HUGO. 294 HUGO. Scott's KenUworth — Jmy llobsart (1829), a fail- ure — and Marion Ihlunnv, which tin- ci'iisur- ship turhnde thi- stage till lS:il. In 182<J Hu<;u published Lvs Uiiiiitalcs, a eulleotion of poems contaiiiiii'; some of the most striking pieeea of metril'al art in the world. They were followed l>y the loiig-eoiitested triumph of Ihrmini and of Kumantieism on the French stage (1830), after Hugo had vainly tried to bring al)out the x-t- formance of Marion Dilonnv. l-'or nearly a hun- dred days, from Kebruary 2(ith to .lune oth, the battle raged nightly at the Thi'i'itre Kran(;ais. hut no further organized elfort was made to resist the retrograde evolution of the Itomantic drama till it collapsed with Hugo's Lcs ISuri/rurrs in 1843. The situation in llcrnani is strained and dramat- ically unreal, the sentiment is mawUish. tlie ora- tory grandiloquent: hut a throbbing life and in- tensely ex]uessed emotion maintain the interest, though this is a lyric rather than' a dramatic one. The same ipialilies and the same defects, with nmre strained antithesis of grotesi|iie and sub- lime, tragic and comic, foul and fair, character- ize Marion Uiloniif (183(1). They characterize also he roi s'amusc (1832); the prose drannis, Lucrirc Borgin (1833); Marie Tudor (1833);
.■tii,
er were distrusted
by his fellow He])ublicans. He lied to ISrussels, whence he was urgently recpiested to move on to Kngland, and resided first in .Jersey, then in Guernsey, as near France as possible, consistent- ly scorning every oiler of amnesty till the col- lap.se of the Second Knipirc brought him back to share the darkest davs of the Terrible Year (1870-71). The.se years of exile steeled his mind, and his gcniui, was lircd l),v what seemed his cimntry'a shame. In 1852 appeared the fierce ami scur- rilous yajioleon le t'ctit, a foretaste of the Lea ihulinients (1853) in which the satiric unites with the lyric genius to pmduee a classic that will survive for generations the Empire that fired Hugo to a wliite heat. To calmer hours we owe Lis eonlein Illations (185ti), a collection of lyrics closing in a noble strain, and the lirst of four vtdumcs of />« leyende des siirlts (185!), 1877, 1883), the high-water nuuk of his achievement in lyrical epic. In 18(')2 the longlieralded Les M iserables apjieared on the same day in ten lan- guages — an event till then unparalleled in the annals of letters. The ten volumes of this vast romance reveal Hugo, no longer as in Nolre- Dunte, an cvoker of the past, but with eyes on the present and heart in the future. It lacks con- tinuit.v and proportion. It is a chaos of eloquent special (ilcading, jiolitical remini.scences, socialis- tic prophecies, bad psychology, groU-.sque situa- tions, false pathos, and descriptions wonderfully vivid and absorbing. In the hurly-burly of this lyric-epic novel we find most of the virtues and all the intellectual vices of Hugo. Its value lies not in its thought, but in its emotion, its lyric cry, and its epic power of description. On the development of fiction it had no influence, for it belonged to a type already outworn. The same may be .said of Lis Irarailleitrs de la m'rr (IStiti), in which the descriptions are superb, and the subject petty. L'homme (/ui rit (18ti!t). an his- torical phantasmagoria of the English Court of F.lizaheth and an unmitigated failure, closes the fiction of the exile. .Meanwhile Hugo's poetic muse h.id had her Indian sununer in Chansons des rues ct des hois {1S(!5). I?ut as the I'.nipire tottered to its fall, his inauspicious interest in politics became once more dominant. He wrote nuich for Lc Rappcl. a radical journal, founded by his sons and son-in-law. but revealed once more, in 1870. the hopelessl.v unpractical nature of his political ideas, alike as a i)ropliet of the people and as a member of the N.ttioniil Assembly at Bordeaux in 1871. He resigned his seat in ifarch and went to Bnissels, where he barelv escaj>ed being mobbed, owing to his defense of the Paris Commune. He was expelled from Helgium. and soon after returned to Paris, Here he failed signally in the elections of 1872, though he was elected life Senator in 187(5. But if he might not be a tribune, he was already the ]>oet laureate of the Third Republic. Of the Les chutiments 100.000 copies were sold within a year, several pla.vs, notably Uuii lilas. were re- vived with success, and he rose to the new oc- casion in L'annee terrible (1872). a noble vol- ume of patriotic verse that made a French critic exclaim, with just pride, that Germany had no such poet to sing her victory as France to glorify even her disaster.
