LES CONTEMPLATIONS of Victor Hugo: An Allegory of the Creative Process

by Suzanne Nash

Overview

Victor Hugo's work presents the reader with a paradox nowhere more apparent than in the collection of more than 150 lyric poems entitled Les Contemplations. Although he insisted upon structural unity, his complex artistic creations often seem disordered and digressive. Suzanne Nash examines this contradiction, and she proposes here a new approach to Les Contemplations that reveals how it may be read as a unified allegory of Hugo's understanding of the creative process.

The author's reading heightens the subtleties of individual poems by placing them within the context of the collection. She clarifies the poet's use of rhetorical devices and. illuminating Les Contemplations as a metapoetic creation, shows how it can serve as a guide to Hugo's other works.

The first two chapters present evidence of Hugo's narrative intention, place his work within an allegorical tradition, and describe the structure of the allegory. One poem, Pasteurs et troupeaux, is analyzed as a paradigm for the whole, and a single theme, that of Léopoldine as sacrificial muse and figure for poetic language, is traced through the six books. The author demonstrates Hugo's narrative purpose in his use of rhetorical forms and examines (according to predominance of themes, images, and technical devices) the six chapters as steps in the religio-poetic allegory.

Originally published in 1977.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691616773
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/08/2015
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1380
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.10(d)

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Les Contemplations of Victor Hugo

An Allegory of the Creative Process

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By Suzanne Nash

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1976 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06313-3

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CHAPTER 1

THE ALLEGORICAL NATURE AND CONTEXT OF HUGO'S WORK

Hugo's intention that Les Contemplations represent a work greater than the sum of its lyric parts is immediately apparent from a reading of his preface and a glance at the narrative format: Part I — Autrefois, 1830-1843; Part II — Aujourd'hui, 1843-1855. Each part contains a further, tripartite division: in Autrefois I — Aurore, II — L'Ame en fleur, III — Les Luttes et Ies rêves; followed by IV — Pauca meae,? V — En marche, and VI — Au bord de l'infini in Aujourd'hui.

The reader is informed in the preface to Les Contemplations that he is to read the collection as a book ("Ce livre doit être l comme on lirait le livre d'un mort") that is both "Mémoires d'une âme" and the book of human destiny. Mirrored in Hugo's own life we are to find written the story of the Human Spirit:

L'auteur a laissé pour ainsi dire, ce livre se faire en lui. La vie, en Hltrant goutte à goutte à travers les événements et Ies soufirances, l'a déposé dans son coeur. Ceux qui s'y pencheront retrouveront leur propre image dans cette eau profonde et triste, qui s'est lentement amassée là, au fond d'une âme.

Hugo repeatedly sketches the linear, progressive direction of this universalized biography, urging us to read it from beginning to end.

C'est l'existence humaine sortant de l'énigme nigme du berceau et aboutissant à l'énigme du cercueil; c'est un esprit qui marche de lueur en lueur en laissant derrière lui la jeunesse, l'amour, l'illusion, le combat, le désespoir, et qui s'arrête éperdu 'au bord de l'infini'. Cela commence par un sourire, continue par un sanglot, et finit par un bruit du clairon de l'abîme.

Traverser le tumulte, la rumeur, le rêve, la lutte, le plaisir, le travail, la douleur, le silence; se reposer dans le sacrifice, et, là, contempler Dieu; commencer à Foule et finir à Solitude, n'est-ce pas, les proportions individuelles réservées, l'histoire de tous?

La joie, cette fleur rapide de la jeunesse, s'effeuille page à page dans le tome premier, qui est l'espérance, et disparaît dans le tome second, qui est le deuil.

A further internal evidence of Hugo's concern that the text be read as a continuous narrative is reflected in the dates and places at the end of each poem. It is by now a well-known fact that on the manuscripts destined for publication in Les Contemplations Hugo scratched out most of the original dates and substituted dates of symbolic significance. For example, many seemingly light-hearted poems placed in Aurore and dated prior to 1843 were actually written in the 1850's, contemporaneously with poems like "Horror," "Pleurs dans la nuit," or even "Ce que dit la bouche d'ombre."

It has been suggested that Hugo changed dates in the published version in order to keep his private life secret from Madame Hugo or Juliette Drouet, or to alter the public's notion of his political evolution toward republicanism in order to show himself in a more favorable light. It seems more likely, however, that the Hugo-allegorist of Les Contemplations considered himself quite separate from and indeed superior to the poet-dreamer of the individual works. In fact, the separation of the lyric narrator from the visionary and their eventual reintegration is a leading theme in the book. By altering the dates, Hugo could organize his work around a specific biographical event and then fill it with providential significance. In this way he poeticizes his personal history so that it gains a superior dimension worthy of the reader's attention. Events such as his affair with Léonie d'Aunet thus take on metaphysical significance. The dates and places assigned to the poems in the manuscript are signs within some universal evolutionary process toward an expanded consciousness through which the reader-initiate must be guided. The lyric poetry of the first person gives way to the dramatic experience of a representative human spirit.

Final internal evidence of the structural unity of the poems is the key position Hugo ascribes to his daughter, Léopoldine, throughout the work. The first and last poems of Autrefois ("A ma fille" and "Magnitudo parvi") are addressed directly to her. The central biographical year, 1843 (cf. Préface: "Vingtcinq années sont dans ces deux volumes"), is the year of her drowning. Many poems are dated the anniversary of her death. Pauca meae is devoted entirely to her memory, and in 1855 Hugo decided to end the collection with an epilogue entitled "De l'absent à l'absente," later to be changed to "A celle qui est restée en France." It is clear that in order to understand the narrative message, one must understand Léopoldine's role in Hugo's poetic scheme.

There is also a good deal of external evidence that points to Hugo's concern with a narrative reading of his work. In 1854 and 1855, when he was assembling Les Contemplations for publication, he insisted upon its structural integrity in both letters and conversations, just as Baudelaire was to do for Les Fleurs du mal. A letter Hugo wrote to Emile Deschanel insisting upon the sacred architecture of the book is striking evidence of this:

Les Contemplations sont un livre qu'il faut lire tout entier pour le comprendre. ... Le premier vers n'a de sens complet qu'après qu'on a lu le dernier. Le poème est une pyramide au dehors, une voûte au dedans. Pyramide du temple, voûte du sépulcre. Or dans des édifices de ce genre, voûte et pyramide, toutes les pierres se tiennent.

We find another example in Adele Hugo's diary. She recounts a conversation between her father and Auguste Vacquerie about two poems of Part vi, "Horror" and "Dolor." In response to Vacquerie's criticism that Hugo was attacking those who doubt too strongly, the poet answered:

Vous ne connaissez pas tout mon livre. Ne jugez pas mon livre sur un détail. Ces deux pièces de vers — elles n'attaquent pas les douteurs, elles blâment les rieurs.

The ideal of writing a long allegorical poem was in no way alien to current Romantic thought. During the first half of the nineteenth century — especially before the abortive revolution of 1848 — the notion of a Utopian world to be realized through the inspired teaching of the poet was a popular one in France. Hugo, Lamartine, and Vigny were all dedicated to the belief in the redemptive power of language as a means of altering the course of history. Unlike traditional metaphysical poets, the younger generation of Romantics believed that once man understood his place within the Divine Scheme, he would and should alter his conduct in such a way as to help realize the city of God in the here and now. For them politics was very much a part of the poet's domain. It is not surprising to see that both Lamartine and Hugo were active in French government or that they read Lamennais and de Maistre with as much care as they did Shakespeare or Schiller.

Lamartine, like Hugo, dreamed of writing "the great predestined poem of the nineteenth century which was to explain man to himself, by throwing onto the poetic screen the birth, the growth, the vicissitudes of the destinies of the human race."

Elle [la poésie] ne sera plus épique; l'homme a trop vécu, trop réfléchi pour se laisser amuser ... la poésie sera de la raison chantée, voilà sa destinée pour longtemps; elle sera philosophique, religieuse, politique, sociale, comme les époques que le genre humain va traverser.

(Cited by Hunt, p. 154, from Des Destinées de la poésie, Les Méditations)

The resemblance of this passage to Hugo's preface to Les Contemplations is striking. The Romantic exaltation of self leads to a communion with a collective, historical self. These are messianic poets dedicated to preparing the public for a Utopian future.

With Les Contemplations, then, Hugo places himself intentionally within a didactic allegorical tradition. In his preface he informs the reader that he is telling the story of human destiny and describes the traditional allegorical theme of man's voyage from life to death and redemption. In Autrefois he invokes two important allegorists whom we know from his poem "Les Mages" he considered to be his literary ancestors: Milton in I, iv and Dante in III,i. That he sees himself as the nineteenth-century French reincarnation of Dante is evident from the key position of this poem at the beginning of Les Luttes et les rêves, the book that describes the hell of contemporary existence. Its title, "Ecrit sur un exemplaire de la Divina Commedia," implies that the poem was dictated to Hugo by Dante's own spirit. The identification of Hugo with Dante is further strengthened by the theme of the transmigration of souls and the final triumphant line: "Maintenant, je suis homme, et je m'appelle Dante." This dependence upon another human but prophetic guide is a theme of traditional allegory and reflects the relationship Hugo has already set up between himself and the reader in the preface, where he insists that his life is really our life as well. "Prenez done ce miroir et regardez-vous-y." The prefatory poem of Les Contemplations dramatically introduces the traditional daemonic or divinely inspired agent, who will be our guide, as the poet. The hero of the Romantic quest is not only a man of action, but a contemplative consciousness as well. In fact, for the Romantic recasting of the allegorical tale, redemption lies in the hero's image-making powers.

    Un jour je vis, debout au bord des flots mouvants,
      Passer, gonflant ses voiles,
    Un rapide navire enveloppé de vents,
      De vagues et d'étoiles;
    Et j'entendis, penché sur l'abîme des cieux,
      Que l'autre abîme touche,     Me parler à l'oreille une voix dont mes yeux
      Ne voyaient pas la bouche:
    "Poète, tu fais bien! Poète au triste front,
      Tu rêves près des ondes,
    Et tu tires des mers bien des choses qui sont
      Sous les vagues profondes!
    La mer, c'est le Seigneur, que, misère ou bonheur,
      Tout destin montre et nomme;
    Le vent, c'est le Seigneur; l'astre, c'est le Seigneur;
      Le navire, c'est l'homme."

The three levels of existence — individual, historical, and metaphysical — are all evoked by the age-old figure of the ship. The poet, like the sails of the ship, has been filled with the breath of Divinity. Thus the literary voyage the reader is about to undertake must be viewed as an act of faith. As Hugo later says in La Contemplation suprême: "L'héroisme est une affirmation religieuse."

Thus if one is to take Hugo's chapter organization, preface, and poeticized dates seriously, Les Contemplations as a whole seems to constitute a narrative that affirms the providential nature of creation. It is a sacred book, a kind of new scripture, in that it claims to reveal that obscure but ideal order to us. The meaning of individual poems is deciphered by the ordering consciousness of 1855. Mythic chronology emerges from under historical chronology as the poet-decipherer scratches away at the palimpsest of his own life. The poet of 1855 is able to see that order because he is "dead" — that is to say he himself has passed through all stages of human destiny and has turned back to tell the tale.

... c'est une âme qui se raconte dans ces deux volumes. Autrefois, Aujourd'hui. Un abîme les sépare, le tombeau. (Préface)

If it is plausible, then, that Hugo's collection constitutes an integrated allegorical narrative rather than a loosely bound assortment of separate works, it is important to determine more precisely the nature of the quest. I have already suggested that the daemonic guide is a contemplative consciousness rather than a man of action. The title Hugo chose for his collection emphasizes at the outset the focus of the work.

The individual poems, or, by extension, the six books, are to be understood as separate contemplative experiences which together lead to the revelation of an Ideal Logos; hence the plural, Les Contemplations. The abstract notion of contemplation is thus objectified and naturalized into a series of perceivable experiences. Each book focuses on a new level of an evolving spiritual and poetic awareness: Book I — organic nature, Book II — earthly love, Book VI — society, Book IV — personal suffering, Book V — prophetic duty, and Book VI — supernatural reality. Thus the collection begins and ends with the world outside the subjective consciousness (nature-surnature), but the metaphysical significance of that world cannot be felt until the poetic imagination has acted upon it. Hence the Romantic inwardness characteristic of Chateaubriand or Rousseau, for example, is merely an important stage in the quest that leads beyond the alienation of human thought. Hugo's presenting the reader with the poet as his guide would suggest that the reader is being introduced into a structure that reflects the image-making process itself, that is to say, into an allegory of the poetic process. There is external evidence to support this view.

A few years after the publication of Les Contemplations, Hugo wrote a series of prose works in which he discussed the steps in the creative process. In Philosophie, commencement d'un livre he divides the experience of metaphysical contemplation into three stages: "observer," "penser," "prier." First one can observe with the naked eye the magnificence of creation. After this period of enthusiastic observation, there follows a terrible sense of alienation:

Une fois l'éblouissement de cette quantité de soleils passé, le coeur se serre, l'esprit tressaille, une idée vertigineuse et funèbre lui apparaît ... l'état normal du ciel, c'est la nuit. ... Cet immense monde que nous voyons et dont nous sommes, serait done l'enfer? (ed. Massin, Vol. XII, pp. 30-1)

The final stage, that of prayer, is described as the rediscovery of natural order and the communication of it to the alienated world of men. That order is now "supernatural" and the contemplator is reborn as a kind of cosmic self:

Le cerveau s'écroule; ceci s'en va. Où? Dans le prodigieux réceptacle du moi impérissable, dans la solidarité pensante de la création, dans le rendezvous des consciences, distinctes, quoique en communion; dans le lieu d'équilibre des libertés et des responsabilités; dans la vaste égalité de lumière universelle où les âmes sont les oiseaux des astres, dans l'infini. (Ibid., p. 50)

These three stages which result in the birth of a visionary work correspond to the "sourire," "sanglot," "bruit du clairon" evolution outlined in the preface to Les Contemplations. One can find them represented in Books I-II, III-IV, and V-VI respectively. The work Hugo put together from the poetic fragments of his past is both a spiritual way and a poetic grimaire.

That Les Contemplations is really a religio-poetic allegory becomes clearer when one compares its formal organization to the metaphysical system as it is described in the final revelatory poem, "Ce que dit la bouche d'ombre." It is no accident that the reader is not given this key until the very end of the initiatory experience, for otherwise he would suffer no transformation. He would remain fixed in the alienated stage of "penser" in his relationship to the work. Angus Fletcher has commented upon the cryptic nature of all allegorical literature:

If the style was and still remains difficult, that puts it in the main tradition of prophetic literature. ... The poet can always justify his obscurity ... because he claims to be presenting an inspired message. This is not mere allegorical cleverness. It is the attitude of the prophet who in turn is reading the mind of some higher Being. ... Allegory thus would reach its highest plane in a symbolism that conveys the action of the mind, (my italics)

Very briefly, then, here is a description of the metaphysical system outlined in "Ce que dit la bouche d'ombre." At the moment of Creation, imperfection or evil is born. Otherwise Creation would be indistinguishable from God or Perfect Unity. Nevertheless, at the very beginnings of Creation, this imperfection is nearly invisible. Matter consists of diaphanous angelic forms through which Divinity shines forth. Yet it is the nature of Creation that imperfection create more imperfection, and that the increasing weight of matter pull it further and further away from original purity. Thus there is established a ladder of being: angels or spirits are at the top, and the heaviest, mute forms at the bottom. Man exists somewhere in the middle, and he is distinguished by his consciousness which is a reflection of the original, Divine Logos. Thus, within Hugo's scheme of things, the cause of the Fall — the desire to know — is the source of man's potential redemption. He is in fact free to choose between a life devoted to the material existence, which reflects his fallen condition, and a life devoted to the contemplation of that superior and immaterial reality from which he issued. His soul is the reflection of that reality. Indeed, all things in the chain of being have souls and hence must be treated lovingly, but only man is capable of bringing about his own transcendence. Contemplation of his own essence and contemplation of God are synonymous. By turning material reality into communicable thought, that is to say by poeticizing his life, man moves closer to those divine origins. Thus God can be perceived by the highly developed contemplative genius through his imperfect and imprisoned material self.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Les Contemplations of Victor Hugo by Suzanne Nash. Copyright © 1976 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• Frontmatter, pg. i
• Preface, pg. vii
• Contents, pg. xi
• Introduction, pg. 1
• I. The Allegorical Nature and Context of Hugo's Work, pg. 13
• II. The Structure of Hugo's Allegory, pg. 34
• III. Leopoldine—Mediating Angel, pg. 52
• IV. Aurore, pg. 79
• V. L'Ame en fleur, pg. 108
• VI. Les Luttes et les reves, pg. 124
• VII. Pauca meae, pg. 136
• VIII. En marche, pg. 150
• IX. Au bord de I'infini, pg. 171
• X. A celle qui est restee en France, pg. 194
• Conclusion, pg. 205
• A Selected Bibliography, pg. 209
• Index, pg. 223