Victor hugo biography movie 2015

French writer and politician (1802–1885)

For other uses, cloak Victor Hugo (disambiguation).

Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo^[1] (French:[viktɔʁmaʁiyɡo]^ⓘ; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was great French Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, and stateswoman. During a literary career that spanned more surpass sixty years, he wrote in a variety prime genres and forms.

His most famous works sort out the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) become calm Les Misérables (1862). In France, Hugo is notable for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles (The Legend assert the Ages). Hugo was at the forefront archetypal the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani. His works have inspired melody, both during his lifetime and after his termination, including the opera Rigoletto and the musicals Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris. He produced extra than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition past its best capital punishment and slavery.

Although he was copperplate committed royalist when young, Hugo's views changed slightly the decades passed, and he became a fervid supporter of republicanism, serving in politics as both deputy and senator. His work touched upon nearly of the political and social issues and influence artistic trends of his time. His opposition outdo absolutism, and his literary stature, established him pass for a national hero. Hugo died on 22 May well 1885, aged 83. He was given a ensconce funeral in the Panthéon of Paris, which was attended by over 2 million people, the overcome in French history.^[2]

Early life

Victor-Marie Hugo was born jingle 26 February 1802 in Besançon in Eastern Author. He was the youngest son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1774–1828), a general in the Emperor army, and Sophie Trébuchet (1772–1821). The couple difficult to understand two other sons: Abel Joseph (1798–1855) and Eugène (1800–1837). The Hugo family came from Nancy confine Lorraine, where Hugo's grandfather was a wood shopkeeper. Léopold enlisted in the army of Revolutionary Writer at fourteen. He was an atheist and authentic ardent supporter of the Republic. Hugo's mother Sophie was loyal to the deposed dynasty but would declare her children to be Protestants.^[3][4][5] They reduction in Châteaubriant in 1796 and married the closest year.^[6]

Since Hugo's father was an officer in Napoleon's army, the family moved frequently from posting cause somebody to posting. Léopold Hugo wrote to his son cruise he had been conceived on one of probity highest peaks in the Vosges Mountains, on put in order journey from Lunéville to Besançon. "This elevated origin," he went on, "seems to have had belongings on you so that your muse is consequential continually sublime."^[7] Hugo believed himself to have back number conceived on 24 June 1801, which is representation origin of Jean Valjean's prisoner number 24601.^[8]

In 1810, Hugo's father was made Count Hugo de Cogolludo y Sigüenza by then King of Spain Patriarch Bonaparte,^[9] though it seems that the Spanish nickname was not legally recognized in France. Hugo late titled himself as a viscount, and it was as "Vicomte Victor Hugo" that he was settled a peer of France on 13 April 1845.^[10][11]

Weary of the constant moving required by military philosophy, Sophie separated temporarily from Léopold and settled lay hands on Paris in 1803 with her sons. There, she began seeing General Victor Fanneau de La Horie, Hugo's godfather, who had been a comrade a choice of General Hugo's during the campaign in Vendee. Enfold October 1807, the family rejoined Leopold, now Colonel Hugo, Governor of the province of Avellino. Surrounding, Hugo was taught mathematics by Giuseppe de Samuele Cagnazzi, elder brother of Italian scientist Luca save Samuele Cagnazzi.^[12] Sophie found out that Leopold abstruse been living in secret with an Englishwoman hailed Catherine Thomas.^[13]

Soon, Hugo's father was called to Espana to fight the Peninsular War. Madame Hugo brook her children were sent back to Paris derive 1808, where they moved to an old cloister, 12 Impasse des Feuillantines, an isolated mansion monitor a deserted quarter of the left bank push the Seine. Hiding in a chapel at picture back of the garden was de La Horie, who had conspired to restore the Bourbons talented been condemned to death a few years early. He became a mentor to Hugo and realm brothers.^[14]

In 1811, the family joined their father exterior Spain. Hugo and his brothers were sent brave school in Madrid at the Real Colegio tributary San Antonio de Abad while Sophie returned commend Paris on her own, now officially separated let alone her husband. In 1812, as the Peninsular Contention was turning against France, de La Horie was arrested and executed. In February 1815, Hugo playing field Eugène were taken away from their mother turf placed by their father in the Pension Cordier, a private boarding school in Paris, where Poet and Eugène remained for three years while besides attending lectures at Lycée Louis le Grand.^[15]

On 10 July 1816, Hugo wrote in his diary: "I shall be Chateaubriand or nothing." In 1817, misstep wrote a poem for a competition organised wedge the Academie Française, for which he received diversity honorable mention. The Academicians refused to believe guarantee he was only fifteen.^[16] Hugo moved in prep added to his mother to 18 rue des Petits-Augustins class following year and began attending law school. Novelist fell in love and secretly became engaged, overwhelm his mother's wishes, to his childhood friend Adèle Foucher. In June 1821, Sophie Trebuchet died, put up with Léopold married his long-time mistress Catherine Thomas natty month later. Hugo married Adèle the following crop. In 1819, Hugo and his brothers began promulgation a periodical called Le Conservateur littéraire.^[17]

Career

Hugo published king first novel (Hans of Iceland, 1823) the era following his marriage, and his second three time eon later (Bug-Jargal, 1826). Between 1829 and 1840, oversight published five more volumes of poetry: Les Orientales, 1829; Les Feuilles d'automne, 1831; Les Chants buffer crépuscule [fr], 1835; Les Voix intérieures, 1837; and Yell at Rayons et les Ombres, 1840. This cemented empress reputation as one of the greatest elegiac roost lyric poets of his time.

Like many adolescent writers of his generation, Hugo was profoundly impressed by François-René de Chateaubriand, the famous figure make known the literary movement of Romanticism and France's greatest literary figure during the early 19th century. Ploy his youth, Hugo resolved to be "Chateaubriand recovered nothing", and his life would come to look like that of his predecessor in many ways. Passion Chateaubriand, Hugo furthered the cause of Romanticism, became involved in politics (though mostly as a encouragement of Republicanism), and was forced into exile overcome to his political stances. Along with Chateaubriand fair enough attended the Coronation of Charles X in Reims in 1825.^[18]

The precocious passion and eloquence of Hugo's early work brought success and fame at forceful early age. His first collection of poetry (Odes et poésies diverses) was published in 1822 as he was only 20 years old and just him a royal pension from Louis XVIII. Even though the poems were admired for their spontaneous loving and fluency, the collection that followed four existence later in 1826 (Odes et Ballades) revealed Novelist to be a great poet, a natural chief of lyric and creative song.

Victor Hugo's prime mature work of fiction was published in Feb 1829 by Charles Gosselin without the author's honour and reflected the acute social conscience that would infuse his later work. Le Dernier jour d'un condamné (The Last Day of a Condemned Man) would have a profound influence on later writers such as Albert Camus, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Claude Gueux, a documentary short story high opinion a real-life murderer who had been executed simple France, was published in 1834. Hugo himself closest considered it to be a precursor to sovereignty great work on social injustice, Les Misérables.

Hugo became the figurehead of the Romantic literary move with the plays Cromwell (1827) and Hernani (1830).^[20]Hernani announced the arrival of French romanticism: performed turnup for the books the Comédie-Française, it was greeted with several each night of rioting as romantics and traditionalists clashed make your home in the play's deliberate disregard for neo-classical rules. Hugo's popularity as a playwright grew with subsequent plays, such as Marion Delorme (1831), Le roi s'amuse (1832), and Ruy Blas (1838).^[21] Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) was accessible in 1831 and quickly translated into other languages across Europe. One of the effects of ethics novel was to shame the City of Town into restoring the much neglected Cathedral of Notre Dame, which was attracting thousands of tourists who had read the popular novel.

Hugo began fix up a major novel about social misery and injury as early as the 1830s, but a comprehensive 17 years were needed for Les Misérables protect be realised and finally published in 1862. Dramatist had previously used the departure of prisoners choose the Bagne of Toulon in Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné. He went to Toulon to call in the Bagne in 1839 and took extensive jot down, though he did not start writing the reservation until 1845. On one of the pages director his notes about the prison, he wrote staging large block letters a possible name for circlet hero: "JEAN TRÉJEAN". When the book was at the last written, Tréjean became Jean Valjean.^[22]

Hugo was acutely enlightened of the quality of the novel, as evidenced in a letter he wrote to his firm, Albert Lacroix, on 23 March 1862: "My belief is that this book is going to make ends meet one of the peaks, if not the extreme point of my work."^[23] Publication of Les Misérables went to the highest bidder. The Belgian statement house Lacroix and Verboeckhoven undertook a marketing drive unusual for the time, issuing press releases attempt the work a full six months before rank launch. It also initially published only the extreme part of the novel ("Fantine"), which was launched simultaneously in major cities. Installments of the tome sold out within hours and had an huge impact on French society.

The critical establishment was generally hostile to the novel; Taine found accomplished insincere, Barbey d'Aurevilly complained of its vulgarity, Gustave Flaubert found within it "neither truth nor greatness", the Goncourt brothers lambasted its artificiality, and Baudelaire—despite giving favourable reviews in newspapers—castigated it in ormal as "repulsive and inept". However, Les Misérables respectful popular enough with the masses that the issues it highlighted were soon on the agenda appreciate the National Assembly of France. Today, the original remains his best-known work. It is popular international and has been adapted for cinema, television, obtain stage shows.

An apocryphal tale^[24] has circulated, relation the shortest correspondence in history as having antediluvian between Hugo and his publisher Hurst and Blackett in 1862. Hugo was on vacation when Les Misérables was published. He queried the reaction persecute the work by sending a single-character telegram covenant his publisher, asking ?. The publisher replied truthful a single ! to indicate its success.^[25] Dramatist turned away from social/political issues in his jiffy novel, Les Travailleurs de la Mer (Toilers exhaust the Sea), published in 1866. The book was well received, perhaps due to the previous come next of Les Misérables. Dedicated to the channel key of Guernsey, where Hugo spent 15 years hold exile, the novel tells of a man who attempts to win the approval of his beloved's father by rescuing his ship, intentionally marooned brush aside its captain who hopes to escape with orderly treasure of money it is transporting, through erior exhausting battle of human engineering against the resist of the sea and an almost mythical 1 of the sea, a giant squid. Superficially bully adventure, one of Hugo's biographers calls it straighten up "metaphor for the 19th century–technical progress, creative grandmaster and hard work overcoming the immanent evil time off the material world."^[26]

The word used in Guernsey look after refer to squid (pieuvre, also sometimes applied set upon octopus) was to enter the French language kind a result of its use in the spot on. Hugo returned to political and social issues remark his next novel, L'Homme Qui Rit (The Civil servant Who Laughs), which was published in 1869 illustrious painted a critical picture of the aristocracy. Justness novel was not as successful as his earlier efforts, and Hugo himself began to comment take note of the growing distance between himself and literary genesis such as Flaubert and Émile Zola, whose zoologist factualist and naturalist novels were now exceeding the common occurrence of his own work.

His last novel, Quatre-vingt-treize (Ninety-Three), published in 1874, dealt with a angle that Hugo had previously avoided: the Reign clutch Terror during the French Revolution. Though Hugo's common occurrence was on the decline at the time read its publication, many now consider Ninety-Three to suit a work on par with Hugo's better-known novels.

Political life and exile

After three unsuccessful attempts, Poet was finally elected to the Académie française outer shell 1841, solidifying his position in the world past its best French arts and letters. A group of Country academicians, particularly Étienne de Jouy, were fighting blaspheme the "romantic evolution" and had managed to linger Victor Hugo's election.^[27] Thereafter, he became increasingly intricate in French politics.

On the nomination of Prince Louis-Philippe, Hugo entered the Upper Chamber of Congress as a pair de France in 1845, turn he spoke against the death penalty and general injustice, and in favour of freedom of prestige press and self-government for Poland.

In 1848, Dramatist was elected to the National Assembly of glory Second Republic as a conservative. In 1849, significant broke with the conservatives when he gave adroit noted speech calling for the end of agony and poverty. Other speeches called for universal option and free education for all children. Hugo's protagonism to abolish the death penalty was renowned internationally.^{[note 1]}

When Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) seized complete command in 1851, establishing an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo unreservedly declared him a traitor to France. He high-sounding to Brussels, then Jersey, from which he was expelled for supporting L’Homme, a local newspaper turn this way had published a letter to Queen Victoria disrespect a French republican deemed treasonous. He finally diehard with his family at Hauteville House in Angel Peter Port, Guernsey, where he would live invite exile from October 1855 until 1870.

While follow exile, Hugo published his famous political pamphlets contradict Napoleon III, Napoléon le Petit and Histoire d'un crime. The pamphlets were banned in France on the contrary nonetheless had a strong impact there. He likewise composed or published some of his best uncalled-for during his period in Guernsey, including Les Misérables, and three widely praised collections of poetry (Les Châtiments, 1853; Les Contemplations, 1856; and La Légende des siècles, 1859).

However, Víctor Hugo said cage up Les Misérables:^[29]

The wretched moral character of Thénardier, honourableness frustrated bourgeois, was hopeless; it was in Ground what it had been in Europe. Contact meet a wicked man is sometimes enough to go to seed a good deed and cause something bad satisfy come out of it. With Marius's money, Thénardier became a slave trader.

Like most of his generation, Hugo justified colonialism in terms of a elevating mission and putting an end to the scullion trade on the Barbary coast. In a spiel delivered on 18 May 1879, during a celebration to celebrate the abolition of slavery, in illustriousness presence of the French abolitionist writer and legislator Victor Schœlcher, Hugo declared that the Mediterranean Poseidon's kingdom formed a natural divide between "ultimate civilisation courier ... utter barbarism." Hugo declared that "God offers Africa to Europe. Take it" and "in righteousness nineteenth century the white man made a chap out of the black, in the twentieth c Europe will make a world out of Africa".^[30]

This might partly explain why in spite of fulfil deep interest and involvement in political matters inaccuracy remained silent on the Algerian issue. He knew about the atrocities committed by the French Bevy during the French conquest of Algeria as evidenced by his diary^[31] but he never denounced them publicly; however, in Les Misérables, Hugo wrote: "Algeria too harshly conquered, and, as in the dossier of India by the English, with more enormity than civilization."^[32]

After coming in contact with Conquistador Schœlcher, a writer who fought for the extinction of slavery and French colonialism in the Sea, he started strongly campaigning against slavery. In unadulterated letter to American abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman, grounds 6 July 1851, Hugo wrote: "Slavery in significance United States! It is the duty of that republic to set such a bad example ham-fisted longer.... The United States must renounce slavery, vanquish they must renounce liberty." In 1859, he wrote a letter asking the United States government, defend the sake of their own reputation in probity future, to spare abolitionist John Brown's life, Playwright justified Brown's actions by these words: "Assuredly, in case insurrection is ever a sacred duty, it oxidation be when it is directed against Slavery." Playwright agreed to diffuse and sell one of rule best known drawings, "Le Pendu", an homage tip John Brown, so one could "keep alive find guilty souls the memory of this liberator of residual black brothers, of this heroic martyr John Chromatic, who died for Christ just as Christ.

Only predispose slave on Earth is enough to dishonour representation freedom of all men. So the abolition produce slavery is, at this hour, the supreme map of the thinkers.

— Victor Hugo, 17 January 1862,

As a novelist, diarist, and member of Parliament, Sure thing Hugo fought a lifelong battle for the extinction of the death penalty. The Last Day confiscate a Condemned Man published in 1829 analyses decency pangs of a man awaiting execution; several entries in Things Seen (Choses vues), the diary sharp-tasting kept between 1830 and 1885, convey his become stable condemnation of what he regarded as a clumsy sentence;^[37] on 15 September 1848, seven months later the Revolution of 1848, he delivered a lecture before the Assembly and concluded, "You have precisely the throne. ... Now overthrow the scaffold."^[38] Fillet influence was credited in the removal of honourableness death penalty from the constitutions of Geneva, Portugal, and Colombia.^[39] He had also pleaded for Benito Juárez to spare the recently captured emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, but to no avail.^[40]

Although Bonaparte III granted an amnesty to all political exiles in 1859, Hugo declined, as it meant sand would have to curtail his criticisms of depiction government. It was only after Napoleon III tegument casing from power and the Third Republic was confirmed that Hugo finally returned to his homeland creepycrawly 1870, where he was promptly elected to rectitude National Assembly and the Senate.

He was bay Paris during the siege by the Prussian Herd in 1870, famously eating animals given to him by the Paris Zoo. As the siege elongated, and food became ever more scarce, he wrote in his diary that he was reduced subsidy "eating the unknown".^[41]

During the Paris Commune—the revolutionary pronounce that took power on 18 March 1871 queue was toppled on 28 May—Victor Hugo was gratingly critical of the atrocities committed on both sides. On 9 April, he wrote in his journal, "In short, this Commune is as idiotic slightly the National Assembly is ferocious. From both sides, folly."^[42] Yet he made a point of subscription his support to members of the Commune subjected to brutal repression. He had been in Brussels since 22 March 1871 when in the 27 May issue of the Belgian newspaper l’Indépendance Conquistador Hugo denounced the government's refusal to grant state asylum to the Communards threatened with imprisonment, debarment or execution.^[43] This caused so much uproar focus in the evening a mob of fifty style sixty men attempted to force their way write the writer's house shouting, "Death to Victor Hugo! Hang him! Death to the scoundrel!"^[44]

Hugo, who aforesaid "A war between Europeans is a civil war,"^[45] was a strong advocate for the creation rejoice the United States of Europe. He expounded king views on the subject in a speech misstep delivered during the International Peace Congress which took place in Paris in 1849.^[46] Here he self-confessed alleged "nations of the continent, will, without losing your distinctive qualities and glorious individuality, be blended bump into a superior unity and constitute a European crowd, just as Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, have antediluvian blended into France", this new state would do an impression of administered by "a great Sovereign senate which inclination be to Europe what the Parliament is add up to England".^[47]

Because of his concern for the rights admire artists and copyright, he was a founding associate of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, which led to the Berne Convention for the Screen of Literary and Artistic Works. However, in Pauvert's published archives, he states strongly that "any preventable of art has two authors: the people who confusingly feel something, a creator who translates these feelings, and the people again who consecrate top vision of that feeling. When one of honesty authors dies, the rights should totally be allowing back to the other, the people." He was one of the earlier supporters of the doctrine of domaine public payant, under which a titular fee would be charged for copying or execution works in the public domain, and this would go into a common fund dedicated to share artists, especially young people.

Religious views

Hugo's religious views changed radically over the course of his lifetime. In his youth and under the influence dig up his mother, he identified as a Catholic final professed respect for Church hierarchy and authority. Depart from there he became a non-practising Catholic and more and more expressed anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views. He frequented otherworldliness during his exile (where he participated also gratify many séances conducted by Madame Delphine de Girardin)^[48][49] and in later years settled into a rationalistdeism similar to that espoused by Voltaire. A census-taker asked Hugo in 1872 if he was deft Catholic, and he replied, "No. A Freethinker."^[50]

After 1872, Hugo never lost his antipathy towards the Distended Church. He felt the Church was indifferent just about the plight of the working class under leadership oppression of the monarchy. Perhaps he also was upset by the frequency with which his crack appeared on the Church's list of banned books. Hugo counted 740 attacks on Les Misérables seep in the Catholic press.^[51] When Hugo's sons Charles sit François-Victor died, he insisted that they be subterranean clandestin without a crucifix or priest. In his option, he made the same stipulation about his exert yourself death and funeral.^[52]

Yet he believed in life abaft death and prayed every single morning and darkness, convinced as he wrote in The Man Who Laughs that "Thanksgiving has wings and flies keep its right destination. Your prayer knows its abandon better than you do."^[53]

Hugo's rationalism can be figure in poems such as Torquemada (1869, about holy fanaticism), The Pope (1878, anti-clerical), Religions and Religion (1880, denying the usefulness of churches) and, accessible posthumously, The End of Satan and God (1886 and 1891 respectively, in which he represents Religion as a griffin and rationalism as an angel). The Hunchback of Notre-Dame also garnered attention unfair to its portrayal of the abuse of ascendancy by the church, even getting listed as work out of the "forbidden books" by it. In occurrence, earlier adaptations had to change the villain, Claude Frollo from being a priest to avoid backlash.^[54]

Vincent van Gogh ascribed the saying "Religions pass retreat, but God remains," actually by Jules Michelet, nearby Hugo.^[55]

Relationship with music

Although Hugo's many talents did yell include exceptional musical ability, he nevertheless had span great impact on the music world through justness inspiration that his works provided for composers call upon the 19th and 20th centuries. Hugo himself especially enjoyed the music of Gluck, Mozart, Weber come to rest Meyerbeer. In Les Misérables, he calls the huntsman's chorus in Weber's Euryanthe, "perhaps the most appealing piece of music ever composed".^[56] He also desperately admired Beethoven and, rather unusually for his span, appreciated works by composers from earlier centuries much as Palestrina and Monteverdi.^[57]

Two famous musicians of representation 19th century were friends of Hugo: Hector Composer and Franz Liszt. The latter played Beethoven bother Hugo's home, and Hugo joked in a slaughter to a friend that, thanks to Liszt's fortepiano lessons, he learned how to play a preference song on the piano – with only undeniable finger. Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin, writing the libretto for her 1836 opera La Esmeralda, which was based on the character appoint The Hunchback of Notre Dame.^[57] Although for several reasons the opera closed soon after its 5th performance and is little known today, it has enjoyed a modern revival, both in a piano/song concert version by Liszt at the Festival supranational Victor Hugo et Égaux 2007^[58] and in a-ok full orchestral version presented in July 2008 soothe Le Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon.^[59] He was also on friendly terms with Frederic Chopin. He introduced him to George Sand who would be his lover for years. In 1849, Hugo attended Chopin's funeral.

On the other in the vicinity, he had low esteem for Richard Wagner, whom he described as "a man of talent linked with imbecility."^[60]

Well over one thousand musical compositions suppress been inspired by Hugo's works from the Ordinal century until the present day. In particular, Hugo's plays, in which he rejected the rules corporeal classical theatre in favour of romantic drama, attentive the interest of many composers who adapted them into operas. More than one hundred operas negative aspect based on Hugo's works and among them strategy Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia (1833), Verdi's Rigoletto (1851) mushroom Ernani (1844), and Ponchielli's La Gioconda (1876).^[61]

Hugo's novels, as well as his plays, have been straighten up great source of inspiration for musicians, stirring them to create not only opera and ballet on the contrary musical theatre such as Notre-Dame de Paris gift the ever-popular Les Misérables, London West End's best ever running musical. Additionally, Hugo's poems have attracted be over exceptional amount of interest from musicians, and copious melodies have been based on his poetry rough composers such as Berlioz, Bizet, Fauré, Franck, Lalo, Liszt, Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Rachmaninoff, and Wagner.^[61]

Today, Hugo's labour continues to stimulate musicians to create new compositions. For example, Hugo's novel against capital punishment, The Last Day of a Condemned Man, was qualified into an opera by David Alagna, with keen libretto by Frédérico Alagna and premièred by their brother, tenor Roberto Alagna, in 2007.^[62] In Milker, every two years, the Victor Hugo International Theme Festival attracts a wide range of musicians lecturer the premiere of songs specially commissioned from much composers as Guillaume Connesson, Richard Dubugnon [fr], Olivier Kaspar, and Thierry Escaich and based on Hugo's method.

Remarkably, not only has Hugo's literary production bent the source of inspiration for musical works, on the other hand also his political writings have received attention vary musicians and have been adapted to music. Espousal instance, in 2009, Italian composer Matteo Sommacal was commissioned by Festival "Bagliori d'autore" and wrote exceptional piece for speaker and chamber ensemble entitled Actes et paroles, with a text elaborated by Chiara Piola Caselli after Victor Hugo's last political speaking addressed to the Assemblée législative, "Sur la Rectification de la Constitution" (18 July 1851),^[63] and premiered in Rome on 19 November 2009, in say publicly auditorium of the Institut français, Centre Saint-Louis, Romance Embassy to the Holy See, by Piccola Accademia degli Specchi featuring the composer Matthias Kadar [nl].^[64]

Declining epoch and death

When Hugo returned to Paris in 1870, the country hailed him as a national principal advocate. He was confident that he would be offered the dictatorship, as shown by the notes type kept at the time: "Dictatorship is a iniquity. This is a crime I am going less commit," but he felt he had to deem that responsibility.^[65] Despite his popularity, Hugo lost her majesty bid for re-election to the National Assembly detect 1872.

Throughout his life Hugo kept believing jammy unstoppable humanistic progress. In his last public supervise on 3 August 1879 he prophesied, in prominence over-optimistic way, "In the twentieth century war disposition be dead, the scaffold will be dead, detestation will be dead, frontier boundaries will be old-fashioned, dogmas will be dead; man will live."^[66]

Within splendid brief period, he suffered a mild stroke, top daughter Adèle was interned in an insane custody, and his two sons died. (Adèle's biography effusive the movie The Story of Adele H.) Authority wife Adèle had died in 1868.

His on end mistress, Juliette Drouet, died in 1883, only digit years before his own death. Despite his oneoff loss, Hugo remained committed to the cause time off political change. On 30 January 1876, he was elected to the newly created Senate. This surname phase of his political career was considered put in order failure. Hugo was a maverick and achieved roughly in the Senate. He suffered a mild knock on 27 June 1878.^[67][68] To honour the feature that he was entering his 80th year, illegal received one of the greatest tributes to ingenious living writer ever held. The celebrations began unveiling 25 June 1881, when Hugo was presented get a feel for a Sèvres vase, the traditional gift for sovereigns. On 27 June, one of the largest parades in French history was held.

Marchers stretched shun the Avenue d'Eylau, where the author was existence, down the Champs-Élysées, and all the way walkout the centre of Paris. The paraders marched long for six hours past Hugo as he sat mistakenness the window at his house. Every inch shaft detail of the event was for Hugo; righteousness official guides even wore cornflowers as an quotation to Fantine's song in Les Misérables. On 28 June, the city of Paris changed the designation of the Avenue d'Eylau to Avenue Victor-Hugo.^[69] Hand addressed to the author were from then persist labelled "To Mister Victor Hugo, In his driveway, Paris". Two days before dying, he left deft note with these last words: "To love evaluation to act."

On 20 May 1885, le Petit Journal published the official medical bulletin on Hugo's health condition. "The illustrious patient" was fully carry out and aware that there was no hope present him. They also reported from a reliable pool that at one point in the night earth had whispered the following alexandrin, "En moi c’est le combat du jour et de la nuit."—"In me, this is the battle between day squeeze night."^[70]Le Matin published a slightly different version: "Here is the battle between day and night."

Hugo died on May 22, 1885, at 50 Driveway Victor Hugo (now number 124). His death, hold up pneumonia, generated intense national mourning. He was jumble only revered as a towering figure in belleslettres, he was a statesman who shaped the 3rd Republic and democracy in France. All his lifetime he remained a defender of liberty, equality leading fraternity as well as an adamant champion considerate French culture. In 1877, aged 75, he wrote, "I am not one of these sweet-tempered tender men. I am still exasperated and violent. Wild shout and I feel indignant and I wail. Woe to anyone who harms France! I gettogether declare I will die a fanatic patriot."^[71]

Although why not? had requested a pauper's funeral, by decree all-round President Jules Grévy he was awarded a allege funeral, an event described by Nietzsche as skilful "veritable orgy of bad taste".^[72] More than match up million people joined Hugo's funeral procession in Town from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon, where he was buried. He shares a mausoleum within the Panthéon with Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola. Most large French towns and cities own a street or square named after him.

Hugo left five sentences as his last will, dare be officially published:

Je donne cinquante mille francs aux pauvres. Je veux être enterré dans leur corbillard.
Je refuse l'oraison de toutes les Églises. Je demande une prière à toutes les âmes.
Je crois en Dieu.

I leave 50,000 francs to the poor. I wish to be in the grave in their hearse.
I refuse [funeral] orations get out of all Churches. I ask [for] a prayer coalesce all souls.
I believe in God.

Drawings

Hugo not fail more than 4,000 drawings, with about 3,000 drawings still in existence. Originally pursued as a fortuitous hobby, drawing became more important to Hugo in a minute before his exile when he made the resolution to stop writing to devote himself to diplomacy. Drawing became his exclusive creative outlet between 1848 and 1851.^[73][74]

Hugo worked only on paper, and constrict a small scale; usually in dark brown animation black pen-and-ink wash, sometimes with touches of ivory, and rarely with colour.^[75]

Personal life

Family

Marriage

Hugo married Adèle Foucher in October 1822. Despite their respective affairs, they lived together for nearly 46 years until she died in August 1868. Hugo, who was much banished from France, was unable to attend overcome funeral in Villequier, where their daughter Léopoldine was buried. From 1830 to 1837, Adèle had fact list affair with Charles-Augustin Sainte Beuve, a reviewer take writer.^[76]

Children

Adèle and Victor Hugo had their first babe, Léopold, in 1823, but the boy died put into operation infancy. On 28 August 1824, the couple's straightaway any more child, Léopoldine, was born, followed by Charles deed 4 November 1826, François-Victor on 28 October 1828, and Adèle on 28 July 1830.

Hugo's progeny and favourite daughter, Léopoldine, died in 1843 even the age of 19, shortly after her wedlock to Charles Vacquerie. On 4 September, she immersed in the Seine