HUGO. n'g6', VICTOR (1802-851. The greatest French poet of his century. a distin guished dramatist, novelist, essayist, and poli tician. His first volume appeared in 1822. For nearly two-thirds of the century he was a leader in French literature. for the greater part of that time preeminently the leader. He repre sents the supreme reach of an individualistic and romantic movement. Besancon, his birthplace. had once been a Spanish city—a significant fact. for his work often shows Spanish influence. Ilis father was a officer of the Republic and Empire, his mother the daugh ter of a sea captain of Nantes, of royalist and Catholic sympathies. With her the child lived in Paris till 1811. when General Hugo summoned his family to join him in Madrid. whence he was constrained to send them back in 1812, as King .Toseph's cause was growing desperate. The impressions of this year left deep marks on many of Victor's works, notably Bug Jargal, Hernani, Ruy Blas, and Toraufmada. After wards, until the fall of the Empire, he was once more with his mother in Paris in the abandoned Convent of Les Feuillantines. which appears prominently in Les .11iserubles. Set at tech nological studies by his father, he aspired at fourteen 'to be Chateaubriand or nothing,' wrote a 31iltonic 'Plage, and planned dramas. epics, and operas. At fifteen he competed for an Academic prize, winning honorable mention and some minor literary patronage. Two years later (1819) he won three prizes at the poetic competition (Jells Florau.r) of Toulouse. Ile also wrote at this time. though he did not pub lish it in this form till his old age, a novel, Bug Jargal, a story of Haiti, of great promise and weird power. An extended revision of this Wa printed in 1826. In 1819 be founded a fortnight ly literary journal, Le Conserratcur LitteTairr, the failure of which, with the withdrawal of his allowance from his father. reduced him to a poverty that gave materials for the Marius epi sodes in Les Miserables. His brother, Abel, gen erously helped him to print Odes et po.-sirs di verse& (1822). which paid him 700 franc:. and caused King Louis XVIII. to grant him a pen
sion of 1500 francs, increased later to 3000. On the strength of this he married (October, 1822), and thereafter enjoyed a happy domestic life. These verses, in their brilliant rhetoric and richness of rhythmic melody, had been ap proached in that generation only by Lamartine's .116ditations. They show an ardent royalism, a perfunctory and sonorous religiosity. and an in tense political passion. on which Napoleon was already beginning to exercise a fascination that declared itself openly in the superb Ode on the tenddme Column (1827).
The next few years were occupied with an extravagantly romantic novel. Ilan d*Islande (1823), and with literary journalism. In 1826 appeared Nourelle.s odes et ballades. whose pre face was a sort of literary manifesto of Ro manticism. and of the first ITYnacie (q.v.). Ver sification and rhythm here begin to show- an aggressive individuality, and several poems in dicate that sympathetic study of the mediceval mind which is associated with French Romanti cism. Hugo was recognized as the Romantic leader. and asserted and confirmed that position by Cromwell IN2.7). As early as 1826 the 0(h•on Theatre had offered hospitality to an English company. in which were Charles Kent ble and Miss Smithson. This company played Othello. Romeo and Juliet. and Hamlet, all of which were enthusiastieally greeted by the new French school. Indeed. Kemble and his com panions did not leave the Odeon till July. 1828 Cronin-en begins with an elaborate preface full of dramaturgic observations. more opportune than new: but they now became the rallying point of a school who thoufdit "the drama the only complete poetry of our time, the only poe try with a national character." This school de manded for the drama an unconventional vocab ulary and a mingling of tragic and comic, to show more fully the irony of destiny. this mm consciously following Diderot (q.v.), while at tempting to follow nature. In all Hugo's dramas the lyric element tends to delay the dramatic effect. Hernani and Rut Blass alone are still played in France.