Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

were “Les Feuilles d’Automne,” “Chants du Crépuscule,” “Les Voix Intérieures,” and “Les Rayons et les
Ombres”; in fiction, “Notre Dame de Paris” (1831); in the drama, “Le Roi s’Amuse,” “Lucrèce Borgia,”
“Marie Tudor,” “Angelo,” and “Les Burgraves.”
During the next decade, 1841–1851, Hugo wrote little and became immersed in politics. He had begun
as a Royalist, but on abandoning classicism he had become a Liberal with strong Napoleonic sentiments.
He supported the constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe; and was created a Peer of France in
1845; but with the revolution of 1848 he turned Republican and favored the election of Louis Napoleon
as president. His opposition to the setting up of the empire led to his banishment, and for nearly twenty
years he lived in the Channel Islands, first in Jersey, and then in Guernsey. His years of exile were very
productive. During this period were written his vast novel, “Les Misérables,” the work which has done
most for his fame outside of France, “Les Travailleurs de la Mer,” an impressive picture of the struggle
between the human will and the forces of nature; and “L’Homme Qui Rit”; “La Légende des Siècles,” a
series of scenes from the various epochs in the history of the world, containing some of his most splendid
poetry; some violent invectives in prose and verse against Napoleon III; and “William Shakespeare,”
ostensibly a criticism of the dramatist, but really a glorifying of the poet as prophet, with a fairly clear
implication that he himself filled the rôle.
On the downfall of the empire, Hugo returned to France, went through the Siege of Paris, and made a
final and unsuccessful attempt to take part in politics. The rest of his life was spent in Paris. His last
novel, “Quatre-Vingt-Treize,” appeared in 1874; and “Les Quatre Vents d’Esprit,” 1881, showed that his
poetical genius had suffered no diminution. These last years brought him a rich reward of fame. He was
elected a perpetual senator, and enjoyed a position of the highest distinction. When he died on May 22,
1885, he was buried with splendid ceremony in the Panthéon after lying in state under the Arc de
Triomphe.
Hugo’s literary production falls into three main classes, drama, poetry, and fiction. Of these the first is
likely to be the most short-lived. In the first heat of his revolt against classicism, he discarded all the old
rules; and though his plays contain striking scenes and splendid declamation, he never brought himself to
take the pains to acquire the technique necessary to insure a long acting life for a drama.
It is as a poet that Hugo is now chiefly esteemed by his own countrymen. Here also he threw over the
classical rules, and both in versification and in language violated all that had been regarded as most
essential in French poetry. But in place of the old conventions he brought an astonishing command of
rich and varied rhythms, and a wealth of vocabulary almost unparalleled in literature. Further, he
possessed, as no French poet had ever possessed, the power of rousing and transporting, and with all his
strength and violence, a capacity for pathos and tenderness. The splendor of his epic style and the
brilliance of his lyric are hardly to be surpassed, and he will remain one of the chief glories of French
poetry.
Among foreigners, he is chiefly known by his prose fiction. Here as elsewhere he is characteristically
romantic. He chose picturesque and sometimes remote themes, but always such as gave opportunity for
violent contrasts. His love for antithesis was such that it led him into exaggeration so gross as to become
grotesque caricature. His creations are vivid and striking, but they are drawn from the outside, and there
is often no attempt at a psychological explanation, expressed or implied, of their behavior. At times he
over-loaded his novels with technical details, apparently the result of special reading undertaken to
obtain local color. The terminology of oceanography and meteorology almost drowns the story in some