The claim that only Gautier has ever skillfully clarified the

21 The familial relationship that Baudelaire establishes between himself and Gautier in his article is actually that of a son to a father: “Mais qu’on sache que quelques-uns d’entre nous ont pris leurs aises avec Gautier, c’est parce qu’en le permettant il semblait le désirer. Il se complaît innocemment dans une affectueuse et familière paternité” (EL 223). 22 Baudelaire writes this in a letter from December of 1859: “Voici des vers faits pour vous et en pensant à vous. Il ne faut pas les juger avec vox yeux trop sévères, mais avec vos yeux paternels” (Corr. 178). 295

successes and failures of La Légende des siècles would, if made public, jeopardize

Gautier’s reputation as an avid and loyal supporter of Hugo’s. Two months later, in a letter to Madame Sabatier, Baudelaire extends the adjective “bête” to Hugo for the first time, if in an oblique manner that mostly calls attention to Hugo’s vanity: “Savez-vous bien, je parle sincèrement, [qu’Ernest Feydeau] m’embarrasse plus que V. Hugo lui- même, et que je serais moins troublé pour dire à Hugo: Vous êtes bête, que pour dire à

Feydeau: Vous n’êtes pas toujours sublime?” (Corr. 203-04). This Hugo of Baudelaire’s, the Hugo for the private audience of Madame Sabatier, exemplifies an artist to whom

Baudelaire claims he would not tell his true opinion of him. Hugo here becomes a name that Baudelaire would not disparage…when speaking with the holder of this name, that is.

V. Frissons fraternels: Baudelaire’s Hugos in Les Fleurs du Mal

A. Introduction

“Le plaisir d’être dans les foules est une expression mystérieuse de la jouissance de la multiplication du nombre. Tout est nombre. Le nombre est dans tout. Le nombre est dans l’individu. L’ivresse est un nombre. ” - Baudelaire, Fusées

A paradox arises when studying Hugo’s name in Baudelaire’s hands. While he writes disparagingly of this monumental figure in his correspondence, Baudelaire also dedicates three of his most innovative and highly regarded poems in the 1861 edition of

Les Fleurs du Mal to this maître. If one were to only read Baudelaire’s poetry, the name of Hugo appears as an honored and respected recipient of these dedications. Before returning to Baudelaire’s letters and articles, an analysis of these three poems illuminates the inconsistencies that characterize both Baudelaire’s formulation of Hugo’s name and his self-presentation through this signifier.

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These three widely-studied poems, “Le Cygne”, “Les Sept Vieillards”, and “Les

Petites Vieilles” appear in the Tableaux parisiens, under the aegis of (a then-exiled)

Hugo’s name. In these three poems dedicated to Hugo, there is a shared thematic of tragic and phantasmagoric familial relationships surrounding exiled, lost, separated, reduplicated, and forgotten members of families and of society at large. However, unlike such figures in Hugo’s works, these outcast personages in Baudelaire’s poems are more likely to inspire fear or disgust rather than sympathy.23 In one of his unfinished preface projects for Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire includes Hugo in a list of writers to address while discussing plagiarism. Making reference to this draft, Pichois describes the complexity of reading these poems with Hugo in mind in the Pléiade edition of

Baudelaire’s Œuvres Complètes:

On ne parlera pas ici de source. Et non plus de ‘plagiat’, pour employer le mot de Baudelaire […] à moins de voir dans ce mot de l’ironie. Mais de pastiche d’admiration […]. Au-delà de la structure verbale, Baudelaire retrouve ‘la voix profonde de la charité’ […]. (1016)24

Rather than identifying influence or imitation, Pichois encourages finding a “pastiche d’admiration” in these poems dedicated to Hugo. While this phrase offers constructive nuance to what some may dismiss as influence studies, more than just pastiche takes place in these poems in which Baudelaire links his name to Hugo’s. For example, in his study tracking modifications to meter in the alexandrin, Roubaud finds that Baudelaire’s poetic revolution takes root in Hugo’s own poetic revolution:

La métrique baudelairienne dans Les Fleurs du mal s’inscrit comme la pointe du triangle dont la base est Nerval-Hugo. Elle est nervalienne par le sonnet, hugolienne par le traitement intérieur au vers, et d’ailleurs déjà sur-hugolienne. (108)

23 This is not to say that all of Hugo’s misérables inspire sympathy (the Thénardiers, for example, do not generally emerge as sympathetic characters in Les Misérables). 24 As cited in Susini (600). 297

Both in the forme and the fond, Baudelaire takes up and modifies Hugolian poetic tendencies. To deploy terms indicating literary movements, the renovation of a Hugolian

Romanticism into a Baudelairean Modernity is visible in Baudelaire’s poems dedicated to

Hugo. Placing Hugo’s name at the head of these poems spotlights Baudelaire’s understanding, reformulation, and unique projection of the significance of this name as within the context of Baudelaire’s own literary revolution. In this manner, Baudelaire mediates the meaning of Hugo’s name for his readers. While the reference to Hugo in these poems represents a profound mark of respect in the collection of poetry in which

Baudelaire asserts himself as a great poet, these dedications also present these “Hugo”s as

Baudelaire’s to subvert if he so chooses.

The dedications of these poems to Hugo undergo additional levels of mediation within Les Fleurs du Mal, as they are dedications buried within two other dedicatory (or nearly-dedicatory) presences: the entire collection is dedicated to Gautier, and the first poem “Au lecteur” powerfully brings the poet’s awareness of the poetry’s readers to the fore.25 Susini comments upon these considerations:

Dans un premier temps, cette étude voudrait donc démontrer que nous avons affaire ici à des dédicaces de nature polémique, qui sont partie intégrante des trois poèmes et qui, s’adressant au lecteur tout autant qu’à Hugo, ont fonction, même tardive, de sous-titre. Voici donc un cygne, sept vieillards et des petites vieilles, personnages ‘naturellement’ hugoliens, renvoyés au Maître après correction et soumis à un lecteur-arbitre. Victor Hugo est beaucoup plus que le dédicataire de ces trois pièces. Il y figure, et à double titre. Primo, il représente un traitement de la détresse humaine qui répugne au dandy. Secundo, il incarne cette insoutenable fécondité dont rêvent Les fleurs du mal et les Journaux intimes sans vouloir toutefois l’égaler à n’importe quel prix. (601)

25 Genette cites this poem as an example of a “proème” similar to those of Hugo: “Rien enfin n’interdit d’investir d’une fonction préfacielle le poème luminaire d’un recueil, comme c’est souvent le cas chez Hugo: ‘Prélude” (après la préface en prose) des Chants du Crépuscule, ‘Fonction du poète’ et tête des Rayons et les Ombres, ‘Nox’ et ‘Lux’ en tête et en fin de Châtiments, ‘Vision d’où est sorti ce livre’ en tête de la Légende des siècles, entre autres. C’est encore le statut de l’‘Au lecteur’ des Fleurs du mal” (159). 298

Susini here identifies two “Hugo”s as being at play in Baudelaire’s dedications. The dual nature of dedications as public and private comes into question. Moreover, the means by which Baudelaire publicly presents juxtapositions of his name with Hugo’s in his poetry reflects a tendency of Baudelaire’s to reformulate Hugolian thematics in a Baudelairean fashion. By transforming the effect of the misérables that appear in these poems,

Baudelaire consequently modifies the meaning of Hugo’s name.

The presence of Hugo in Baudelaire’s work famously receives the critical attention of Benjamin, who sees Hugo and Baudelaire as representatives of a final chapter of lyric poetry.26 According to Mehlman, the relationship between Baudelaire and Hugo serves as the basis of Benjamin’s Arcades Project: “[…] Walter Benjamin’s famous and famously unpublished Arcades Project was built around the Baudelaire/ Hugo opposition

[…]” (95).27 This connection and opposition between Hugo and Baudelaire revolves around Baudelaire’s multiple conceptions of “Hugo” that stem from Hugo’s plural projections of himself. Benjamin sees Baudelaire as the last lyric poet, but he tempers this well-known claim by adding Hugo as another poet who belongs to this group:

First of all, the lyric poet has ceased to represent the poet per se. He is no longer a “minstrel,” as Lamartine still was; he has become the representative of a genre. Verlaine is a concrete example of this specialization; Rimbaud must already be regarded as an esoteric figure, a poet who, ex officio, kept a distance between his public and his work. Second, there has been no success on a mass scale in lyric poetry since Baudelaire. (The lyric poetry of Victor Hugo was still capable of evoking powerful reverberations when it first appeared). (WML 170-71)

This addition of Hugo as something of an afterthought could actually make Hugo the last

Benjaminian lyric poet, as Hugo outlives Baudelaire by 18 years. Either way, the lyric poetry of Baudelaire is closely linked to that of Hugo in Benjamin’s account.

26 I owe thanks to Brandon Pelcher for pointing out this understanding of Baudelaire and Hugo within Benjamin’s work. 27 Vinken concurs: “The comparison with Hugo focuses the critical moment in Benjamin’s readings of Baudelaire” (420-21). 299

Benjamin finds the common motif of “the crowd” in the poetry of Baudelaire and of Hugo.28 He turns to Hugo after describing the crowd as the subject most “worthy of attention from nineteenth-century writers”:

The most successful author of the century met this demand out of inner necessity. To him, ‘the crowd’ meant—almost in the ancient sense—the crowd of clients, the public. Victor Hugo was the first to address the crowd in his titles: Les Misérables, Les Travailleurs de la mer. (WML 181)

Two of Baudelaire’s poems dedicated to Hugo (“Les Sept Vieillards” and “Les Petites

Vieilles”) deploy this titular pattern of groupings before the publications of Les

Misérables and Les Travailleurs de la mer. However, Benjamin states it is futile to search for Hugo’s crowds in Baudelaire’s poems29 and that Baudelaire’s crowds rival

Hugo’s.30 Benjamin finds the commonality of crowds specifically within Baudelaire’s poems dedicated to Hugo as well and gives Hugo credit for introduction the crowd as a literary “object of contemplation” (WML 90).31

28 Much scholarship exists on the theme of crowds in the works of Baudelaire and Hugo. See for example Schnapp and Tiews. While Hugo’s crowds hold the potential to organize themselves into a goal-oriented peuple capable of working towards an ideal (see Jonsson 60), Baudelaire’s crowds do not exhibit this mission towards progress. It is also worth noting that la foule is often for Hugo a dangerous, inchoate body that, should it be properly directed by a worthy common aim, can ascend to the status of le peuple. 29 Benjamin writes, “It is futile to search in Les Fleurs du mal or in Spleen de Paris for any counterpart to the portrayals of the city that Victor Hugo composed with such mastery. Baudelaire describes neither the Parisians nor their city. Avoiding such descriptions enables him to invoke the former in the figure of the latter” (WML 183). 30 Benjamin here comments on Baudelaire’s appreciation for and competitiveness with Hugo’s crowds: “If any proof were needed of the force with which the experience of the crowd moved Baudelaire, it would be the fact that he undertook to vie with Hugo in this experience. That Hugo’s strength lay here, if anywhere, was evident to Baudelaire. He praises the ‘caractère poétique…interrogatif’ of Hugo’s work, and says that Hugo not only knows to reproduce clear things sharply and distinctly but also reproduces with appropriate obscurity what has manifested itself only dimly and indistinctly” (WML 90). Benjamin goes on to explain how Hugo saw the crowd as his constituents: “To him the crowd meant, almost in the ancient sense, the crowd of his constituents—that is, the masses of his readers and his voters. Hugo was, in a word, no flâneur” (95). 31 Benjamin here compares crowds for Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and Baudelaire: “One of the three poems in ‘Tableaux parisiens’ which are dedicated to Hugo begins with an invocation of the crowded city: ‘Teeming city, city full of dreams.’ Another follows old women in the ‘teeming tableau’ of the city, as they move through the crowd. The crowd is a new subject in lyric poetry. Someone once remarked that ‘the crowd was unbearable’ for the innovator Sainte-Beuve, and this was said appreciatively, as something fitting and proper for a poet. During his exile in Jersey, Hugo opened this subject up for poetry. […] In Hugo, the crowd enters literature as an object of contemplation” (WML 90). 300

Naming—or a lack thereof—also surfaces as central to Baudelaire’s own presence within his poems: “Behind the masks which he used to their fullest extent, the poet in

Baudelaire preserved his incognito. He was as circumspect in his works as he was capable of seeming provocative in his personal associations. The incognito was the law of his poetry” (WML 126). As always, one must read Baudelaire’s poetry with attentiveness to separating the poet from the narrator. An awareness of the multiplicity of

Baudelaire’s narratorial voices helps attune one’s reading towards recognizing the multiplicity of “Hugo”s within Baudelaire’s poetry. A number of paradoxically singular multiplicities accordingly emerge: crowds, Baudelaire’s narratorial voice, Baudelaires, and Hugos emanating through the multiple Baudelaires. Derrida sees such iterations and expansions as the gift of a name, the condition for which is a liberation of the name from the being that is named.32 As Baudelaire analogously writes in his prose poem “Les

Foules”, “Multitude, solitude: termes égaux et convertibles pour le poète actif et fécond.

Qui ne sait pas peupler sa solitude, ne sait pas non plus être seul dans une foule affairée”

(Spleen 90). These poetic multiplicities all meld into singularizations of entities, which process reflects the tension inherent to a name, as all of the liberated meanings of a name are still contained by one signifier. A name—especially the name of writers giving rise to crowds and incorporating them within themselves, like Hugo, Baudelaire, or “Hugo” through Baudelaire—contains a crowd.

32 Derrida writes the following on the results of onomastic expansion as comparable to the gift: “Inversement, supposez que X ne veuille pas de votre nom ou de votre titre; supposez que, pour une raison ou une autre, X s’en affranchisse et se choisisse un autre nom, opérant une sorte de sevrage réitéré du sevrage originaire; alors votre narcissisme, doublement blessé, s’en trouvera par là même d’autant enrichi: ce qui porte, a porté, aura porté votre nom paraît assez libre, puissant, créateur et autonome pour vivre seul et se passer radicalement de vous et de votre nom. Il revient à votre nom, au secret de votre nom, de pouvoir disparaître en votre nom. Et donc de ne pas revenir à soi, ce qui est la condition du don (par exemple du nom) mais aussi de toute expansion de soi, de toute augmentation de soi, de toute auctoritas” (Passions 32-33). 301

B. “Le Cygne”

“Ma Douleur, donne-moi la main; viens par ici, Loin d’eux. Vois se pencher les défuntes Années, Sur les balcons du ciel, en robes surannées; Surgir du fond des eaux le Regret souriant […].” - Baudelaire, “Recueillement”

The first of Baudelaire’s poems dedicated to Hugo, “Le Cygne”, is separated into two parts: the first contains seven stanzas, and the second contains six. As is the case for all three of Baudelaire’s poems dedicated to Hugo, each stanza is a quatrain composed of alexandrines. In the very title of this poem, one can hear a much-studied phonic multiplicity via the homonymic pair “le cygne” and “le signe”.33 Baudelaire begins “Le

Cygne” with an image of a classical Greek widow who represents a lost family:

“Andromaque, je pense à vous!” (136). Benjamin finds the inclusion of antiquity in this poem to be revelatory of some of Baudelaire’s thoughts surrounding Hugo:

The poem ‘Le Cygne,’ too, is dedicated to Hugo, one of the few men whose work, it seemed to Baudelaire, produced a new antiquity. To the extent that one can speak of a source of inspiration in Hugo’s case, it was fundamentally different from Baudelaire’s. (WML 112)34

Benjamin both notes a shared interest in the works of the two writers and discourages equating Hugo’s images with Baudelaire’s.

33 Terdiman touches upon this homonymic pair: “In French the pronunciation of le cygne is identical to that of le signe. So the swan in Baudelaire’s poem is not there just in his own right: he is also a sign. The homonym suggests that we should be alert to anything in the poem that might refer not only to the ornithological realm of swans but also to the semiotic realm of signs” (116). 34 Benjamin goes on to draw a comparison between Hugo’s poetry and Baudelaire’s: “The same way of viewing things engendered the work in which the first image of a ‘Parisian antiquity’ appears: Hugo’s poetic cycle ‘À l’Arc de Triomphe.’ The glorification of this architectural monument proceeds from the vision of a Paris Campagna, an ‘immense campagne’ in which only three monuments of the vanished city have survived: the Sainte-Chapelle, the Vendôme column, and the Arc de Triomphe. The great significance of this cycle in Hugo’s work derives from its role in the genesis of a picture of Paris in the nineteenth century which is modeled upon classical antiquity. Baudelaire undoubtedly knew this cycle, which was written in 1837” (WML 113). Benjamin also points to this cycle as a model of sorts for Baudelaire’s Modernity: “In Hugo’s sequence ‘À l’Arc de Triomphe’ and in Du Camp’s great portrait of his city from the administrative point of view, one discerns the same inspiration that became decisive for Baudelaire’s idea of modernity” (WML 115). 302

Though Baudelaire’s antiquity may differ from Hugo’s, he does begin this poem dedicated to Hugo with the classical figure of Andromaque grieving for Hector.35 As the narrator crosses the “nouveau Carrousel”, situating the poem in his modern-day Paris, he laments the rapidity with which Paris changes: “Le vieux Paris n’est plus (la forme d’une ville/ Change plus vite, hélas! Que le cœur d’un mortel)” (136). In the following stanzas, the narrator remembers a menagerie from which a swan escaped:

Un cygne qui s’était évadé de sa cage, Et, de ses pieds palmés frottant le pavé sec, Sur le sol raboteux traînait son blanc plumage. Près d’un ruisseau sans eau la bête ouvrant le bec

Baignait nerveusement ses ailes dans la poudre, Et disait, le cœur plein de son beau lac natal: “Eau, quand donc pleuvras-tu? quand tonneras-tu, foudre?” Je vois ce malheureux, mythe étrange et fatal,

Vers le ciel quelquefois, comme l’homme d’Ovide, Vers le ciel ironique et cruellement bleu, Sur son cou convulsif tendant sa tête avide Comme s’il adressait des reproches à Dieu! (137)

This mythologized creature appears out of place in contemporary Paris, and it comes attached to memories of classical Greek figures of mourning and Ovid’s myth surrounding the creation of man (“comme l’homme d’Ovide”). Marinčič ties this latter parallel to Hugo:

Unlike man, Baudelaire’s swan is an immobilized, silenced exile; his unrealized swan song, as a ‘missing’ metamorphosis, is a silent expression of spleen, and a testimony to the poem’s modernity. ‘Comme l’homme d’Ovide’ is to be read as ‘à la différence de l’homme d’Ovide’: the only real parallel is Ovide himself, the (almost) silenced exile, as a parallel to the addresse of the poem, Victor Hugo. (184)

Ovid, Hugo, the swan, and the sign are drawn together via their status as cut off by their exile. The exiles here at play include geographical, temporal, and onomastic exiles:

Hugo is separated from certain significances of his name that are attached to different

35 For a study of the similarities between this poem and ancient Greek poetry treating swans, see Marinčič. 303

iterations of “Hugo” from different times and places. As Hugo’s tendency to time-and- place-date his poetry began in exile, his exile leads to an auto-recognition of the separation of the former, pre-exile “Hugo” from these later “Hugo”s whose significances are partially determined by changing temporal and geographical locations.

In the first stanza of the second section, the narrator makes a revelatory comment about allegory amidst his melancholic view of Paris: “Paris change! Mais rien dans ma mélancolie/ N’a bougé! Palais neufs, échafaudages, blocs,/ Vieux faubourgs, tout pour moi devient allégorie/ Et mes chers souvenirs sont plus lourds que des rocs” (137). For the narrator, everything becomes allegory in this ever-evolving Paris.36 Thinking again of the swan—his swan—the narrator then compares it to people in exile:

Aussi devant ce Louvre une image m’opprime: Je pense à mon grand cygne, avec ses gestes fous, Comme les exilés, ridicule et sublime Et rongé d’un désir sans trêve! et puis à vous,

Andromaque, des bras d’un grand époux tombée, Vil bétail, sous la main du superbe Pyrrhus, Auprès d’un tombeau vide en extase courbée Veuve d’Hector, hélas! et femme d’Hélénus! (138)

This poem, dedicated to a Victor Hugo in exile, has its narrator declare that everything has become allegorical for him and then immediately thereafter compare the out-of-place swan, “ridicule et sublime”, to exiles. The adjective “sublime” may also serve as a wink that this poem silently names Hugo in more than just its dedication because of the name

36 Benjamin aligns Baudelaire’s allegories with his linguistic resistance to formality, a trait Baudelaire again shares with Hugo, and yet also a trait that marks how Baudelaire differs from Hugo in his deployment of this innovation: “Victor Hugo had begun smoothing out, in literature, the difference between words of colloquial language and those of elevated speech. […] Baudelaire transcended both Victor Hugo’s linguistic Jacobinism and Sainte-Beuve’s bucolic liberties. His images are original because the objects they bring into relation are so humble. […] This linguistic gesture, characteristic of the artist in Baudelaire, becomes truly significant only in the allegorist. It gives his type of allegory the disconcerting quality that distinguishes it from the ordinary kind” (WML 127). Benjamin goes on to further clarify Baudelaire’s uniqueness in the field of allegory: “He took up myriad allegories and altered their character fundamentally by virtue of the linguistic context in which he placed them” (WML 128). 304

“enfant sublime” that Chateaubriand once gave to Hugo. Then, with the most drastic enjambment in the poem, the narrator addresses a “vous” who, in the following stanza, appears as the same recipient of the address in the first line of the poem: Andromaque.

When the narrator arrives at the explanation of Andromaque’s complex familial make-up

(“Veuve d’Hector, hélas! Et femme d’Hélénus!”), three out of six words in the line begin with the letter “H”, the first letter of “Hugo”. The name “Hector” also shares phonetic commonalities with “Victor”. Additionally, the first two capitalized letters in the line,

“Veuve d’Hector”, form “VH”. The only other pair of juxtaposed capital letters in this poem appears in the final line of the first stanza: “Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit” (4). These capitalized letters of “CS” are also the first and last letters of

Baudelaire’s first name, Charles. This inscription of Hugo’s first and last initials and the letters bookending Baudelaire’s first name mirrors a hierarchical distinction between the formally fully-named master, Victor Hugo, and the informally first-named student,

Charles.

The narrator goes on to mention other entities that show similarities to the exiles, including “la négresse” who seeks the absent African coconut trees, anyone who has lost things that cannot be found, the “maigres orphelins séchant comme des fleurs”—a highly

Hugolian trope—,lost sailors, captives, and the vanquished: “Ainsi dans la forêt où mon esprit s’exile/ Un vieux Souvenir sonne à plein souffle du cor!/ Je pense aux matelots oubliés dans une île,/ Aux captifs, aux vaincus!...à bien d’autres encor!” (138).37 The word “exile” resurfaces in this final stanza; moreover, the final phrase “à bien d’autres

37 Vinken aligns this line with an attention to anonymity in Baudelaire: “The poem proceeds even further into anonymity, corresponding to an increasing lostness, ending with prisoners, the vanquished to end—at a point of insurpassable inferiority to all these fates—with ‘bien d’autres encore [sic]’” (435). 305

encor!” is often seen as a reference to Hugo’s poem “Oceano Nox”.38 One also notes the repetition of “cor” [“horn”] via the pair “cor”/“encor”; continuing with the play of letters in this poem, if one graphically and phonetically inverts the word “cor”, the word “roc” results. Baudelaire also incorporates “roc” into this poem, in the earlier-cited passage immediately following his narrator’s statement concerning allegory: “Vieux faubourgs, tout pour moi devient allégorie/ Et mes chers souvenirs sont plus lourds que des rocs”

(137). As Baudelaire describes Hugo’s Guernsey residence as a “palais sur un rocher”

(Corr. 324) in his private correspondence, this rock imagery may refer to Hugo’s

Hauteville House and to the many photographs of Hugo on rocks during his exile. In the play Hernani, a “cor” serves as a central element of the plot, as Hernani gives Don Ruy

Gomez a horn to sound when the latter wishes the former to die.39 Far from contemporary, this “cor” sounds for Baudelaire’s narrator through “un vieux Souvenir”, which causes him to reflect on ocean-bound exiles. The transition from sounding a “cor” to reflecting upon “bien d’autres encor” who resemble the exiles treated throughout this poem may reflect certain transitions in the role of Hugo for Baudelaire’s generation.

Once a sounder of literary battle cries, Hugo now resides amongst the rocks in exile, and his Romantic battle cry only resounds through memory.

Terdiman’s study of this poem stresses the divide in the homophonic pair “cygne” and “signe” while studying the presence of exiled figures:

38 Cargo, for example, makes this influence-based argument: “The reference to the ‘matelots oubliés dans une île,’ in all probability then, represents a subtle, though perhaps unconscious, allusion to the forgotten sailors of one of the great Hugo poems and further contains a contemporary allusion in a personal way to Hugo himself in a manner that the proud exile could scarcely have failed to appreciate” (285). This poem of Hugo’s also presents sailors whose names are forgotten, which detail becomes pertinent in Baudelaire’s poem “Les Petites Vieilles”. 39 The following lines explain the purpose of this horn in Hernani: “Ecoute, prends ce cor. Quoi qu’il puisse advenir,/ Quand tu voudras, seigneur, quel que soit le lieu, l’heure,/ S’il te passe à l’esprit qu’il est temps que je meure,/ Viens, sonne de ce cor, et ne prends d’autres soins;/ Tout sera fait” (Théâtre I 618). 306

They are all exiled, banished, or disposed: Hugo, who for the entire period of the Second Empire daily contemplated his exile from an island a few kilometers off the French coast; Andromache, who mourned Hector in Buthrotum after the fall of Troy; Ovid (line 25), whose conflict with the Roman emperor Augustus was as intense, and whose exile as painful, as Hugo’s under Napoleon III; the swan held in a cage far from ‘son beau lac natal’ (174) […]; the black woman grieving for Africa; the shipwrecked sailors; and so on. In the common experience of the poem’s heterogeneous cast of characters, the distance between home and exile is established as a powerful figure for the internally divided sign. (122)

The name Hugo also represents a divided sign for Baudelaire’s generation. They have heard of the Hugo of 1830, and they also hear of the Hugo of 1861. One Hugo was emphatically present in France, while the other is resoundingly absent. Both represent revolutionaries, but revolutionaries of varying types (poetic, dramatic, novelistic, religious, political, etc.).

In the absence of Hugo and the other exiled figures, Baudelaire’s narrator laments the incessant change that time brings about, an effect of time’s passing that only aggravates changes to the public’s understanding of swans and signs alike. As Hugo writes in his “À l’Arc de Triomphe”, an 1837 poem often juxtaposed in scholarship alongside Baudelaire’s “Le Cygne”,40 this dilapidation still represents an outcome preferable to death:

Ce n’est pas, ce n’est pas entre des pierres neuves Que la bise et la nuit pleurent comme des veuves. Hélas! d’un beau palais le débris est plus beau. Pour que la lune émousse à travers la nuit sombre L’ombre par le rayon et le rayon par l’ombre, Il lui faut la ruine à défaut du tombeau! (Poésie I 820)

This stanza of Hugo’s incorporates lamentations (“hélas!”) and figures of loss (“veuves”,

“ruine”, “tombeau”) that reappear in Baudelaire’s poem. By comparing these two poems,

40 See Vinken: “In the poems ‘À l’Arc de Triomphe’ and ‘Le Cygne’ (which is dedicated to Hugo), one can see two conceptions of how the relations between ancient and modern stand in the capital of the moderns, Paris. Both poems are about Paris, and both take as their theme the imitatio that makes Paris into a new and better Rome, outdoing its ancient predecessor” (420). 307

Vinken finds two drastically different views of Paris as an inheritor of Rome. In Hugo, she finds that Paris serves as an improved version of Rome lacking the violence of instantiation; in Baudelaire, she finds that Paris becomes, like any copy, always already unfaithful to its original version and necessarily embodying difference. By providing iterations of Hugo’s name in his poetry, Baudelaire copies an oft-cited name and necessarily injects some originality into this projection. Vinken extends this study of predecessors to Baudelaire’s poetic work:

The destruction of the authorities, whose name Baudelaire guarantees verbatim with a pun (eau vide), implies a moment of pleasure and triumph. The shattering of language finds its counterweight in a sonnet constructed with classical rigor. Its anagrammatics is the pleasurable reverse side of a melancholy-pessimistic fatalistic surface; it takes place in the destruction of the sense of authorities, of that of Vergil as of that of Ovid. But without them Baudelaire, the poet of the modern, would not exist. (436)

This note upon the inclusion of Ovid’s phonetic name via “eau vide” serves as an addendum to this study of Baudelaire’s incorporations of masters’ names into his work.41

More compelling, though, is Vinken’s conclusion that Baudelaire both owes everything to such “authorities” and attempts to destruct their “sense” at the same time. Such a treatment of Hugo’s name emerges clearly in his correspondence and essays, as earlier studied, but it is subtly present here as well. Hugo, like the swan, stands for belief in the possibility of returning to a home that once existed. Baudelaire, on the other hand, instills in his narrator an exile at home: “The exile has worked its way into the capital of the moderns: to be modern is to be exiled” (Vinken 434). Seeing Hugo’s name as a divided sign within Baudelaire’s work underscores the multiplicity of this name for

Baudelaire. Hugo was the sounder of the trumpet, the exiled poet of political resistance, and the representative of Romantic idealism. Just as the “vieux Paris” no longer exists,

41 One may also note the repetition of this sound in the phrase “tombeau vide” in “Le Cygne”. 308

so the vieux Hugo of 1830 can be seen as replaced by a nouveau Hugo exilé who, upon returning to Paris, may find himself searching in vain for his former home, like the poem’s eponymous cygne. By also rendering his narrator as exiled while ostensibly home, Baudelaire inserts a similar but more “modern” division into his narrator. In the context of Baudelaire’s literary revolution, the division of the signe comes to reflect that of Hugo’s name which once embodied poetic revolution: it is separated or exiled from its old meanings and must take on novel sense in the hands of the new generations deploying it, but it will now carry its exile internally. By incorporating Hugo’s name in this poem’s dedication and signals and sounds of this name in the body of the poem, Baudelaire enacts transformations of Hugo’s name as a signe. Moreover, if one understands the exiled cygne as being aligned with Hugo, it follows that Baudelaire foresees the anachronistic future for this divided and time-and-place-determined cygne/signe upon its return. At least one “Hugo” will be out of place.

C. “Les Sept Vieillards”

“–Ta main se glisse en vain sur mon sein qui se pâme; Ce qu’elle cherche, amie, est un lieu saccagé Par la griffe et la dent féroce de la femme. Ne cherchez plus mon cœur; les bêtes l’ont mangé.” - Baudelaire, “Causerie”

When Baudelaire sends Hugo his first manuscripts of the poems he dedicates to this maître, he includes only “Les Sept Vieillards” and “Les Petites Vieilles”.42 In “Les

42 Tucci comments upon the possible Hugolian presence within these poems of Baudelaire’s: “It is a well- known fact that Baudelaire admired Hugo’s visionary powers […]. He goes on to define the poet, in general terms, as an individual who can intuit and then decipher the link between the natural and the supernatural, be it in terms of form, movement, color, perfume or number. Baudelaire, then, following in Hugo’s footsteps, by his own admission, begins a new series with ‘Les Sept Vieillards,’ and the mystery which surrounds the seven old men of this unusual poem has given rise to much critical speculation” (69). Yoon notes the anonymity of the seven men: “Naming the unnumberable crowd by numbers becomes a minimal epistemological precondition as much for a metropolitan lyric poet as for a statistician. The countability of the object is one evidence of the counting subject’s self-empowering knowledge of the 309

Sept Vieillards”, composed of 13 quatrains, Baudelaire again treats familial relations.

However, amongst the old men, these relations become more complicated and unusual than those of the orphans and widows in “Le Cygne”. This poem opens with a description of Paris: “Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,/ Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant!/ Les mystères partout coulent comme des sèves/ Dans les canaux

étroits du colosse puissant” (139). Then, one morning, the narrator sees “un brouillard sale et jaune” that floods “tout l’espace”; in this realm, the “je” of the poem wanders the

“faubourg”, “roidissant [ses] nerfs comme un héros” (139). While thus occupied, the narrator suddenly sees appear before him “un vieillard dont les guenilles jaunes/ Imitaient la couleur de ce ciel pluvieux” (139). Twice within the first four stanzas, one finds the color yellow—the only color of the poem—appearing by name. For one of Hugo’s most memorable vieillards, Jean Valjean, the color yellow holds great significance. Yellow is the color of his passport marking him as a forçat, and his shirt upon his release from the bagne is also yellow. Finally, and most similarly to this vieillard of Baudelaire’s, the tattered jacket that Jean Valjean wears after his flight from the guilt attached to his name after revealing himself in court as Jean Valjean (after which event he goes to collect

Cosette in disguise as an anonymous pauper), is also yellow. A comparison of

Baudelaire’s vieillards and Hugo’s best-known misérable leads to productive comparisons of the treatments of singularity, multiplicity, anonymity, and self-imposed identitary questioning within these works. It is impossible to claim that this emphasis upon yellow represents a nod from Baudelaire to Hugo’s character, as Les Misérables is published in 1862, one year after this edition of Les Fleurs du Mal. However, the inverse

object. Yet the ‘sept’ in the title also indicates the failure to classify the object in any socially meaningful way. The knowing subject knows nothing more than they are ‘seven old men’” (224). 310

could possibly be true (that is to say, it could be the case the Hugo nods at Baudelaire via certain aspects of Jean Valjean), which would expose an instance of Hugo modeling his projection of his own authorial name, via authorial signature and the signature of style, after Baudelaire’s intervention on the meaning of this name.

One possibility arises for a reference to another well-known Hugolian character in this poem of Baudelaire’s. As Baudelaire’s narrator describes the body of this vieillard, he depicts the old man’s contorted frame:

Il n’était pas voûté, mais cassé, son échine Faisant avec sa jambe un parfait angle droit, Si bien que son bâton, parachevant sa mine, Lui donnait la tournure et le pas maladroit

D’un quadrupède infirme ou d’un juif à trois pattes. (139-40)

Hugo’s character Quasimodo from the 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris shares a similarly broken frame: “On eût dit un géant brisé et mal ressoudé” (Roman I 528).43

Baudelaire may here imitate this aspect of Hugo’s protagonist; nevertheless, the effect of

Baudelaire’s vieillards differs greatly from those of Quasimodo and of Jean Valjean.

In his 1862 essay on Les Misérables, to which I will return, Baudelaire analyzes

Hugo’s treatment of such characters as Jean Valjean and calls them “des abstractions

43 The name Quasimodo stems from the first words of the introit antiphon prayer for Sunday: “Quasi modo genitī infantēs” (1 Peter 2:2). This line translates to “Like newborn infants”. Immediately after describing Quasimodo’s physical form in great detail, the narrator of Les Misérables explains the source of his name: “Quand il tira l’enfant du sac, il le trouva bien difforme en effet. Le pauvre petit diable avait une verrue sur l’œil gauche, la tête dans les épaules, la colonne vertébrale arquée, le sternum proéminent, les jambes torses […]. Il baptisa son enfant adoptif, et le nomma Quasimodo, soit qu’il voulût marquer par là le jour où il l’avait trouvé, soit qu’il voulût caractériser par ce nom à quel point la pauvre petite créature était incomplète et à peine ébauchée. En effet, Quasimodo, borgne, bossu, cagneux, n’était guère qu’un à peu près” (Roman I 599). Another poem of Baudelaire’s in Les Fleurs du Mal, entitled “Allégorie” (which title may remind readers of a line in “Le Cygne”: “Tout pour moi devient allégorie”), incorporates the origin of Quasimodo’s name, in translation. In the final line of this poem, Baudelaire describes the means by which the “femme belle et de riche encolure” (1) approaches death: “Ainsi qu’un nouveau-né, –sans haine et sans remords” (20). Baudelaire again utilizes this expression in one of his “Pièces divers”, to a more sexual end: “Elle n’a que vingt ans; –la gorge déjà basse/ Pend de chaque côté comme une calebasse,/ Et pourtant, me traînant chaque nuit sur son corps,/ Ainsi qu’un nouveau-né, je la tète et la mords—[…]” (257). 311

vivantes, des figures idéales” that represent a “type” raised to a “hauteur épique” (EL

471-72). He writes that each character in Les Misérables is only an exception in terms of hyperbole, which allows them to represent a generality. Baudelaire finds that Hugo’s characters in Les Misérables, though epically singular, stand for many iterations of beings similar to themselves and thereby come to represent a “generality.”44 This latent multiplicity that Baudelaire notes in Hugo’s characters bears out in Baudelaire’s poem before the publication of Les Misérables. After seeing this first yellow-clad vieillard,

Baudelaire’s narrator sees six more men pass before him that all appear identical to the first:

Son pareil le suivait: barbe, œil, dos, bâton, loques, Nul trait ne distinguait, du même enfer venu, Ce jumeau centenaire, et ces spectres baroques Marchaient du même pas vers un but inconnu.

À quel complot infâme étais-je donc en butte, Ou quel méchant hasard ainsi m'humiliait? Car je comptai sept fois, de minute en minute, Ce sinistre vieillard qui se multipliait! (140)

Continuing this idea that the vieillard is capable of multiplying himself, the narrator later describes him as a “dégoûtant Phénix, fils et père de lui-même” (140), introducing the complex, incestuous familial background of this old man who reproduces himself. While

Baudelaire’s vieillards share some commonalities with Hugo’s characters, one notes a marked contrast in the sentiments elicited upon encountering these characters. In the case of Jean Valjean, readers generally wish he could be forgiven for his crime and live peacefully without being pursued, which effect of this work on its readers Baudelaire describes: “Valjean, c’est la brute naïve, innocente; c’est le prolétaire ignorant, coupable d’une faute que nous absoudrions tous sans aucun doute (le vol d’un pain), mais qui,

44 Vargas Llosa also studies “collective characters” in Les Misérables (84-86). 312

punie légalement, le jette dans l’école du Mal, c’est-à-dire au Bagne” (EL 473). However, in the case of the vieillards, no such empathy is called for on the part of the reader, as these “infernal” characters deeply disturb the poem’s narrator and cause him to flee: “—

Mais je tournai le doc au cortège infernal./ Exaspéré comme un ivrogne qui voit double,/

Je rentrai, je fermai ma porte, épouvanté,/ Malade et morfondu, l’esprit fiévreux et trouble,/ Blessé par le mystère et par l’absurdité!” (140). While in Les Misérables, Hugo follows the initially sinister Jean Valjean for long enough that he affords this character enough time to distinguish himself from the immediate signification of “criminal”, to surmount his tainted reputation by changing his name, and to gain the affection of his readers, Baudelaire’s narrator ceases observing this phantasmagoric, ominous, and anonymous cortege, which prevents these identical copies of men from singularizing themselves. In this manner, Baudelaire reformulates avant la lettre what is now considered to be a Hugolian theme but offers a less sympathetic and more sinister aura to the signe of vieillard by refusing to single out commiserable individuals from this crowd.

By leaving his vieillards in an undistinguishable, anonymous, homologous mass,

Baudelaire takes the empathy-enducing “com” out of “commisery” and leaves only the horrifying misérables.

Yoon calls attention to the hyphen introducing the line in which Baudelaire’s narrator turns away from this vision (“—Mais je tournai le dos au cortège infernal”) and claims that it serves to simultaneously separate the narrator from the vieillards and link them together: “But a trait d’union, as its very name indicates, links even as it separates”

(230). As the narrator goes on to describe his personal torment following this experience in the last stanza of the poem, certain vocabulary elicits an approximation of this poem to

313

Les Misérables (published the year after Les Fleurs du Mal): “Vainement ma raison voulait prendre la barre;/ La tempête en jouant déroutait ses efforts,/ Et mon âme dansait, dansait, vieille gabarre/ Sans mâts, sur une mer monstrueuse et sans bords!” (140-41)

Having retreated from the streets of Paris and into a private space behind his door, the narrator describes his reason as seeking stability on the dancing ship of his soul that finds itself at the mercy of a “tempête”. When Jean Valjean (as M. Madeleine) faces the monumental decision as to whether or not he will reveal himself as Jean Valjean and save another man standing accused of being Jean Valjean, he undergoes what Hugo terms

“une tempête sous un crâne” in the well-known chapter title. Baudelaire pays special attention to this passage in his article on Les Misérables:

M. Madeleine sort vainqueur, mais après quelles épouvantables luttes! de cette mer d’angoisses, et redevient Valjean par amour du Vrai et du Juste. Le chapitre où est retracée, minutieusement, lentement, analytiquement, avec ses hésitations, ses restrictions, ses paradoxes, ses fausses consolations, ses tricheries désespérées, cette dispute de l’homme contre lui-même (Tempête sous un crâne), contient des pages qui peuvent enorgueillir à jamais non seulement la littérature française, mais même la littérature de l’Humanité pensante. (EL 474)

Both the shared image of a “tempête” as well as Baudelaire’s description of Jean

Valjean’s experience as a “dispute de l’homme contre lui-même” reveal certain affinities between Baudelaire’s narrator in “Les Sept Vieillards” and Jean Valjean. Both characters suffer multiplicity within themselves. Baudelaire’s narrator finds himself overwhelmed by the multiplicity of others that he witnesses, and Valjean struggles with his interior and onomastic multiplicities. By describing himself as similar to a drunkard seeing double,

Baudelaire’s narrator undergoes an internalization of the multiplicity he views in the

314

street.45 Burton studies this poem (“LSV”) in conjunction with Baudelaire’s “La

Béatrice” (“LB”) and also finds an identitary threat at play:

Each poem concludes with the “actor’s” reason or consciousness seriously jeopardized or undermined. His sense of individual identity or value has undergone some fundamental challenge and his ego—represented by the mountain-top in LB and by the “vieille gabarre” in LSV—has been, or is about to be, engulfed by some formless natural force representing the unconscious, the irrational, and the demonic (“la nuée” in LB, “une mer monstrueuse et sans bords” in LSV). (18)

This interiorized instability leads to a tempestuous struggle of Baudelaire’s narrator and

Hugo’s protagonist to regain their balance and bearings of their identities. Both characters thus undergo identitary chaos because of their surfacing internal multiplicities.

But while Baudelaire leaves his narrator in this turmoil, Hugo will save Jean Valjean by reforming him in the image of the kindly bishop Myriel (a.k.a. Monseigneur Bienvenu).

Perhaps in this manner, Hugo offers an alternative to Baudelaire’s vieillards through Jean

Valjean, an alternative that could lead to societal progress.

Before Baudelaire’s narrator closes the poem in the throes of this tempest, he addresses the reader: “Que celui-là qui rit de mon inquiétude/ Et qui n’est pas saisi d’un frisson fraternel/ Songe bien que malgré tant de décrépitude/ Ces sept monstres hideux avaient l’air éternel!” (140). According to Leakey and Pichois, this stanza appeared

45 Benjamin finds, in the ability to reproduce oneself, a connection to Baudelaire’s personal ability to reduplicate himself; additionally, in this description, Benjamin connects Baudelaire’s physical versatility to his “incognito”: “The scenery, the actor, and the hero meet in these stanzas in an unmistakable way. Baudelaire’s contemporaries did not need the reference. When Courbet was painting Baudelaire, he complained that his subject looked different every day. And Champfleury said that Baudelaire had the ability to change his facial expression like a fugitive from a chain gang. Vallès, in a malicious obituary that displays a fair amount of acuity, called Baudelaire a cabotin. Behind the masks which he used to their fullest extent, the poet in Baudelaire preserved his incognito. He was as circumspect in his works as he was capable of seeming provocative in his personal associations. The incognito was the law of his poetry” (WML 126). Tucci also singles out the anonymity of the specter in Baudelaire’s poem: “The anonymous ‘spectre’ of which the narrator speaks most probably anticipates the apparition of the old man, and the slight deformation of the material world reflects his psychological disposition” (72). Bowles similarly finds an identitary mingling that takes place between Baudelaire and his poetic subjects: “Hence, on a deeper level, Baudelaire’s uneasiness that ‘Les Sept Vieillards’ oversteps the limits assigned to poetry can be attributed to his discovery of a discursive space between his own consciousness and his textual alter egos where identity and power are locked in an endlessly degenerative circuit” (58). 315

almost exactly as such, with only minor differences, in Baudelaire’s first version of this poem sent to Hugo.46 As we have seen, Hugo writes in specific reference to Baudelaire’s poems “Les Sept Vieillards” and “Les Petites Vieilles”, “Vous créez un frisson nouveau”

(Théophile Gautier ii). This deployment of Baudelaire’s word “frisson”, attached to the qualifier “fraternel” in “Les Sept Vieillards”, juxtaposed with Hugo’s description of

Baudelaire’s novelty, offers an instance of Hugo reflecting Baudelaire’s vocabulary. The adjective “fraternel” also draws attention to the link between Baudelaire and Hugo, as

Baudelaire comments upon Hugo’s fraternal writings in his article entitled “Victor

Hugo”, published the same year as this edition of Les Fleurs du Mal. A passage from this article exposes similarities between this description of Hugo and events in “Les Sept

Vieillards”:

Ce serait sans doute ici le cas, si l’espace le permettait, d’analyser l’atmosphère morale qui plane et circule dans ses poèmes, laquelle participe très sensiblement du tempérament propre de l’auteur. Elle me paraît porter un caractère très manifeste d’amour égal pour ce qui est très fort comme pour ce qui est très faible, et l’attraction exercée sur le poète par ces deux extrêmes dérive sa raison d’une source unique, qui est la force même, la vigueur originelle dont il est doué. La force l’enchante et l’enivre; il va vers elle comme vers une parente: attraction fraternelle. Ainsi est-il emporté irrésistiblement vers tout symbole de l’infini, la mer, le ciel; vers tous les représentants anciens de la force, géants homériques ou bibliques, paladins, chevaliers; vers les bêtes énormes et redoutables. Il caresse en se jouant ce qui ferait peur à des mains débiles; il se meut dans l’immense, sans vertige. (EL 324)

Fraternity emerges as a distinguishing characteristic not only of Hugo’s poetry here, but also of the “temperament” of the man, according to this publication of Baudelaire’s. In addition to the fraternity present in “Les Sept Vieillards” (“frisson fraternel”), one also finds indications of inifinity (“l’air éternel”), the sea (“une mer monstrueuse”), and the

46 The only line of this stanza that differs in this first version is the last line: “Tous ces monstres avaient l’air moins vieux qu’éternel!” (Leakey 267). In the following version of the seven versions of this poem collected in Leakey and Pichois’ work, Baudelaire inserts the adjective “hideux”: “Tous ces monstres hideux avaient l’air éternel” (268). It is noteworthy to point out in passing that the word that Baudelaire chooses to add to this line is a word beginning with an “H”. 316

sky (“la couleur de ce ciel pluvieux”), all of which Baudelaire also pinpoints as distinctively Hugolian tropes. The final line of this citation (“Il caresse en se jouant ce qui ferait peur à des mains débiles; il se meut dans l’immense, sans vertige”) facilitates a reading of the difference separating Baudelaire’s narrator from Hugo. While Hugo, according to Baudelaire, experiences no vertigo or dizziness when handling such intimidating representatives of force, Baudelaire’s narrator, in “Les Sept Vieillards” remains unsteady at the poem’s close, despite his “reason’s” attempts to steady itself.

Perhaps Baudelaire offers, in “Les Sept Vieillards”, an encounter between a less-capable poetic figure (in his narrator) in the face of Hugo-esque representatives of multiplicity, immensity, and infinity.

The narrator goes on to ask the reader to establish a fraternal bond with him. By having his narrator pre-empt his reader’s laughter (a mark of superiority in Baudelaire’s

“De l’Essence du Rire”) and insist upon the merit of a “frisson fraternel” within this stanza, Baudelaire presents a narrator concerned with the ridicule he may face. Instead of instilling a sense of fraternal empathy between the readers and the vieillard (the Hugolian model with Jean Valjean), Baudelaire pre-emptively chides readers for resisting fraternal feelings with his narrator who feels no compassion for the vieillards. Yoon explores this aspect of “Les Sept Vieillards” in conjunction with “De l’Essence du Rire” to study inescapable similitude:47

The poet’s anxiety has as much to do with the possibility of the reader’s indifference to the terrifying spectacle as with the spectacle itself. Baudelaire wishes to preempt such

47 Baudelaire states that laughter comes from superiority and often alongside madness in this essay: “Le rire vient de la supériorité. […] Aussi, il fallait dire: Le rire vient de l’idée de sa propre supériorité. Idée satanique s’il en fut jamais! Orgueil et aberration! Or, il est notoire que tous les fous des hôpitaux ont l’idée de leur propre supériorité développée outre mesure. Je ne connais guère de fous d’humilité. Remarquez que le rire est une des expressions les plus fréquentes et les plus nombreuses de la folie” (Critique d’art 190). One may also recall that Baudelaire praises Hugo’s treatment of laughter and the feeling of the grotesque (EL 225). 317

possibility by appealing to a shared fraternal sympathy that would validate the experience. But the appeal is also a challenge to those on the other side of the camp who laugh at the buffoonery of the poet’s appeal. […] Laughing at the other’s show of anxiety can be a clear sign, if not of superiority over the other, at least of temporal reprieve from the common yoke of anxiety that oppresses the metropolitan subject. Yet such laughter serves at the same time to betray the anxiety of the person who laughs; it indicates that he is part of the fraternity of anxiety at the very moment when he seeks a momentary—or, one might say, convulsive—superiority over the other. At the heart of ‘Les Sept Vieillards’ lies this dialectic of intersubjective fear of samenesss […]. (223-24)

The very similitude that Baudelaire’s narrator witnesses in this poem is also projected onto the poem’s readers with regard to the narrator. In sharing this similitude, the readers and the narrator take part in this eternal, incestuous reproduction of the same decrepitude.

As Yoon also notes, with this interpellation of the reader in “Les Sept Vieillards”, we are not far from his accusation of sameness of the reader in his “Au Lecteur”: “—Hypocrite lecteur, —mon semblable, —mon frère!” (50).48 In this famous line that interpellates and accuses the reader before establishing a fraternity between the reader and his first narratorial voice, Baudelaire again utilizes hyphens (“traits d’union”) to join and distance these three entities—the “lecteur”, the “semblable”, and the “frère”. The hyphen works to simultaneously bring together and maintain the separation between beings in “Au

Lecteur”, just as it does between the narrator and the series of vieillards in “Les Sept

48 I owe thanks to Jacques Neefs for pointing out the similarities between this line of Baudelaire’s and a passage from Hugo’s 1855 preface to Les Contemplations: “Nul de nous n’a l’honneur d’avoir une vie qui soit à lui. Ma vie est la vôtre, votre vie est la mienne, vous vivez ce que je vis; la destinée est une. Prenez donc ce miroir, et regardez-vous-y. On se plaint quelquefois des écrivains qui disent moi. Parlez-nous de nous, leur crie-t-on. Hélas! quand je vous parle de moi, je vous parle de vous. Comment ne le sentez-vous pas? Ah! insensé, qui crois que je ne suis pas toi!” (Poésie II 249). This preface of Hugo’s predates the first publication of Les Fleurs du Mal by two years. Yoon joins this commentary on Baudelaire to Eliot’s incorporations of Baudelaire into his “The Waste Land”: “Coming to Baudelaire, we are struck by the force with which Baudelaire interpellates the reader in ‘Les Sept Vieillards’—the kind of skill to which Eliot pays tribute by quoting from the predecessor’s ‘Au Lecteur’: ‘You! Hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,— mon frère!” (223). Yoon earlier cites another inclusion of Baudelaire in Eliot, to which she contributes some of the fame of “Les Sept Vieillards” amongst English readers: “The fame of Baudelaire’s ‘Les Sept Vieillards’ among English readers owes not a little to T.S. Eliot’s allusion to the poem in ‘The Waste Land,’ which Eliot underlines with a note that favors his readers with a specimen of his erudition. Having composed a two-word line as sonorous with sense as ‘Unreal City,’ Eliot wishes to boost the value of the phrase by dint of the following endnote: “60. Cf. Baudelaire: ‘Fourmillante cité, cite pleine de rêves,/ Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant’”” (222). 318

Vieillards”. Similitude and involuntary identitary incorporations come to the fore in both of these poems. The fraternities established by Baudelaire in these two poems are alternately accusatory, horrifying, and pleading, but they are all enforced upon readers to impact their understandings of his work. While Baudelaire and Hugo share interests in fraternity, their fraternities are far from identical. A critique of Barthou’s, to which I will return, aids in the comparison of these fraternities. Barthou aligns Baudelaire with sickness and Hugo with health: “[…] Mais la maladie ne peut pas donner les mêmes fruits que la santé” (58). Joining Hugo’s name as a brother promises to lead to “santé”, but entering Baudelaire’s fraternal family portends an exploration of “maladie”.49 Seen in this light, Baudelaire’s summons into fraternity (from his narrators to the readers) contrasts starkly with Hugo’s invitation to his readers to empathize with certain of his misérables over the course of a towering novel. Baudelaire thereby stakes out the means and results of joining his authorial name (as readers, through a narrator) as in opposition to doing the same with Hugo’s.

When Baudelaire’s narrator addresses “Celui-là qui rit de mon inquiétude/ Et qui n’est pas saisi d’un frisson fraternel”, he delivers a nearly moralizing accusation of such an unfraternal lecteur. Given Baudelaire’s tendency to criticize the moralizing aspects of

Hugo’s work in his private writings (but despite his praise of the subtle morality in

Hugo’s writings in his essay “Victor Hugo”),50 the possibility emerges that Baudelaire

49 Hugo sends Baudelaire a letter on April 10, 1861 that runs contrary to this reading in a rather literal sense, after receiving a copy of the 1861 edition of Les Fleurs du Mal: “Me voici voyageant; on m’a cru très malade cet hiver, mais le changement d’air me remet; je vais d’horizon en horizon, je quitte l’océan pour la terre, je cours à travers monts et vaux, et la grande nature du bon Dieu me guérit. Votre poésie aussi est un dictame; c’est elle qui a commencé ma guérison. Les vers calment et charment. Je vous rends grâce et je vous serre cordialement la main” (Corr. II 349). 50 For example, in “Victor Hugo”, Baudelaire writes, “Il ne s’agit pas ici de cette morale prêcheuse qui, par son air de pédanterie, par son ton didactique, peut gâter les plus beaux morceaux de poésie, mais d’une morale inspirée qui se glisse, invisible, dans la matière poétique, comme les fluides impondérables dans 319

enacts a similar means of manipulating the sentiments of his readers in this poem dedicated to Hugo. Just as his narrator faces an undesired similiarity and even identitary infiltration by the vieillards, so do Baudelaire’s readers find themselves solicited to identify with the narrator as a brother.

Baudelaire is similarly caught in a Hugolian fraternity reflected in these dedications. Baudelaire’s inclusion of fraternity in this poem dedicated to Hugo belies an attention to such identitary conjunctions that produce both multiplicity within singular beings and singularity from groups of beings. Multiplicity and conflation of identities come to the fore in this poem, and these facets observed alongside Hugo’s attention to such phenomena render the poem’s dedication to Hugo all the more intelligible within

Baudelaire’s “aim to imitate” Hugo. One also finds similarly complex familial identifications between Hugo and Baudelaire. As earlier seen in Baudelaire’s correspondence, Hugo represents a paternal figure for the young poet. Then, as

Baudelaire initiates his “frisson nouveau” and his poetic revolution, he strays from a

Hugolian path to find his own unique poetry. Nevertheless, given their shared themes and images, Baudelaire falls within the group of poets led by Hugo who reflect certain habits of this maître. He is connected to Hugo by a “trait d’union” in the sense that his own poetic “traits” occasionally resemble Hugo’s to the point of self-accused plagiarism.

The proper noun emblematizes the difference inherent to unity, as seen in the Lacanian

“trait unaire” that ties together multiple meanings attached to a signifier.51 Each

toute la machine du monde. La morale n’entre pas dans cet art à titre de but; elle s’y mêle et s’y confond comme dans la vie elle-même. Le poète est moraliste sans le vouloir, par abondance et plénitude de nature” (EL 325). 51 Lacan translates Freud’s term Einziger Zug as the “trait unaire”. Lacan finds that the “trait unaire” is materialized in the proper noun: “Mais s’il apparaît à ce niveau que justement le nom propre, en tant qu’il spécifie comme tel l’enracinement du sujet, est plus spécialement lié qu’un autre, non pas à la phonétisation 320

significance of “Hugo” differs as it is attached to a unique naming event by different namers, and yet it always emanates from an iteration of the same name. While

Baudelaire resists, modifies, and even defies aspects of Hugo’s work—especially in the effect he produces—he still remains a “semblable” of Hugo’s and places his poem under the aegis of Hugo’s name. The simultaneous recognition for and revolution against Hugo is mirrored in the function of the “trait d’union” in this poem. The two authorial names are linked and made distinct. Baudelaire’s poem incorporates Hugolian themes to subvert their effect, and the significance of the name of “Hugo” is modified in this process. Put in Barthou’s terms, Hugo becomes the representative of healthy fraternity, while Baudelaire’s fraternity invites readers to explore human sickness through a fleur du mal.

D. “Les Petites Vieilles”

“Soyez béni, mon Dieu, qui donnez la souffrance comme un divin remède à nos impuretés!” - Baudelaire, “Bénédiction”

The third and final poem dedicated to Hugo in Les Fleurs du Mal, “Les Petites

Vieilles”, also incorporates complex familial relations and represents the poem that

Baudelaire admits to Hugo that he composed “en vue de vous imiter” (Corr. 175).52 Far longer than the other two poems, this poem is composed of twenty-one quatrains, separated into four sections. Baudelaire begins this poem by setting the scene in the “plis sinueux des vieilles capitales”, where the narrator is on the lookout for certain kinds of beings:

comme telle, à la structure du langage, mais à ce qui déjà dans le langage est prêt, si l’on peut dire, à recevoir cette information du trait” (126). 52 In Gautier’s lengthy 1868 work on Baudelaire that appeared as the preface to the third edition of this collection, he mentions Hugo’s reaction to this poem: “Terminons cette analyse déjà un peu longue, et que pourtant nous abrégeons beaucoup, par quelques mots sur cette pièce des Petites Vieilles qui a étonné Victor Hugo” (75). 321

Je guette, obéissant à mes humeurs fatales, Des êtres singuliers, décrépits et charmants.

Ces monstres disloqués furent jadis des femmes, Eponine ou Laïs! Monstres brisés, bossus Ou tordus, aimons-les! ce sont encor des âmes. (141)

These women are similar to the sept vieillards (and Quasimodo) in their brokenness.

However, two differences become immediately visible between this poem and “Les Sept

Vieillards”, differences that resound with the “charité” that Baudelaire notes in Hugo’s poems that he aimed to imitate: firstly, the narrator calls for love for these monsters, and secondly, he names them—in a way. The first name that appears in the poem, in the second line of the second stanza, is a familiar name to readers of Hugo: Eponine.

Ubersfeld offers a playful reading of the name Eponine in Hugo’s novel that also applies to Baudelaire’s poem: “Mais aussi son double, qui conquiert dans le malheur et la mort le grand nom d’ÉPONINE (épo[pée fémi]nine), où l’on entend aussi l’épos, la parole poétique qui lui permet de parler à Marius le grand délire de la faim” (Paroles 146-47).53

As this poem predates Les Misérables (but, similar to “Les Sept Vieillards”, contains some now familiar Hugolian characteristics), Baudelaire’s Eponine may refer to the wife of Julius Sabinus, the Roman officer who started a revolt in Belgian Gaul in AD 69.54

53 Rondeau includes Baudelaire’s poem dedicated to Hugo as a possible inspiration for the names of the Thénardier daughters in Les Misérables in the notes to the Laffont edition: “Jusqu’en 1860, elles s’appelaient Palmyre et Malvina. Plusieurs réminiscences ont pu concourir à l’adoption d’Eponine: […] un vers des Petites Vieilles de Baudelaire évoquant la déchéance des courtisanes […]” (1179). 54 Upon the failure of this revolt, Sabinus fakes his death as a suicide, burns his villa, and goes into hiding with his wife, Epponina. These events bring to mind certain tactics taken by Jean Valjean when he “kills” some of his personas in order to free himself to create another identity. Because Epponina manages to bear two children by her husband while he was supposedly dead, the two were eventually found out, and they were both put to death by the emperor Vespasian. Eponine was a popular cultural figure in 19th-century France, conjuring connotations of anti-imperialism and spousal fidelity. Eponine appears in an 18th-century tragedy, Éponine, by Michel-Paul-Gui de Chabanon, in 1762, which in turns inspires the opera Sabinus, by François-Joseph Gossec (which premiered at Versailles in 1773). After the Revolution, she (and many other Eponines, dating back to de Salle’s invented daughter of Plato, Eponine (see Greishaber)) appears in Delisle de Salle’s Éponine, ou de la République, ouvrage de Platon, in 1793 and in Eponine et Sabinus in 1796 at the Lycée theater. Eponine also appears as a subject for art, as in Etienne-Barthélémy Garnier’s 1810 work Éponine et Sabinus. Spiquel adds Chateaubriand to this list of artists interested in Eponine and 322

The name Eponine holds phonetic resonance with the word “éponyme”. In Baudelaire’s poem, this name does not actually name the old women. Instead, it acts as an example of an individual name to conjure an image of a woman in her youth, before becoming a decrepit monster. The other name Baudelaire here gives, Laïs, is a name shared by two ancient Greek courtesans.55 While Eponine sounds like “eponyme” and thereby nearly becomes a name of double referral—a name that means “of the same name”—, Laïs acts as a double historical reference to two different, famous courtesans of the same name.

The interdependent, convoluted, and fallible aspects of naming are staged in these two names that do not actually name Baudelaire’s characters. Additionally, like Jean Valjean, who can stand for the misérables, Eponine and Laïs here give onomastic particularity to a group of anonymous beings. And yet, Eponine and Lais are not the names of these women. By mentioning these names, Baudelaire implies the existence of names for the petites vieilles by giving them placeholder names. In this manner, Baudelaire approaches

Hugo’s tendency to name the representatives of a greater group of beings as a part of the process of establishing sympathy between the reader and the character, and yet

Baudelaire does this without actually naming the women in his poem.

offers insight into Hugo’s manuscript notes concerning his character: “Hugo aimait son personnage; il le dit dans une lettre: ‘Cette pauvre Éponine est une de mes préférées secrètes et douloureuses et je vous remercie de l’aimer un peu.’ Le choix de ce nom la situe nettement dans la lignée des femmes qui se sacrifient pour protéger l’homme qu’elles aiment. Éponine est une héroïne gauloise; quand son mari, Sabinus, vaincu par Rome, se réfugie dans une grotte au fond de la forêt, elle choisit d’y vivre avec lui, mais seulement la nuit pour ne pas éveiller les soupçons. Quand il est capturé, elle implore en vain l’empereur Vespasien et choisit enfin de mourir avec son mari. Cette légende gauloise est très connue à l’époque de Hugo: plusieurs romans, pièces de théâtre, opéras du XVIIIe siècle l’avaient racontée. Chateaubriand la mentionne dans Les Martyrs et dans ses ‘Remarques’, il souligne: ‘Il est inutile de s’étendre sur cette histoire que tout le monde connaît.’ Une indication du manuscrit des Misérables renvoie sans doute à l’un des romans sur Éponine: ‘Éponine et Sabinus ou la généreuse épouse, roman héroïde.’ Nous n’avons pu identifier le roman auquel Hugo fait allusion mais il s’agit sans doute de l’une de ces ‘niaiseries’ qu’a lues la Thénardier” (102) 55 These two ancient Greek courtesans were Lais of Hyccara in the 4th Century BC (Lieber 388) and Lais of Corinth in the 5th Century BC (Smith 298). 323

Baudelaire’s narrator goes on to masculinize these women, an element of the poem that receives great scholarly attention, with an inter-stanza enjambment that places the adjective “cassés” in relief: “Tout cassés/ Qu’ils sont, ils ont des yeux perçants comme une vrille” (141-42).56 These women, who were once beautiful and loved like

Eponine and Laïs, become androgynous “marionnettes” and “monstres” in Baudelaire’s poem and embody the grotesque aspects of Hugo’s works that Baudelaire admires

(141).57 Whether these figures are presented as having once resembled famous women of the past, as puppets, or as monsters, they are all eponymous unto themselves. In other words, each wildly varying iteration of each of these women over time is connected by their names. The onomastic sign remains fixed despite the drastic changes in their forms and the varying means by which they are perceived. This same possibility for drastic change over time plays out in the signified to which the signifier “Victor Hugo” refers.

Under the contemporary grandfatherly figure of exile, one may recall the young revolutionary.

In the poem’s second section, Baudelaire introduces an attention to naming and refers to a familiar image of Hugo found in Gautier:

De Frascati défunt Vestale enamourée; Prêtresse de Thalie, hélas! dont le souffleur Enterré sait le nom; célèbre évaporée Que Tivoli jadis ombragea dans sa fleur,

56 Susini, for example, studies this aspect of this poem: “On voit donc pointer, derrière la pitié, une certaine rancœur. Si, dans la deuxième partie du poème, la re-féminisation des petites vieilles semble exorciser un moment leur déchéance, elle ranime en fait de méchants souvenirs. Redevenus femmes et jeunes, l’espace de trois strophes, les ‘monstres disloqués’ rappellent au poète qu’ils furent, en leur temps, de redoutables agents de dispersion” (608-09). One also finds a shared androgeny between Hugo’s Eponine (who disguises herself as a man) and the petites vieilles: “Une des formes de cette ambiguïté [d’Éponine] est son androgynie” (Spiquel 103). Finally, as Spiquel notes, Eponine also has holes in her clothing, like the petites vieilles, and she is described as a specter in Les Misérables (103). 57 Mathieu comments upon Baudelaire’s admiration for the monstrous in Hugo: “Enfin, Hugo est maître dans l’enveloppement par le monstrueux; il a peint prodigieusement ‘toute la monstruosité qui enveloppe l’homme’, et cette atmosphère imprègne les vieillards et les vieilles, produisant le pullulement de ce qui sort du néant et la difformité qui apparente à l’hybride” (202). 324

Toutes m’enivrent; mais parmi ces êtres frêles Il en est qui, faisant de la douleur un miel, Ont dit au Dévouement qui leur prêtait ses ailes: Hippogriffe puissant, mène-moi jusqu’au ciel!

L’une, par sa patrie au malheur exercée, L’autre, que son époux surchargea de douleurs, L’autre, par son enfant Madone transpercée, Toutes auraient pu faire un fleuve avec leurs pleurs! (142-43)

In the first stanza of this section, the name of a Thalian priestess is lost along with the buried “souffleur” who knew her name. This loss of a name accompanies the thematic of passing time that not only metamorphoses the little old women of the narrator’s Paris but can also go so far as to erase the names of other formerly famous (“célèbre”) women.

When the last person who knows this priestess’ name dies, her erasure becomes more final.58 Baudelaire will go on in this poem to refer to “Mères au cœur saignant, courtisanes ou saintes,/ Dont autrefois les noms par tous étaient cités./ Vous qui fûtes la grâce ou qui fûtes la gloire,/ Nul ne vous reconnaît!” (143-44), re-emphasizing the concomitance of lost names with lost identities that depend upon others’ recognition of these women and knowledge of their names. In the second stanza of this second section,

Baudelaire incorporates a description of these frail beings who tell “Dévouement”, presented as a “Hippogriffe puissant”, to take them on its wings to the sky. As earlier examined, Hugo was portrayed as similar to a hippogriff in Gautier’s writings on Hugo to express his capacity for poetic flight, and Hugo was drawn riding Pegasus in Roubaud’s

1842 caricature. Additionally, Hugo himself describes Quasimodo as being borne away

58 This also calls to mind the erasures at the conclusions of Notre-Dame de Paris, Les Misérables, and Les Travailleurs de la mer, the latter two of which would not appear until after this edition of Les Fleurs du Mal. 325

on a hippogriff when he rings the cathedral bells.59 These hippogriffs come accompanied by religious or divine implications. If one accepts the inclusion of a hippogriff as an allusion to Hugo, one may see these women of Baudelaire’s as calling upon a Hugo-like figure to raise them from neglected anonymity to sublimity.60

In the final stanza of this section, Baudelaire accentuates the multiplicity possible within this singular category of “petites vieilles”. He begins the first line of this stanza with “L’une”, and he then places an anaphora in the two following lines of the stanza, beginning them both with the word “L’autre”; finally, in the last line of the stanza, he blurs the individuality of these characters by grouping them all together with the initial word “Toutes”. The line beginning the third section of this poem is often cited as a reference to a line of Hugo’s. Baudelaire’s line reads as follows: “Ah! que j’en ai suivi de ces petites vieilles!” (143). In Hugo’s poem “Fantômes” from Les Orientales (first published in 1829, over 30 years before Baudelaire’s poem), the first line indeed seems to provide some material for Baudelaire’s self-confessed emulative poem:61

59 In this passage, Hugo associates Quasimodo with a hippogriff: “Cependant la tour vacillait; lui, criait et grinçait des dents, ses cheveux roux se hérissaient, sa poitrine faisait le bruit d’un soufflet de forge, son œil jetait des flammes, la cloche monstrueuse hennissait toute haletante sous lui, et alors ce n’était plus ni le bourdon de Notre-Dame ni Quasimodo, c’était un rêve, un tourbillon, une tempête; le vertige à cheval sur le bruit; un esprit cramponné à une croupe volante; un étrange centaure moitié homme, moitié cloche; une espèce d’Astolphe horrible emporté sur un prodigieux hippogriffe de bronze vivant” (Roman I 603). 60 Mathieu also compares the treatment of proper names in Hugo and in Baudelaire, coming to different conclusions: “Autre figure de réécriture, celle des noms propres. L’édification babélienne se construit chez Hugo sur le vertige de noms propres entassés, condensant des pans de siècles, allégorisant des vices ou des vertus. ‘Toutes m’enivrent’, et l’ivresse que produisent ces petites vieilles s’inspire, plus sobrement, de cette ébriété hugolienne du nom propre: ‘Eponine ou Lais’, ‘De Frascati défunt Vestale énamourée/ Prêtresse de Thalie, hélas!...’, ‘Célèbre évaporée/ Que Tivoli jadis ombragea dans sa fleur’. Mais le nom propre que représentait chez Hugo une hyperbole d’existence, une plénitude d’être incarnée dans un individu singulier, devient un rôle dérisoire auquel les petites vieilles s’accrochent pitoyablement, au delà de la disparition de l’objet de leur culte, ‘Vestale’ ou ‘Prêtresse de Thalie’ laissées au rivage. Ombres d’actrices, de vestales et de guerrières, elles sont l’envers, évidé par le temps, des grands rôles humains, ‘le poète, le prêtre et le soldat’. Carnaval sous l’œil du mélancolique. Même leurs noms de théâtre se délitent, leur nom propre se perd dans la périphrase galante (‘Vous qui fûtes la grâce ou qui fûtes la gloire’), englouti dans l’anonymat des villes” (200). 61 Benjamin notes this link between their poems when writing about a rivalry between Hugo and Baudelaire, and Benjamin continues to deem Baudelaire’s poem superior to Hugo’s: “The third poem in the 326

Hélas! que j’en ai vu mourir de jeunes filles! Que j’en ai vu mourir! –L’une était rose et blanche; L’autre semblait ouïr de célestes accords; L’autre, faible, appuyait d’un bras son front qui penche, Et, comme en s’envolant l’oiseau courbe la branche, Son âme avait brisé son corps.

Une, pâle, égarée, en proie au noir délire Disait tout bas un nom dont nul ne se souvient; Une s’évanouit, comme un chant sur la lyre; Une autre en expirant avait le doux sourire D’un jeune ange qui s’en revient

Toutes fragiles fleurs, sitôt mortes que nées! (Poésie I 513)

Aside from this similar line, other aspects of Hugo’s poem resurge in Baudelaire’s.

Hugo’s poem includes a similar transition from “L’une” to “L’autre” to “Toutes”, with an anaphora of “L’autre” as well. Hugo also refers to the body of one of these young women as “brisé”, employing the same adjective that Baudelaire later uses to describe the bodies of his monstrous petites vieilles. Moreover, Hugo writes of the forgotten name of one of these women, as Baudelaire writes of the forgotten names of his poem’s women.

Just as Hugo goes on to single out one young woman in particular, Baudelaire will also single out one old woman as well. These two poems also share a link between coffins and cradles. Hugo, considering the mother of the Spanish girl, writes of her spending

“tant de nuits à l’endormir pleurante/ Toute petite en son berceau!/ A quoi bon? –

Maintenant la jeune trépassée,/ Sous le plomb du cercueil, livide, en proie au ver,/ Dort

cycle devoted to Hugo, “Les Petites Vieilles,” underlines the rivalry by following verbatim the third poem in Hugo’s cycle “Fantômes.” Thus, there is a correspondence between one of Baudelaire’s most perfect poems and one of Hugo’s weakest” (WML 246). Additionally, Mathieu makes the following comments upon the rapport between these poems: “Baudelaire a repris des mots, et surtout l’émotion d’un élan de pitié, au poème ‘Fantômes’ des Orientales—ce qu’avait relevé l’édition Crépet-Blin; mais outre ces traces précises, la prégnance de Hugo est plus profonde dans tout le poème. […] Baudelaire retient de Hugo de quoi nourrir le paradoxe de sa vision: les jeunes filles hugoliennes passent dans le filigrane des vieilles femmes baudelairiennes” (198). One may also note the fact that Baudelaire includes the figure of a “fantôme” in his poem “Les Petites Vieilles”, perhaps alluding to the title of Hugo’s poem. 327

[…]” (Poésie I 516). Baudelaire emphasizes the link between coffins and cradles in something of an aside in his poem, set off by hyphens:

–Avez-vous observé que maints cercueils de vieilles Sont presque aussi petits que celui d’un enfant? […] Et lorsque j’entrevois un fantôme débile Traversant de Paris le fourmillant tableau, Il me semble toujours que cet être fragile S’en va tout doucement vers un nouveau berceau. (142)

Baudelaire thereby draws attention to the similarity between, firstly, coffins of the young and the old, and, secondly, coffins and cradles. The leitmotif of seeing the disappeared youth in the old continues to hold great importance in the poem, especially when considered alongside Hugo’s “Fantôme”. Perhaps this theme emerges with such force in

Baudelaire’s poem dedicated to Hugo because of a layering of “Hugo”s present in

Baudelaire’s time; as Baudelaire’s old lady listens to military songs, “sentant la règle”

(143), so the Hugo of the 1850’s forms a palimpsest with the idea of a Hugo sounding the battle cry in 1830. Through the old classical Hugo, one may still catch a glimpse of the young eponymous revolutionary.

In the final stanzas of his poem, Baudelaire’s narrator inserts himself into the family of these women by comparing himself to a figure similar to their father:

Mais moi, moi qui de loin tendrement vous surveille, L’œil inquiet, fixé sur vos pas incertains, Tout comme si j’étais votre père, ô merveille! Je goûte à votre insu des plaisirs clandestins:

Je vois s’épanouir vos passions novices Sombres ou lumineux, je vis vos jours perdus; Mon cœur multiplié jouit de tous vos vices! Mon âme resplendit de toutes vos vertus!

Ruines! ma famille! ô cerveaux congénères! Je vous fais chaque soir un solennel adieu! Où serez-vous demain, Eves octogénaires, Sur qui pèse la griffe effroyable de Dieu? (144)

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When turning to speak of himself in the anti-penultimate stanza, the narrator repeats the pronoun “moi”, generating the possibility for multiple iterations of himself through this reiteration. This “moi” then describes himself as behaving as though he were the father of these women and delighting in their own pleasures, vices, and virtues. The narrator again emphasizes the multiplicity that he gains from this experience by describing his heart as “multiplié”. Hugo’s narrator also inserts himself into familial relations with the young women of his poem and shortly thereafter deploys a means of reduplicating his narrator:

Mon âme est une sœur pour ces ombres si belle, La vie et le tombeau pour nous n’ont plus de loi. Tantôt j’aide leurs pas, tantôt je prends leurs ailes. Vision ineffable où je suis mort comme elles, Elles, vivantes comme moi! Elles prêtent leur forme à toutes mes pensées. Je les vois! Je les vois! (Poésie I 513)

To Hugo’s multiply singular narrator presented as a brother to the subjects of his poem,

Baudelaire responds with a multiply singular narrator who sees himself as a father figure to the old women. In terms of age, both relationships are unusual, as Hugo’s narrator is presumably too old to be a brother to young girls, and as Baudelaire’s narrator is too young to be a father to old women. Both narrators gain multiplicity by witnessing the multiplicity inherent in certain groups of people. And yet, both narrators remain singular despite their vicarious capacities.

Alongside this reduplication of himself, Baudelaire’s narrator also repeatedly employs three lexicographical variations of the word “tout” as both an adverb (“tout comme”) and as masculine and feminine adjectives (“tous vos vices”, “toutes vos vertus”). A marker of multiplicity, the word “tout” here also enjoys its grammatical multiplicity in the final stanzas of this poem. Additionally, particularly in the

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penultimate stanza, there are many incorporations of the letter V (“vois vos”, “novices”,

“vis vos”, “vos vices”, and “vos vertus”), which can be seen as a nod to the first letter of the name Victor. Two of these V-laden words, “novices” and “vices”, present the first three letters of Hugo’s first name. A softening of the “c” through the addition of an “e” enacts a Baudelairean renversement of the “vic” of Victor into “vice”. When juxtaposed with the line on Andromaque’s familial relations from “Le Cygne” in which the letter H appears frequently, these lines in “Les Petites Vieilles” may complement the former by offering the other, first half of Hugo’s initials. Moreover, the nominatives of two of the titles of these three poems dedicated to Hugo, “Vieillards” and “Vieilles”, both contain the phoneme “vi” shared with the name Victor. This isolated pronunciation of two letters from Hugo’s name echoes the word “vie” (life). From the Baudelairean reformulations of the pieces of the name Victor first emerges life (vi-vie), shortly followed by vice (vic- vice).

In the final stanza of Baudelaire’s poem, the narrator experiences a certain desperation when he considers his elderly family as in “ruines”. The narrator’s concluding image of a frightening God phonetically resounds with the earlier image of these women looking to a hippogriff to lift them into the skies: “Où serez-vous demain,

Eves octogénaires,/ Sur qui pèse la griffe effroyable de Dieu?” (144). To the “griffe” present in the “hippogriffe” to which these women turn to borrow flight, the “griffe effroyable de Dieu” at the poem’s conclusion provides a stark contrast.62 Baudelaire’s

62 Mathieu also notes this contrast between the angelic and the diabolic found in the “griffe”/ “hippogriffe” pair: “De la marque de Dieu s’imprime la contrefaçon, paraphe signé, singé, avec un attribut du Diable, la ‘griffe’: l’empreinte du Néant sur leur corps, qui ‘pèse’ sur elles comme la Fatalité. La ‘griffe’ enfonce vers le bas celles qui ‘rampent’, le coup d’aile de ‘l’hippogriffe’, moitié cheval moitié griffon, les exaltait […]” (195). 330

God here represents the destructive force bringing about the decay and ruin of the narrator’s family of little old women. Thanks to the phonetic resonance between

“hippogriffe” and “griffe”, this final line intimates an image of Hugo as a god. However, this god differs from Gautier’s vision of a deific, hippogryphic Hugo because this talon- wielding god brings about the ruin of the adopted progeny of Baudelaire’s narrator. Even if the women ask the hippogriff named “Dévouement” to fly them away from a world that has forgotten them, the final image keeps these women not on the wings of a mythical creature but under the talons of a destructive god of ruin and erasure. This god scratches off the names of these women and renders them unrecognizable. Does

Baudelaire here imply that Hugo similarly marks and disfigures others to the point that they lose their individuality? Does he imply that devoting his name to Hugo’s will risk rendering the name “Baudelaire” unrecognizable? One English translation of a meaning of “Dévouement” bolsters this ambiguity: dévouement can be translated as “devotion” or

“dedication”. Of course the French word for a paratextual dedication is dédicace.

Nevertheless, the risk of deformation (by almighty griffes) through devotion (the hippogriffe named Devotion) still lies within a dedication.

E. Imitation, Plagiarism, and Dépassement

“Je te donne ces vers afin que si mon nom Aborde heureusement aux époques lointaines, Et fait rêver un soir les cervelles humaines, Vaisseau favorisé par un grand aquilon.” - Baudelaire, “Je te donne ces vers afin que si mon nom”

After exploring these three poems of Baudelaire’s with an eye towards incorporations of Hugo and his name, the following passage from Baudelaire’s 1861 essay on Hugo gains clarity and significance:

Comment le père un a-t-il pu engendrer la dualité et s’est-il enfin métamorphosé en une population innombrable de nombres? Mystère! La totalité infinie des nombres doit-elle 331

ou peut-elle se concentrer de nouveau dans l’unité originelle? Mystère! […] Il n’est pas un problème agité ou attaqué, dans n’importe quel temps ou par n’importe quelle philosophie, qui ne soit venu réclamer fatalement sa place dans les œuvres du poète. Le monde des astres et le monde des âmes sont-ils finis ou infinis? L’éclosion des êtres est- elle permanente dans l’immensité comme dans la petitesse? Ce que nous sommes tentés de prendre pour la multiplication infinie des êtres ne serait-il qu’un mouvement de circulation ramenant ces mêmes êtres à la vie vers des époques et dans des conditions marquées par une loi suprême et omnicompréhensive? La matière et le mouvement ne seraient-ils que la respiration et l’aspiration d’un Dieu qui, tour à tour, profère des mondes à la vie et les rappelle dans son sein? Tout ce qui est multiple deviendra-t-il un, et de nouveaux univers, jaillissant de la pensée de Celui dont l’unique bonheur et l’unique fonction sont de produire sans cesse, viendront-ils un jour remplacer notre univers et tous ceux que nous voyons suspendus autour de nous? (EL 326-27)

This quotation includes commentary on Hugo that one may find reflected in Baudelaire’s poems dedicated to Hugo. The first lines, pertaining to a “père un” who engenders duality and morphs into a “population innombrable de nombres” bears similar traits to the old man in “Les Sept Vieillards”, who is “fils et père de lui-même”. However,

Baudelaire modifies the seemingly magnificent image of a self-reproducing masculine source of innumerable beings present in his essay on Hugo into a “Dégoûtant Phénix” in his poem dedicated to Hugo. Analogously, while Baudelaire points to God in his essay on Hugo as the source of matter and movement, a force that “profère des mondes à la vie et les rappelle dans son sein”, he also treats the unnerving power of God to use his

“griffes” to mark and mar other beings in “Les Petites Vieilles”.

Baudelaire goes on in this essay to write of the singularity of what is multiple, of the formations of new groupings from unusual combinations, and of the monstrosities that can emerge from such poetic conjecture:63

63 Baudelaire’s description of himself as monstrous in a letter to Hugo nicely coincides with his poetry incorporating monsters dedicated to Hugo: “Je me rappelle que vous m’envoyâtes, lors de cette publication, un singulier compliment sur ma flétrissure que vous définissiez une décoration. Je ne compris pas très bien, parce que j’étais encore en proie à la colère causée par la perte de temps et d’argent. Mais aujourd’hui, Monsieur, je comprends très bien. Je me trouve fort à l’aise sous ma flétrissure, et je sais que désormais dans quelque genre de littérature que je me répande, je resterai un monstre et un loup-garou” (Corr. 175-76). 332

Et la conjecture sur l’appropriation morale, sur la destination de tous ces mondes, nos voisins inconnus, ne prend-elle pas aussi naturellement sa place dans les immenses domaines de la poésie? […] Que des systèmes et des groupes nouveaux, affectant des formes inattendues, adoptant des combinaisons imprévues, subissant des lois non enregistrées, imitant tous les caprices providentiels d’une géométrie trop vaste et trop compliquée pour le compas humain, puissant jaillir des limbes de l’avenir; qu’y aurait-il, dans cette pensée, de si exorbitant, de si monstrueux, et qui sortît des limites légitimes de la conjecture poétique? Je m’attache à ce mot conjecture, qui sert à définir, passablement, le caractère extrascientifique de toute poésie. (EL 326-28)

All of these aspects enter into Baudelaire’s three poems dedicated to Hugo. In “Le

Cygne”, the narrator draws diverse figures into the group of exiled and forgotten; in “Les

Sept Vieillards”, he observes multiple identical iterations of a singularity rendering itself as a disconcerting chain of plurality; and, in “Les Petites Vieilles”, he studies the presence of anonymous monstrosities that were once recognized and beloved beauties.

By combining studies of groups and of single entities that make up these groups,

Baudelaire exposes the dependence of identity on a paradoxical combination of singularity and multiplicity for all of the subjects of these poems. In Baudelaire’s works dedicated to Hugo, Tout n’est qu’Un. Nevertheless, Baudelaire’s mythic or divine poetic

“Un” is threatening and horrifying.

By deeming himself the father of the little old women, Baudelaire’s narrator in

“Les Petites Vieilles” behaves comparatively to the comprachicos by invading a paternal role for people to whom he bears no actual familial relation. Bearing in mind Hugo’s as- yet-to-appear definition of plagiarism as the theft of children in L’Homme qui rit

(1869),64 a connection emerges between this unusual familial role for Baudelaire’s narrator and the second of Baudelaire’s projets de préface for Les Fleurs du Mal, entitled

64 The following definition of plagiarism is given by one of Hugo’s characters in L’Homme qui rit: “Plagiaire, fit le sergent de la coiffe. C’est-a-dire acheteur et vendeur d’enfants. Loi visigothe, livre sept, titre trois, paragraphe Usurpaverit; et Loi silique, titre quarante et un, paragraphe deux; et Loi des Frisons, titre vingt et un, De Plagio. Et Alexandre Nequam dit: Qui pueros vendis, plagiarius est tibi nomen [Toi qui vends des enfants, ton nom est plagiaire]” (Roman III 639). 333

“Note sur les plagiats”. The final name to appear in this list of seven names (of seven

“vieillards”) that Baudelaire presumably worries he plagiarizes is Hugo’s: “Note sur les plagiats. –Thomas Gray. Edgar Poe (2 passages). Longfellow (2 passages). Stace.

Virgile (tout le morceau d’Andromaque). Eschyle, Victor Hugo” (248). Baudelaire’s

“plagiarism” of Hugo is comparable to the act of the comprachicos in Hugo’s 1869 novel

L’Homme qui rit: his plagiarism involves kidnapping and deformation, which Hugo posits with reference to the comprachicos as a possible “providence Démon” as opposed to a “providence Dieu” (Roman III 532).65 Despite this indication of plagiarism on his own part, Baudelaire claims something radically different in a letter to the director of La

Revue Française by stating that he had surpassed the limits of poetry:

In June of 1859, Baudelaire sent his poem “Les Sept Vieillards” to Jean Morel, director of La Revue Française informing him that this particular poem marked a definitive break with the type of poetry which he had been writing heretofore: “C’est le premier numéro d’une nouvelle série que je veux tenter, et je crains bien d’avoir simplement réussi à dépasser les limites assignées à la poésie.” In September of the same year, Baudelaire sent another copy of the poem to Victor Hugo, and in an accompanying letter to the poet stated: “Le morceau a été fait en vue de vous imiter”. (Tucci 69)

Imitation and novelty come hand in hand in this contradictory set of statements from

Baudelaire. By putting Hugo’s name at the head of these poems, Baudelaire shows homage to the maître. And by incorporating many Hugolian tropes, Baudelaire appears

65 The protagonist of L’Homme qui rit, Gwynplaine, is kidnapped by the comprachicos who carve a permanent smile into his face: “Selon toute apparence, d’industrieux manieurs d’enfant avaient travaillé cette figure. Il semblait évident qu’une science mystérieuse, probablement occulte, qui était à la chirurgie ce que l’alchimie est à la chimie, avait ciselé cette chair, à coup sûr dans le très bas âge, et créé, avec préméditation, ce visage. Cette science, habile aux sections, aux obtusions et aux ligatures, avait fendu la bouche, débridé les lèvres, dénudé les gencives, distendu les oreilles, décloisonné les cartilages, désordonné les sourcils et les joues, élargi le muscle zygomatique, estompé les coutures et les cicatrices, ramené la peau sur les lésions, tout en maintenant la face à l’état béant, et de cette sculpture puissante et profonde était sorti ce masque, Gwynplaine. On ne naît pas ainsi. Quoi qu’il en fût, Gwynplaine était admirablement réussi. Gwynplaine était un don fait par la providence à la tristesse des hommes. Par quelle providence? Y a-t-il une providence Démon comme il y a une providence Dieu? Nous posons la question sans la résoudre. […] On voyait Gwynplaine, on se tenait les côtes; il parlait, on se roulait à terre. Il était le pôle opposé du chagrin. Spleen était à un bout, et Gwynplaine à l’autre” (Roman III 531-32). Hugo thus presents Gwynplaine as the polar opposite of Spleen, one of Baudelaire’s preferred terms and poetic subjects. 334

to at least slightly imitate Hugo’s works (a view bolstered when one has access to the letter in which Baudelaire writes that he at least once wrote “en vue de vous imiter”).

However, by vastly differing in the effect of these poems, Baudelaire decidedly injects his own name into these works.

Baudelaire’s choice to juxtapose his name with Hugo’s calls the reader’s attention to both the similarities and the differences between these two names. As a “trait d’union”, a poetic dedication both links and distinguishes the two authorial names involved. What’s more, it offers a reading of the dedicatee’s name as through the perspective and modifications of the dedicator. The Hugolian aspects incorporated into these poems are authored and altered by Baudelaire. In this manner, Baudelaire determines the significance of the name “Hugo” within his works as a name mediated by

Baudelaire’s interpretation, adaptation, and projection. Because the meanings of “Hugo” are already multiple and because this source of mediation (Baudelaire) is multiple,

Baudelaire’s “Hugo”s proliferate accordingly. Each name contains a foule that diversifies the meaning of the proper noun. Despite the positive qualities to be found in these “Hugo”s, the talons cannot be missed. Baudelaire’s poetic “Hugo”s are fleurs du mal.

The Modernity that scholars find in Baudelaire’s poetry stems at least in part from his interpretation and reconfiguration of the meaning of “Hugo”. Baudelaire’s revolutionary poetic frisson nouveau through his novel presentation of Hugo affects the understanding of “Hugo”—and consequently the poetic revolutions—of writers to follow him. What’s more, as the echoes of Baudelaire’s poems dedicated to Hugo and

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reverberating in Hugo’s later works exhibit, Baudelaire’s “Hugo”s may have impacted

Hugo’s “Hugo”s.

VI. The Stupidity of Believing Praise: Other Articles on Hugo

“La sottise, l’erreur, le péché, la lésine, Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps, Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords, Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.” - Baudelaire, “Au Lecteur”

Around the time of the publication of the 1861 edition of Les Fleurs du Mal,

Baudelaire composes two articles centered on Hugo that impact the means by which the public understands the significance of this name. The first, “Victor Hugo”, appears in the series of articles entitled “Réflexions sur quelques-uns de mes contemporains”, in which his article on Gautier also appears. Writing to Eugène Crépet in 1860, Baudelaire reveals the personal stance that he will take with Hugo concerning this article: “Je résume: je vais

écrire à Hugo pour le prévenir que moi, petit et infirme, je prends vis-à-vis de lui tous les droits de la liberté” (Corr. 214). He also describes to Crépet a letter that he recently received from Hugo, and he includes a backhanded compliment for Hugo reminiscent of those of Sainte-Beuve: “Je viens de recevoir une lettre d’Hugo, très cordiale, contre son ordinaire […]” (214). In this first article on Hugo, published in 1861, the same year as the second edition of Les Fleurs du Mal containing the poems dedicated to Hugo,

Baudelaire writes very flatteringly about this monumental figure. However, in the last line of the article on Poe that precedes this article (“Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe”),

Baudelaire includes a critique of Hugo’s emphasis on education, though it is again wrapped in a complicated compliment for Hugo:

Nos préférés sont faciles à deviner, et toute âme éprise de poésie pure me comprendra quand je dirai que, parmi notre race anti-poétique, Victor Hugo serait moins admiré s’il était parfait, et qu’il n’a pu se faire pardonner son génie lyrique qu’en introduisant de

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force et brutalement dans sa poésie ce qu’Edgar Poe considérait comme l’hérésie moderne capitale: l’enseignement. (EL 314)

Throughout “Victor Hugo”, Baudelaire emphasizes Hugo’s attention to moral sentiments, mystery, universality, immensity, charity, and his equal love for the very weak and for the very strong. He refers to Hugo a “génie sans frontières” (EL 323), claims that “aucun artiste n’est plus universel que lui […]” (EL 319), and situates Hugo as the king of his day, a day firmly situated in the past. This passage echoes the letter of Baudelaire’s requesting a letter for his Gautier article, but the important difference lies in the fact that this following passage was published and therefore represents a public naming event for

Hugo by Baudelaire:

Dans les temps, déjà si lointains, dont je parlais, temps heureux où les littérateurs étaient, les uns pour les autres, une société que les survivants regrettent et dont ils ne trouveront plus l’analogue, Victor Hugo représentait celui vers qui chacun se tourne pour demander le mot d’ordre. Jamais royauté ne fut plus légitime, plus naturelle, plus acclamée par la reconnaissance, plus confirmée par l’impuissance de la rébellion. Quand on se figure ce qu’était la poésie avant qu’il apparût, et quel rajeunissement elle a subi depuis qu’il est venu; quand on imagine ce peu qu’elle eût été s’il n’était pas venu; combien de sentiments mystérieux et profonds, qui ont été exprimés, seraient restés muets; combien d’intelligences il a accouchées, combien d’hommes qui ont rayonné par lui seraient restés obscurs, il est impossible de ne pas le considérer comme un de ces esprits rares et providentiels qui opèrent, dans l’ordre littéraire, le salut de tous, comme d’autres dans l’ordre moral et d’autres dans l’ordre politique. Le mouvement créé par Victor Hugo se continue encore sous nos yeux. Qu’il ait été puissamment secondé, personne ne le nie; mais si aujourd’hui des hommes mûrs, des jeunes gens, des femmes du monde ont le sentiment de la bonne poésie, de la poésie profondément rythmée et vivement colorée, si le goût public s’est haussé vers des jouissances qu’il avait oubliées, c’est à Victor Hugo qu’on le doit. (EL 318)

This Hugo of Baudelaire’s represents the king of old to whom modern readers owe their thanks for his contributions to French literature that held great influence over writers to follow. Hugo’s “royauté”—an image full of political import for a France under Napoleon

III’s Second Empire—stands as the most legitimate and the most futilely opposed according to Baudelaire. Baudelaire’s description of the rebellions against Hugo’s royalty as powerless seems to emphasize the justness and greatness of Hugo’s reign.

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Nevertheless, bearing in mind Baudelaire’s other, more private comments upon Hugo’s reputation as preventing the truth from being spoken about him, one may read this description of Hugo’s rule as similar to that of an all-powerful monarchical figure against whom resistance is futile. Despite this possible wink towards his own révolution against what he perceives as Hugo’s doctrines (and for which he has already been convicted of obscenity and offending public morality), Baudelaire fills this consistently complimentary article with emphatic proofs of reconnaissance.

Baudelaire’s second article primarily centered on Hugo, “Les Misérables par

Victor Hugo”, appears in 1862, the year of the publication of Les Misérables and one year following the publication of the above article “Victor Hugo”. Baudelaire is once again very deferential to Hugo in this article and paints a picture of a “grand poète, le plus vigoureux et le plus populaire de la France” (EL 467). After citing passages from his earlier article on Hugo, Baudelaire goes on in this article to examine the first volume of Les Misérables, which he calls “un livre de charité” made to provoke charitable sentiments in its readers. Baudelaire also refers to Les Misérables as a “poème d’ailleurs plutôt que roman” (EL 471). His view of Hugo’s novel as a poem stems from his interpretation of the characters in the novel as transcending their singularity in order to represent a generality:

Il est bien évident que l’auteur a voulu, dans Les Misérables, créer des abstractions vivantes, des figures idéales dont chacune, représentant un des types principaux nécessaires au développement de sa thèse, fût élevée jusqu’à une hauteur épique. C’est un roman construit en manière de poème, et où chaque personnage n’est exception que par la manière hyperbolique dont il représente une généralité. (EL 471-72)

This remark of Baudelaire’s emphasizes the movement of Hugo’s characters from individuals to representatives of types, an expansion of a being that echoes ideas proposed in Hugo’s prefaces with reference to the poet and to himself as an author

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capable of standing for many. Allegorical magnification, reduplication of individuals, and compounding individuals into general groups all play central roles in Baudelaire’s poems dedicated to Hugo. Baudelaire may here imply that Hugo, too, has become (or turned himself into) a living abstraction.

In August of 1862, a little over a month after the first publication of this article on

Les Misérables, Baudelaire writes to his mother and exposes an altogether different, private view of this work: “Ce livre est immonde et inepte. J’ai montré, à ce sujet, que je possédais l’art de mentir. Il m’a écrit, pour me remercier, une lettre absolument ridicule.

Cela prouve qu’un grand homme peut être un grand sot” (Corr. 279-80).66 Baudelaire also later calls this book “le déshonneur de Hugo” (Corr. 325). The Hugo about whom

Baudelaire writes publicly differs greatly from the Hugo of Baudelaire’s private correspondence. The source of Hugo’s sottise or stupidity is here portrayed as this maître’s willingness to believe the authenticity of compliments written about him by a critic. It is Hugo’s unquestioned welcoming of articles that propagate his renown that

Baudelaire privately critiques.67

In his final letter to Hugo, dated December of 1863, Baudelaire asks for another favor from the (former) “roi” and (still) “sovereign”. This time, he requests that Hugo

66 Baudelaire’s critiques of Hugo in letters to his mother almost always come accompanied by an offer to send her Hugo’s newest work. 67 Flaubert also writes very disparagingly of this novel in his private correspondence in 1862, in a letter to Madame Roger des Genettes: “A vous, je peux tout dire. Eh bien! Notre dieu baisse. Les Misérables m’exaspèrent et il n’est pas permis d’en dire du mal: on a l’air d’un mouchard. La position de l’auteur est inexpugnable, inattaquable. Moi qui ai passé ma vie à l’adorer, je suis présentement indigné!” (5717-18). He goes on to slightly modify this idea of gods in decline to depict them as aging: “Tout ce qui touche une plume doit avoir trop de reconnaissance à Hugo pour se permettre une critique; mais je trouve, extérieurement, que les dieux vieillissent” (5719). Such descriptions of a god descending from holiness mark many criticisms of Hugo and reach their culmination in Mallarmé, as we will see. 339

recommend him to the publisher of Les Misérables, M. Lacroix.68 Baudelaire ends with an attestation of his reconnaissance and an appeal to Hugo’s sovereignty: “[…] Croyez toujours à mon affection et à mon admiration. – Vous êtes un puissant seigneur, mais vous avez, comme vous voyez, tous les inconvénients de la souveraineté. Chacun a quelque chose à vous demander” (Corr. 296). Baudelaire, placing himself as under

Hugo’s sovereignty, excuses his request for a favor as a natural result of Hugo’s dominion. It therefore becomes Hugo’s duty as the sovereign to use the power of his name and influence to open doors for the lesser-known.

VII. The Stupidity of Genius: Shakespeare article and Brussels letters

“Parmi l'énumération nombreuse des droits de l'homme que la sagesse du XIXe siècle recommence si souvent et si complaisamment, deux assez importants ont été oubliés, qui sont le droit de se contredire et le droit de s'en aller.” - Baudelaire, preface to Histoires Extraordinaires

Following Baudelaire’s final 1863 letter to Hugo, Hugo’s name appears again in

Baudelaire’s anonymous article “Anniversaire de la naissance de Shakespeare”, which was published in Le Figaro, on April 14, 1864. On April 23 of that same year, nine days after the publication of this article, there was a tricentennial celebration of Shakespeare’s birth. In this article, after wondering if all of Europe really needs to celebrate the birth of an English writer, an anonymous Baudelaire goes on to ask a more pointed question:

“Mais les littérateurs parisiens sont-ils poussés par un sentiment aussi désintéressé, ou plutôt n’obéissent-ils pas, à leur insu, à une très petite coterie qui poursuit, elle, un but personnel et particulier, très distinct de la gloire de Shakespeare?” (EL 520). Hugo’s work on Shakespeare, entitled William Shakespeare, was published in 1864 as well. An

68 Baudelaire’s own publisher Poulet Malassis went bankrupt in 1861, leaving Baudelaire in dire financial straits. Unfortunately, this recommendation to Lacroix presumably did not go well, as Baudelaire in a later letter refers to Lacroix as “cet infame Lacroix” (Corr. 310) against whom he considers avenging himself by exposing that Lacroix pulled more passages from Les Misérables than he was instructed to pull. 340

anonymous Baudelaire makes explicit his charge against the Hugo-centered publicity stunt that he feels this celebration of Shakespeare’s birth actually represents:

Tout banquet, toute fête sont une belle occasion pour donner satisfaction à ce verbiage français; les orateurs sont le fonds qui manque le moins; et la petite coterie caudataire de ce poète (en qui Dieu, par un esprit de mystification impénétrable, a amalgamé la sottise avec le génie) a jugé que le moment était opportun pour utiliser cette indomptable manie au profit des buts suivants, auxquels la naissance de Shakespeare ne servira que de prétexte: 1° Préparer et chauffer le succès du livre de V. Hugo sur Shakespeare, livre qui, comme tous ses livres, plein de beautés et de bêtises, va peut-être encore désoler ses plus sincères admirateurs; […] Ensuite, et selon les occurrences et le crescendo particulier de la bêtise chez les foules rassemblées dans un seul lieu, porter des toasts à Jean Valjean, à l’abolition de la peine de mort, à l’abolition de la misère, à la Fraternité universelle, à la diffusion des lumières, au vrai Jésus-Christ, législateur des chrétiens, comme on disait jadis, à M. Renan, à M. Havin, etc., enfin à toutes les stupidités propres à ce XIXe siècle, où nous avons le fatigant bonheur de vivre, et où chacun est, à ce qu’il paraît, privé du droit naturel de choisir ses frères. […] Conservez ma signature, si bon vous semble; supprimez-la, si vous jugez qu’elle n’a pas assez de valeur. (EL 525-27)

In this article, which the editor decided to publish anonymously, Baudelaire publicly writes that there is a mixture of “sottise” and “génie” in Hugo’s poetic person and works,69 and that, as in all of his books, this one on Shakespeare contains “bêtises” that may dishearten his most sincere admirers. Baudelaire also attacks the enforced fraternity of this period, which Hugo seems to embody. One may recall that Hugo earlier imposes a brotherhood between Baudelaire and Gautier. However, it seems that it is an enforced fraternity between Hugo and all others that Baudelaire here resists.70 Baudelaire does not

69 Barthou notes this preoccupation of Baudelaire’s concerning Hugo: “Cette idée de la sottise habitant le génie hantait Baudelaire” (53). 70 For example, in 1862, Hugo wrote a letter to Baudelaire thanking him for his publication on Les Misérables and implying their shared mission as pursuing progress through truth: “J’ai déjà plus d’une fois constaté avec bonheur les affinités de votre pensée et de la mienne; tous nous gravitons autour de ce grand soleil, l'Idéal. […] J'espère que vous continuerez ce beau travail sur ce livre et sur toutes les questions que j'ai tâché de résoudre ou tout au moins de poser. C'est l'honneur des poètes de servir aux hommes de la lumière et de la vie dans la coupe sacrée de l'art. Vous le faites et je l'essaie. Nous nous dévouons, vous et moi, au progrès par la Vérité. Je vous serre la main” (Corr. II 386). This letter from April 24, 1862 is currently for sale by Gros & Delettrez and is estimated to sell for €28,000. 341

present himself as a willing member of Hugo’s fraternal lineage in this anonymous publication.71

At the end of Baudelaire’s letter, he exhibits modesty concerning the value of his own signature. Though it was relatively known that Baudelaire was the author of this article, he does (at least publicly) recognize that his own signature may not be of great importance.72 This could also indicate some recognition on Baudelaire’s part that critiquing the Shakespeare event as a publicity stunt for Hugo’s book was a dangerous move. As far as revolutions against celebrated maîtres go, this is a quite public example of resistance against such a popular figure of the time.73 When bolstering Hugo’s name,

Baudelaire attaches his own name to the work without hesitation; however, when critiquing Hugo’s publication as a pursuit for renown and financial success on the coattails of Shakespeare and under the sign of a non-negotiable fraternity, Baudelaire allows his authorial name to be suppressed.

71 In fact, Baudelaire’s narrator proposes a diametrically opposed fraternity in “Le Joueur Généreux” in Spleen de Paris, one that sees the Devil behind Enlightenment calls for progress: “[…] Mes chers frères, n'oubliez jamais, quand vous entendrez vanter le progrès des lumières, que la plus belle des ruses du Diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas!” (150). 72 As Barthou writes, “Le Figaro remplaça la signature par trois étoiles. Ce n’est pas évidemment qu’il méconnût la valeur de Baudelaire. Je crois plutôt qu’il lui répugna d’accoler le nom d’un poète de talent aux injures adressées à un poète de génie, exilé de France. Les amis d’Hugo n’en furent pas moins renseignés et indignés” (50-51). 73 Following the publication of this article, Baudelaire blames a bizarre accusation of being affiliated with the police that he receives in Brussels on “quelqu’un de la bande d’Hugo” and swears he will avenge this confrontation. Barthou recounts this belief of Baudelaire’s, which followed his meeting with Lacroix that Hugo presumably arranged: “Quand […] Baudelaire se rendit à Bruxelles pour traiter avec l’éditeur Lacroix une affaire de librairie, il se heurta à une hostilité marquée et à des bruits calomnieux qui le faisaient passer pour affilié à la police française. Il attribua ces bruits, qui l’exaspèrent et le décourageaient, à ‘quelqu’un de la bande d’Hugo’, et il jura de s’en venger” (51). Benjamin disagrees with this suspicion: “What earned Baudelaire such a reputation in Belgium can hardly have been only his manifest hostility toward Hugo, who was proscribed in France but acclaimed in Belgium. His devastating irony contributed to the origin of that rumor; he may have taken pleasure in spreading it himself. The seeds of the culte de la blague, which reappears in Georges Sorel and has become an integral part of fascist propaganda, are first found in Baudelaire” (WML 49). 342

Nearly a year following the publication of this article, in February of 1865,

Baudelaire writes privately to Narcisse Anselle of his opinion of Hugo, wherein he again describes Hugo as a “sot”:

Ainsi, on peut être à la fois un bel esprit est un rustre, – comme on peut en même temps posséder un génie spécial et être un sot. Victor Hugo nous l’a bien prouvé. – A propos, ce dernier va venir habiter Bruxelles. […] Il paraît que lui et l’Océan se sont brouillés. Ou il n’a pas eu la force de supporter l’Océan, ou l’Océan lui-même s’est ennuyé de lui. – C’était bien la peine d’arranger soigneusement un palais sur un rocher! Quant à moi, seul, oublié de tout le monde, je ne vendrai la maisonnette de ma mère qu’à la dernière extrémité. – Mais j’ai encore plus d’orgueil que Victor Hugo, et je sens, je sais que je ne serai jamais si bête que lui. – On est bien partout (pourvu qu’on se porte bien, et qu’on ait des livres et des gravures), même en face de l’Océan. Proudhon n’avait jamais lu Victor Hugo; il aurait dû lire les poésies; mais on lui prêta Les Misérables (le déshonneur de Hugo); il annota les deux premiers volumes ligne à ligne. Ce devait être une merveille de drôlerie; la logique corrigeant l’absence de logique! – Or, le propriétaire belge de l’exemplaire (admirez le Belge!) trouvant son exemplaire souillé, a soigneusement effacé toutes les notes. Et voilà un monument perdu! (Corr. 324-25)

The connection between “Hugo” and “sot” strengthens in Baudelaire’s private letters, and

Baudelaire here goes on to mock Hugo’s relationship with the ocean. One also finds a comparison of the economic success of Hugo and Baudelaire here, which casts

Baudelaire in a similar light of comparative lack that Sainte-Beuve often projected around himself with regard to Hugo.74 While Sainte-Beuve compared himself with Hugo to show his lack of familial fortune, Baudelaire here concentrates on the financial success of the maître / sot. This difference crystallizes a pivotal aspect in the shift from Sainte-

Beuve’s treatment of “Hugo” to Baudelaire’s. For Baudelaire, the personal life of Hugo is less of a concern, making way for a focus on his status as the dominant, hugely

74 Benjamin comments upon the effect of Hugo’s success on Baudelaire: “For the crowd that kept company with Hugo, and with which he kept company, there was no Baudelaire. But this crowd did exist for Baudelaire. Every day, the sight of it caused him to plumb the depths of his failure, and this probably was not the least of the reasons he wanted to gaze at it. The desperate pride he thus felt—in bursts, as it were— was fed by the fame of Victor Hugo. […] While Victor Hugo was celebrating the crowd as the hero of a modern epic, Baudelaire was seeking a refuge for the hero among the masses of the big city. Hugo placed himself in the crowd as a citoyen; Baudelaire divorced himself from the crowd as a hero” (WML 96). While Hugo presented himself as capable of representing humanity, Baudelaire isolated himself as a critic of his world. 343

successful writer of their century. Hugo the maître of old continues to best Baudelaire in sales until the end of Baudelaire’s days. As Baudelaire remains financially in debt until his death, it is possible that some of his disdain for Hugo (and for his adoring public who, through their purchases of his works regardless of the “bêtises” they contain, afford him this lifestyle that allows him to abandon the “palace” that he built “on a rock” in

Guernsey) stems from envy.75 Despite his poetic révolution that propounds the practice of art for art rather than art for progress—a poetic revolution rooted in a difference between himself and Hugo and a denial to join Hugo’s project for progress through truth—Baudelaire does not surpass the popularity of the maître of progrès during his lifetime. Baudelaire lives and dies under the shadow of Hugo and thus must primarily continue to show his reconnaissance for this figure while reserving his more scathing remarks for his private writing.

VIII. The End of “grands hommes” and a “cré nom”

“Chaque jour vers l’Enfer nous descendons d’un pas” - Baudelaire, “Au Lecteur”

While living in Brussels, Baudelaire spends time with Hugo and his family, which act he seems compelled to justify in order to maintain the divide between his name and that of Hugo.76 Perhaps to compensate for this ostensible deference, Baudelaire writes a number of letters in which he portrays himself as being courted—to his displeasure—by

75 Certain scholars argue vehemently to the contrary. See Barthou, 56-57. My aim here is not at all to denigrate Baudelaire by confirming the role of envy in his perception of Hugo during his lifetime. Rather, I simply wish to clarify the difference in their economic statuses (a problem that plagued Baudelaire) as well as the difference in the level of success that their publications enjoyed in terms of sales as an added complication to their already complicated literary relationship. 76 Robb notes this and mentions the rumors surrounding Baudelaire in Brussels: “Not everyone saw the Hugo household in such a pleasant light. Baudelaire had been a regular visitor in Brussels while Mme Hugo was still alive. He was rumoured to be a “mouchard” (“spy”), which was Hugolian slang for someone who wrote in officially approved newspapers and did not review Hugo’s books, which accounts for almost every living French writer” (VH 424). 344

the Hugo family. For example, in this 1865 letter to Madame Paul Meurice, Baudelaire describes an evening spent with Mme. Hugo and her sons:77

J’ai été contraint, il y a quelque temps, de dîner chez Mme Hugo; ses deux fils m’ont vigoureusement sermonné, mais j’ai fait le bon enfant, moi, républicain avant eux, et je pensais en moi-même à une méchante gravure représentant Henri IV à quatre pattes, portant ses enfants sur son dos. – Mme Hugo m’a développé un plan majestueux d’éducation internationale (je crois que c’est une nouvelle toquade de ce grand parti qui a accepté l’entreprise du bonheur du genre humain). Ne sachant pas parler facilement, à toute heure, surtout après dîner, surtout quand j’ai envie de rêver, j’ai eu toutes les peines du monde à lui expliquer qu’il y avait eu de grands hommes AVANT l’éducation internationale; et que, les enfants n’ayant pas d’autre but que de manger des gâteaux, de boire des liqueurs en cachette, et d’aller voir les filles, il n’y aurait pas plus de grands hommes APRÈS. – Heureusement pour moi, je passe pour fou, et on me doit de l’indulgence. (Corr. 343)78

Baudelaire and the Hugo clan do not agree on the ideal future of education.79 In fact,

Baudelaire here claims that international education would be the end of the tradition of

“grands hommes”, which one may recall was a central topic of discussion in one of

Sainte-Beuve’s articles on Hugo. While Sainte-Beuve argued that the monumentality of figures like Napoleon and Hugo turns such “grands hommes” into fictional figures,

77 Baudelaire also meddles in the affairs of Mme. Hugo and Sainte-Beuve by writing to each about the other. The younger poet sees in Sainte-Beuve another sort of a predecessor, to whom Labarthe refers as “à la fois son prédécesseur et sa caution littéraire” (91). Labarthe goes on to present Hugo and Sainte-Beuve as opposing religious models for Baudelaire: “Nous avons montré ailleurs combien Baudelaire a pu voir en Sainte-Beuve, à l’opposé de la religion humanitaire hugolienne, un héritier de la tradition augustinienne réorchestrée par Chateaubriand […]” (92). Sainte-Beuve records a meeting with Baudelaire in his Cahiers, during which Baudelaire calls Hugo an ass: “J’ai vu mon petit ami libertin (Baudelaire) qui m’a dit les choses les plus étranges en littérature et en poésie, mais spirituel et qui m’ouvre des jours sur les générations survenantes. Il raffole de Balzac et m’en donne une théorie très-amusante, et qui a cela de précieux pour moi qu’elle est bien au point de vue de cet auteur et qu’elle me le fait comprendre. Mais quand il en vient à Hugo, il me dit: ‘C’est un âne de génie.’ – ‘Un âne!’ dis-je; et j’essaye de l’en faire démordre. ‘C’est un mulet obstiné que vous voulez dire?’ – ‘Non, c’est bien un âne.’ Il y tient et je finis par comprendre sa pensée, par y entrer même. – Seulement, pour être juste et ne pas déroger à l’héroïque, j’ajouterai que c’est l’âne d’Ajax, qui tient bon dans le champ hérissé de chardons, et sur qui on brise bien des bâtons avant de le forcer à la retraite, qu’il fait toujours en bon ordre” (36-37). 78 One may recall that Hugo makes a similar comment about himself in his 1869 letter to the editors published in the first issue of Le Rappel: “J’ai, heureusement pour moi, la réputation d’être bête. Ceci me sauva. M. Victor Hugo ne sait ce qu’il dit! cria un membre compatissant de la majorité” (Politique 621). 79 However, in 1860, Baudelaire writes to Crépet (describing the article he would write on Hugo) that he would side with Hugo over Napoleon III if Baudelaire were to deign to write on political matters: “J’esquiverai la question politique; d’ailleurs je ne crois pas possible de parler des satires politiques, même pour les blâmer; or, si j’en parlais, bien que je considère l’engueulement politique comme un signe de sottise, je serais plutôt avec Hugo qu’avec Bonaparte du coup d’État” (Corr. 214). 345

Baudelaire implies that, by fighting for this egalitarian form of progress, Hugo will eradicate his own distinction as a “grand homme”. In this letter, Baudelaire claims to be happy to be seen as a madman, as this reputation protects him from being seen as overly insulting. Baudelaire the “fou” believes he has a privileged right to disagree with the

Hugos and still receive their indulgence.

Later in 1865, he writes to Manet and reiterates this message of being courted, this time by Hugo himself: “Et Victor Hugo! Il ne peut se passer de moi, dites-vous. Il m’a un peu fait la cour. Mais il fait sa cour à tout le monde et traite de poète le dernier ou le premier venu” (Corr. 351). As a validator of poetic genius, Hugo is too egalitarian for Baudelaire’s taste. Here it is Hugo’s lack of discernment when courting poets (which could lead to a forced, universal poetic fraternity) that Baudelaire criticizes. Baudelaire goes on in this letter to recount the inscription that Hugo writes in a volume of his poetry that he sends to Baudelaire.80 The inscription reads “À Charles Baudelaire, jungamus dextras [let us join hands]”. Writing to Manet, Baudelaire interprets this phrase differently than what appears to be its face value:

Cela, je crois, ne veut pas dire seulement: donnons-nous une mutuelle poignée de main. Je connais les sous-entendus du latin de V. Hugo. Cela veut dire aussi: unissons nos mains, POUR SAUVER LE GENRE HUMAIN. Mais je m’en fous du genre humain, et il ne s’est pas aperçu. (Corr. 351)

While Baudelaire claims to eschew this unity, he also reminds Manet that these statements are made in private and should not be shared universally:

Vous comprenez, mon cher Manet, que je vous écris secrètement, relativement à beaucoup de choses, – ainsi, si vous voyez Mme Meurice, il est inutile d’affliger ses convictions. Cette excellente femme, qui aurait eu autrement plaisir à vivre, est tombée, vous le savez, dans la démocratie, comme un papillon dans la gélatine. De même, je vous recommanderai, si vous voyez Julien Lemer, de ne lui raconter de ma lettre que ce que vous jugerez bon de lui raconter. (Corr. 351)

80 Barthou believes the volume containing this inscription was “sans doute les Chansons des Rues et des Bois” (54). Robb concurs (VH 425). 346

Baudelaire seems to accept Hugo’s hand in public but reveals in his private correspondence that his fingers were crossed the whole time. He therefore attempts to reassure those more intimately familiar with the “real” “Baudelaire” that his project is not aligned with Hugo’s; and yet, he asks that such assertions of disjunction between himself and Hugo not be shared with everyone. For Baudelaire, the public and private perceptions of his name with relation to Hugo’s hold great importance and overshadow the contrasting statements he makes concerning Hugo.

As usual, Baudelaire saves his most scathing remarks about Hugo for his correspondence with his mother:

Victor Hugo qui a résidé pendant quelque temps à Bruxelles et qui veut que j’aille passer quelque temps dans son île, m’a bien ennuyé, bien fatigué. Je n’accepterais ni sa gloire ni sa fortune, s’il me fallait en même temps posséder ses énormes ridicules. Mme Hugo est à moitié idiote, et ses deux fils de grands sots. – Si tu avais envie de lire son dernier volume (Chansons des rues et des bois), je te l’enverrais tout de suite. Comme d’habitude, énorme succès, comme vente. – Désappointement de tous les gens d’esprit après qu’ils l’ont lu. – Il a voulu, cette fois, être joyeux et léger, et amoureux et se refaire jeune. C’est horriblement lourd. Je ne vois dans ces choses-là, comme en beaucoup d’autres, qu’une nouvelle occasion de remercier Dieu, qui ne m’a pas donné tant de bêtise. Je fais sans cesse la prière du Pharisien. (Corr. 353)

Here Hugo’s sons become the “sots”, and Hugo the simultaneous representative of glorious success and ridiculousness. According to Baudelaire, Hugo bores him (just as he bored the ocean). In this letter to his mother, Baudelaire claims he would not accept

Hugo’s fortune if it meant he had to be like Hugo. The prayer of the Pharisee that

Baudelaire references at the end of this citation serves as yet another means of simultaneously bringing himself and Hugo down a peg; Baudelaire here insults Hugo

347

again, but he also casts himself as the unrighteous devotee who tries to exalt himself by describing himself as superior to others.81

In March of 1866, Baudelaire writes the last notes of his life on Hugo’s novel Les

Travailleurs de la mer before suffering a stroke.82 Following this stroke, Baudelaire suffered paralysis and aphasia (loss of speech).83 The one phrase that he frequently repeated was “Cré nom!” which Dieguez clarifies was an abbreviation for “Sacré nom de

Dieu!” (137).84 A certain Foucauldian irony colors the fact that Baudelaire’s final phrase, after a life including the charge of offenses against religious morality, pertains to the name of God. However, ever the blender of reverence and irreverence, Baudelaire’s incessant references to the name of God after his stroke are blasphemous: he calls out the name to deploy it as a curse.85

81 The following passage tells of the Pharisee in the Bible: “And He also spoke this parable to some of those relying on themselves, that they are righteous, and despising the rest: Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee was standing, praying these things to himself: God, I thank You that I am not as the rest of men, rapacious, unrighteous, adulterers, or even as this tax-collector. I fast twice in the week, I tithe all things, as many as I get. And standing at a distance, the tax-collector would not even lift up his eyes to the Heaven, but smote on his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, the sinner! I say to you, This one went down to his house having been justified, rather than that one. For everyone exalting himself will be humbled. And the one humbling himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14). In the 1857 publication of Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire prefaces the section Révolte with a note in which he predicts that his readers will say this prayer of thanks for not having to be the poet of these poems: “Plus d’un adressera sans doute au ciel les actions de grâces habituelles du Pharisien: ‘Merci, mon Dieu, qui n’avez pas permis que je fusse semblable à ce poète infâme!’” (Fleurs Poulet-Malassis 215). 82 In a letter to his mother in March 1866, Baudelaire offers to send her a copy of Les Travailleurs de la mer. 83 Dieguez writes of Baudelaire’s condition: “He was struck by hemiplegia with aphasia before his 50s and died after having survived 18 months with this terrible condition, without being able, of course, to work again” (122). Baudelaire’s mother died from the same condition a mere four years after her son (143). 84 Dieguez also recounts the curse that Baudelaire reiterated in this condition, to the displeasure of the Sisters who took care of him in Brussels: “Though not mentioned explicitly, the reason for the Religious Superior’s complaints was probably Baudelaire’s involuntary (?) blasphemous cursing Cré nom. However, there was no other place for patients like him in Brussels. As the Sisters complained more and more about their frightening patient, Ms. Aupick decided to take him back to the Hôtel du Miroir. At this time, the hemiplegia had substantially reverted—he could move by himself with a cane—but not the aphasia. His mother, interestingly, seemed to misunderstand Baudelaire’s expletive, either voluntary or unconsciously: ‘Non, quie, quie, the only words he can articulate, he shouts his head off with them’” (131). 85 Of course, it is not even certain that Baudelaire was aware of his repetitive exclamation, so assigning any deeper meaning to this curse is purely speculative. Dieguez addresses this aspect of Baudelaire’s aphasia: “To what extent can we say that Baudelaire was aware of his condition? Recall that Poulet-Malassis wrote: 348

IX. The Many Baudelairean Hugos

“L’Humanité bavarde, ivre de son génie, Et, folle maintenant comme elle était jadis, Criant à Dieu, dans sa furibonde agonie: ‘Ô mon semblable, ô mon maître, je te maudis!’” - Baudelaire, “Le Voyage”

For Baudelaire, the name Hugo held many meanings. Baudelaire’s own plurality is reflected in this plurality of projections of Hugo (some public, some private) for

Baudelaire. For the young Baudelaire, Hugo represents a figure to emulate and with whom he hopes to forge a relationship. As Baudelaire ages and begins to clear his own revolutionary literary path, he partly bases his innovations and convictions upon a divergence of opinions between himself (representing what would come to be called l’art pour l’art) and Hugo (representing l’art pour le progrès). Baudelaire expresses these opinions gently in public—coated in compliments for Hugo—and vehemently in private.

However insulting his remarks upon Hugo become, though, Baudelaire still shows a measure of reconnaissance for this figure of literary success who once led the army of the Romantics, Gautier the first among them.

In the concluding pages of his study of Baudelaire and Hugo, Barthou offers the following remarks:

Les papiers de Baudelaire renfermaient une note sommaire sur les Travailleurs de la Mer, destinée à un article qui ne parut pas. La dernière ligne est en quelques mots une révélation: ‘Le dénouement fait de la peine: (critique flatteuse).’ Ainsi Baudelaire s’efforçait d’accorder la bienveillance de sa critique publique avec la sincérité de ses sentiments personnels. Trop intelligent, trop profond, trop avisé pour ne pas subir la

‘The gravity of the disease, it seems to me, appears to be entirely in his inability to express himself. And it is clear that he is aware of this inability.’ It is indeed common wisdom among neurologists to ascribe awareness of impairment to motor aphasia and anosognosia to Wernicke’s aphasia. However, the picture may not be as clear-cut. In a review of anosognosia in aphasics, Lebrun [1987] states that aphasic patients who recover from their condition often are quite surprised to learn that they repeatedly used a specific word. It appears that motor aphasics are aware of their incapacity to speak, but often unaware of the specific kind of errors or speech they produce. Among other explanations, an impaired auditory feedback might prevent these patients from hearing their own stereotypy as they produce it. So it is far from certain that Baudelaire actually knew he was cursing when he attempted to speak” (142). 349

puissance du génie, il détestait l’orgueil de l’homme et il méprisait les théories sociales de l’apôtre humanitaire. Il y a dans Fusées un passage qui résume cette double impression: ‘Hugo pense souvent à Prométhée. Il s’applique un vautour imaginaire sur une poitrine qui n’est lancinée que par les moxas de la vanité. Puis, l’hallucination se compliquant, se variant, mais suivant la marche progressive décrite par les médecins, il croit que, par un fiat de la Providence, Sainte-Hélène a pris la place de Jersey. Cet homme est si peu élégiaque, si peu éthéré, qu’il ferait horreur même à un notaire. Hugo, sacerdoce, a toujours le front penché, trop penché pour rien voir, excepté son nombril.’ Entre Victor Hugo et Baudelaire, il y avait incompatibilité d’humeurs, de doctrines et de talents. Tout les séparait: la vie, la politique, l’art. Certes, Baudelaire, qui a rendu hommage, même dans l’ordre poétique, à tant de gloires, n’était pas jaloux de Victor Hugo, et on le rabaisserait sans raison et sans justice en lui prêtant un aussi vil sentiment. Mais il avait le tort, contre lequel il ne se défendait pas assez et dont il se plaignait pour lui quand il le rencontrait chez les autres, de ne pas séparer l’homme de l’œuvre. Les défauts de l’un lui cachaient les beautés de l’autre. (56-57)

The fact that Baudelaire notes that a seemingly unflattering statement about the dénouement of Les Travailleurs de la mer is in fact a flattering statement rather aptly sums up the intricate problems one encounters when reading his critical work on Hugo with an eye towards his personal problems with Hugo. There were numerous Hugos

(both as “l’homme” and as the author of “l’œuvre”) for Baudelaire: multiple Hugos who lived and multiple Hugos who wrote. Hugo the successful writer helped Baudelaire and lent him the authority of his name when Baudelaire asked for this. Hugo the man had great success in the sales of his works and lived a somewhat lavish lifestyle that

Baudelaire was incapable of imitating. Hugo the poet wrote beautiful poetry that had a great impact upon Baudelaire, but he also believed in a sacerdotal mission for poets.

Hugo the novelist wrote books that Baudelaire found to be full of both genius and stupidity. Hugo believed in both Beauty and Progress. “Hugo” posed a very nuanced and complicated figure for Baudelaire. Remembered as a revolutionary figure of 1830,

Hugo becomes more of a classical figure in 1866. Baudelaire describes resisting Hugo as futile: “Jamais royauté ne fut plus légitime, plus naturelle, plus acclamée par la reconnaissance, plus confirmée par l’impuissance de la rébellion” (EL 318). Baudelaire

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here speaks of the Hugo of 1830, but, in some respects, Hugo’s royalty continues throughout and even beyond the span of Baudelaire’s life. Through Baudelaire, one can see how Hugo comes to represent a very established, successful, and formerly revolutionary maître for the generations following 1830.

In the final paragraphs of his study, Barthou makes valorizing statements comparing Baudelaire and Hugo:

Au cours des relations, d’ailleurs dispersées et vagues, qu’ils eurent pendant vingt ans, les bons procédés furent du côté de Victor Hugo, dont la “politesse innée”, si banale qu’elle fût, ne cessait jamais d’être prévenante et charmante. Cette politesse affectait de rapprocher les distances et de traiter un émule en égal. La postérité a fait aux deux poètes leur part légitime. Elle a relevé Baudelaire des préventions injustes qu’une condamnation stupide avait fait peser sur lui, mais la maladie ne peut pas donner les mêmes fruits que la santé, et un recueil qui contient quelques chefs-d’œuvre ne doit pas être mis au rang des innombrables chefs-d’œuvre auxquels ne suffisent pas plusieurs recueils. Un frisson, même nouveau, n’est pas un orchestre. Ce serait mal servir le talent, si original, de Baudelaire que d’en forcer le sens en voulant l’égaler, par un excès maladroit d’admiration ou de snobisme, au puissant génie qui a dominé son siècle et qui honore l’Humanité. (58-59)

Barthou offers modern readers a peek into the terms of this debate when his study was published in 1917. By describing Baudelaire as Hugo’s émule whom Hugo treated as an

égal, Barthou approaches Gautier’s disciple-based vocabulary in his writing on Hugo.

The fact that Baudelaire himself wrote to Hugo that he imitated his poetry offers some traction for this nomination of Baudelaire as Hugo’s disciple or emulator; and yet, this designation calls for some complication, as many of Baudelaire’s private writings present a “Hugo” that he did not aim to follow. When Barthou concludes this study by claiming that Baudelaire cannot be compared to Hugo, as a “shiver” cannot rival an “orchestra”, he valorizes Hugo as superior to Baudelaire. In this manner, Barthou deploys Hugo to devalue Baudelaire. After making this claim, Barthou defies those who would attempt to make Baudelaire equal to Hugo. In 1917, Hugo is a classical literary figure in the eyes of

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some (including Proust, as we will see), and yet, according to Barthou, his import seems to be put at risk if some would dare claim that Baudelaire rivals Hugo. Barthou’s study helps one see that Hugo’s importance serves as a preoccupation for literary scholars well into the second decade of the 20th Century, when Hugo is here touted as a “genius” serving “Humanity” through “health”, who will always best the writers representing mere

(if original) “talent” serving “beauty” through “sickness”. Moreover, Barthou’s work also reveals the extent to which Baudelaire and Hugo become linked in scholarly studies.

As the younger revolutionary Baudelaire gains more and more of his own followers,

Barthou must lower Baudelaire and present him as an émule of Hugo’s in order to insist that he certainly was no égal to the maître.

While it is intriguing to see the changing terms of the debate surrounding Hugo and Baudelaire in 1917 through Barthou, the study of the multiple Hugos within

Baudelaire reveals this figure’s centrality to Baudelaire’s past and future; in other words, it reveals Baudelaire’s reconnaissance for the Hugo he loved in his youth and his révolution against Hugo’s project that leads to his own literary innovations. Even for an irreverent figure like Baudelaire, who in his Salons did not shy away from publishing highly insulting remarks about contemporary artists,86 Baudelaire does not go to this extreme when publicly writing about Hugo’s works under his own name. Baudelaire’s

Hugos still contain the Hugo who led Gautier in 1830 and who inspired a long lineage of writers, in whose ranks Baudelaire himself once aspired to appear. However, they also

86 For example, in his Salon de 1845, Baudelaire writes a negative review of Boulanger’s paintings that incorporates a critique of Hugo as a bad influence on his friend: “Voilà les dernières ruines de l’ancien romantisme—voilà ce que c’est que de venir dans un temps où il est reçu de croire que l’inspiration suffit et remplace le reste; —voilà l’abîme où mène la course désordonnée de Mazeppa. –C’est M. Victor Hugo qui a perdu M. Boulanger—après en avoir perdu tant d’autres—c’est le poëte qui a fait tomber le peintre dans la fosse. Et pourtant M. Boulanger peint convenablement (voyez ses portraits); mais où diable a-t-il pris son brevet de peintre d’histoire et d’artiste inspiré? est-ce dans les préfaces ou les odes de son illustre ami?” (Critique d’art 26). 352

contain the Hugo against whom Baudelaire stakes his literary claim as based in an aversion to progress through art. For this reason, Baudelaire’s incorporations and studies of the name Hugo aptly expose the multiplicity contained within this name. Not only does Hugo signify differently for different people, but he also signifies differently for singular people (who themselves contain a plurality of identitary iterations). For the

Baudelaire seeking aid, Hugo is the maître to whom deference is due; for the Baudelaire seeking his own literary revolution, Hugo represents the abhorred progrès; and for the

Baudelaire seeking his mother’s approval, Hugo proves that great commercial success comes burdened with stupidity. Like the cygne, Baudelaire’s “Hugo”s are simultaneously ridiculous and sublime. Along with each Baudelaire comes a unique

Hugo. Depending on his changing needs and audience, Baudelaire alternatively bolsters the merits and resists the sacredness of the “cré nom” of Hugo. In this manner, the meaning of “Hugo” undergoes change according to the person wielding it, even if the namer is one Baudelaire as opposed to another. Just as Hugo’s name emblematizes a

“trait unaire”, so does Baudelaire’s name. Through the juxtapositions of these names enacted by Baudelaire, the potential for plurality of meanings and onomastic significances abounds. Baudelaire’s plural projections of “Hugo” will impact the understandings of this name for many poets to follow.

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CHAPTER IV

HUGO THE NEARLY VOYANT BUT CABOCHARD IDEALIST: RIMBAUD’S HUGOS

Carjat, Etienne. Victor Hugo. 1873. Paris: Maison Victor Hugo.

I. Introduction

“La vie est la farce à mener par tous.” - Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer

Baudelaire’s projections of the significance of Hugo’s name are taken up and reformulated by Rimbaud. However, while Baudelaire explicitly names Hugo in his critical writings and poem dedications, Rimbaud does so less frequently. He mentions

Hugo in his second “lettre du voyant”, but he does not offer much more critical writing.

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While searching for reformulations of the meaning of “Hugo” in Rimbaud’s poetry, one depends more on implicit naming events, or references, to Hugo’s works. Such a means of studying Rimbaud’s poetry risks slipping into the field of influence studies. However, by studying these poems, one may instead focus on the metamorphosis of Hugolian thematics to explore the changes that “Hugo” undergoes within Rimbaud’s revolutionary poetic project.

Rimbaud provides insight into perspectives of Hugo from writers belonging to generations following those of Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, and Baudelaire. Born in 1854,

Rimbaud is 52 years younger than Hugo, 50 years younger than Sainte-Beuve, 43 years younger than Gautier, and 33 years younger than Baudelaire. Though Rimbaud is also 10 years younger than Verlaine, the poet to whom chapter five is dedicated, beginning with

Rimbaud’s perspective of Hugo is beneficial because Rimbaud leaves the literary scene at a young age, whereas Verlaine remains until his death.1

II. A Forbidden Hugo

“Je suis esclave de mon baptême. Parents, vous avez fait mon malheur et vous avez fait le vôtre.” - Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer

When Les Misérables was published in 1862, Rimbaud was eight years old. In

1870, when Rimbaud was 16, his mother wrote a letter to his teacher Georges Izambard expressing her concern over her son reading this novel:

Mais il est une chose que je ne saurais approuver, par exemple la lecture du livre comme celui que vous lui avez donné il y a quelques jours, Les Misérables, [de] V. Hugo. Vous devez savoir mieux que moi, monsieur le Professeur, qu'il faut beaucoup de soin dans le choix des livres qu'on veut mettre sous les yeux des enfants. Aussi j'ai pensé

1 Verlaine writes of this in his article on Rimbaud in Poètes maudits: “Ici une parenthèse, et si ces lignes tombent d’aventure sous ses yeux, que M. Arthur Rimbaud sache bien que nous ne jugeons pas les mobiles des hommes et soit assuré de notre complète approbation (de notre tristesse noire, aussi) en face de son abandon de la poésie, pourvu, comme nous n’en doutons pas, que cet abandon soit, pour lui, logique, honnête et nécessaire” (OPC 644). He also goes on to say Rimbaud damned himself: “Ainsi, maudit par lui-même, ce Poète Maudit!” (OPC 655). 356

qu'Arthur s'est procuré celui-ci à votre insu, il serait certainement dangereux de lui permettre de pareilles lectures. (Dragacci-Paulsen 79)

According to Mme. Rimbaud, this work of Hugo’s represents “dangerous” reading for someone as young as her son. This letter shows that some people still viewed Hugo’s works as scandalous in 1870.2 In his 1954 article in Le Figaro littéraire, Gaulmier elaborates upon Rimbaud’s readership of Hugo:

On a maintes fois souligné tout ce que Rimbaud doit à Hugo. Nous savons que les ‘républicains’ de Charleville, Léon Deverrière et Charles Bretagne, lui prêtaient des livres de l’exilé de Guernesey; qu’Izambard lui fit lire Notre-Dame de Paris, eut maille à partir avec la ‘mère Rimb’ qui lui reprochait d’avoir prêté les Misérables à Arthur; nous savons qu’il connaissait les Contemplations, puisque, parlant de sa mère, il écrivait à Demeny le 17 avril 1871: ‘J’ai réussi à apaiser la bouche d’ombre pour un temps.’ Il admirait si profondément Hugo que, nous dit Delahaye, ‘vers la fin de 1874, déjà brouillé avec la littérature, n’ouvrant plus guère un ouvrage d’imagination, il avouait cependant avoir lu Quatre-vingt treize’. On peut donc admettre comme incontestable qu’en 1870-1871, Rimbaud est nourri de l’œuvre de Hugo, prose et vers. (10)3

Thus, for Rimbaud, Hugo remains present in his literary life even after he leaves the world of literature.4

While Rimbaud reads Hugo’s works, Hugo does not seem to represent Rimbaud’s maître. If one were to point to an early literary maître of Rimbaud’s, one would more likely choose Théodore de Banville over Hugo as this figure. But, in a rapport bearing some resemblance to that between Baudelaire and Gautier, Rimbaud sees Banville as having Hugo as a maître. So, for both Baudelaire and Rimbaud, Hugo is their maître’s

2 Robb discusses this opinion of Hugo following the 1860s: “In schools, Hugo was still considered a “Decadent”: a word which referred to the gaudy, ungrammatical period of Latin literature but was acquiring connotations of picturesque depravity. Hugolatrous pupils were placed in detention and their Hugo books confiscated” (VH 220). 3 One may here note that Rimbaud dubs his mother “la bouche d’ombre” in reference to Hugo’s poem “Ce que dit la bouche d’ombre” from Les Contemplations. 4 Some scholars even find traces of this banned Les Misérables within Rimbaud’s works. See, for example, Fongaro, who studies the presence of Les Misérables in two of Rimbaud’s poems, “Enfance V” and “Qu’est-ce pour nous”: “A partir de là, les détails du texte rimbaldien, empruntés presque tous aux pages de Hugo, non seulement prennent une allure parodique par rapport aux texte d’origine, mais encore expérimentent une nouvelle conception du monde” (124). 357

maître. As a compatriot of Banville’s in Rimbaud’s eyes, the Hugo of 1830 still dominates the background of Rimbaud’s first letter to Banville, dating from May of 1870:

Que si je vous envoie quelques-uns de ces vers, […] c’est que j’aime tous les poètes, tous les bons Parnassiens, – puisque le poète est un Parnassien, – épris de la beauté idéale; c’est que j’aime en vous, bien naïvement, un descendant de Ronsard, un frère de nos maîtres de 1830, un vrai romantique, un vrai poète. Voilà pourquoi. –c’est bête, n’est-ce pas, mais enfin? Dans deux ans, dans un an peut-être, je serai à Paris. Anch’io, messieurs du journal, je serai Parnassien! – Je ne sais ce que j’ai là… qui veut monter… – je jure, cher maître, d’adorer toujours les deux déesses, Muse et Liberté. (21)

This second goddess, “Liberté”, is a rallying cry of Hugo’s as well. In 1830, Banville was seven years old, two years younger than Baudelaire and much younger than Hugo and Gautier. However, for Rimbaud, Banville still represents a brother to the “maîtres de

1830”; that is to say, Banville is described as a brother of Hugo’s in this letter. At the end of this letter, Rimbaud applies this fraternal relationship to all poets after asking Banville to publish his poetry in Le Parnasse contemporain:

Si ces vers trouvaient place au Parnasse contemporain? – ne sont-ils pas la foi des poètes? - je ne suis pas connu; qu’importe? les poètes sont frères. Ces vers croient; ils aiment; ils espèrent: c’est tout. – Cher maître, à moi: Levez-moi un peu: je suis jeune: tendez-moi la main… (28)

In 1857, Banville publishes a collection of poetry entitled Odes funambulesques, which he dedicates to Hugo. When thanking Banville for this dedication, in a letter that would be published alongside this collection of poems, Hugo emphasizes what Banville does for his name through this dedication: “Je vous aime, poëte, je vous remercie d’avoir sculpté mon nom dans ce marbre et dans ce bronze, et je vous embrasse” (Hovasse Banville 9).5

5 This letter is dated March 15, 1857. Hovasse goes on to analyze the role of names in this work of Banville’s alongside the role of naming in Hugo’s poetry: “Plus encore: il n'est pas impossible que Hugo ait vu –ou voulu voir– dans les Odes funambulesques une nouvelle version de Châtiments: un recueil où les noms propres sont légion, une mise en carnaval du présent, la nouvelle dénonciation, de l'intérieur cette fois, d'un monde prosaïque” (Banville 10). 358

After Baudelaire criticizes Banville for overly imitating other poets, Banville writes of what he owes Hugo in his preface to his first collection of poetry, Les

Cariatides:

Pour les autres, je ne suis qu’un faiseur de pastiches. La Voie lactèe c’est Hésiode; Stephen et la Lyre morte c’est Alfred de Musset; le Songe d’une nuit d’hiver c’est Hoffmann, le Songe d’une nuit d’été c’est Shakespeare; Phyllis et Ciymène c’est Virgile; quant au reste, Victor Hugo, toujours Victor Hugo, Victor Hugo quand même. (8)6

Immediately after recognizing what he owes to Hugo, Banville goes on to defend this practice of imitation and pastiche:

Cependant, à chaque pièce nouvelle, les aristarques ne manquent pas de secouer gravement la tête et de s’écrier: Je le reconnais bien là! Qu’est-ce donc, Messieurs, je vous prie, qu’un poëte qui, en imitant Hésiode, Virgile, Victor Hugo, Shakespeare et Alfred de Musset, imprime à toutes ses compositions un cachet qu’on ne peut méconnaître? Qu’est-ce donc qu’un semblable poëte, s’il vous plaît, sinon un poëte original? Peut-être, après cela, trop original, comme disent les autres! (8-9)

Banville’s defense of the poet’s right to imitate—and to imitate Hugo in particular— informs readings of Rimbaud’s works.7 Many scholars emphasize pastiche and parody in

Rimbaud’s poetry. Merely a year after his first letter to Banville, a precocious 17-year- old Rimbaud stakes his literary revolution upon a reconfiguration of “Hugo”, the maître

6 Baudelaire reproaches Banville’s “nombreuses et involontaires imitations” (EL 364). See Fuchs, 63. 7 Hovasse writes of Banville’s tendency to present himself as belonging to the generation of 1830, even though he was younger than that generation, as being related to his “imitations” of Hugo’s early works: ‘Qu'il faille en passer par une parodie de Victor Hugo pour inventer un genre nouveau dans ces années-là prouve à quel point le paysage poétique semblait obstrué... Et encore Banville ne fait-il pas référence, dans le recueil de 1857, aux Châtiments ni aux Contemplations! On peut remarquer en tout cas la concomitance entre l'effondrement de son rêve de prendre la succession de Hugo et le développement de son propre succès. Simple coïncidence, peut-être, mais les Odes funambulesques ne sont pas aux recueils de l'exil ce que Les Cariatides étaient aux recueils d'avant l'exil: elles s'inscrivent encore dans le prolongement direct des premiers poèmes de Hugo. On comprend dès lors pourquoi Théodore de Banville s'est toujours défendu d'appartenir à une autre génération que celle de 1830, même s'il n'était pas très âgé le jour de la bataille d'Hernani. Quoi qu'il en soit, la rédaction de ces "Occidentales" ne s'apparente en rien à un quelconque parricide, comme Banville s'en explique par prétérition dans la préface de la première édition, parue sans nom d'auteur: ‘Pour ce qui regarde les formes spéciales imitées dans quelques pièces, est-il nécessaire de rappeler encore une fois que la parodie a toujours été un hommage rendu à la popularité et au génie? Nous croirions faire injure à nos lecteurs en supposant qu'il pût se trouver parmi eux une âme assez méchante pour voir dans ces jeux où un poète obscur raille sa propre poésie, une odieuse attaque contre le père de la nouvelle poésie lyrique, contre le demi-dieu qui a façonné la littérature contemporaine à l'image de son cerveau, contre l'illustre et glorieux ciseleur des Orientales’” (Banville 8-9). Nevertheless, Banville later attempts to show his progression away from imitations of Hugo in his Nouvelles Odes Funambulesques, which Hovasse interprets as a move towards independence from Hugo. 359

of the maître, which opens the way for Rimbaud to become “Rimbaud”, the poet of

“voyance”.

III. Voyance: Hindsight is 20/20

“On n’est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans.” - Rimbaud, “Roman”

In Rimbud’s celebrated “voyant” letters, in which he lays out his revolutionary poetic project, Hugo’s presence plays an important role in Rimbaud’s theory of the imitation inherent in literature. Like Baudelaire’s poems dedicated to Hugo, these letters emphasize multiplicity within beings. Garabedian notes the link between imitation or theft and identitary multiplicity: “As subjects we are continually borrowing, taking, stealing, copying…our identity from others. Our identity is permanently ‘becoming’, never finished or fixed, but engaged in a continuous process of construction and creation”

(610). The second “voyance” letter contains explicit references to Hugo that retroactively afford scholars more insight into the first letter and its poem as a potential reference to Hugo.

It is also helpful to bear in mind the political state of France and Paris in particular at the time when Rimbaud wrote these letters. When Napoleon III surrenders to Prussian invaders in September of 1870, the Second Empire falls, and the Third Republic is declared. Hugo returns to Paris in September 1870 and is elected to the Assemblée

Nationale; however, he resigns from this post shortly after his election. From March 18 to May 28, 1871, the Paris Commune rules the capital. March 18 is not only the date that the Commune begins, but it is also the date of the funeral of Hugo’s son Charles. Hugo leaves Paris for Brussels three days later and remains in Brussels throughout the

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remainder of the Commune.8 Rimbaud’s letters, written from his hometown of

Charleville, are dated May 13 and 15, 1871. In these letters, he writes that he will be in

Paris in eight days. While such political considerations do not explicitly surface in these letters, some scholars find these factors to be crucial to understanding their import.9 With political novelty, poetic novelty would surely come as well. The breaking of old molds becomes a dominant thematic and practice in Rimbaud’s letters and poetry.

The multiplicity expressed by and through the pronoun “je” in Rimbaud’s letters provides a re-localization of the multiplicity of Hugo studied thus far. By expressly conflating the “je” with an “autre”, Rimbaud offers a vision of internal plurality that mirrors and incorporates a plurality of external others.10 The “je” in question in

Rimbaud’s letters is a poet seeking to make itself “voyant”. Hugo appears within these literarily revolutionary letters as a complex figure to whom one owes recognition but still must resist. Rimbaud’s revolutionary and simultaneously multiple and singular “je” must contend with the shadow cast by Hugo over 19th-century French literature. What’s more, this is a “je” situated in 1871, when many “Hugo”s have already been interpreted, reformulated, projected, praised, idolized, resisted, denigrated, etc. Rimbaud’s multiple yet singular “je” is constructed in a world dominated by a Baudelairean multiple yet singular “Hugo”.

8 See Porter, 82. 9 Fowlie finds in these letters a reflection of the political turmoil of the time: “These two letters, and especially the second, addressed to Paul Demeny, and usually referred to as La Lettre du Voyant, were written at a moment of great exuberance when, in every sense, literary as well as political and sociological, Rimbaud was expecting a new age to begin. He obviously was looking upon himself as one of the founders of the new age” (518). 10 This multiplicity is not only present in the letters, as Steinmetz also finds a similar trend in Une saison en enfer: “Dans Une saison en enfer, Rimbaud affirme qu’à chaque être plusieurs vies lui semblent dues” (xxxvii). 361

The first of these letters of Rimbaud’s, written to Izambard on May 13, 1871 (one year following his mother’s letter to Izambard concerning Hugo’s novel), represents the shorter explanation of what he proposes as “voyant” and offers the first instantiation of

Rimbaud’s well-known assertion: “Je est un autre”. This phrase succinctly conveys an aspect of identitary multiplicity present in the works and prefaces of Hugo, in the contradictory significations of Hugo’s name for his many contemporaries, and in their processes of auto-distinction from Hugo. For Rimbaud, this statement indicates the multiplicity he finds within himself as a poet:

Maintenant, je m’encrapule le plus possible. Pourquoi? je veux être poète, et je me travaille à me rendre voyant: vous ne comprendrez pas du tout, et je ne saurais presque vous expliquer. Il s’agit d’arriver à l’inconnu par le dérèglement de tous les sens. Les souffrances sont énormes, mais il faut être fort, être né poète, et je me suis reconnu poète. Ce n’est pas du tout ma faute. C’est faux de dire: je pense: on devrait dire: On me pense. – Pardon du jeu de mots. – Je est un autre. Tant pis pour le bois qui se trouve violon, et Nargue aux inconscients, qui ergotent sur ce qu’ils ignorent tout à fait! (92)

The division within the Rimbaud writing this letter receives repeated emphasis. In this citation, he begins with the projected desire of being a poet and a description of the accompanying work necessary to render himself “voyant”. Within this projection of a desire, there is an implicit separation, akin to the Lacanian split subject, between a being as it is and a being as it wishes to be. Then, in the phrase “Je me suis reconnu poëte”,

Rimbaud again shows a separation between his selves. If he is able to recognize himself as a poet, it is because two entities are at work: the being doing the recognizing and the recognized being. Then Rimbaud augments this division by incorporating a subject “on” who does the thinking instead of a “je” (“on devrait dire: On me pense”), which reflects this simultaneous possibility of singularity and plurality in the numerically ambiguous pronoun “on”.

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The following sentence, “Pardon du jeu de mots”, contains a homophonic alternative that reveals another “je”, this one based in or belonging to words: “Pardon du je des mots”. The possibility of interchanging “jeu” and “je” underscores a ludic aspect of identity; as identity is multiple and malleable, Rimbaud’s “je” plays the “jeu” of self- division. To push this homophonic play one step further, one can also hear “Par don du je des mots”, which presents the “je” as a gift of words. From the game of wordplay emanates the gift of multiplicity within a single “je”. The game comes to a climax of division and incorporation, of multiplicity and singularity, in the phrase of “Je est un autre”. Combining the first person singular pronoun with the third person singular conjugation of être, which conjugation would be appropriate for the subject “on”,

Rimbaud intensifies the disparity between “je”s and further accentuates this discordance with the predicate “un autre”. Heidegger’s study of the copula illuminates the work done by the being verb in Rimbaud’s celebrated statement:

The proposition, however, is a discourse consisting of two coupled names, by which the speaker signifies he understands that the second name, or predicate, is the name of the same thing as is named also by the first; or, what is the same, he understands that the first name, the subject, is contained in the second. For example, this utterance ‘Man is an animal,’ in which two names are coupled by the verb ‘is.’ […] The copula, the ‘is,’ is the sign that the speaker understands that the two names in the proposition refer to the same thing. (191)

In Rimbaud’s sentence, the first name “je” is therefore contained in the second name, “un autre”. The “je” and “un autre” are pulled together and apart by this copula, much in the way a “trait d’union” functions as a “trait unaire” (and really, what better paradoxically unifying and divisive device is there than the verb “to be”?). And yet, this copula is unusual because it is conjugated to agree with the second name, even though the ordering

“Un autre est je” could be more in line with syntactic expectations. In this formulation,

“un autre” would be contained in “je”. Surrounding Rimbaud’s copula are two pronouns,

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one a subject pronoun and the other an indefinite pronoun. The subject thereby becomes indefinite, indeed, the subject is indefinite. The Lacanian term “extimité” also helps illuminate Rimbaud’s famous phrase.11 Egginton’s study of “extimité” alongside Nancy elucidates aspects of Rimbaud’s statement:

As Nancy states in The Birth to Presence, “[t]he subject contains its difference from itself. The subject not only has this difference, it is this difference. If the subject did not differ from itself, it would not be what it is: a subject relating itself to itself. A = A signifies that A in itself is its difference from itself, and that it derives its equality, its being-equal to itself, only from this difference” (11). The sign of equality is here the redoubling, the remarking, of the hyphenization of being; hence identity is nothing other than a remarking of interior alterity, of the extimacy of Being. (Perversity 81)

The copula and the “trait unaire” reflect Rimbaud’s statement concerning internal alterity, or “extimité”. It is from this internal division that the “je” proclaims itself, as “un autre”.

The multiplicity inherent to a being makes its seemingly singular and definite name (like

“Hugo” or “je”) impossible to fully define (because it is always also “un autre”).

In his second “lettre du voyant”, written to Paul Demeny two days after the first letter to Izambard, Rimbaud repeats the phrase “Je est un autre” and expands upon his description of this idea of becoming “voyant”. This letter exhibits Rimbaud’s view of his own poetic aims in relation to his opinions of poetry and art throughout time:

– Voici de la prose sur l’avenir de la poésie – Toute poésie antique aboutit à la poésie grecque; Vie harmonieuse. – De la Grèce au mouvement romantique, – moyen âge, – il y a des lettrés, des versificateurs. D’Ennuis à Théroldus, de Théroldus à Casimir

11 Egginton summarizes the history and significance of this term: “The term extimacy (extimité) was coined by Lacan in the course of his seminar, but was only elaborated by his student Jacques-Alain Miller in his own seminar of 1985-86. In the English translation and condensation of that seminar, Miller writes: ‘Extimacy is not the contrary of intimacy. Extimacy says that the intimate is Other—like a foreign body, a parasite.’ (“Extimacy” 76). For the purposes of the luxuriant psychoanalytic idiom, Other and unconscious are, Miller makes clear, interchangeable, such that the extimate parasite is in fact my own unconscious, which Lacan describes as ‘this other to whom I am more attached than to myself, since, at the heart of my assent to my own identity, it is still he who agitates me’ (Ecrits trans. 172). The unconscious: not a hidden and repressed reserve of concrete but socially unacceptable drives, but rather a ‘radical heteronomy…gaping within man’ (Ecrits trans. 172)—gaping, that is, at the very heart of my assent to my own identity. Identity, idem-ens, the same being or the being of sameness, requires a moment of assent, assent to sameness; but assent requires at least two parties, a partition across which unity may be established; the assent of identity occurs only at the cost of hiding, avoiding, or disavowing the heart of dissent” (Perversity 79). 364

Delavigne, tout est prose rimée, un jeu, avachissement et gloire d’innombrables générations idiotes: Racine est le pur, le fort, le grand. – On eût soufflé sur ses rimes, brouillé ses hémistiches, que le Divin Sot serait aujourd’hui aussi ignoré que le premier venu auteur d’Origines. – Après Racine, le jeu moisit. Il a duré deux mille ans! Ni plaisanterie, ni paradoxe. La raison m’inspire plus de certitudes sur le sujet que n’aurait jamais eu de colères un jeune-France. Du reste, libre aux nouveaux! d’exécrer les ancêtres: on est chez soi et l’on a le temps. (95)

One here finds a little less reconnaissance for the “ancêtres” and a little more blatant résistance, peppered with some Rimbaudian feculence. After Racine, the rotting “jeu” had to change. Racine emerges as the “Divin Sot” of the “générations idiotes”, a figure that bears resemblance to Baudelaire’s primarily private view of Hugo. Rimbaud begins this study of the future of poetry with the death of this “Divin Sot” (“Après Racine, le jeu moisit”), which will resemble Mallarmé’s “Crise de vers”, in which not Racine’s but

Hugo’s death brings about monumental change in verse. Moreover, Rimbaud here refers to a “jeune-France” in order to assert his own certainties. Hugo’s presence is thereby already established as the implicit “maître” of a “jeune-France”. Of course, there is a new youth now, the youth of Rimbaud’s generation.

The emphasis on divisions between generations grows stronger in his call for the liberty of the “nouveaux” to abhor “les ancêtres”. Rimbaud goes on to refer to the

“vieux” in even stronger terms, calling them “imbéciles”, which description at once dispenses with the adjectival half of his description of Racine as a “Divin Sot” and redoubles its emphasis on the nominative:

On n’a jamais bien jugé le romantisme; qui l’aurait jugé? les critiques!! Les romantiques, qui prouvent si bien que la chanson est si peu souvent l’œuvre, c’est-à-dire la pensée chantée et comprise du chanteur? Car Je est un autre. Si le cuivre s’éveille clairon, il n’y a rien de sa faute. Cela m’est évident: j’assiste à l’éclosion de ma pensée: je la regarde, je l’écoute: je lance un coup d’archet: la symphonie fait son remuement dans les profondeurs, ou vient d’un bond sur la scène. Si les vieux imbéciles n’avaient pas trouvé du Moi que la signification fausse, nous n’aurions pas à balayer ces millions de squelettes qui, depuis un temps infini! ont accumulé les produits de leur intelligence borgnesse, en s’en clamant les auteurs! (95-96)

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According to Rimbaud here, the division between artists’ work and their understanding of their own work represents a crucial aspect of the misinterpretation of Romanticism. As many of these writers were “one-eyed”, they claimed themselves as authors of works they only partially saw. Rimbaud then reiterates his unusual poetic cogito, “Je est un autre”.

The separation between the writer and the work introduces the multiplicity of identity into the field of Romanticism. Rimbaud’s “je” then describes how he sees and listens to his own thoughts, emphasizing the divide between himself and his work. With his violin bow in hand, the “je” merely awakens the symphony of internal “autres”. The following description of the prior generations, which includes those critics unable to judge

Romanticism, as “vieux imbéciles” drops the partial reverence he shows earlier for

Racine. The main issue taken up with these “vieux imbéciles” is that they find only false signification for the “Moi”. With their many inaccurate understandings of “Moi” come the many skeletons that Rimbaud says must now be swept away. Describing the authorial “Moi” as a skeleton offers an image of the paring-down inherent in naming.

When the multiplicity of an authorial “je” is removed, the flesh of the authorial body of

“autres” within the “je” disappears.

Shortly following this excerpt, Rimbaud arrives at his first Hugolian reference in this letter. This first reference to an unnamed Hugo appears while Rimbaud discusses the need for poets, upon recognizing their inherent divisions and multiplicity, to get to know themselves and make themselves monstrous:

La première étude de l’homme qui veut être poète est sa propre connaissance, entière; il cherche son âme, il l’inspecte, il la tente, l’apprend. Dès qu’il la sait, il doit la cultiver; cela semble simple: en tout cerveau s’accomplit un développement naturel; tant d’égoïstes se proclament auteurs; il en est bien d’autres qui s’attribuent leur progrès intellectuel! – Mais il s’agit de faire l’âme monstrueuse: à l’instar des comprachicos, quoi! Imaginez un homme s’implantant et se cultivant des verrues sur le visage.

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Je dis qu’il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le Poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens. Toutes les formes d’amour, de souffrance, de folie; il cherche lui-même, il épuise en lui tous les poisons, pour n’en garder que les quintessences. Ineffable torture où il a besoin de toute la foi, de toute la force surhumaine, où il devient entre tous le grand malade, le grand criminel, le grand maudit, – et le suprême Savant – Car il arrive à l’inconnu! Puisqu’il a cultivé son âme, déjà riche, plus qu’aucun! Il arrive à l’inconnu, et quand, affolé, il finirait par perdre l’intelligence de ses visions, il les a vues! Qu’il crève dans son bondissement par les choses inouïes et innombrables: viendront d’autres horribles travailleurs; ils commenceront par les horizons où l’autre s’est affaissé! (96)

The work of poets, as they familiarize themselves with their selves (“sa propre connaissance, entière”), becomes a means of making their souls monstrous. At this point,

Rimbaud refers to Hugo’s comprachicos as the example to follow in alterations of oneself.12 Gaulmier finds this term to be crucial to the development of Rimbaud’s theory of voyance:

Les comprachicos de Victor Hugo ont bien appris à Rimbaud qu’‘il y a dans l’invisible d’obscures portes entrebâillées’ et lui ont indiqué la voie à suivre pour passer une Saison en enfer: ce n’est pas là une de ces hypothèses sur lesquelles M. Etiemble ironise à juste titre. L’Homme qui rit n’est pas la source de la poésie de Rimbaud. Mais la lecture qu’il a faite de ce livre extraordinaire lui a permis de réunir dans le faisceau d’une brusque illumination les vérités qu’il pressentait. La théorie du Voyant va renouveler profondément la poésie française; mesurer la part qui revient à Victor Hugo dans sa mystérieuse élaboration, ce n’est pas diminuer Rimbaud, mais le rattacher à une tradition. Il n’a pas inventé la théorie du Voyant, il l’a découverte. (10)

Whether or not one agrees with the argument that Rimbaud merely discovers this theory of the Voyant in Hugo’s novel does not here represent the issue at hand. What one can find beyond any doubt in Rimbaud’s letter—this letter in which he lays out the theory and practice by which he aims to stage his poetic revolution—is a centrally-placed image borrowed from Hugo, an image that Hugo links to plagiarism. Perhaps, this suggests that the moment there are multiple entities within one person, plagiarism becomes inevitable.

12 Gaulmier verifies this word as a neologism of Hugo’s: “Or aucun dictionnaire de l’époque ne parle des comprachicos – qui d’ailleurs semblent bien nés de l’imagination de Victor Hugo. Et alors la ‘théorie du Voyant’ s’explique lumineusement. Ce n’est pas une révélation d’Archange, mais la mise en ordre systématique du contenu de L’Homme qui rit, admirable et délirant roman-poème. Quelle formule rend compte, mieux que le Je est un autre, de chacun des personnages du roman de Hugo?” (10). 367

This image is followed by some familiar Baudelairean thematics (including “folie”,

“poison”, “malade”, “l’inconnu”), which again suggests that Rimbaud’s Hugo comes through, comes before, is tied to, or leads to Baudelaire. Rimbaud’s reptition of the phrase “il arrive à l’inconnu” in this letter calls to mind the final stanza of the final poem

(“Le Voyage”) of Les Fleurs du Mal: “Verse-nous ton poison pour qu’il nous réconforte!/

Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brûle le cerveau,/ Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou

Ciel, qu’importe?/ Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!” (192). Marking oneself up with scars, kidnapping oneself, and imitating oneself are means of pluralizing oneself, making oneself into a monster, and acquainting oneself with one’s own multiplicity so as to become “voyant”. If Je est un autre, the poet “je” gleans material from the autre and its realm of the inconnu. Thanks to the ability to find the unknown within the “je”, the state of voyance achieved can make the poet sick, criminal, damned, and the “suprême Savant” all at once. A sick, criminal, and damned “suprême Savant” who combines the “comprachicos” with the pursuit of the “inconnu” sounds rather like a

Hugo-Baudelaire hybrid that here emerges as the ideal “voyant” in Rimbaud’s revolutionary letter.

The word “progrès”, which Baudelaire lashes to Hugo’s name, also makes a marked appearance within Rimbaud’s second letter as he discusses the need for a universal language:

Cette langue sera de l’âme pour l’âme, résumant tout, parfums, sons, couleurs, de la pensée accrochant la pensée et tirant. Le poète définirait la quantité d’inconnu s’éveillant en son temps dans l’âme universelle: il donnerait plus – que la formule de sa pensée, que la notation de sa marche au Progrès! Enormité devenant norme, absorbée par tous, il serait vraiment un multiplicateur de progrès! […] La Poésie ne rythmera plus l’action, elle sera en avant. (99)

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Rather than do away with the rapport between poetry and progress (as one may argue

Baudelaire does while criticizing Hugo as the proponent of progress in art), Rimbaud here encourages poets to make poetry outstrip progress. The poet becomes a

“multiplicateur de progrès”, like a Foucauldian founder of discursivity, capable of creating a plurality of progresses that reflect the multiplicity of entities within the poet.

One may find a reflection of perceptions and projections of Hugo in the phrase “Enormité devenant norme, absorbée par tous”: by revealing the unknown inherent to the universal soul, such an enormous and ubiquitous poet becomes a multiplier of progress by embodying, hosting, and entering all. Tout n’est qu’Un.

Another face of Hugo emerges towards the end of Rimbaud’s letter, as Rimbaud goes on to study writers from generations preceding his and their varying degrees of

“voyance”:

En attendant, demandons aux poètes du nouveau, – idées et formes. Tous les habiles croiraient bientôt avoir satisfait à cette demande. – Ce n’est pas cela! Les premiers romantiques ont été voyants sans trop bien s’en rendre compte: la culture de leurs âmes s’est commencée aux accidents: locomotives abandonnées, mais brulantes, que prennent quelque temps les rails. – Lamartine est quelquefois voyant, mais étranglé par la forme vieille. – Hugo, trop cabochard, a bien du vu dans les derniers volumes: Les Misérables sont un vrai poème. J’ai Les Châtiments sous la main; Stella donne à peu près la mesure de la vue de Hugo. Trop de Belmontet et de Lamennais, de Jéhovahs et de colonnes, vieilles énormités crevées. (100)

According to Rimbaud, Hugo is the creator of the “vrai poème” Les Misérables (a noun that Baudelaire also utilized with reference to this novel), but he is also pig-headed or stubborn. Though “voyant”, Hugo counts among those who did not recognize that they were “voyant”.13 This quotation appears in nearly every study juxtaposing Hugo and

13 Murphy comments upon Hugo’s status in Rimbaud’s letter: “Lorsqu’il écrit que ‘Les premiers romantiques ont été voyants sans trop bien s’en rendre compte’, métaphorisant sous la forme d’‘accidents’ ferroviaires l’intermittence de leur progrès vers le statut du voyant (‘la culture de leurs âmes’), c’est que ces poètes n’auraient pas assez compris leur chanson ainsi que les conditions que requiert son jaillissement” (“Logiques” 38). 369

Rimbaud. However, this quotation is frequently decontextualized. Firstly, it is important that Rimbaud recognizes Hugo as belonging to the group of the “premiers romantiques”, a group from which he distinguishes his own generation. So, like Baudelaire’s projection of “Hugo”, Rimbaud’s “Hugo” belongs to past generations. However, the works that

Rimbaud most often praises are Hugo’s (at that time) later works. Even though Hugo represents one of the first-wave Romantics, Rimbaud focuses on his later works (Les

Châtiments is published in 1853 and Les Misérables in 1862) rather than his 1830-era revolutionary works. Nevertheless, despite his age and his belonging to a different generation, Rimbaud does recognize Hugo as a predecessor of his idea of “voyance”.14

The poem “Stella” that Rimbaud mentions here is from Les Châtiments and contains an image of a talking flower that tells the poem’s narrator that a star is its sister:

“Une fleur/ Qui s’éveillait me dit: c’est l’étoile ma soeur” (Poésie II 165). Rimbaud’s poem “Aube” shares this image of a talking flower but adds the presence of a name: “La première entreprise fut, dans le sentier déjà empli de frais et blêmes éclats, une fleur qui me dit son nom” (276).15 Through the shared image of a talking flower, Rimbaud alters

Hugo’s usage of the flower’s voice to indicate its familial relationship with a star to make the flower instead reveal its own personal name. While Hugo’s flower notes its familial rapport with the star, Rimbaud’s flower tells the narrator its name, a name that the narrator does not share with the reader. According to Got, this revelation of its name is equated with the flower’s coming into existence:

14 Brombert also credits Hugo with differentiating “looking at” and “seeing” (Visionary 11). 15 Ducoffre finds a connection between Hugo and Rimbaud through this image of a talking flower that also appears in Rimbaud’s poem “Aube”: “À cela s’enchaîne l’alinéa de la ‘première entreprise’ où – toute éclats – une fleur dit son nom, parce qu’elle est dite elle-même par la révélation de lumière de ‘l’étoile sa sœur’, pour citer encore Stella de Hugo. Plus que clairement préparé par la polysémie (son et lumière) du terme ‘éclats’, ce trait rhétorique témoigne d’ailleurs d’une puissance d’évidence de l’image poétique que Rimbaud semble partager seul avec Hugo (“Tiens! une fleur qui parle!”), si ce n’est que ce dernier se montrait plus accessible à la lecture spontanée” (159). 370

Impossible qu’en ce point l’on n’entende pas résonner aux oreilles le vers fameux: ‘…Sut nommer par leur nom les choses qu’il sut voir…’ Le Verbe qui crée! La fleur, parce qu’elle a dit son nom au poete, passe à l’existence; elle prend, ou reprend vie. (42)

By referring to Anatole France’s poem “Poète”, Got here underscores a biblical resonance between Adam’s naming of the animals and Rimbaud’s poem, which he ties to an ontological beginning sparked by the utterance of a name. However, the narrator’s failure to share the name of the flower also carries great importance in this poem. By hinting at but hiding the name of his flower, Rimbaud opens its potential to signify.

In “Stella”, the flower speaks of its sister the star, and the narrator’s attention is drawn to the star, which also speaks and eventually reveals its symbolic import:

Et pendant qu’à longs plis l’ombre levait son voile, J’entendis une voix qui venait de l’étoile Et qui disait: – Je suis l’astre qui vient d’abord. […] Je suis ce qui renaît quand un monde est détruit. O nations! je suis la poésie ardente. […] Debout, vous qui dormez! – car celui qui me suit, Car celui qui m’envoie en avant la première, C’est l’ange Liberté, c’est le géant Lumière!” (Poésie II 165)

One may here note the repetition of “je suis” in this poem. In Hugo’s poem, the star identifies itself as ardent poetry, an emissary of Liberty and Light. Like Hugo’s poem,

Rimbaud’s poem also incorporates the image of a veil; however, Rimbaud’s narrator, in pursuit of the goddess of the dawn, himself lifts the veils covering her one by one: “Alors je levai un à un les voiles” (276). Rather than ending his poem with the message of Light and Liberty as the sources inspiring ardent poetics, Rimbaud concludes with the image of the narrator wrapping up the dawn in these veils. The narrator thereby uncovers and then re-wraps the dawn.16 Rimbaud also merges the sacred with sexual desire in this poem.

16 Eigeldinger finds Hugolian tendencies in this poem of Rimbaud’s: “Le mouvement de la marche suscite le mouvement des trois règnes de la nature, perçus par le poète selon une vision animiste, à la manière de Victor Hugo” (145). Pensom studies the progression from Baudelaire to Rimbaud through their poems “Une Hémisphère dans une chevelure” and “L’Aube”: “[…] Deux textes exemplaires et qui ont été lus et 371

However, by pluralizing the narrator of the poem, this sexualization becomes more difficult to pinpoint: “Le Je du narrateur-auteur, après s’être comparé à un mendiant, s’identifie à l’enfant par un acte de dédoublement ou de métamorphose mythique, correspondant à un mouvement de chute et de division” (Eigeldinger 146). By inserting plurality into the narrative “je”, Rimbaud gives both the speaker and its account an abundance of possible significations. Both Rimbaud’s penchant for sexualization and the transition from Hugo’s repeated “je suis” to Rimbaud’s idea of “je est un autre” becomes visible in the comparison of these two poems.

Following Rimbaud’s commentary on Hugo in this letter, he presents Musset as the overly-imitated Romantic that not only should no longer be imitated (which Rimbaud expresses by describing everyone as imitating Musset’s poem “Rolla”) because such imitative “abominations” threaten to awaken him:17

Musset est quatorze fois exécrable pour nous, générations douloureuses et prises de visions, – que sa paresse d’ange a insultées! O! les contes et les proverbes fadasses! O les nuits! O Rolla, O Namouna, O la Coupe! Tout est français, c’est-à-dire haïssable au suprême degré; français, pas parisien! Encore une œuvre de cet odieux génie qui a inspiré Rabelais, Voltaire, Jean La Fontaine,! commenté par M. Taine! Printainier, l’esprit de Musset! Charmant, son amour! En voilà, de la peinture à l’émail, de la poésie solide! On savourera longtemps la poésie française, mais en France. Tout garçon épicier est en mesure de débobiner une apostrophe Rollaque, tout séminariste en porte les cinq cents rimes dans le secret d’un carnet. A quinze ans, ces élans de passion mettent les jeunes en rut; à seize ans, il se contente déjà de la réciter avec cœur; à dix-huit ans, à dix- sept même, tout collégien qui a le moyen, fait le Rolla, écrit un Rolla! Quelques-uns en meurent peut-être encore. Musset n’a rien su faire; il y avait des visions derrière la gaze des rideaux: il a fermé les yeux. Français, panadif, trainé de l’estaminet au pupitre de collège, le beau mort est mort, et, désormais, ne nous donnons même plus la peine de le réveiller par nos abominations! (100-01)

relus par les commentateurs nous donnent accès, chez Baudelaire, à un univers poétique où les formes strophes et la prose poétique évoluent en parallèle, et chez Rimbaud, à un processus créateur où celle-ci a entièrement remplacé celles-là” (15). 17 In “Rolla”, Musset also incorporates a talking flower as analogous to the young woman Marie in the poem who loses her innocence in prostitution: “Rolla, pâle et tremblant, referma la croisée./ Il Brisa sur sa tige un pauvre dahlia./ ‘J’aime, lui dit la fleur, et je meurs embrasée/ Des baisers du zéphir, qui me relèvera./ J’ai jeté loin de moi, quand je me suis parée,/ Les éléments impurs qui souillaient ma fraîcheur./ Il m’a baisée au front dans ma robe dorée;/ Tu peux m’épanouir, et me briser le cœur’” (24). 372

Musset, a young member of the “Cénacle” who refused to admire Hugo as the “maître”, mocked Hugo and his followers for their nightly walks in the towers of Notre-Dame.18

Rimbaud here discourages revivifying this hugophobe, who died in 1857, by imitating this poem. The first section of Musset’s lengthy poem “Rolla” presents a melancholic view of the present as devoid of Christ, as the poem’s first lines intimate: “Regrettez- vous le temps où le ciel sur la terre/ Marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux?” (1).

He goes on in this poem to incorporate the “Cénacle” that Musset attended, but he does so without the typical attitude of deference to Hugo:

Où donc est le Sauveur pour entr’ouvrir nos tombes? Où donc le vieux saint Paul haranguant les Romains, Suspendant tout un peuple à ses haillons divins? Où donc est le Cénacle? où donc les Catacombes? Avec qui marche donc l’auréole de feu? Sur quels pieds tombez-vous, parfums de Madeleine? Où donc vibre dans l’air une voix plus qu’humaine? Qui de nous, qui de nous va devenir un Dieu? (3)

While most of the other members of the Cénacle recognized Hugo as their divine leader,

Musset’s narrator here leaves this role open-ended. Rimbaud’s choice of Musset as the example of overly-imitated poor Romanticism may also serve as a warning against such a lack of reconnaissance for Hugo, one of the pre-“voyant” poets in Rimbaud’s book.

After praising the early signs of voyance in Gautier (the hugophile par excellence), Rimbaud points to Baudelaire (a poet who publicly maintained his reconnaissance for Hugo) as the new poetic “roi” and “Dieu”, after whom follow the

“voyants” of the Parnassian school, Mérat and Verlaine, in whose image Rimbaud aims to model himself:

18 Jeune notes this mockery in his study of Musset’s view of Hugo: “Déjà, il s’était moqué des excursions champêtres ou des ascensions aux tours de Notre-Dame, exercice préparatoire en vue des Orientales ou de Notre-Dame de Paris: ‘Monsieur Hugo va voir mourir Phoebus le blond’ (Mardoche, str.1). Ses disciples l’escortent – mais non pas Musset, pourtant invité. […] Ainsi à peine hugolien, Musset, selon l’expression de son père, qui s’en réjouissait, avait commencé à se ‘déhugotiser’” (256). 373

Les seconds romantiques sont très voyants: Th. Gautier, Lec. de Lisle, Th. de Banville. Mais inspecter l’invisible et entendre l’inouï étant autre chose que reprendre l’esprit des choses mortes, Baudelaire est le premier voyant, roi des poètes, un vrai Dieu. Encore a-t-il vécu dans un milieu trop artiste; et la forme si vantée en lui est mesquine – les inventions d’inconnu réclament des formes nouvelles. Rompue aux formes vieilles, parmi les innocents, A. Renaud, – a fait son Rolla, – L. Grandet, – a fait son Rolla; – les gaulois et les Musset, G. Lafenestre, Coran, Cl. Popelin, Coulary, L. Salles; les écoliers, Marc, Aicard, Theuriet; les morts et les imbéciles, Autran, Barbier, L. Pichat, Lemoyne, les Deschamps, les Desessarts; les journalistes, L. Cladel, Robert Luzarches, X. de Ricard; les fantaisistes, C. Mendès; les bohèmes; les femmes; les talents, Léon Dierx, Sully-Prudhomme, Coppée, – la nouvelle école, dite parnassienne, a deux voyants, Albert Mérat et Paul Verlaine, un vrai poète. – Voilà. – Ainsi je travaille à me rendre voyant. – (OC 101)

Rimbaud thus ends this letter with a tempered nod to Baudelaire. He calls Baudelaire the first “voyant”, the “roi”, and the “Dieu” of those to follow; however, he does find

Baudelaire’s formal innovation to be lacking.19 And yet, in response to Musset’s question “Qui de nous, qui de nous va devenir un Dieu?”, Rimbaud answers

“Baudelaire”. The poets who fail to sufficiently break with old molds are those who imitate Musset by making their own “Rolla”. Hugo’s own call for liberty can be heard echoing through Rimbaud here. And yet, Hugo’s stubbornness prevents him from being considered a full “voyant” in Rimbaud’s letters. The need for revolution continues in

Rimbaud’s time, but Hugo has become a member, not of the last generation, but of a generation long past (despite the fact that he is still living and publishing). In these letters, Rimbaud’s Hugo emerges as a partially “voyant” ancestor of “voyance” who did not push the limits of poetic vision far enough. Hugo’s name here stands for an innovative but stubborn poet stuck in a sort of French poetic Dark Ages that the young

19 Zimmerman comments upon Rimbaud’s remark concerning Baudelaire’s poetry: “Rimbaud, dans la ‘lettre du voyant,’ écrivait durement à propos de Baudelaire: ‘La forme si vantée en lui est mesquine.’ Pour le jeune casse-cou Baudelaire était resté trop fidèle aux formes établies. En effet, que ce soit au niveau des mètres, des rythmes, des rimes, ou des dispositions strophiques, on ne trouve chez Baudelaire rien de comparable aux Illuminations, aux ‘Djinns’ de Hugo ou à ‘Chanson d’automne’ de Verlaine. Ses préférences vont à l’alexandrin classique, au sonnet, redécouvert dans sa jeunesse avec la poésie de la Renaissance, et il ne s’arroge qu’un minimum de liberté dans la disposition de ses rimes. Bien plus, sa poésie abonde en procédés rhétoriques chers aux anciens comme aux romantiques” (205). 374

generation of poets must illuminate through voyance, following the example of

Baudelaire. His description of Verlaine as “un vrai poète” also calls to mind his earlier description of Les Misérables as “un vrai poème”. Rimbaud is here constructing a literary lineage that maps nicely to this study of Hugo’s name. We will see in the following chapter how Verlaine treats Hugo’s name as a part of the construction of his own. What’s more, Rimbaud places himself into the lineage of writers constituting this chain of developing voyance, including Hugo, Gautier, and Baudelaire, all of whom he praises at least partially. Each link in this chain of the literary family of which Rimbaud names himself a part (Hugo-Gautier-Baudelaire-Verlaine-Rimbaud) based their own literary projects on an interpretation of Hugo’s name.

IV. A Vieillard in Parody

“J’ai seul la clé de cette parade sauvage.” - Rimbaud, “Parade”

Just embarking upon his adventures as a writer in Paris, Rimbaud arrives in the capital in 1870 only to be arrested; Hugo, on the other hand, pulls into the same station five days later to public applause:

Two men in railway uniform asked him for his ticket. He was taken to one side and searched: a suspicious little figure with long hair and grubby but respectable clothes. He had an accent that might be foreign. His pockets proved to contain incomprehensible notes, written in lines of different length. The story that he was suspected of espionage may well be true. Reports were coming in all the time of attempted coups and political agitators returning from abroad. Five days after Rimbaud’s arrest, Victor Hugo arrived at the same station, but with a first-class ticket and a cheering crowd at the exit. Hugo and his republican supporters were believed to have formed an alliance with the Prussians. The ticketless boy, who came from a region that was now in enemy hands, might be part of an avant-garde. (Robb Rimbaud 46)

The contrast between the two figures becomes clear: Rimbaud is an unknown youth, while Hugo is an eminent and respected older figure. One possibly apocryphal account of an interaction between Rimbaud and Hugo involves the latter patting the former on the

375

head and calling him a “Shakespeare enfant”, which Rimbaud apparently mocked.20

Whether or not this actually occurred, Rimbaud would not become a faithful imitator of

Hugo. However, he would take up and modify certain of Hugo’s ideas concerning poetic liberty. Robb claims that Rimbaud better embodies Hugo’s statement about his own literary revolution than Hugo does:

Victor Hugo’s famous description of his linguistic revolution – ‘I declared all words free, equal and of age’ – matches Rimbaud’s poetry more closely than his own. Rimbaud was certainly aware of this, and it is significant that his best satirical poem appears to attack Victor Hugo. “L’Homme juste” is a sarcastic reversal of Hugo’s “Ce que dit la Bouche d’Ombre”: instead of the Mouth of Darkness appearing to Hugo, Victor Hugo appears to Rimbaud. This was Hugo the pontificating clown who, according to the anarchist press, had left the Commune in the lurch. (Rimbaud 93-94)

Rimbaud’s references in his poem “L’Homme juste” to the “front” of the “Vieillard” seem to point to Hugo as this old representative of pity and justice (110-11). The narrator clarifies the difference between himself and this “homme juste” as well:

Barbe de la famille et poing de la cité, Croyant très doux: ô cœur tombé dans les calices, Majestés et vertus, amour et cécité, Juste! plus bête et plus dégoûtant que les lices! Je suis celui qui souffre et qui s’est révolté! (110)

Thus, Rimbaud’s narrator distinguishes himself from the “homme juste”, asserting that he, the narrator, is the real revolutionary.21 Bianco also ties Rimbaud’s revolution to

Hugo’s without insisting on the antagonism some scholars find between the two: “Like

Du Bellay in 1549, and like Hugo in 1831, Rimbaud sees himself as announcing a new

20 Murphy recounts this event: “Il est vrai que l’on pourrait alléguer une remarque de Berrichon indiquant, dès 1896, que Rimbaud ‘rira des observations de Théodore de Banville, comme il a ri du “Shakespeare enfant” de Victor Hugo’” (“Logiques” 27). Robb finds this story less convincing: “The story that Victor Hugo patted him on the head and called him an ‘infant Shakespeare’ is apocryphal, though Rimbaud’s retort may well be genuine: ‘That old duffer gets up my nose.’ Verlaine was on cordial terms with the Hugos and could easily have taken Rimbaud to one of Hugo’s eclectic soirées” (139). 21 Robb writes of his reputation as a rebel: “Rimbaud is largely responsible for what we now think of as the rebel artist – ‘the poet of revolt, and the greatest of them all’, said Albert Camus” (Rimbaud xiii). 376

era, as representing a rising generation of poets that will someday spawn The Poet” (38).

Perhaps Hugo put this necessary and ongoing need for poetic revolution best:

Or, après tant de grandes choses que nos pères ont faites, et que nous avons vues, nous voilà sortis de la vieille forme sociale; comment ne sortirions-nous pas de la vieille forme poétique? A peuple nouveau, art nouveau. (Théâtre I 540)

Many studies exist that treat the possible presence of Hugo in Rimbaud’s poetry by locating certain shared images between the two poets.22 There are also many studies exploring Rimbaud’s imitation and pastiche with regard to Hugo. For example,

Dragacci-Paulsen calls “Le Forgeron” “misérabilienne” and notes how Rimbaud imitates

Hugo (without turning to pastiche) in this poem and in Une saison en enfer via the shared forçat figure.23 On the other hand, Corsetti finds that Rimbaud’s poem “Première Soirée” represents a simultaneous pastiche and inversion of Hugo’s poem “Elle était déchaussée, elle était décoiffée…”. By crossing the line of euphemism into sexual language,

Rimbaud’s poem makes Hugo’s suggestions more blatantly clear: “A l’effet euphémique de Hugo (déchaussée/ décoiffée), Rimbaud substitue une charge qui détourne l’effet vers l’ironie mais le maintient simultanément dans le champ clos de la métaphore à travers une subjectivisation (arbres indiscrets)” (Corsetti 22). Such methods of “détournement”

22 For instance, Amprimoz studies Rimbaud’s poem “Chanson de la plus haute tour” alongside Glatigny’s poem “Château Romantique”. Glatigny’s poem, dedicated to Banville and consisting of four quatrains of octosyllables, ends with a reference to 1830: “Dans les fosses pleins d’eau courante,/ Les crénaux se mirent joyeux;/ Le drapeau de mil huit cent trente/ Flotte librement dans les cieux” (212). Rimbaud’s poem includes a reference to Notre-Dame alongside an image of widowhood: “Ah! Mille veuvages/ De la si pauvre âme/ Qui n’a que l’image/ De la Notre-Dame!” (168). This inclusion of Notre-Dame in Rimbaud’s poem leads Amprimoz to juxtapose Hugo with Rimbaud through Glatigny. Claisse, on the other hand, finds a shared image in Hugo’s “Vingtième siècle” and in Rimbaud’s “Marine”. Claisse sees an extension of Hugo in this poem of Rimbaud’s: “Il suffit au poëte de Marine de deux verbes notant le dynamisme humain et pouvant simultanément s’appliquer au domaine terrestre et marin, pour que Rimbaud suggère ce que Hugo prophétise” (1029). 23 Dragacci-Paulsen writes, “Car déjà à cette date, Arthur dépose périodiquement sur le bureau d'Izambard justement, au Collège de Charleville, des ‘devoirs [faits] en dehors de la classe’, des poèmes, tel Le Forgeron, par exemple, qui reflètent sinon l'influence ‘misérabilienne’ de Victor Hugo, dont on retrouve la trace jusque dans la figure du forçat d'Une Saison en enfer, du moins une certaine affinité idéologique avec Les Misérables” (80). 377

and “renversement” become typical of Rimbaud’s poetic revolution and point towards some possible origins of his parade-like presentation of parody:

Comme nous l’avons vu à plusieurs reprises, les analogies entre le texte de Hugo et Première soirée ne font sens qu’à partir de l’instant où la parade rimbaldienne détourne l’enjeu poétique sur le terrain de la parodie, où elle en montre l’inefficacité et l’impossible perdurance dans le champ d’une écriture poétique telle que la Lettre du Voyant tente de la circonscrire. (Corsetti 24)

This attitude of irreverent pastiche is reflected in the practices of the Zutiques (or

Zutistes), a literary group in which Rimbaud was involved:

Les Zutistes, hormis Cabaner le musicien, rassemblaient surtout des poètes qui, sans dire non à la société, ni merde (comme le criait Rimbaud à tout venant), se réclamaient d’un zut tout aussi péremptoire. Les frères Cros, Verlaine, Blémont, Valade, parmi d’autres, formaient le gros d’une troupe que reliait un rituel d’impertinences: pratique du pastiche, détournement de textes en vogue, ironie s’en prenant aux plus graves des Parnassiens comme aux plus insipides […]. (Steinmetz xvi)

Parody, pastiche, and ironic reversals characterize a large amount of Rimbaud’s literary career. And it is often by imitating and revolutionizing Hugo’s poems—without explicitly mentioning Hugo’s name—that Rimbaud enacts the poetic revolution for which his name would come to stand.

However, not all of Rimbaud’s pastiches are parodies. For instance, Bianco sees

“Soleil et Chair” as a respectful imitation of Hugo24 and calls Rimbaud’s poem “Le

Chatiment de Tartuffe” “practically a rewrite of Hugo’s twenty-line ‘Fable ou histoire,’ in Book Three of Les Châtiments […]” (32). Reconnaissance and révolution emerge in

Rimbaud’s treatment of Hugo. While much of Rimbaud’s innovative writing can be interpreted as a détournement of Hugolian works, some of his works are seen as

24 Bianco writes, “More than that, the Rimbaud of ‘Soleil et Chair’ was imitating – admiringly, consciously, we are inclined to say, because he has captured exactly the Hugolian idiom and rhythms, and has not appended a single note of irony—the poet of astral contemplation; and his own originality (which Rimbaud’s admirers constantly insist upon) was not even a concern for Rimbaud while he was writing these lines, because he was writing an anthem to humanity, and to confound himself with the universal song was his ideal” (31). 378

homages. For Rimbaud, Hugo still seems to appear as a maître to be imitated, respected

(to a degree—this is, after all, the young, radical, Zutiste Rimbaud), and resisted.

V. Seeking more radical liberty: “Le Bateau ivre”

“Le monde marche! Pourquoi ne tournerait-il pas?” - Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer

There are many studies of shared images or aspects in the works of Hugo and

Rimbaud, some of which specifically pertain to the rapport between Hugo’s poetic pieces

“Pleine mer” and “Plein ciel”, first published in 1859, and Rimbaud’s 1871 poem “Le

Bateau ivre”.25 Through the manifest transgressions of “Le Bateau ivre”, Rimbaud plays out a revolution against Hugolian patterns and expresses his inheritance and reconfiguration of a Baudelairean understanding of “Hugo”.26

In his study of “Le Bateau ivre”, Murphy singles out three writers in particular that critics repeatedly point to as “sources” for or “influences” on Rimbaud’s poem:

Baudelaire (“Le Cygne” and “Le Voyage”), Verne (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers), and

Hugo (“Pleine mer” and “Plein ciel”). Murphy also notes the shared emphasis on progress—even though the types of progress differ—in these works:

Dans Le Bateau ivre une fin élégiaque rétrospective montre un sujet pris dans le deuil et la perte. Et quoi qu’il en soit, les principaux intertextes du poème – ceux de Hugo, Verne et Baudelaire – ont tous des enjeux idéologiques, un rapport positif ou négatif à l’idée même du Progrès, scientifique, moral ou révolutionnaire. (“Logiques” 76)

Murphy emphasizes loss and mourning in Rimbaud’s poem to link “Le Bateau ivre” with

Baudelaire’s poetry dedicated to Hugo. By treating the problem of progress, Rimbaud aligns this possible adaptation of Hugo’s poetry with a flaw that Baudelaire emphasized

25 Some point to other Hugo poems as having inspired “Le Bateau ivre”. Porter, for example, claims it is Hugo’s poem “Magnitudo parvi”: “Rimbaud’s visionary poems such as ‘Barbare’ or ‘Le Bâteau [sic] ivre’ were directly inspired by such passages in Hugo” (Porter VH 100). 26 Lawler introduces his book with a study of this poem’s boat as transgressive: “By way of initial commitment and single-minded pursuit, he has played out the scenario of transgression” (9). 379

in his projection of “Hugo”. Rimbaud’s poem may be read as a corrective re-formulation of Hugo’s work based on Baudelaire’s critique.

While Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau ivre” neither mentions Hugo by name nor presents him as the dedicatee, it does include the image of Leviathan, which appears in and connects Hugo’s “Pleine mer” and “Plein ciel”.27 These two pieces compose “Vingtième siècle”, the penultimate poem of the 1859 publication of La Légende des siècles.

Baudelaire deems this work a collection of modern epic poetry, the only one possible at the time.28 As the title “Vingtième siècle” suggests, Hugo projects a certain vision of how the future could progress through these two pieces.29 In “Pleine mer”, there is a steamship named “Léviathan” that Hugo describes as a colossal, hideous cadaver floating in the sea. Hugo names this ship “Léviathan” in capitalized letters: “Une lueur, qui tremble au souffle de l’autan,/ Blême, éclaire à demi ce mot: LÉVIATHAN” (Poésie II

806).30 Hugo’s ship embodies the old world: “Léviathan; c’est là tout le vieux monde,/

Apre et démesuré dans sa fauve laideur;/ Léviathan, c’est là tout le passé: grandeur/

Horreur” (Poésie II 806). The past embodied by this ship is described as a time when brothers are enemies (“en ces temps de frères ennemis” (Poésie II 808)) and when all unities are threatened:

27 Leviathan is a monster of the sea referenced in the Old Testament: “In that day the LORD will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, with his fierce and great and mighty sword, even Leviathan the twisted serpent; and He will kill the dragon who lives in the sea” (Isaiah 27:1). Hobbes’ well-known 1651 work is also entitled Leviathan. 28 In his 1861 essay “Victor Hugo”, Baudelaire writes, “Or, pour en revenir à La Légende des siècles, Victor Hugo a créé le seul poème épique qui pût être créé par un homme de son temps pour des lecteurs de son temps” (EL 330). He goes on to call this poem a “poème épique moderne” (EL 330). 29 Gifford calls this particular poem “the climax of the Légende des siècles” and outlines the futuristic progression between the two pieces of this poem: “The poem Vingtième Siècle (Pleine Mer – Plein Ciel) forms the climax of the Légende des siècles, and presents in mythical form a picture of man’s ascent through science, out of a state of ignorance, slavery and hatred, into one of enlightenment, freedom and brotherly love. Hugo typifies the idyllic future by an air-ship, (Plein Ciel), the somber past and present by the colossal steamship ‘Léviathan’ (Pleine Mer)” (1193). 30 Hugo also includes a Leviathan in Les Misérables, where he describes the Paris sewers as the intestines of the Leviathan (Roman II 991). 380

Le mal l’avait marquée de son funèbre sceau. Ce monde, enveloppé d’une brume éternelle, Était fatal; l’Espoir avait plié son aile; Pas d’unité; divorce et joug; diversité De langue, de raison, de code, de cité; Nul lien, nul faisceau; le progrès solitaire, Comme un serpent coupé, se tordait sur la terre, Sans pouvoir réunir les tronçons de l’effort […]. (Poésie II 809) 31

Progress here becomes a solitary and futile pursuit because of the lack of unity decried by the poem’s narrator. The final stanza of this poem envisions and recounts the death of this old world of disunity and calls upon the reader to look upwards to find the new world:

Ce monde est mort. Mais quoi! l’homme est-il mort aussi? […] Pas un esquif vivant sur l’onde où la mouette Voit du Léviathan rôder la silhouette. Est-ce que l’homme, ainsi qu’un feuillage jauni, S’en est allé dans l’ombre? est-ce que c’est fini? Seul le flux et reflux va, vient, passe et repasse. Et l’œil, pour retrouver l’homme absent de l’espace, Regarde en vain là-bas. Rien. Regardez là-haut. (Poésie II 810)

The final image of the Leviathan here is no more than a roaming shadow of the old world that is now dead and deserted. The personification of this ship begins and ends with cadaveresque depictions. Rather than a living being, the Leviathan represents a formerly living thing. In this final stanza, vision becomes central, as Hugo’s narrator claims that nothing will be seen below. In comparison to Rimbaud’s voyance, Hugo’s sights are set

31 There is a shared image, albeit with different repercussions, between Hugo’s cut serpent symbolizing division and Baudelaire’s description of Le Spleen de Paris as a serpent able to be cut into pieces and stand on their own. Baudelaire writes the following in his letter to Houssaye that serves as the collection’s preface: “Nous pouvons couper où nous voulons, moi ma rêverie, vous le manuscrit, le lecteur sa lecture; car je ne suspends pas la volonté rétive de celui-ci au fil interminable d’une intrigue superflue. Enlevez une vertèbre, et les deux morceaux de cette tortueuse fantaisie se rejoindront sans peine. Hachez-la en nombreux fragments, et vous verrez que chacun peut exister à part. Dans l’espérance que quelques-uns de ces tronçons seront assez vivants pour vous plaire et vous amuser, j’ose vous dédier le serpent tout entier” (SP 59-60). This work of Baudelaire’s was first published posthumously, in 1869, a decade following the first publication of La Légende des siècles. 381

on the external world rather than the interior of the poet. Moreover, Hugo’s narrator points not just out but up, to the skies or the heavens.

“Plein ciel”, the second piece of this poem, begins immediately following this command to look up. In the realm above there is a flying ship that serves as the living, unified, and optimistic counterpart to the Leviathan. When describing this ship, Hugo emphasizes its novelty by underscoring its initial unnamed status: “Ce n’est pas un morceau d’une cime […]. Ni rien de ce qu’en songe ou dans la fièvre on nomme./ Qu’est- ce que ce navire impossible? C’est l’homme./ C’est la grande révolte obéissante à Dieu!”

(Poésie II 811). In this introductory naming event of the flying ship that replaces the

Leviathan of old, the narrator equates “l’homme” with the great revolt that obeys God.

This flying ship thereby stands for a unified humanity progressing hand-in-hand in a divine revolution. The future of humanity becomes a sacerdotal mission by continuing this revolution for God. The narrator goes on to give the boat a proper, capitalized name:

“Char merveilleux! son nom est Délivrance” (Poésie II 811). Humanity’s familiarity with this ship leads the narrator to wonder whether the ship has carried humanity far enough beyond its former self to warrant a renaming of the human race as well:

Ô profondeurs! faut-il encor l'appeler l'homme? L'homme est d'abord monté sur la bête de somme; Puis sur le chariot que portent des essieux; Puis sur la frêle barque au mât ambitieux; Puis, quand il a fallu vaincre l'écueil, la lame, L'onde et l'ouragan, l'homme est monté sur la flamme; A présent l'immortel aspire à l'éternel; Il montait sur la mer, il monte sur le ciel. (Poésie II 816)

After envisioning the immortality and eternity of this new humanity, one that would so revolutionize past meanings of “humanity” that humanity would require a new name, the

382

narrator calls himself and his reader back down to less lofty, more immediate goals and encourages the simpler aim of improvement:

Pas si loin! Pas si haut! redescendons. Restons L’homme, restons Adam; mais non l’homme à tâtons, Mais non l’Adam tombé! Tout autre rêve altère L’espèce d’idéal qui convient à la terre. Contentons-nous du mot: meilleur! écrit partout. (Poésie II 817)

This struggle with the name of mankind accompanies the narrator’s views of the changing identity of humanity. The narrator’s decision that “L’homme” should retain both this name and that of “Adam” comes on the condition that humanity constantly strive to improve the significance, import, and value of this name by bettering itself. Like

Jean Valjean, humanity will shed its prisoner’s clothing to become a different version of itself:

Tout s’envola dans l’homme, et les fureurs, les haines, Les chimères, la force évanouie enfin, L’ignorance et l’erreur, la misère et la faim, […] Tombèrent dans la poudre avec l’antique sort, Comme le vêtement du bagne dont on sort. (Poésie II 818)

Humanity may keep its name after freeing itself from its old misguided ways, but it must revolutionize the significance of that name.

The unification necessary for this utopian vision extends not only to nations but also to liberty and light in the final stanzas of Hugo’s poem:

Nef magique et suprême! elle a, rien qu’en marchant, Changé le cri terrestre en pur et joyeux chant, Rajeuni les races flétries, Etabli l’ordre vrai, montré le chemin sûr, Dieu juste! et fait entrer dans l’homme tant d’azur Qu’elle a supprimé les patries!

Faisant à l'homme avec le ciel une cité, Une pensée avec toute l'immensité, Elle abolit les vieilles règles, Elle abaisse les monts, elle annule les tours; Splendide, elle introduit les peuples, marcheurs lourds,

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Dans la communion des aigles.

Elle a cette divine et chaste fonction De composer là-haut l'unique nation, A la fois dernière et première, De promener l'essor dans le rayonnement, Et de faire planer, ivre de firmament, La liberté dans la lumière. (Poésie II 822)

This abolition of the old rules recalls the earlier mention of revolution in this poem

(“C’est la grande révolte obéissante à Dieu!”). Such revolutions are made possible by the unity of this new humanity. While still under God, this race of people represented by a flying ship revolutionizes its own identity, mission, and capabilities. As humanity revolutionizes its own image, it must also revolutionize that of its God.32 If the significance of humanity’s name is to change, so must that of God. In the last lines of this poem, Hugo’s ship becomes drunk from the sky and infuses liberty with light. The combination of liberty with light ties this poem’s ending to the ending of “Stella”, a poem that Rimbaud compliments in his second “lettre du voyant”. “Stella” also ends with a conflation of these two forces within a star that represents poetry’s capacity to rebuild worlds after their destruction: “C’est l’ange Liberté, c’est le géant Lumière!” (Poésie II

165). The elated drunkenness of Hugo’s ship at the close of this utopian view of the 20th

Century serves as another link between his ship and Rimbaud’s famously drunken boat.

Rimbaud’s poem “Le Bateau ivre” presents a ship (that does not identify itself as such from the poem’s outset) that recounts its voyage in the first person, emphasizing its desire to be free from being steered by others. The “je” of the poem only eventually reveals itself as other than what one may have initially assumed; in other words, where a

32 This idea of humanity as being made in the image of God comes early in the Old Testament: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). 384

castaway might be expected, Rimbaud instead gives voice to the ship.33 Like a poet breaking with an old mold, a ship embarking on a fully-liberated voyage, free from the control of “haleurs” pulling it in a certain direction, can better encounter the unknown:

“La tempête a béni mes éveils maritimes/ Plus léger qu’un bouchon j’ai dansé sur les flots/ Qu’on appelle rouleurs éternels de victimes,/ Dix nuits, sans regretter l’oeil niais de falots!” (130). Lawler’s commentary on these lines asserts the manifest affinity between

Rimbaud and Hugo:

Rimbaud takes his readings unto himself. Thus, in the fourth stanza, ‘les flots/ Qu’on appelle rouleurs éternels de victimes’ […] is an allusion to Hugo’s ‘Oceano nox’ (“Vous roulez à travers les sombres étendues”) and undoubtedly intended to be heard as such. The reference is plain, yet subsumed in the prosodic and semantic continuum like the necessary component of another pattern. […] We have become sensitive to the intertextual nature of all literature and, especially, to that typically anxious modernistic ambition to consume rather than echo the texts of the past. Rimbaud’s poem is not a patchwork of quotations but a coherent whole that encompasses a vast lexicon of words and figures. In the lines above, the sonorous Hugolian tone contrasts with the lightness of the dance, pathos with joy. Hugo becomes a means and not an end: the quatrain uses the allusion as allusion, but does not imitate it. (12)

In this poem, one finds an allusion to Hugo not just in the shared reference to the

Leviathan, but also in the imitative style that, as Lawler argues, sucks Rimbaud’s poem under, just as the dropping waves pull down the bobbing cork of the boat within this poem. While this ship attempts to free itself from all guiding forces, Rimbaud’s poem similarly strives to free itself from Hugolian destinations.

33 According to one anecdotal account, Rimbaud’s choice to refrain from explicitly presenting his ship as a ship in the beginning of his poem serves as the basis for a disagreement between him and his early maître, Banville, leading Rimbaud to adopt one of Baudelaire’s less respectful terms for Hugo and apply it to Banville: “L’ex-Delahuppe (il a désormais 77 ans) n’a quand même pas toujours livré exactement le même récit, gratifiant le colonel Godchot de cette information-hapax dans une lettre du 1 novembre 1930: “Verlaine me racontait que quand Rimbaud lut son poème à Banville, celui-ci objecta qu’il aurait été bon de dire, en commençant: ‘Je suis un bateau qui…etc.’. Le jeune sauvage ne répondit rien, mais en sortant, il haussa les épaules et grommela: ‘Vieux Con!…’” (Murphy “Logiques” 27). 385

Further evidence of the literary lineage traced in Rimbaud’s letters can be found through a study juxtaposing his poetry with that of Hugo and Baudelaire.34 After Hugo’s

“Oceano Nox” and Baudelaire’s “Le Cygne” and “Le Voyage”, Rimbaud advances his own work as a further step on the path toward voyance and freedom from old forms.

“Oceano Nox” includes a description of the nameless sailors who lose their lives—and soon their names as well—through shipwreck and the loss of people to remember them:

Maint joyeux cercle, assis sur des ancres rouillées, Mêle encore quelque temps vos noms d’ombre couverts Aux rires, aux refrains, aux récits d’aventures, Aux baisers qu’on dérobe à vos belles futures, Tandis que vous dormez dans les goémons verts! (Poésie I 1035)

This poem goes on to mentions the loss of names two more times.35 The thematic of naming also appears in Baudelaire’s poem “Le Voyage”; however, rather than presenting an anxiety about the preservation of names, Baudelaire’s poem seeks novelties so unfamiliar that they have no names: “Ceux-là dont les désirs ont la forme des nues,/ Et qui rêvent, ainsi qu’un conscrit le canon,/ De vastes voluptés, changeantes, inconnues,/ Et dont l’esprit humain n’a jamais su le nom!” (FM 187). While Hugo’s narrator mourns

34 Cargo studies Baudelaire’s “Le Cygne” and “Le Voyage” alongside Hugo’s “Oceano Nox”, while recounting Baudelaire’s trips to Calcutta (in 1841) and Honfleur (in 1858): “These events, as we have seen, took place during the year prior to the appearance of Le Cygne. They serve to indicate that the poet must have relived vicariously the experience of 1841 and those experiences had made a profound impression on him. A few months later, Baudelaire was writing Le Cygne, which he dedicated to Hugo, then in exile on the channel islands, to Hugo who, since 1852, had been a part of these ‘captifs’ and ‘vaincus’ evoked by Baudelaire in the last line. Baudelaire could hardly have escaped remembering his own sea voyage and island experiences—and recalling how he, like Hugo’s sailors in Oceano Nox, might have been cast down to the depths of the sea to oblivion” (284-85). 35 The two other references to loss of names follow: “Le corps se perd dans l’eau, le nom dans la mémoire”; “Et quand la tombe enfin a fermé leur paupière,/ Rien ne sait plus vos noms, pas même une humble pierre/ Dans l’étroit cimetière où l’écho nous répond” (Poésie I 1035). Porter comments upon the loss of the sailors’ name in “Oceano Nox”: “Throughout ‘Oceano Nox,’ everything associatied with the drowned sailors becomes more unsubstantial. They will have no gravestone, no memorial. They are present first as dead bodies, next as dreams, then as names, and finally only as the unintelligible murmur of the waves. […] The sailors’ disappearance from living memory is a second death. But the poem concludes with a startling intuition of a world-soul that preserves the identities of human individuals elsewhere forgotten” (VH 62). This thought modifies the Lacanian “l’entre-deux-morts” by making these deaths that of the mortal being and that of the name. 386

the lives lost from ships that stray too far or too dangerously, Baudelaire’s narrator yearns to break free into the ocean and experience such adventures into the unknown, even if this novelty comes in death, as seen in the last lines of “Le Voyage” (and therefore of Les

Fleurs du Mal).36 Studying these poems before turning to “Le Bateau ivre”, exposes how

Rimbaud’s narrator-boat exhibits a certain willful ignorance of Hugolian warnings of the dangers of shipwreck and the losses of identity and of means of survival via memory that accompany it. It also displays Rimbaud’s determination to follow and extend

Baudelaire’s path seeking the novel, even at the price of death. Rimbaud’s progress communicated in “Le Bateau ivre” differs from the progress in Hugo’s “Vingtième siècle” because it is a solitary pursuit that disregards the lessons and paths of seemingly less adventurous guides. Rimbaud’s boat is also more solitary than Baudelaire’s voyagers, as they take the plural form in “Le Voyage”.37 After Hugo’s unification of all of humanity is reduced to Baudelaire’s unification of a voyaging “nous” seeking novelty,

Rimbaud’s boat actively seeks solitude and thereby strives to become the most isolated narrator.

Having acquired its autonomy, Rimbaud’s boat equates the sea with poetry and fills it with stars: “Et dès lors, je me suis baigné dans le Poème/ De la Mer, infusé d’astres, et lactescent,/ Dévorant les azurs verts;/ où, flottaison blême/ Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend” (130). Rimbaud’s sea is here infused with stars, in a renversement of the sky-sea of Hugo’s “Plein ciel”. While Hugo’s poem exalts the sea

36 These earlier-cited lines go as follows: “Verse-nous ton poison pour qu’il nous réconforte!/ Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brûle le cerveau,/ Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu’importe?/ Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!” (FM 192). 37 The penultimate stanza of “Le Voyage” shows the continued first person plural that Baudelaire’s narrator employs throughout this poem to speak on behalf of voyagers: “Ô mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l’ancre!/ Ce pays nous ennuie, ô Mort! Appareillons!/ Si le ciel et la mort sont noirs comme de l’encre,/ Nos cœurs que tu connais sont remplis de rayons!” (FM 192). 387

into the sky, Rimbaud’s poem draws the stars down into the sea. This boat also describes the experience of a certain level of voyance: “Et j’ai vu quelque fois ce que l’homme a cru voir!” (131). In one such vision, Rimbaud’s drunken boat mentions a Leviathan:

“J’ai vu fermenter les marais énormes, nasses/ Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un

Léviathan!/ Des écroulements d’eau au milieu des bonaces/ Et les lointains vers les gouffres cataractant!” (131).38 While the Leviathan in this poem is not expressly deemed a ship and therefore could be a sea monster, the shared name here offers ground for comparison of these homonymous boats. Moreover, in his 1862 article on Hugo in Les

Œuvres et les Hommes, Barbey d’Aurevilly refers to Hugo as a poet who thinks of himself as a Leviathan:

Le talent de M. Hugo, auquel la concentration est inconnue, a toujours eu besoin de place pour se mouvoir, et c’est même une des raisons de M. Hugo pour se croire un Léviathan poétique, mais aujourd’hui la difformité de ce talent, disproportionné même à ce qu’il fut, dévore infiniment plus de place que nous n’en avons à lui donner. Si philanthropiques qu’ils puissent être, les livres de la Critique ne sont pas bâtis pour offrir l’hospitalité complète d’une maladrerie aux talents littéraires affectés d’éléphantiasis. (7-8)

It is impossible to confirm that Rimbaud knew of this article by Barbey d’Aurevilly.

Nevertheless, Rimbaud’s Leviathan still resonates with this vision of a poetic world dominated by Hugo. Rimbaud’s Leviathan is similar to Hugo’s cadaveresque Leviathan in that it is rotting; however, Rimbaud’s personification of a drunken boat bears witness to the ruin and decomposition of the Leviathan before carrying on with its unbridled, unguided voyage of novelty. The final stanzas of this poem differ greatly from Hugo’s ending to “Vingtième siècle” as they do not offer a utopian vision of future possibilities:

38 One may here recall the final passage of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which novella Baudelaire translated: “Hereupon Nu-Nu stirred in the bottom of the boat; but upon touching him we found his spirit departed. And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow” (1179). 388

Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré! Les Aubes sont navrantes. Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer: L’âcre amour m’a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes. Ô que ma quille éclate! Ô que j'aille à la mer!

Si je désire une eau d’Europe, c’est la flache Noire et froide où vers le crépuscule embaumé Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses, lâche Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai.

Je ne puis plus, baigné de vos langueurs, ô lames, Enlever leur sillage aux porteurs de cotons, Ni travers l’orgueil des drapeaux et des flammes, Ni nager sous les yeux horribles des pontons. (133)

While Hugo’s poem envisions a time beyond nations, Rimbaud’s poem ends on a note of desperation due to its confrontation with commercial invaders of the sea and prideful flags. The narrative voice can no longer support swimming under the “yeux horribles” of the pontoons. Although able to gain its independence, Rimbaud’s boat cannot escape the company it encounters in the sea and expresses a suicidal wish for its keel to splinter.39

Instead of a Hugolian utopian vision or a Baudelairean death wish for the sake of novelty,

Rimbaud’s boat ends in a despondency unaccompanied by visions of a future.

Murphy interprets the pontoons of this final line as an allusion to the boats for the deportees following the Paris Commune (“Logiques” 60). On this understanding,

Rimbaud’s pontoons also evoke the resulting torture and exile for the deported people.40

Uncertainty surrounds the exact dates of Rimbaud’s presence in Paris and his

39 Steinmetz comments upon the suicidal tendency of the ship: “Rimbaud agence certaines mises en scène émotionnelles qui, certes, pourrait confiner au suicide. Ainsi l’eau qui, océanique, entraînait Le Bateau ivre, de nouveau il souhaite s’y plonger, moins pour une purification que pour une dissolution” (xix). One may also note Rimbaud’s capitalization of “Aubes” in this poem, which may encourage connections with his other poem “Aube”, which was earlier noted as sharing Hugolian thematics. 40 In his chapter entitled “The trials of the Communards”, Lissigaray comments upon the pontoons: “Twenty-five pontoons took in 20,000, the forts and isles 8,087. On the pontoons tortures were inflicted by regulation. The traditions of June and of December were religiously observed with the victims of 1871. The prisoners, penned in cages made of wooden planks and iron bars, received only a dim light through the nailed down port-holes. Ventilation there was none” (239). Rimbaud and Lissigaray knew one another in London in 1872 as well (Steinmetz xxi). 389

involvement with the Paris Commune.41 While Hugo was in Brussels during the majority of the Commune, he made amnesty for the Communards his final political mission.42

The political upheavals in the background of this period offer another means of interpreting the revolutionary notes in these poems. Hugo’s Leviathan represents the old world that “Plein ciel” leaves behind. Rimbaud’s Leviathan remains part of the world in which his bateau ivre still finds itself at the poem’s end. The pessimism and disgust of

Rimbaud’s boat leads to no optimistic alternative. Instead, Rimbaud’s boat remains in the waters of the putrefying Leviathan. While commenting upon an interpretation of this poem as a memorial for the Commune, Murphy compares “Le Bateau ivre” with both

Hugo’s “Le Vingtième Siècle” and Baudelaire’s “Le Cygne”. This allows for a reading of Rimbaud’s poem in the light of Hugo’s name and presence through Baudelaire:

L’expérience de la Commune ne débouche donc pas sur le pourrissement définitif de tous les Léviathans (le nom faisant à la fois allusion à la Bible, au livre de ce nom de Hobbes et à Pleine mer de Hugo), ni sur la libération que ce dernier espérait, sous la forme de la conquête symbolique du ciel (Plein Ciel). Ce n’est pas ici le poème de l’amertume, de la colère, de l’invective – ces émotions trouveront expression ailleurs dans les poèmes de l’époque – mais celui des ‘tristesses’, de la mélancolie. Une mélancolie contre l’oubli. Car, de même que Le Cygne de Baudelaire célébrait le refus de Hugo de cautionner

41 See Fowlie, 517. 42 Porter recapitulates this period of Hugo’s life: “Hugo returned to Paris, where his son Charles promptly died. The funeral occurred on 18 March, the same day the revolutionary Paris Commune began. It was more a patriotic than a Communist movement, although it defended the rights of workers. The Communards did not want to surrender to Prussia. Thiers’s army attacked the city. Similar movements in other French cities quickly collapsed. Deploring the violence on both sides, Hugo took the opportunity to go to Belgium to settle his son’s estate, and he remained there. Meanwhile both sides committed atrocities. The Communards executed three Versaillais (Theirs’s forces) for every Fédéré (Communard) who was killed; they also executed many clerics, including the archbishop of Paris. When General MacMahon’s troops forced their way into Paris on 21 May, a week of bloody reprisals followed; more people were summarily executed than during the entire Reign of Terror; children and pregnant women went before the firing squads. In an open letter to L’Indépendence belge of 27 May, Hugo offered asylum to any refugee from the Commune. But the Catholics had recently come to power in Belgium; the refugees were no longer accepted. That evening a mob (including the son of the minister of the interior) stoned Hugo’s house for two hours without police intervention. Hugo was soon expelled from the country and went to Luxembourg. He returned to Paris to fight for amnesty and for the abolition of the death penalty but failed to be elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1872. Some detractors considered him ‘the quasi-official candidate of the Commune’ (Le Français, 4 January 1872). For a year, he withdrew to Guernsey, the Channel island where he had spent his exile. His efforts to win amnesty for the Communards would fail until 1880” (VH 82-83). 390

l’amnistie décrétée par ‘Badinguet’, et en même temps se vouait à la mémoire des exilés et des vaincus (ceux de décembre, ceux aussi sans doute de juin, oubliés par Hugo qui se faisait une piètre opinion du prolétariat depuis les émeutes), Rimbaud tenait à faire du Bateau ivre un mémorial, par un devoir de mémoire d’autant plus prenant que le gouvernement de Versailles tentait d’occulter tout souvenir de ce qu’il venait d’accomplir, entreprise secondée par les bataillons serrés des poètes: ceux qui, comme Gautier ou Mendès, y consacraient des livres, ceux aussi qui, comme Leconte de Lisle, se contentaient de pousser un grand soupir de soulagement en constatant l’énormité de la répression. Il s’agit donc bien, comme l’a affirmé Claude Zissmann, d’un ‘tombeau chiffré de la Commune’; à travers lui, Rimbaud se situe du côté des barricades où les poètes étaient peu nombreux, même si les rangs parnassiens abritaient un group assez clairsemé de communards. Et en premier lieu Verlaine, auquel on doit la survie du poème. (“Logiques” 70)

If one accepts a political reading of Rimbaud’s poem, both “Le Cygne” and “Le Bateau ivre” incorporate tributes to exiles. Murphy’s accentuation of the melancholy in

Rimbaud points to a transitioning political repression over time. While Baudelaire’s poem is dedicated to a Hugo who refuses to return to France despite Napoleon III’s offer for amnesty, Rimbaud’s poem makes mention of a decrepit, rotting ship that earlier appears in Hugo’s poetry only to find that this ship is still rotting and that his drunken ship is still witnessing political wrongdoings that have not been corrected or avoided by a utopian societal restructuring. In Rimbaud’s poem, one does not find the dream of

Hugo’s utopia. Instead, there is an ever-rotting vestige of the inescapable and corrupt order. One may see the Paris Commune as an attempt at Hugo’s “Plein ciel” world of unity; nevertheless, Rimbaud sees this Commune brutally repressed and replaced by continuing decay of the old order. Rimbaud therefore sees the failure of an idealistic project reminiscent of a Hugolian dream of revolution.

Rimbaud’s Hugo is an older man who counts among the first of the pre- or nearly-

“voyants” who do not know they are “voyant”. Rimbaud sees the seeds of his own theory in Hugo come to greater fruition in Baudelaire, which leads some modern scholars

391

to place Rimbaud in the “École Baudelairienne”.43 Nevertheless, according to Rimbaud’s letters, this Baudelairean school finds a predecessor in Hugo. With the passage of time,

Hugo becomes increasingly classified and stabilized as belonging to a certain literary school and moment—in the past. Rimbaud resists this to a degree by deeming Hugo partially “voyant”, but he still locates the still-living Hugo as belonging to a past group, the “premiers romantiques”. He is a forefather who is also sometimes overly

“cabochard”.44 Nevertheless, when Rimbaud’s boat attempts to sail its own path free from the control of others, it is telling that his boat still encounters a figure from Hugo’s poetry while enjoying its independence and hunt for novelty. By ending this poem on a note of suicidal hopelessness, Rimbaud’s narrator offers no alternative to this incessant putrescence and inability to become fully solitary. Because it seems impossible to avoid following the same paths of others and making his own “Rolla”, Rimbaud’s boat wishes for death. Instead of an optimistic death like Baudelaire’s, this is a death of disheartenment that proposes no plan for a better future. Placed into the chain of voyance as following an idealistic, fraternity-bolstering Hugo and an ennui-fleeing

Baudelaire who calls for fraternity in the face of eternal decrepitude, Rimbaud here

43 Murphy analyzes Rimbaud’s status as a follower of Baudelaire: “Cette nouvelle poétique, avec sa dose stratégique d’implications, donne à Rimbaud une place dans cette ‘École Baudelairienne’ dont le proviseur bien involontaire a reconnu avec stupéfaction l’existence, ressentant non pas cette angoisse de subir l’influence explorée par Harold Bloom, mais l’angoisse d’exercer une influence que l’on ne peut maîtriser, les cancres et potaches de l’institution en question s’obstinant à être ‘baudelairiens’ de manières nouvelles et déviantes. En 1871, ce bond en avant de la poésie était indissociable de la modernité poétique – de la modernité de la poétique – de Baudelaire. […] Dans ce second cas de figure, il pourra accéder à une expérience de l’interprétation toujours renouvelable mais qui s’approfondira, la lecture supposant une relecture potentiellement interminable” (“Logiques” 84). 44 Corsetti ties this judgment of Rimbaud’s to the political atmosphere of 1871: “Ce jugement mi-laudatif mi-badin n’est lisible que si l’on reconnaît là les ersatzs d’un engagement idéologique lié à la Commune, succédanés que renforce le mythe hugolien du poète en exil luttant contre le second Empire. Des ‘faces de lumière pure’ à ‘l’ange de la liberté’, Hugo consigne une quête où se conjuguent l’émancipation universelle de l’homme et son retour à la lumière d’un verbe sacré. Rimbaud admire l’auteur des Mages et puise dans une partie de son œuvre les germes de la Voyance. Par ailleurs, il ne se prive guère de taquiner le ‘cabochard’, celui qui se laisse parfois prendre au piège de la mièvrerie ou aux facéties de l’art pour l’art, de l’emphase” (18). 392

emerges as a poet of solitude and disenchantment.45 By incorporating a Leviathan into his poem of voyage, Rimbaud distinguishes himself from a Hugo seen through

Baudelaire by refusing to offer a solution to the decrepitude of the old order.

And yet, Rimbaud’s poem is highly innovative. In his well-known comparison of

“Le Bateau ivre” with Verne’s ship Nautilus in Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, Barthes ends with an emphasis on Rimbaud’s originality:

Dans cette mythologie de la navigation, il n’y a qu’un moyen d’exorciser la nature possessive de l’homme sur le navire, c’est de supprimer l’homme et de laisser le navire seul; alors le bateau cesse d’être boîte, habitat, objet possédé; il devient œil voyageur, frôleur d’infinis; il produit sans cesse des départs. L’objet véritablement contraire au Nautilus de Verne, c’est le Bateau ivre de Rimbaud, le bateau qui dit “je” et, libéré de sa concavité, peut faire passer l’homme d’une psychanalyse de la caverne à une poétique véritable de l’exploration. (77)

It is by making his boat “voyant”, by continuing in the lineage that he created from Hugo to Baudelaire to himself, that Rimbaud does in fact steer this poem away from the guides of the old mold and into unknown waters. So, paradoxically, it is by following in one’s literary lineage that one may innovate. Hugo emerges in this study as an ancestor who partly inspires Rimbaud’s project of “voyance” but who must also be seen as a

45 I am here referring to a stanza earlier studied from Baudelaire’s poem “Les Sept Vieillards”: “Que celui- là qui rit de mon inquiétude/ Et qui n’est pas saisi d’un frisson fraternel/ Songe bien que malgré tant de décrépitude/ Ces sept monstres hideux avaient l’air éternel!” (FM 140). Chambers writes of Rimbaud’s disenchantment and reenchantment of the unknown, in reference to his other works: “Rimbaud is defining the invention of unknownness as a function of a known that cannot be fully and incontrovertibly left behind, let alone transformed, and requiring what is unknown, therefore, to be an object of suggestion and imagination only, more than a mere object of wish-fulfillment, but less than fully attainable. […] The poetry that must invent unknownness for lack of direct access to the unknown. This would be a poetry of preterition, the language-thinning device that consists, like the servant’s remarkable breasts, of going out in front (Latin praeter-ire), i.e. moving ahead in such a way that the ultimate topic of the poem, assuming it to be ‘the’ unknown, is only indirectly conveyed by its omission […]” (30-31). He ends this article with a remark on the importance of multiplicity in Rimbaud’s poetry and letters: “And that is doubtless why the satisfactions of poetry in the era of modernity, great as they are, are subject—as my essay will have suggested—to a law of iterativity: climaxes like ‘E il naufrager m’è dolce in questo mare’ or the final couple of ‘Je n’ai pas oublié…’ cannot put an end to the pursuit of reenchantment, which has to be continually reinvented. And perhaps that is the secret intimation of the plurals in the final sentence of the Demeny letter: ‘Les inventions d’inconnu réclament des formes nouvelles’?” (33). 393

representative of the past against whom or following whom the young generation of poets must work in order to innovate.

VI. De profundis: Une saison en enfer

“Si stupide que soit son existence, l’homme s’y rattache toujours.” - Rimbaud, Correspondance

Another of Rimbaud’s works serves as a simultaneous continuation and renversement of a Hugolian revolution. “Mauvais sang”, the second section of his Une saison en enfer (first published in 1873) includes the narrator’s explanation of his ancestry, his exploration of language, and his thoughts on revolution.46 In the first section of Une saison en enfer, the narrator presents this work as pages for Satan from his notebook of a damned one who suffers from inadequate linguistic capabilities.47 With increasing frequency, the narrator experiences linguistic impediments or break-downs, which often stand detached from the earlier thread of thought by an ellipsis or a hyphen

(a “trait d’union”, which one will recall reflects the Lacanian “trait unaire” that separates as an inherent function of pulling together).

In “Mauvais sang”, at a moment when reference to Hugo appears as a possibility and when the narrator questions his familiarity with himself, the narrator exclaims against language: “Connais-je encore la nature? me connais-je? – Plus de mots. J’ensevelis les morts dans mon ventre. Cris, tambour, danse, danse, danse, danse! Je ne vois même pas l’heure où, les blancs débarquants, je tomberai au néant./ Faim, soif, cris, danse, danse,

46 Macklin finds that “Mauvais Sang” emphasizes the poet’s lineage: “The tension between affirmation and tentativeness established in this introductory statement sets the tone for what follows. ‘Mauvais sang’ represents a sustained endeavour on the part of the poet to understand himself through an exploration of his unconventional lineage. The second section in the whole, ‘Mauvais sang’ is vital to the overall structure of the work” (381). 47 The address to “dear Satan” reads as follows: “Mais, cher Satan, je vous en conjure, une prunelle moins irritée! et en attendant les quelques petites lâchetés en retard, vous qui aimez dans l’écrivain l’absence des facultés descriptives ou instructives, je vous détache ces quelques hideux feuillets de mon carnet de damné” (201-02). 394

danse, danse!” (207). In 1869, Hugo’s sons Charles and François, Meurice, and

Rochefort found a newspaper, Le Rappel, which has as its emblem a drum that beats the

“rappel”, which signal traditionally calls soldiers to arms. As will be examined in greater depth in the following chapter, two of Verlaine’s poems that pre-date Rimbaud’s Saison

(“Au pas de charge”, published in Le Rappel in 1869, and his 1872 poem “Bruxelles.

Chevaux de bois”), explicitly refer to Hugo and include the image of a tambour.

Additionally, the latter poem of Verlaine’s repeats the verb “tournez” 18 times in the poem, eight of which iterations occur in the first stanza. The coincidence of a tambour and reiterations of “danse” in Rimbaud’s section of Une saison en enfer doubly link

Rimbud’s work to Verlaine’s poems involving Hugo. Possibly via Verlaine, Hugo appears in the background of Rimbaud’s “Mauvais sang”.

Rimbaud’s narrator laments his tendency to exaggerate the presence of the divine in the common: “—Ah! je suis tellement délaissé que j’offre à n’importe quelle divine image des élans vers la perfection./ O mon abnégation, ô ma charité merveilleuse! ici-bas, pourtant!/ De profundis Domine, suis-je bête!” (206).48 The juxtaposition of a Latin prayer with the very common language of “bête” here indicates a self-deprecatory awareness on the part of Rimbaud’s narrator concerning his own pretention. While this

Latin phrase is not uncommon, part of it appears in Hugo’s 1866 novel Les Travailleurs de la mer, in a chapter entitled “De profundis ad altum”. A footnote to this chapter title explains its significance: “Début du psaume 129: ‘De profundis clamavi ad te,

48 This prayer actually appears in Psalm 130 and translates to “From the depths I have cried out to you, O Lord”. 395

Domine…’” (Roman III 1075).49 Both Hugo’s and Rimbaud’s narrators call out to higher powers from watery profundī.

In this chapter of Hugo’s work, Gilliatt struggles to save his boat from sinking.

He places a great amount of hope in some other boat coming to rescue him. When he sees that he is alone and unable to do any more to ameliorate his situation, Gilliatt becomes a spectator of his own destiny: “Il n’était plus que le spectateur de sa vie ou de sa mort. Ce Gilliatt, qui avait été une providence, était, à la minute suprême, remplacé par une résistance inconsciente” (Roman III 293). By specifying “ce” Gilliatt, Hugo here reveals the multiplicity inherent in his protagonist. Gilliatt’s separation from himself becomes intensified in this chapter: “Gilliatt se voyait perdu. Gilliatt se voyait aussi mort que Clubin” (Roman III 294). This division of Gilliatt into a passive form renders him merely a witness to his own life who reflexively sees himself as lost and dead. While

Gilliatt himself does not explicitly express this identitary questioning, which comes instead from Hugo’s narrator, Rimbaud’s narrator/ protagonist does formulate his own above-cited query of “me connais-je?”, which question leads him away from language.

The final paragraphs of Hugo’s chapter resound with Rimbaud’s narrator’s examination of the divine and of his tendency towards the grandiose:

Il n’avait même plus un vêtement. Il était nu devant l’immensité. Alors, dans l’accablement de toute cette énormité inconnue, ne sachant plus ce qu’on lui voulait, se confrontant avec l’ombre, en présence de cette obscurité irréductible, dans la rumeur des eaux, des lames, des flots, des houles, des écumes, des rafales, sous les nuées, sous les souffles, sous la vaste force éparse, sous ce mystérieux firmament des ailes, des astres et des tombes, sous l’intention possible mêlée à ces choses démesurées, ayant autour de lui et au-dessous de lui l’océan, et au-dessus de lui les constellations, sous l’insondable, il s’affaissa, il renonça, il se coucha tout de son long le dos sur la

49 Macklin studies the usage of this phrase in Rimbaud’s work: “It suggests a speaking in tongues redolent of Babel and again indicative of insanity; it shows how the narrator is torn between pleas to Satan and prayers to God; it underlines his sense of being in the pit of Hell where he cries for succour; and it illustrates how tones, registers and idioms can change at any moment in this diary of the damned” (382). 396

roche, la face aux étoiles, vaincu, et, joignant les mains devant la profondeur terrible, il cria dans l’infini: “Grâce!” Terrassé par l’immensité, il la pria. Il était là, seul dans cette nuit sur ce rocher au milieu de cette mer, tombé d’épuisement, ressemblant à un foudroyé, nu comme le gladiateur dans le cirque, seulement au lieu de cirque ayant l’abîme, au lieu de bêtes féroces les ténèbres, au lieu des yeux du peuple le regard de l’inconnu, au lieu des vestales les étoiles, au lieu de César, Dieu. Il lui sembla qu’il se sentait se dissoudre dans le froid, dans la fatigue, dans l’impuissance, dans la prière, dans l’ombre, et ses yeux se fermèrent. (Roman III 294-95)

After this near dissolution, Hugo’s protagonist is seemingly rewarded for this cry for help, as both he and his vessel manage to survive the night. In this passage, the glance of

“l’inconnu” is aligned with God. Hugo’s unknown thereby has a more divine connotation than Rimbaud’s in “Le Bateau ivre”.

Rimbaud’s narrator in “Mauvais sang” writes of a boat coming as a savior for the shipwrecked, which reflects Gilliatt’s situation:

Le chant raisonnable des anges s’élève du navire sauveur: c’est l’amour divin. – Deux amours! je puis mourir de l’amour terrestre, mourir de dévouement. J’ai laissé des âmes dont la peine s’accroîtra de mon départ! Vous me choisissez parmi les naufragés, ceux qui restent sont-ils pas mes amis? Sauvez-les! La raison m’est née. Le monde est bon. Je bénirai la vie. J’aimerai mes frères. Ce ne sont plus des promesses d’enfance. Ni l’espoir d’échapper à la vieillesse et à la mort. Dieu fait ma force, et je loue Dieu. (208)

It is during these pleas to the savior ship that the narrator converts from his initial Satanic stance to a position of praise for and recognition of God. Furthermore, the inclusion of reason and fraternity in connection with God also calls to mind Hugolian themes.

The thematics of “Mauvais sang” reflect Hugo’s revolutionary call for liberty.

Throughout this section of Une saison en enfer, the narrator expresses a desire for liberty.

Nevertheless, this desire dissolves into recognition of the impossibility of liberty due to the farcical nature of life:

Je veux la liberté dans le salut: comment la poursuivre? Les goûts frivoles m’ont quitté. Plus besoin de dévouement ni d’amour divin. Je ne regrette pas le siècle des

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cœurs sensibles. Chacun a sa raison, mépris et charité: je retiens ma place au sommet de cette angélique échelle de bon sens. Quant au bonheur établi, domestique ou non… non, je ne peux pas. Je suis trop dissipé, trop faible. La vie fleurit par le travail, vieille vérité: moi, ma vie n’est pas assez pesante, elle s’envole et flotte loin au-dessus de l’action, ce cher point du monde. […] Farce continuelle! Mon innocence me fait pleurer. La vie est la farce à mener par tous. Assez! voici la punition. – En marche! Ah! les poumons brûlent, les tempes grondent! la nuit roule dans mes yeux, par ce soleil! le cœur… les membres… Où va-t-on? au combat? je suis faible! les autres avancent. Les outils, les armes… le temps!... Feu! feu sur moi! Là ou je me rends. – Lâches! – Je me tue! Je me jette aux pieds des chevaux! Ah!... - Je m’y habituerai. Ce serait la vie française, le sentier de l’honneur! (208-09)

Here, there is no longer a need for “dévouement” (which one may recall was the name of the exalting hippogriff in Baudelaire’s poem “Les Petites Vieilles”). Life is presented as a farce, and the narrator exhibits suicidal impulses, like the narrator of “Le Bateau ivre”.

This narrator’s complaint that he is too dissipated to enjoy any form of “bonheur établi” calls to mind Gilliatt’s tendency towards dissolution. Dissipation differs from dissolution in that it carries an immoral connotation; however, dissipation and dissolution represent similar processes of self-division on the road to disappearance.50 Both protagonists mention their own multiplicities, and both at least consider suicide. Had this citation stopped at the narrator’s intention to throw himself to his own death, this poem’s protagonist would bear even more resemblance with Gilliatt, who commits suicide by drowning in the novel’s final pages. However, Rimbaud’s narrator turns this post- conversion distaste for the insincerity of life and resulting suicidal leanings on their head.

Rimbaud’s narrator thereby becomes distinct from Gilliatt because he fails to embody

50 Macklin finds identitary multiplicity in Rimbaud’s narrator: “Surely, rather than a single entity, we find in the narrator in Une Saison a multiplicity of identities scattered through numerous fragments, moods and inclinations to create an impression of insanity rather than wholeness and stability?” (384). 398

and follow through on ideals. Accordingly, Rimbaud’s narrator does not have to die at the end of this section. Instead, he can resignedly decide that he will get used to it: “—Je m’y habituerai”. The “trait d’union” here stages the divide between two such starkly opposed attitudes contained within this narrator. Like the Lacanian “trait unaire”, and like Rimbaud’s “je” in his voyance letters, it is this multiplicity inherent to the narrator that allows for his singularity. This passage also echoes the earlier juxtaposition of high and low in this poem:

—Ah! je suis tellement délaissé que j’offre à n’importe quelle divine image des élans vers la perfection. O mon abnégation, ô ma charité merveilleuse! ici-bas, pourtant! De profundis Domine, suis-je bête! (206)

One may contrast this eventual pull away from suicide to the end of “Le Bateau ivre”.

While the boat ends on a suicidal note, this narrator’s return from suicidal contemplation at the final moment in “Mauvais sang” exposes both his lack of commitment to this intention as well as his own view of this act as overblown, unnecessary, and perhaps even useless.51 And yet, only Hugo’s character actually goes through with a suicide. By describing such an act as an overblown commitment to idealism, Rimbaud may intimate a similar critique of Hugo’s works. Rimbaud presents his narrators as more “realistic” or more “disenchanted” than the “idealistic” and suicidal characters found in Hugo’s works.

In this manner, Rimbaud’s auto-distinction from Hugo helps readers see the possibility of an idealism at the root of suicide. This acts as a Baudelairean renversement of “Hugo” with a Rimbauldian twist: idealism and self-deprecation on account of this idealism are drawn together and made internal to a narrator.

51 In a later section of Une saison en enfer, the narrator clarifies what he sees as farcical in life: “Mais n’y a-t-il pas un supplice réel en ce que, depuis cette déclaration de la science, le christianisme, l’homme se joue, se prouve les évidences, se gonfle du plaisir de répéter ces preuves, et ne vit que comme cela!” (230). 399

The final two sections of Une saison en enfer play out a very similar transition from idealism to resignation. In the penultimate section, “Matin”, the narrator begins with complaints about his loss of speech, which he equates with prayer: “Moi, je ne puis pas plus m’expliquer que le mendiant avec ses continuels Pater et Ave Maria. Je ne sais plus parler!” (135).52 Such prayers are prescribed dictations (or imitations of words spoken by countless others) that Rimbaud compares to a loss of the ability to speak. The narrator then goes on to decide that he has at least left his hell. After this observation, the narrator wonders when humanity (or “nous”) will attain to utopian heights comparable to those in Hugo’s “Plein ciel”:

Quand irons-nous, par delà les grèves et les monts, saluer la naissance du travail nouveau, la sagesse nouvelle, la fuite des tyrans et des démons, la fin de la superstition, adorer – les premiers! – Noël sur la terre! Le chant des cieux, la marche des peuples! Esclaves, ne maudissons pas la vie. (235)

These lines, which end the penultimate section of Rimbaud’s work, greatly resemble

Hugo’s idealistic calls.

However, in the final section, entitled “Adieu”, the tone changes yet again. This first part of this final section begins with a paragraph that depicts a boat turned toward worldly misery; then, in the following longer paragraph, one finds a golden boat with many colored flags located above the narrator:

L’automne. Notre barque élevée dans les brumes immobiles tourne vers le port de la misère, la cité énorme au ciel taché de feu et de boue. Ah! les haillons pourris, le pain trempé de pluie, l’ivresse, les mille amours qui m’ont crucifié! Elle ne finira donc point cette goule reine de millions d’âmes et de corps morts et qui seront jugés! Je me revois la peau rongée par la boue et la peste, des vers plein les cheveux et les aisselles et encore de plus gros vers dans le cœur, étendu parmi les inconnus sans âge, sans sentiment… J’aurais pu y mourir… L’affreuse évocation! J’exècre la misère. […] – Quelquefois je vois au ciel des plages sans fin couvertes de blanches nations en joie. Un grand vaisseau d’or, au-dessus de moi, agite ses pavillons multicolores sous les brises du matin. J’ai créé toutes les fêtes, tous les triomphes, tous les drames. J’ai essayé d’inventer de nouvelles fleurs, de nouveaux astres, de nouvelles

52 One may here recall Baudelaire’s aphasia and repeated phrase of “Cré nom!” at the end of his life. 400

chairs, de nouvelles langues. J’ai cru acquérir des pouvoirs surnaturels. Eh bien! je dois enterrer mon imagination et mes souvenirs! Une belle gloire d’artiste et de conteur emportée! (237)

This coupling of boats, one of which portrays the problems of the world and the other of which exhibits a utopian vision, bears a stark resemblance to Hugo’s pieces “Pleine mer” and “Plein ciel”. However, Rimbaud’s narrator is not sympathetic with the misery surrounding the first boat. In fact, he hates it. And when he very briefly describes the second boat, he is quick to mock himself for believing in his own “pouvoirs surnaturels”, which impulse he tries to quell. This desire inspires the following view of himself brought back down to his decidedly ungodly level: “Moi! moi qui me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu au sol, avec un devoir à chercher, et la réalité rugueuse à étreindre! Paysan!” (237). Like in his “lettres du voyant”, Rimbaud’s narrator here continues to view himself as having multiple forms. And as in “Mauvais sang”, the narrator here turns on himself to criticize his overly-exalted selves. By failing to commit to and project an ideal version of himself, Rimbaud’s narrator sees himself as doomed to be forgotten. He recognizes that burying these memories of his “divine” self will strip him of a “belle gloire d’artiste”. On the other hand, as the poet who continues to believe in his sacerdotal mission, Hugo’s glory and renown are ensured. Conversely, as the poet of internal multiplicities that lead to self-doubt and self-ridicule, the survival of Rimbaud’s literary name seems far less certain. Another contrast between Rimbaud and Hugo thereby lies in the commitment to—or rejection of—a belief in the poet’s mission as sacerdotal and the subsequent assurance of—or threat to—authorial glory.

In Une saison en enfer, Rimbaud’s narrator mocks himself after he effectively imitates Hugo and, like the boat in “Le Bateau ivre”, decides to point himself in a different direction. The following well-known lines from near the end of Une saison en

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enfer exhibit the narrator’s ultimate choice to push towards revolutionary innovation: “Il faut être absolument moderne. Point de cantiques: tenir le pas gagné” (238). The turn towards the absolutely modern comes alongside a turn away from canticles, or liturgical songs. Modernity thus indicates a breaking away from the zealous repetition of well- worn litanies. For Rimbaud, modernity means breaking away from repeating the words of another, from making yet another “Rolla”, or from imitating other modernities.53 As has already been observed, some saw Hugo as a literary deity. In this light, even if Hugo is an ancestor to “voyance”, Rimbaud’s mission as a poet of modernity would entail détournements of the “maîtres” of the past in order to escape the bland imitation that results from authorial deification.

VII. Seeing is disbelieving

“Christ! ô Christ, éternel voleur des énergies.” - Rimbaud, “Les Premières Communions”

According to Asquith, another connection exists between Rimbaud’s “Mauvais sang” and the works of Hugo:

“Mauvais sang” addresses one of the fundamental questions that preoccupy French poets in the nineteenth century: what happens to poetry after the paradigm shift of 1789? In Hugo’s famous manifesto – ‘Réponse à un acte d’accusation’ – the poet dismantles the noble forms that gave poetry its prestige and authority in the old regime in symbolic acts that mirror the legendary events of the French Revolution. Poetry, like the French nation itself, is reborn, reconceptualized as a fluid, universal medium for human expression, independent of ‘caste’. (297)54

53 Macklin identifies such other modernities as those of science and Christianity: “Here he is speaking of a new type of modernity. It is not the false modernity of science and it is not the prevailing Christian ethic seen as the ‘horrible arbrisseau’ which the poet has left behind definitively. This is a form of victory but the new era will be something other than a blissful transcendence” (384). St. Clair specifies this modernity as post-Baudelairean: “Et de quelle ‘modern[ité]’ s’agit-il? L’hypothèse que nous voudrions soumettre consiste à affirmer que Rimbaud appartient bel et bien à une modernité poétique post-baudelairienne, mais que l’on peut également déceler chez lui un certain éthos du contre-modernisme qui s’articule dans/à travers l’espace poétique” (2). 54 Hugo’s narrator famously calls for change in this poem: “Guerre à la rhétorique et paix à la syntaxe!” (Poésie II 266). The narrator also comments upon how he (a figure greatly resembling Hugo himself) dared call a pig by its name in the theater: “Je nommai le cochon par son nom; pourquoi pas?” (Poésie II 265). “Scholars interpret the stakes of this poem of Hugo’s, as well as the “accusation” to which the narrator responds, in different manners. For example, see de Dobay Rifelj and Greenberg. 402

Rimbaud’s inclusion of “De profundis Domine, suis-je bête” supports the idea that

Rimbaud continues Hugo’s project of dismantling poetic prestige (a project, one will recall, that Baudelaire at least partially resisted). However, as Asquith notes, the conclusions of Hugo’s work differ greatly from the conclusions of Rimbaud’s work: “As in ‘Réponse’, poetry has been dethroned here; however, the Revolution has brought no positive change, no ‘langue en liberté’” (298). In other words, Rimbaud’s work neither glorifies nor rewards the dethronement it enacts. In fact, the narrator of Une saison en enfer questions himself as he performs this continuation of Hugo’s work, eventually deciding he would do better to just accept the farcical facets of life that once made him suicidal. Rimbaud’s revolutionary work contains a resignation to its own fruitlessness that one does not find in Hugo’s revolutionary work. This resignation also contrasts with the final lines of Les Fleurs du Mal, in which suicide is presented as a gift from Death that allows the voyaging narrator to experience the unknown. For Rimbaud, the unknown is an internal realm, as his letters and his narrators confirm in their cycling through commitments to and rejections of different perspectives. Rather than finding solace in a suicide responding to the failure of life to match a character’s idealism or in a suicide that provides for an escape from ennui, Rimbaud’s poetic solace stems from internal multiplicity and a mood of resignation. If one “je” must die, another will reemerge in its place.

By pursuing the path of “voyance”, Rimbaud places himself in the tradition of poetic revolutionaries simultaneously indebted to and revolting against (or revolting after and therefore against) Hugo. Like Rimbaud’s “je” in his letter of voyance, the “Hugo”s that appear in Rimbaud’s writings possess a plurality, a capacity to become “autre”.

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Rimbaud’s theory on the otherness of his “je” also allows for multiple “Hugo”s to exist for the multiple Rimbauds. Both the old, outdated revolutionary who stubbornly believes in ideals as well as the later poet and novelist whose works include some glimmers of voyance can be spotted.

Rimbaud leaves the literary world in 1875, at 20 years of age, and dies in 1891 at the age of 37, only outliving Hugo by a mere six years.55 Rimbaud’s departure from poetic pursuits deprives readers of his later opinions of Hugo, though we do know from

Gaulmier’s account that Rimbaud continues to read Hugo after leaving the literary world.

In the voyance letters, Hugo is established as a precursor of the revolutionary poetic vision that Rimbaud pursues. The “Hugo” buried in anonymous references in Rimbaud’s poetry represents a figure so committed to an ideal that he allows for exaggerations of himself (through exaggerations of his characters) which ensure his renown. This Hugo is presented through implicit contrast with Rimbaud’s narrators. Rimbaud’s poetic “Hugo” is therefore primarily unnamed but nevertheless momentarily shines through Rimbaud’s own narrators during their more idealistic moments. Rimbaud’s “Hugo”s thereby become necessary stepping stones for literary revolution as well as representatives of the stubbornly idealistic and impossible.

55 Steinmetz comments upon the disappearance of Rimbaud from literature: “Ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler ‘le silence de Rimbaud’, l’absence de textes après 1875 hormis des lettres à fin commerciale ou d’ordre strictement privé, n’a sans doute pas d’autre cause que sa lucidité et sa désillusion au vu de la place marginale qu’il occupait et des faibles pouvoirs de la littérature” (xliv). 404

Intended to be blank.

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CHAPTER V

A FALTERING CROWN OF NAMES: VERLAINE’S HUGOS

Roubaud, Benjamin. Victor Hugo. Panthéon Charivarique. 1884. Paris: Maison Victor Hugo.

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I. Introduction

“Mais son nom, c’est bonheur! Ah! qu’il souffre et jouit, Extasié le jour, halluciné la nuit Ou réciproquement, jusqu’à ce qu’il en meure!” - Verlaine, “Torquato Tasso”

Verlaine was born in 1844, when Hugo was 42 years old, and he represents the first writer in this study to both survive Hugo (Verlaine dies 11 years after Hugo, in

1896) and to continue writing after the death of Hugo. It is for this reason that I study

Verlaine after Rimbaud despite Rimbaud’s being younger than Verlaine. While Rimbaud only writes about Hugo before Hugo’s death, Verlaine’s work includes his writings on

Hugo both before and after the death of this looming figure of colossal renown. One facet Verlaine’s naming events for Hugo share with Rimbaud’s lies in their dependence on a Baudelairean tradition of the meaning of “Hugo”. However, Verlaine’s late projections of “Hugo” will metamorphose to become the inverse of Baudelaire’s.

Like many writers preceding him, Verlaine’s revolution in poetry follows the example of Hugo’s while radicalizing it:

Cette mobilité s’accroît démesurément à partir de l’introduction des idées romantiques, avec en particulier Racine et Shakespeare et, bien entendu, la préface de Cromwell. Le relativisme esthétique proposé par Stendhal, la mise en cause du cloisonnement des genres par Hugo, ne cesseront de redéfinir ou dédéfinir les frontières des formes et des genres. À partir des années 1860, la poésie de la période post-romantique poursuivra cette redistribution des catégories. Que les poètes aient accompli ce travail dans l’idée de démolir le Romantisme ou de le radicaliser, l’exigence d’originalité et la promotion en (anti)système de l’hétérodoxie font d’eux comme une deuxième vague romantique, moins ouvertement expressive et, pour l’heure, moins accessible au commun des lecteurs. (Murphy Marges 162-63)1

As he transitions from being viewed as a “post-Romantic” to a Parnassian to a Symbolist,

Verlaine’s career offers many vantage points from which to view the name of Hugo throughout the latter decades of the 19th Century.

1 Murphy here writes about what he terms “parapoésie”, or marginal writings that nevertheless may change the course of literary history. 407

II. The First Maître: Early letters and a poem

“Son nom? Je me souviens qu’il est doux et sonore, Comme ceux des aimés que la Vie exila.” - Verlaine, “Mon rêve familier”

Like Baudelaire, Verlaine writes to Hugo at a very young age. In 1858, two years after the publication of Les Contemplations and one year before the publication of La

Légende des siècles, a 14-year-old Verlaine writes his first letter to the maître. Like

Baudelaire, Verlaine assures Hugo of his admiration for him and requests a response in this letter. However, unlike Baudelaire, Verlaine also sends Hugo his first known poem, which he dedicates to Hugo. In the brief text leading into this poem, Verlaine calls Hugo a skillful maître:

Monsieur, Pardonnez-moi si je prends la liberté de vous dédier des vers: c’est que, me sentant quelque goût pour la poésie, j’éprouve le besoin de m’en ouvrir à un maître habile, et à qui pourrais-je mieux qu’à vous, monsieur, confier les premiers pas d’un élève de quatrième, âgé d’un peu plus de quatorze ans, dans l’orageuse carrière de la poésie? (Corr. 54)

The poem that follows, entitled “La Mort” and dedicated to Hugo, is composed of five quatrains.2 In the majority of this first poem, Verlaine describes death through comparisons; then, in the final quatrains, he addresses Hugo (via “tu”) and studies the master poet’s response to the presence of death:

Aigle fier et serein, quand du haut de ton aire Tu vois sur l’univers planer ce noir vautour, Le mépris (n’est-ce pas, plutôt que la colère)

2 Borel also finds echoes of Hugo’s poem “Mors” from Contemplations within this poem of Verlaine’s: “Vers négligeables, sans doute: nous savons bien d’où vient cette faucheuse dans un champ, et cette ‘faulx dans ses livides mains’. Mais enfin il est caractéristique que ces premiers vers, malgré leur gaucherie, leur raideur, leurs fautes de prosodie, offrent déjà des variantes, des repentirs: ce trait, et aussi le fait que Verlaine les ait adressés aussitôt à un poète admiré, montre assez, chez cet adolescent qui s’essaie, la volonté, la conscience, de faire là œuvre littéraire, et ce besoin d’être accueilli et jugé que n’ont pas d’ordinaire les collégiens qui balbutient en vers leurs confidences, leurs aspirations ou leurs nostalgies” (Œuvres Poétiques Complètes 6). Hovasse’s study on Verlaine and Hugo, wherein he cites the passage above, offers an in-depth look at the intricacies of their relationship, and I owe a great deal to this study. Murphy also compares Verlaine’s “La Mort” with Hugo’s “Mors” and finds that Verlaine’s poem modernizes Hugo’s while it emphasizes Verlaine’s readership of Hugo (Marges 23-28). 408

Magnanime génie, dans ton cœur, à son tour?

Mais, tout en dédaignant la mort et ses alarmes, Hugo, tu t’apitoies sur les tristes vaincus; Tu sais, quand il le faut, répandre quelques larmes, Quelques larmes d’amour pour ceux qui ne sont plus. (Corr. 54)

One here finds a representation of Hugo in a form capable of flight (recalling Gautier’s hippogriff), this time as an eagle.3 By describing Hugo’s attitude towards death as akin to mépris rather than colère, Verlaine places Hugo in a position superior to death (or at least as believing himself to be superior to death). And yet, while disdaining death from this superior vantage point, Verlaine’s first Hugo here also pities the vanquished and cries for the lost. This primary Hugo in Verlaine’s writings is already split by two distinct characteristics: superiority over death and sympathy for the dead. This is reminiscent of

Baudelaire’s description of Hugo’s possession of an equal love for the very weak and for the very strong. However, possibly as a result of the much greater gap in age and the well-established fame of Hugo throughout Verlaine’s entire life, Verlaine’s first Hugo becomes a more exaggerated version of Baudelaire’s own view. Rather than being equally loving of the weak and the strong, this Hugo is superior to death but capable of bringing himself down to a humane level of sympathy in order to mourn those who are subjected to death. This Hugo to whom Verlaine dedicates this poem and whose name

Verlaine includes in his first recorded poetic attempt is a figure that is larger-than-life, or more precisely, larger-than-death.

The pronouns used to refer to Hugo shift from the “vous” of the text of the letter to the “tu” deployed by the poem’s narrator and then back to the “vous” in this letter’s final request for a response. This shift affords a privileged means of witnessing

3 As already mentioned, the eagle was also one of Napoleon I’s imperial symbols. See Keegan for more on Napoleonic symbolism. 409

Verlaine’s earliest literary projection of himself alongside, in relation, and in reference to his projections of Hugo.4 As an adolescent, Verlaine composes a letter with great respect and deference (that recalls Baudelaire’s early “trembling” letters) to Hugo the maître. However, Verlaine’s poetic narrator addresses Hugo informally, as an equal “tu”, while nevertheless elevating Hugo to a position that is disdainful of and therefore superior to death. Parsed in the language of the mathematical Property of Substitution (if a=b and b>c, then a>c), if Verlaine’s narrator (a) is intimate enough with Hugo (b) to be able to speak to him as an equal (a=b), and if Hugo (b) is superior to (>) death (c), then

Verlaine’s narrator (a) is also superior to (>) death (c). By using Hugo’s name in this poem, Verlaine legitimizes his narrator by implying his equality with the poetic author and authority. Having authorized his narrator, Verlaine may then attempt to analogously authorize himself as a member of Hugo’s literary family in the eyes of the recipient and dedicatee of this poem. In this way, he invites himself to the party, so to speak, of filiation and equality with Hugo.5 Despite this predominantly respectful stance of a young poet approaching the maître, one may also find in Verlaine’s early opinions of

Hugo a shock concerning Hugo’s daring to reproach God.6 Verlaine’s youthful shock hints at his future return to Catholicism and corresponding break with Hugo.

4 Verlaine ends this letter with the following respectful request for a response: “Si vous voulez bien, monsieur, me faire l’honneur de me répondre, adressez ainsi votre lettre […]” (Corr. 54). 5 Murphy begins his work on Verlaine’s early writings with a section entitled “Un premier hommage à Hugo: La Mort”, in which he also notes Verlaine’s approximation towards familiarity with Hugo in this letter: “Dans le domaine de la poésie, la captatio benevolentiae est un procédé coutumier du sous-genre de la missive-du-jeune-prodige-pour-l’instant-méconnu qui produit le plus souvent, par une compulsion plus ou moins intéressée, l’incessante réitération d’une information capital: le Grand Poëte n’est autre, aux yeux du destinateur de la lettre, que son illustre correspondant” (Marges 22). 6 Robb notes Verlaine’s early shock: “Poems like ‘À Villequier’, which shocked the schoolboy Verlaine with its gentle reminder to God, who had never had a daughter, that losing one’s child was very painful” (VH 256). 410

Verlaine’s second known poem, “Fragment d’une imitation des Petites Vieilles de

Baudelaire”, is very short: “Il m’arrive souvent, tous les jours, dans les rues,/ De croiser des vieillards et des vieilles…/ …torticolis en grues” (Poésie 595). Seeing Verlaine’s first poem dedicated to Hugo followed by a second fragment explicitly imitating

Baudelaire’s poem dedicated to Hugo forefronts the dominance of Hugo and Baudelaire’s interpretation of Hugo for the young Verlaine.

In 1862, the year of the publication of Les Misérables, an 18-year-old Verlaine writes to his friend Lepelletier and compares this later novel to Hugo’s earlier Notre-

Dame de Paris:

As-tu fini de lire les Misérables? Quel est ton avis sur cette splendide épopée? Je m'en suis arrêté, pour mon compte, au second tome de l’Idylle rue Plumet, (exclusivement), de sorte que je n'en puis porter de jugement définitif. Jusqu'à présent, mon impression est favorable: c'est grand, c'est beau, c'est bon, surtout. La charité chrétienne luit dans ce drame ombreux. Les défauts même, et il y en a, et d'énormes, ont un air de grandeur qui attire. Ce livre chenu, comparé à Notre-Dame de Paris, le chef- d’œuvre sans contredit de Victor Hugo, me fait l'effet d'un vieillard, mais d'un beau vieillard, cheveux et barbe blancs, haut de taille, et sonore de voix, comme le Job des Burgraves, à côté d'un jeune homme aux traits élégants, aux manières fières et nobles, moustache en croc, rapière dressée, prêt à la lutte. Le jeune homme plaît davantage, il est plus brillant, plus joli, plus beau, même, mais le vieillard, tout ridé qu'il est, est plus majestueux, et sa gravité a quelque chose de saint, que n'a pas la sémillance du jeune homme. "Et l'on voit de la flamme aux yeux des jeunes gens, Mais dans l’œil du vieillard on voit de la lumière." (Corr. 67)7

In his private correspondence, Verlaine notes defects in Hugo’s work; and yet, he excuses these shortcomings as being grand, even when they are enormous. Verlaine’s excuses for

7 These cited lines are from Hugo’s poem “Booz Endormi”, which Proust calls one of the greatest if not the greatest poem of the 19th Century. Proust finds a projection of Hugo within the character of Booz: “Je le regrette d’autant plus que je tiens Baudelaire—avec Alfred de Vigny—pour le plus grand poëte du XIX siècle. Je ne veux pas dire par là que s’il fallait choisir le plus beau poème du XIXe siècle, c’est dans Baudelaire qu’on devrait le chercher. Je ne crois pas que dans toutes Les Fleurs du Mal, dans ce livre sublime mais grimaçant, où la pitié ricane, où la débauche fait le signe de la croix, où le soin d’enseigner la plus profonde théologie est confié à Satan, on puisse trouver une pièce égale à Booz endormi. […] Ce grand poème biblique (comme eût dit Lucien de Rubempré: ‘Biblique, dit Fifine étonnée?’) n’a rien de sèchement historique, il est perpétuellement vivifié par la personnalité de Victor Hugo qui s’objective en Booz” (Propos 5-6). 411

Hugo go on to reflect Hugo’s age. He describes Les Misérables as the old and whitened—but still “beau”—man in comparison to the young, elegant, and more beautiful Notre-Dame de Paris. By personifying these works, Verlaine makes it possible to glimpse similarly contrasting images of the author (who was 29 and 60 years old when

Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables were published, respectively). In writing this letter to his friend, the teenaged Verlaine exposes his grasp of the different Hugos to emerge from this monumental figure of his century. As Verlaine is so much younger than Hugo, one finds even in his early writings a retrospective view of this still-living maître. A young Verlaine already projects—through the personification of his works— the Hugo of 1862 as “chenu”, with a “gravité [qui] a quelque chose de saint”, and perhaps not long for this mortal world.

III. Tempered Defenses

“Ils sonnent la révolte à leur tour contre l’Homme, Leur vainqueur stupéfait encore et mal remis D’un tel combat avec de pareils ennemis.” - Verlaine, “Les Dieux”

An early variant of Verlaine’s first published poem, entitled “Monsieur

Prudhomme”, contains Hugo’s name, but this name is suppressed when the poem first appears in publication in 1863. M. and Mme. Joseph Prudhomme were a bourgeois couple in caricature created by Henry Monnier to mock the bourgeois under Louis-

Philippe, “le roi bourgeois”.8 Multiple misspellings of Hugo’s name appear in Monnier’s

1857 satirical novel Mémoires de Monsieur Joseph Prudhomme, as a means of emphasizing the bourgeois lack of familiarity—whether sincere or feigned—with Hugo.

8 Murphy proposes that this caricature also inspires one of Flaubert’s characters: “Monsieur Prudhomme – origine du personnage Monsieur Homais dans Madame Bovary (PrudHOMME  HOMais) – fut donc l’œuvre d’un artiste bien connu à l’époque, mais qui était à la fois dessinateur, écrivain et acteur: il a composé des textes satiriques portant sur Homais, notamment ses Mémoires de Joseph Prudhomme, dessiné le personnage […] et joué sur scène le rôle de Prudhomme” (Marges 34). 412

Monnier plays with Hugo’s name in a conversation between a bourgeois man and a

Romantic visitor:

– N’avez-vous pas aussi un certain petit bonhomme nommé Hector Trumeau ou Grumeau? – Victor Hugo. – Victo Rhugo, c’est cela. On prétend dans les journaux que j’ai traité ce Victo Rhugo d’enfant sublime; je m’en serais bien gardé. Sans doute, il y a par-ci par-là quelques étincelles dans ce petit Victo Rhugo, mais il n’y a que vous et monsieur Sain-Tebeuve pour voir un poète dans ce rhétoricien. (91)

Hugo’s name and nickname (possibly given by Chateaubriand) here come to the fore.

Verlaine’s poem “Monsieur Prudhomme” reflects Monnier’s parody of the bourgeois proclivity towards opportunistic social ambitions, a desire to occupy the political and ideological middle ground and refrain from any extreme position or idea, and a tendency to overemphasize the pronunciation of the letter “r”.9 There are no mentions of Hugo in the published versions of Verlaine’s poem; however, in an 1862 variant, there is a modified rendering of Hugo’s name that echoes Monnier’s: “Monsieur Prudhomme songe à marier sa fille/ Avec Monsieur Machin, un jeune homme rangé./ Il haît Victôre

Hũgô, pourrsuit le Prrréjugé,/ Il est utilitairre […]” (Murphy Marges 32).10 Through satire, Verlaine here criticizes M. Prudhomme for his uninformed hatred of Hũgô; the error in spelling indicates the lack of authority on this topic underlying M. Prudhomme’s negative opinion of the extremist Hũgô. However, Verlaine suppresses the name of

Hugo in this poem when it is published.11 Murphy proposes two possible reasons for this suppression: it may expose the seeds of Verlaine’s future self-distancing from

Romanticism and from Hugo, or it may indicate an attempt on Verlaine’s part to sidestep

9 See Murphy, 34. 10 When this poem was published, Hugo’s name disappeared, but M. Machin’s opinion of poets in general is given: “Monsieur Prudhomme songe à marier sa fille/ Avec monsieur Machin, un jeune homme cossu./ Il est juste-milieu, botaniste et pansu,/ Quant aux faiseurs des vers, ces vauriens, ces maroufles,/ Ces fainéants barbus, mal peignés, il les a/ Plus en horreur que son éternel coryza […]” (OC lii). 11 Murphy also connects this poem of Verlaine’s to Hugo’s “Le Satyre” (Marges 40-52). 413

conflation of the different utilitarianisms of Hugo and M. Prudhomme: “Verlaine ne voulait pas susciter une comparaison potentiellement désobligeante entre l’utilitarisme bourgeois et conformiste de Prudhomme et l’utilitarisme républicain et révolté de l’exilé

Hugo” (Marges 49). This early suppression of a méconnu Victôre Hũgô both exposes an attempt to quell further méconnaissance of Hugo and points to the ideological discrepancies between Verlaine and Hugo that become increasingly pronounced as the years pass. In any case, this suppression reveals the care with which Verlaine handled publications of Hugo’s name at this time.

In one of his many critiques of Hugo, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly writes very disparagingly of Les Contemplations. This 1862 article (already briefly cited in relation to Rimbaud), from the collection of Les Œuvres et les Hommes centered on Les Poètes, later receives an antagonistic response from Verlaine. Barbey d’Aurevilly’s critique of

Hugo offers a scathing retrospective view of the Hugo still living in exile in the 1860s. A contemporary of Hugo’s, born only six years after him, Barbey d’Aurevilly writes that

“Hugo” no longer exists after Les Contemplations:

C’est là, en effet, un livre accablant pour la mémoire de M. Victor Hugo, et c’est à dessein que nous écrivons “la mémoire”. A dater des Contemplations, M. Hugo n’existe plus. On en doit parler comme d’un mort. […] Personne n’apprécie plus que nous ce que valait M. Hugo à l’origine et ne sait mieux ce qu’il ne vaut plus. […] Le respect devient impossible. […] La France est un pays tellement généreux que l’idée d’exil l’empêche de juger un homme littéraire, que cela l’attendrit, que cela l’arrête, même quand il ne s’agit, comme aujourd’hui, que de se prononcer sur un suicide en littérature! (3)

According to Barbey d’Aurevilly, Hugo’s exile protects him from the critique that he claims Hugo deserves. The attention to the impact of Hugo’s work upon his name marks the writings of Barbey d’Aurevilly: “Avec le nom de M. Hugo et l’exil, on prendrait ce livre pour un chef-d’œuvre, une divine Comédie, si la Critique n’avait pas le courage de crier haro!” (22). According to Barbey d’Aurevilly, Hugo’s political reputation and

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supporters in Paris prevent his works from receiving impartial judgment. He proposes the hypothetical situation of Hugo once again being a politician in Paris and says that, were this the case, readers would be more honest (that is to say, more critical) about Les

Contemplations (20-21).

In response to Barbey d’Aurevilly’s work on Hugo and other poets in this piece,

Verlaine writes a review that appears in L’Art on November 2, 1865 and that both defends and critiques Hugo. Verlaine first describes Barbey d’Aurevilly as a man containing many men (which Barbey d’Aurevilly also writes about Hugo), among whom

Verlaine identifies the following: “[…] Romancier très inégal, catholique ultra, autoritaire à faire pâlir de Maistre, critique détestable souvent et contestable toujours”

(Prose 612). Verlaine dedicates a great amount of his article to retorting Barbey d’Aurevilly’s critiques of Hugo:

Passons maintenant en revue quelques jugements particuliers dans ce procès intenté aux poètes par M. Barbey d’Aurevilly, juge et avocat. A tout seigneur, tout honneur! Notre aristarque commence sa distribution de férules par Les Contemplations de Victor Hugo, qu’il appelle un “grand front vide”, et Gustave Planche est dépassé! Certes, à mes yeux, Les Contemplations ne sont pas le chef-d’œuvre d’Hugo, tant s’en faut; je les trouve même son livre le plus faible; mais ce n’est pas une raison pour insulter au génie, même défaillant, en quels termes, on en a pu juger par un mot pris au hasard entre mille. Il va sans dire que le plus gros grief de M. Barbey d’Aurevilly contre Hugo est le manque de sincérité. Dans les trop fameuses philippiques publiés par Le Pays, lors de l’apparition des Misérables, il reprochait entre autres choses, à Hugo, d’être “un classique peint en romantique”, “un lyrique artistement peigné en échevelé”. Artistement, mais c’est ce qu’il faut, bon critique! […] Abordant ensuite La Légende des siècles, M. Barbey d’Aurevilly rend, avouons-le, un franc et loyal hommage à cette superbe épopée où Victor Hugo a mis toutes ses qualités, et aussi tous ses défauts. De ces défauts, il en est un que M. Barbey d’Aurevilly n’a pas signalé, et pour cause. J’entends ces déplorables passages attendrissants qui ont la prétention d’être réalistes, et ne constituent rien moins qu’une grotesque parodie. (Prose 614)

Barbey d’Aurevilly is here presented as a lawyer and judge declaring the verdict surrounding Hugo’s name. By retorting and primarily supporting Hugo, Verlaine casts himself as Hugo’s defense lawyer in this Foucauldian trial of his name. However, the

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critiques that Verlaine includes of Hugo’s work defy Barbey d’Aurevilly’s claim that one cannot critique a Hugo in exile and avoid overly praising the maître. The latter would risk an excessive flattery that would make Verlaine’s response unreliable. From his seemingly pro-Hugo position and his initially defensive stance, Verlaine both fails to refute certain critiques of Hugo’s work here and adds to the list of his faults. This tempered defense recalls Sainte-Beuve’s equivocal publications on Hugo but differs in its apparent candidness. The paper in which this review appeared, L’Art, was a precursor to the Parnassian mouthpiece Le Parnasse contemporain.12 By writing a primarily positive defense of Hugo’s name in this Parnassian forerunner, Verlaine establishes a literary rapport between Hugo and the soon-to-be Parnassians. The link between Verlaine and the Parnassian movement will increasingly come to mark Hugo’s relationship with

Verlaine.

The same year of Verlaine’s review of Barbey d’Aurevilly, Hugo publishes Les

Chansons des rues et des bois, which affords Barbey d’Aurevilly the occasion to respond to Verlaine’s defense of Hugo’s name.13 In this manner, Hugo’s name becomes a literary battleground on which Barbey d’Aurevilly and Verlaine have it out. Hugo’s collection receives passionate reactions from both admirers and detractors, primarily because of its bucolic leanings and its youthfully sexual thematics. Accustomed to a more mature and grandiose subject matter from a writer then in his 60s, some of his reading public disapproved of this change of pace. Barbey d’Aurevilly, for example, also attacks

12 Hovasse makes note of a possible oral retort of Hugo’s to this publication from Verlaine’s account: “Cette réponse apporte l’indication précieuse que Hugo lisait L’Art, revue fondée par Louis-Xavier de Ricard, éditée par Lemerre, et dont l’existence est aussi importante qu’éphémère puisqu’elle va directement conduire au premier Parnasse contemporain” (175). 13 Some scholars find this publication of Hugo’s to act as a “source” for Verlaine’s 1869 collection Fêtes galantes (Hovasse 189). 416

Hugo’s work in an article entitled “Chansons des rues et des bois”, published in Nain jaune on November 15, 1865, a mere 13 days after Verlaine’s critical review of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s work on Hugo. In this article, Barbey d’Aurevilly attacks not only the work of Hugo but also the sometimes unmerited glory given to his works because of their attachment to the authorial name of Hugo:

On a été universellement pris à ce titre fascinateur: les Chansons des rues et des bois, — car Victor Hugo a, au moins, le génie des titres. […] Que de choses un esprit qui pense invente-t-il et met-il sous ce titre-là! Et si vous ajoutez: par Victor Hugo, le chansonnier de la délicieuse Chanson du Fou, dans Cromwell […] l’imagination se bercera voluptueusement dans l’idée d’un chef-d’œuvre. C’est là ce qui est arrivé. Malheureusement, en lisant le livre, on tombe de ce hamac. Et c’est là ce qui est arrivé aussi, même à moi. […] Ainsi, après avoir passé par la première Légende des siècles, ces sublimes Petites Épopées qui me faisaient demander la grande, Victor Hugo ne s’est pas renouvelé. […] Repris, remmené et surmené par l’amour de ce qu’il n’a pas, par l’admiration de ce qui lui est impossible, Victor Hugo, ce gigantesque trompette-major fait pour sonner toutes les espèces de charges, a voulu être un Tircis littéraire et souffloter, et trembloter, et chevroter dans la flûte en sureau de l’Idylle, avec ces lèvres et cette poitrine qui sont de force, vous le savez! à fendre les spirales d’airain des plus durs ophicléïdes. (178-79)

According to Barbey d’Aurevilly, Hugo’s inability to live up to the grandeur of his name stems from the enormity attached to this signifier.

In an earlier critique of Hugo (in one of his “Médaillons de l’Académie”), Barbey d’Aurevilly specifies the root of Hugo’s faults as lying in his divine opinion of himself:

“César de décadence en littérature, M. Victor Hugo, comme les Césars de la décadence, se croit dieu” (60). Like Roubaud, Barbey d’Aurevilly aligns Hugo with his own poetic

Pegasus in Les Chansons des rues et des bois; however, while Roubaud’s work is presented as a caricature, Barbey d’Aurevilly’s work is offered through the less satirical medium of literary scholarship:

L’écueil, pour les poètes comme pour les rois, vient de trop de puissance. Dans cette double pièce de vers intitulée le Cheval, qui commence et finit ce volume, d’une composition si peu surveillée qu’on y trouve une pièce qu’on dirait oubliée de la Légende des Siècles: un Souvenir des vieilles guerres; dans cette pièce de vers où le poète, pour faire du neuf à bon marché, a démarqué le linge de Boileau (procédé peu fier pour le chef

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de l’école romantique) et appelé Pégase un cheval au lieu de l’appeler bravement cheval, Hugo, enchaîné à ce mot d’énorme comme le coupable à l’idée de son crime, adresse à Pégase ce vers singulier: Sa fonction est d’être énorme! et dans ce seul mot il s’est révélé lui-même tout entier. Il a dit ce qu’il est et par quoi il est, mais aussi ce par quoi il périt…Oui! la fonction de Hugo est d’être énorme. Tout l’est en lui: le talent, les qualités et les défauts, les élans, les défaillances, le succès, les chutes, les opinions, la niaiserie comme le génie, les maladresses, les ridicules, tout, — même les chansons, même les caprices, ces choses charmantes ordinairement petites. Ton caprice énorme voltige! dit-il au même cheval. Évidemment, il parle du sien! L’homme et le cheval ici ne font qu’un, comme il arrive aux bons écuyers. L’énormité explique Victor Hugo comme la peur de l’enfer explique tout Pascal. Prenez-le dans ses livres comme dans sa vie, et vous trouverez toujours, au bout de tout, cette notion, qui se lève, de l’Énormité. (184-85)14

This reference to Pegasus stems from Hugo’s own inclusion of Pegasus in the poem

“Cheval” that opens Les Chansons des rues et des bois. It is in the final stanza of this poem that Hugo names this horse Pegasus: “—Que fais-tu? me dit Virgile./ Et je répondis, tout couvert/ De l’écume du monstre agile:/ —Maître, je mets Pégase au vert”

(Poésie II 840). Hugo’s narrator here names Virgil as his master and introduces the bucolic nature of the work to follow. Hugo’s narrator recognizes that this horse offers

“gloire” to its rider: “C’était le grand cheval de gloire” (Poésie II 837). He goes on to describe the enormity of this horse as capable of deforming its rider: “Plus d’un sur son dos se déforme;/ Il hait le joug et le collier;/ Sa function est d’être énorme/ Sans s’occuper du chevalier” (Poésie II 839). By arguing that Hugo represents himself via this image of an exalted horse made mythological creature, Barbey d’Aurevilly metaphorically allows for riders to climb upon Hugo, take flight with him, and potentially deform themselves upon his back. Hugo, as the horse, would only hold the function of possessing enormity and would take flight without care for these riders risking deformation. In the final poem of this collection, entitled “Au Cheval”, Hugo’s narrator

14 When critiquing Hugo for not bravely calling a horse a horse, Barbey d’Aurevilly may refer to Hugo’s 1834 poem “Réponse à un acte d’accusation”, in which the narrator writes that he named a pig by its name (Poésie II 265). 418

lets loose the “monster” it has been figuratively riding throughout this collection of poetry. At this moment of release, the narrator tells this animal to become its own master again: “Redeviens ton maître, va-t’en!” (Poésie II 1031). However, towards the end of the poem, the narrator pleads with the horse to keep him on his back:

Pourtant sur ton dos garde-moi; Car tous mes songes font partie De ta crinière, et je ne voi Rien sur terre après ta sortie. Je veux de telles unions Avec toi, cheval météore, Que, nous mêlant, nous parvenions À ne plus être qu’un centaure. (Poésie II 1035)

Rather than implying an equivalency between the narrator and this horse—or himself, as

Barbey d’Aurevilly claims—Hugo ends this work with a desire on the part of the narrator to become one with this Pegasus, with this embodiment of “gloire”, in order to permanently deform and reform himself as a mythical and divine creature.

Even when criticizing Hugo’s work (and his narcissism), Barbey d’Aurevilly does not cease to compliment what he recognizes as Hugo’s areas of expertise and genius. He takes it upon himself—in what he claims to be the task of the critic—to remind Hugo of what it is that “Hugo” should be: “Oui! un poème épique…Etre le poète épique de la

France, telle était pour moi, et j’y reviens malgré moi, la vraie destinée de Victor Hugo, et dès longtemps je voulus le rappeler à cette haute destinée” (186). This critique calls to mind Sainte-Beuve’s attempts to mold Hugo into a Romantic poet of intimacy and interiority. Barbey d’Aurevilly goes on to demand that Hugo resist becoming the antithesis of himself by writing the sort of material that does not play to his strengths:

[…] Il ne s’agissait pas, à force d’antithèses, de devenir l’antithèse de soi-même, et d’épique qu’on est de nature, de soldat et de prêtre qu’on est par la tournure de son esprit, de se faire bucolique, un pleutre pleurard d’humanitaire! (187)

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Such demands that Hugo be the writer that Barbey d’Aurevilly thinks he should be evoke the entitlement that readers can come to feel over writers and the resulting ideas that readers form of writers’ identities. Barbey d’Aurevilly’s imposition of his idea of

“Hugo” onto Hugo affords a vantage point on the struggle that Hugo faces in France later in his career. With his readers expecting a certain version of himself, he experiences resistance to attempts at other formulations of his writing and authorial voice that lead to new understandings of “Hugo”. Nevertheless, if Hugo or his narrator wishes to remain upon the back of Pegasus, they must open themselves to the possibility of deformation and change in identity resulting from this ride.15 Verlaine’s tempered defense of Hugo’s name against Barbey d’Aurevilly’s attacks shows his role as a young writer striving to both defend the maître and maintain a measure of critical distance and independence.

IV. Clashing Hugos: Poèmes saturniens and Le Parnasse contemporain

“Ah! l’Inspiration, on l’invoque à seize ans!” - Verlaine, “Epiloque”

According to many scholars, Les Chansons des rues et des bois significantly impacts Rimbaud, Verlaine, and the Symbolists.16 In 1866, four years before Hugo’s

15 Moreover, in 1862, Barbey d’Aurevilly asks in Les Œuvres et les Hommes whether or not Hugo the poet emerges as anything more than the “Quasimodo de son génie” (4), employing this same idea of deformity resulting from proximity to genius. 16 Robb defends Hugo’s Les Chansons des rues et des bois through an appeal to the multiplicity inherent to “Hugo”: “Barbey d’Aurevilly of all people should have seen that the petticoat-chasing adolescent was another of Hugo’s personae, a mask beneath the mask, and that, demoralizing as it may seem for the biographically minded, certain aspects of Hugo’s personality were principally pretexts for varieties of poems, so that apparent contradictions in the whole moral picture are no more surprising than the fact that the same poet worked in different genres” (VH 410). Robb goes on to comment on the impact of this collection on writers to follow: “The powerful effect of Hugo’s Chansons on Verlaine, Rimbaud, and the Symbolists suggests that influences passed more purely and freely between the generations of the grandfather and grandchild. […] Morally, Hugo sounded like a relic of the eighteenth century; aesthetically, he was a giant of the avant-garde. Neither quality was likely to endear him to his own generation” (VH 410). Brombert also locates a predecessor to Symbolism in Hugo: “The vatic voice, in William Shakespeare, proclaims the chief tenets of Symbolism, all of which transcend politics: the poet’s intuition of the occult sense of existence; the heroic quality of poetic vision; the gospel of correspondences; the belief that the world is a text that speaks to us but needs to be deciphered—that there are semiotic links 420

return from exile, Verlaine publishes his first poetic collection, Poèmes saturniens.17

According to Lloyd, this collection situates itself within Hugo’s vein of Romanticism:

Not surprisingly, Verlaine’s first volume of verse reflects the dominant influence of Hugo and Leconte de Lisle, showing the current fascination with the myths of India as well as those of Greece, and restoring the Romantic image of the poet […] regardless of Baudelaire’s recent transformation of the artist into ragpicker or Théodore de Banville’s image of the poet as street performer. (8)

Barbey d’Aurevilly dismisses Verlaine’s work for overly resembling the works of others, including Hugo, in Le Nain jaune in November, 1866: “Un Baudelaire puritain, — combinaison funèbrement drolatique, — sans le talent net de M. Baudelaire, avec des reflets de M. Hugo et d’Alfred de Musset, ici et là. Tel est M. Paul Verlaine. Pas un zeste de plus!” (AI 145). One here finds Verlaine projected by Barbey d’Aurevilly as a

Baudelaire (with less talent) who reflects Hugo from time to time. Additionally, Sartre finds an implicit reference to Hugo as a paternal figure in Verlaine’s Prologue:18

Héros d’une grande bataille perdue, le Père est là-bas, dans l’Ile, et ses fils veulent trouver dans cette retraite l’image d’une défaite qui fut plus glorieuse qu’une victoire et qui consomme le nouveau divorce du Temporel et du Spirituel. De leur côté, ils s’efforcent, sur le continent, de communier, par une sorte de participation mystique, à cette Absence considérable. Ils la mimeront, la diront, la vivront; ils la manifesteront à tous par leur costume et l’air de leur visage. Père et fils sont également fous: l’un se prend pour la Poésie en exil, les autres croient incarner l’Exil de la Poésie. Plus tard, le Père, de retour, proclamera devant le Monde que la Poésie est revenue; mais ses fils n’auront pas d’oreilles pour l’entendre: l’exil est devenu leur seconde nature; l’Absence du Père, leur propre Absence du monde et l’Absence éternelle de Dieu se confondent en une sorte de Trinité dont chaque terme est la preuve des deux autres. Hugo vaincu, c’est Dieu mort; le poète devait échouer, dans ce monde hasardeux; les fils prouveront par leur

between the realms of the visible and the invisible, binding infinite manifestations to a single principle” (12). 17 Published five years before Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau ivre”, Verlaine’s work’s “Prologue” ends in a manner that resonates with Rimbaud’s poem: “—Maintenant, va, mon Livre, où le hasard te mène” (7). 18 Murphy also notes a link between Verlaine and Hugo in the Prologue to this work, which he locates in the relationship between “Action” and “Rêve” for the two writers here: “Ce glissement sardonique n’est sans doute pas le seul du recueil. Dans le Prologue, d’abord, les propos lénifiants et désengagés de l’avant- dernier paragraphe suivent des propos plus proches de ceux de Victor Hugo concernant les rapport [sic] entre l’Action et le Rêve, sans parler d’évocations de Charlemagne, de Roland et d’Olivier qui, malgré le nom de Théroldus (v. 41), font surtout penser en 1866 aux poèmes de la première série de La Légende des siècles” (Marges 107). Murphy also studies Verlaine’s poem “Après trois ans” alongside two preceding poems of Hugo’s, “Trois ans après” and “Tristesse d’Olympio”. 421

distraction, par une absence de l’âme, que Dieu, l’Homme et la Poésie sont également impossibles. (29-30)19

At the time of the publication of Poèmes saturniens, the Father and God as embodied in

Hugo have not yet died. Nevertheless, Sartre holds that for these later generations of

19th-century French poets, Hugo should remain exiled to match their conception of God as dead.20

The year of the publication of Poèmes saturniens is also the year of the first publication of Le Parnasse contemporain, a paper propagating the Parnassian movement in which Verlaine takes part and which he even leads for a time. Hugo’s view of

Verlaine as a leader of the Parnassian movement at least partially motivates their early correspondence. During the year following these two publications, Hugo writes a letter to Lemerre to be passed along to Verlaine, concerning his Poèmes saturniens:

Une des joies de ma solitude, c’est, monsieur, de voir se lever en France, dans ce grand dix-neuvième siècle, une jeune aube de vraie poésie. Toutes les promesses de progrès sont tenues, et l’art est plus rayonnant que jamais. Je vous remercie de me faire lire votre livre. Ubi spiritus ibi porta. Certes, vous avez le souffle. Vous avez le vers large et l’esprit inspiré. Salut à votre succès. – Je vous serre la main. (Corr. 106)

This letter from Hugo, with its Latin message (translated as “Là où se trouve l’esprit, là est une porte”) and epistolary handshake, becomes something of a rite of passage for 19th- century up-and-coming French writers.21 After receiving this letter, Verlaine mocks

Hugo and his letters of approval in a private letter to Lepelletier in August of 1867:

Confrère, car vous êtes mon confrère, dans confrère il y a frère. Mon couchant salue votre aurore. Vous commencez à gravir le Golgotha de l’Idée, moi je descends. Je suis votre ascension. Mon déclin sourit à votre montée. Continuez. L’Art est infini. Vous

19 Upon Sartre’s first employment of the word “Père” in this passage, the editors add a note indicating that this Father in Sartre’s study of Verlaine is Hugo (Marges 29). 20 Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, in which he first proclaims God to be dead, is not published until 1882, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra does not appear in publication until 1883. 21 Hovasse also remarks upon this letter as a genre: “Ce rapprochement prouve à quel point la lettre de Hugo était un genre littéraire à part entière, avec ce qu’elle comportait de conventionnel: la cordialité, la formule en latin, la fraternité” (175). This Latin phrase bears great resemblance to 2 Corinthians 3:17: “And the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 422

êtes un rayon de ce grand tout obscur. Je serre vos deux mains de poète. Ex imo. V.H. (Lepelletier 141)

The handshake, the Latin phrase (ex imo translating roughly to “from the depths”), and the assurances of fraternity all appear here in Verlaine’s parody in a moment reminiscent of Baudelaire’s mockery of Hugo’s similar letters.

Hovasse also likens Verlaine’s response to Baudelaire’s earlier mocking of Hugo in his letter to Manet and compares Verlaine’s epistolary parody to imitations and/or parodies in his poetry:

Dans cette facilité à tourner en dérision une lettre dont il devait être, au fond, extrêmement fier, on pourrait lire une métaphore de tout le recueil Poèmes saturniens. Multiples sont les influences qui y ont été relevée: Hugo, Gautier, Glatigny, Ricard, et surtout Leconte de Lisle et le Parnasse – dont on ne sait jamais trop s’il les imite ou bien les parodie. (175-76)

Kirchwey argues that Verlaine’s poem “Cauchemar” from Poèmes saturniens may be in homage to Hugo and to Gautier, who both write poems with the same title (203). While, like Hugo’s, Verlaine’s poem seems to be a vision of a nightmarish phantom, the final line of this poem may indicate a critique of Hugo’s political past: “Et montrait d’un air de gloire/ Un torse d’ombre et d’ivoire,/ Tandis que dans la nuit noire/ Luisaient en des cris stridents/ Trente-deux dents” (Poésie 16). The inclusion of the number 32 here, while it is the standard number of teeth that an adult possesses, may also serve as a political reference to the June Rebellion of 1832.22 While Hugo writes very empathetically for the insurgents who perished in Les Misérables, he leaned more to the right politically in 1832

22 The number 32 in “Cauchemar” brings back a number that also appears in Baudelaire’s poetry. 32 is the difference resulting from subtracting the number of lines in Baudelaire’s third poem dedicated to Hugo (“Les Petites Vieilles”) from the number of lines that both the first and second poems (“Le Cygne” and “Les Sept Vieillards”) each contain. And 1832 is the year of the June Rebellion that Hugo describes with great empathy in Les Misérables but against which he argued and even attempted to deter the insurgents at the time. 423

and admonished the insurgents for prematurely and unnecessarily bloodying the flag.23

Robb writes of Hugo’s attempts to re-write his own stance during the 1832 June

Rebellion:

At the time, his only other comment on the ‘follies drowned in blood’ was that they would make an excellent subject for a poem. No such poem appeared – though a later, less cowardly piece on the subject was redated to make it look as though it was written immediately after the rebellion. (VH 174)

If one accepts the interpretation of Verlaine’s inclusion of the number 32 in his poem as an allusion to the June Rebellion and Hugo’s modified position regarding this rebellion, the title of the poem that Verlaine and Hugo share, “Cauchemar” (“Le Cauchemar” for

Hugo), takes on a more profound meaning.24 In Hugo’s 1822 poem, the following lines about a “monstre” resemble Baudelaire’s much later poem “Les Sept Vieillards”:

Comme d’impurs miroirs des ténèbres mouvantes Répètent son image en cercle autour de lui; Son front confus se perd dans des vapeurs vivantes; Il remplit le sommeil de vagues épouvantes, Et laisse à l’âme un long ennui. (Poésie I 268)

A Verlainian projection of Hugo’s “cauchemar” could be resurgences of Hugo’s former projections of himself and the accusations of hypocrisy that colliding and clashing significances of “Hugo” can bring about, especially for a writer who lives as long and changes as drastically as Hugo. This is the identitary nightmare that Gautier tried to deny in his maître by fixing him in his 1830 iteration. However, for Verlaine, this nightmare view of multiple, clashing Hugos is more difficult to avoid.

V. Recasting 1830 in 1867

“L’art, mes enfants, c’est d’être absolument soi-même.” - Verlaine, “J’ai dit à l’esprit vain, à l’ostentation”

23 See Robb, VH, 173. 24 Gautier also wrote a poem entitled “Cauchemar”, written between 1830 and 1832, that includes an image of flesh being devoured that will resurface in Verlaine’s poem “Les Loups”, later studied in this chapter. 424

In 1867, the year following the publications of Poèmes saturniens and the first edition of Le Parnasse Contemporain, Verlaine co-writes a letter of praise to Hugo along with 13 other Parnassian poets commemorating the success of the reprisal of Hernani.25

This letter refers to Hugo as the writers’ “cher et illustre maître” and as the “plus grand poète français”, and it succinctly encapsulates the generational position of Verlaine and his young, revolutionary cohort with regard to the older, established, and seemingly formerly revolutionary Hugo still in exile:

Cher et illustre maître, Nous venons de saluer des applaudissements les plus enthousiastes la réapparition au théâtre de votre Hernani. Le nouveau triomphe du plus grand poète français a été une joie immense pour toute la jeune poésie; la soirée du Vingt Juin fera époque dans notre existence. Il y avait cependant une tristesse dans cette fête. Votre absence était pénible à vos compagnons de gloire de 1830, qui ne pouvaient presser la main du maître et de l'ami; mais elle était plus douloureuse encore pour les jeunes, à qui il n'avait jamais été donné de toucher cette main qui a écrit la Légende des Siècles. Ils tiennent du moins, cher et illustre maître, à vous envoyer l'hommage de leur respectueux attachement et de leur admiration sans bornes. (Politique 594)

This group of young writers classify themselves as just that: young representatives of “la jeune poésie”. The year of the reprisal of Hernani and the writing of this letter is also the year of Baudelaire’s death.26 Verlaine’s belonging to the youthful new generation of writers distinctly marks his relationship with Hugo, as it also did to varying degrees for

25 These other thirteen poets are Jean Aicard, Henri Cazalis, François Coppée, Ernest d’Hervilly, Léon Dierx, Georges Lafenestre, Albert Mérat, Sully Prudhomme, Armand Renaud, Louis-Xavier de Ricard, Armand Silvestre, André Theuriet, and Léon Valade. From this list, Aicard, Coppée, Dierx, Lafenestre, Mérat, Sully-Prudhomme, Renaud, Ricard, and Theuriet all appear for judgment in the final paragraph of Rimbaud’s second “lettre du voyant” (Rimbaud 101). 26 Verlaine writes a brief article on Baudelaire the day of his burial in which he hierarchizes Hugo as in a superior league to Baudelaire’s: “La merveilleuse pureté de son style, son vers brillant, solide et souple, sa puissante et subtile imagination, et par-dessus tout peut-être la sensibilité toujours exquise, profonde souvent, et parfois cruelle dont témoignent ses moindres œuvres, assurent à Charles Baudelaire une place parmi les plus pures gloires littéraires de ce temps – Balzac et Hugo mis à part, bien entendu. Ces idées, qui seront bientôt celles de tout le monde à force d’être vraies, ont été admirablement exprimées dans un discours attendri de Théodore de Banville, le maître exquis, si digne de louer Baudelaire” (Prose 626). However, in 1895, Verlaine writes that, as a teenager, he began to see Hugo as lower than Baudelaire: “Moi qui commençais – je pouvais alors être âgé de 15 à 17 ans—à préférer Hugo à Chateaubriand, et, en secret, à ne pas préférer, mais, dans un coin de mon cerveau, subordonner, pour certains cas, le premier à Baudelaire […]” (Prose 556). 425

Baudelaire and Rimbaud (though Baudelaire does not often group himself with others).27

Hugo once again emerges as an older maître figure for Verlaine and the Parnassians.

These younger poets single out La Légende des siècles as the work of Hugo’s to extoll, rather than Hernani or Cromwell. This choice speaks to their difference from Hugo’s previous disciples, like Gautier, who holds on to 1830 as one of the most faithful

“compagnons de gloire de 1830” that the Parnassians reference in this letter.

Additionally, Gautier becomes a strong influence for the Parnassian movement, which takes in particular his preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin as one of their base texts.28

Gautier’s preface functions for the Parnassians similarly to how Hugo’s preface to

Cromwell functions for the Romantic Movement. So, as was the case for Baudelaire, the

Parnassian movement and Verlaine may here address Hugo as the maître of the maître, the older maître.

Verlaine writes a note on this reprisal of Hernani that further exposes the relationship between the two generations and the desire on the part of the younger generation for the approval of the older generation:

27 In a letter to his mother, Baudelaire writes of the Parnassians as well as of his wish to be excluded from groups of writers: “Il y a du talent chez ces jeunes gens; mais que de folies! quelles exagérations et quelle infatuation de jeunesse! Depuis quelques années je prenais, çà et là, des imitations et des tendances qui m’alarmaient. Je ne connais rien de plus compromettant que les imitateurs et je n’aime rien tant que d’être seul. Mais ce n’est pas possible; et il paraît que l’école Baudelaire existe” (Corr. II 625). See Guyaux, 1078. Johnson notes the homophony between “Mallarmé” and a verb that Baudelaire utilizes in this letter, “m’alarmaient”: “[…] In speaking of ‘des tendances qui M’ALARMAIENT,’ Baudelaire has unwittingly inscribed the name of one of the sources of his alarm” (267). 28 Vivès argues that narcissism marks the “L’Art pour l’Art” movement that Parnassians attribute to Gautier and which leads in part to Symbolism: “La littérature se mirant dans le bonheur de son expression – tel est le clair aboutissement d’un Mallarmé qui, à la suite de Gautier, Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, forme le projet d’un grand renfermement où le monde n’aboutirait plus qu’à un livre et où le livre serait la totalité objectale centrant le désir sur elle-même. Mais ceci, l’Art pour l’Art et le Parnasse l’avaient déjà exploré dans des voies diverses. Si narcissisme il y a dans le projet poétique et le procès littéraire de Gautier, de Banville, de Leconte de Lisle, il s’actualise différemment au gré des relations entre ces différents auteurs et l’investissement qu’ils offrent dans leurs productions symboliques. C’est avant tout à partir d’un texte de Gautier que nous parcourrons le miroir structurant d’une esthétique innervée par un saisissement de soi au prix d’un détournement du monde: Mademoiselle de Maupin” (3). 426

Le succès d’Hernani a été immense, inouï, colossal, écrasant! – et, ce qui ne gâte rien, pacifique, — personne ne s’étant trouvé pour jouer le rôle de l’esclave insulteur des triomphes romains. Quelques personnes semblaient regretter les ‘grandes luttes’ de 1830 et criaient à la décadence. Eh quoi! parce que le bon sens a fait, durant ces trente dernières années, justice des ridicules préjugés de quelques voltigeurs de la Tragédie il faudrait se désoler de n’avoir plus ces adversaires à combattre, jeter la pierre au progrès et reprocher à notre génération d’avoir profité de l’expérience! Allons, allons, messieurs les grondeurs pour rire, avouez qu’au fond vous êtes contents de nous, les jeunes, que nous ne dégénérons pas trop de nos pères de 1830 et que véritablement nous sommes les petits de ces grands lions-là! C’était l’avis de Gautier, l’autre soir, de Gautier, qui se démenait dans sa stalle comme aux beaux jours des gilets rouges et des cheveux mérovingiaques, c’était l’avis de Dumas, superbe d’attendrissement et d’expansion à chaque sursaut d’enthousiasme de la salle! (Prose 624)

Verlaine’s account of this reproach for a lack of “grandes luttes” à la 1830 from some of the elders elicits his double explanation: that this generation has learned from its predecessors, and that the battle is over, rendering such struggles unnecessary because the adversaries of old no longer exist. Verlaine here names Gautier and Dumas as something of Hugolian stand-ins during Hugo’s absence and as badges of approval authorizing the legitimacy of these new writers as continuing in the lineage of Hugo.

In this note, Verlaine also focuses on the renown of Hugo and draws attention to the way in which the audience deploys Hugo’s name:

Aussi, quels cris unanimes et mille fois répétés de vive Hugo! pendant les entractes et à la sortie! quelle furia d’admiration! quelle joie délirante et quel bonheur véritable éclataient dans tous les yeux! J’imagine que, le soir d’une grande bataille, l’enthousiasme n’est pas plus grand dans le camp vainqueur. Victoire, en effet, du grand Art sur le métier, des Poètes sur les faiseurs! (Prose 624-25)

This account of the resounding cry “vive Hugo” during and after this play leads to

Verlaine’s comparison of this reprisal of Hernani to an actual battle, like that which broke out during the 1830 opening night of Hernani. A comparison of Verlaine’s description of the reprisal of Hernani to Gautier’s account of this same reprisal brings to the fore the difference in their two views of this event as a battle. Gautier sees the success of this production as proof that Hernani no longer needs defense and has been

427

pardoned and sanctioned.29 While Gautier remembers the battles as they once were,

Verlaine tries to insert some battle imagery into his description of this reprisal while still admitting that the battles no longer occur because they are no longer needed. In 1867,

Gautier’s Hugo is still the leader of 1830 whose victory is long since won, but Verlaine’s

1867 Hugo is an absent man whose name holds power because of the militant memory it carries. For Verlaine, Hugo’s play still represents a “Victoire”, but one of a different nature from the defeat of classicism it once referenced. For Verlaine, the new victory of

Hernani legitimizes the victory of (capitalized) Art by (capitalized) Poets over lower works by lesser braggarts. Hugo’s former victory for Romanticism thus finds itself repackaged and applied to a new struggle, that of the Parnassians. Hugo’s name, shouted by the audience, becomes a battle cry lending itself to new literary revolutions, Verlaine’s included.30

In response to the joint letter from Verlaine and the other Parnassians, Hugo sends a lengthy letter that clarifies his perspective on the revolutions with which he is affiliated and that casts the names of the young generation’s poets within his lineage, thereby verifying the success of Hugo’s earlier revolution (which Hugo deems a consequence of the French Revolution). According to Hovasse, this letter constitutes an open letter from

Hugo to the Parnassians in which he attempts to direct their movement away from its detached stance:

Il y a quelque chose d’énorme, pour reprendre un terme cher aux adversaires du poète, dans le fait de s’adresser au Parnasse, qui clame partout son détachement des choses de

29 See the earlier-cited passage from Gautier’s Victor Hugo, 80. 30 George Sand also writes a letter to Hugo about attending a reprisal of Lucrèce Borgia, in which she also notes how the audience cries his name: “‘J’étais il y a trente-sept ans à la première de Lucrèce, et j’ai pleuré. Je sors de la représentation d’aujourd’hui le cœur tout rempli d’émotion et de joie. J’ai dans les oreilles les acclamations de cette foule qui criait: “Vive Victor Hugo!” et qui vous appelait, hélas! comme si vous alliez venir, comme si vous alliez l’entendre’” (Barbou 338). 428

ce monde, son désintérêt de la politique, et de l’instituer conséquence littéraire de la Révolution française. (179)

One may also note the proximity of Hugo’s letter here to the parody of Hugolian letters of encouragement that Verlaine earlier writes:

Chers poëtes, La révolution littéraire de 1830, corollaire et conséquence de la révolution de 1789, est un fait propre à notre siècle. Je suis l’humble soldat de ce progrès. Je combats pour la révolution sous toutes ses formes, sous la forme littéraire comme sous la forme sociale. J’ai la liberté pour principe, le progrès pour loi, l’idéal pour type. Je ne suis rien, mais la révolution est tout. La poésie du dix-neuvième siècle est fondée. 1830 avait raison, et 1867 le démontre. Vos jeunes renommées sont des preuves à l’appui. […] Grâce à vous, jeunes et beaux talents, nobles esprits, la lumière se fera de plus en plus. Nous, les vieux, nous avons eu le combat; vous, les jeunes, vous aurez le triomphe. (Politique 594)31

This projection of Hugo’s presents himself in the first-person plural “nous” as a “vieux” who was part of the battle, after which the second-person plural “vous” will have the triumph. The reprisal of Hernani and the burgeoning literary movements of 1867 shows the righteousness of 1830. In this manner, the “jeunes renommées” of Verlaine’s generation prove that Hugo was right. Hugo thereby channels the effect of the renown of the youth into a vindication of Hugo’s 1830 revolution. While this is an attempt to control the effect of their names, it is also a means of placing himself below the new generation, as the tables here turn: in this case, Hugo presents their renown as validating his.

This possibility for individual renown to work for a collective purpose relies upon an alliance:

En laissant de côté tout ce qui m’est personnel, dès aujourd’hui, on peut l’affirmer et on vient de le voir, l’alliance est faite entre tous les écrivains, entre tous les talents, entre toutes les consciences, pour réaliser ce résultat magnifique. La généreuse jeunesse, dont vous êtes, veut, avec un imposant enthousiasme, la révolution tout entière,

31 My emphases. 429

dans la poésie comme dans l’état. La littérature doit être à la fois démocratique et idéale; démocratique pour la civilisation, idéale pour l’âme. Le Drame, c’est le Peuple. La Poésie, c’est l’Homme. Là est la tendance de 1830, continuée par vous, comprise par toute la grande critique de nos jours. (Politique 594-95)

Hugo here interpellates these young poets as writers who will continue his project of aligning political and literary progress, a project that the Parnassians would resist.32 The end of this letter shows Hugo projecting himself as preparing to die but happy to receive a crown of names from these young writers:

Recevez aussi, vous, mes jeunes confrères, mon remerciement. A ce point de la vie où je suis arrivé, on voit de près la fin, c’est-à-dire l’infini. Quand elle est si proche, la sortie de la terre ne laisse guère place dans notre esprit qu’aux préoccupations sévères. Pourtant, avant ce mélancolique départ dont je fais les préparatifs dans ma solitude, il m’est précieux de recevoir votre lettre éloquente, qui me fait rêver une rentrée parmi vous et m’en donne l’illusion, douce ressemblance du couchant avec l’aurore. Vous me souhaitez la bienvenue, à moi qui m’apprêtais au grand adieu. Merci. Je suis l’absent du devoir, et ma résolution est inébranlable, mais mon cœur est avec vous. Je suis fier de voir mon nom entouré des vôtres. Vos noms sont une couronne d’étoiles. – Victor Hugo (Politique 595)33

The focus upon naming in this letter serves as a means of establishing unity—an onomastic jungamus dextras—between Hugo and the young Parnassians. Though of different ages and faced with different literary battles, Hugo emphasizes the role of the younger generation as inheritors, as writers whose work proves the legitimacy and righteousness of the Hugo of 1830 and crowns the Hugo of 1867.

32 In the August 1, 1867 publication of Le Nain Jaune, a gossip columnist writes of the disparity between Hugo’s mission and that of the Parnassians, in reference to this epistolary exchange between the two: “Ce sont là, certes, de fortes et excellentes paroles; mais quand on est au courant de certains petits mystères, quand on songe que, parmi les jeunes gens auxquels ces paroles sont adressées, les trois quarts se font honneur d’appartenir à une école qui, volontairement, s’affranchit de toute préoccupation politique ou sociale, se cloître dans je ne sais quel culte mal défini de l’art pur, et ferme les fenêtres de son cénacle tous les bruits qui peuvent monter des champs ou de la rue, alors on se demande si dans la réponse du vieillard à ces jeunes gens il ne faut pas voir un petit, un tout petit peu de bienveillante ironie” (Corr. 112). 33 My emphases. Hugo’s first article for Le Rappel (the article is dated April 25, 1869, and it appears in the first publication of this paper on May 4, 1869) ends with a statement saying that Hugo does not ask for a crown. 430

In this letter, one finds a tendency toward historical explication of Hugo’s revolution (as a corollary to the Revolution of 1789) as well as a call to continue to align literary revolutions with political progress. These alignments, unifications, and recollections of the roots of revolutions underlie Hugo’s idea of names crowned with names. This results in a series of concentric circles of names, each of which differs from but in some way depends upon the names in the circles within and beyond its own circle.

So, if one places Hugo’s name at the center, one may spot Sainte-Beuve’s name written in the first ring around Hugo’s, then Gautier’s name in the following concentric circle, followed by Baudelaire’s, Rimbaud’s, Verlaine’s, etc. Each of these rings crowning

Hugo’s name comes with their own unique view of the significance of the name they surround. Allowing one’s name to serve as a crown for an older, revered writer also sets this name up in a line of coronations and prepares it for its own coronation via names and generations of writers to follow. And yet, it is Hugo’s own name that he here presents as gaining in prestige from the growing renown of his literary descendants.

VI. Doublement hugolâtre: Friendship in radicalism and dreams of poetic unity

“Et sur leur front le rêve inachevé des Dieux, Le monde que troublait leur parole profonde, Les exile. A leur tour ils exilent le monde!” - Verlaine, “Prologue”

In August of 1867, Verlaine and Hugo meet in Brussels. Verlaine writes of this meeting almost 30 years later, in 1895 (a decade following Hugo’s death), in a short prose piece entitled Croquis de Belgique. In this piece, Verlaine writes of his excitement to meet Hugo: “ […] Je bondis plutôt que je ne courus […]” (Prose 560). Upon arriving, he learns from a servant that he will first meet with Mme. Hugo while waiting for Hugo to return. He writes that, while walking to the salon to meet Mme. Hugo, he remembers

431

lines of both Hugo’s and Sainte-Beuve’s pertaining to this “Muse du Romantisme”

(Prose 562).34 Like her husband, Adèle holds legendary status for the writers of

Verlaine’s generation.

Verlaine recalls that, after speaking with Mme. Hugo for some time, her husband arrives. Verlaine’s description of this meeting continues the earlier attestations of excitement at meeting these living legends, but it also incorporates the fact that Verlaine was prepared for this encounter, precisely because of Hugo’s legendary status:

[…] La porte s’ouvrit, — et Victor Hugo parut à mes yeux pour la première fois. Je connaissais Victor Hugo d’après l’immense quantité de portraits, lithographies, glabres en toupet Louis-Philippe, les daguerréotypies en coup de vent d’un peu après, en saule pleureur du coup d’État, puis les premières photographies en barbes poussantes et en cheveux tondus de chez Pierre Petit. […] A vrai dire, j’étais ému. Beaucoup. Dame! J’étais, comme nous tous, doublement hugolâtre: 1830, le 2 décembre, ces deux dates me hantaient. Pourtant l’homme de génie commençait à m’imposer plus en Victor Hugo que l’homme de parti. Aussi fus-je charmé de son accueil tout littéraire, et si gentiment littéraire! Oui, j’étais ému; mais j’étais préparé. Et cette communion d’une heure avec la digne compagne du grand homme, ce quelque chose de lui qui était elle, et sa parole si suggestive avaient, sinon rompu, du moins brisé ma timidité, et ce fut avec une aise modeste et, mon Dieu, l’avouerai-je, avec une loquacité respectueuse que je causai avec lui. Il me cita de mes vers – ô sublime et doux roublard! Il flatta ma fierté d’enfant par une controverse qu’il souffrit paternellement que je soutinsse, à propos de quoi? des premiers vers, des premiers articles que je publiais alors… […] Pour ce qui concernait l’Im-pas-si-bi-li-té, notre grand mot d’alors, à nous Parnassiens, il ajouta: “Vous en reviendrez.” […] Le Maître était, en outre, avec tous les défauts inhérents et indispensables à un homme digne d’être un homme, un homme exquis et un brave homme, au fond. Que diable voulez-vous que je fisse à Bruxelles après cette aubaine? M’en aller bien vite, emportant la bonne nouvelle à part moi: que Victor Hugo s’intéressait à moi! Je m’en allai bien vite, parbleu! (Prose 562-64)

Verlaine recounts the images of Hugo with which he was familiar as points of comparison for the person that he meets. The description of himself as “doublement hugolâtre” emphasizes the two kinds of revolution with which Hugo is associated: the

34 Moreover, the lines that he cites from Sainte-Beuve come from his 1830 work entitled Les Consolations, a work one will recall was dedicated to Hugo and in which, according to this dedication, Hugo’s name can be found on nearly every page. 432

literary revolution of 1830 and the political resistance to the coup of 1851. Verlaine’s

Hugo has made at least two very well-known significations for his name, both of which are bound up with revolution. Verlaine’s Hugos, then, are young and old, Parisian and exiled, but both are also revolutionaries in literature and in politics. However, in this meeting, a literary-minded Hugo dominates and cites Verlaine’s words, which move

Verlaine views as belying slyness, as he calls Hugo a “sublime et doux roublard” for doing so.35 Hugo’s dismissal of the importance of a key Parnassian word,

“l’Impassibilité”, foreshadows the divide that will separate Hugo and the Parnassian movement. The manner by which Hugo brushes this word aside here presents him as a paternal or grandfatherly figure who tolerates the excesses of youth and predicts the eventual abandonment of wild ideals (“Vous en reviendrez”). Like Hugo’s open letter to the Parnassians, the Hugo of Verlaine’s account sees the new revolutionary generation as reconcilable with his own generation’s well-known revolution. Verlaine’s reference to

Hugo as “le Maître” and his happiness upon finding that this master both lives up to his reputation and at least feigns interest in Verlaine is inflected by the desires of the “nous”, the “doublement hugolâtres” who have more than one Hugo to worship and judge as worthy or unworthy of the term “maître”. The more significances that are attached to

Hugo’s name, the more “Hugo”s there are to worship or reject.

A month after this meeting, Verlaine sends Hugo a long letter in which he reports back to Hugo on his progress concerning two literary missions that Hugo drafted him to carry out in Paris. Verlaine thus becomes a kind of Hugolian emissary, “comme un

35 Hovasse infers that Verlaine believes Hugo memorized these lines just before Verlaine’s arrival so as to appear to be familiar with his work. Hovasse then defends Hugo, saying that Verlaine must have sent his work to Hauteville-House, so Hugo must have read his work before traveling to Brussels (184). 433

ambassadeur de la jeune génération” (Hovasse 186).36 Then, Verlaine thanks Hugo for the visit:

Il me reste, cher Maître, à vous prier d’excuser ce bavardage et de recevoir l’expression de mon immense respect, ainsi que l’inaltérable affection de ma gratitude profonde. Mon bon ami François Coppée vous dira mieux que je ne saurais vous l’écrire le bonheur et la joie intarissables et bavards dont m’a comblé la charmante et fraternelle façon dont vous avez daigné me recevoir récemment. En vous priant de faire agréer à Mme. Victor Hugo l’hommage de mon profond et reconnaissant respect, je vous supplie encore une fois de me croire à jamais, Cher, illustre et vénéré Maître, Votre tout humble et dévoué serviteur et admirateur. (Corr. 119)

While insisting upon Hugo’s status as “Maître”, Verlaine here thanks him for his fraternal welcome and assures the master of his fidelity as a servant and admirer (thereby casting himself in a role lower than that of a brother). Returning his gratitude, Hugo sends

Verlaine a copy of Paris-Guide (for which Hugo wrote the preface) with a dedication for

Verlaine within it. Verlaine’s letter to Hugo following his receipt of this gift shows his continued gratitude: “Je m’empresse de vous remercier du fond du cœur et de l’envoi et de la dédicace: double honneur dont je m’efforcerai d’être digne” (Corr. 123). He goes on in this letter to exhibit an increasing familiarity with Hugo, as he tells him of his own forthcoming article as well as the future publications of Leconte de Lisle and of Coppée.

Hovasse sees this as indicative of a reversal of Verlaine’s role between Hugo and the

Parnassians: “Les rôles sont inversés depuis la lettre précédente: de porte-parole de Hugo auprès du Parnasse, Verlaine est devenu porte-parole du Parnasse auprès de Hugo” (188-

89). Verlaine’s role as an intermediary between Hugo and the Parnassian movement continues for some time, and their rapport strengthens. Thanks in large part to this

36 Hovasse also points out that the two people Hugo sends Verlaine to speak with, Leconte de Lisle and Glatigny, represent figures of the Parnassian movement: “D’un côté, Leconte de Lisle qui en est le modèle implicite; de l’autre Glatigny, gracieux poète et comédien, qui en est une étoile montante. […] [Hugo] semble chercher à mesurer ses chances de maîtrise du mouvement contemporain, ou tout au moins à évaluer sa position” (187). 434

relationship, Hugo’s name was associated with the early Parnassian movement through

Verlaine.

Verlaine includes two lines of Hugo’s poetry as an epigraph to his poem “Les

Loups”, first published in the Revue des lettres et des arts in 1867. This epigraph was suppressed in a later publication of the poem, in Jadis et naguère in 1885, marking the second instance of Verlaine suppressing Hugo’s name for the publication of one of his works.37 The epigraph comes from Hugo’s poem “La Voix de Guernesey”, in which he critiques the papacy for suppressing Garibaldi and the Italian people for accepting this revolutionary dissolution (“Pleurez, Italiens! Il vous eût faits Romains” (Poésie II

1046)). In the first section of this poem, Hugo includes the image of wolves feasting on the human carcasses strewn by war:

Ces jeunes gens, ces fils de Brutus, de Camille, De Thraséas combien étaient-ils? quatre mille. Combien sont morts? six cents. Six cents! comptez, voyez. Une dispersion de membres foudroyés, Des bras rompus, des yeux troués et noirs, des ventres Où fouillent en hurlant les loups sortis des antres, De la chair mitraillée au milieu des buissons, C’est là tout ce qui reste, après les trahisons, Après le piège, après les guet-apens infâmes, Hélas, de ces grands cœurs et de ces grandes âmes! (Poésie II 1042)

Hugo’s wolves here consume and thereby eradicate the bodies of the descendants of heroes. The “grands cœurs” and “grandes âmes” find their bodies ravaged by these wild animals. The lines cited by Verlaine appear in the following passage from Hugo’s poem, in italics:

Et cependant l’odeur des morts, affreux parfum Qui se mêle à l’encens, des Tedeums superbes,

37 Hovasse interprets the removal of this epigraph as being due to Hugo’s status as an older poet: “‘Les Loups’ […] est le seul poème de sa section (‘Vers jeunes’) à n’être dédié à personne. Les autres le sont successivement à Edmond Lepelletier, à Robert Caze, à Léon Vanier, à J.-K. Huysmans, à Louis-Xavier de Ricard. Est-ce à dire que la référence à Hugo aurait dépareillé cet ensemble de ‘jeunes’ écrivains?” (189). 435

Monte du fond des bois, du fond des prés pleins d’herbes, Des steppes, des marais, des vallons, en tous lieux! Au fatal boulevard de Paris oublieux, Au Mexique, en Pologne, en Crète où la nuit tombe, En Italie, ou sent un miasme de tombe, Comme si, sur ce globe et sous le firmament, Étant dans sa saison d’épanouissement, Vaste mancenillier de la terre en démence, Le carnage vermeil ouvrait sa fleur immense. (Poésie II 1047)38

This image contains darkness, violence, and morbidity, all infused with the odor of death.

It also creates something of a “fleur du mal” by depicting carnage as blooming. The manchineel tree referenced here (“Vaste mancenillier de la terre en démence”) is a tree that poses great danger to human beings; one of its perils lies in its fruit, which resembles an apple and is highly poisonous.39 Hugo’s tree of death corresponds to the blooming, ruby flower of carnage that the narrator finds staining the globe.

While Hugo’s poem portrays wolves in an unsympathetic light, Verlaine’s poem is narrated from the point of view of a group of wolves. In both poems, the “héros” lose their lives to predators. At one point, while Verlaine’s wolves eat human flesh, they comment upon the taste of heroes: “Chair entaillée et sang qui coule/ Les héros ont du bon vraiment./ La faim repue et la soif soûle/ Leur doivent bien ce compliment” (Poésie

176). The substantive “héros” appears five times in Hugo’s poem, at one point to describe people who are imprisoned because of their struggle for liberty: “Une chaîne au héros! une corde à l’apôtre!/ John Brown, Garibaldi, passez l’un après l’autre./ Quel est

38 My emphases. 39 Philpott writes of this tree’s dangers: “Found on many beaches the Manchineel has a number of effective defensive mechanisms which can prove very painful. Trees vary from a few feet to more than 30 feet in height, and have widely spreading, deep forked boughs with small, dark green leaves and yellow stems, and fruit like small, green apples. […] The apple-like fruit is very poisonous, and sap from the tree causes very painful blisters. It is so toxic, that early Caribs are said to have dipped their arrow heads in it before hunting trips. Sap is released if leaf or branch is broken, and more so after rain. Avoid contact with the tree, don’t sit under it, or on a fallen branch, and do not eat the fruit. If you do get sap on your skin, run into the sea and wash it off as quickly as possible” (17). Additionally, another word for the manchineel is “hippomane”, which translates to horse lover and shares a Greek etymological root, “hippo”, with “hippogriff”. 436

ce prisonnier? c’est le libérateur” (Poésie II 1043). On the other hand, Verlaine’s “héros” are judged not by their commitment to an ideal but by the taste of their flesh. One may here recall Sartre’s comments about the godlessness of the generations following Hugo.

Verlaine’s poem here shows an affinity with Rimbaud’s renversement of Hugolian idealism by reducing these heroes to the flavors savored by their predators.40

However, despite their primary role as predators, Verlaine’s wolves also remark on the songs of the army of “jeunes hommes” (Poésie 176) that they stalk.41 Their description of these songs reflects the ideals communicated in Hugo’s poem: “Ils chantaient des choses hautaines!/ Ça parlait de libres combats,/ D’amour, de brisements de chaînes/ Et de mauvais dieux mis à bas —” (Poésie 177). So, in this poem, the gods lain low are the “bad” gods. This poem both mentions the “hautaine” idealism of the fallen soldiers and reduces them to many-flavored wolf fodder. In this way, the poem exhibits a reconnaissant echo of Hugo and a renversement of a Hugolian image. The wolves wait for the soldiers to sleep in a valley, and then they massacre the humans.

Verlaine’s poem ends with the following two quatrains that relate the wolves’ feast and introduce a master-less battlefield:

Et nous avons de quoi repaître Cet impérial appétit, Le champ de bataille sans maître N’étant ni vide ni petit.

Or, sans plus perdre en phrases vaines Dont quelque sot serait jaloux Cette heure de grasses aubaines,

40 The teeth of the wolves also receive considerable attention, appearing twice in the poem, which repetition serves to emphasize their role as destructive entities of consumption. The final image of teeth in this poem is especially striking and reminiscent of Baudelaire’s “Le Cygne”, Poe’s “The Raven”, and Gautier’s “Cauchemar”: “Et le bruit sec de nos dents blanches/ Qu’attendaient des festins si beaux/ Faisaient cliqueter dans les branches/ Le bec avide des corbeaux” (Poésie 177). 41 Murphy calls these wolves secondary predators: “[…] Pour Verlaine, ce ne sont pas les responsables de la tuerie, mais de simples instruments du pouvoir (voire de la chair à canon)” (Marges 279). 437

Buvons et mangeons, nous, les Loups! (Poésie 178)

The lack of a “maître” on the battlefield described in the penultimate stanza becomes more compelling when the source of this poem’s epigraph is taken into consideration.

According to his letters and his description of meeting Hugo, Verlaine’s maître is Hugo during this period of his life. The lack of a “maître” on the battlefield may be a reference to Hugo’s absence from France at this time during his exile. What complicates this possible interpretation is the fact that Verlaine’s narrator self-identifies as a capitalized

“Loup” in the poem’s final line, putting himself in the camp of observers and beneficiaries of this lack of a maître.

In the absence of this “maître”, the wolves find a battlefield full of the corpses of the leader’s heroic followers ready to be eaten. That is to say that, without Hugo, the youthful followers that sing of “choses hautaines” cannot defeat the wolves, whose collective aim lies in quelling their hunger rather than pusuing political ideals. In both poems, those committed to an ideal are consumed by the wolves. Nevertheless, while

Hugo’s poem ends with a call to the sleeping masses to awaken and take up arms,

Verlaine’s poem ends with a call to the wolves to stop wasting time on these “phrases vaines” and to begin feasting upon the bodies of dead heroes. The final use of the pronoun “nous” to refer to “les Loups” incriminates the reader as well and renders this ending more of a Baudelairian accusation (in the style of “Au Lecteur”) than a Hugolian call for revolution. And yet, the lines that Verlaine cites from Hugo’s 1867 poem “La

Voix de Guernesey” in this poem’s epigraph expose a highly Baudelairean version of

“Hugo”, not in the sense of a “Hugo” projected by Baudelaire, but in the sense of a

“Hugo” that approximates Baudelaire, a Hugo presenting a poem that resembles a “fleur du mal”. Maybe the maître has been within the wolves all along—and vice versa: after 438

devouring one another’s bodies of work, the wolf-writers may carry within them some shreds of the other writers.

VII. Le Rappel and the return of the Maître

“C’est triste De voir le piédestal, où le nom de l’artiste Se lit péniblement parmi l’ombre d’un arbre.” - Verlaine, “L’amour par terre”

In a very un-Parnassian move, Verlaine publishes a poem with a strong political message that also contains a reference to Hugo. This poem, “Au pas de Charge”, was first published in Le Rappel, the radical republican newspaper founded in 1869 by

Hugo’s sons Charles and François, Meurice, and Rochefort.42 Hugo’s letter for the first issue calls upon writers to remember, echoing the name of the newspaper. Through the act of remembering, the young and the old may become unified:

Ces nobles jeunes hommes d’à présent, je les connais, et je les aime. Je suis dans leur secret et je les remercie de ce doux murmure que si souvent, comme une lointaine troupe d’abeilles, ils viennent faire à mon oreille. Ils ont une volonté mystérieuse et ferme, et ils feront le bien, j’en réponds. Cette jeunesse, c’est la France républicaine en fleur, c’est la Révolution redevenue aurore. […] Mes amis et vous, mes fils, allez! combattez votre vaillant combat! Combattez-le sans moi et avec moi. Sans moi, car ma vieille plume guerroyante ne sera pas parmi les vôtres; avec moi, car mon âme y sera. (Politique 622)43

As a means of distinguishing the two groups that he wants to see unified, Hugo refers to one group as “mes amis” and to the other as “mes fils”, thereby assuming a paternal role

42 According to Avenel, this paper was an immediate success: “Le succès des journaux tels que le Rappel et la Marseillaise fut tout de suite considérable, surtout à Paris et dans les grandes villes” (578). 43 One may recall the latter part of this citation from the first chapter of this work. I am citing it again here as a rappel of this version of Hugo. Just before the cited passage, Hugo writes the following encouragement to the older generation to unify with the younger. I here include the very end of his long list of different “rappels” that he hears in the title of this paper: “[…] Rappel de la liberté par le réveil de la France; rappel de la lumière par le cri: Fiat lux! Vous dites: voilà notre tâche; moi je dis: voilà votre œuvre. Cette œuvre, vous l’avez faite, soit comme journalistes, soit comme poètes, dans le pamphlet, admirable mode de combat, dans le livre, au théâtre, partout, toujours; vous l’avez faite d’accord et de front avec tous les grands esprits de ce grand siècle. Aujourd’hui, vous la reprenez, ce journal au poing, le Rappel. […] Aucune générosité ne manquera à votre œuvre. Vous donnerez le mot d’ordre de l’espérance à cette admirable jeunesse d’aujourd’hui, qui a sur le front la candeur loyale de l’avenir. Vous rallierez dans l’incorruptible foi commune cette studieuse et fière multitude d’intelligences toutes frémissantes de la joie d’éclore, qui le matin peuple les écoles et le soir les théâtres, ces autres écoles; le matin cherchant le vrai dans la science, le soir applaudissant ou réclamant le grand dans la poésie et le beau dans l’art” (Politique 619). 439

with regard to the young generation of writers. Avenel underscores the importance of

Hugo’s name for the success of this paper: “Le Rappel, bien supérieur au Réveil, arborait le nom de Victor Hugo, non comme celui d’un rédacteur en chef, mais comme un programme et un drapeau” (573). Hugo’s name as a flag lends it the magnetism of patriotism: his name attracts others to surround and support it, like the crown Hugo describes earlier. Verlaine contributes to this paper multiple times in 1869, but always pseudonymously.44 This choice exhibits hesitancy on Verlaine’s part to overtly align his name and literary mission with those of Hugo.

Verlaine publishes “Au pas de Charge” in Le Rappel four days following the newspaper’s first issue. His pseudonym for “Au pas de Charge” is “BARRA”, which

Hovasse sees as a reference to the newspaper’s vignette of a drum (190). Hovasse also notes certain Hugolian presences in this poem of Verlaine’s:

La première partie, en revanche, est à la fois politique et pro-Hugo, c’est-à-dire tout à fait dans le ton du journal. Elle commence comme une transcription, mezza-voce, du poème ‘À l’obéissance passive’ […] et s’achève par une allusion à Gwynplaine qui peut s’expliquer par la parution en feuilleton, dans Le Rappel, de L’Homme qui rit […]. (191)

Hugo’s poem “À l’Obéissance Passive”, from Les Châtiments, is first published in 1853, over 15 years before Verlaine’s poem. Hugo’s poem attacks Napoleon III and his supporters:

Vos pères combattaient les plus fières armées, Le prussien blond, le russe aux foudres enflammées, Le catalan bruni, Vous, vous tuez des gens de bourse et de négoce. Vos pères, ces géants, avaient pris Saragosse, Vous prenez Tortoni! (Poésie II 54)45

44 Despite his pseudonymous publications, in a study on August Vacquerie published in 1895, Verlaine openly writes about his contributions to Le Rappel (Prose 945). 45 Zaragoza, Spain was the site of two sieges (in 1808 and 1809) during the Napoleonic Wars. See Escalettes. Tortoni was the name of a famous café-glacier frequented by many writers during the 19th Century. See Dewey. 440

In place of military battles fought by giants, the “vous” of this poem enacts insignificant struggles for prestige. This poem goes on to twice focus on the names of the guilty.46

Hugo’s narrator ends this poem with the hope that, despite himself being “rien”, God’s force will help him crush both “L’empire et l’empereur!” (Poésie II 60).

Verlaine’s “Au pas de Charge” takes up the image of the drum and echoes Hugo’s poem in its praise of those who fought the “bonne guerre” in 1793:

Les petits tambours de l’an II, Joyeux garçonnets hasardeux Que les balles n’effrayaient guère Ces tapins de la bonne guerre Ne sont pas si morts qu’on le croit Et dans la lutte qui s’accroît, Iront frappant sur la peau d’âne. (Poésie 624)

The final stanzas of the first section of this poem imply that Hugo is the “Maître” and the

“Poète prodigieux” who offers hope for Humanity in this time of political and militaristic shame:

Avant-hier, le dernier vestige Du temps si fécond en prestige Qui vit Brumaire et Waterloo, Vint de l’autre côté de l’eau Poser mainte et mainte Immortelle À la grille devant laquelle On est si fier d’être Français. Coulez mes larmes, — sans excès!

Cependant les poètes rêvent Et leurs chants ailés nous enlèvent Dans les cieux immenses et clairs. Ceinte de rayons et d’éclairs, Voici venir l’œuvre du Maître Dont l’éclat tournant nous pénètre D’un tremblement religieux.

46 Firstly, it names Napoleon III “Guet-apens”: “Vous crûtes jusqu’ici que j’étais Bonaparte,/ Mon nom est Guet-apens” (Poésie II 54); secondly, it calls out certain “noms maudits” that should burn: “Hélas! tout est fini. Fange! néant! nuit noire!/ Au-dessus de ce gouffre où croula notre gloire,/ Flamboyez, noms maudits!/ Maupas, Morny, Magnan, Saint-Arnaud, Bonaparte!/ […] Cinq hommes! cinq bandits!” (Poésie II 57-58). 441

Le Poète prodigieux, Cette fois encore, relève Ceux que tient opprimés le glaive Ou la loi des forts et, vengeant L’Humanité, sur le méchant, Fait luire, large éclair de haine, Les trente-deux dents de Gwynplaine. (Poésie 624-25)

The winged songs of poets here have the power to lift the poem’s “nous”. Verlaine again includes the image of 32 teeth in a poem that incorporates Hugo (as he earlier did in

“Cauchemar”). These teeth belong to Gwynplaine, Hugo’s mangled protagonist from

L’Homme qui rit, a novel first published in this same year of 1869. One passage from

Hugo’s letter published with the first edition of Le Rappel also emphasizes laughter as a powerful tool in the fight against injustice:

Ce sera un journal lumineux et acéré; tantôt épée et tantôt rayon. Vous allez combattre en riant. Moi, vieux et triste, j’applaudis. Courage donc, et en avant! Le rire, quelle puissance! Vous allez prendre place comme auxiliaires de toutes les bonnes volontés, dans l’étincelante région parisienne des journaux du rire… (Politique 620)

In Verlaine’s poem, Gwynplaine’s laugh embodies a hateful vengeance aimed to benefit those in need. While this poem does not explicitly cite Hugo’s name, it does cite the name of his most recent protagonist. As the creator of this character, Hugo here emerges through Gwynplaine. The creator of Gwynplaine, the capitalized “Maître” and capitalized “Poète” appearing in this poem, deploys the perpetual laughter and 32 teeth of

Gwymplaine to fight the injustices of his country and its government.47 This poem demonstrates Verlaine’s strong support for Hugo at this time as well as his having cast

Hugo as the masterful poetic leader of his generation, a leader unafraid to bare his literary teeth.

47 A line from Le Roi s’amuse aligns laughter with power through the visibility of teeth: “Un puissant en gaîté ne peut songer qu’à nuire./ Il est bien des sujets de craindre là-dedans./ D’une bouche qui rit on voit toutes les dents” (Théâtre I 859). 442

Also in 1869, Verlaine publishes his third collection of poetry, Fêtes galantes, for which Hugo writes a laudatory “billet” to Verlaine.48 In this “billet”, Hugo emphasizes

Verlaine’s youth:

Vous êtes digne, mon jeune confrère, de voler d’une cîme à l’autre. […] Vous savez qu’à Bruxelles je vous disais cette bonne aventure et je vous annonçais cet avenir. Vous êtes un des premiers et plus puissants, un des plus charmants dans cette nouvelle légion sacrée des poètes que je salue et que j’aime, moi le vieux pensif des solitudes. (Corr. 157)

To Verlaine’s youthful generation, Hugo again presents himself as differing because of age.49 He also affirms Verlaine’s capacity for flight in this “billet”, thereby authorizing

Verlaine as a poet belonging to Hugo’s hippogriffic literary family. As Verlaine’s earlier parody of Hugo’s letter shows, this receipt of a letter of praise from Hugo serves as something of a milestone in the careers of many writers in 19th-century France. The ability to publish such a letter alongside a work offers these writers the chance to align their names with Hugo’s and exhibit to the public that they have been accepted into

Hugo’s literary family.50

The following year, 1870, marks Hugo’s return to France after Napoleon III’s fall from power and the establishment of the Third Republic. Les Châtiments is also then published in France for the first time (its 1853 publication was in Brussels as the work so insulted Napoleon III), with an introductory poem “Au moment de rentrer en France”, in which the narrator declares his enduring fidelity to France: “France, tu verras bien qu’humble tête éclipsée/ J’avais foi,/ Et que je n’eus jamais dans l’âme une pensée/ Que

48 In 1868, Verlaine publishes his second collection, Les Amies, pseudonymously. 49 While in exile, Hugo fostered an image of himself as a prophet speaking from beyond the grave. He apparently succeeded to some degree in this endeavor because, while visiting Brussels in 1867, 18 years before his actual death, a woman he ran into one night told him, “Vous ressemblez à Victor Hugo; on dit qu’il est mort” (Garval 187). 50 And yet, as Borel notes, there was a general sentiment that Hugo wrote such letters for many writers, regardless of their actual talent. Hovasse cites Borel’s critique of Hugo’s letter for Verlaine: “Le billet de Hugo est sévèrement jugé par Jacques Borel dans la préface au recueil publié dans la ‘Bibliothèque de la Pléiade’: ‘Un billet de Hugo le 16 avril, élogieux, emphatique, vague, comme il en écrivait à tous et à toutes, à Louise Colet comme à Baudelaire […]’” (192). 443

pour toi” (Poésie II 234). In this poem, Hugo’s narrator writes of how he fled France when it celebrated the luxury brought about by the coup of 1851 and how he now rushes back to France when it faces danger from the Prussian army. One may recall that, as recompense for his sacrifices, this narrator hopes that France will give him a tomb: “Et peut-être, en la terre où brille l’espérance,/ Pur flambeau,/ Pour prix de mon exil, tu m’accorderas, France,/ Un tombeau” (Poésie II 235). There is some irony in comparing

Verlaine’s following praise of this republication of Hugo’s poetry and his later disgust at just how exalting the funeral and tomb France eventually gives Hugo were.

In December of 1870, two months after the French publication of Les Châtiments,

Verlaine sends Hugo some verses about shipwreck in which “Le Livre” (by which he means Les Châtiments)51 saves his poem’s characters lost at sea. Verlaine dedicates these lines to Hugo: “Accueillez, cher Maître, ces vers de votre tout dévoué, qu’une gorge littéralement en flammes prive de l’honneur et du plaisir de vous les porter lui-même”

(Corr. 194). Verlaine’s poem bears some resemblance to Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau ivre”:

Nous errions sur la mer des suprêmes désastres Sous un ciel irrité, sans boussole, sans astres, Débris d’un grand combat perdu par trahisons Autour de nous rampaient les flots, phosphore et souffre; Le radeau lentement s’enfonçait dans le gouffre; Déjà nous nous sentions guettés par les poissons…

O Livre, tu parais dans ce hideux naufrage, Tel qu’un inespéré vaisseau de grand tonnage Où nous grimpons, nageurs à demi-submergés, Et la seule vertu de ta bonne mâture Et tes rangs de canons prêts à toute aventure Nous ont soudain – par quel miracle? – encouragés.

Nous combattrons! – Que vienne à présent le pirate, Nous l’accueillerons bien l’escadre scélérate…

51 The allusion to Hugo’s Les Châtiments is verified by Pakenham in his edition of Verlaine’s Correspondance Générale, in which a footnote to “Livre” reads, “Les Châtiments, édition enfin publiée en France avec deux poèmes inédits” (194). 444

Mousqueton, caronnade, oh! l’admirable chœur! – Et s’il ne nous échoit qu’une belle défaite, Du moins nous aurons eu cette suprême fête Nous aussi, de couler à fond sur le Vengeur! (Corr. 194)

Published months before Rimbaud’s 1871 “Le Bateau ivre”, Verlaine’s narratorial voice is not a “je” like Rimbaud’s but is a “nous”, more akin to Baudelaire’s narratorial voice in “Le Voyage”. Verlaine’s “Le Livre” depicts sailors lost at sea who, rather than desiring an opportunity to explore the unknown, fear that they are hunted by the fish in these dangerous waters. Hugo’s “Livre” appears to save them like a vessel. In the second stanza, one may note the repetition of the sound /aʒ/, echoing the French “âge”

(“naufrage”, “tonnage”, “nageurs”, and “encouragés”). Such repetition emphasizes

Hugo’s status as the elder. While Rimbaud’s ship seeks liberty and freedom from the guidance of others, Verlaine’s sailors welcome the appearance of Hugo’s guiding light.

Hovasse signals the marked similarity of these two poems:

Ces vers précèdent, de peu, l’écriture du poème “Le Bateau ivre”; certains en sont même si proches qu’il paraît difficile d’imaginer que Rimbaud n’avait pas en tête le poème écrit par Verlaine à l’occasion de la publication des Châtiments. (194)

It is possible that Rimbaud’s poem, with its Léviathan and other references to Hugolian poetry, serves as a less respectful counterpart to Verlaine’s poem of praise and thanks for

Hugo. Two approaches to the dominance and impact of Hugo’s name are thus offered in quick succession: Verlaine’s stance of reconnaissance and Rimbaud’s aim for liberating résistance and solitary révolution.

In response to Verlaine’s letter including this poem, the “cher Maître” writes a short note of thanks in which he accepts credit for being an inspiration and insists that

Verlaine take credit for the production: “Cher poète, Vos vers sont tout bonnement superbes. J’ai une belle part, les avoir inspirés; vous en avez une non moins belle, les

445

avoir faits. A bientôt. Mettez-moi [mes hommages] aux pieds de votre charmante femme. V.H.” (195). Hugo here introduces the fact that he and the new Mme. Verlaine were acquaintances, a relationship that will soon change the nature of his rapport with

Verlaine. But at least up until 1870, it appears that the names Hugo and Verlaine will appear side by side for years to come, given both their mutual professional appreciation and their mutual affiliation with Verlaine’s wife.

VIII. Conjugal Trouble, Prison, and Conversion to Hugophobia

“Mortel, ange ET démon, autant dire Rimbaud…” - Verlaine, “À Arthur Rimbaud”

Verlaine and Mathilde Mauté were married in August of 1870. Paul Foucher,

Adèle’s brother, was one of Mathilde’s witnesses at the ceremony. The following year, in 1871, Verlaine meets Rimbaud, and they engage in an affair that twice turns famously violent. During this year, Rimbaud writes “Le Bateau ivre”, and Verlaine maintains friendly and supportive relations with Hugo. He and his wife eat dinner with Hugo and

Juliette Drouet and with the Hugos. In May of 1872, Verlaine and his wife are invited to dinner at Hugo’s house, along with one other family. Rimbaud had recently stabbed

Verlaine multiple times in his legs during one of their disputes. Soon thereafter, Hugo begins takes on a very different role for Verlaine, that of a conjugal advisor and intermediary.52

During this metamorphosis of their relationship, Verlaine uses some of Hugo’s lines as an epigraph to another of his poems, “Bruxelles. Chevaux de bois”. The epigraph comes from Hugo’s poem “Le Pas d’armes du roi Jean”, published in Odes et Ballades:

52 Hovasse comments upon this shift: “Il est fort peu probable que Hugo ait jamais rencontré Rimbaud, mais il est en revanche certain qu’il a connu son existence par Verlaine. Rien de très poétique, pourtant, dans tout cela: Hugo y perd son image de Maître pour celle, plus surprenante, de conseiller conjugal” (193). 446

“Par Saint-Gille,/ Viens-nous-en,/ Mon agile/ Alezan” (Poésie 88). In Verlaine’s 27-line poem, the narrator commands the eponymous wooden horses to turn 18 times. The

“maîtres” of this poem hold a different position than in Verlaine’s earlier poems referring to Hugo: “Le gros soldat, la plus grosse bonne/ Sont sur vos dos comme dans leur chambre;/ Car, en ce jour, au bois de la Cambre,/ Les maîtres sont tous deux en personne” (Poésie 88). The masters in this poem are the corpulent soldier and the even more rotund maid who ride these wooden horses without commanding great respect. The final stanza of this poem refers to lovers and to the “tambours”, which object recalls

Verlaine’s earlier pro-Hugo writings for Le Rappel under the pseudonym BARRA:

“Tournez, tournez! le ciel en velours/ D’astres en or se vêt lentement./ Voici partir l’amante et l’amant./ Tournez au son joyeux des tambours!” (Poésie 88). This poem with an epigraph from Hugo presents a much lighter, more celebratory and frivolous tone than Verlaine’s earlier works tied to Hugo. Such a change in tone may result from the closer, more intimate rapport that develops between the two poets during this period.

Having dined with Hugo and his lover, Verlaine may feel more at liberty to refer to Hugo in the same poem that treats lovers and plural “maîtres” who enjoy amusement, rather than a singular “Maître” representing ideals to an entire generational following. “Hugo” is presented in a more humanly fleshy context through this poem of Verlaine’s: as compared to the sacrificed flesh of heroes with no maître in “Les Loups”, the corpulent maîtres of “Bruxelles. Chevaux de bois.” end by presumably preparing to pursue pleasures of the flesh with one another.

Verlaine repeatedly abandons Mathilde for Rimbaud and occasionally sends her letters blaming her for these disappearances. Mathilde shows Hugo one of these letters in

447

1872, which marks the beginning of Hugo’s time as an intermediary between Verlaine and his wife.53 Verlaine also sends Hugo a letter in 1872 telling him that he is the victim in this situation, not his wife. In 1873, Verlaine is imprisoned after shooting Rimbaud in the wrist in Brussels: “The lovers fight, separate, chase after each other, and fight again.

In Brussels, on 10 July 1873, Verlaine fires two pistol shots at Rimbaud. It’s the end of their relationship” (Vassalli 31). Verlaine is sentenced to two years in prison in Brussels and a fine of 200 Belgian francs, the maximum sentence possible. While in prison awaiting his sentencing, Verlaine writes his final letters to Hugo asking for salvation:

Cher et vénéré Maître, cette lettre est bien faite pour vous surprendre, tant par l’indication qui précède que par l’ardente prière qui va suivre, mais n’êtes-vous pas la bonté comme vous êtes le génie? – et puisque, depuis les déjà longues années que j’ai l’honneur et le bonheur de vous connaître, vous m’avez toujours bien voulu témoigner, ainsi qu’au bonheur de mon pauvre ménage, le plus vif et le plus paternel intérêt, j’ose, mon cher Maître, m’ouvrir à vous tout entier aujourd’hui, car près de périr sombrer affreusement, je vous crie au secours, sauvez-moi! […] Mon cher Maître, c’est affreux, mais le pire, c’est ma femme, qui est la cause indirecte de tout celà, et qui, - sans doute ne sachant rien encore—me laisse là!... —Ô mon cher et vénéré Maître, faites une chose, tenez, vous le pouvez, vous seul le pouvez. Parlez-lui, faites-la venir chez vous, dites-lui qu’elle doit pardonner à ce malheureux, que seule elle peut me sauver du remords, de l’angoisse, seule elle peut m’aider à refaire ma vie. […] Je serai doux comme un enfant: qu’elle ait enfin pitié et considère ce que le désespoir m’a déjà fait faire […]. Dites-lui tout celà mon cher Maître: vous avez toute autorité sur elle et elle vous écoutera avec respect et fruit, j’en suis sûr. Ai-je besoin de vous dire quelle immense gratitude nous vous aurons tous, elle, moi, —et plus tard, ce pauvre enfant! C’est peut-être fou à moi de vous demander un tel service, mais je vous aime tant, mon cher Maître, que je suis sûr que vous me la [sic] rendrez. […] Je rougis de signer Votre tout dévoué P. Verlaine […] Si Madame Drouet voulait se faire votre auxiliaire dans la tâche pieuse que j’ose vous offrir, elle a, je crois, grande influence sur ma femme. (Corr. 341-43)

Over the course of this desperate letter, Verlaine calls Hugo “mon cher Maître” four times and “mon cher et vénéré Maître” twice. A disciple in need is a disciple indeed.54

53 See Hovasse, 195. 54 Schlanger’s comments upon the relationship between a “maître” and an “élève” here resonate with the relationship between Hugo and Verlaine: “Le maître a bien son opinion sur la promesse que représente 448

Hugo sends Verlaine’s letter to Mathilde along with a note of his own saying he hopes to see her when he arrives in Paris and that her husband is a self-recognizing “malade”: “Je ne puis que le recommander à votre douce et belle âme” (Corr. 343). Hugo’s response to

Verlaine is less complimentary and markedly more terse than Verlaine’s lengthy plea:

“Mon pauvre poëte, Je verrais votre charmante femme et lui parlerai en votre faveur, au nom de votre doux petit garçon. Courage et revenez au vrai. Victor Hugo” (Corr. 344).

This call of Hugo’s for Verlaine to “revenez au vrai” harkens back to his earlier prediction that the Parnassiens would eventually temper their fierce commitment to

“L’Impassibilité” (“Vous en reviendrez”). Hugo’s paternal or grandfatherly (as he intervenes in the name of the child) guiding role for Verlaine resurfaces in this compromising point in Verlaine’s life, when Verlaine depends upon Hugo and Drouet to stabilize his familial situation. As such a figure, Hugo attempts to call Verlaine back into line, here in personal rather than literary terms.

Verlaine responds to his “cher Maître” to thank him for his help and to insist that he had been trying to return “au vrai”:

Je reçois à l’instant votre lettre, mon cher Maître, et je m’empresse de vous envoyer toute l’expression de mon infinie gratitude. Je savais bien, en vous écrivant sincèrement, dans toute l’expansion de mon affreux chagrin, que je vous toucherais et que vous viendriez à mon secours. Merci mille et mille fois pour tant de bonté, je saurai m’en montrer digne. […] De désespoir j’étais retourné à Londres, où je m’étais arrangé une vie d’étude et de travail qui n’eût pas manqué de porter de bons fruits, si l’impérieux besoin de revenir “au vrai” ne m’eût pas fait tenter cette dernière et désespérée démarche que les circonstances et un misérable vertige ont convertie en ce dernier malheur. (Corr. 344)

After this assurance of his good intentions, Verlaine goes on to discuss the risk that his son’s name now faces:

l’élève, et il a parfois le pouvoir de décider ou non de l’aider; mais il ne peut rien sur ce que l’élève voit en lui. De quoi le maître est-il le modèle, cela ne dépend pas de lui” (74). 449

[…] La présence même de cet enfant devrait m’être un garant du cœur de la mère. En me supposant tous les torts, en admettant toute justice dans les résolutions prises à mon égard, n’y-a-t-il pas là un petit être innocent, dont le nom est en cause, qu’un rejet de mes incessantes prières ferait bien plus tristement orphelin que cette mort que j’avais tant souhaitée, et depuis si longtemps? Je disais plus haut que j’espérais: hélas! j’attends! M’écrira-t-elle, ou sera-ce à vous qu’elle répondra? Dans ce dernier cas, dois-je compter sur un mot de vous, m’apprenant les choses quelles qu’elles soient? Enfin, quand vous serez à Paris, vous la verrez, n’est-ce pas? (Corr. 345)

Verlaine’s attention to his son’s name in this letter both picks up on Hugo’s motivation to intervene and recalls a passage from Hugo’s preface to Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné, in which he laments the impact of capital punishment on the children of the sentenced.55

This appears to be the final epistolary contact between Verlaine and Hugo. Verlaine ends this letter with reiterations of his continued respect and reconnaissance for Hugo:

“Agréez ma respectueuse et bien affectueuse reconnaissance” (Corr. 345).

The following year, while still in prison, Verlaine sends Lepelletier a poem entitled “Dizain mil huit cent trente” that treats 1830 and that later appears in Jadis et

Naguère. In this poem, Verlaine’s narrator writes of how he would have made a stellar

Romantic: “Je suis né romantique et j’eusse été fatal […]. Et puis, j’eusse été si féroce et si loyal! –” (Corr. 369). This projection of a would-have-been loyal Verlaine in 1830

(14 years before his birth) exposes the view that this period and group of Romantics are irrevocably tied to the past. During this year of 1874, Hugo’s Quatrevingt-treize is first published. In a letter to Lepelletier a few weeks later, Verlaine writes of Hugo and refers to him only as “Lui”: “Lu ici, récemment (en secret bien entendu), le 8e n de la nouvelle

Lanterne. Est-ce assez faible? et 2 ou 3 fragments du 93 de Lui. Est-ce assez… 48!!!”

55 In this preface, Hugo analyzes the far-reaching effects of capital punishment on those with families: “Ou cet homme a une famille; et alors croyez-vous que le coup dont vous l’égorgez ne blesse que lui seul? que son père, que sa mère, que ses enfants, n’en saigneront pas? Non. En le tuant, vous décapitez toute sa famille. Et ici encore vous frappez des innocents. […] Cet homme, ce coupable qui a une famille, séquestrez-le. Dans sa prison, il pourra travailler encore pour les siens. Mais comment les fera-t-il vivre du fond de son tombeau?” (Roman I 413). 450

(Corr. 377). This conjunction of Verlaine’s projection of himself into a conditional past, his insistence of how ferociously loyal he would have been, and his references to Hugo as

“Lui”, this figure so present and attached to Verlaine that he does not need to be named, will return in this study’s treatment of Verlaine’s 1886 work Les Mémoires d’un veuf.

The fact that one can find these elements present at the very beginning of Verlaine’s split from Hugo and trace their continued presence through 1886 demonstrates the degree to which Verlaine’s writings remain marked by Hugo’s dominance.

In 1875, Verlaine writes again of Quatrevingt-treize, in a “Vieux Coppée” poem entitled “Ultissima Verba”, which he signs with the signature F.C., indicating its status as a parody of François Coppée. This title exaggerates that of Hugo’s poem in Châtiments entitled “Ultima verba”, in which Hugo’s narrator pledges fidelity to the other “bannis” and to his idea of France before its period of adoring “l’exécrable trompeur”: “Je ne fléchirai pas! Sans plainte dans la bouche,/ Calme, le deuil au cœur, dédaignant le troupeau,/ Je vous embrasserai dans mon exil farouche,/ Patrie, ô mon autel! Liberté, mon drapeau!” (Poésie II 198). In his “Ultissima Verba”, Verlaine places a critique of Hugo into the mouth of Rimbaud. Rimbaud’s voice is identified in Verlaine’s poem by the profanity for which Rimbaud was known as well as the illustration that accompanies this poem.56 In this poem, Verlaine’s Rimbaud specifically mentions Hugo’s Quatrevingt- treize:

Epris d’absinthe pure et de philomathie Je m’emmerde et pourtant au besoin j’apprécie Les théâtres qu’on peut avoir et les Gatti. “Quatre-vingt-treize” a des beautés et c’est senti

56 This illustration depicts a boyish figure wearing an oversized coat, holding his left hand to his head and smoking a pipe with a bad-tempered expression. On a table before this figure are a dictionary; two bottles, one of which is labeled porter; and five glasses. Pakenham identifies Rimbaud: “Ce vieux coppée est illustré d’un dessin représentant Rimbaud accoudé à une table d’estaminet, fumant, l’air maussade, sa longue pipe” (424). 451

Comme une merde, quoi qu’en disent Cros et Tronche Et l’Acadême où les Murgers boivent du ponche. Mais plus de bleus et la daromphe m’a chié. C’est triste et merde alors et que foutre? J’y ai Pensé beaucoup. Carlisse? Ah! non, c’est rien qui vaille A cause de l’emmerdement de la mitraille! (Corr. 424)

Verlaine here portrays a Rimbaud filled with conflicting attitudes towards such institutions as the theater, “les Gatti” (which may be a family of actors or possibly an allusion to Rimbaud’s trip to Italy),57 and Quatrevingt-treize. Verlaine’s Rimbaud is both bored by and appreciative of these institutions (though this appreciation comes in cases of

“besoin”). At the poem’s end, a Verlainian Rimbaud decides against joining the Carlist army because of “l’emmerdement de la mitraille”.58 To describe the effects of a hail of bullets as a “bummer” contrasts starkly with Hugo’s poetry treating war and the violence and death it entails. Hugo generally either praises the sacrifice of soldiers or inveighs against the callousness of political leaders causing the deaths of their citizens. Hugo’s

“Ultima Verba” glorifies personal sacrifice for a greater national good in the face of adversity; alternatively, Verlaine’s “Ultissima Verba” demonstrates the ease with which one may take up and discard political alliances (“Carlisse? Ah! non, c’est rien qui vaille

[…]”). Hovasse identifies this poem as a formata, a musical notation indicating prolongment, in the alignment of these three figures:

Ce dizain où Verlaine donne à la parole de Rimbaud la forme de Coppée avec un titre violemment inspiré par Les Châtiments et une allusion à Quatrevingt-Treize met comme un point d’orgue (de barbarie) à ce trio inattendu de l’histoire littéraire formé par Hugo et le couple Verlaine-Rimbaud. (199)

57 These possibilities are put forth in Pakenham’s footnotes (424). 58 Pakenham’s footnote explains the meaning of “Carlisse” in this poem: “Rimbaud avait eu l’intention de s’engager dans l’armée Carliste ‘histoire d’apprendre l’espagnol’ (nouvelle apprise de Delahaye)” (425). 452

Unsurprisingly, it is the year of the composition of this poem (1875) that scholars point to as the breaking point between Verlaine and Hugo.59 It is during this year that Verlaine sends letters to Rimbaud discussing his conversion to Catholicism, which religious shift will play an important role in his future compositions.60 This newfound support of the

Catholic Church inserts a wedge between his beliefs and Hugo’s, as Hugo himself often inveighs against the clergy.61 Like Verlaine’s Rimbaud at this poem’s end, Verlaine too will divorce himself from his alliance with Hugo and begin to very publicly criticize his former “cher et vénéré Maître” without resorting to putting such critiques into the mouths of others.

IX. “On change, n’est-ce pas?”: Transforming Namers and Names

“On mûrit et on vieillit avec et selon le temps, voilà tout.” - Verlaine, “Critique des Poèmes saturniens”

In 1880, Verlaine’s collection of poetry entitled Sagesse is published, in which he writes in a vehemently Catholic voice. The introduction to this collection makes the shift in Verlaine’s focus explicit, as he writes of “l’auteur de ce livre”:

Le sentiment de sa faiblesse et le souvenir de ses chutes l’ont guidé dans l’élaboration de cet ouvrage qui est son premier acte de foi public depuis un long silence littéraire: on n’y trouvera rien, il l’espère, de contraire à cette charité que l’auteur, désormais chrétien, doit aux pécheurs dont il a jadis et presque naguère pratiqué les haïssables mœurs. (Poésie 96)

59 Hovasse also identifies 1875 as the year of Verlaine’s split with Hugo: “A partir de 1875 et jusqu’à la mort de Hugo, les relations entre les deux poètes sont très distendues” (199). 60 For example, in a letter to Rimbaud from London dated in December of 1875, Verlaine writes of his turn to Catholicism in prison: “Moi, le même toujours. Religieux strictement, parce que c’est la seule chose intelligente et bonne. Tout le reste est duperie, méchanceté, sottise. L’Église a fait la civilisation moderne, la science, la littérature: elle a fait la France, particulièrement, et la France meurs d’avoir rompu avec elle. C’est assez clair. Et l’Église aussi fait les hommes, elle les crée. Je m’étonne que tu ne voies pas ça, c’est frappant. J’ai eu le temps en dix-huit mois d’y penser et d’y repenser, et je t’assure que j’y tiens comme à la seule planche. – Et sept mois passés chez des protestants m’ont confirmé dans mon catholicisme, dans mon légitimisme, dans mon courage résigné” (Corr. 465-66). 61 See Robert, 77. 453

This new Verlaine presents himself as superior to the sinners with whom he once cavorted, as he now owes them Christian “charité” despite their detestable practices.62

After Sagesse was published, a few lines appeared in Le Rappel from the editor, Émile

Blémont, treating Verlaine’s new work: “Dois-je parler ici d’un nouveau volume de Paul

Verlaine, Sagesse (Palmé) qui m’a fort affligé et que j’ai trouvé fort peu sage? […] Mais quel désastre, quel naufrage d’une intelligence d’élite en plein mysticisme catholique!”

(Corr. 677). While Blémont does praise the still-existing talent of Verlaine to be found in this collection, his review of Verlaine’s work is opposed to the emphasis upon religion, as one may expect in a newspaper so closely aligned with Hugo’s thought. The choice to describe Verlaine’s fall into religion as a shipwreck recalls Verlaine’s earlier opem in which Hugo’s work saves the lost sailors. By straying from Hugo’s guiding light, like

Rimbaud’s drunken boat, Verlaine is here presented as plunging into yet another poetic shipwreck. Blémont, a Parnassian poet with strong ties to Hugo, comes to hold the position that perhaps Verlaine once thought he would hold in relation to the maître as a link between him and the Parnassians. Verlaine, on the other hand, finds himself estranged from Hugo, though not because of a Parnassian impassibilité as one may have expected before his conversion to Catholicism.63

Following this critique of Sagesse in Le Rappel, Verlaine sends a letter to

Blémont in which he includes the poem “À Victor Hugo”. In the body of the letter addressed to “Mon cher ami”, Verlaine indicates his comprehension of the necessity to

62 Funnily enough, Hugo was also seen by some as the poet of Charity, as Saillens’ 1886 work shows: “And yet Victor Hugo was preeminently the poet of Charity. It was that, more than anything else, which made him the man of the people, and caused his death to be universally lamented. […] He was the poet of mercy; and was the means, by his eloquent pleadings, of saving many a head from the scaffold” (143). 63 Verlaine includes a poem entitled “À Émile Blémont” in the collection Amour, in which his poem “À Victor Hugo” also appears. 454

criticize him in a newspaper so affiliated with Hugo: “Je lis à l’instant vos quelques lignes sur mon livre. Je sais que vous ne pouviez guère dire autre chose et même je m’étonne, connaissant ‘l’esprit du journal’ qu’on les ait laissé passer” (Corr. 677).

Verlaine here recognizes his friend’s obligation to criticize this new iteration of Verlaine because of Blémont’s ties to Hugo. The former Hugo/ Parnassian go-between understands the situation of the current intermediary: Blémont must look upon Verlaine’s straying from “Hugo” to Catholicism in a negative light. In the sonnet that Verlaine attaches to this letter and entitles with a dedication to Hugo (“À Victor Hugo en lui envoyant ‘Sagesse’”), he explains that his change of heart towards Hugo is inextricably tied to his religious conversion. At the same time, he both emphasizes the former importance of Hugo’s name to him and subtly shifts his means of addressing Hugo throughout this poem:

Nul parmi vos flatteurs d’aujourd’hui n’a connu Mieux que moi la fierté d’admirer votre gloire: Votre nom m’enivrait comme un nom de victoire. Votre œuvre, je l’aimais d’un amour ingénu.

Depuis, la vérité m’a mis le monde à nu. J’aime Dieu, son Église, et ma vie est de croire Tout ce que vous tenez, maître, pour dérisoire, Et j’abhorre en vos vers le Serpent reconnu.

J’ai changé. Comme vous. Mais d’une autre manière. Tout petit que je suis j’avais aussi le droit D’une évolution, la bonne, la dernière.

Mais, poète, je sais l’hommage que vous doit L’enthousiasme ancien: le voici, plein, sincère, Car vous me fûtes doux en des jours de misère. (Corr. 678)

In the first stanza of this poem, the narrator emphasizes the importance of Hugo’s name for him, and the word “nom” is accordingly repeated twice in the third line. However, this name’s impact on the narrator rests in the imperfect tense. This “nom de victoire” is

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described as having intoxicated the narrator. The love that the narrator felt for this person’s work is then described as naïve. These final two lines of the first stanza, with their anaphora of “Votre”, separate not the man from the work but rather the name from the work. Hugo’s name overshadows his own person for the narrator, whose emphasis upon his name serves to conjure up renown and exaltation. The narrator also proclaims his own superiority over other admirers of “Hugo” in this stanza by insisting that he was the greatest contemporary admirer of Hugo’s glory. Verlaine’s narrator thereby presents himself as having once been the biggest fan, not of Hugo, but of the power and prestige of Hugo’s name.

Following his early “amour ingénu” for Hugo’s work, the narrator asserts in the second quatrain that he has since seen a world illuminated by “vérité” and has been led to religious faith. On account of this faith, the once adoring follower breaks with his former, uncapitalized “maître”. The only capitalized nouns in this poem are those associated with the Church. The narrator has found a new religion that will not tolerate the reverence of a literary deity whose verses contain traces of the capitalized “Serpent” that Verlaine’s narrator must now firmly oppose. Through this image of a serpent,

Verlaine implies that, like in the Garden of Eden, Hugo’s poetry works as a Satanic temptation. The first line of the first tercet presents a comparison of Hugo and Verlaine’s trajectories of belief: “J’ai changé. Comme vous. Mais d’une autre manière” (Corr.

678). Just as Hugo converts from Catholicism to other non-clerical forms of faith, so

Verlaine’s narrator, like Verlaine, conversely converts to Catholicism. Compared to

Baudelaire’s and Rimbaud’s renversements of Hugolian thematics, Verlaine here emerges as a revolutionary in the opposite direction: towards the Church. This révolution

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hinges on an entirely different projection of Hugo’s name. While Hugo’s conversion represents a fall to the narrator, the narrator’s conversion, “la bonne”, exalts him to the point that he feels that all he owes Hugo now is homage for the kindness the former maître showed him during difficult times in his life. Verlaine’s narrator no longer views

Hugo as the “Maître”; instead, Hugo becomes a name that formerly entailed intoxicating glory and that now represents a mere “poète” who deserves thanks, not for his literary contributions, but for his personal aid to the narrator. The transformation that Verlaine’s narrator undergoes and his ensuing poetic revolution against his former self also hinges upon a comparison of his conversion to Hugo’s. In this way, Verlaine incorporates a changing “Hugo” into the construction of the new “Verlaine”. A mobile and inconstant

Hugo will not suffice for Verlaine’s God.

In his later writings on Hugo, Verlaine elaborates on the de-deification he must perform on his image of “Hugo”. Hovasse recounts a detail from Verlaine’s life that exposes the religious purging that Verlaine performs upon himself with regard to Hugo:

Image cohérente et blasphématoire du retournement de situation évoqué par ce sonnet religieux, Verlaine, à Coulommes en 1883, avait accroché sur son mur un Hugo à l’envers. Il s’agissait de la couverture du Grelot du 11 mars 1883, dessin d’Alfred Le Petit sur lequel Hugo, revêtu d’une toge, ceinturé d’un nuage, dominant de très haut le monde sur lequel ses pieds reposent encore, était un dieu au crâne déjà transformé en soleil. Sans aller jusqu’à y voir l’accomplissement du meurtre du père, il y avait dans ce geste dont Verlaine se vantait, un peu plus que l’exaspération d’un converti devant la divinisation d’un mortel: sa conformité avec le contenu du sonnet en donnait preuve. (200)

One would be hard-pressed to find an image more capable of encapsulating the détournement of “Hugo” that accompanies many 19th-century French poetic revolutions.

Like an inverted cross, this upside-down image of Hugo exposes Verlaine’s later-in-life mission to turn away from worshipping this false idol.

X. The death of a false god

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“Et vraiment, quand la mort viendra, que reste-t-il?” - Verlaine, “Beauté des femmes”

Verlaine’s symbolic lowering of Hugo and his name to the rank of mortal is challenged by the pantheonization of Hugo after his death on May 22, 1885. Hugo’s death and funeral were momentous events. The journalistic coverage of Hugo’s death places great emphasis on his religious beliefs during these last moments of his life:

“Devout journalists were writing some unusually vicious obituaries. Others had already decided to improve on the truth by pretending that Victor Hugo had called for a priest at the last moment” (Robb VH 524). Far from offering a death-bed conversion back to

Catholicism, Hugo’s death actually brings about the earlier-noted fourth deconsecration of the Pantheon:

At five-thirty in the morning of Saturday, 30 May, a small group of people had gathered on the Place du Panthéon and were staring up at the temple which until recently had been the Church of Saint Geneviève, patron saint of Paris. High above the Latin Quarter, a workman was hacking the arms off the Cross. (Robb VH 525)

Hugo’s final testament holds true to his anti-ecclesiastical beliefs. He ends by stating that he refuses the prayers of all churches, asks for a prayer from all souls, and believes in

God.64 Following Hugo’s death, his name attracted both supporters and detractors. As

Saillens notes in his 1886 publication, the popular opinion of Hugo following his death is marked by controversy and extremism: “His ashes are scarcely cold; the time has not yet come when impartial history can render her verdict on the great poet. For the present, we are restricted to the works of his glowing panegyrists and of his passionate detractors”

(131). Verlaine counts himself amongst the hugophobe camp, particularly after Hugo’s

64 While Verlaine does not attend the funeral, his wife signs her married name for the last time on Hugo’s funeral registry: “Son ex-femme, en revanche, écrit dans ses mémoires: ‘Mon divorce fut prononcé en 1885. La dernière fois que je signai du nom de Mathilde Verlaine, ce fut sur le registre mortuaire de Victor Hugo.’ Coïncidence surprenante, c’est le jour même de la mort de Hugo que l’acte d’état civil consécutive au jugement de divorce des époux Verlaine fut établi” (Hovasse 201). 458

death. Once this old, false god has finally died, Verlaine publishes far more derogatory pieces that present and project a very different image of “Hugo” than what one finds before the death of the named. Hugo’s death gives more power to others (like Verlaine) to control and modify the significance of this name. Once Hugo the man can no longer defend or alter the meaning of “Hugo” the name, this name enters the public domain.

Verlaine’s disgust at the celebration and pantheonization of Hugo after his death becomes particularly apparent in his 1886 work Les Mémoires d’un veuf. In “Mon

Testament”, Verlaine parodies Hugo’s final testament while contrasting himself with

Hugo in terms of financial status:

Je ne donne rien aux pauvres parce que je suis un pauvre moi-même. Je crois en Dieu. Paul Verlaine. CODICILLE: Quant à ce qui concerne mes obsèques, je désire être mené au lieu du dernier repos dans une voiture Lesage et que mes restes soient déposés dans la crypte de l’Odéon. Comme mes lauriers n’ont jamais empêché personne de dormir, des chœurs pourront chanter pendant la triste cérémonie, sur un air de Gossec, l’ode célèbre: “La France a perdu son Morphée.” Fait à Paris, juin 1885. (Prose 86-87)

Verlaine’s explanation that he does not give to the poor because of his own poverty draws attention to Hugo’s great wealth.65 Verlaine also here implies that Hugo sees himself as the Morpheus of France. Ovid’s Metamorphoses describes Morpheus, the god of dreams, as capable of changing his appearance to take on different human forms.66

One may recall the 1835 preface to Les Chants du crépuscule in which Hugo claims that within the work one will find not the author but “beaucoup de choses rêvées” (Poésie I

677). Additionally, Verlaine here suggests that Hugo sees himself as comparable to a mythological god because of his expectations for his funeral. Verlaine thereby presents

65 Sartre also notes Hugo’s financial success: “En 1848 Victor Hugo possédait 180 millions de francs […]. Vers la fin de sa vie sa fortune s’élevait à plus de deux milliards” (37). 66 See Book 11: “Morpheus, of all his numerous Train, express’d/ The Shape of Man, and imitated best;/ The Walk, the Words, the Gesture cou’d supply,/ The Habit mimick, and the Mien bely;/ Plays well, but all his Action is confin’d,/ Extending not beyond our human kind” (Dryden 467). 459

an iteration of “Hugo” that portrays Hugo presenting himself as a god. It is not the

French people who revere Hugo who are here to blame, but Hugo himself for promoting himself as a false idol.

In another section of Les Mémoires d’un veuf, “Monomane”, Verlaine gives voice to the hearse of the poor, which itself gives voice to the corpse of Hugo it carries to the

Pantheon:

Le corbillard des pauvres lui suggérait bien des divagations. A le considérer comme pur et simple permit tant de somptuosités, il disait, interprète de son client, ce véhicule orgueilleux: ‘Ah! ah! tas d’imbéciles, tourbe de badauds, vous avez blagué mes antithèses de mon vivant; eh bien, voilà ma dernière et c’est la bonne, pleurez et erudimini’. (Prose 89)67

Verlaine’s Hugo (voiced by his “interpreter”, the hearse) sprinkles his French with Latin.

Moreover, Verlaine here suggests that Hugo’s choice of this hearse represents another of his “antithèses”, emphasizing the contradictions within Hugo’s works, person, and name.

Verlaine’s Hugo chooses this vehicle in order to taunt the “imbéciles” who teased him while he was alive. By calling attention to this antithesis, Verlaine simultaneously mocks a Hugo who believes himself—in death—to be mocking his detractors, and he emphasizes Hugo’s wealth, making this final ride to the Pantheon in the corbillard des pauvres an act of insincere affectation. Even if Hugo presents himself during this final ride as akin to a pauper, he did not live by this code. Verlaine goes on in this section to compare Hugo to Olympio, referring to Hugo’s “Tristesse d’Olympio”:

On ne pouvait pas dire qu’à cet enterrement-là il y avait plus de cochons que de prêtres, cas, hélas! de la balade funéraire décernée à cet Olympio, qui eut cela de commun avec le grand Roi qu’à leur voyage des pieds en avant le peuple rigola ferme et se soûla dru. (Prose 90)

67 The Latin phrase above is from Psalm 2:10 and translates as “be taught”: “Now, then, be wise, O kings; be taught, O judges of the earth”. 460

The allusion to Hugo as an Olympio becomes more understandable when one takes into account the thematics of the poem “Tristesse d’Olympio”. In this poem, first published in 1840 in Les Rayons et les ombres, Olympio collectively queries the valley, solitude, nature, and the desert as he contemplates memory, death, and the erasure of names:

Et s’il est quelque part, dans l’ombre où rien ne veille, Deux amants sont vos fleurs arbitrant leurs transports, Ne leur irez-vous pas murmurer à l’oreille: - “Vous qui vivez, donnez une pensée aux morts!”

Dieu nous prête un moment les prés et les fontaines, Les grands bois frissonnants, les rocs profonds et sourds Et les cieux azurés et les lacs et les plaines, Pour y mettre nos cœurs, nos rêves, nos amours;

Puis il nous les retire. Il souffle notre flamme; Il plonge dans la nuit l’antre où nous rayonnons; Et dit à la vallée, où s’imprima notre âme, D’effacer notre trace et d’oublier nos noms. (Poésie I 1013)

The loss of individual names (“nos noms”) here signifies the final erasure, one posterior to even the wiping clean of the collective trace (“notre trace”) of the dead. It is when the name is no longer remembered by others that the erasure becomes complete. Verlaine’s reference to Hugo as an instantiation of Olympio while writing of Hugo’s enormous funeral insinuates that Hugo’s funeral represents his attempts to ensure his name is not erased from popular memory. In Hugo’s poem, it is God who tells the valley to forget the names of the dead. Here, by calling Hugo Olympio, Verlaine implies that his name will also be erased by what he as a Catholic considers to be the real God.

In another section of Les Mémoires d’un veuf, “Lui Toujours – Et Assez”,

Verlaine goes so far as to declare that Hugo should have died earlier, echoing Barbey d’Aurevilly’s much earlier statements concerning Hugo that Verlaine once at least partially rebuked. The capitalized letters in this section title, L,T,E, and A can be rearranged to form the English word “late”, which could be interpreted in two ways in 461

Verlaine’s treatment of Hugo: firstly, Hugo is deceased; and secondly, Hugo was late to die. This section’s title refers to Hugo’s poem “Lui” (which treats Napoleon I and was written six years following this emperor’s death), the first words of which resound with

Verlaine’s title: “Toujours lui! Lui partout!” (Poésie I 533). Verlaine’s renversement here lies in turning an extolment of the ubiquity of a Napoleonic ‘lui” into a disgruntlement with the ubiquity of a Hugolian “lui”. Hugo emphasizes the name of

Napoleon in his poem, in a manner that resembles Verlaine’s account of his early view of

Hugo’s name as intoxicating: “Je tremble, et dans ma bouche abondent les paroles/

Quand son nom gigantesque, entouré d’auréoles,/ Se dresse dans mon vers de toute sa hauteur” (Poésie I 533). He goes on to say Napoleon’s name causes “ardents chevaux” to neigh (Poésie I 534). This recalls the earlier-studied line from this poem in which

Hugo’s narrator aligns himself (and, phonically, his name) with Napoleon: “Napoléon! soleil dont je suis le Memnon!” (Poésie I 535). Verlaine plays with this alignment by riffing on Hugo’s poem. However, rather than promote Hugo’s immortality (Memnon receives immortality from Zeus after his death because of his mother Eos’ mourning and passionate adherence to the memory of her son), Verlaine’s narrator loathes the sign indicating Hugo’s immortality: his omnipresence even in death.68

In contrast to Olympio’s view of memories, lives, and names as erasable, Hugo’s narrator in this poem sees Napoleon as “l’homme ineffaçable” (Poésie I 535) whose trace remains omnipresent, whether or not one wishes this to be the case: “L’œil même qui te fuit te retrouve partout” (Poésie I 535). Verlaine’s narrator of “Lui Toujours – Et Assez”

68 See Ovid, XIII. The final lines of Verlaine’s first collection of poetry, Poèmes saturniens, present the possibility of the work becoming a new Memnon: “Afin qu’un jour, frappant de rayons gris et roses/ Le chef d’œuvre serein, comme un nouveau Memnon,/ L’Aube-Postérité, fille des Temps moroses,/ Fasse dans l’air futur retentir notre nom!” (Poésie 40). The “nous” of this poem is clarified as “les Suprêmes Poètes” (Poésie 39). If the work becomes a new Memnon, it can make the names of the Supreme Poets ring out. 462

desires to flee the omnipresent “lui” of his poem, Hugo. The ubiquity of Hugo becomes an inescapable irritation. In the epigraph to this piece, Verlaine cites himself from “Mil huit cent trente”: “Je suis né romantique et j’eusse été fatal […]. Et puis, j’eusse été si féroce et si loyal! –” (Prose 105). Verlaine here presents his epigraphic self as a figure who would have made a wonderful warrior for Romanticism in the past conditional tense.

It is here that one find an 1886 reprisal of Verlaine’s projection of himself into a conditional past, his insistence on how loyal he would have been to Romanticism, and his reference to Hugo as “lui”. However, after Hugo and Verlaine both change and after

Hugo dies, Verlaine’s projection of “Hugo” becomes far more caustic–and public–than his early critiques.

Verlaine begins this piece with what he foresees for the future reputation of Hugo:

Maintenant que le bruit intrus s’est tu, que le Poète, après les secousses d’obsèques irrespectueuses, rentre par degré dans la glorieuse impopularité due, maintenant que la foule est retournée à ses besognes et que les poètes, seuls enfin, gardent le deuil, il m’est permis de parler de mon maître, de bien lui, abandonnant à mes colères, passées? non! récentes! et à mes rudesses de naguère les exploiteurs inqualifiables de sa grande mémoire. (Prose 105)69

Hugo, “le Poète”, is here seen as deserving glorious unpopularity. The choice of the adjective “glorious” both serves as a reversal of the general understanding of poetic glory as great renown and emphasizes the joy with which the writer foresees this change of fortune for his former “maître”. Verlaine goes on to say that Hugo should have died long ago:

Il eût fallu que Victor Hugo meure vers 1844, 45, au lendemain des Burgraves. Fort de trois Ballades: Les Bœufs qui passent, Le Pas d’armes, La Chasse du Burgrave, des Orientales, où il y a une perle, Les Tronçons du serpent, des quatre recueils de vers intimes rarement politiques (si peu en tout cas), Les Feuilles d’automne, etc., qui constitueront sa vraie gloire de bon poète de demi-teintes, de son théâtre et de ses trois premiers romans, Bug, Han, N.-D. de Paris, si drôles par places, surtout le théâtre en

69 From this list of works of Hugo’s of which Verlaine here approves, many were initially published anonymously, including Bug-Jargal, Han d’Islande, and Notre-Dame de Paris. 463

prose et Han, nous voudrions qu’il n’eût laissé que cela et eût disparu contesté. Les fières funérailles alors! On y eût vu moins de gilets qu’en 1885, mais ceux qui y auraient été auraient été un peu défraîchis, mais rouges! et des chevelures autrement amusantes que les éventails, pluies, et capouls actuels, eussent flotté, dame! éclaircies, derrière un char point ridiculement odieux du tout, précédé d’un clergé plus pittoresque encore que messieurs les Ordonnateurs de l’Administration, si bien brossé que fût leur costume des grands jours. (Prose 105)

Had Hugo died earlier, Verlaine says that his “vrai gloire” would have dominated. The first year that Verlaine chooses for Hugo’s ideal death, 1844, happens to be the year of

Verlaine’s birth. Hovasse argues that Verlaine’s choice is indicative of the frustration that poets in Verlaine’s generation must have felt with regard to the fact that Hugo continued to be published long into their careers and their generation:

Qu’il date précisément de sa naissance son désir d’enterrer Hugo prouve à quel point la présence de ce dernier a pu être gênante pour un poète contemporain – et beaucoup moins sa présence physique (Gautier non plus n’était pas mort, et Verlaine lui règle son compte entre parenthèses) que sa présence dans les librairies au rayon ‘Nouveautés’. (204)

Verlaine and his generation remain under the shadow of Hugo even after his death, as his posthumous publications keep him on the shelf of “Nouveautés” for many years after

1885. Contrary to such suspicions concerning bitterness towards Hugo, Verlaine’s reasoning for his wish that Hugo would have died over 40 years before his actual death lies both in that he finds Hugo’s best works to have been his earlier works and in that he wishes Hugo would have died “contesté”. That is to say, he wishes Hugo would have remained the controversial revolutionary figure of his youth rather than becoming the widely-loved, admired, established, and accepted figure of his senescence. According to

Verlaine, this earlier death would have rendered his funeral less attended but more authentic. The dominance of the past conditional tense in Verlaine’s writings concerning

Hugo continues in this work. Following Verlaine’s past projection of his presence (had he just been born earlier), he here projects into the past an erasure of Hugo (had he just

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died earlier). Verlaine envisions either a conflation or a separation of their generations that did not occur because of Hugo’s longevity. Unable to fully affiliate himself with

Hugo’s literary familial name, Verlaine projects two impossible solutions to this dilemma.

Verlaine continues in this work to virulently critique Hugo’s later writing. One notes a great contrast in his opinion of Les Châtiments in particular. As noted earlier, in

Verlaine’s 1870 poem “Le Livre”, Les Châtiments appears to rescue the shipwrecked.

However, in “Lui toujours – et assez”, Les Châtiments bores Verlaine and exhibits

Hugo’s lack of sophistication:

Oui, tout ce qui part des Châtiments, Châtiments compris, m’emplit d’ennui, me semble turgescence, brume, langue désagrégée, l’art non plus pour l’art, incommensurable, monstrueuse improvisation, bouts-rimés pas variés, ombre, sombre, ténèbres, funèbres, facilité déplorable, - ô ces Contemplations, ces Chansons des rues et des bois! – manque insolent platement de la moindre composition, plus nul souci d’étonner que par des moyens pires qu’enfantins. (Prose 106)

In qualifying these works as “l’art non plus pour l’art”, Verlaine disassociates Hugo’s work from the Parnassian movement. Just as he rejects the earlier role for Les

Châtiments as a book of salvation, Verlaine also controverts his earlier attempts to act as a unifying intermediary for Hugo and the Parnassians. Verlaine goes on to dismiss a great amount of Hugo’s work and makes clear the Hugo that he would prefer later in life:

Le reste de l’œuvre d’à partir des Châtiments ne vaut pas l’honneur d’être nommé; et quand j’aurais avoué qu’il y a des choses dans Les Misérables, cet arlequin, et dans Quatre-vingt-treize, laissez-moi retourner au Victor Hugo de Pétrus Borel et de Monpou! (Prose 106)

Verlaine here wishes Hugo would have remained singular, and he wishes that the one

Hugo to have existed was the Hugo of 1830 with his petit Cénacle followers.70

70 Verlaine also incorporates Gautier into his judgments of their generation: “J’oubliais, dans l’énumération des œuvres à conserver, le Rhin, de cette époque d’ailleurs, bien supérieur, je le dis, aux Voyages figés et puérils de Théophile Gautier, et où se trouve l’adorable conte du Beau Pécopin. (Ah, Gautier! Mlle de 465

Verlaine then defends the way in which he earlier named Hugo. Before turning to this, it is important to note that, when Verlaine writes an 1894 article about himself, entitled “Paul Verlaine” in the series Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui, he presents himself as named by Hugo: “‘Féroce et doux’, Victor Hugo a baptisé Verlaine en Abd-el-Kader”

(Prose 767). A fighter for Algerian independence, AbdelKader represents resistance to dominance.71 If Verlaine is an AbdelKader, his later dominant adversary would be Hugo.

After Hugo’s death, Verlaine becomes more capable of naming Hugo and thereby controlling his former maître’s reputation and legacy while still propagating his own name’s worth via a baptism from Hugo. So, while he finds the authority to author

“Hugo”, Verlaine still authorizes himself through a naming event that maintains Hugo in the role of a giver of names to lesser-known writers. When naming Hugo, Verlaine refers to an earlier publication in which he calls Hugo “l’auteur de Gastibelza-l’homme-à-la-

Carabine”, which appellation cites the beginning of Hugo’s poem “Guitare”.72 Hugo’s songlike poem does not contain the somber gravity of many of his works, which makes

Verlaine’s choice of this poem as representative of Hugo’s career a somewhat radical selection:73

Maupin, Ténèbres, Émaux et Camées, trois chefs-d’œuvre et c’est tout, et déjà beau!)” (Prose 105-06). Monpou was another member of the petit Cénacle who creates many musical accompaniments for Hugo’s works: “There can be no doubt that Monpou did transfer Hugo’s doctrine into the realm of music” (Jensen 124). 71 The Encyclopaedia Brittanica includes the following information concerning Abdelkader: “Abdelkader […], the military and religious leader who founded the Algerian state and led the Algerians in their 19th- century struggle against French domination (1840-46)” (1). 72 Gautier writes of how this poem of Hugo’s becomes popular when put to music by Monpou: “Une de ces chansons singulières que Victor Hugo désigne sous le nom fantasque de ‘guitare’, comme pour indiquer leur accent espagnol, a servi de point de départ à M. Dennery pour le livret que M. Maillard a brodé de sa musique. Nous voulons parler de Gastibelza, ‘l’homme à la carabine’, rendu si populaire par le refrain de Monpou” (Victor Hugo 156). 73 This is not to say that this poem lacks subtlety. On the contrary, it presents a study of obsession, as Laster points out: “On mesure ainsi combien le traitement musical peut influencer notre interprétation d’un texte, soit en le faisant dériver vers une fantaisie de bon aloi dont on sourit – tel est, me semble-t-il, l’effet de la chanson de Brassens – soit en révélant un sens latent et provisoirement oublié ou méconnu – ce qui 466

Quelqu’un m’a, d’ailleurs très courtoisement, taquiné sur ce que j’avais nommé Hugo l’auteur de Gastibelza-l’homme-à-la-Carabine, pour tout potage. D’abord, oui, il en est l’auteur, l’auteur il en est. Ensuite Gastibelza dépasse toute son œuvre. Il y a ENFIN là du cœur et des sanglots et un cri formidable de jalousie, le tout exprimé magnifiquement dans un décor superbe. Trouvez-m’en un autre, de Gastibelza, dans tous ces volumes! C’est qu’Hugo n’a jamais parlé d’amour que banalement ou en homme qui (du moins c’est ce dont témoignent ses écrits) fut toute sa vie envers les femmes un simple Pacha. “Tu me plais, tu me cèdes, je t’aime. Tu me résistes, va-t’en. Tu m’aimes pour mon nom, peut-être pour mon physique bizarre, pour ma tête faite? Tu es ange.” Ni crainte, ni espoir, ni douleur, ni joie. Le bonheur du coq et son chant de cuivre après. (Prose 106-07)

In this passage, Verlaine begins by justifying his projection of Hugo as “the author of

Gastibelza” because Hugo is the author of this work. However, such a name for Hugo requires defending because this is an atypical work to deploy in order to name Hugo. By the end of this citation, Verlaine not only takes control of Hugo’s name but also critiques the uses for which Hugo deployed his own name while alive. Verlaine accomplishes this insult by speaking as a Hugo who utilizes his own renown to seduce a woman (“Tu m’aimes pour mon nom”). In this manner, Verlaine takes control of the significance of the name “Hugo”—by definitively attaching it to one of Hugo’s works and by exposing the means by which Hugo abused the power of his name—in order to depreciate this maître.

The final paragraph of this work signals the dawn of a new age following the death of Hugo:

Hugo est mort. Ses détenteurs ont eu leur jour, échelles doubles et apothéose laïque. Moi qui connus l’homme dès avant 1870, et, quelque temps depuis, qui même eus à me louer, comme j’allais devenir ce pauvre veuf-ci, de sa commisération et de son amitié, qui, poète, ai plus qu’eux le droit de m’intéresser à la manière d’être glorieux et glorifié de mon maître au tombeau, je le prends, le mien de jour, et c’est aujourd’hui, et je le répète, et je le suis, Légion: Hugo est mort trop tard, il s’est survécu, mais son seul héritage sérieux est nôtre, et nous le défendrons, mes beaux messieurs du premier juin mil huit cent quatre-vingt-cinq! (Prose 107) me paraît un des mérites de la version de Liszt, qui, transcendant le cri de jalousie perçu par Verlaine, nous fait accéder aux secrets les plus intimes du poème, à la zone effrayante où les obsessions tournent à la folie, et communiquer avec ‘l’inquiétante étrangeté’ de l’invasion d’un cerveau par la démence” (1). 467

Verlaine separates himself from the card-carrying hugophiles who have already had their day and seen their peak. Nevertheless, he still reminds his readers of his personal acquaintance (which he here calls friendship) with Hugo and says that because of this connection and because of his status as a poet, he, Verlaine, should have the definitive say on the means by which Hugo is glorified in death. He then repeats that Hugo should have died sooner and asserts that the “nous” he addresses are the new possessors

(“détenteurs”) of Hugo. Following Hugo’s death, this new generation now possesses the former maître. A shift in this final iteration of the ideal earlier death of Hugo lies in the means by which he interpellates his audience. First, he calls them by the militaristic term

“Légion”, and then he ends with the appellation “mes beaux messieurs du premier juin mil huit cent quatre-vingt-cinq”. June 1, 1885 is the day that Hugo was buried in the

Pantheon. Verlaine’s army of writers of June 1, 1885 both symbolically replaces Hugo’s

Romantic army from 1830 and gains the power to determine the import and impact of

Hugo and his revolution: “On pourrait y voir comme le symbole du travail accompli par toute cette génération pour se débarrasser de Hugo” (Hovasse 202). Moreover, Verlaine then replaces Hugo as the leader of this new, liberated generation by sounding the horn to rally the troops.

In “Panthéonades”, Verlaine hammers the final nail into the coffin he has been fashioning for Hugo throughout Les Mémoires d’un veuf. He here describes visiting the

Pantheon:

Plus, ce refrain chante dans ma tête à moi, ma tête têtue qui aime bien qu’on laisse les gens tranquilles: Il était un’ bergère, Et ron et ron, petit patapon.

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(Mirabeau, Marat et d’autres en savent quelque chose), et qui s’obstine à vouloir connaître ce que peut signifier pour les grands hommes qui nous gouvernent le mot Panthéon, puisqu’il n’y a plus ni dieux, ni Dieu. (Prose 120)

The nursery rhyme that Verlaine cites tells the violent tale of a shepherdess tending her sheep when her kitten drinks some milk that it is not allowed to have. The shepherdess then kills the kitten and goes to confession to tell the priest what she did, to which the priest responds that her punishment will be to “embrasser” him (“Ma fille pour pénitence, nous nous embrasserons, ron ron, nous nous embrasserons”). In response to this, the shepherdess decides that, since the punishment is so light, they will do it again, but the significance of what exactly will be repeated is uncertain: “La peine étant si douce, nous recommencerons, ron ron, nous recommencerons” (Du Parquet, 316). As the shepherdess’ murder of her kitten receives an easy absolution, she may not hesitate to do so again. By citing this song, Verlaine suggests that those buried in the Pantheon may be absolved of their crimes with similar ease and even subsequently exalted to the rank of idols. Verlaine’s remark that French revolutionary leaders Mirabeau and Marat know a thing or two about this kind of thing underscores the violence in this story. Additionally, both Mirabeau and Marat were buried in the Pantheon before their remains were disinterred.74 In fact, Mirabeau was the first person to be buried in the Pantheon, making him the cause of the Pantheon’s first deconsecration in 1791. This deconsecration renders the Pantheon simultaneously devoid of gods and God. For this later Verlaine,

Hugo’s death will not give the maître Memnon’s godlike immortality; for Verlaine, Hugo is no god; and for Verlaine, Hugo’s burial in the Pantheon helps eradicate both gods and

God.

74 Mirabeau was disinterred in 1792 after “papers proving Mirabeau’s relations with the court were found” (Encyclopedia Brittanica 1). Marat was disinterred in 1795, as a result of a decree stating that the image of citizens should not appear in public places until 10 years following their deaths. See Hubbard, 20. 469

XI. A Satanic Hugo

“On n’offense que Dieu qui seul pardonne. Mais On contriste son frère, on l’afflige, on le blesse, On fait gronder sa haine ou pleurer sa faiblesse […].” - Verlaine, “On n’offense que Dieu…”

In Verlaine’s 1890 critique of his first collection of poems, Poèmes saturniens,

Verlaine distinguishes between his own different selves as divided by age while half- rejecting, half-endorsing his early work: “On change, n’est-ce pas?” (Prose 719). He writes that, while he generally rejects this work, one may find therein “touches” of the

“définitif écrivain qu’il se peut que je sois de nos jours” (Prose 719). Moreover, Verlaine believes that the more he is read, the more readers will find the old Verlaine within the work of the young Verlaine. The division that Verlaine explicitly stakes out between different iterations of himself throughout time mirrors the division that he finds within

Hugo. However, while late Verlaine prefers late Verlaine, late Verlaine prefers early

Hugo to late Hugo to the extent that he wishes early Hugo would have also been late

Hugo by dying sooner. While discussing his transition between selves, Verlaine points out the distance he placed between himself and Hugo during this process of metamorphosis:

J’ai aussi abandonné, momentanément, je suppose, ne connaissant pas l’avenir et surtout n’en répondant pas, certains choix de sujets: les historiques et les héroïques, par exemple. Et par conséquent le ton épique ou didactique pris forcément à Victor Hugo, un Homère de second main après tout, et plus directement encore à M. Leconte de Lisle qui ne saurait prétendre à la fraîcheur de source d’un Orphée ou d’un Hésiode, n’est-il pas vrai? Quelles que fussent, pour demeurer toujours telles, mon admiration du premier et mon estime (esthétique) de l’autre, il ne m’a bientôt pas convenu de faire du Victor Hugo ou du M. Leconte de Lisle, aussi bien peut-être et mieux (ça s’est vu chez d’autres ou du moins il s’est dit que ça s’y est vu) et j’ajoute que pour cela il m’eût fallu, comme à d’autres, l’éternelle jeunesse de certains Parnassiens qui ne peut reproduire que ce qu’elle a lu et dans la forme où elle l’a lue. (Prose 720-21)

Verlaine’s reconstitution of himself hinges upon his capacity to distinguish his writing from Hugo’s. This evolution also depends upon his abandoning his earlier imitation of

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Hugo, as he admits the epic and didactic tones were “pris forcément à Victor Hugo”. The phrase “faire du Victor Hugo”, which reproduction Verlaine had to eradicate in his writing in order to become the late Verlaine, harkens back to Rimbaud’s accusation of the un-innovative and non-voyant writers of his time who simply imitate Musset and make their “Rolla” (Rimbaud 101). Within this retroactively traced formula for self- differentiation and innovation, Verlaine differs from Rimbaud in that he casts Hugo and

Leconte de Lisle in the role of Rimbaud’s Musset. The significance of the later and—in his view—more original and authentic “Verlaine” depends on his suppression of the

“Hugo” that once emanated through an early, imitative “Verlaine”. According to

Verlaine, naming his authentic self depends upon his ability to rid himself of the stamp of

Hugo.

Throughout this critique of Poèmes saturniens, Verlaine maintains within his sights two poles: that of his predecessors and that of future generations. His own vision of himself for the future generations of poets comes to resemble Hugo’s erstwhile role for

Verlaine:

Et maintenant je puis, je dois peut-être, puisque c’est une responsabilité que j’assume en assumant de réimprimer mes premiers vers, m’expliquer très court, tout doucement, sur des matières toutes de métier avec de jeunes confrères qui ne seraient pas loin de me reprocher un certain illogisme, une certaine timidité dans la conquête du “Vers Libre”, qu’ils ont, croient-ils, poussée, eux, jusqu’à la dernière limite. En un mot comme en cent, j’aurais le tort de garder un mètre, et dans ce mètre quelque césure encore, et au bout de mes vers des rimes. Mon Dieu, j’ai cru avoir assez brisé le vers, l’avoir assez affranchi, si vous préférez, en déplaçant la césure le plus possible, et quant à la rime, m’en être servi avec quelque judiciaire pourtant, en ne m’astreignant pas trop, soit à de pures assonances, soit à des formes de l’écho indiscrètement excessives. (Prose 722)

Just as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé, as we will soon see, find Hugo’s work to be insufficiently daring or innovative and therefore in need of even more revolutionary treatments of poetry and/or verse, so too do the poets following Verlaine

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view his work. One can here spot a Verlaine who places himself in Hugo’s position— that of the insufficiently revolutionary maître—for this new generation. Finally, five years after Hugo’s death and six years before his own death, Verlaine can portray himself as the Hugo-esque vieillard who, while he perhaps opened up verse to a degree, cannot satisfy the youthful generation’s push to liberate verse even more towards the “Vers

Libre”. Analogously to Rimbaud’s pre-voyant Hugo, Verlaine here casts himself as a pre-vers libre poet.

Still in 1890, Verlaine publishes his longest work on Hugo, “A propos d’un récent livre posthume de Victor Hugo”, which he begins with a critique of Amy Robsart and Les

Jumeaux before then critiquing Hugo’s work in its entirety. Verlaine’s exasperation at the fact that Hugo’s work is still being published years after his death comes across in his description of this publication as “ce dernier, ou avant-dernier ou peut-être, qui sait? cet antépénultième livre posthume d’Hugo, n’ajoutera, comme on dit, rien à sa gloire, et sans doute j’en viens d’assez parler” (Prose 725).75 Despite his article’s typically scathing critiques of Hugo’s writing (e.g. he deems Hugo’s fictional women “petites horreurs fadasses et bébêtes” (Prose 725)), of his politics (e.g. he says Hugo’s republicanism is purely superficial (Prose 727)), and of his writing style (e.g. he refers to Hugo’s sentences as “ces interminables déclamations ronronnantes où la phrase s’énerve dans l’article” (Prose 729)), Verlaine insists that he has not completely lost his enthusiasm for

Hugo and offers an anecdotal recollection of the former import of Hugo’s name for him:

75 Hovasse encapsulates Verlaine’s attitude towards Hugo’s death at this time and its reflection in the title of this article on Hugo: “Son titre antithétique est loin d’être anodin: c’est le mélange de l’actualité de Hugo pour Verlaine (récent) et le désir, peut-être, qu’il soit enfin posthume. La violence de cet article s’explique assez naturellement: il était déjà difficile de vivre en même temps que Hugo, mais puisque ce dernier continue de publier après sa mort, rien ne change que l’ordre des adjectifs: de récent et posthume (ou mort vivant), il est devenu posthume et récent (vivant mort). Une telle résurrection ne pouvait satisfaire Verlaine” (206). 472

La première fois que ce nom si longtemps prestigieux, Hugo! retentit à mes oreilles, elles étaient tendres et petites, mes oreilles, des oreilles comme de souris, dressées naïves aux côtés de mon innocente tête presque tout instinct candide et volonté dans des limbes. Savais-je même lire? Avais-je sept ans? […] C’était à l’époque du Coup d’État ou peut-être après. Si bien que chez moi par la bouche du patron ou du sous-maître, ce vocable: Victor Hugo sonnait mal, signifiait ‘rouge’, fou aussi, et, mon Dieu! parfois saltimbanque. Plus tard, quand je fus en pension, j’écoutais les grands, les rhétoriciens, déjà libérés de la tunique et faisant faux-col, le faux-col en triangle de guillotine de cette époque, qu’affirmaient d’autre part des hardis essais de sous-pieds, déclamer des vers du grand homme: Une surtout, une jeune Espagnole… Envolez-vous de ce manteau Et s’il n’en reste qu’un… (Prose 725-26)

Verlaine’s account of the multiple and mutable meanings of the vocable “Victor Hugo” as he grew up sets the stage for the multiple and mutable significations of this term for

Verlaine himself. Nevertheless, at the close of this article, Verlaine ends with a return to his former means of designating Hugo as “le Maître”:

Conclusion. Talent énorme (c’est le mot) manifesté dès l’aurore, persistant jusque dans les suprêmes efforts contre la sénilité. Génie incontestable, éclatant fréquemment surtout vers le milieu de l’œuvre, des pages comme Gastibelza, superbe cri de jalousie quasi bestiale dans quel sinistrement voluptueux paysage, comme Olympio, prodigieux, prestigieuse d’orgueil, comme l’Expiation (bien qu’inferieure écriturement parlant au Feu du ciel [Orientales], prototype), comme l’incomparable Tempête sous un crâne, honneur de toute une littérature, a dit Baudelaire, mieux. Esprit d’homme de lettres, idées moyennes, sensations cordiales bourgeoises – nul plus mauvais ‘chantre’ de l’amour. Médiocre pamphlétaire en prose, fort-en-gueule seulement satirique, politique et littéraire, une érudition de livres dépareillés (suivant son aveu à votre serviteur). Extraordinaire deux fois décadence, assimilable à aucune comme chute terrible et magnifique au point qu’on est tenté de lui appliquer le premier vers de La Fin de Satan: Depuis quatre mille ans il tombait… que la postérité peut-être la plus lointaine redira en parlant de lui comme aussi sa gloire peut sombrer sous nos yeux, et à coup sûr s’éclipsera pour un temps comme nous la voyons commencer à le faire. Mais en somme, quelle grande figure et qu’avec tous ses défauts, c’est encore, avec Lamartine incomparablement plus poète certes, mais infiniment moins artiste, le Maître! (Prose 731-32)

This final “Maître” figure that Hugo becomes for Verlaine carries within it far more contradiction and complication than the early “Maître” that “Hugo” was for the younger

Verlaine. The final “Maître” Hugo is here compared to Hugo’s depiction of the falling

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angel that becomes Satan. Within Verlaine’s writing, Hugo undergoes such a transformation. Once a godlike “Maître”, Hugo ends up as a Satanic figure whose popularity should be resisted and condemned.76 Still, the memory of the “Maître” that

Hugo once was and still stubbornly remains is explicit in this article. Verlaine’s concern about the future significance of Hugo’s name is made manifest. In this matter, Verlaine differs greatly from Gautier: while Gautier tries to protect and propagate a fixed significance of Hugo’s name until his death, Verlaine tries to ensure that Hugo’s popularity will be tempered in the future and seen in the light of Hugo’s multiplicity and inexorably approaching fall. Hugo is here presented as a once heavenly angel doomed to fall to Satanic depths. Another name for this Verlainian Hugo is “Satan”.

XII. Do Unto (the Names of) Others

“Et surtout soyons-nous l’un à l’autre indulgents.” - Verlaine, “Les uns et les autres”

The final mentions of Hugo’s name in Verlaine’s work retrospectively transmit glimmers of his early admiration for Hugo. In his 1894 Epigrammes, Verlaine writes of

Hugo as the leader for his generation in its youth while addressing the new youthful generation of poets:

Après tout, ils ont sans doute raison, Puisque notre vie est aux trois quarts faite; C’est à nous de leur céder la maison, En nous réservant toutefois le faîte.

La jeunesse, hélas! aime à triompher.

76 In his work entitled Victor Hugo, poète de Satan, Zumthor studies the identitary link between Hugo and Satan: “Mais l’Humanité, comme l’individu, est double: son corps, c’est le peuple, les peuples; quant à son âme, c’est Hugo lui-même, l’Homme-Hugo, l’élu en qui s’achève et s’accomplit la longue tradition des mages. Pour peu qu’une fréquentation, même superficielle et de courte durée, du langage mystique ésotérique, l’ait habitué, comme il semble, à doubler toute expression psychologique d’un sens métaphysique, il ne pouvait sérieusement douter que l’Ame humaine habitât en lui. S’écrier, du fond de sa conscience de mage: je souffre! c’est dire: l’homme souffre depuis toujours. C’est nommer Satan. Plus encore que l’histoire, Satan représente l’âme de l’humanité; l’âme tout court. Il est un phénomène intérieur au poète, ainsi qu’à tout homme” (257). 474

Nous fûmes aussi triomphaux et jeunes, Sans plus qu’eux de pente à philosopher. Bah, qu’ils aient la faim, nous aurons les jeûnes.

Qu’ils gardent Ibsen! Nous, c’était Hugo. Qu’ils soient tant et plus, nous restons les mêmes, N’étant pas trop vieux, n’allons pas tout de go Pas encor songer aux plongeons suprêmes.

Laissons-les grandir. Leur art mûrira: Ils ne viennent que d’entrer dans le temple, Et notre mort pleurée approuvera Ceux à qui nous avons donné l’exemple. (Poésie 503)

This near-praise for Hugo comes alongside Verlaine’s consideration of his own age and the difference he finds between himself and the new fighters for the “Vers Libre”, which he treats in this Epigrammes (a collection in which the poems are untitled) as well:

“J’admire l’ambition du Vers Libre./ — Et moi-même que fais-je en ce moment/ Que d’essayer d’émouvoir l’équilibre/ D’un nombre ayant deux rythmes seulement?” (Poésie

502). Verlaine’s narrator also expresses concern about how other poets see him: “Le poète qu’il faut être/ Et que j’ai, dit-on, été,/ (Le suis-je, dites, resté?)/ Craint de ne plus le paraître,/ — Cas terrible en vérité! —” (Poésie 502). The poet and his appearance to others are delineated as distinct entities. It seems that, the more Verlaine realizes that his own reputation and importance depend upon how future generations perceive him, the more he returns to an appreciative and deferential attitude towards Hugo. Verlaine’s reconnaissance for Hugo is embedded within a projection of himself as a poet who will similarly give “l’exemple” for the new revolutionaries to follow. If Verlaine treats

Hugo’s name with respect, maybe those who survive Verlaine and wield power over his name will do the same for him.

Similarly, in the poem “Conseils” in the 1896 collection Invectives, Verlaine portrays Hugo in a flattering light while critiquing (or “advising”, according to the

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poem’s title) poets of the new generations leading novel literary revolutionary schools of thought:

Ghil est un imbécile. Moréas N’en est foutre pas un lui, mais, hélas! Il tourne ainsi que ce Ghil “chef d’école”. Et cela fait que de lui l’on rigole.

Chef d’école au lieu d’être tout de go Poète vrai comme le père Hugo, Comme Musset et comme Baudelaire, Chef d’école au lieu d’aimer et de plaire. (Poésie 543)

Hugo is here likened to Musset and to Baudelaire as a writer who dedicates himself more to being a “poète vrai” rather than to becoming a leader of a literary school. However,

Hugo is placed before the latter two (both of whom he outlives by decades) by here receiving the name “le père Hugo”. This qualifier holds onomastic import in a patronymic society: as the father, Hugo would pass his name on to his poetic offspring.

However, in another poem in Invectives entitled “À Raoul Ponchon”, Verlaine soundly consigns Hugo’s posterity to the past and insults Hugo: “Notre époque n’est plus celle du père Hugo,/ —Encore un bon loufoque!” (Poésie 569). The about-faces of Verlaine’s published opinions of Hugo seem to occur at an accelerated pace towards the end of

Verlaine’s life, as he oscillates between respectfully referring to him as “le père Hugo” only to deploy this term sardonically in order to then deride Hugo as a madcap 50 poems later.

Verlaine’s final mention of Hugo in all of his work—written in 1895 and published posthumously in the second edition of Dédicaces—emphasizes the role of

Hugo’s name for the impact of Hugo’s fame: “Victor Hugo, soleil dont tous sont le

Memnon,/ Donnant à nous sa lyre étoilée et fleurie,/ Extase du poète, orgueil de la patrie,/

Honneur du genre humain qui se lève à son nom […]” (Dédicaces 139). Verlaine here

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pastiches “Lui”, rather than parodying it as he did in Les Mémoires d’un veuf. Instead of portraying Hugo negatively and as someone who would have done well to die long before he did, Verlaine here places Hugo within the honored position Napoleon holds for

Hugo’s narrator in “Lui”. Verlaine then expands the figure of Memnon to host not just a narratorial “je” but all people (“tous”). All here become the Memnon of Hugo. In

Verlaine’s final poem treating Hugo, the name of Hugo has the power to raise humanity to its feet and defines the role and name (via the phonic “même nom” within Memnon) of all who follow him. In the end, Verlaine places himself alongside the rest of humanity as an admirer of a posthumous but still omnipresent Hugo. Through these about-faces,

Verlaine shuttles between two positions that can benefit from a return to Lacanian terminology: he either resists and mocks the nom/ non du père or upholds its status. This latter stance necessitated Verlaine’s recognition of a time when he too could be pointed out as a force generating the Nom-du-père.

Through the lens of Verlaine, multifarious and contradictory implications of the name of Hugo both throughout the latter part of his lifetime and immediately after his death become clear. Verlaine offers a thoroughgoing study of the impact of Hugo’s name, as the name “Hugo” appears far more than any other proper noun in his prose.77

Whether he writes the name of Hugo in order to celebrate or denounce the signified,

77 Hovasse offers this statistic: “Quiconque lit les Œuvres en prose complètes de Verlaine, qui se répartissent à peu près équitablement entre autobiographie et critique littéraire, est frappé de la constance avec laquelle il est fait mention de Hugo. Un regard sur l’index des noms propres cités, dans l’édition de la ‘Bibliothèque de la Pléiade” procurée par Jacques Borel, vient confirmer cette impression: qu’il soit question de poète, d’homme politique, ou même de familier, personne ne revient si souvent sous sa plume—pas même Rimbaud, loin de là. Un classement dans l’ordre décroissant du nombre de pages où ces personnages, pêle-mêle, sont cités, dessinerait le paysage suivant: Victor Hugo (105); Baudelaire (66); Rimbaud (65); Banville (51); Shakespeare (50); Elisa Verlaine (49); Mathilde Mauté (48); Leconte de Lisle (47); Mallarmé (44); Racine (41); Villiers de L’Isle-Adam (36); Coppée (34); Nicolas Verlaine (32); Catulle Mendès (31); Jean Moréas (30); Musset (29); Lamartine (26); Sainte-Beuve (25); Edgar Poe (25); Gautier (24); Voltaire (23); François Villon (21); Léon Valade (20); Napoléon Ier (20); Vigny (19); etc.” (171). 477

Verlaine’s work is haunted by this name, both before and after Hugo’s death. The chronology of Verlaine’s life and literary career provides him with a retrospective view of the impact of “Hugo” as being tied to his complete body of works (or nearly complete, if only those pesky posthumous publications would have ceased). By surviving Hugo,

Verlaine is eventually liberated to criticize him more freely, which he does for a time with abandon. However, Verlaine later tempers his harshness towards Hugo as he intersubjectively recognizes in himself what appears as a stodgy representative of the old school in the eyes of the young.

From his first recorded poem to his writings just before his death, Verlaine’s definition of himself is intricately wound up with his definition of Hugo. With multiple

Verlaines come multiple Hugos. Moreover, each new Verlaine stakes out his new identity with a study of the new meaning of Hugo for him. Verlaine gives today’s readers a peek at the extreme positions held in the 19th Century with regard to Hugo, especially following the death of the maître. Death particularly marks Verlaine’s interpretations of “Hugo”, as he early on describes Hugo as superior to death and later describes Hugo’s death as overdue. By holding both positions at one time or another,

Verlaine’s multiplicity as both “doublement hugolâtre” and “hugophobe” microcosmically reflects the myriad significations of Hugo’s name for Verlaine’s generation. For Verlaine, “Hugo” means at different times “Soleil” and “loufoque”, a sincere and a sarcastic “Maître”, an angel of salvation and a Satan in the making (or in the falling). The one consistent aspect of Hugo’s name for Verlaine is its status as omnipresent and ineffaceable.

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One close acquaintance of Verlaine’s later in his life is Mallarmé, who, alongside

Rimbaud, counts among Verlaine’s group of “poètes maudits”. Verlaine writes of

Rimbaud in this work aiming to promote writers whose names have not gained the renown he believes they deserve:

Nous avons mis sous les yeux de ceux qu’il fallait les vers qu’il fallait et ce que nous est, nous le répétons, un indicible orgueil que d’avoir revendiqué pour les Lettres ces précieux noms, dont l’un obscur, l’autre à demi inconnu, l’autre méconnu, Tristan Corbière, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé! (Prose 665-66)

Verlaine’s project here is to uncover and promote these names. In his piece on Rimbaud,

Verlaine again incorporates Hugo’s name into his writing as a means of bolstering

Rimbaud’s name: “N’est-ce pas bien ‘l’Enfant Sublime’ sans le terrible démenti de

Chateaubriand […]?” (Prose 635). While Verlaine does not explicitly name Hugo, he does name Hugo as he was named by Chateaubriand in order to onomastically elevate

Rimbaud above Hugo. This borrowed nickname would not later be denied by its giver, as Verlaine here says was the case for Chateaubriand’s naming of Hugo. Verlaine will not deny his name of “poète maudit” for Rimbaud and will thereby serve as a more supporting patronymic maître figure than Chateaubriand was for Hugo. By wielding the power to name and bolster the glory of underappreciated “poètes maudits” overshadowed by the renown of such giant names as “Hugo”, Verlaine casts himself as the new maître, the new giver of poetic names. “Abd-el-Kader” thereby promotes himself to the rank of a superior of a Hugo or a Chateaubriand, as a giver of poetic names who will not later deny the name he offers. And yet, the name that Verlaine gives these poets is the damned.

Like his projections of Hugo as alternately a savior or Satan, Verlaine’s assumption of the role of namer of the damned is rife with religious ambiguity. One here wonders

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which Hugo Verlaine either commiserates with or resists when appointing himself as the namer of the poetically damned.

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Intended to be blank.

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CHAPTER VI

ABDICATING NAMES: MALLARMÉ’S HUGOS

Gill, André. Victor Hugo. L’Eclipse. 29 August, 1875. Paris: Maison Victor Hugo.

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I. Introduction: Naming without Names

“Peindre non la chose mais son effet.” - Mallarmé letter to Cazalis, Oct. 30, 1864

Like Rimbaud and Verlaine, Mallarmé too stakes out certain renversements of

Hugolian thematics in a manner resonating with Baudelaire’s treatments of the name

“Hugo”. In Mallarmé’s writings on Hugo, Rimbaud also has a tendency to appear, as a solitary revolutionary within the literary world overshadowed by Hugo. While

Mallarmé’s treatments of “Hugo” resemble Verlaine’s by focusing on the theme of death

(and more specifically Hugo’s death), Mallarmé deploys this thematic to different ends than Verlaine. For those with some familiarity with Mallarmé’s work, thinking of

Mallarmé’s “Hugo” likely first calls to mind “Crise de vers”, wherein Mallarmé equates

Hugo’s death to the death of verse. However, Mallarmé’s Hugo presents a far more complex figure than just this representative of poetic dominance. Mallarmé’s preference for suggestion over naming occasionally makes studying the presence and significance of the name of Hugo in his work an exercise in reading what is suggested rather than what is named.1 While there do exist a number of appearances of the name Hugo in Mallarmé’s work, there also exist less conspicuous references to Hugo that reveal an unnamed

Mallarmean Hugo on the path to a revolutionary poetic authorial anonymity. One could call this tendency of Mallarmé’s an onomastic preterition: he names Hugo without naming him while paving the way to universal poetic anonymity.

Mallarmé was born in 1842, two years before Verlaine, and he died in 1898, two years after Verlaine. These two contemporaries both published pieces in the first issue of

1 Blanchot points out the ability of language to make things disappear while studying Mallarmé: “Dans le langage authentique, la parole a une fonction, non seulement représentative, mais destructive. Elle fait disparaître, elle rend l’objet absent, elle l’annihile” (37). Cited in Block de Behar, 388. 483

Le Parnasse contemporain. Verlaine also attended some of Mallarmé’s Tuesday gatherings, called “les Mardis”.2 Additionally, Mallarmé wrote what is now known as his

“lettre autobiographique” to Verlaine in 1885. When Verlaine died, his title of “Prince des poètes” was passed to Mallarmé.3 Lloyd comments upon their friendship:

One of Mallarmé’s early friendships, and one that lasted until the other poet’s death, was with Paul Verlaine […]. To the outsider, much would seem to separate these poets: Mallarmé was dapper, decorous, intellectual, and intensely private and self-effacing, while Verlaine was exuberant, passionate, untidy, frequently drunk, and the subject of so much public scandal. Yet this was one of Mallarmé’s most important friendships, and he, perhaps more than any of their contemporaries, saw what Verlaine was attempting in his poetry and valued that far too much to be disconcerted by the frequently publicized details of his friend’s private life. (7)

Staunchly situated within Rimbaud’s and Verlaine’s generation (even if Rimbaud was a bit younger than his cohort), Mallarmé occasionally frequented the “dîners des Vilains

Bonshommes”, a group that served as a less exclusive, more expansive version of the

Parnassian “Zutiques” collective.4 Like Verlaine’s, Mallarmé’s name eventually ceases to be aligned with the Parnassian movement5 and becomes seen as a founder and even

2 Millan writes of the quasi-mythical nature of these gatherings because of the secrecy surrounding them: “C’est que, sans que l’on cherche à proposer ici la notion d’une cabale ou d’une société secrète, tous ceux qui grimpaient régulièrement les quatre étages mal éclairés menant au modeste appartement du quartier des Batignolles où, pendant près d’un quart de siècle Mallarmé tenait sa cour, restaient néanmoins très conscients d’appartenir à une communauté d’élite, de faire partie d’un groupe privilégié dont il convenait en quelque sort de garder le secret. Pour participer à ces séances, il fallait y avoir été invité par Mallarmé lui-même, soit oralement ou par un de ces billets délicieux qu’il savait écrire, ou avoir été introduit par un membre du groupe qui avait déjà fait ses preuves” (17-18). Other frequenters of Mallarmé’s Tuesday evening gatherings include Whistler, Wilde, Renoir, Monet, Degas, Redon, Rodin, Gide, and Valéry (Lloyd “Debussy” 256-57). Lloyd writes that Verlaine frequents both Debussy and Mallarmé (154). 3 Simon mentions the passing of the title between Verlaine and Mallarmé as one that Mallarmé did not covet: “His election as ‘prince of poets’ upon Verlaine’s death, with its attendant publicity, gave him little pleasure” (30). The first “prince of poets” was Ronsard, a 16th-century French poet, to whom Sainte-Beuve compares Hugo in his early writings (Brix 13). 4 Mallarmé writes of this in a letter to M. Harrison Rhodes that becomes a piece in Divagations entitled “Arthur Rimbaud” within the section “Quelques médaillons et portraits en pied”. In this letter, Mallarmé describes his one encounter with Rimbaud: “Je ne l’ai pas connu, mais je l’ai vu, une fois, dans un des repas littéraires, en hâte, groupés à l’issue de la Guerre – le Dîner des Vilains Bonhommes, certes, par antiphrase, en raison du portrait, qu’au convive dédie Verlaine” (IDC 133-4). 5 Murphy defends this assignment of Verlaine and Mallarmé as Parnassians: “Baudelaire était un catalyseur crucial dans la réflexion de Verlaine et on peut dire que c’est bien l’École Baudelaire, à l’intérieur du Parnasse, qui a déclenché la révolution du langage poétique des années 1860-1880: moins Ricard, Mendès ou Glatigny que Mallarmé, Verlaine, et, bientôt, Rimbaud. Ce furent tous, entre 1866 et 1871, de vrais 484

participant of Symbolism.6 Though both a contemporary innovator and a friend of

Verlaine’s, Mallarmé does not express the same bitterness for Hugo that appear in

Verlaine’s writings. While Verlaine laments the seemingly never-ending posthumous life of Hugo, Mallarmé focuses upon his death. The name and presence of Hugo in

Mallarmé’s writing frequently signifies either a prematurely-shrouded or a fully-dead god, the death of which allows his survivors to see the tearing of a divine veil.

Like many other writers in this study, the young Mallarmé was an avid fan of

Hugo’s. Austin writes that Mallarmé’s father became worried over his son’s focused love for Hugo: “Le père de Mallarmé s’inquiète de ce que son fils, à seize ans, n’aime que Victor Hugo” (“Principal” 156). Moreover, Mallarmé also had Hugo’s portrait hanging in his room at Tournon (right side up, presumably, as opposed to Verlaine’s inverted portrait of Hugo).7 Lloyd distinguishes Hugo as one of the writers in whose works the young Mallarmé would become engrossed:

Mallarmé’s reading, it would seem from these letters and from the critical articles I’ve quoted thus far, is active and analytical, a playing out in the theater of his mind, to use his own expression (OC, 300), of what he feels a writer is attempting to achieve. It is also, perhaps inevitably, focused on techniques and artistry. We rarely get the sense of him being lost in the book’s narrative or themes, except perhaps in his references to his adolescent reading of Charles Baudelaire or Théodore de Banville, Victor Hugo or Théophile Gautier. (24)

Parnassians…à moins de vider le mot de toute pertinence historique, en se cramponnant à un Parnasse mutilé, limité à Leconte de Lisle et à ses disciples les plus assidus” (Marges 113). 6 Any assignment of a movement to a poet or writer risks over-simplification of the writer’s work. Nevertheless, Mallarmé’s association with Symbolism appears even in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica introductory blurb for Mallarmé’s entry: “Stéphane Mallarmé (born March 18, 1842, Paris–died Sept. 9, 1898, Valvins, near Fontainebleau, Fr.), French poet, an originator (with Paul Verlaine) and a leader of the Symbolist movement in poetry” (1). Murphy studies the subtlety of the appropriation of Mallarmé by the Symbolist movement: “C’est en partant du troisième Parnasse que les acolytes de Leconte de Lisle définiront le Parnasse, entérinant l’exclusion de Verlaine, Mallarmé et Cros, choisissant ainsi comme point de repère essentiel ce que l’on peut considérer aujourd’hui comme un enterrement de première classe, ce qui n’est pas sans ironie quand on songe que Leconte de Lisle a failli ne pas participer, pour des raisons tout à fait différentes, au troisième Parnasse. À la longue, l’expulsion de Mallarmé et de Verlaine profitera aux Symbolistes qui pourront, en mettant en valeur leurs œuvres, approprier leurs auteurs non seulement comme précurseurs, mais comme membres virtuels de leurs mouvements” (Marges 394). 7 See Austin, “Principal”, 156. 485

Aside from his youthful readings of Hugo, Mallarmé’s interactions with and publications on Hugo come a bit later in life than they do for some of the other writers gathered in this study. Similarly to the other writers preceding Mallarmé in this study, in order to liberate his own voice and verse, Mallarmé finds he must first liberate himself from the examples and molds of his predecessors, particularly Hugo’s.

In 1891, Jules Huret places both Mallarmé and Verlaine in the category of

“Symbolistes et Décadents” in his work entitled Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire.8 It is in this account of Huret’s interview with Mallarmé that Mallarmé’s stance on naming becomes clearer as he criticizes the Parnassian movement for naming things:

Nommer un objet, c’est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème qui est faite du Bonheur de deviner peu à peu: le suggérer, voilà le rêve. C’est le parfait usage de ce mystère qui constitue le symbole: évoquer petit à petit un objet pour montrer un état d’âme, ou, inversement, choisir un objet et en dégage un état d’âme, par une série de déchiffrements. (60)

I will return to this interview later in my study. For the moment, I would like to introduce Mallarmé’s later stance on naming. Mallarmé’s attitude brought him accusations of obscurantism from many of his contemporaries, including Proust. This resistance to naming offers Mallarmé’s works its particular abundance of potential interpretations. An erasure of names also resounds with certain of Mallarmé’s literary projects that call for anonymity, as I will explore. For this study, it is important to remember Mallarmé’s aversion to naming, as the name Hugo only appears in Mallarmé’s published work a handful of times. Nevertheless, Hugo also appears in his ciphered

Mallarmean form, that is, via suggestion.

II. “Hugo! Hugo!”: Early Writings

8 In the introduction to this work, Huret notes the oddity that Mallarmé’s name receives more mentions in this work (as calculated by the work’s index) than Hugo’s name: “Que M. Mallarmé, dont la haute personnalité littéraire ne se révèle que les mardis soirs à quelques personnes choisies, a pourtant groupé plus de nominations que Victor Hugo, la plus populaire des gloires de la France moderne […]” (xvi). 486

“Le splendide génie éternel n’a pas d’ombre.” - Mallarmé, “Toast funèbre”

Despite Hugo’s unique attention to naming in his own works, one also finds

Hugolian contemplation and pursuit of suggestion. Stemming from the Latin preposition sub, meaning both “under” and “up”, and the Latin verb gerere, meaning “bring” or

“carry”, the word “suggest” encompasses both the idea of carrying under and bringing up. In relation to the prevalence of death in Mallarmé’s incorporations of Hugo into his work, this double direction of carrying implicit in the verb “suggest” becomes paramount.

While studying the Hugolian influence upon and difference from Mallarmé, Cellier lands upon suggestion as a common ground between the two:

Ainsi, pour juger de l’influence d’Hugo, convient-il de distinguer l’art et le rêve. En admettant (personne ne le conteste) que la poétique d’Hugo est fondée sur l’amplification, celle de Mallarmé sur la condensation, Hugo est-il incapable de condensation? Ne subsiste-t-il dans l’œuvre de Mallarmé, qui imite manifestement la manière oratoire d’Hugo dans Entre quatre murs, aucune trace d’amplification oratoire? Ne faut-il pas, au-delà de l’opposition entre condensation et amplification, faire une place essentielle à la suggestion? (Mallarmé 48)

Despite finding suggestion as a middle ground between Hugolian amplification and

Mallarmean condensation, Cellier later concludes that Mallarmé condenses Hugo:

Oui, les poétiques de Mallarmé et d’Hugo s’opposent, et celle de Mallarmé est bien fondée sur la condensation, la concentration. Mais, souvent, tout se passe comme si la poésie de Mallarmé était de l’Hugo condensé. (Mallarmé 61)

This viewpoint reduces “Mallarmé” to a reduction of “Hugo”. Cellier also offers a new perspective on Bloom’s term of “anxiety” (14 years before Bloom’s work was published) for Mallarmé:

Or, qui dit angoisse, rêve ou hantise, dit réseau d’images obsédantes. Ce réseau d’images, qui subsiste d’un bout à l’autre de l’œuvre de Mallarmé, est incontestablement d’origine hugolienne. (Mallarmé 48-49)

According to Cellier, Mallarmé’s network of images stems from Hugo and offers a particular perspective on what would later be called the anxiety of influence. Through

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Cellier’s account, Hugo and Mallarmé share a network of images that they both suggest, via amplification or condensation.

To explore this “réseau d’images […] d’origine hugolienne” as a means of studying the importance and role of Hugo’s name for Mallarmé, I will first turn to

Mallarmé’s Hugo in Entre quatre murs. In 1854, a 12-year-old Mallarmé writes a poem entitled “Sa tombe est fermée”, in which a Hugolian passage appears with an emphasis upon naming:

Elle donna partout un doux souvenir d’elle! De tout… que reste-t-il? Que nous peut-on montrer? Un nom!... sur un cercueil où je ne puis pleurer! Un nom!...qu’effaceront le temps et le lierre! Un nom!...couvert de pleurs, et demain de poussière Et tout est dit! (Poésies 118)

This onomastically-focused passage precedes but resonates with Hugo’s ending to Les

Misérables. In the final section of this novel, entitled “L’herbe cache et la pluie efface”,

Hugo’s narrator describes Jean Valjean’s tomb as being stripped of its inscribed name over time. The erasure of names after death emerges as a shared thematic within the

“réseau d’images” of Hugo and Mallarmé.

Cellier claims that, for Mallarmé, Hugo is always the author of his 1856 collection Les Contemplations, in which Hugo dedicates many poems to mourning the death of his daughter Léopoldine.9 An 1859 poem of Mallarmé’s (then 17 years old) from Entre quatre murs emphasizes not just naming but the name of Hugo by repeating it

9 When making this claim, Cellier cites a line from Hugo’s poem “Fantômes”, which line Baudelaire reworks in his poem “Les Petites Vieilles”, as earlier studied: “Hugo est et restera pour Mallarmé le poète des Contemplations, inextricablement lié à son ‘Individualité secrète et antérieure’. Le critique se doit donc de lire Hugo avec les yeux de Mallarmé. Hugo est le poète des Fantômes. On sait que tel est le titre d’un poème des Orientales, qui frise par moments le ridicule mais dont le vers liminaire prend une résonance prophétique: ‘Hélas! que j’en ai vu mourir de jeunes filles’” (Mallarmé 50). 488

three times over the course of a short (or “condensed” as Cellier may put it) poem entitled

“Vers écrits sur un exemplaire des Contemplations”:

La France, Hugo, déjà d’un noir linceul te voile, Comme l’on voile un mort! La vipère en sifflant bave sur ton étoile, Et l’oison-vautour mord De son bec écumant les cordes de tes lyres! Hugo! Hugo! la voix Du luth qui pleure un ange au ciel ravi, ta fille Dormant sous une croix, Est une voix qui met au cœur bien des délires, A l’œil bien des sanglots! Non! – Son astre en la nuit plus qu’un soleil scintille, “Il vit!...” chantent les flots! (Poésies 127-28)

While Hugo is in exile, Mallarmé’s narrator resists the treatment of Hugo as dead while he is still living. One will recall that Hugo himself stated that he wished for his readers to read this work as though it came from a defunct person in his preface: “[…] Ce livre doit

être lu comme on lirait le livre d’un mort” (Poésie II 249). As in the biblical narrative of

Lazarus—which reference will grow increasingly prevalent in this study—, Mallarmé’s repetition of Hugo’s name works to revivify the prematurely and unsuccessfully enshrouded Hugo. While repeating Hugo’s last name, this narrator also repeatedly and informally refers to Hugo via one direct object pronoun and three possessive pronouns

(“te voile”, “ton étoile”, “tes lyres”, “ta fille”). Without being so bold as to deploy the subject pronoun “tu” in this address, preferring instead to use the addressee’s last name

“Hugo”, Mallarmé’s narrator walks a fine line between formality and familiarity with

Hugo. Hugo’s name here acts as the line between camaraderie and respectful distance between a young poet and a much older maître. At the poem’s close, the narrator insists upon Hugo’s status as still very much alive despite France’s treatment of him as dead and despite the young goose’s pecking at the strings of his lyre. The “voile” in this first direct

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mention of Hugo in Mallarmé’s writing portends the veils that will accompany most other Mallarmean mentions of this name. In this instance, the veil covering Hugo embodies a premature putting-to-death of Hugo by the nation from which he exiles himself. Mallarmé’s project with Hugo at this moment is one of revivification before the actual death of the poet. It is through repetitions of Hugo’s name that the narrator makes this absent maître present. As opposed to the tomb of the unnamed dead woman in “Sa tombe est fermée”, which will soon see this unnamed name erased by the ravages of time,

Hugo’s tomb is not closed, and his name is here recurrently proclaimed to remind readers of his continued life. In this manner, Mallarmé’s narrator deploys Hugo’s name in order to encourage readers to perceive of Hugo as very much alive and present in their world.

III. Siding with Baudelaire against Hugolian utility

“Au voile qui la ceint absente avec frissons Celle son Ombre même un poison tutélaire Toujours à respirer si nous en périssons” - Mallarmé, “Le tombeau de Charles Baudelaire”

Seven years later, in 1866, two poems of Mallarmé’s with Hugolian thematics are published in Le Parnasse contemporain: “Aumône” and “Les Fleurs”. In “Aumône”,

Mallarmé’s narrator addresses a beggar to whom he has just given alms. The narrator then suggests the beggar use the money for “quelque péché bizarre” (Poésies 24) like opium, a prostitute, or an entire night spent in a café during which he could give money to another beggar. The narrator ends with an insistent stance against what may be termed a useful employment of this money: “Ne t’imagine pas que je dis des folies./ La terre s’ouvre vieille à qui crève la faim./ Je hais une autre aumône et veux que tu m’oublies/

Et surtout ne va pas, frère, acheter du pain” (25). In the first version of this poem, entitled “À un mendiant”, the narrator makes more explicit his feelings about utility in

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particular: “Ne t’imagine pas que je dis des folies:/ Que le Diable ait ton corps si tu crèves de faim,/ Je hais l’aumône utile, et veux que tu m’oublies;/ Et, surtout, ne va pas, drôle, acheter du pain!” (Poésies 200).10 In the original version, the alms that the narrator hates are those meant to be useful. Additionally, the original version addresses the beggar as a “drôle” in the final apostrophe, while the 1866 published version ends by calling the beggar his “frère”. The resistance to utility and the insistence that this damned subject is a brother to the narrator align Mallarmé’s poem with Baudelaire, both in his stance against Hugolian utility and in his establishment of a complex fraternity based in a shared culpability-cum-ridiculousness.11 The narrator’s desire to be forgotten here (“[je] veux que tu m’oublies”) comes alongside his hatred for utility in alms. Early seeds of the

“disparition élocutoire du poëte”, which appears much later in “Crise de vers”, come across in this wish to be forgotten (IDC 256). One may also interpret the detail of the purchase of bread as the most despicably useful way to spend alms as an additional reference to Les Misérables, as it was Jean Valjean’s theft of bread that led him to prison.

In this Mallarmean renversement of a Hugolian theme, a de-moralizing narrator expresses the abnormal desire to see his alms squandered. By implying the presence of Hugo’s model in this poem, Mallarmé begins to stake out his poetic revolution as based in the lineage of Baudelairean renversements of Hugo.

Murphy also identifies Hugo as the figure of opposition against which Mallarmé here joins Baudelaire:

Vers la même époque, en 1862 ou 1863, dans À un mendiant (première version du poème mieux connu sous son titre ultérieur Aumône), Mallarmé avait fait des allusions

10 In the following draft of this poem, entitled “À un pauvre”, Mallarmé removes the italics but retains the adjective “utile”: “Je hais l’aumône utile et veux que tu m’oublies” (Poésies 201). 11 I am here referring to Baudelaire’s fraternity found at the end of “Au Lecteur”: “—Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, —mon frère!” (FM 50). 491

parodiques au Mendiant de Hugo (le poème est une réponse à…Un mendiant) et risqué ce vers fortement inspiré d’une conception baudelairienne de la poésie: “Je hais l’aumône utile, et veux que tu m’oublies”. Mallarmé va d’abord enlever les italiques et ensuite le mot utile. C’est bien à l’utilitarisme hugolien que Mallarmé s’attaque. (Marges 49)

Ten years before this poem of Mallarmé’s was published, Hugo publishes a poem entitled

“Le Mendiant” in Les Contemplations. In Mallarmé’s “À un mendiant”, there is no literal reference to or inscription of Hugo’s name. However, Mallarmé’s title may indeed indicate a response to Hugo’s poem that contains shared thematics with different aims and conclusions. In her comparison of how Hugo’s narrator idealizes his mendicant while Mallarmé’s narrator insists upon the harsh reality of his beggar, Berger also notes the Hugolian haunting of this poem of Mallarmé’s: “Un autre spectre hante aussi ce poème, hantise dont Mallarmé dressera le constat dans ‘Crise de vers’. Il s’agit bien sûr de Hugo” (244). In Hugo’s poem, the narrator offers shelter to a beggar and immediately asks of the beggar his name:

C’était le vieux qui vit dans une niche au bas […] Tendant les mains pour l’homme et les joignant pour Dieu. Je lui criais: “Venez vous réchauffer un peu. Comment vous nommez-vous?” Il me dit: “Je me nomme Le pauvre.” Je lui pris la main: “Entrez, brave homme.” (Poésie II 440)

The fact that Hugo’s beggar names himself “Le pauvre” underscores his identity as determined both by his condition and by his appearance to others. By immediately renaming the beggar “brave homme”, the narrator engages in interpellation to modify the significance of this still unnamed but now differently-qualified figure. Because Hugo’s mendicants often serve as reminders of the humanity they share with readers and of the need of these members of the same family of humanity to help one another, the presence of the narrator is felt as a force making the work morally useful to its readers.

Nevertheless, Hugo’s giver of alms and vessel of useful morality is elevated above that of

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the recipient, as the narrator twice states that he does not listen to what the beggar is saying. Mallarmé’s narrator’s wish for disappearance after giving the alms stands in direct opposition to a Hugolian literary treatment of beggars:

Le pauvre de Mallarmé, comme ceux de Baudelaire, est en ce sens un pauvre vraiment moderne: il a perdu son auréole dans le ruisseau. Il n’est plus ce ‘mendiant puissant au ciel’ encore exalté par Hugo. (Berger 243)12

Mallarmé’s narrator offers a counter-morality that resonates with Baudelaire’s resistance to Hugo’s alliance of poetry and morality, as both renversements are detached from a project of moral improvement, be it for the beggar, the narrator, or the reader.13 If God is dead, humanity may have no need for moral improvement.14

Like in this last pairing of poems, the following pairing also contains no explicit reference to the name of Hugo but implies a Hugolian presence through thematic common ground; and, as did the last pair, this pair of poems clarifies similarities between

Mallarmé and Baudelaire with regard to Hugo. Mallarmé’s second poem in this same

1866 edition of Le Parnasse contemporain, “Les Fleurs”, contains a line that many scholars, including Sartre and Austin, identify as Hugolian.15 Written in 1864, when

12 Berger here alludes to Baudelaire’s prose poem “Perte d’auréole”. 13 While studying two of Mallarmé’s titles for this poem, “Haine du Pauvre” and “Aumône”, and drawing an equivalency between hatred and a gift, Berger also notes the Baudelairean aspect of this Mallarmé, terming it “son ironie subversive digne du Baudelaire le plus mordant, le caractère insoutenable” (242). 14 Berger also studies the exposition of the death of God to be found in Baudelaire and in Mallarmé: “Si le discours chrétien a encore cours au XIXe siècle, si l’on assiste même à une réactivation du message de charité face au phénomène de paupérisation massive des classes dites laborieuses, faute d’une prise en charge politique du problème, le poème de Mallarmé, comme ceux de Baudelaire, révèle l’envers de la morale et de la conscience contemporaines et la vérité de l’âge: Dieu est mort, et, dit en conséquence le locuteur au ‘vieux spectre’ de la pauvreté, ‘Tu comprends que le pauvre est le frère du chien’ (c’est moi qui souligne) […]” (243). 15 Sartre writes of this line when discussing Mallarmé’s discouragement at finding that none of his writings belong to him: “Il relit ses poèmes et les rejette, découragé, rien ne lui appartient. Ces ‘avalanches d’or du vieil azur’, il faut les rendre à Hugo ainsi que les ‘mains mal fermées’ d’Apparition, à Gautier le vocabulaire et le rythme du Guignon, à Baudelaire le mot même de ‘guignon’ et le sujet du poème, les thèmes de la chevelure, de l’azur, des yeux, de la blancheur, de l’Infini, du néant, etc., etc.; à Banville, plus tard, l’affabulation de L’Après-Midi d’un faune, au Parnasse même je ne sais quel clinquant qui dépare Hérodiade” (125). Austin writes of these same lines: “Le début du poème Les Fleurs […] est une réminiscence frappante du huitième vers du Sacre de la Femme, dans la première Légende des siècles, 493

Mallarmé was 24 years old, the opening phrase presents the passage in question: “Des avalanches d’or du vieil azur” (Poésies 12). A striking similarity arises between this line and a line from Hugo’s 1859 La Légende des siècles poem “Sacre de la Femme”: “Des avalanches d’or s’écroulaient dans l’azur” (Poésie II 572). Hugo’s poem introduces his first series in La Légende des siècles, which series, as its title of “D’Ève à Jésus” suggests, covers the period of time from the Christian beginning of humanity to the death of Christ. More than just containing a shared image, Hugo’s “Sacre de la Femme” and

Mallarmé’s “Les Fleurs” also hold thematic resonance. Both poems open at the dawn of time, describe an infant world, and offer lengthy descriptions of flowers in which they compare flowers to women.16 While Hugo’s poem credits God as the creator of this world, Mallarmé’s final version of his poem does not. However, in the first version of this poem, Mallarmé not only includes God but also makes this deity the addressee of the poem: “Des avalanches d’or du vieil azur, au jour/ Premier, et de la neige éternelle des astres,/ Mon Dieu, tu détachas les grands calices pour/ La terre jeune encore et vierge de désastres” (Poésies 189). This change appears in 1887, along with other changes to the final stanzas of the poem that replace God with a “Mère” figure who creates new

parue en 1859 […]. Les deux derniers vers d’Apparition […] rappellent un passage d’un des Chants du Crépuscule […]” (“Principal” 156). 16 Hugo writes at length about flowers in “Sacre de la Femme”: “Et, sous les verts palmiers à la haute stature,/ Autour d’Ève, au-dessus de sa tête, l’œillet/ Semblait songer, le bleu lotus se recueillait,/ Le frais myosotis se souvenait; les roses/ Cherchaient ses pies avec leurs lèvres demi-closes;/ Un souffle fraternel sortait du lys vermeil;/ Comme si ce doux être eût été leur pareil,/ Comme si de ces fleurs, ayant toutes une âme,/ La plus belle s’était épanouie en femme” (Poésies II 574-75). Mallarmé also compares flowers to the flesh of women in his “Les Fleurs”: “L’hyacinthe, le myrte à l’adorable éclair/ Et, pareille à la chair de la femme, la rose/ Cruelle, Hérodiade en fleur du jardin clair,/ Celle qu’un sang farouche et radieux arrose!” (Poésies 12). Fontainas also makes this connection between the two poems: “Dans l’un comme dans l’autre, les fleurs s’empressent en cortège autour de la femme, et chacune: couleur, parfum, éclat multiple, fraîcheur, candide essor de splendeur ou sombre recueillement de volupté ombreuse et veloutée, exprime, interprète, exalte et intègre un aspect, une vertu, une fatalité, une aspiration, un bienfait” (69). 494

calyxes.17 Marchal finds these changes to be revelatory of the religious transformations that Mallarmé undergoes during his lifetime: “[…] Les remaniements apparus en 1887 de l’état initial sont révélateurs de l’évolution spirituelle du poète. Comme pour Les

Fenêtres, Mallarmé a effacé Dieu, destinataire initial du poème […]” (Poésies 188-89).18

Mallarmé’s conversion away from a Christian God runs contrary to Verlaine’s later conversion to Catholicism; nevertheless, both conversions incorporate a resistance to

Hugo, who thereby emerges as simultaneously a representative of the divine and the satanic.19

Even though Mallarmé will later remove God from “Les Fleurs” and further distance himself from typically Hugolian aims, this poem’s initial form also contains stark differences from Hugo’s poem. As was the case with “Aumône”, the distinctions between Mallarmé and Hugo place Mallarmé in Baudelaire’s camp of resistance to Hugo.

17 The original final two quatrains are the following: “Hosannah sur le cistre et dans les encensoirs,/ O mon Père hosannah du profond de nos limbes!/ A jamais hosannah dans l’or des jours sans soirs,/ Par l’azur des rayons et le frisson des nimbes!/ Car, n’oubliant personne en ton charmant effort,/ Tu donnas, lui montrant son devoir sans mensonge,/ De fortes fleurs versant comme un parfum la Mort/ Au poète ennuyé que l’Impuissance ronge. (Poésies 189). The 1887 final quatrains are the following: “Hosannah sur le cistre musical instrument et dans les encensoirs,/ Notre Dame, hosannah du jardin de nos limbes!/ Et finisse l'écho par les célestes soirs,/ Extase des regards, scintillement des nimbes!/ Ô Mère qui créas en ton sein juste et fort,/ Calices balançant la future fiole vial,/ De grandes fleurs avec la balsamique Mort/ Pour le poète las que la vie étiole” (Poésies 12-13). I will return to these lines later in this study. 18 Mondor analyzes the religious shift of Mallarmé: “Pour Kurt Wais, dont le livre est, en bien des pages, remarquable, la mort d’une amie, Harriet, l’aurait profondément trouble. Cet événement aurait brisé les liens qui rattachaient son esprit à l’éducation catholique. Désormais, dit Kurt Wais, il évitera de nommer Dieu” (18). 19 Mallarmé’s early poem Pan is seen as a Hugolian opposition of the Church and nature (Marchal Religion 302). However, rather than Hugo, Wagner may better represent a divine force upon a transitioning Mallarmé. In fact, in his correspondence, Mallarmé writes of Wagner as the “hyperdivine” force he notes after writing of his appreciation for Hugo: “Hugo et Leconte de Lisle nous sauvent, nous font vivre et, grâce à Richard Wagner, je connais d’infinis ravissements. Vous connaissant comme je crois vous connaître, je me fais une fête de vous initier à l’art nouveau qui n’est ni la poésie ni la musique et qui est en même temps la musique et la poésie, créé par Richard Wagner. Cet homme-là—si ce nom peut s’appliquer à une nature hyperdivine—est véritablement le précurseur et le rédempteur à la fois” (Marchal Religion 170). Additionally, in the closing lines of his homage poem “Le silence déjà funèbre d’une moire”, Mallarmé’s narrator refers to Wagner as “le dieu Richard Wagner” (Poésies 63). Mallarmé will eventually break with Wagner (see Gans). After Wagner, it is Poe that Mallarmé will revere in literary terms. See Mondor, 39. 495

In Hugo’s “Le Sacre de la femme”, the innocence of the world is emphasized and extolled:

Et sur cette nature encore immaculée Qui du verbe éternel avait gardé l’accent, Sur ce monde céleste, angélique, innocent, Le matin, murmurant une sainte parole, Souriait, et l’aurore était une auréole. Tout avait la figure intègre du Bonheur; Pas de bouche d’où vint un souffle empoisonneur […]. (Poésie II 571-72)

However, in Mallarmé’s poem, the narrator ends with the image of a poisonous flower that acts as a balm to the tired, withered poet: “O Mère, qui créas en ton sein juste et fort,/

Calices balançant la future fiole,/ De grandes fleurs avec la balsamique Mort/ Pour le poëte las que la vie étiole” (Poésies 13). It is revelatory that the Mother should fill the space formerly occupied by God when considering this poem of Mallarmé’s alongside

Hugo’s “Le Sacre de la Femme”.20 In Hugo’s poem, the narrator mentions that Adam was perceived with more respect as the “être complet”, but Eve, on this day that she gives birth, is seen as the more “auguste” being (Poésie II 574) because, on this particular day,

“Ève sentit que son flanc remuait” (Poésie II 576).21 Hugo’s woman here has the sacred power of giving life, but Mallarmé’s Mother doles out balsamic death. As Marchal notes, this appreciation for the Mallarmean flowers of Death given by this “Mère” to tired poets

20 Kristeva studies the entrance of the figure of the Mother in late 19th-century French poetry: “Pour ce qui est de la fin du XIXe siècle, une prédominance du domaine pré-symbolique, pré-œdipien, ‘maternel’, semble se dégager, marquant la littérature d’avant-garde en opposition au ‘réalisme’ et au ‘naturalisme’ en tant que doctrines” (607). 21 It is also at this point in the poem that the narrator incorporates a veil and describes names as “mots ténébreux”: “Mais, ce jour-là, ces yeux innombrables qu’entr’ouvre/ L’infini sous les plis du voile qui le couvre,/ S’attachaient sur l’épouse et non pas sur l’époux,/ Comme si, dans ce jour religieux et doux,/ Béni parmi les jours et parmi les aurores,/ Aux nids ailés perdus sous les branches sonores,/ Au nuage, aux ruisseaux, aux frissonnants essaims,/ Aux bêtes, aux cailloux, à tous ces êtres saints/ Que de mots ténébreux la terre aujourd’hui nomme,/ La femme eût apparu plus auguste que l’homme!” (Poésies II 575). 496

evokes Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal at large and “Le Voyage” in particular,22 as well as Mallarmé’s poem commemorating Baudelaire:

Cette célébration des fleurs par un ‘poète las que la vie étiole’ se termine par deux vers qui annoncent déjà cette autre célébration de fleurs—Les Fleurs du Mal—dans Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire: “…un poison tutélaire/ Toujours à respirer si nous en périssons”. (Poésies 189)

Though Mallarmé’s poem places itself in a setting reminiscent of Hugo’s, compares womanly flesh to flowers, and even begins with a nearly-identical phrase to one of

Hugo’s, it still ends squarely within the counter-moral camp of Baudelaire, another poet whose narrator yearns for poisonous death.23 Mallarmé’s unnamed, suggested “Hugo” here represents the side of a literary battle opposed to Baudelaire and carries echoes of a

Christianity that Mallarmé erases from himself and from his work.

IV. The Mystery of a Name: “Toast funèbre” and “Sonnet”

“La tombe aime tout de suite le silence. Acclamation, renom, la parole haute cesse et le sanglot des vers abandonnés ne suivra jusqu’à ce lieu de discrétion celui qui s’y dissimule pour ne pas offusquer, d’une présence, sa gloire.” - Mallarmé, discourse at Verlaine’s burial

When Gautier dies in 1872 (the same year during which Mallarmé encounters

Rimbaud at a “dîner des Vilains Bonhommes”) Hugo and Mallarmé both publish poems

22 One may recall that the final two quatrains of “Le Voyage” (which are also the final lines of Les Fleurs du Mal) are as follows: “O Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l’ancre!/ Ce pays nous ennuie, ô Mort! Appareillons!/ Si le ciel et la mer sont noirs comme de l’encre,/ Nos cœurs que tu connais sont remplis de rayons!/ Verse-nous ton poison pour qu’il nous réconforte!/ Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brûle le cerveau,/ Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu’importe?/ Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!” (FM 192). In addition to the final poem in this work of Baudelaire’s, his first poem (discounting “Au Lecteur”), “Bénédiction”, also incorporates a maternal figure, the mother of the “Poète”, who wishes death and mutilation upon her child in her declarations to God in the following quatrains: “Puisque tu m’as choisi entre toutes les femmes/ Pour être le dégoût de mon triste mari,/ Et que je ne puis pas rejeter dans les flammes,/ Comme un billet d’amour, ce monstre rabougri,/ Je ferai rejaillir ta haine qui m’accable/ Sur l’instrument maudit de tes méchancetés,/ Et je tordrai si bien cet arbre misérable,/ Qu’il ne pourra pousser ses boutons empestés!” (FM 51). One may also here note a line from “Le Balcon”, a poem addressed to “Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses”: “Et je buvais ton souffle, ô douceur! ô poison!” (FM 84). 23 This is not to say that Mallarmé sides completely with Baudelaire on all matters. One of Mallarmé’s biographers, Mondor, notes that Mallarmé will also eventually detach himself from Baudelaire to an extent: “Comme il se détacha de Hugo, il s’écartera, non sans une belle révérence déjà projetée, de Gautier, de Banville, et même de Baudelaire. Un maître lui reste, avec lequel des affinités profondes l’unissent, pour toujours: c’est Edgar Poe […]” (39). See also Michaud, 16. 497

in the 1873 collection dedicated to Gautier’s memory, Le Tombeau de Théophile Gautier, for which Hugo’s “À Théophile Gautier” serves as the first poem. Mallarmé’s “Toast funèbre” is the 57th poem to appear out of the 82 total works commemorating Gautier.

As this poem appears in a collection for Gautier following his death, one may assume that the “Maître” who, in the poem, experiences a “frisson final” is Gautier; however, as

Bilous notes, Gautier’s name does not appear until very late in this poem, making it possible that the “Maître” here described is another poet or perhaps all “Poets” in general.

Another detail supporting the universality of this poem lies in its distinction from

Mallarmé’s other “tombeau” poems, as he does not include this poem in his “Hommages et Tombeaux” series.24 Because Mallarmé does not include this apparent homage to

Gautier in his series of homages, the idea that this poem may not be specific to Gautier gains traction.

Throughout “Toast funèbre”, the fleeting nature of life and presence is emphasized. Near the beginning of the poem, the narrator laments the forgetfulness of the living: “Et l’on ignore mal, élu pour notre fête/ Très-simple de chanter l’absence du poëte” (Poésies 42). The narrator also writes that we are but temporary embodiments of the specters we will become: “Cette foule hagarde! Elle annonce: Nous sommes/ La triste opacité de nos spectres futurs” (Poésies 42). By employing the first person plural pronoun “nous” here, Mallarmé announces the shared fate of humanity to eventually face nothingness and erasure in death. In “Toast funèbre”, Mallarmé includes a flower that is spoken to, which inverse figure—that is to say, a talking flower—was previously noted in

Hugo’s “Stella” and in Rimbaud’s “Aube”. Mallarmé’s flower is spoken to by “Le

Maître”: “Le Maître, par un œil profond, a, sur ses pas,/ Apaisé de l’éden l’inquiète

24 See Bilous 8. 498

merveille/ Dont le frisson final, dans sa voix seule, éveille/ Pour la Rose et le Lys le mystère d’un nom” (Poésies 43). This citation prompts Lloyd to write of Mallarmé’s magical names:

The magical power of the name so frequently and so unforgettably evoked in Mallarmé’s critical writing and in Poésies in such expressions as “awaken for the Rose and the Lily the mystery of a name” […] also plays a role in letter writing: “I’ve long had ready an envelope on which your name strutted in a tempting fashion” […]. (16)

Indeed, naming comes to the fore in this poetic image of Mallarmé’s. Alongside the talking flower images that one also finds in the poetry of Hugo and Rimbaud, Mallarmé’s poem adds the “mystère d’un nom” within the conversation between his Maître and flowers. Additionally, the capitalization of “Rose” and “Lys” affords these common categorical nouns with the status of proper nouns, or names.25

Mallarmé writes about “Toast funèbre” in a letter reminiscent of Rimbaud’s

“lettres du voyant”: “[…] Je veux chanter, en rimes plates probablement, une des qualités de Gautier: le don mystérieux de voir avec les yeux. (Otez mystérieux). Je chanterai le voyant qui, placé dans ce monde, l’a regardé, ce que l’on ne fait pas” (Bilous 14).26

Rimbaud’s praise of Hugo’s poem “Stella” comes in one of his “lettres du voyant”, in which he studies the work of poets in light of the division of identities within poets. Just as Rimbaud’s praise of one of Hugo’s talking flower poems comes alongside his study of

“voyance”, Mallarmé’s incorporation of flowers involved in conversation comes in a poem through which he aims to foreground Gautier’s “voyance”. A link here emerges

25 Austin studies the changes these words underwent in Mallarmé’s variants: “In line 35, “Rose” and “Lys” are capitalized, with double underlinings. But clearly they were originally written with small letters. In the volume Le Tombeau de Théophile Gautier, they were printed with small letters. The capitals were restored in the definitive version: they stress the symbolic value of the flowers” (“Toast” 339). 26 One may compare Mallarmé’s image of a voyant looking at the world with a means by which Hugo distinguishes Adam from Eve in his “Le Sacre de la Femme”: “Ève qui regardait, Adam qui contemplait” (Poésies II 575). 499

between talking flowers, naming, and seeing in the poetry and letters of Hugo, Gautier,

Rimbaud, and Mallarmé.

Bilous sees Mallarmé’s “voyance” as distinct from Rimbaud’s (and Hugo’s)

“voyance”: “C’est sans doute par contraste qu’un poète aussi peu ‘pittoresque’ que

Mallarmé sembla particulièrement apte à chanter ‘le voyant’, un terme à prendre en un sens plus restreint, plus technique que dans la vulgate sémantique Hugo-Rimbaud” (14).

Nevertheless, Mallarmé’s simultaneous separation and blending of Gautier and the

“Maître” in this poem—which he accomplishes by waiting to name Gautier until the 52nd line of a poem composed of 56 lines and by distinguishing this poem from his other

“tombeau” poems—works to place the same division within Gautier that Rimbaud explores within poets in his “lettres du voyant”. Like Rimbaud’s “je”, Mallarmé’s

“Maître” is multiple and permeable while also acting as a singular identifier.

Mallarmé’s Gautier is part of the larger “Maître” entity, an entity that also seems to include Hugo because of the shared “réseau d’images” to be found reflecting Hugo in

Mallarmé’s “Toast funèbre”. Mallarmé describes the “Maître” in “Toast funèbre” as affiliated with the Garden of Eden (which location was a shared thematic in Hugo’s

“Sacre de la Femme” and Mallarmé’s “Les Fleurs”):

Le Maître, par un œil profond, a, sur ses pas, Apaisé de l’éden l’inquiète merveille Dont le frisson final, dans sa voix seule, éveille Pour la Rose et le Lys le mystère d’un nom. Est-il de ce destin rien qui demeure, non? Ô vous tous! oubliez une croyance sombre. Le splendide génie éternel n’a pas d’ombre. Moi, de votre désir soucieux, je veux voir, A qui s’évanouit, hier, dans le devoir, Idéal que nous font les jardins de cet astre, Survivre pour l’honneur du tranquille désastre Une agitation solennelle par l’air De paroles, pourpre ivre et grand calice clair, Que, pluie et diamant, le regard diaphane 500

Resté là sur ces fleurs dont nulle ne se fane, Isole parmi l’heure et le rayon du jour! (Poésies 43)

The insistence upon the vision of the “Maître” in this passage aligns with Mallarmé’s epistolary statements about his aim in this poem. Mallarmé’s reference to the “Idéal” that the gardens of this star make calls for a return to Hugo’s “Stella”.27 In Hugo’s poem, one may recall that the talking flower speaks of its familial relationship with the star, and the star speaks of the Liberty and Light that will follow its arrival:

Les oiseaux se parlaient dans les nids; une fleur Qui s’eveillait me dit: c’est l’étoile ma soeur. Et pendant qu’à longs plis l’ombre levait son voile, J’entendis une voix qui venait de l’étoile Et qui disait: - Je suis l’astre qui vient d’abord. Je suis celle qu’on croit dans la tombe et qui sort. […] Je suis ce qui renaît quand un monde est détruit. Ô nations! je suis la poésie ardente. […] Debout, vous qui dormez! – car celui qui me suit, Car celui qui m’envoie en avant la première, C’est l’ange Liberté, c’est le géant Lumière! (Poésie II 165)

By reading Mallarmé’s poem as a possible response to Hugo’s, Mallarmé’s narrator desires to see a continuation of the agitation of the air that words bring about following the “tranquille désastre” entailed in the pursuit of the “Idéal que nous font les jardins de cet astre”. Mallarmé’s “Maître” belongs to the “génie éternel” that has no shadow and that continues to survive through the agitations of the air caused by words. A lack of shadow can indicate either the absence or disappearance of a body: the génie is either within the dead or was never contained within one being. It is also a génie that does not pursue the Idéal heralded by Hugo’s star; instead, it survives this pursuit (of progress in

Hugo’s poem) and yet continues to disturb the stillness of air. In this manner,

27 Cellier studies the relationship between flowers and stars in Mallarmé’s work: “Autrement dit, la femme et l’astre ne font plus qu’un” (Mallarmé 204). Another Hugolian poem that incorporates a talking flower is his “La tombe dit à la rose”. 501

Mallarmé’s poem treating the “Maître” contains echoes and renversements of Hugolian thematics.

Two such disturbances of the air by words come in Rimbaud’s and Mallarmé’s talking flowers: in Rimbaud’s “Aube”, the talking flower tells the poem’s narrator its name, and in Mallarmé’s “Toast funèbre”, it is the voice of the “Maître” that calls forth the mystery of the name for the flowers. This progression of poems following Hugo’s increasingly highlights naming. In Mallarmé’s poem, it is the poet, in death, who awakens the mystery of a name to the flowers. Mallarmé’s poem empowers the poet on the condition that the poet is dead. Rather than give voice to the flowers, Mallarmé here gives voice to the poet from beyond the grave. Mallarmé’s image of flowers spoken to by the dead “Maître” further abstracts Hugo’s and Rimbaud’s talking flowers: instead of stating a familial relationship or marking the communication of a hidden name, as is the case in Hugo’s and Rimbaud’s poems, respectively, the message of this “Maître” awakens the mystery of the name. Typical of Mallarmé’s attitude towards naming, the mystery of a name is mentioned, but no actual name is revealed or stated until Gautier’s name is deployed as an example in the final lines of the poem:

Quand la mort ancienne est comme pour Gautier De n’ouvrir pas les yeux sacrés et de se taire, Surgisse, de l’allée ornement tributaire, Le sépulcre solide où gît tout ce qui nuit, Et l’avare silence et la massive nuit. (Poésies 43)

Part of the mystery of the name “Maître” lies in its capacity to encompass many maîtres, of which Gautier is an example. Especially considering Hugo’s role for Gautier, the idea that Hugo may also be covered by this title garners more support. The mystery of Hugo’s name is accentuated by the narrator’s suggesting this presence rather than naming it.

502

Bilous finds in the post-mortem capabilities of this “Maître” a “négation radicale du pouvoir de la mort sur les génies” (9).28 It is also important that the mystery awoken by the still-speaking but dead “Maître” involves the name. In death, the “Maître” both seals the loss of the individual name and faces the Althusserian state of being as named- by-others by now belonging to the collective title of “Maître”. “Maître” is a collective title because it is both dependent upon the recognition of others that someone is a

“Maître”, and it is a name that participates in cyclical replacement: it is in death that a

“Maître” is most fully subjected to being assigned identity by those who survive this person, and each “Maître” is just one of many that receive this title. When this poem is published, Gautier is dead, but Hugo is still alive (and the author of the very first tribute poem for Gautier in this collection). Perhaps Hugo cannot be singled out in this poem because he is not yet dead, and posterity has not yet written “Maître” on his tombstone.

Suggestion and evocation, two of Mallarmé’s key words for his poetic endeavors, come to the fore in this exchange between the dead poet whose name of “Maître” encompasses many and the listening flowers who are christened Rose and Lys, putting them into the same onomastic category as the “Maître” whose name acts as a definition for him dependent upon how others perceive or see him and whose name or title is not specific to just one entity. Cellier sees this process of naming as a means of isolating the flowers from their “bosquets”: “Isoler les fleurs, c’est aussi leur donner un nom”

(Mallarmé 152).29 This isolation further underscores their being put on display to be

28 Bilous finds a reference to another poem of Hugo’s within Mallarmé’s “Toast funèbre”. The lines of Hugo’s appear in his poem “Les deux trophées” in L’Année terrible: “Superbe, tu luttais contre tout ce qui nuit;/ Ta clarté grandissante engloutissait la nuit”. As Bilous notes, the following lines from Mallarmé’s “Toast funèbre” (especially at the lines’ ends) bear resemblance to Hugo’s: “Le sépulcre solide où gît tout ce qui nuit,/ Et l’avare silence, et la massive nuit” (12). 29 Cellier also goes on to cite another highly relevant passage from Mallarmé’s “Crise de vers” in conjunction with these flowers from “Toast funèbre”: “Ces paroles poétiques, ‘pourpre ivre et grand calice 503

observed and defined by others. They are isolated so that their namers may consider them individually, but their names act as categories into which many flowers can be similarly placed. Just as the maître cannot name itself “Maître”, neither do the Rose nor the Lys name themselves as such; the Maître, the Rose, and the Lys all find that their names stem from their observers who will go on to call others by the same name long after these individual instantiations of the name perish. Death acts as a definitive force for these forms due to the appellations that others attach to them either after or in death.

It is in death that the Maître learns and communicates the mystery of the name, it is after the death of individuals that they can be more permanently (and reductively) named

“Maître”, and it is after the death of the Maître that Rose and Lys become proper nouns.

The mystery of the name is not just in its ability to stand for singularities and pluralities at once; the mystery of the name also lies in its trap-like nature that sets external identitary delimitations upon the posthumous significance of an entity through a name or title. Perhaps this is the mystery of the name that the Maître understands in death. In

“Crise de vers”, Mallarmé will offer a similar simultaneously reductive and exalting definition of Hugo as a dead Maître to be both revered and resisted.

Another of Mallarmé’s poems explores the role of a name after death. In 1877,

Mallarmé writes an untitled sonnet that ends with the deceased narrator’s claim that he or she could come back to life if the loved one of the deceased pronounces the narrator’s name: “Pour revivre il suffit qu’à tes lèvres j’emprunte/ Le souffle de mon nom murmuré tout un soir” (Poésies 159). This poem’s narrator believes he or she may return to life through the repetition of the name. Cellier notes the similarity of this sonnet’s ending clair’, proférées, perpétuent la Rose et le Lys en dégageant leur notion pure: ‘Je dis: une fleur! et, hors l’oubli où ma voix relègue aucun contour, en tant que quelque chose d’autre que les calices sus, musicalement se lève, idée même et suave, l’absente de tous bouquets’” (Mallarmé 152). 504

and the biblical narrative of Lazarus and juxtaposes these two instances in which names breathe life into the dead with a reference to a similar passage from Hugo:

La vertu du nom est remarquablement illustrée dans l’épisode évangélique de la résurrection de Lazare. J’ai déjà cité le vers du poème ultime des Contemplations: Lazare ouvrit les yeux quand Jésus l’appela, et l’on sait que cet épisode a inspiré à Hugo une petite épopée de la Légende des Siècles: Première rencontre du Christ avec le Tombeau. (Mallarmé 176)

From the 1859 edition of La Légende des siècles, “Première rencontre du Christ avec le tombeau” serves as the final poem of the first part, “D’Ève à Jésus” (for which “Le Sacre de la femme” is the first poem). In this poem, Hugo’s Jesus is referred to as “le maître” six times. The poem recounts when Jesus heard of Lazarus’ death, visited Lazarus’ corpse, and awakened Lazarus: “Et, se penchant, il dit à haute voix: ‘Lazare!’/ Alors le mort sortit du sépulcre […]” (Poésie II 588-89).30 At the poem’s close, the narrator indicates that it was for revivifying Lazarus simply by pronouncing his name that a group of priests decides Jesus must die.31 By speaking Lazarus’ name, Jesus both brings him back to life and inflames the Romans’ desire for Jesus’ death. Mallarmé’s poem does not name its narrator (in fact, it is unclear whether the narrator is male or female) and therefore does not name its dead. Instead, it suggests the name by speaking of the name without naming the name. Even when writing about names, Mallarmé resists naming the name, preserving both its mystery and its universal applicability.32 Even when incorporating a biblical notion of raising the dead through repetition of a name, a notion

30 In the Bible, the raising of Lazarus is described as follows: “And saying these thing, He cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus! Here! Outside! And the one who had died came out, the feet and the hands having been bound with sheets, and his face being bound with a cloth. Jesus said to them, Untie him, and let him go” (John 11: 43-44). 31 The final stanza of this poem is as follows: “Or, les prêtres, selon qu’au livre il est écrit,/ S’assemblèrent, troublés, chez le préteur de Rome;/ Sachant que Christ avait ressuscité cet homme/ Et que tous avaient vu le sépulcre s’ouvrir,/ Ils dirent: ‘Il est temps de le faire mourir’” (Poésie II 589). 32 Another poem of Mallarmé’s, “L’Azur”, ends with a striking final line that similarly incorporates implications of an afterlife, the repetition of a capitalized word-turned-name, and a phonetic similarity to the name “Lazare”: “Je suis hanté. L’Azur! l’azur! l’azur! l’azur!” (Poésies 21). 505

that Hugo explicitly treats by naming Lazarus, Mallarmé does not directly refer to

Lazarus, to Hugo, or to God. In this manner, Mallarmé enacts the disappearance of names central to this poem and effaces Hugo’s name while excising that of God.

Another way in which Mallarmé’s sonnet differs from the Bible and Hugo’s poem lies in who possesses the power to give life. In the latter two cases, it is Jesus who is able to bring Lazarus back to life by speaking his name and calling him out. In Mallarmé’s poem, it is the still-living mourner of the dead, the “tu” of the poem, that the narrator believes to be capable of this miracle of revivification. If the loved person who is still alive speaks the name of the dead for an entire night, the dead can come back to life. It is through this name’s repetition that the dead may return as named-by-the-lover. Would this then represent an act of naming or a specific act of interpellation? By loving and then naming the dead as loved, the lover may call the dead back to life as loved. The dead thereby becomes defined as the dead of the lover. Christ-like qualities are thus available to an apparently non-deific person through the presence of love, a name, and a calling. In this way, the entire capacity for life for the narrator depends on his or her being named by this loved and loving living person’s naming of the dead. Cellier remarks that Mallarmé here “unit en une seule expression la vertu du nom et la vertu du souffle” (Mallarmé 174), thereby equating the name with the breath of life. Mallarmé’s breath of life stands out through its universality: as long as one is living and loving, one may revivify a dead loved one by repeating their name. Naming, interpellation, and conjuring here begin to stand on an even footing in this poem of Mallarmé’s, in which anyone with the power to christen may bring the dead back to life.

506

V. Meeting the living and naming the dead: “Le vierge, le vivace, et le bel

aujourd’hui”

“Devant le papier, l’artiste se fait.” - Mallarmé, letter to Lefébure, Feb. 1865

By the time he met Hugo in 1878, Mallarmé has already published many of the works for which he is well-known today, including “Les Fleurs”, “L’Après-midi d’un faune”, and “Tombeau d’Edgar Poe”. However, he was not yet a very well-known writer. Mondor recounts their meeting:

Quel jour insigne, et en quel lieu a-t-il pu aller, avec l’émotion embarrassée d’un néophyte approchant le prophète, voir et écouter Victor Hugo? Celui-ci en pinçant, en empereur des lettres, l’oreille un peu faunesque de son visiteur, l’aurait appelé: “Mon cher poète impressionniste.” Après cette rencontre unique de sa plus caressante voix, Mallarmé aurait fait, à l’ami chargé de la présentation, cette remarque problématique mais non invraisemblable: “Il détient le génie, la puissance, la gloire; mais il lui manque une petite flamme que j’ai et que je voudrais lui donner.” (111)

Like Verlaine’s account of his being baptized “Féroce et doux” and “Abd-el-Kader” by

Hugo, Mallarmé here also receives a name from Hugo. After Hugo (maybe apocryphally) christened these two young poets, they both went on to make their own names more well-known and to reverse this onomastic dynamic by naming Hugo in different ways and to different ends.

Five years after this meeting with Hugo, Mallarmé’s name suddenly became much more recognizable on account of two publications that discussed him: Verlaine’s

1883 Poètes maudits and Huysmans’ 1884 A Rebours.33 Verlaine writes of the need to publish and study all of Mallarmé: “Il nous reste, nous le savons, à compléter l’étude entreprise sur Mallarmé et son œuvre! Quel plaisir ce va nous être, si bref qu’il nous

33 In Mallarmé’s “lettre autobiographique”, he comments upon the change in his Tuesday night gatherings following these two publications: “Vos Poëtes Maudits, cher Verlaine, A Rebours d’Huysmans, ont intéressé à mes Mardis longtemps vacants les jeunes poëtes qui nous aiment (mallarmistes à part) et on a cru à quelque influence tentée par moi, là où il n’y a eu que des rencontres. Très affiné, j’ai été dix ans d’avance du côté où de jeunes esprits pareils devaient tourner aujourd’hui” (CG 918). 507

faille faire ce devoir!” (Prose 665). Huysmans’ work includes such laudatory quotations as the following: “A l’exception de ces poètes et de Stéphane Mallarmé qu’il enjoignit à son domestique de mettre de côté, pour le classer à part, des Esseintes n’était que bien faiblement attiré par les poètes” (307). Huysmans’ narrator preempts Cellier by calling

Mallarmé’s work “condensé” with specific reference to his “Toast funèbre” and to l’Après-midi d’un faune.34 He also approximates Baudelaire and Mallarmé via their shared form of prose poem.35 Huysmans’ narrator claims that Mallarmé pushes

Baudelaire and Poe to their limits, and he asserts that the decadence of literature and its death-knell are embodied in Mallarmé:

En effet, la décadence d’une littérature, irréparablement atteinte dans son organisme, affaiblie par l’âge des idées, épuisée par les excès de la syntaxe, sensible seulement aux curiosités qui enfièvrent les malades et cependant pressée de tout exprimer à son déclin, acharnée à vouloir réparer toutes les omissions de jouissance, à léguer les plus subtils souvenirs de douleur, à son lit de mort, s’était incarnée en Mallarmé, de la façon la plus consommée et la plus exquise. C’étaient, poussées jusqu’à leur dernière expression, les quintessences de Baudelaire et de Poe; c’étaient leurs fines et puissantes substances encore distillées et dégageant de nouveaux fumets, de nouveaux ivresses. C’était l’agonie de la vieille langue qui, après s’être persillée de siècle en siècle, finissait par se dissoudre, par atteindre ce deliquium de la langue latine qui expirait dans les mystérieux concepts et les énigmatiques expressions de saint Boniface et de saint Adhelme. Au demeurant, la décomposition de la langue française s’était faite d’un coup. Dans la langue latine, une longue transition, un écart de quatre cents ans existait entre le verbe tacheté et superbe de Claudien et de Rutilius, et le verbe faisandé du VIIIe siècle. Dans la langue française aucun laps de temps, aucune succession d’âges n’avait eu lieu; le style tacheté et superbe des de Goncourt et le style faisandé de Verlaine et de Mallarmé se coudoyaient à Paris, vivant en même temps, à la même époque, au même siècle. (321)

34 Huysmans’ narrator finds that this process of condensation becomes more pronounced in Mallarmé’s later work: “Cela devenait une littérature condensée, un coulis essential, un sublimé d’art; cette tactique d’abord employée d’une façon restreinte, dans ses premières œuvres, Mallarmé l’avait hardiment arborée dans une pièce sur Théophile Gautier et dans l’Après-midi d’un faune, une églogue, où les subtilités des joies sensuelles se déroulaient en des vers mystérieux et câlins que trouaient tout à coup ce cri fauve et délirant du faune […]” (317). 35 In the following passage, the narrator studies the progression of the prose poem from Baudelaire to Mallarmé: “En un mot, le poème en prose représentait, pour des Esseintes, le suc concret, l’osmazôme de la littérature, l’huile essentielle de l’art. Cette succulence développée et réduite en une goutte, elle existait déjà chez Baudelaire, et aussi dans ces poèmes de Mallarmé qu’il humait avec une si profonde joie” (Huysmans 320). 508

For Huysmans’ narrator, Mallarmé signals that the old language is dying and on the verge of dissolution. As the limit point on the road paved by Baudelaire and Poe, Mallarmé represents novelty in the face of this stagnant, decomposing language. This viewpoint foreshadows “Crise de vers”, in which Mallarmé will elucidate Hugo’s role in the exhaustion of French verse. One may also imagine the lines of Hugo rubbing elbows with those of Mallarmé in the latter part of the 19th Century. Perhaps it is partly due to

Hugo’s calls for liberty that this lapse did not occur in France: in the wake of Hugo, poetic revolutions abound in rapid succession to create this odd poetic party for which all the old maîtres are still alive and able to attend.

In 1885, the year following the publication of A Rebours, Hugo dies on May 22.

On November 16 of this same year, Mallarmé pens a letter to Verlaine that is now known as his “lettre autobiographique”, which Mallarmé writes to help Verlaine compose his article on Mallarmé in Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui. This letter acts for Mallarmé similarly to the “lettres du voyant” for Rimbaud in the eyes of modern readers because of

Mallarmé’s explication of his vision for “Le Livre” there within. His identity as a writer undergoes a process of self-induced disappearance and division into disparate entities in this description of “Le Livre”: “[…] Et cela contiendra plusieurs séries, pourra même aller indéfiniment, (à côté de mon travail personnel qui je crois, sera anonyme, le Texte y parlant de lui-même et sans voix d’auteur) ” (CG 918).36 By envisioning “Le Livre” as anonymous, Mallarmé here imagines a disappearance of his name from his writing. He

36 In his work on Tennyson, “Tennyson vu d’ici”, in the section Quelques médaillons et portraits en pied of Divagations, Mallarmé describes the name of the poet as melting into the work: “Le nom du poëte mystérieusement se refait avec le texte entier qui, de l’union des mots entre eux, arrive à n’en former qu’un, celui-là, significatif, résumé de toute l’âme, la communiquant au passant; il vole des pages grandes ouvertes du livre désormais vain; car, enfin, il faut bien que le génie ait lieu en dépit de tout et que le connaisse chacun, malgré les empêchements, et sans avoir lu, au besoin” (IDC 160). 509

goes on to modify his writerly name in order to distinguish between two spheres of his work. This quotation follows Mallarmé’s assertion that he spends little time on frivolous pursuits of pleasure:

Si, à un moment, pourtant, désespérant du despotique bouquin lâché par Moi-même, j’ai après quelques articles colportés d’ici et de là, tenté de rédiger tout seul, toilettes, bijou, mobilier, et jusqu’aux théâtres et aux menus de dîner, un journal, La Dernière Mode, dont les huit ou dix numéros parus servent encore quand je les dévêts de leur poussière à me faire longtemps rêver. (CG 918)

The capitalization of “Moi-même” when referring to the “myself” that he projects upon

“Le Livre” emphasizes the formal, public, and perhaps longer-lasting nature of that projection of himself as opposed to the “Mallarmé” who writes La Dernière Mode (under multiple noms de plume).37 However, in a seemingly counter-intuitive twist, this capitalized “Moi-même” refers to a self who writes a work that he does not intend to sign with his name. It’s an unnamed “Moi-même”, not for public recognition, yet still formally elevated through capitalization, who partakes in the collective work of all writers: “[…] J’irai plus loin, je dirai: le Livre, persuadé qu’au fond il n’y en a qu’un, tenté à son insu par quiconque a écrit, même les Génies” (CG 917). Instead of “Je est un

Autre”, Mallarmé here implies something more along these lines: “Myself is an other— even to myself—composed of those who write”. Mallarmé does not mention Hugo in this letter that he writes mere months after Hugo’s death. Nevertheless, the death of

Hugo closely precedes Mallarmé’s study of the erasures and divisions within his own authorial name. Shortly after the carrier of the enormous name of “Hugo” dies, Mallarmé

37 Furbank and Cain discuss these pseudonyms: “But, apart from a poem and short story in each number, commissioned from friends, every word of the text was written by Mallarmé himself, under a variety of pseudonyms. These included ‘Marguerite de Ponty’ (for fashion and the theory of fashion); ‘Miss Satin’ (giving news of the fashion houses of Paris); ‘Ix’, a male critic (for theatre and books); ‘Le Chef de bouche chez Brébant’ (for food), etc” (5). 510

envisions (in this letter at once to Verlaine and to the public) his masterpiece as being anonymously signed by an auto-divided, auto-reduced, and auto-effaced “Moi-même”.

Also during the year of Hugo’s death, Mallarmé first publishes the sonnet “Le vierge, le vivace, et le bel aujourd’hui” which describes an exiled swan of bygone days, calling to mind Baudelaire’s poem “Le Cygne” dedicated to Hugo. One may recall the earlier study of the utilization of the letters V and H in Baudelaire’s poem “Le Cygne”.

Here, in Mallarmé’s poem, there is a similar phonetic play that hints at Hugo’s name without explicitly naming him. Michaud aptly calls this poem a “symphonie en i majeur”.38 I would slightly modify this statement by saying that, particularly in the quatrains, this poem is a “symphonie en vi majeur”, given the frequency with which the sound “vi” and its inverse “iv” appear. In fact, more expansively, the letter “v” appears in every line of the quatrains, and only three of these 11 instances do not contain either a

“vi” or “iv” sound. To facilitate reading this poem for its symphony of “vi” and “v”, one will here find the letter “v” in bold, all instances of “vi” underlined, and all instances of

“iv” doubly underlined:

Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d’aile ivre Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre Le transparent glacier des vols qui n’ont pas fui!

Un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre Pour n’avoir pas chanté la région où vivre Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l’ennui.

Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie Par l’espace infligée à l’oiseau qui le nie, Mais non l’horreur du sol où le plumage est pris.

Fantôme qu’à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne, Il s’immobilise au songe froid de mépris

38 Marchal cites this in Poésies (235). 511

Que vêt parmi l’exil inutile du Cygne. (Poésies 57)

Aside from the shared swan and the theme of exile, both of which harken back to

Baudelaire’s “Le Cygne”, the word “ennui” representing the force that radiates the dead winter in Mallarmé’s poem also makes Mallarmé’s poem resonate with Baudelaire’s poetics throughout Les Fleurs du Mal. As “Ennui” represents the destructive force, the

“monstre délicat” in Baudelaire’s poem “Au Lecteur”, Mallarmé’s inclusion of “ennui” as a source of light appears as a renversement of a Baudelairean theme in a poem carrying echoes of Baudelaire’s Hugo in Les Fleurs du Mal (50). Moreover, the first quatrain contains precisely seven Vs, which may allude to another earlier-studied

Baudelaire poem dedicated to Hugo, “Les Sept Vieillards”.

The line in which the swan appears in Mallarmé’s poem offers additional clues indicating an unnamed Hugo’s presence in this poem: “Un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui”. As earlier studied, “Lui” is both the title of a poem of Hugo’s on

Napoléon as well as a term that Verlaine will later employ to parody Hugo’s work on

Napoléon in his study of Hugo entitled “Lui toujours—et assez”. While the date of publication for Mallarmé’s poem prohibits any inference that he here refers to Verlaine’s work on Hugo, a possible link between the pronoun “lui” and Hugo for Verlaine and for

Mallarmé emerges. Baudelaire’s “Hugo” may here return as the “cygne d’autrefois” that remembers it is “lui”. The final line of this poem both offers support for this hunt for the letter V in this poem and names the swan as Swan: “Que vêt parmi l’exil inutile du

Cygne”. The verb in this line is the third person singular conjugation of “vêtir”; when pronounced, “vêt” sounds very similar to the pronunciation of the letter V in French. In this way, Mallarmé phonically condenses a word into a letter. The Cygne in this poem faces an analogous process of reduction by becoming an immobile phantom surrounded 512

by a cold dream of scorn. Only a phantom or a shadow of the cygne can eventually gain status as a Cygne, just as only a reduced significance of the being named is communicated by a Name. This capitalized name of Cygne comes accompanied by an erasure of the swan’s full being and replacement of the once living swan with a phantom.

In the wake of Hugo’s death, perhaps Mallarmé here writes of the entity that this swan of older times will become in the future, when it can only stand immobile in the new exile of death. Once a living man, Hugo has now become a name with no living signified.

Phonetically, the last line of this poem supports this reading of Hugo (or “V”) as compared to the swan. In the line “Que vêt parmi l’exil inutile du Cygne”, one can also hear the following: “Que V parmi l’exil inutile du signe”. Although Hugo has passed from the exile of his life during Napoleon III’s rule to the exile of death, the reductive treatment of his work and name continues. The person becomes a phantom, which in turn eventually become no more than a signature. And yet, this signature still demands respect, as the swan still holds its capitalized title even when enveloped in disregard or scorn. The adjective “inutile” in this line reminiscent of Hugo also harkens back to the literary debate surrounding utility in art, in which Baudelaire resisted Hugo’s practice of making art useful. Once again, a renversement of a Baudelairean interpretation of

“Hugo” seems to be at hand: rather than attack utility in art, Mallarmé’s narrator here deems the exile useless. Despite the reduction that the cygne undergoes to become its phantom Cygne after its exile, this exile may be pointless because it renders the Cygne somehow more present and more revered than when it was corporeally present. Even if

Hugo’s death brings about reductions of the full significance of his name—reductions inherent to the process of naming—Hugo’s absence-in-death is analogously not an

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absence. When one combines the two phonetic sounds of “vi” and “iv”, one may hear a disjoined phonic “vive”, the pieces of the subjunctive conjugation of “vivre” (qu’il vive), sounding through this poem that finds the exile of death to be pointless. Because of the dominance and exaltation of his name, Hugo’s phantom continues to dominate art, making his exile of death inutile.

Johnson notes a possible allusion to Hugo in the division that Mallarmé’s swan inhabits between “aujourd’hui” in the first line and “autrefois” in the fifth line. She finds this division to be located within a Hugolian tomb:

To return to Malllarmé’s sonnet, we can see that the very division between “aujourd’hui” (today) and “autrefois” (bygone day) names the temporality of intertextuality as such. And this division in itself constitutes a textual allusion—to the division of Hugo’s Contemplations into two volumes entitled precisely “Autrefois” and “Aujourd’hui.” “They are separated by an abyss,” writes Hugo: “the tomb.” (271-72)

Like Hugo’s tomb that divides the two volumes of Les Contemplations, Mallarmé’s adaptation of a Baudelairean swan dedicated to Hugo inhabits the tomb that divides

“aujourd’hui” and “autrefois”. According to legend, it is the death of the swan that releases its song, and that simultaneous release and separation forever prohibits the swan from singing again.39 The death of Hugo, like that of the Cygne, removes the living composer from the work. This reading approximates Barthes’ thoughts on the death of the author. This erasure of the author frees the work for others to interpret at will and prohibits the author from any further control of the work’s form or interpretation. But the trace (le signe) still survives, embodying a paradoxical authorial presence and absence.

One such trace lies in interpretation of Mallarmé’s swan as echoing Baudelaire’s swan and thereby implying the unnamed presence of Hugo. Hugo and the Cygne are

39 Marchal writes of this legend: “[…] Selon la légende, chanter, pour le cygne, c’est mourir pour ne plus vivre que dans son chant” (Poésies 236). 514

pointlessly exiled: the capitalized and reduced impacts of their names—even when unnamed—still survive through their traces.

In his 1891 interview with Huret, Mallarmé describes the death of Hugo from

(Mallarmé’s) Hugo’s point of view:

Nous assistons, en ce moment, m’a-t-il dit, à un spectacle vraiment extraordinaire, unique, dans toute l’histoire de la poésie: chaque poète allant, dans son coin, jouer sur une flûte, bien à lui, les airs qu’il lui plaît; pour la première fois, depuis le commencement, les poètes ne chantent plus au lutrin. Jusqu’ici, n’est-ce pas, il fallait, pour s’accompagner, les grandes orgues du mètre officiel. Eh bien! on en a trop joué, et on s’en est lassé. En mourant, le grand Hugo, j’en suis sûr, était persuadé qu’il avait enterré toute poésie pour un siècle; et pourtant, Paul Verlaine avait déjà écrit Sagesse; on peut pardonner cette illusion à celui qui a tant accompli de miracles, mais il comptait sur l’éternel instinct, la perpétuelle et inéluctable poussée lyrique. Surtout manque cette notion indubitable: que, dans une société sans stabilité, sans unité, il ne peut se créer d’art stable, d’art définitif. De cette organisation sociale inachevée, qui explique en même temps l’inquiétude des esprits, naît l’inexpliqué besoin d’individualité dont les manifestations littéraires présentes sont le reflet direct. (56-57)

This Hugo, Mallarmé’s “le grand Hugo”, emerges as proud, narcissistic even, but also as meriting this pride through the many miracles he performed. Mallarmé differs from

Verlaine in his tempering of his criticism of Hugo here; while implying Hugo’s narcissism by delivering this lofty opinion of Hugo from the perspective of Hugo, he still respectfully recognizes Hugo’s importance. Mallarmé ends this statement with a

Hugolian remark that the literature of his century directly reflects its politics. According to Mallarmé, the lack of uniformity in the social sphere entails the desire for individuality amongst poets during this period. Moreover, after Hugo’s death and the burial of “toute poésie pour un siècle”, all of the other poets present the “spectacle vraiment extraordinaire” stemming from their liberation from poetic expectations. One here begins to see that, for Mallarmé, the death of Hugo heralds the birth of a new poetic liberation.

VI. A Veil-Tearing Name: “Théodore de Banville” and “Solennité”

“Oui, je le sais, nous ne sommes que de vaines formes de la matière, mais bien sublimes pour avoir inventé Dieu et notre âme.”

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- Mallarmé, letter to Cazalis, 1866

Divagations is first published in 1897, with three pieces that mention Hugo. I will first study the first two pieces that tangentially touch upon Hugo, “Théodore de Banville” and “Solennité”; then, after a brief interlude via Proust, I will return to Divagations to study “Crise de vers”. “Théodore de Banville” is an article written by Mallarmé to commemorate a recent inauguration of a monument erected in Banville’s honor in the

Jardin du Luxembourg. As noted in the earlier study of Rimbaud, Banville sees himself as owing a great deal to Hugo. In his article, Mallarmé describes sentiments surrounding

Hugo’s burial while discussing Banville’s burial:

Toujours, aussi près du Panthéon se prend-on à regretter qu’Hugo (eux, les savants, les politiques, plus ou moins, s’accommodent de la vide coupole sous quoi la Mort continue une séance de parlement et d’institut) habite un froid de crypte; quand avait lieu de renaître pareillement parmi des ramiers, ou l’espace. (IDC 162-63)

This worry for the dead Hugo’s inability to revivify in a more pleasing setting exposes a view of Hugo as never dead or forever undead, waiting to be called (or suggested) back to life. Mallarmé returns to Hugo towards the end of this article for Banville:

Quoiqu’y confine une suprématie, ou déchirement de voile et lucidité, le Verbe reste, de sujets, de moyens, plus massivement lié à la nature. La divine transposition, pour l’accomplissement de quoi existe l’homme, va du fait à l’idéal. […] Je sais, il se devinait à ce point, l’héritier, choyé et impropre au méchef, que de tirer, par un témoignage très tendre ou de respect, qui en illuminait la beauté énorme, à même Hugo, sa fusée de clair rire. Jeux secondaires, caractéristiques. (IDC 166)

Mallarmé locates the source of Banville’s “beauté énorme” and his “fusée de clair rire” within Hugo, of whom he states Banville sees himself as “l’héritier”. The commemoration of Banville’s life after his death inspires Mallarmé to find Hugo’s life after his death in two forms: his forthcoming reawakening in the Panthéon, and his means of living on through other poets who survive him like Banville. A tear in a veil appears in this citation just before Mallarmé’s mention of Hugo, which follows the pattern for

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Mallarmé’s writing concerning Hugo as accompanying a veil. No longer the veil in

“Vers écrits sur un exemplaire des Contemplations” that pre-emptively buries a still-alive but exiled Hugo, this veil is torn by Hugo’s actual death and precedes visions of his revivification.

The second article in Divagations in which Hugo’s name again appears near a torn veil is “Solennité”. In this article, Mallarmé writes of the impulse of writers following great but dying literary movements to fill the void of the geniuses who came before. Using the example of Ponsard, who tried to fill the void of the defeated Classical group in theater after Hugo’s Romantic victory, Mallarmé writes of the intermingled condescension and tenderness with which he regards such belated fighters for already lost causes.40 The choice of Ponsard in this text written during a period when the dominance of Hugo’s Romanticism is waning just as Classicism once did affords insight into the cyclical nature of literary revolutions. Mallarmé here refers to Hugo as “le dieu” of “la

Poésie” in the theater, and he employs considerable religious vocabulary in this piece:41

Ce Ponsard, plus qu’aucun, n’agite mon fiel, si ce n’est que, sa gloire vient de là, il paya d’effronterie inouïe, hasardée, extravagante et presque belle en persuadant à une clique, qu’il représentait, dans le manque de tout éclat, au théâtre la Poésie, quand en resplendissait le dieu. Je l’admire pour cela, avoir sous-entendu Hugo, dont il dut, certes, s’apercevoir, à ce point que né humble, infirme et sans ressources, il joua l’obligation de frénétiquement surgir faute de quelqu’un; et se contraignit après tout à des efforts qui sont d’un vigoureux carton. Malice un peu ample, et drôle! dont nous sommes plusieurs nous souvenant; mais en commémoration de quoi il n’importe de tout à coup sommer la génération nouvelle. Combien, à part moi au contraire ayant l’âme naïve et juste, je nourris de prédilection, sans désirer qu’on les ravive au détriment d’aucun contemporain, pour les remplaçants authentiques du Poëte qui encourent notre sourire, ou le leur peut- être s’ils en feignent un, à seule fin pudiquement de nier, au laps d’extinction totale du lyrisme, – comme les Luce de Lancival, Campistron ou d’autres ombres – cette vacance néfaste: ils ont, à ce qu’était leur âme, ajusté pour vêtement une guenille usée jusqu’aux

40 One may recall Adèle’s commentary on the waning popularity of Hugo’s name in favor of that of Ponsard (VHR 595). 41 Austin writes of this appellation as indicative of a recurrent theme of Mallarmé’s following the death of Hugo: “Après la mort de Victor Hugo, Mallarmé revient souvent sur cet évènement, dont il souligne l’importance dans l’évolution littéraire. En 1887, dans Solennité, Mallarmé appelle Victor Hugo ‘le dieu’ du théâtre” (“Principal” 156). 517

procédés et à la ficelle plutôt que d’avouer le voile de la Déesse en allé dans une déchirure immense ou le deuil. Ces larves demeureront touchantes et je m’apitoie à l’égal sur leur descendance pareille à des gens qui garderaient l’honneur d’autels résumés en le désespoir de leurs poings fermés aussi par somnolence. Tous, instructifs, avant que grotesques, imitateurs ou devanciers, d’un siècle ils reçoivent, en manière de sacré dépôt et le transmettent à un autre, ce qui précisément n’est pas, ou, si c’était, mieux vaudrait ne pas le savoir! un résidu de l’art, axiomes, formule, rien. (IDC 239-40)

Ponsard emerges as a writer attempting to fill the void left after the Hugo-led Romantic defeat of Classicism in the theater, which somewhat futile resistance Mallarmé admires.

According to Mallarmé, such replacement writers deny that a void (“cette vacance néfaste”) even exists. They deny that the veil of the Goddess is immensely ripped, and they deny the mourning following the loss of a god because they do not believe that the god is dead. Instead, they take up some “guenille usée” with which to don themselves by imitating an old, worn-out form or style. In so doing, they propagate a residue of art, or

“rien”.

To cleanse his palate from imitative writing, Mallarmé turns immediately after the preceding quotation to Rimbaud’s “Le Forgeron”, but he only cites the title of the poem, leaving the writer unnamed: “Un soir vide de magnificence ou de joie j’ouvrais, en quête de compensation, le radieux écrit Le Forgeron pour y apprendre de solitaires vérités”

(IDC 241). As briefly mentioned in the study of Rimbaud, this poem is seen to contain many thematic similarities to Hugo’s work; however, as Mallarmé’s study in this article shows, it also pushes the alexandrine to new levels of compatibility with rhyme, making it far from imitative in Mallarmé’s eyes and making its truths “solitary”: “Que tout poème composé autrement qu’en vue d’obéir au vieux génie du vers, n’en est pas un” (IDC 241).

To refresh himself after reading imitative poetry, Mallarmé chooses to read a Rimbaud poem that shares a “réseau d’images” with Hugo’s works but that also, far from imitating

Hugo’s style or conclusions, forges its own anew. So, what some may see as a

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thematically imitative poem here becomes an epitomical poem of originality. Mallarmé especially enjoys the multiplicity that Rimbaud offers in this poem.42 Echoes from

Rimbaud’s “Le Forgeron” will return in “Crise de vers”, another work of Mallarmé’s that treats the role of Hugo’s name alongside a torn veil.

VII. Proust’s Hugo vs. Mallarmé’s Hugo: A Foray into Obscurantism

“Mais, hélas! Ici-bas est maître: sa hantise Vient m’écœurer parfois jusqu’en cet abri sûr, Et le vomissement impur de la Bêtise Me force à me boucher le nez devant l’azur.” - Mallarmé, “Les fenêtres”

The year before the first publication of Divagations, 1896, is the year that Proust publishes an article entitled “Contre l’obscurité”, in which the 25-year-old writer attacks obscurantist writing. One entity Proust aims to protect from obscurantism is his “Hugo”, whose name appears three times over the course of this very short piece. Born in 1871,

Proust is 14 years old when Hugo dies. Proust shows his generational separation from and consequently more distant view of Hugo in his “Contre l’obscurité”. In his letter to

Jacques Rivière now referred to as “À propos de Baudelaire”, Proust places Hugo’s poem

“Booz endormi” as superior to all of the poems in Les Fleurs du Mal,43 and over the entirety of À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust mentions Hugo by name 44 times.44

42 Mallarmé writes the following about the multiplicity in “Le Forgeron”: “On a pu, antérieurement à l’invitation de la rime ici extraordinaire parce qu’elle ne fait qu’un avec l’alexandrin qui, dans ses poses et la multiplicité de son jeu, semble par elle dévoré tout entier comme si cette fulgurante cause de délice y triomphait jusqu’à l’initiale syllabe […]” (IDC 241). 43 Proust writes the following earlier-cited comparison of Baudelaire and Hugo in “À propos de Baudelaire”: “Je le regrette d’autant plus que je tiens Baudelaire—avec Alfred de Vigny—pour le plus grand poète du XIXe siècle. Je ne veux pas dire par là que s’il fallait choisir le plus beau poème du XIXe siècle, c’est dans Baudelaire qu’on devrait chercher. Je ne crois pas que dans toutes Les Fleurs du Mal, dans ce livre sublime mais grimacant, où la pitié ricane, où la débauche fait le signe de la croix, où le soin d’enseigner la plus profonde théologie est confié à Satan, on puisse trouver une pièce égale à Booz endormi. […] Ce grand poème biblique […] n’a rien de sèchement historique, il est perpétuellement vivifié par la personnalité de Victor Hugo qui s’objective en Booz” (5-6). 44 Barthes finds this work of Proust’s to represent the epic of modern writing: “Proust lui-même, en dépit du caractère apparemment psychologique de ce que l’on appelle ses analyses, se donna visiblement pour tâche de brouiller inexorablement, par une subtilisation extrême, le rapport de l’écrivain et de ses 519

The very first time he mentions Hugo (and the only appearance of Hugo’s name in Du côté de chez Swann), the narrator Marcel is named by another character as a possible diminutive version of Hugo: “Qui sait? Ce sera peut-être un petit Victor Hugo, une espèce de Vaulabelle, vous savez” (78). So, rather than being named by Hugo (as

Verlaine claims to be and as some accounts say Mallarmé was), Proust’s narrator is here named as a little Hugo. Gasiglia-Laster analyzes this citation in detail:

Etre Victor Hugo, être aussi grand que Victor Hugo…ou n’être rien, pas même un Vaulabelle. Voilà, une fois croisés les propos de l’oncle avec le projet attribué au Victor Hugo de 14 ans, “Je veux être Chateaubriand ou rien”, une alternative qui pourrait bien se trouver au cœur du roman proustien. Elle témoigne de l’image de Hugo à la fin du XIXe siècle et encore au moment où Proust écrit son roman: celle d’un géant de la littérature auprès duquel l’apprenti écrivain ne peut que se sentir tout petit, une sorte de père étouffant pour les littérateurs, qui le nomment volontiers, avec un mélange d’affection et d’irrespect, “le père Hugo”. (68)45

Hugo’s paternal role remains present for Proust, but the maître’s shadow has grown ever longer over the young generation, making the most that they may become as writers no more than a diminutive replication of Hugo. Imitation is almost a given in this respect.

To become a “petit Victor Hugo”, one must bear a great resemblance to Hugo. The final mention of Hugo in the Recherche (which also represents the final external citation in the

Recherche) resounds with the role Hugo plays for Proust in opposition to Mallarmé in

“Contre l’obscurité”:

Victor Hugo dit: ‘Il faut que l’herbe pousse et que les enfants meurent.’ Moi je dis que la loi cruelle de l’art est que les êtres meurent et que nous-mêmes mourions en épuisant toutes les souffrances pour que pousse l’herbe non de l’oubli mais de la vie éternelle, l’herbe drue des œuvres fécondes, sur laquelle les générations viendront faire gaiement, sans souci de ceux qui dorment en dessous, leur ‘déjeuner sur l’herbe’. (Le Temps Retrouvé 452)

personnages: en faisant du narrateur non celui qui a vu ou senti, ni même celui qui écrit, mais celui qui va écrire (le jeune homme du roman—mais, au fait, quel âge a-t-il et qui est-il?—veut écrire, mais il ne le peut, et le roman finit quand enfin l’écriture devient possible), Proust a donné à l’écriture moderne son épopée […]” (63). 45 This name “le père Hugo” also appears in an 1888 letter from Proust to Halevy (Ecrits 56). 520

This citation and its allusion to Hugo’s poem “À Villequier” from Les Contemplations allows for the erasure of the living and their replacement by future generations.46

Proust’s tragedy differs from Hugo’s. While Hugo’s poem mourns the cruel inevitability of passing time alongside that of dying children, Proust mourns the “loi cruelle” that dictates that writers fight for eternal life by producing the “herbe drue” of their works, upon which future writers will frolic without worrying about the person from whom these works came.

The first appearance of Hugo’s name in Proust’s preceding work “Contre l’obscurité” comes alongside a striking comparison of the verses of obscurantists to rotting wood that once formed part of a majestic fleet:

Mais ce ne sont là que de vains coquillages, sonores et vides, morceaux de bois pourris ou ferrailles rouillés que le flux a jetés sur le ravage et que le premier venu peut prendre, s’il lui plaît, tant qu’en s’en retirant la génération ne les a pas emportés. Mais que faire avec du bois pourri, souvent débris d’une belle flotte ancienne – image méconnaissable de Chateaubriand ou d’Hugo?... (390)

This shipwreck image continues to emerge as a leitmotiv in this study of the name of

Hugo. Hugo’s rotting Leviathan was a ship representing that out of which society would be exalted in Vingtième siècle, and Rimbaud’s putrefying Leviathan was a tourist stop for his drunken boat. In this passage from Proust, the ravaged, rotting fragments of Hugo’s images thrown by the ebb are available to be collected and presented in their mangled form by any “premier venu”. Hugo’s verse, a “belle flotte ancienne”, in the absence of its captain, has presumably wrecked somewhere in the sea, leaving its pieces to be thus mistreated by the young Symbolists. Here, the new school mistreats and mangles the

46 The full stanza in which these lines from “À Villequier” are found are as follows: “Les mois, les jours, les flots des mers, les yeux qui pleurent,/ Passent sous le ciel bleu;/ Il faut que l’herbe pousse et que les enfants meurent;/ Je le sais, ô mon Dieu!” (Poésies II 412). This poem represents a poem in which the narrator arguably reproaches God for taking his child too soon (the type of poem with which Verlaine took issue). 521

work of the school that has become “classical”. In the following passage, Proust foresees and addresses the counterargument that what he here qualifies as “classic” was once a revolutionary school that even fought the Classics. Proust presents this counterargument from the mouths of Symbolist dissenters:

Notre obscurité, pourraient-ils nous dire, est cette même obscurité qu’on reprochait à Hugo, qu’on reprochait à Racine. Dans la langue tout ce qui est nouveau est obscur. Et comment la langue ne serait-elle pas nouvelle, quand la pensée, quand le sentiment ne sont plus les mêmes? La langue pour rester vivante doit changer avec la pensée, se prêter à ses besoins nouveaux, comme les pattes qui se palment chez les oiseaux qui auront à aller sur l’eau. Grand scandale pour ceux qui n’avaient jamais vu les oiseaux que marcher ou voler; mais, l’évolution accomplie, on sourit qu’elle ait choqué. Un jour, l’étonnement que nous vous causons étonnera, comme étonnent aujourd’hui les injures dont le classicisme finissant salua les débuts du romantisme. (391)

The phrase “comme les pattes qui se palment” echoes Baudelaire’s poem “Le Cygne”:

“Et, de ses pieds palmés frottant le pavé sec” (137). One may recall the multitude of images comparing Hugo to a bird capable of both running and flying, especially in

Gautier’s projections of Hugo.47 Proust here argues that birds have another important capability: the capacity to evolve. Once this evolution is “accomplie”, those with the benefit of hindsight can smile at the fact that these birds once shocked their observers.

Not only do writers evolve, but their reputations and receptions evolve as well. Proust here expects the new revolutionaries to compare themselves to the revolutionary Hugo, and he summarizes an argument that can be found in both Hugo’s writings and those of

Mallarmé: the argument for a changing language to accompany a changing world. One may recall that Hugo writes in his preface to Hernani of the concomitance of these two evolutions: “Or, après tant de grandes choses que nos pères ont faites, et que nous avons

47 The previously studied passage from Gautier to which I here refer is the following: “M. Hugo ayant résolu de marcher et non de voler, pour que le parterre ne le perdit pas de vue, a prudemment serré ses talonnières dans son tiroir. Car les poètes sont comme les hippogriffes, ils peuvent courir et voler, tandis que les prosateurs, si envieux qu’ils soient, ne peuvent que courir. Tout poète, quand il voudra descendre à cette besogne, fera de l’excellente prose; jamais un prosateur-né, fût-ce M. de Chateaubriand, ne fera de beaux vers” (Victor Hugo 101). 522

vues, nous voilà sortis de la vieille forme sociale; comment ne sortirions-nous pas de la vieille forme poétique? A peuple nouveau, art nouveau” (Théâtre I 540). Mallarmé similarly writes in “Crise de vers” of the need for those in his generation to liberate themselves from the old mold:

Autre chose ou simplement le contraire, se décèle une mutinerie, exprès, en la vacance du vieux moule fatigué, quand Jules Laforgue, pour le début, nous initia au charme certain du vers faux. (IDC 250)

As similarly revolutionary, both Hugo and Mallarmé see evolution in literature as necessary and as benefitting from great liberty, both in its form and matter. Nevertheless,

Proust finds Hugo to be a bird of a different revolutionary feather than “obscurantists” like Mallarmé.

Proust goes on to explain why this new group of obscurantist writers do not belong to the same category of “obscure” as Hugo once did:

Voilà ce que nous diraient les jeunes poètes. Mais nous, les ayant félicités d’abord pour ces paroles ingénieuses, nous leur dirions: Ne voulant pas sans doute faire allusion aux écoles précieuses, vous avez joué sur le mot “obscurité” en faisant remonter si haut la noblesse de la vôtre. Elle est au contraire bien récente dans l’histoire des lettres. C’est autre chose que l’étonnement et, si vous voulez, le malaise que purent causer les premières tragédies de Racine et les premières odes de Victor Hugo. Or, le sentiment de la même nécessite, de la même constance des lois de l’univers et de la pensée, qui m’interdit d’imaginer, à la façon des enfants, que le monde va changer au gré de mes désirs, m’empêche de croire que, les conditions de l’art étant subitement modifiées, les chefs-d’œuvre seront maintenant ce qu’ils n’ont jamais été, au cours des siècles: à peu près inintelligibles. (391)

A precocious 25-year-old Proust here writes of what the “jeunes poètes” will say, implying that he is an older poet. He also differentiates the surprise caused by the young poets’ works from the shock once caused by Hugo’s works by comparing the literary- historical perspectives afforded to readers who later deem whether or not works are obscure. Proust’s conservative stance is typical of older poets throughout literary history, as was explored in Verlaine’s very late writings on Hugo. One may also recall the older

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Classics of theater fighting the young, long-haired Hugolian Romantics like Gautier in

1830. This example leads to another inversion inherent to Proust’s stance: Hugo, who stands for revolution and liberty in verse, can also now (after his death, when the significance of his name is more fully determined by others) help call to arms the protectors of “classics” who resist new forms of poetic liberty. Here, Proust’s “Hugo”, a dead Hugo, is a “classic” in that he is a canonical master of verse at risk of being misused by the new troop of poetic hooligans who aim for total liberation of verse (and who sometimes make their works obscure in this pursuit). For Proust, the vast majority of whose life follows the death of Hugo, “le père Hugo” is a supremely respected and admired poet who joins the ranks of Racine and Chateaubriand. By holding up Hugo as an entity to protect against the putrescence of Symbolism, Proust makes his Hugo a classical figure in “Contre l’obscurité”. For Proust, Hugo’s vers libre is threatened by

Symbolism’s vers libéré.

VIII. “Une inquiétude du voile dans le temple”: The Death of a god

“–Le Ciel est mort. –Vers toi j’accours! Donne, ô matière, L’oubli de l’Idéal cruel et du Péché A ce martyr qui vient partager la litière Où le bétail heureux des hommes est couché […].” - Mallarmé, “L’Azur”

As earlier mentioned, it is in the year following Proust’s publication of “Contre l’obscurité” that Divagations is first published. One piece within Divagations, “Crise de vers”, stems from a montage of three pieces of Mallarmé’s writing from earlier dates combined and modified to fit together into one piece. Asquisto sees this formal background of “Crise de vers” as emblematic of Mallarmean thought on recycling: “The cut and paste technique by which Mallarmé assembled Crise de vers is simply a more vivid example of the way all texts are constructed, that is, by the recombination of

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previously constructed words and phrases” (32). While “Crise de vers” is not traditionally seen as a response of Mallarmé’s to Proust (most see “Le Mystère dans les lettres” as performing this function), one may find in “Crise de vers” a riposte to Proust’s article.48 “Crise de vers” contains Mallarmé’s most developed thoughts concerning the consequences of Hugo’s death. These thoughts intensify those expressed in the 1891

Huret interview and perhaps also act as something of a response to the 1896 Proust article. Instead of saying that Hugo feels he ends the century’s verse with his death, as he states in the Huret interview, Mallarmé (or his narrator) locates the death of verse within the death of Hugo in “Crise de vers”. The sixth paragraph of “Crise de vers” contains

Mallarmé’s account of the death of Hugo. This Hugo-centric paragraph initially appears in print four years before Proust’s article, so one cannot claim that it was written as a response to Proust, but its inclusion in “Crise de vers” may present this piece as a repackaged interjection in this literary debate between Mallarmé and Proust, a debate that partially hinges on different understandings of the meaning of Hugo’s name.

In the five opening paragraphs of “Crise de vers”, Mallarmé describes his era’s literary crisis and leads up to his account of the import of Hugo’s death within the context of this crisis:

Tout à l’heure, en abandon de geste, avec la lassitude que cause le mauvais temps désespérant une après l’autre après-midi, je fis retomber, sans une curiosité mais ce lui semble avoir lu tout voici vingt ans, l’effilé de multicolores perles qui plaque la pluie, encore, au chatoiement des brochures dans la bibliothèque. Maint ouvrage, sous la

48 Marchal writes of this generally-accepted presumption on these two articles both originally published in La Revue blanche: “La cause prochaine de cet article inhabituellement polémique de Mallarmé était très vraisemblablement la publication, dans le numéro du 15 juillet de la même revue, d’un article de Marcel Proust, intitulé ‘Contre l’Obscurité’. Cet article ne s’en prenait pas directement à Mallarmé – il attaquait les jeunes symbolistes –, mais il relançait la polémique sur l’obscurité poétique à une époque où Mallarmé était la cible mensuelle des articles d’Adolphe Retté dans La Plume. Mallarmé choisit donc de répondre une fois pour toutes à ses nombreux accusateurs à travers ce texte qui déplaçait la question de l’obscurité au mystère, un mystère essentiel, inhérent aux lettres et à l’homme même, un mystère qui est aussi le nom mallarméen de l’inconscient” (IDC 499). 525

verroterie du rideau, alignera sa propre scintillation: j’aime comme en le ciel mûr, contre la vitre, à suivre des lueurs d’orage. Notre phase, récente, sinon se ferme, prend arrêt ou peut-être conscience: certaine attention dégage la créatrice et relativement sûre volonté. Même la presse, dont l’information veut les vingt ans, s’occupe du sujet, tout à coup, à date exacte. La littérature ici subit une exquise crise, fondamentale. Qui accorde à cette fonction une place ou la première, reconnaît, là, le fait d’actualité: on assiste, comme finale d’un siècle, pas ainsi que ce fut dans le dernier, à des bouleversements; mais, hors de la place publique, à une inquiétude du voile dans le temple avec des plis significatifs et un peu sa déchirure. (IDC 247-48)

Especially in this final sentence, religious vocabulary again takes center stage in a

Mallarmé text that incorporates Hugo’s name. The nervousness of the veil, its folds, and its tears provide for a new Mallarmean relationship between Hugo and a veil.49 In the

Book of Matthew, the ripping of the temple veil occurs at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross:

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people. When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:50-54)

In ancient Israel, the tabernacle veil curtains the “Holy of Holies”, the innermost realm of the tabernacle, which was believed to be the dwelling-tent of God. Only the High Priest

49 The tearing veil appears repeatedly in Hugo’s Napoléon-le-petit, as in the following passage in which he studies its relationship to law: “La loi est comme le voile du temple; quand elle se déchire, c’est du haut en bas” (Histoire 71). Hugo makes powerful use of the image of a trembling canvas at the conclusion of his Napoléon-le-petit, after having described Napoleon III as daring to command that God stop progressing: “Vous ne voyez donc pas que c'est tout cela qui est chimère! vous ne voyez donc pas que le Deux- Décembre n'est qu'une immense illusion, une pause, un temps d'arrêt, une sorte de toile de manœuvre derrière laquelle Dieu, ce machiniste merveilleux, prépare et construit le dernier acte, l'acte suprême et triomphal de la Révolution française! Vous regardez stupidement la toile, les choses peintes sur ce canevas grossier, le nez de celui-ci, les épaulettes de celui-là, le grand sabre de cet autre, ces marchands d'eau de Cologne galonnés que vous appelez des généraux, ces poussahs que vous appelez des magistrats, ces bonshommes que vous appelez des sénateurs, ce mélange de caricatures et de spectres, et vous prenez cela pour des réalités! Et vous n'entendez pas au-delà, dans l'ombre, ce bruit sourd! vous n'entendez pas quelqu'un qui va et vient! vous ne voyez pas trembler cette toile au souffle de ce qui est derrière!” (Histoire 152). 526

occasionally had the right to enter this realm beyond the veil.50 Jesus’ death eradicates this mediated access to God through the High Priest by making direct access to God available to all. Because Hugo’s death rips the temple veil in “Crise de vers”, similarly to how Jesus’ death tears the temple curtain asunder, Mallarmé introduces an analogy that places Hugo in the position of Christ.51 In Mallarmé’s analogy, this tearing of the veil exposes the most sacred realm of French verse, now made available to all poets through

Hugo’s death.

In the following paragraph (¶ 6), as Mallarmé explicitly names Hugo, it becomes clear that it is Hugo’s death that Mallarmé here compares to the death of Christ and that it is therefore Hugo’s death that renders the sacred available to the masses:

Un lecteur français, ses habitudes interrompues à la mort de Victor Hugo, ne peut que se déconcerter. Hugo, dans sa tâche mystérieuse, rabattit toute la prose, philosophie, éloquence, histoire au vers, et, comme il était le vers personnellement, il confisqua chez qui pense, discourt ou narre, presque le droit à s’énoncer. Monument en ce désert, avec le silence loin; dans une crypte, la divinité ainsi d’une majestueuse idée inconsciente, à savoir que la forme appelée vers est simplement elle-même la littérature; que vers il y a sitôt que s’accentue la diction, rythme dès que style. Le vers, je crois, avec respect attendit que le géant qui l’identifiait à sa main tenace et plus ferme toujours de forgeron, vînt à manquer; pour, lui, se rompre. Toute la langue, ajustée à la métrique, y recouvrant ses coupes vitales, s’évade, selon une libre disjonction aux mille éléments simples; et, je l’indiquerai, pas sans similitude avec la multiplicité des cris d’une orchestration, qui reste verbale. (IDC 248)

Hugo is here presented as dominating so emphatically during his lifetime that he nearly confiscated the right of all others to think, discuss, and state themselves (“s’énoncer”).

Three deaths have now been aligned: the death of Christ, the death of Hugo, and the death of verse. Hugo is now not just the god of verse, he is the embodiment of verse; and, as Hugo is dead, verse is now also dead. While Christ offered a human embodiment

50 See Reid. 51 As Marchal notes, this passage compares the crisis of verse at the end of the 19th Century to the death of Christ: “Allusion à la déchirure du voile du Temple après la mort du Christ. La crise de vers a donc quelque chose à voir, même sur le monde mineur, avec la crise révolutionnaire du siècle dernier, et avec la mort de Dieu, même si le dieu qui meurt est ici, en apparence, Victor Hugo” (IDC 498). 527

of God, Hugo acted as a human embodiment of verse.52 Mallarmé thereby both affirms that Hugo is a deity and emphasizes that this deity is dead. With this double move,

Mallarmé encapsulates the simultaneous recognition for and revolution against Hugo that defines the literary revolutions of the majority of the other writers studied in this work.

Like Sainte-Beuve, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Verlaine, Mallarmé defines his literary project in opposition to an aspect of Hugo’s work.53 For Mallarmé, it is Hugo’s omnipresent domination of verse that must be resisted.54

Mallarmé’s description of Hugo’s hand upon verse as that of a “forgeron” in this passage calls to mind his earlier Hugo-adjacent mention of Rimbaud’s poem “Le

Forgeron” as a poem that, even though it contains great thematic similarity to Hugo’s work, defies common practices of the alexandrine.55 In its final stanza, Rimbaud’s poem, which recounts a blacksmith’s account of burgeoning revolution before Louis XVI, describes the effect of this blacksmith upon his audience. This blacksmith is an emphatically revolutionary figure of humble origins whose power to persuade—through speech or through force—extends even over the king:

—Il reprit son marteau sur l’épaule. La foule

52 Marchal notes the death of God that one can read in this work: “Or ce schéma fonctionnel de la crise de vers—disparition d’un ordre officiel provoquant une libération sans perspectives—permet de lire d’autres crises: qu’on remplace le patriarche Hugo par Dieu le père, et l’orthodoxie du vers officiel par celle de la religion nationale, et l’on obtient la formule de la crise religieuse qui procède pour Mallarmé de la mort de Dieu et de la désuétude qui en résulte du catholicisme” (Religion 371). 53 Mallarmé even goes on to write immediately after this paragraph that Verlaine paves the way for the generations following Hugo’s giant shadow: “La variation date de là: quoique en dessous et d’avance inopinément préparé par Verlaine, si fluide, revenue à de primitives épellations” (IDC 248). 54 Hugo’s 1834 preface to Littérature et Philosophie mêlées makes a similar point by stating that the language made in the 19th Century (by reinstating senses of words) is nearly finished, which hints at a future need to recommence this process of language-making: “Cette langue est aujourd’hui à peu près faite” (Critique 55). Additionally, in this preface Hugo argues that imitation should be avoided at all costs and that each generation in some way calls for resistance that will germinate a revolution and an ensuing new generation. 55 Asquisto comments upon the singularity of the thought that stems from the multiplicity of Mallarmé’s works: “This text is approached through violent quasi-Darwinian struggle (‘a contest for the true text’), and the synthesis is never achieved. This is Mallarmé in his most Ghilean moment: the very multiplicity of texts in the world ultimately, and ironically, suggests that there is only one text” (32). 528

Près de cet homme-là se sentait l’âme soûle, Et, dans la grande cour, dans les appartements, Où Paris haletait avec des hurlements, Un frisson secoua l’immense populace. Alors, de sa main large et superbe de crasse, Bien que le roi ventru suât, le Forgeron, Terrible, lui jeta le bonnet rouge au front! (OC 52-53)

Rimbaud’s usage of the word “frisson” harkens back to Baudelaire’s utilization of this word in “Les Sept Vieillards” and Hugo’s deployment of this adjective to describe

Baudelaire’s poetic novelty. Moreover, Rimbaud’s description of the “main large” of the blacksmith is elaborated in Mallarmé’s description of Hugo’s hand as “sa main tenace et plus ferme toujours de forgeron”. Hugo fought to similarly liberate verse and allow common language into the realm of literature. In Mallarmé’s generation, others fight to further liberate verse from its traditional constraints. Like the “forgeron” of Rimbaud’s poem, Hugo represents a fighter for freedom whose mission somewhat resembles the literary fighters of Rimbaud’s time, but who still belongs to a past revolution that has long since been won. By comparison, Rimbaud and Mallarmé become new revolutionaries who pioneer poetic frontiers—often through adaptations of Hugolian images.

Mallarmé here partially joins Proust in a view of Hugo as a once-revolutionary and now-classical figure; however, despite his respect for Hugo, Mallarmé does not wish to preserve and perpetuate Hugo’s style in the writing of future generations of poets.

Mallarmé here encourages the new generation of poets to respectfully frolic on Hugo’s grave and each play their own individual instrument that is sufficiently liberated so as to create a unique sound that does not simply imitate the sounds of past composers:

Une haute liberté d’acquise, la plus neuve: je ne vois, et ce reste mon intense opinion, effacement de rien qui ait été beau dans le passé, je demeure convaincu que dans les occasions amples on obéira toujours à la tradition solennelle, dont la prépondérance

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relève du génie classique: seulement, quand n’y aura pas lieu, à cause d’une sentimentale bouffée ou pour un récit, de déranger les échos vénérables, on regardera à le faire. Toute âme est une mélodie, qu’il s’agit de renouer; et pour cela, sont la flûte ou la viole de chacun. (IDC 252)

Mallarmé here emphasizes that he does not desire an erasure of past beauty, but instead, he encourages the disturbance and interruption of the “échos vénérables” (especially those resonating from Hugo’s work) as a means of liberating each individual’s instrument, which will allow each individual to play their unique melody. The death of the being named Hugo here liberates all other poets to play their unique songs.

Alongside this encouragement for each individual to find their unique instrument and create their own particular work free from the constraints of past forms—that is to say, free from Hugo’s dominant form—Mallarmé also advocates anonymity. It is in this work that his well-known statement on the “disparition élocutoire du poëte” appears (IDC

256). Moreover, Mallarmé describes his own role in this process of rebuilding verse after

Hugo’s death as preferably anonymous: “Témoin de cette aventure, où l’on me voulut un rôle plus efficace quoiqu’il ne convient à personne, j’y dirigeai, au moins, mon fervent intérêt; et il se fait temps d’en parler, préférablement à distance ainsi que ce fut presque anonyme” (IDC 249). Mallarmé also indirectly calls upon other poets to do the same when describing “le magique concept de l’Œuvre”:

Quelque symétrie, parallèlement, qui, de la situation des vers en la pièce se lie à l’authenticité de la pièce dans le volume, vole, outre le volume, à plusieurs inscrivant, eux, sur l’espace spirituel, le paraphe amplifié du génie, anonyme et parfait comme une existence d’art. (IDC 257)

A signature made of initials (“paraphe”) amplified by the genius of many erases itself and becomes a signature of no name, “anonyme et parfait”. Self-effacement is not just an endearing quality of Mallarmé’s: it marks a revolution for the poet’s role by erasing the poet’s name. In the wake of the death of Hugo, which acts simultaneously as the death

530

of an embodiment of God and as the death of verse, Mallarmé calls upon his generation to sentence all poets’ names to death, including their own. This may serve as a means of avoiding future dominations of poetic names like that of Hugo, which became so prevalent that it encompassed all of verse and stripped other writers of their ability to pronounce themselves. By proclaiming the death of Hugolian verse, Mallarmé endeavors to put Hugo’s name to rest along with the authorial names of the new revolutionary writers. In this way, an older Mallarmé runs somewhat contrary to a younger Mallarmé by preemptively drawing a funeral shroud over the names of still-living writers.

In the well-known final paragraphs of “Crise de vers”, Mallarmé clarifies the goal of recognizing Hugo’s death as the death of verse and of putting the poet’s name to death:

A quoi bon la merveille de transposer un fait de nature en sa presque disparition vibratoire selon le jeu de la parole, cependant; si ce n’est pour qu’en émane, sans la gêne d’un proche ou concret rappel, la notion pure. Je dis: une fleur! et, hors de l’oubli où ma voix relègue aucun contour, en tant que quelque chose d’autre que les calices sus, musicalement se lève, idée même et suave, l’absente de tous bouquets. Au contraire d’une fonction de numéraire facile et représentatif, comme le traite d’abord la foule, le dire, avant tout, rêve et chant, retrouve chez le Poëte, par nécessité constitutive d’un art consacré aux fictions, sa virtualité. Le vers qui de plusieurs vocables refait un mot total, neuf, étranger à la langue et comme incantatoire, achève cet isolement de la parole: niant, d’un trait souverain, le hasard demeuré aux termes malgré l’artifice de leur retrempe alternée en le sens de n’avoir ouï jamais tel fragment ordinaire d’élocution, en même temps que la réminiscence de l’objet nommé baigne dans une neuve atmosphère. (IDC 259-60)

Mallarmé here compares the pursuit of transmitting “la notion pure” to pronouncing “une fleur” in so unprecedented a manner that it conveys the unadulterated concept of flower,

“l’absente de tous bouquets”, defying the bounds of the “calices sus” and the “proche ou concret rappel” one may carry of other flowers recently considered. 56 This flower becomes “l’objet nommé”, which the poet aims to bathe “dans une neuve atmosphère”,

56 Considerable scholarship surrounds this antepenultimate paragraph of “Crise de vers” and its spoken flower. See for example La Charité, who refers to the “Je dis: une fleur!” citation as “a ‘credo’ in French poetry” that “has also emerged as a preferred statement in literary criticism” (96). 531

free of the old recollections of other named objects so that it may stand alone and then perhaps convey a “notion pure” from an anonymous speaker. The speaker’s name steps aside in order to allow the object to more fully appear as named. To fully name the pure notion of a single object, the speaker and the listener alike must not be weighed down by preconceptions or expectations about the named object. One may consider Hugo as such an “objet nommé” that may suffer from preconceived connotations but that can be rejuvenated through novel presentation and pronouncement. Each named object—even a traditional poetic image like “une fleur”—may thereby gain novel and singular meaning, freed from the shackles of the name of a creator and the notions that this name carries with it for the reader. Yet, it is important to remember that Mallarmé’s “fleur” is also described as “l’absente de tous bouquets”. This description underscores the isolation of such a flower that stands out from all collections of flowers, but it also emphasizes absence as a defining characteristic for the flower. To become such a novel rendition of an old trope, the flower must become absent from its usual realm and enter a “neuve atmosphère”. Similarly, to give “Hugo” new meaning, this name must be removed from its usual realm of significance. To give “Hugo” new meaning, it must garner a novel significance in a new atmosphere of onomastic capacity, an atmosphere in which the namer does not insist upon also being named.

To create this new atmosphere, writers must erase their own names and dissolve into anonymity.57 In other words, writers must cease striving to become a literary “grand homme” à la Hugo. Mallarmé clarifies this mission earlier in “Crise de vers”:

57 One may consider the progression from Hugo’s first anonymous publication of Han d’Islande to his publication under the name “Oguh” to his final publications with his real name as the inverse of the authorial onomastic dissolution that Mallarmé here envisions. 532

L’œuvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du poëte, qui cède l’initiative aux mots, par le heurt de leur inégalité mobilisés; ils s’allument de reflets réciproques comme une virtuelle traînée de feux sur des pierreries, remplaçant la respiration perceptible en l’ancien souffle lyrique ou la direction personnelle enthousiaste de la phrase. (IDC 256)

A “souffle”, similar to the one that the narrator of Mallarmé’s untitled sonnet hopes will revive him, returns in this work. In order to create liberated words, poets must resist inscribing themselves in their works and instead join in the “ancien souffle lyrique”. This can offer life and liberty to an “œuvre pure” that comes about when the words, not the poet, assume control of their self-expression and organization. Saunders comments upon the revolutionary nature of such a disappearance of the poet in the wake of a

“dismantled” syntax, one of Mallarmé’s most marked means of revolutionizing writing:

Once syntax, which produces the subject, has been dismantled, poetic voice is silenced: language speaks itself, rather than in the interest of an empowered poet, in accordance with that famous Mallarmean dictum—“L’œuvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du poëte qui cède l’initiative aux mots.” Indeed, according to the passage, the disappearance of the poet is consequent to a mobility of words – “le heurt de leur inégalité mobilisés” […] – a mobility, as we have noted, occasioned by syntactic dismantlement. On the one hand, this silencing indicates that the lyric voice which has customarily, in its sovereign role, established subjects, acted upon objects, directed relation and subordination, established point of view (a term to be taken significantly), and thereby legitimated meaning has been, as it were, overthrown […]. (368)

The poetic voice voluntarily relinquishes its royal status; it abdicates in order to empower mobilized words. The revolution for which Mallarmé here calls is self-inflicted: by abdicating, poets turn the reins over to the words.

In the first paragraphs of the penultimate piece of Divagations, “La Cour”,

Mallarmé writes of the choice to leave behind a name: “Quel nom, d’arrière-exploits mémorable, vaudra le paraphe, entre des appels de splendeur, que signe avec son motif ondoyant telle grande symphonie de concerts—Une noblesse, désormais, se passera du nom” (IDC 329). This new nobility is marked by its abdication of individual names in favor of a “paraphe amplifié du génie, anonyme et parfait comme une existence d’art”

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(IDC 257). In “La Cour”, Mallarmé goes on to propose a new order with an aristocracy of works summoned together by an anonymous chef-d’œuvre:

Seuls plusieurs conditions changeront—et un vent, pour ne parler histoire, sacré culbute, plaque, disperse ici; là, suspend une poussière précieuse. Ce caractère, nulle fixité, dans la composition d’une élite, officiellement et traditionnellement ne marque personne. Millier le même ou à peu près, en auditoires, mobile à l’annonce, quelque part, de beau: le chef-d’œuvre convoque. Loin de prétendre, dans l’assemblée, à une place, comme de fondation ou corporative, pour le producteur: il paraîtra, se montrant en l’anonymat et le dos convenables, je compare, à un chef d’orchestre—sans interception, devant le jaillissement de génie possible—ou, il rentre, selon son gré, à l’hémicycle assister, dans les rangs. (IDC 333)

The chef-d’œuvre becomes the new maître. Its makers—now mere participants—remain anonymous. Verses composed by unnamed writers represent Mallarmé’s ideal future for writing around which will congregate a new, unnamed elite composed of liberated works, rather than writers, in this auditorium. These works no longer contain the formerly popular “vers libérés”, the passivity of which is expressed in the participial adjective

“libérés”, which subordinates the “vers” to the power of an external liberating force.

These new works contain “vers libres”, free from the constraints of any authorial name, be it the name of an author from the past whose forms still influence writers or the name of the author presently writing. In this manner, the death of Hugo helps free writers to voluntarily lose the revolution of their words against their own names. Freedom from a living and dominant “Hugo” allows for the usurpation of “vers libres”, the anonymity of authors, and the passing of the orchestration of the work from the authors to the words composing the work.58

58 Barthes writes of Mallarmé’s revolutionary stance on the role of the author in “La mort de l’auteur”: “En France, Mallarmé, sans doute le premier, a vu et prévu dans toute son ampleur la nécessité de substituer le langage lui-même à celui qui jusque-là était censé en être le propriétaire; pour lui, comme pour nous, c’est le langage qui parle, ce n’est pas l’auteur; écrire, c’est, à travers une impersonnalité préalable—que l’on ne saurait à aucun moment confondre avec l’objectivité castratrice du romancier réaliste—, atteindre ce point où seul le langage agit, “performe”, et non “moi”: toute la poétique de Mallarmé consiste à supprimer l’auteur au profit de l’écriture (ce qui est, on le verra, rendre sa place au lecteur)” (62). Foucault concurs 534

IX. A Constellation

“Rien, cette écume, vierge vers A ne designer que la coupe; Telle loin de noie une troupe De sirènes mainte à l’envers

Nous naviguons, ô mes divers Amis, moi déjà sur la poupe […].” - Mallarmé, “Salut”

In the context of Hugo’s name, Mallarmé stands out from the majority of the other writers collected in this constellation of namers of “Hugo” by revolutionizing the status of the authorial name.59 Mallarmé progresses from a preference for suggestion rather than naming to a subversive stance against the authorial name. While naming entails a measure of erasure within all of these writers’ works, Mallarmé pushes this problematic to a new limit by playing it out even with his non-names (like Rose, Lys,

Maître, and Livre). By elevating common nouns to the status of name-like proper nouns through capitalization, Mallarmé exposes the transition of a thing to its named status.

When the living being dies and the temple veil tears, the being’s deification lies in the hands of the survivors. The rose becomes a Rose through the words of the dead Maître, and Hugo becomes Mallarmé’s “Hugo” of “Crise de vers” after the maître’s death enacts the death of verse. The power to name those of “autrefois” rests in the hands of those who live in the realm of “aujourd’hui”; and, sometimes, a namer of “aujourd’hui” may just be able to raise back to life an inhabitant of the tomb by speaking their name. On the with Barthes: “La disparition de l’auteur, qui depuis Mallarmé est un évènement qui ne cesse pas, se trouve soumise au verrouillage transcendantal” (796). 59 Krauβ offers a helpful definition of constellations: “Constellations arise out of the conjunction of certain factors that are significant for a situation, a process, a (textual) structure; they result from the presence and the arrangement or grouping of certain factors or elements. […] They designate an interpretive procedure that draws specific attention to the instable conditions of this interpretation: To look from the earth into the sky in order to ‘read’ the positions of the stars to one another, the constellations, is to become a relative observer in relation to an investigative object that is continually shifting; and it is to observe puzzlingly structured ‘surfaces’ that only coalesce into recognizable astral images when an ‘external’ knowledge intrudes into the domain of dispersed points of light, when significant patterns produce something legible among these intrinsically unspecified shapes” (439). 535

other hand, letting a dead Maître be allows for new writers to both liberate their own writing and to embrace the power to un-name maîtres and allow the words and works to gain control of themselves.

A passage from Mallarmé’s poetically revolutionary shipwreck poem “Un coup de dés” resounds with this idea: “RIEN N’AURA EU LIEU QUE LE LIEU EXCEPTÉ

PEUT-ÊTRE UNE CONSTELLATION” (IDC 438-441). Following the overthrow of the named elite (of authors) by the anonymous plurality (of words and works)—or, the phonetic “coup de des”, the coup of the indefinite plural—what remains is the gathering place, the auditorium in which these works congregate to converse with one another.60

Such a place and its constellation of works drawn together to form a novel image of an

“objet nommé” rather aptly describes the study here undertaken.61 Convocated by their changing and contradictory deployments of the name “Hugo”, Hugo, Sainte-Beuve,

Gautier, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé are drawn together in a

60 Robb sees the Maître figure in “Un coup de dés” as an allusion to Hugo: “A reaction against the patriotic, school-desk sort of poetry that Hugo was thought to represent produced some of the great modernist experiments, like Mallarmé’s bizarre typographical shipwreck, Un Coup de Dés (1897), in which a Hugo- like ‘Master’ sinks beneath the waves, surrounded by the wreckage of his alexandrines” (VH 537-38). Fontainas sees Hugo’s poem “Dieu” and Mallarmé’s “Un Coup de dés” as accompanying and completing one another: “Le parallélisme du Coup de Dés à ce morceau cité de Victor Hugo, par l’alternance d’ombre et de clarté fixes et dures, par l’opposition de l’immuabilité de l’univers et de la hardiesse ensemble réconfortante et futile, de l’effort humain s’appuie sur un goût d’images brèves et étendues, variées ou prolongées, d’un bout à l’autre différentes, mais, dans leur essence et leur mobilité dynamique, en dernier ressort imperturbablement analogues, m’éblouit d’émerveillement. Les deux poèmes s’achèvent l’un par l’autre, et se cimentent entre eux de cette rencontre provoquée, ou simple chance nécessaire, cette avalanche vibrante et haletante, emportée et saccadée, cette suite opposée ou cumulative, des participes présents ici ‘Se penchant, se dressant, lâchant et retenant’, et, pour se répondre joints encore par cet étrange et efficient comme si, chez Hugo comme chez Mallarmé, et l’éther vague, le tourbillon, la brume, AU HASARD, n’importe où, ‘peut-être travers la nuit, peut-être vers la cime’ se retrouve, non le vaisseau voué à sa perte, mais un char aux chevaux sombres, ‘fuyant, s’abaissant, s’élevant’ et faits d’éclair, de nuée et de vent!” (78). 61 Porter studies a poem of Hugo’s in which a constellation forms a name: “To help us understand what it means to be a visionary poet or prophet, Hugo frequently revives the topos (literary commonplace) of the liber mundi. Creation is a book where God has inscribed His purpose for those who know how to read. The title ‘Nomen, Numen, Lumen,’ for instance (The Name, The Spiritual Power, The Light) (6.25), placed in Les Contemplations just before the supreme revelation of ‘Ce que dit la Bouche d’ombre’ (What the Mouth of Darkness Says), depicts God naming himself to the just-created universe. He calls out his name, ‘JEHOVAH!’; the seven letters form the seven stars of the Big Dipper. In the physical world, they point to the True North or axis mundi (the hub of the universe), and in the spiritual world, to the Creator” (VH 88). 536

constellation that, through its shared references to one particular name, leads to a study of the many different erasures inherent to this name and the interdependence of these points of the constellation upon one another. Hugo’s name can become overly filled with different meanings of “Hugo” as named by different readers. What remains in the end is not a definitive understanding of the significance of Hugo’s name. On the contrary, what remains in the end is the discernment that such a definitive pairing of a name and its significance cannot exist.62 This results from the populated lieu in which a constellation of different projections of the meaning of a name convene. As reflected in the roots of the word “suggest” (sub and gerere), naming both brings up and carries under the object named. In the end, studying Hugo’s name leads to a study of the individual beams of light created by different readers of Hugo’s work that together form an illuminated image of an authorial name, as this name is named by others. Each beam projects a different reading of “Hugo” as a competitor, revolutionary leader, classic, maître, père, demon, god, embodiment of verse, etc. Together, these beams offer a fluctuating and glimmering image of Hugo as he was named by those he too named in 19th-century French literature.

62 Michaels writes of such a concept for literary theory: “In literary theory, this transformation takes place in what Derrida has called the ‘substitution of mark for sign,’ the substitution that I have described as the emergence of the shape of the signifier as constitutive of the identity of a text, and that is foundational not only to deconstruction but to every account of literary texts that imagines they can have more than one meaning or, more particularly, that imagines they can mean something other than what their authors intended. […] For some, of course, the problem with this view is that it seems to make impossible the resolution of our disagreements, but the real problem, if there is one, is that it makes disagreement impossible, not resolution” (61-62). 537

Intended to be blank.

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Fiala, Robert. “Painting at the entry of the Cao Dai Holy See”. Photograph. “Through God’s Left Eye”. Paul La Farge. The Underground (Summer 2008): 1. Web. Feb. 7, 2016.

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CONCLUSION: IN HIS NAME

“Now you people have names. That’s because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names.” - Gaiman, Coraline

“Once you label me you negate me.” - Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

The name “Hugo” conjures up as many meanings as there are naming events.

This plurality of meanings refutes the idea that there is one singular significance of

“Hugo”. While a number of images may reappear from one naming event to another

(e.g. foreheads, giants, ogres, hippogriffs, eagles, swans, shipwrecks, talking flowers, veils, demons, gods, etc.), each naming event is unique. Each naming event presents a vision of Hugo from a particular viewpoint at a particular time, and as a result, each significance of “Hugo” carries with it a trace of the namer. Arriving at a full or complete significance of “Hugo” is not possible. However, by gathering and exploring these naming events, or by analyzing a Kripkean “chain” of reference, one may more fully understand the multitudinous meanings of this name. From the Latin re, “repeatedly”, and nominare, “to name”, the word renown is etymologically rooted in the act of renaming.1 For a name to reach such a monumental height of renown as Hugo’s, it must be repeatedly named.

This project traces the name of Hugo in the works of those who name him as a literary creator. Exploring the naming events for Hugo within the works of these great

19th-century French writers affords a glimpse into the interpellations, formulations, and effects of their onomastic acts regarding Hugo. One thereby follows the translations, transformations, and functions of this name from Hugo’s auto-naming events to the

1 See Online Etymology Dictionary, 1. 540

revolutionary poetic innovations of Mallarmé. Nevertheless, there are other realms in which Hugo’s name is indelibly inscribed that are not here addressed. For example,

“Hugo” works as a reference in the popular voice. The 1985 Parisian exposition commemorating Hugo’s death and accompanying volume La Gloire de Victor Hugo present not just a figure of national recognition and love but also one of notoriety and even hatred: “La gloire, c’est la ‘célébrité grande et honorable’ dont parle le dictionnaire de Littré, et c’en est aussi la contre-épreuve: déboires, haines, malentendus, distorsions…” (Georgel 23). While negative reactions to the glory of Hugo are discernible through the literary works and correspondence upon which this study focuses, this phenomenon was not restricted to the literary world.

Many of Hugo’s literary namers deploy this name to evoke the image of a respected force to be resisted by a new literary revolution. Perhaps, as Schlanger proposes, such resistance is an integral part of respect: “Car en bien ou en mal, d’une manière destructrice ou d’une manière féconde, tout disciple intéressant, c’est bien connu, est nécessairement infidèle” (75). This is even more the case when the maître to be revered and resisted made his name synonymous with revolution and progress.

Because “Hugo” stood in part for artistic revolution, the revolutions that other writers enact in opposition to some formulation of “Hugo” can be enfolded into the tradition of another understanding of “Hugo”. Hugo was therefore a proponent of revolution along with and against whom new literary revolutionaries revolted. With regard to Foucault’s assertion that novelists cannot inspire as varied lineages as founders of discursivity like

Marx and Freud, Hugo acts as a counterexample. By instilling revolution into the meaning of his name, Hugo becomes a Foucauldian founder of discursivity.

541

In 1901, a society that called itself “Les Hugophiles” was officially instated.2 The following year (the centenary of Hugo’s birth) saw a survey entitled “Etes-vous hugophile ou hugophobe?” This prompt set the stage for readers to either fully support or entirely reject Hugo.3 In his response to this survey, Remy de Gourmont ends with a commentary on the changing status of Hugo’s name after his death:

Les fêtes du centenaire sont donc très légitimes, si c’est bien le poète que l’on veut célébrer et non le “vieux républicain”. Politiquement, Victor Hugo appartint successivement à tous les partis, et tous pourraient s’en réclamer. Mais ce beau nom, échappé enfin aux polémiques vulgaires, n’est plus désormais que celui d’un grand poète. (Rees 243)

This passage reveals that the meaning of Hugo’s name remained a topic of discussion in

20th-century French literary thought.4 For Gourmont, the reduction of the significance of

Hugo’s name from the political man to just signify Hugo the poet offers Hugo’s name an escape from vulgarity. In other words, the death of Hugo the man allows for the transcendence of “Hugo” the name beyond the mortal world, to an exalted poetic sphere.

Inspired by Gourmont’s response to the survey, André Gide quipped the now- famous phrase of “Hugo, —hélas” in response to the question “Quel est votre poète?”

(O’Brien 556).5 This pronouncement caught on widely because of its quippish combination of reverence and revolution that one often finds with regard to Hugo.

2 Gourcuff, the president of “Les Hugophiles”, writes the following about the group in the beginning of his work Hugophilies: “La Société ‘Les Hugophiles’ est née, le 23 mai 1901, d’une fervente admiration pour Victor Hugo et du désir, inné chez les Français, d’honorer la langue et la littérature nationales dans la personne d’un de leur plus glorieux représentants” (9). 3 Nevertheless, some writers did not accept this necessary divide. For example, Remy de Gourmont responds, on February 8, 1902, that he is neither one nor the other: “Ni l’un ni l’autre, mon cher confrère. Ni-phile, ni-phobe. Je n’ai pas un grand amour pour Victor Hugo, mais j’ai pour lui une grande admiration. C’est le plus riche écrivain en vers, et en prose aussi, qu’ait eu la langue française et peut-être aucune langue. Musicien du verbe, il est au-dessus de tous ceux qui ont joué la parole” (Rees 242). 4 In October of 1923, Valéry writes in a letter to Souday about the ongoing difficulty of doing something other than “Hugo”, a quandary reminiscent of Rimbaud’s accusation that most other writers of his time were just making their “Rolla”: “Le problème capital de la littérature, depuis 1840 jusqu’en 1890, n’est-il pas: comment faire autre chose que Hugo? Comment se pencher sur les cimes de Hugo” (149). 5 Many believe this phrase to have been first pronounced in an interview of Gide in 1902, but this source has never been located. Gide first wrote this phrase, a phrase he would repeat many times over the course of his career, in the periodical L’Ermitage in February 1902. See O’Brien, 555. 542

Moreover, this statement of Gide’s has since been repeatedly misattributed. Even the

1942 New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles claims that it was Verlaine who stated this when asked, on his deathbed, to “name the greatest French poet of the

XIX century” (O’Brien 554). The misattribution of this statement about Hugo exposes the popular belief that many writers regarded Hugo extraordinarily highly and with a measure of auto-defiance concerning this veneration. In other words, writers struggled with their own recognitions of the greatness of Hugo. Naming Hugo as his poet seems to cause Gide some sorrow. Both the hugophile and the hugophobe are present in this self- conflicting naming event for Hugo. The concluding “—hélas” indicates a kind of a grief that accompanies loving Hugo above all others. Between the nomination of “Hugo” and the indicator of the namer’s torment lies a trait d’union, a connecting and dividing force that links so many poets to this dominant name. The fact that Gide pronounced this statement in response to the question “Quel est votre poète?” exposes an aspect of naming—and especially naming Hugo—explored in this study: when people name Hugo, they are naming their Hugo at a certain point in time. When one names Hugo, one inserts oneself—as the namer—into the significance of the name. “Hugo” thereby becomes defined by particular possessors: Hugo becomes the “Hugo” of others.

One may here recall Althusser’s study of the scene of interpellation between God and Moses. God auto-nominates as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, etc. Such possessive onomastics trigger two results: a reduction (as God must lose some aspects of

God to become the God of another) and an expansion (as God and a mortal are now conflated into one dual possessive denomination). A reduction of some traits seems to be necessary to ascend into an all-encompassing ontological status like that of God: in order

543

for a name to signify in a universal, transcendental way, it must be able to accommodate a vast plurality of understandings (or onomastic possessions). The name of God exhibits the onomastic expansion that is made possible by a combination of reduction and possession. Hugo’s name similarly undergoes reduction as it is interpreted and possessed by his namers, and it may then expand in order to host others (be they citizens that he represented politically, condamnés, exilés, or misérables for whom reduced versions of

“Hugo” could stand).

Nominating writers to the canon entails a similar dynamic of reduction, possession, and expansion concerning the significance of the writers’ names. First, there is the process of reduction: canonical writers are often represented as being defined by certain traits. Second, there is the process of possession. Since writers must be named by others to enter the canon, they must therefore become writers of namers of the canon.

Finally, there is the process of expansion: canonical writers often stand for vast literary movements that include the works of many other writers. Is Hugo more the “Hugo” of

Hugo, that of Baudelaire, or that of Mallarmé today? Is Hugo more the “Hugo” of

Maulnier, who gave him a mere four pages in his 1939 Introduction à la poésie française and no single poem in full (299-302),6 or the “Hugo” of Bloom, who recommends reading seven of Hugo’s works in his 1994 The Western Canon? (541)7 It is only

6 From La Légende des siècles, Maulnier cites just one line from “Booz endormi”: “…Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de l’éternel été…” (300). One can compare Hugo’s four pages to the seven pages given to Baudelaire which include six poems in their entireties (308-14); the five pages for Rimbaud, including three full poems (315-19); and the five pages given to Mallarmé, including five full poems (320-24). 7 Within Hugo’s subsection of “France” under “The Democratic Age”, this canonical list includes 20 writers (among them Gautier, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Rimbaud). Hugo’s seven works are second only to Balzac’s eight works that appear in this list of recommended canonical reading. Moreover, Bloom chooses to have Hugo’s poetry represented by a collection of his poetry in translation (Guest’s volume entitled The Distance, The Shadows: Selected Poems). In a 1996 interview, while explaining why he did not choose certain writers—Hugo, for example—to analyze in detail in his study preceding the canonical list at the work’s end, Bloom perhaps also explains why Balzac is more represented than Hugo 544

possible to perpetuate widespread recognition of a name throughout time if this name is reduced, subjected to the possession of a name, and then expanded beyond the confines of a one-to-one signification between signifier and signified. Moreover, all naming events—for individuals, for canonical representatives, for gods, etc.—necessitate these three processes.

In the 20th Century, Hugo’s name experiences an extraordinary reincarnation as an iconic religious signifier. The year 1925 saw the birth of a Vietnamese syncretic religion named Cao Đài that regards Victor Hugo as one of three “Venerable Saints”.

This religion still thrives today, with approximately 8 million followers worldwide.8

Goodfriend describes Hugo’s presence in Cao Đài iconography:

In 1921, Ngo Van Chien, a Vietnamese born in 1878, worked in the French colonial government on Phu Quoc Island. In his free time, he attended seances. At one of these seances, a spirit told him that he would found an important religious sect. Part of this revelation included a vision of an all-seeing eye in a triangle. The triangle eventually became the symbol of Cao Dai, representing the sect’s three spiritual guides—Victor Hugo, Sun Yat-sen, and Trang Trinh. This symbol appears in every Cao Dai temple. (37)

Cao Đài allows for the different names and understandings of God to represent the same being.9 This idea reflects a previously-cited line of Hugo’s from Religions et Religion:

“Tout n’est qu’Un” (Poésie III 990). The name Cao Đài is a Taoist term that means

“Supreme Being” (Werner 6). Since Hugo’s line segment appears in the triangle that now stands for Cao Đài, Hugo’s trace has become an integral part of one syncretic name of God.

So, what’s in a name? To hazard a response to this question, one may say that a name contains everything and nothing, everyone and no one. A name like that of Victor on this list: “One tries to choose writers who are exemplary. Thus for France, for instance, one has to leave out Rousseau, one has to leave out Balzac, who is my personal favorite. One has to leave out Victor Hugo, whose poetry I think is immensely underrated, for he was a great poet” (Gurpegui 173). 8 See Cosh. 9 See Goodfriend, 38. 545

Marie Hugo simultaneously signifies all of the meanings ever assigned to it and none of these meanings, making the name either far larger or far smaller than the being to which it is attached. “Hugo” can indicate any triangulation of significances that any individual interpreting this name recognizes, possesses, and creates as reference points. In this way,

“Hugo” is synthetic: each “Hugo” is made up of many constructed Hugos revered and resisted by many namers over time. Hugo’s name is constituted out of a world of onomastic chains defined by perpetual flux yet linked by a fixed form. For a name to endow its signified with immortality, it must continuously undergo this passage through the modifying chain of reference that alters understandings of the signified by tapping into the Lacanian “vide du verbe être” (Ecrits I 517).

The pages contained in this study merely scratch the surface of the ever- expanding world within the name of Hugo. Like the old man in Baudelaire’s “Les Sept

Vieillards”, Hugo’s name spawns different versions of itself, becoming a “dégoûtant

Phénix, fils et père de lui-même” (140). This iterability helps explain how Hugo’s name simultaneously comprehends countless Hugos and, ultimately, no final, definitive Hugo.

Just as the narrator’s reaction to the seven old men (in Baudelaire’s poem dedicated to

Hugo) exposes far more about the narrator than it does about the men, the name “Hugo” often reveals more about the namer than it does about the named. A revolutionary young writer naming a being like “Hugo” is a high-stakes endeavor, especially when Hugo was still alive: writers must project themselves carefully via their means of naming Hugo.

Because the name of Hugo encompasses all those who name him, Hugo’s namers interpolate themselves into this name. To respond to Shakespeare’s question on the contents of a name, one can return to Hugo’s comment on Hamlet: “Hamlet, c’est nous

546

tous” (Théâtre I 1079). Hugo, like Hamlet and like God, is also all of us, where the “us” is comprised of his namers. Those who name Hugo enter into the meaning of his name:

Hugo, c’est nous tous. And yet, this universal ability to possess and alter the significance of “Hugo” also makes this name incapable of directly referring to a fixed meaning.

Block de Behar’s comments on the power of words to negate themselves lead to another result of this possessive aspect of naming: “When the word negates the thing that it is referred to, it negates the one proffering, it negates itself, multiplying by creation the negating irradiation” (390). If namers are caught up in the meaning of the name “Hugo”, then the negation of “Hugo” also brings about the negation of the namers. “Hugo” is therefore everyone and no one.

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CURRICULUM VITAE Abigail RayAlexander

Birth: Fitzgerald, GA (02/10/1987)

1004 West 38th Street, Apt. 1 [email protected] Baltimore, MD 21211 706-829-2887

Department of German and Romance Johns Hopkins University Languages and Literatures 3400 North Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21218

Education 2010-2016 Johns Hopkins University, PhD, French Section, Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures Dissertation title: “Naming the Master: The Evolving Significance of ‘Victor Hugo’ in 19th-Century French Literature” Dissertation Supervisor: Professor Jacques Neefs 2013-2014 Université de Genève, Foreign Study Exchange, Geneva, Switzerland 2011, June Université Laval, Ecole d’été sur la francophonie des Amériques, Québec, Canada 2006-2010 Dartmouth College, Double Bachelor of Arts with Honors, French Literature & Comparative Literature Comparative Literature thesis title: “Adventures in Writing: Extraordinary Voyages with E.A. Poe and J. Verne” Thesis Supervisor: Professor Roxana Verona 2008, Mar.-May Dartmouth College, Foreign Study Program, Paris, France

Honors & Awards 2016, Jan.-May Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University Course title: “Constructing Poe: How 19th-Century France Created an Icon” 2015-2016 Denis Curatorial Fellowship, Special Collections Research Center of the Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University Exhibition title: Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore and Beyond: Highlights from the Susan Tane Collection; complementary volume title: Edgar Allan Poe in Ten Objects 2015, Aug.-Dec. Marion Frances Chevalier Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University 2015, May-July Summer Funding, Johns Hopkins University 2014, May-July Summer Travel Grant, Johns Hopkins University 2010-2013 Owen Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University

Teaching Experience 2010-2016 Graduate Teaching Assistant, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

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Language course titles: French Elements I & II, Intermediate French I & II, Advanced Writing and Speaking in French II Taught Elements I & II twice, taught Intermediate I & II once, taught Advanced French II once, aided for all sections of Elements I once Collaborated with language coordinating team to create lesson plans and tests; taught all courses; graded all assignments; held office hours; conducted review sessions not required of Teaching Assistants before all examinations; utilized Blackboard to post grades, disseminate instructional materials, and communicate with students; and incorporated many forms of media into the classroom Literature course titles: Dead Men Talking, Constructing Poe: How 19th-Century France Created an Icon Created syllabi; planned and conducted all classes; held office hours; graded all materials; utilized Blackboard for class discussions, dissemination of materials, and posting of grades; incorporated many forms of media; and submitted all grades on time 2006-2016 French Tutor, privately Tutored 10+ students in French, ranging from 12 to 60 years old 2013-2015 Composer of online exercises, McGraw-Hill Designed exercises for all levels of French language acquisition for online component of multiple textbooks, incorporated images and differentiated means of testing 2008-2010 Volunteer “Book Buddy”, “Book Buddy” Program, Hanover, New Hampshire Volunteered 3 hours per week to interactively read with 3rd grade students 2008 High School Substitute Teacher, Augusta Preparatory Day School, Augusta, GA Worked approximately 30 hours per week for 3 months, created lesson plans and conducted classes for English classes for middle and high school students and for all subjects for 5th grade students 2006 Volunteer English Teacher, I-to-I Program, Hanoi, Vietnam Volunteered for 25-30 hours per week for 3 months, created lesson plans, graded homework and tests, taught classes with no Vietnamese teacher present, and helped organize and chaperone a field trip in Hanoi

Publications - Forthcoming publication: RayAlexander, Abigail. “Pierrot le fou comme un loser métamorphique.” Texas Tech University Conference Proceedings: Le Loser. Ed. Carole Edwards. - Forthcoming publication: RayAlexander, Abigail. “Le vide qui réside dans le par: une lecture de Barthes avec Hugo.” MLN 131.4. Ed. Jacques Neefs. - Forthcoming publication: RayAlexander, Abigail. “‘M.S. Found in a Bottle’: Poe’s Prize Mystery.” Edgar Allan Poe in Ten Objects. Eds. Gabrielle Dean and Richard Kopley. - Forthcoming translation: Garcia, Tristan. Intensity. Trans. Jon Cogburn, Abigail RayAlexander, and Christopher RayAlexander. Edinburgh UP.

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- Forthcoming translation: Cogburn, Jon. “An Interview with Tristan Garcia.” Trans. Abigail RayAlexander and Christopher RayAlexander. Garcian Meditations. Edinburgh UP. - RayAlexander, Abigail. “Le roi s’amuse.” The Literary Encyclopedia. Ed. Nigel Harkness. Web. First published 27 July 2015. - RayAlexander, Abigail. “Flaubert and Baudelaire on Trial: On Authorial Intent, Intervention & Responsibility before the Law.” Interférences littéraires/ Literaire interferenties, “The Risks of Metatextuality.” Eds. Karin Schwerdtner and Geneviève de Viveiros. 15 (Feb. 2015). 35-51. - RayAlexander, Abigail. “Romanticism and the Question of the Stranger (review).” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 43.1 (2014). - Tinguely, Frédéric. “Calvin au Corcovado. De l’inégale ressemblance entre Genève et Rio de Janeiro”/ “Calvin on Corcovado. On the uneven resemblance between Geneva and Rio de Janeiro.” Trans. Abigail RayAlexander. MOTS SLOW 1 (Dec. 2013), Hand Art Publisher, Berlin. - RayAlexander, Abigail. “Visible Writings: Cultures, Forms, Readings (review).” MLN 128.4 (2013): 970-976. - Alexander, Abigail. “Le Nadir de la grâce : Essai sur la figure et la défiguration (review).” MLN 127.4 (2012): 952-957. - Alexander, Abigail. “La Renaissance des mots: de Jean LeMaire de Belges à Agrippa d’Aubigné (review).” MLN 126.4 (2011): 915-920.

Service 2014-2015 President, GGSF (GRLL [German and Romance Languages and Literatures] Graduate Student Forum) Scheduled and presided over meetings, held office hours, attended Departmental Faculty Meetings, brought graduate students’ concerns to Faculty, amended the GRLL Graduate Student Handbook, and revised and ratified GGSF by-laws 2012-2013 Administrator, GGSF Scheduled meetings, took and distributed minutes, budgeted, held office hours, attended Departmental Faculty Meetings 2011-2012 Representative, French section, GGSF Aided in the inauguration of the GGSF and composition of its by-laws, held office hours, and acted as a graduate student liaison

Conferences & Events 2016, Apr. Participant, “Le vide qui réside dans le par: Barthes et Hugo,” JHU Conference: Travailler maintenant avec Barthes, Baltimore, USA 2016, Mar. Participant, “Dying to Tell the Tale: The Murders of Coleridge, Poe, Verne, and Pamuke,” 2016 ACLA Annual Conference, Cambridge, USA 2016, Mar. Participant, “Pierrot le fou comme un loser métamorphique,” Texas Tech University Symposium: Le loser dans le film et les littératures d’expression française, Lubbock, USA 2015, Dec. Co-Organizer, JHU Graduate Student Professional Development Workshop: Book Reviews, Baltimore, USA

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2015, Mar. Co-Organizer & Panel Chair, 2015 JHU French Film Festival: Francophone Crossings, JHU, Baltimore, USA Raised funds, obtained screening rights from American and French distributors, organized and coordinated logistics Projected 5 films in French with English sub-titles to the general public: Inch’Allah Dimanche, Monsieur Lazhar, C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons, Le grand voyage, Rengaine Mediated a panel of guest speakers and Q&A session following C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons 2014, Oct. Organizational Aide, French for Research and Creation, JHU, Baltimore, USA 2014, Oct. Panel Chair, 40th Annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium: Fuite/ Évasion, San Juan, Puerto Rico 2014, Oct. Organizational Aide, Translating Constrained Literature International Conference, JHU, Baltimore, USA 2013, Apr. Participant, “From Below to On High—The holy and yet common source of all in Hugo and Mallarmé,” Society of Dix-Neuviémistes Annual Conference: Heaven and Hell, Exeter, England 2012, Oct. Organizational Aide, Salammbô, 150 years, JHU, Baltimore, USA 2012, Sept. Co-Organizer & Participant, “Over and Under Reading: Mallarmé’s ever-absent and yet omnipresent fleur,” JHU German and Romance Languages and Literatures Inaugural Bi-annual Graduate Conference: Counterphilologies, Baltimore, USA 2012, Mar. Participant, “Vitality and Veracity: Verne’s murder and revivification of Poe’s Pym,” Boston College Annual Graduate Conference, Boston, USA 2011, Oct. Co-Organizer & Panel Chair, JHU French Literature bi-annual graduate conference: Normes et Formes, Baltimore, USA

Languages French (native-like), Spanish (conversational spoken and reading knowledge)

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