Author: Wang Kai
February 26 marks the 220th anniversary of the birth of victor Hugo, a giant of world literature. Hugo, a leading figure in the French Romantic literary movement and one of the most talented writers in the history of French literature, began his literary work during the Restoration Dynasty and died in the Third Republic, a literary career of 60 years. Hugo's creation reflects the major historical and literary processes of 19th-century France, and in a sense, his literary world is a true portrayal of the reality of France at that time.
Hugo.
Hugo's former home during his exile in Guernsey is the "High City Residence".
Hugo's head, now in the Hugo House in Paris.
Precocious poet
On February 26, 1802, in a small building in besançon, France, there was a cry of a baby, this child was the world's most famous literary hero Victor Hugo.
Coming from a military family, Hugo's father was a Republican and an officer under Napoleon, who was sent to Spain and was awarded the rank of general by Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain, who became a close confidant of the king. Hugo, who had traveled to Italy and Spain with his father as a child, would never forget the trip he took in a stagecoach throughout France, along which included peaks, fields, forests, and branches of bloody corpses, which Hugo and his brothers looked at through the window glass. Contrary to her father, Hugo's mother was politically loyal to the royalists and stubbornly opposed Napoleon. Hugo's father fought on the battlefield for many years and had no time to take care of his children, Hugo grew up with his mother, was influenced by his mother, and became a loyalist of the royalists.
Hugo was born bright, began writing poetry when he was a teenager, and was a precocious poet. In 1817, in order to commemorate saint-Louis, the Académie de France held a poetry competition under the theme of "Studying the Happiness Brought by the Living Environment", and the 15-year-old Hugo won the first encouragement prize. The famous romantic pioneer Chateaubriand hailed Hugo as a "child prodigy", and Hugo himself said: "Either become Chateaubriand or live a lifetime." This is the first ambition that the young Hugo has set for himself, he wants to become a literary giant.
During this period, after years of "Cold War", Hugo's parents finally dissolved their marriage, and the custody of several children was vested in the mother's name. But none of the Hugo brothers were able to stand on their own, so the father still bore the cost of living for their mother and son. According to his father's wishes, Hugo was supposed to study law or engineering, but he was obsessed with literature and poetry, eager to make a big splash in the field. Hugo's love of poetry greatly regretted his father, but he was not a stubborn man, and when he saw that his child was so attached to poetry, he acquiesced to Hugo's literary dream, and he had no reason to forbid the child's noble pursuit.
In the early 1820s, when Hugo was just 20 years old, his first collection of poems, Carols and Ballads, was published. Hugo also began to write novels while writing poetry, but the novels of this period, such as "Icelandic Devil King", were not mature in thought and art, and they were not the same as his future works.
In 1827, Hugo published the play Cromwell and its preface. The play could not be performed because it did not meet the requirements of stage art, but the preface became an epoch-making document in the history of literature, considered a declaration of Romanticism, and Hugo became the leader of Romanticism from then on.
"Forced" out of "Notre Dame de Paris"
After the publication of Cromwell's Preface, Hugo became famous in one fell swoop, and in the struggle against classicism, Hugo's ideas developed newly, gradually departing from the royalist position. Since the late 1920s, Hugo has created many colorful romantic plays, poems and novels, showing quite an astonishing creative power. Flogging the sins of the feudal rulers, exposing the darkness and injustice of society, and showing sympathy for the oppressed and the poor were the main elements of Hugo's works of this period.
In 1831, Hugo published his novel Notre Dame de Paris. This work has a great impact, has endured for hundreds of years, and its creative process is also very interesting, it is a novel that has been "forced".
After Hugo became popular, many publishers rushed to publish his works, and Hugo was busy writing poems, plays, and novels. Once, a bookstore owner named Goslan came to visit and wanted to buy Hugo's script. Hugo was not at home at the time, and there were many guests, and Hugo's wife did not know Goslan, so she did not speak to him, and Goslan thought that he was insulted and left.
Afterwards, Goslan wrote to Hugo, saying that Mrs. Hugo had neglected him, and in retaliation, he demanded that Hugo fulfill the publishing contract as scheduled. It turned out that Hugo had signed a contract with Goslan to sell him the copyright to Notre Dame de Paris, stipulating that the delivery date was April 1829. But hugo was too busy to start the novel at all, and Goslan never urged him, but now he was forced to submit it immediately. Hugo was so anxious that he had to consult with Goslan, and finally reached an agreement, and then gave Hugo a few months to deliver the manuscript by February 1, 1831, otherwise he would be fined 1,000 francs a week later, and the conditions were quite harsh.
But Hugo had no choice but to accede to Goslan's request. He bought a large bottle of ink, locked his social dress in the closet, resisted the temptation of the outside world, and immersed himself completely in the novel. In fact, for the creation of this novel, Hugo has been conceiving for 3 years, reading a large number of historical materials, and examining the remains of the ancient buildings of Paris. It can be said that the overall framework and character image of the novel have long been in the chest, and when he picks up the pen, these materials gush out like a spring. On January 14, 1831, Hugo completed his last line, the famous romantic novel. At this time, a bottle of ink just ran out, and for this reason, Hugo wanted to rename the novel "The Connotation of a Bottle of Ink", but later because this name was used by another writer, the matter was abandoned.
Creation of Les Misérables in exile
In December 1851, Louis Bonaparte staged a coup d'état, and Hugo participated in an anti-coup uprising organized by Republicans. Napoleon III used terror and ruthlessly suppressed the rebels, and Hugo was persecuted and had to go into exile until 19 years later.
During his exile, Hugo persisted in his crusade against Napoleon III, publishing the political satire pamphlet "Little Napoleon" and the article "The Beginning and End of a Crime" exposing the process of the coup d'état. In 1853, Hugo published a collection of political satire poems, The Punishment Collection, in which he exposed the bloody crimes of Napoleon III in suppressing the people with great anger, and the poetry collection was full of revolutionary momentum and critical power.
Hugo lived in Jersey, England, and he chose it because the islanders spoke French and were on the french coast. In the late autumn of 1855, the British government expelled Hugo from Jersey in order to please Napoleon III, and Hugo dragged his family to Guernsey, which was smaller than Jersey. Exile was meant to be a life of wandering, and Hugo's family moved to Guernsey, doomed to be another hectic. In April 1856, Hugo's Meditation Collection was published simultaneously in Paris and Brussels, with great success, and received a considerable fee for the manuscript, which he used to buy a small three-story building and named it "Gao chengju".
Hugo lived a carefree life in the "High City Residence", where sports and writing were his main tasks, during which time he wrote the long work Les Misérables, which was published in 1862. Les Misérables went through a long period from conception to completion. As early as 1828, Hugo had heard a true story: in 1806, a convict named Pierre Moran was received by the bishop, who entrusted him to a general; Moran later became a serious man, ransom, and finally died heroically at Waterloo. This story is the prototype of Les Misérables. Many of the material in the book comes from Hugo's personal experience, and Marius's thought in the novel has gone through three stages of development from royalists to Bonapartists to Republicans, which is consistent with the trajectory of Hugo's ideological development, and this character clearly has the shadow of Hugo himself.
"Les Misérables" is the pinnacle of Hugo's literary creation, and even he himself can't help but marvel: "This work is a big mountain." "It seems very appropriate that Les Misérables received this review today. Picture is an infographic (Wang Kai)
Source: Hainan Daily