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| The man himself |
Found this on my laptop. It's probably aload of drool. I remember doing a module on Hugo and not having a clue but it might be of use to somebody who also doesnt know what's going on. Can't remember what grade I got for it. I'm not even going to read it before I post it on here.
Victor
Hugo is undoubtedly one of the greatest French Poets of the
nineteenth century, if not one of the greatest french Poets of all
time. His contribution to popular culture not only in France, but
around the world with 'Les Miserables' alone, is remarkable. Despite
130 years since his death, his writing still attracts readers all
over the globe. His greatest poetry work, Les
Contemplations,
still sells in large numbers, more than one hundred and fifty years
after its first publication.
Hugo
wrote 'O gouffre! L'âme
plonge et rapporte le doute' in three stanzas. By comparing it to
other poems in Les
Contemplations
as well as his other poems in other poetry publications, this is a
short poem by Hugo's standards. All three stanzas are sextain and
have a rhyming scheme of aabccb. Hugo tends to use the sextain stanza
along with the aabccb rhyming scheme quite a lot in Book Six of Les
Contemplations,
'Au bord de l'infini' with 'Dolor', 'Horror' and 'Pleurs dans la
Nuit' all appearing within a few pages of one another. This isn't
seen as often throughout the rest of Les
Contemplations,
with only a handful other poems with the same structure and rhyming
scheme in the other five books within the publication. Interestingly,
Hugo strongly contemplated putting 'O gouffre!..' at the beginning of
Horror which is dated around 5 months after 'O gouffre!..'. (Hugo,
1973).
'O
gouffre! L'âme
plonge..' is given a fictional of September 1853. The dates given by
Hugo tend not to relied on as factually correct (Duclaux,1921).
Yet the date given by Hugo coincides with his introduction to
spiritualism by Mme Delphine de Girardin, a Parisian medium and a
friend of the Hugo family. She spent a few days with the Hugo family
at their house in Marine Terrace in the Channel Islands, during
Hugo's time in exile there. On her visit she brought a suitable
round, three legged table and on the 11th
of September 1853 Victor Hugo participated in his first seance.
According to a number of sources, after a 45 minutes wait he made
contact with his late daughter, Leopoldine, who died in a boating
accident on the Seine ten years previously. (Llosa, 2004; Jefferson,
2007).
Mario Llosa
claims that Hugo continued holding these seances for over a year and
“spent hours and hours - sometimes entire nights – transcribing
the dialogues” of the seances where he conversed with a large
number of prominent people from the past like Jesus Christ, Aristotle
and Shakespeare (2004). One begins to understand the poem a little
more when reading it in this context. Interestingly, Hugo wrote the
poem in the third person plural. “Nous” appears eleven times
throughout the poem. One can give an educated guess that he is
referring to “his wife...his children, friends, and neighbors”
with whom he attended the seances with (Llosa, 2004).
The
poem's theme is very dark, which is in line with the general feeling
of the second half of Les
Contemplations,
'Aujord'hui' written between 1843 to 1855 in the aftermath of the
death of his Daughter. This theme is startlingly sense in the very
first words, “O gouffre!”. This sense of of darkness is
emphasized by an exclamation mark. The first line taken as a whole is
quite startlingly dark and and despairing:
Ô
gouffre ! l'âme
plonge et rapporte le doute.
Hugo
is clearly hurting. By placing “doute” at the the end of the line
Hugo is emphasizing the word for the reader. One is suddenly
intrigued if not concerned for the poet. Why is Hugo in doubt?
In addition to this, the first stanza Hugo rhymes “sombre”, which
ends the fourth line, with “ombre” which ends the fifth. He
describes man as “brumeux”, the world as “noir” and the sky
as “ombre”. This, along with strategically placed commas acting
as caesuras after them, help reinforce the dark feeling of the poem.
Then in the last line all the darkness that Hugo describes the
landscape as being, contrasts with the paleness which he describes
himself and those around him as being:
Et
nous, pâles,
nous contemplons.
By stating that they
are pale hints that something is not quite right among them which
plays up the the uncertainty and holds the reader's interest.
The
despairing nature of the poem continues into the second stanza. The
very first line develops this sense of despair:
Nous
contemplons l'obscur, l'inconnu, l'invisible.
Words
like “l'obscur”, and “l'inconnu in the first line as well as
phrases like “l'ombre indeterminée” and “l'esprit frémissant”
in the lines following it in the second stanza are used by Hugo to
advance the dark, despairing feeling brought about by the poem. The
first four lines of the third stanza also contain despairing images
painted by Hugo : “dans ces vides funebres”, “ le souffle,
errant dans les ténèbres
/ Dont frissone l'obscurité”, “perdus dans les nuits
insondables”. He rhymes “funèbres”
and ténèbres”and
“obscurité” with “éternité” which furthers the dark
feelings and overall gloominess in the poem.
Hugo has built up a
dark landscape in which him and those around him There is light
relief for the reader on reading the last two lines:
Nous
voyons s'éclairer de lueurs formidables
La
vitre de l'eternité
The very mention of
“s'éclairer de lueurs formidables” signifies hope. It is in
complete contrast to the previous sixteen lines previous where
darkness and gloominess have invaded the landscape which Hugo and
those with him had occupied. It is like the so-called 'light at the
end of the tunnel' moment. It is also important to notice that the
only time enjambment takes place in this poem is between the final
two lines of the poem. This is clearly deliberate on Hugo's part and
works very well. The lack of punctuation helps create a flow which
stresses the moment of high relief without compromising on the poem's
structure.
This
poem shows Victor Hugo's ability to turn his hand at almost any
subject in the human experience. This poem, in which he deals with
his experiences of seances, is just one example of a huge range of
subjects that Hugo deals with in his own style. In this poem he
brilliantly develops a theme of despair and sullen atmosphere and
then contrasts it brilliantly with almost a moment of epiphany
that leaves the reader enthralled until the very last word. He is
almost undoubtedly not only one of the greatest French poets of the
nineteenth century but one of the greatest poets of all time.
Bibliography:
Duclaux, Agnes Mary (1921).
Victor Hugo. (New York:
Connecticut Press) p. 214
Hugo, Victor (2010) Les
Contemplations. (Gaillimard Presse) p. 494
Llosa, M. V. (2004). The
Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and Les Miserables.
(Oxford: Princeton University
Press) p. 4
Jefferson,
Anne (2007). Biography
and the Question of Literature in France.
Oxford University Press. p. 150
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