In February 1815 Victor and Eugene were taken away from their mother and placed by their father in the Pension Cordier, a private boarding school in Paris, where Victor and Eugène remained three years while also attending lectures at Lycée Louis le Grand. [8], Well over one thousand musical compositions have been inspired by Hugo’s works from the 1800s until the present day. In his youth, Hugo resolved to be "Chateaubriand or nothing", and his life would come to parallel that of his predecessor in many ways. I demand a prayer to all souls. Jeho bratři byli Abel Joseph Hugo (nar. In his will, he made the same stipulation about his own death and funeral. On 28 August 1824, the couple's second child, Léopoldine was born, followed by Charles on 4 November 1826, François-Victor on 28 October 1828, and Adèle on 28 July 1830. He played an important part in the Romantic movement in France. The latter played Beethoven in Hugo’s home, and Hugo joked in a letter to a friend that thanks to Liszt’s piano lessons, he learned how to play a favourite song on the piano – even though only with one finger! The paraders marched for six hours to pass Hugo as he sat in the window at his house. It is popular worldwide and has been adapted for cinema, television, and stage shows. The publisher replied with a single ! On the deaths of his sons Charles and François-Victor, he insisted that they be buried without crucifix or priest, and in his will made the same stipulation about his own death and funeral. Crépuscule ("Twilight"), Jersey, 1853-1855. Victor's mother Sophie was a devout Catholic who remained loyal to the deposed dynasty. In 1812 Victor Fanneau de La Horie was arrested and executed. In 1851, he lived in Belgium, in Brussels.He moved to Jersey in 1852. He stayed in Naples and Rome for six months, before going back to Paris. He telegraphed the single-character message '?' Rorschach blots), "grattage" or rubbing, often using the charcoal from matchsticks or his fingers instead of pen or brush. Many years after their separation, Hugo made a point of supporting her financially. Léopold Hugo wrote to his son that he had been conceived on one of the highest peaks in the Vosges Mountains, on a journey from Lunéville to Besançon. Dedicated to the channel island of Guernsey, where he spent 15 years of exile, Hugo tells of a man who attempts to win the approval of his beloved's father by rescuing his ship, intentionally marooned by its captain who hopes to escape with a treasure of money it is transporting, through an exhausting battle of human engineering against the force of the sea and a battle against an almost mythical beast of the sea, a giant squid. [5] He had also pleaded for Benito Juarez to spare the recently captured emperor Maximilian I of Mexico but to no avail. From squid dishes and exhibitions, to squid hats and parties, Parisians became fascinated by these unusual sea creatures.[3]. Victor-Marie Hugo was born on 26 February 1802 in Besançon in Eastern France. Liukkonen, Petri (2000). Où je criai : L'enfant que j'avais tout à l'heure, [20] Je refuse l'oraison de toutes les Églises. The novel was not as successful as his previous efforts, and Hugo himself began to comment on the growing distance between himself and literary contemporaries such as Flaubert and Émile Zola, whose realist and naturalist novels were now exceeding the popularity of his own work. Hugo himself considered it to be a precursor to his great work on social injustice, Les Misérables. Let those who have loved me respect her. From 1859, his exile was by choice. Hugo suffered a mild stroke on 27 June 1878.[55][56]. After three unsuccessful attempts, Hugo was finally elected to the Académie française in 1841, solidifying his position in the world of French arts and letters. They also reported from a reliable source that at one point in the night he had whispered the following Alexandrin, "En moi c’est le combat du jour et de la nuit" – "In me, this is the battle between day and night". En plus de ces œuvres-clés de la première moitié du XIXe siècle, le roman social (et parfois en milieu rural) trouve sa place dans la littérature avec des textes de George Sand (Consuelo – 1842, -1846 La Mare au Diable, La Petite Fadette – 1849) et, plus tard, avec la grande fresque humaniste Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862). His mother, Sophie, went to Italy with her husband who was a governor of a province near Naples. [58] Le Matin published a slightly different version, "Here is the battle between day and night. Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles are his most famous poetry collections. [29] He had also pleaded for Benito Juárez to spare the recently captured emperor Maximilian I of Mexico but to no avail. A bust of Hugo stands near the entrance of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. However, he enjoyed sharing his drawings with his family and friends, often in the form of ornately handmade calling cards, many of which were given as gifts to visitors when he was in political exile. Analogy also enabled him to conceal the real meaning: A woman's Suisses (Swiss) are her breasts – due to the fact that Switzerland is renowned for its milk. Installments of the book sold out within hours, and had enormous impact on French society. [41], Yet he believed in life after death and prayed every single morning and night, convinced as he wrote in The Man Who Laughs that "Thanksgiving has wings and flies to its right destination. V.H. Sometimes he would even toss in coffee or soot to get the effects he wanted. Le Dernier jour d'un condamné (The Last Day of a Condemned Man) would have a profound influence on later writers such as Albert Camus, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. claims he never completely recovered from it. In October 1807 the family rejoined Leopold, now Colonel Hugo, Governor of the province of Avellino. The house where he stayed in Vianden, Luxembourg, in 1871 has also become a museum. [1], Since Hugo's father was an officer in Napoleon's army, the family moved frequently from posting to posting, Sophie had three children in four years. In his youth and under the influence of his mother, he identified as a Catholic and professed respect for Church hierarchy and authority. On 20 May 1885, le Petit Journal published the official medical bulletin on Hugo's health condition. From 1830 to 1837 Adèle had an affair with Charles-Augustin Sainte Beuve, a reviewer and writer.[60]. [10] In Guernsey, every two years the Victor Hugo International Music Festival attracts a wide range of musicians and the premiere of songs specially commissioned from Guillaume Connesson and based on Hugo’s poetry. When he was young, Victor Hugo fell in love. When the book was finally written, Tréjean became Jean Valjean.[14]. Alas! His work was about many of the political and social problems as well as the artistic trends of his time. Victor Hugo continue son œuvre littéraire. discovered in November 1875 may refer to Sarah Bernhardt.[66]. Mismas cosas: The same. His most famous poem is undeniably "Demain, dès l'aube" (Tomorrow, at Dawn), in which he describes visiting her grave. His legacy has been honoured in many ways, including his portrait being placed on French currency. The 1848 Revolution made Hugo rebel against his Catholic Royalist education. The latter played Beethoven in Hugo's home, and Hugo joked in a letter to a friend that, thanks to Liszt's piano lessons, he learned how to play a favourite song on the piano – with only one finger. Victor married Adèle the following year. After this, he wrote many poems about his daughter's life and death. Victor Marie Hugo fr: [v i k t ɔ ʀ m a ʀ i y g o], Wiktor Hugo (ur. Marble bust of Victor Hugo by Auguste Rodin. A census-taker asked Hugo in 1872 if he was a Catholic, and he replied, "No. He felt the Church was indifferent to the plight of the working class under the oppression of the monarchy. Hugo, Victor, Choses vues, 1870–1885, Gallimard, 1972. Most large French towns and cities have a street or square named after him. Hugo returned to political and social issues in his next novel, L'Homme Qui Rit (The Man Who Laughs), which was published in 1869 and painted a critical picture of the aristocracy. The Hugo family came from Nancy in Lorraine where Victor Hugo's grandfather was a wood merchant. A Freethinker". His work touched upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time. Hugo was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani. The pamphlets were banned in France but nonetheless had a strong impact there. He was only five at the time, but he remembered the trip well. Throughout his life Hugo kept believing in unstoppable humanistic progress. Je regarde toujours ce moment de ma vie Victor Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, statesman and human rights activist. je ne l'ai plus ! Hugo's passion and eloquence in his early work made him successful and famous at an early age. Exclamation Mark! [12] Hernani announced the arrival of French romanticism: performed at the Comédie-Française, it was greeted with several nights of rioting as romantics and traditionalists clashed over the play's deliberate disregard for neo-classical rules. The Belgian publishing house Lacroix and Verboeckhoven undertook a marketing campaign unusual for the time, issuing press releases about the work a full six months before the launch. [47], On the other hand, he had low esteem for Richard Wagner, whom he described as "a man of talent coupled with imbecility. Je demande une prière à toutes les âmes. 23 juillet - Festival Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon - classique - concert - opéra La Esmeralda Louise Bertin - direction Lawrence Foster - Orchestre Nationa... "Caodaism : A Vietnamese centred religion", Guernsey’s Victor Hugo International Music Festival, 1867 Caricature of Victor Hugo by André Gill, Translation of Victor Hugo note found in "Hunchback of Notre Dame," french edition, Official site of the Société des Amis de Victor Hugo, Official site of the Festival international Victor Hugo et Égaux, Translation of The legend of Victor Hugo by Paul Lafargue, https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victor_Hugo&oldid=7370047, Articles needing additional references from January 2012, All articles needing additional references, Articles with dead external links from January 2021, Articles with permanently dead external links, Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers, Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers, Wikipedia articles with KULTURNAV identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Léonore identifiers, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers, Wikipedia articles with RKDartists identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. Les Misérables, Random House Publishing Group, 2000, 1280 pages. Both a graphomaniac and erotomaniac, he systematically reported his casual affairs using his own code, as Samuel Pepys did, to make sure they would remain secret. Petri Liukkonen. Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin, writing the libretto for her 1836 opera La Esmeralda which was based on the character in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. [13] He moved to Brussels, then Jersey, from which he was expelled for supporting a Jersey newspaper that had criticised Queen Victoria. Les Misérables proved popular enough with the masses that the issues it highlighted were soon on the agenda of the French National Assembly. He married Adèle in 1822, after his mother's death in 1821. When Hugo returned to Paris in 1870, the country hailed him as a national hero. Hugo's popularity as a playwright grew with subsequent plays, such as Marion Delorme (1831), The King Amuses Himself (1832), and Ruy Blas (1838). Most large French towns and cities have a street named for him. [24] Hugo agreed to diffuse and sell one of his best known drawings, "Le Pendu", an homage to John Brown, so one could "keep alive in souls the memory of this liberator of our black brothers, of this heroic martyr John Brown, who died for Christ just as Christ". Although Hugo's many talents did not include exceptional musical ability, he nevertheless had a great impact on the music world through the endless inspiration that his works provided for composers of the 19th and 20th century. Woe to anyone who harms France! Though the poems were admired for their spontaneous fervor and fluency, the collection that followed four years later in 1826 (Odes et Ballades) revealed Hugo to be a great poet, a natural master of lyric and creative song. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote abundantly in an exceptional variety of genres: lyrics, satires, epics, philosophical poems, epigrams, novels, history, critical essays, political speeches, funeral orations, diaries, letters public and private, as well as dramas in verse and prose. turning an envious eye towards the past, Scroll down to the Assemblée Constituante 1848 heading and subsequent pages. In a letter to American abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman, on 6 July 1851, Hugo wrote: Slavery in the United States! Other speeches called for universal suffrage and free education for all children. He became a mentor to Victor and his brothers. Never has her soul forsaken mine. One of the effects of the novel was to make the inhabitants of Paris restore the neglected Cathedral of Notre Dame, which was attracting thousands of tourists who had read the popular novel. He had two older brothers called Abel Joseph Hugo (1798–1855) and Eugène Hugo (1800–1837). Ville avec le pont de Tumbledown, ("Town with Tumbledown Bridge"), 1847. He shares a crypt within the Panthéon with Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola. After leaving France, Hugo lived in Brussels briefly in 1851, and then moved to the Channel Islands, first to Jersey (1852–1855) and then to the smaller island of Guernsey in 1855, where he stayed until Napoleon III's fall from power in 1870. Like many young writers of his generation, Hugo was profoundly influenced by François-René de Chateaubriand, the famous figure in the literary movement of Romanticism and France's pre-eminent literary figure during the early 19th century. Perhaps he also was upset by the frequency with which his work appeared on the Church's list of banned books. Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin, writing the libretto for her 1836 opera La Esmeralda, which was based on the character in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A group of French scholars, particularly Etienne de Jouy, were fighting against the "romantic evolution" and had managed to delay Victor Hugo's election. He finally settled with his family at Hauteville House in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, where he would live in exile from October 1855 until 1870. The book was well received, perhaps due to the previous success of Les Misérables. Although Napoleon III granted an amnesty to all political exiles in 1859, Hugo declined, as it meant he would have to curtail his criticisms of the government. He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment. Vincent van Gogh ascribed the saying "Religions pass away, but God remains", actually by Jules Michelet, to Hugo. Hugo left five sentences as his last will, to be officially published: Je donne cinquante mille francs aux pauvres. However, although Hugo believed Catholic dogma to be outdated and dying, he never directly attacked the institution itself. Although he had requested a pauper's funeral he was awarded a state funeral by decree of President Jules Grévy. Additionally, Hugo's beautiful poems have attracted an exceptional amount of interest from musicians, and numerous melodies have been based on his poetry by composers such as Berlioz, Bizet, Fauré, Franck, Lalo, Liszt, Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Rachmaninoff, and Wagner.[49]. Hugo decided to live in exile after Napoleon III's coup d'état at the end of 1851. Hugo had used the departure of prisoners for the Bagne of Toulon in one of his early stories, "Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné" He went to Toulon to visit the Bagne in 1839 and took extensive notes, though he did not start writing the book until 1845. what! His first collection of poetry (Odes et poésies diverses) was published in 1822 when he was only 20 years old and earned him a royal pension from Louis XVIII. Some of his work was shown to, and appreciated by, contemporary artists such as Van Gogh and Delacroix; the latter expressed the opinion that if Hugo had decided to become a painter instead of a writer, he would have outshone the artists of their century. Hugo worked only on paper, and on a small scale; usually in dark brown or black pen-and-ink wash, sometimes with touches of white, and rarely with color. The critical establishment was generally hostile to the novel; Taine found it insincere, Barbey d'Aurevilly complained of its vulgarity, Flaubert found within it "neither truth nor greatness," the Goncourts lambasted its artificiality, and Baudelaire - despite giving favorable reviews in newspapers - castigated it in private as "tasteless and inept." Napoléon became Emperor two years after Hugo's birth. In this poem, he describes visiting her grave. Pieuvre avec les initiales V.H., ("Octopus with the initials V.H. Hugo kept his artwork out of the public eye, fearing it would overshadow his literary work. The celebrations began on the 25th when Hugo was presented with a Sèvres vase, the traditional gift for sovereigns. to indicate its success. His last novel, Quatre-vingt-treize (Ninety-Three), published in 1874, was about a subject that Hugo had previously avoided: the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. [48]", Well over one thousand musical compositions have been inspired by Hugo's works from the 19th century until the present day. It reflected his interest for society which appeared more often in his later work. Many are not aware that Hugo was almost as prolific in the visual arts as he was in literature, producing more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime. for kisses) or to Spanish (Misma. Pieuvre avec les initales V.H., ("Octopus with the initials V.H. Report of the proceedings of the second general Peace Congress, held in Paris on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24 August 1849. It is popular worldwide, has been adapted for cinema, television and stage shows. I shout and I feel indignant and I cry. Léopold enlisted in the army of Revolutionary France at fourteen, he was an atheist and an ardent supporter of the republic created following the abolition of the monarchy in 1792. He left his children a note reading as follows : "J.D. Gavroche a onze ans, ("Gavroche at eleven years old"). Hugo never lost his antipathy towards the Roman Catholic Church, due largely to what he saw as the Church's indifference to the plight of the working class under the oppression of the monarchy; and perhaps also due to the frequency with which Hugo's work appeared on the Pope's list of "proscribed books" (Hugo counted 740 attacks on Les Misérables in the Catholic press). Le Rocher de l'Ermitage dans un paysage imaginaire ("Ermitage Rock in an imaginary landscape"). "[15] Publication of Les Misérables went to the highest bidder. They also went to Spain where Joseph governed three Spanish provinces. Hugo began planning a major novel about social misery and injustice as early as the 1830s, but it would take a full 17 years for Les Misérables, to be realized and finally published in 1862. This was only shortly after her marriage. "), 1866. Despite his popularity Hugo lost his bid for reelection to the National Assembly in 1872. The school Lycée Victor Hugo was founded in his town of birth, Besançon in France. Dedicated to the channel island of Guernsey, where he spent fifteen years of exile, Hugo’s story about Man’s battle with the sea and the creatures in its depths, started an unusual trend in Paris: squids. Despite his personal loss, Hugo remained committed to the cause of political change. I leave 50,000 francs to the poor. Hiding in a chapel at the back of the garden, was Victor Fanneau de La Horie, who had conspired to restore the Bourbons and had been condemned to death a few years earlier. On 27 June, one of the largest parades in French history was held. The City of Paris has preserved his residences Hauteville House, Guernsey, and 6, Place des Vosges, Paris, as museums. [33], Victor Hugo, who said "A war between Europeans is a civil war",[34] was an enthusiastic advocate for the creation of the United States of Europe.