Victor Hugo’s Les Contemplations : a poetic album ?
A talk by Professor Florence Naugrette
On May 23rd, The Victor Hugo in Guernsey Society hosted a talk by Professor Florence Naugrette of Sorbonne University on the subject of one of Victor Hugo’s most famous collections of poetry, entitled Les Contemplations.
The Contemplations was published in 1856, a year after Hugo arrived in Guernsey. It consists of 158 poems in six books. Most of the poems were written between 1841 and 1855, though the oldest date from the 1830s. Memory plays an important role in the collection, as Hugo was experimenting with the genre of autobiography in verse. The collection is equally a homage to his daughter Léopoldine Hugo, who drowned in the Seine in 1843.
Professor Naugrette, a specialist in French Literature, regularly appears on French radio and TV, and is a frequent visitor to Guernsey. Her talk focused on the structure of the work as analogous to a photographic album, in the sense that the work was written over a long period of time, the poems can be viewed as if images, although words rather than pictures, with many dedicated to people Hugo knew, particularly family and friends, just as a photo album shows images of family and friends.
Hugo eldest son, Charles, developed an interest in the then new medium of photography during the family’s three-year stay in Jersey (immediately prior to moving to Guernsey). Charles, with his friend, Auguste Vacquerie, took many photographs in Jersey, including famously one of Victor Hugo on a rock looking out to sea towards his beloved France.
In fact, editions of Les Contemplations were customised by Auguste Vacquerie for particular friends and family, to include photographs of people associated with particular poems in the collection, some of which Professor Naugrette showed during her talk.
The Contemplations contains one of the most famous poems in the French language, known to schoolchildren throughout France, in the same way that Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud’ is known to English school children. The poem is ‘Demain, dès l’aube’,
‘Tomorrow, at first dawn’:
Tomorrow, at first dawn, when the country starts to whiten,
I will set out. You see, I know you’re waiting for me.
I will go by forest, I will go by mountain,
Away from you I can no longer remain.
I will walk with eyes fixed onto my thoughts,
Without seeing outside, nor hearing any noise,
Alone, unknown, my back bent, my hands crossed,
Forlorn, and the day for me will be night.
I will watch neither the gold of the falling evening,
Nor the sails in the distance descending on Harfleur,
And when I get there, I will put on your grave
A bunch of green holly and heather in bloom.
The Contemplations was an immediate success, and earned Hugo enough to buy Hauteville House at the end of 1856. A first edition of Les Contemplations is held at the Priaulx Library.