The Works of Victor Hurgo ; [General Introduction and Notes by Robert
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Please do not assume that a book's appearance in 'The Builder' library means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. The Webmaster Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/worksofvictorhur10hugouoft . rk^rs"'>^-iZL'T-/ ..w Victor Mane Hugo Cbition be liuxt THE WORKS O F VICTOR HUGO VOLUME X SHAKESPEARE LIFE OF HUGO Bv F. T. MARZIALS tlTije Jefferson ^vtii Posfton ^eto ©ork EDITION DE LUXE One Thousand copies of this edition ha\ e been printed for sale in america, of which this is Bo Copyright. 1905, bt EDWIN C. HILL COMPANY CoPVRIC.tlT. IPOft, RV JAMES L. PERKINS AND COMPANY 1l TO ENGLAND fl Dedicate tbia :Booft, THE GLORIFICATION OF HER POET. I TELL ENGLAND THE TRUTH; EtTT, A3 A LAND ILLtTSTKIOUS AND FREE, I ADMIRE HER, AND AS AN ASYLUM, I LOVE HER. VICTOR HUGa Hauteville House, 1864. PREFACE " The true title of this work should be, Apropos to Shake- as in speare." The desire of introducing, they saj"^ England, has before the public, the new translation of Shakespeare, been the first motive of the author. The feeling which in- terests him so profoundly in the translator should not deprive him of the right to recommend the translation. However, his conscience has been solicited on the other part, and in a more itself. In reference to binding way still, by the subject Shakespeare all questions which touch art are presented to his mind. To treat these questions, is to explain the mission of art; to treat these questions, is to explain the duty of human thought toward man. Such an occasion for speaking truths imposes a duty, and he is not permitted, above all at such an epoch as ours, to evade it. The author has comprehended this. He has not hesitated to turn the complex questions of art and civilization on their several faces, multiplying the horizons every time that the perspective has displaced itself, and accepting every indication that the subject, in its rig- orous necessity, has offered to him. This expansion of the point of view has given rise to tliis book. Hautevilix House, 1864. CONTENTS PART I. Book Page I. Shakespeare.— His Life 1 II. Men of Genius.— Homer, Job, ^Eschylus, Isaiaii, Ezekiel, LucBETins, Juvenal, Tacitus, St. John, St. Paul, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare 23 III. Art and Science 66 IV. The Ancient Shakespeare 80 V. The Souls 122 PART II. — I. Shakespeare.— His Genius— 134 II. Shakespeare. His Work. The Culminating Points . 156 III. ZoiLus AS Eternal as Homer 179 IV. Criticism 198 V. The Minds and the Masses 213 VI. The Beautiful the Servant of the True 227 PART HI.— CONCLUSION. I. After Death.— Shakespeare.— England 247 n. The Nineteenth— Century 269 III. True History. Every one put in his Right Plasb . 280 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE PART I.—BOOK I HIS LIPE CHAPTER I years ago, in an island adjoining tlie coast of TWELVEFrance, a house, with a melancholy aspect in every sea- son, became particularly sombre because winter had com- menced. The west wind, blowing then in full liberty, made thicker j'et round this abode those coats of fog that November places between earthly life and the sun. Evening comes quickly in autumn ; the smallncss of the windows added to tlie shortness of the days, and deepened the sad twilight in which the house was wrapped. The house, which had a terrace for a roof, was rectilinear, correct, square, newly whitewashed,— a true IMethodist struc- is as that it ture. Nothing so glacial English whiteness ; seems to offer you the hospitality of snow. One dreams with a seared heart of the old huts of the French peasants, built of wood, cheerful and dark, surrounded with vines. To the house was attached a gai'den of a quarter of an acre, on an inclined plane, surrounded with walls, cut in steps of granite, and with parapets, without trees, naked, where I 1 2 WILLIAIM SHAKESPEARE one could see more stones than leaves. This little unculti- vated domain abounded in tufts of marigold, which flourislved in autumn, and which the poor people of the country eat baked with the eel. The neighbouring seashore was hid from this a rise in tlie this rise a garden by ground ; on there was field of short grass, where some nettles and a big hemlock flourished. From the house you might perceive, on the right, in the horizon, on an elevation, and in a little wood, a tower, which for left tlie passed haunted ; on the you might see dyke. The dyke was a row of big trunks of trees, leaning against a wall, planted upright in the sand, dried up, gaunt, with knots, ankyloses, and patellas, which looked like a row of tibias. Revery, which readily accepts dreams for the sake of proposing enigmas, might ask to what men these tibias of three fathoms in height had belonged. The south facade of the house looked on the garden, the north facade on a deserted road. A corridor at the entrance to the ground-floor, a kitchen, a greenhouse, and a courtyard, with a little parlour, having a view of the lonely road, and a pretty large study, scarcely lighted; on the first and second floors, chambers, neat, cold, scantily furnished, newly repainted, with white blinds to the window,— such was this lodging, with the noise of the sea ever resounding. This house, a heavy, right-angled white cube, clwsen by those who inhabited it apparently by chance, perhaps by in- tentional destiny, had the form of a tomb. Those who inhabited this abode were a group,— to speak more properly, a family; they were proscribed ones. The most aged was one of those men who, at a given moment, are de trap in their own country. He had come from an as- ; the who were sembly others, young, had come from a prison. To have written, that is sufficient motive for bars. Where shall thought conduct except to a dungeon.'' The prison had set them free into banishment. The the had in that oldest, father, place all Ijis own except WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 3 His son-in-law his eldest daughter, who could not follow him. a table or • was with her. Often were they leaning round and seated on a bench, silent, grave, thinking, all of them, absent ones. without saying it, of those two Wliy was this group installed in this lodging, so little suitable? For reasons of haste, and from a desire to be as soon as possible anywhere but at the inn. Doubtless, also, because it was the first house to let that they had met with, and because proscribed people are not lucky. This house,— which it is time to rehabilitate a little and at console, for who knows if in its loneliness it is not sad — this what we have just said about it; a home has a soul, house was called ^Marine Terrace. The arrival was mourn- ful; but after all, we declare, the stay in it was agreeable, and Marine Terrace has not left to those who then inhabited And it anything but affectionate and dear remembrances. that w hat we say of that bouse, Marine Terrace, wc say also of island of Jersey. Places of suffering and trial end by having a kind of bitter sweetness which, later on, causes them to be which the regretted. They have a stern hospitality pleases conscience. There had been, before them, other exiles in that island.