Victor Hugo, novelist, poet, and dramatist, was the most important of the French Romantic writers. In an era when France was the greatest nation of the Continent, most of the nineteenth century, Victor Hugo and Napoleon were the dominant personalities of the country. He was given a national funeral on May 22,1985, attended by two million people, and buried in the Pantheon.
Hugo developed his own version of the historical novel, combining concrete historical details with vivid, melodramatic, even feverish imagination. Among his best-known works are the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables.
I thought that it might be appropriate to share some of his famous quotes.
“Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
“When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.”
“He who opens a school door closes a prison.”
“Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.”
“There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”
“Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education”
“There is a great spectacle, and that is the sea. There is a greater spectacle than the sea, and that is the sky. There is yet a greater spectacle than the sky, and that is the interior of the soul.”
Victor Hugo gained fame in 1831 with the publishing of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. This story has become part of the popular culture. The novel tells a moving story of a gypsy girl Esmeralda and the deformed deaf bell ringer, Quasimoda, who loves her and ultimately gives his life in a vain attempt to save her from her executioner.
Hugo’s lyrical style was rich, intense and full of powerful sounds and rhythms. Hugo was seen by his fans a Gargantuan, larger-than-life character and rumors spread that he could eat half an ox at a single sitting, fast for three days, and work non-stop for a week.
When a coup d’etat by Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) took place in 1851, Hugo believed his life in danger. “Louis Napoleon is a traitor,” he had declared. “ He had violated the Constitution!” Hugo fled to ultimately to Guernsey in the English Channel. He lived in exile for close to twenty years. In 1862, he completed Les Miserables (1862) an epic story about social injustice. The book is set in the French underworld. The protagonist, Jean Valjean, a petty criminal, ultimately reforms and becomes a benefactor.
Quotes from “Les Miserables”
“Man has a body that is both his burden and his temptation. He ought to watch over it. Keep it in bounds, repress it, and obey it only as a last resort. It may be wrong to obey even then, but if so the fault is venial. It is fall, but a fall unto the knees, which may end in prayer.” Ironically, in his private life, Hugo gained a richly deserved promiscuous notoriety. Almost to the end of his life, he courted several mistresses simultaneously.
“Prosperity supposes capacity. Win in the lottery and you are an able man.”
“Would you realize what Revolution is, call it Progress; and would you realize what Progress is, call it tomorrow.”
“Great Blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers.”
In 1870, after the Prussian defeat of France, Louis Napoleon abdicated. The proclamations of the Third Republic enticed Hugo to return to France He was elected Senator of Paris in 1876.
