Victor Hugo: biography, characteristics, phrases

Victor Hugo is one of the most celebrated French personalities. He was a thinker, critic, poet, playwright, novelist, politician and plastic artist. Author of countless poems, engaged novels, plays, critical essays on literature and dramaturgy, in addition to political writings, his vast intellectual legacy transformed him, while still alive, into a national hero.

Exponent of romanticism French, Victor Hugo's work and public life were dedicated to themes such as social inequality and the struggle for civil rights.

Read too: Romanticism in Brazil – particularities of this literary movement on Brazilian soil

Victor Hugo Biography

Natural from Besancon, city in eastern France, Victor-Marie Hugo born on February 26, 1802. His father, Count Joseph Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo, was a general in the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte. His mother, Sophie Trébucher, on the other hand, was a royalist. Victor Hugo's childhood was crossed, therefore, by constant disagreements between his parents, as well as by frequent trips accompanying his father in the service of the Napoleonic army and even to other countries such as Italy and Spain.

Since his youth, he had literary aspirations, and, contrary to his father's wishes, who wanted to see him as a student at the Polytechnic School, graduated fromlaw School. However, young Victor Hugo had other plans, less related to working with the law. Encouraged by your mother, he started to publish literary articles, with emphasis on those dealing with the poets Alphonse de Lamartine and André de Chénier, between 1819 and 1821.

After his mother's death in 1821, Victor Hugo married a childhood friend, Adèle Foucher, with whom he had five children. That same year he published his first book.

The author was a writer of multiple genres and recognized success in his time, winning several awards, becoming a member of the French Academy and also publishing magazines and journalistic texts. He was also a visual artist, but his more than four thousand drawings were never exhibited during his lifetime, being still little known to the general public.

Portrait of Victor Hugo.

In 1845, already famous, rich and close to the Court, became a member of the French Senate. Combative, Victor Hugo was known for his speech always concerned with the situation of the poor and miserable in France, which increased more and more in number. His posture, once monarchist, became republican and liberal after the 1848 Revolution.

He campaigned on behalf of Prince Napoleon III, but when he was elected, he violated the Constitution and installed a dictatorship. Victor Hugo took a stand against the Napoleon III regime, which earned him a exile over 18 years, a period in which he lived in several cities outside France, such as Brussels, Jersey and Guernsey.

Upon returning to France, was elected deputy in 1870, also occupying the position of president of the left wing of the National Assembly. Then, in 1876, he was elected senator again.

Victor Hugo died at the age of 83, in Paris, on May 22, 1885. He was given a funeral with national honors and was buried in the Panthéon, a monument where the remains of so-called French national heroes are located.

Literary Life of Victor Hugo

It is from 1821 the first book by Victor Hugo, a volume of poems entitled Odes and various poems, from which stand out the classic style of form, an intimate and personal voice of the poet, his style of working with fantasy themes and something about his political ideas. His monarchical position, revealed by the verses, earned him, with this work, a pension from King Louis XVIII.

In 1823 he wrote his first novel, Hans from Iceland, one historical fiction which caught the attention of the journalist Charles Nodier, leading him to introduce the author to his group of enthusiastic romantic intellectuals. This literary group was called the Cénacle and involved great names in addition to Victor Hugo, such as Alfred du Musset, Alphonse de Lamartine, Théophile Gauthier, and Gérard de Nerval.

In the years 1824 to 1826, Victor Hugo released two more volumes of poems, plus a new novel. But it's with the publication of your first play, entitled Cromwell, of 1827, that the author was consecrated asrepresentative of french romanticism: in his preface, Victor Hugo identifies this publication as an action drama appropriate to modern man in his battleground of matter and spirit, capable of transcending the categories of classicism and mix the sublime and the grotesque.

It was mainly from the publication of Notre-Dame de Paris[Our Lady of Paris], in 1831, who Victor Hugo started togain success. The historical novel dates back to medieval Paris, from the reign of Louis XI, and portrays an inhuman society in the figures of deacon Claude Frollo and the captain Phoebus de Châteaupers, who make misfortunes and ridicule accumulate about the hunchback of Quasimodo, the bell-ringer of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, and also of the gypsy Emerald.

Victor Hugo was an author of many works and wished to be the great voice, the sound echo of its time. He dedicated plays, novels and poems to denounce the workers' misery, to the main problems of the 19th century and also to the great and eternal human issues, and so eloquently that it moved the minds of those who read it.

Defender of monarchy in his youth, Victor Hugo became a great republican, engaging in French political life and reverberating his ideals of freedom and social justice in many of his works..

The most famous of these was probably the novel The miserable, first published in 1862, a great fictionalized compendium of denunciations against poverty and social inequality that affected France in the first half of the 19th century. Centered on the character Jean Valjean, sentenced to 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread, The miserable portrays a grand panorama of Parisian society and its underworld.

Read too: Condoreira - Brazilian movement inspired by the libertarian ideals of Victor Hugo

Literary Characteristics of Victor Hugo

Portrait of Victor Hugo undated, taken from the book modern history, Russian publication of 2008.[1]

• multiple genres: the writer has worked in prose, poetry, drama, criticism and journalism;

• historical fiction: frequently, the author's novels, poems and plays date back to historical occasions in France;

• political issues: engagement in support of social causes and in defense of the poor and disadvantaged;

• Philosophical Themes: the problem of evil and freedom and metaphysical issues are also axes that guide his work;

• Idealism: great exponent of French romanticism, he transformed his characters into legendary heroes. The idealization of women is also present;

• The "enlightened" poet: the figure of the poet appears as the bearer of the function of guiding men in search of peace, the fraternal union of humanity and other idealistic principles;

• I lyrical linked to nature: search for a relationship between humanity and the natural universe through poetry — man as a being belonging to nature;

• Praise of progress and science;

• Union of the sublime and the grotesque: the valorization of the grotesque gives way to the creation of fantastic, obscure or considered out of the ordinary elements, and creates contrasts and shadows with what is seen as beautiful and sublime.

Main works by Victor Hugo

• Affairs

Hans from Iceland (1823)

Jargal bug (1826)

the last day of a convict (1829)

Our Lady of Paris (1831)

The miserable (1862)

the workers of the sea (1866)

the man who laughs (1869)

Ninety-three (1874)

• Poetry

Odes and ballads (1822)

new odes (1824)

the orientals (1829)

twilight corners (1835)

the punishments (1853)

the contemplations (1856)

the legend of the centuries (1859)

Songs from the streets and the woods (1865)

the supreme piety (1879)

the art of being a grandfather (1877)

the four winds of the spirit (1881)

• theater

Cromwell (1827)

marion de lorme (1828)

hernani (1830)

the king has fun (1832)

Lucrezia Borgia (1833)

Mary Tudor (1833)

angelo (1835)

Ruy Bras (1838)

the burgraves (1843)

Torque (1869)

• Critical essays and political writings

Napoleon the little (1852)

oratory works (1853)

William Shakespeare (1864)

acts and wordsI and II (1875)

acts and wordsIII (1876)

Also access: José de Alencar – great name in romantic prose in Brazil

Sentences

"Tolerance is the best of religions."

"The time comes when it is not enough to just protest: after philosophy, action is indispensable."

"The ultimate happiness in life is the conviction of being loved for what you are, or rather despite what you are."

"Hope would be the greatest of human strength, if despair did not exist."

“The beautiful is as useful as the useful. Maybe even more.”

“Humanity means identity. The men are all of the same clay.”

"Freedom begins where ignorance ends."

"It is the features of the years that make up the physiognomy of the centuries."

“We resist the invasion of armies; we can't resist the invasion of ideas.”

"The realities of the soul, because they are not visible and palpable, they are also realities."

Image credits

[1] Neveshkin Nikolay / Shutterstock

by Luiza Brandino
Literature teacher 

Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/victor-hugo.htm