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Victor Hugo. Hernani

PREFACE

VICTOR HUGO

HISTORICAL NOTE TO «HERNANI»

PERSONNAGES

ACTE PREMIER – LE ROI

SCÈNE PREMIÈRE

SCÈNE II

SCÈNE III

SCÈNE IV

ACTE DEUXIÈME – LE BANDIT

SCÈNE PREMIÈRE

SCÈNE II

SCENE III

SCÈNE IV

ACTE TROISIÈME – LE VIEILLARD

SCÈNE PREMIÈRE

SCÈNE II

SCÈNE III

SCÈNE IV

SCÈNE V

SCÈNE VI

SCÈNE VII

ACTE QUATRIÈME – LE TOMBEAU

SCÈNE PREMIÈRE

SCÈNE II.[26]

SCÈNE III

SCENE IV

SCÈNE V

ACTE CINQUIÈME – LA NOCE

SCÈNE PREMIÈRE

SCENE II

SCÈNE III

SCÈNE IV

SCÈNE V

SCÈNE VI

NOTES

PREFACE

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

ACT IV

ACT V

Отрывок из книги

For American and English readers who are at all well informed about modern European literature the name of Victor Hugo stands out more prominently than any other as representing the intellectual life of France since the fall of Napoleon. Even the defects of his character are by many considered typically French. They see him excessively conceited, absurdly patriotic, a too voluminous producer of very varied works; and it is not unusual to find that such readers believe him to be all the more French for these peculiarities. It would open their eyes if they should read what M. Ferdinand Brunetière, the most authoritative French critic of our generation, says of Victor Hugo. They would be surprised, if they conversed with intelligent Frenchmen generally, to hear their opinions of him. Indeed if they had a wider acquaintance with French letters and French character they would not need M. Brunetière or any other guide, because they would feel for themselves that Hugo must seem to the French just as peculiar, just as phenomenal, as he does to foreigners. For it is only to superficial readers that French literature can appear to be in the main frivolous or eccentric. Dignity is not necessarily severe. It cannot be heavy; indeed, grace is of its essence. And dignity is the note of French literature in the seventeenth century, its Augustan age. To say that seriousness is the note of the eighteenth-century literature in France may sound less axiomatic, but I think it is even more true. No men are more serious than those who believe it to be their mission to revolutionize and reform society. We may not now take Diderot and Voltaire and Rousseau as seriously as they took themselves; but that is partly because their purposes have been to a large extent achieved, and the result is an old story to us. The note of the nineteenth century in French literature is harder to catch, perhaps cannot be caught; for the voices are many, and we are too near the stage. But if anything is evident it is that this epoch is marked by severe and conscientious industry. Criticism has been developed into an almost perfect instrument for quick, sure testing of literary claims. A perverse book may, through neglect, through its insignificance, or indeed through its very absurdity, find a large number of gentle readers in England or America. In France less favor would be shown it. The artistic sense is more widely diffused there; life centres in Paris, where values can be readily compared; and, above all, the custom of personal journalism prevails in France. A man is not going to waste his time in reading a new book if the critic most competent to judge condemns it over his own signature in the morning paper. And if a new book is so insignificant that no critic reviews it, the condemnation of silence is even more annihilating. Then, too, the competition for literary honors is intense. The rewards are greater than in any other country: a seat in the Academy; a professor's chair in the College de France; an office of dignity and pecuniary value under government; the knowledge that a successful French book will sell from St. Petersburg to Madrid, and from Amsterdam to Constantinople – all over the world, in fact; for in nearly every country people read two languages – their own and French. In this competition it may not always be the best-written books that come to the front; but the chance of their doing so is immensely greater than elsewhere. And another beneficial result is the careful toil bestowed upon the preparation of books, the training to which authors submit themselves, the style and finish, the lopping off of eccentricities and crudities, the infinite pains, in short, which a writer will take when he knows that his fate depends on his pleasing first of all a select and cultivated audience of connoisseurs. No journeyman work will do.

It was by such a tribunal that Victor Hugo was judged, long before his name was known outside of France. And yet, although the popular voice has been immensely favorable to him for two generations, this high court of criticism has not decided the case. The position of Victor Hugo is by no means definitely established, as Alfred de Musset's is established, and Balzac's. But, whatever be the verdict, Victor Hugo, because of the power and quantity of his work, and his long life, certainly is the most imposing figure of this century in French literature.

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We have seen that the conservative reaction, represented by Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lamennais, and Hugo, lasted from 1815 to 1830, and that the new spirit, of Romanticism, which had been working all along, finally became dominant then. The political revolution of 1830, often called the Revolution of July, had dethroned Charles X, and brought in, with a more liberal constitution, Louis Philippe, a prince of the house of Orleans. This event proved to be a great stimulus to literary activity and a guarantee of literary freedom. It went far towards destroying the expectation of reviving a state of society and a tone of thought modelled after seventeenth-century life. It weakened the monarchical tendency altogether, for it divided the hopes of conservatives and proved that the Bourbons were not the only possible kings of France, but that many monarchists would take a king wherever they could get him. As is usual, and not in politics merely, but in all combinations of human effort where supremacy must be maintained by compromise, the unsuccessful minority, the hungry opposition, was freer from division, more single in aim, and purer in method, than the party in power. There is sometimes no party tonic like defeat, and nothing is so recuperative as retirement for a season. So then after fifteen years of invigorating rest, the republican party was more capable in 1830 than in 1815 of inspiring the enthusiasm of men who desired well for their country. It had been so far purified that a young poet like Hugo might be attracted towards it as to the saving remnant of his people. His drift in the direction of republicanism was hastened by the fact that his next two dramas, «Marion De Lorme», 1831, and «Le Roi s'amuse», 1832, were kept from being performed by ministerial order, because they displayed two revered kings of France, Louis XIII and Francis I as the shallow, pleasure-loving men they were.

A new era for French literature began in 1830. We are justified in saying this, because the great names of the former decade had lost their brilliancy, and another set of writers began to be celebrated and to be looked upon as establishing the tone of thought. The character of the product, too, is different. There was a larger freedom in the choice and treatment of subjects, the literatures of England and Germany were being studied and translated. For the first time, also, was there in France any widespread appreciation of Dante. The fact I wish to establish is merely that the spirit had completely changed, and no argument beyond the evidence of our senses is necessary.

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