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fa#^#fcZA7A6i<t/?^<7 VICTOR HUGO: THE LYRIC POET AND THE NOVELIST A Thesis Presented by Muriel Joy Alford to The Faculty of Purdue University for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Science June 1902 VICTOR HUGO: THE LYRIC POET AND THE NOVELIST The estimate placed upon a man by his contemporaries is not often a true estimate of his greatness. This is well illustrated by the light in which the English nation viewed their great "Protector" Cromwell, for so long a time. Por more than two hundred years no just estimate of Crom well's greatness seems ever to have entered the English mind. Not until Thomas Carlyle rewrote his biography from his personal letters was any just idea formed of Cromwell's greatness. To-day he stands as one of the most revered characters of English history. On the occasion of the cen tenary celebration of Dante's birth Victor Hugo wrote: "Let us not say that nations are ungrateful at a given mo ment. A man has been the conscience of a people. By glo rifying that man, the people attest the existence of its own conscience". Hugo's own words might well be applied to himself. During his life he was many times exalted and many times debased, as the influence of the sentiments which he advocated prevailed or met with defeat. V/e may recall the fact that at one time (1851) he was banished from his country and remained an exile for almost twenty years. Who knows anything of Victor Hugo and does not call to mind that great moment in the Theatre. Francais,(Feb ruary 25th, 1830) when his "Hernani" was presented. It was a fierce battle, raging between the Romanticists and Classicists, but Hugo's genius was victorious. Now it is only with the deepest admiration that the world looks upon this drama. It has been only seventeen years since Hugo's life came to an end, and it is no wonder, then, that it is hard to measure his renown and determine'his place in litera ture. The works of real genius appear more and more re splendent as we meditate on them, and knowing how recent are the works of Victor Hugo we may barely imagine what Time will do. However it is reasonable to believe that they will receive their just and "true consecration". Few deserve the name of "master" better than Hugo. His contemporaries were simply his disciples. Notwith standing those writers who sought to mar his glory - his talent was recognized by his greatest fellow authors. He set forth the highest sentiments and was such an advocate for the people as the world has seldom seen. He raised his voice for humanity in its weakness, oppression and sor row and consoled and strengthened it. "He had a great mind and a still greater heart". America should be particularly interested in Victor Hugo because of the fact that many of his political ideals were in harmony with ours. It might be well to quote from a letter written by Victor Hugo to Mrs. Chapman, who wrote to him for help in the- cause of the Abolitionists. He says: "I agree with you that it is impossible that the United States of America should not within a certain time give up slavery. Slavery in such a country! Was there ever such a monstrous contradiction? ***********Liberty in chains, blasphemy proceeding from the altar, the negro's fetters riveted to the pedestal of Washington's statue. It is impossible. Let all generations take courage ******** The United States must either give up slavery or give up liberty. They will not give up liberty". Born in 1802, Hugo gave to the world his first work in 1817. He was called the poet laureate of the Restoration. He was a member of the Assembly. In 1845 he was made a Peer of France and in 1851 he was banished. After his ex ile (1870) he came back and was again in the Assembly, and a few years later he was a member of Senate. Yet how lit tle do these incidents show that "Titanic vitality" and boundless energy put into his life. It cannot be said that Hugo was a man of great political genius but rather a man of great imagination together with this great vitality which, one author says, "drove him through life with a touch of demonic energy". Although Hugo had a wealth of imagination he did not possess any great originality of ideas. Everything attacked his imagination and it absorb ed his lesser faculties. Hugo stood for the freedom from personal element in art - which is a lyrical movement itself, and his super!- ority undoubtedly lay in his lyrism. In his works, he brings forth not only his ideas, but also a re-echoing of the world's passion, and because of this he was powerful. In Les Feuilles d'Automne - a work of 1631- Hugo dis plays a lyrism of the heart — he is extremely sensitive to "feelings for hearth and home - with a charity for human kind, a faith in God, and a hope of immortality". Fre quently in the poem, however, we see the spirit of public indignation break forth. As a novelist also does Hugo remain famous, and even more so as a dramatist. However it is enough to say, here, that as a lyric poet was he superior, both to anything he has done and certainly to what others have done. Barbou says: "all childish brains are impregnated with the ideas of those who rear them. Parents sow in this fertile soil both convictions and prejudices; seeds which education develops and affection ripens, and which become gigantic plants, that the grown man left to his own reason, rends pitilessly". We may account naturally then for Hugo's early royalistic feelings, though these changed as he be came older. Hugo was a royalist in his youth because his mother was a royalist. Hugo's mother, however, ardent roy alist as she may have been, did not possess those qualities of mind, which are so evident in the son. Madame Hugo, the wife, said of the mother that while in Spain she felt nothing but the "badness of its roads and the bite of its fleas". She was strangely Hacking in that poetic nature with which Hugo was so endowed. On the other hand let us look at the father of the poet. In his chiefly military writings there is nothing whatever of the genius of the poet, no eloquence, no metaphors or no anthitheses. But there are some traits in the works of the father, which be came evident in the works of the son. The principal traits common to both father and son are the high moral ideas. With this glimpse of the mother and father of Hugo, we indeed think it strange, even mysterious, that from them should have sprung the greatest poet of French Literature. He began life an ugly little creature, as we know, but from his youth, it has been said that probably no other "child of genius" was so peculiarly blessed in his education. In his youth were those things which stored up in his mind the material for, what afterward became, "Hernani*,'Les Miser- ables' and still others. There were things that passed un observed by his brothers and were scarcely more noticed by his father, but these were the same things which the child afterwards moulded into golden poetry and romantic fiction. We might relate many instances of his childhood and youth which could be easily traced into many of his works. When in Paris the boy's education continued to be a fortunate one. He had, as he afterwards tells us, "three masters, a garden, an old priest and his mother". Every reader of poetry will recall the poem where he immortalizes the old garden. We must mention also, because of its great impor tance, the rich and abundant experiences in Spain. These experiences furnished splendid material for his genius to work upon and enriched and strengthened almost all of his most important works. At the time of the separation of Hugo's father and mother, which event made a deep impression upon him, there were found the following words in his diary, "Our fathers see in Napoleon only the man who gave them epaulettes; our mothers see in Bonaparte only the man who took away their sons". It was not for several years after this that the Royalist in Hugo died out - though it burned in him only feebly toward the last. It was after his marriage that Hugo caught the spirit of the new age and the development of his mind was so rapid that it gave the idea of sudden ness. A better idea of his change in beliefs can be gainrr ed, by quoting from Hugo himself. He says "My ancient Royalist Catholic creed of 1820 has crumbled away piece by piece. It is nothing now but a religious and poetic ruin. I turn towards it sometimes to consider it with respect, but I go there no more to pray". The child who was to become the greatest poet in French literature came into the world on February 26th, 1802. He was born at Besancon, in the place Saint-Quentin, in a house known to-day as Barrette- House. The infant /•. was very small and exceedingly frail and sickly. In a poem on his infancy Hugo represents himself forsaken by all, save his mother, whose tender love and care made him doubly her child.

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