Victor Hugo - childhood and youth
Victor Hugo was born at the very beginning of the 19th century - February 26, 1802. The historical context of his birth was as follows: the great revolution had just died down in France, the old order and the monarchy had sunk into oblivion, and they were replaced by the First French Republic. The motto “Liberty, equality and fraternity” was on everyone’s lips, and the young and ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte instilled faith in a bright future.
It was in such a revolutionary environment of change that the captain of the Napoleonic army, Leopold Sigisbert Hugo, had his third son. The Hugo family at that time lived in the city of Besançon, in eastern France. The boy, who was named Victor, was born weak and sickly. His mother Sophie Trebuchet wrote in her diary that her third baby was born "no bigger than a table knife."
Victor Hugo in childhood and youth
Biography of Hugo
Victor Marie Hugo was born on February 26, 1802 in the city of Besançon in eastern France. He grew up in a wealthy family who lived in a three-story mansion.
His father, Leopold Sigisbert Hugo, was a general in Napoleon's army. Mother, Sophie Trebuchet, was the daughter of a shipowner.
In addition to Victor, two more boys were born into the Hugo family.
Childhood and youth
As a child, the future writer was a very weak and sickly child. Due to the fact that the father was a military man, the family often had to change their place of residence.
Victor Hugo in his youth
During their travels, they managed to live in Corsica, Italy, Spain and various French cities. All these travels left vivid impressions in little Victor’s soul.
Soon, frequent scandals began to arise between Victor Hugo's parents, caused by political differences.
Sophie was an ardent supporter of the Bourbons, while Leopold remained loyal to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Over time, the wife began to cheat on her husband with General Lagori. The couple began to communicate less and less and eventually decided to separate altogether.
Victor stayed to live with his mother, and his two brothers Abel and Eugene lived with their father.
An interesting fact is that later Sophie repeatedly tried to improve relations with her ex-husband, but he did not forgive her for her previous insults.
Hugo's parents
The Hugo family was wealthy; in Beznason they had a large three-story mansion at their disposal. The head of the family, Leopold Hugo, came from the peasant class, but the revolution gave him a chance to prove himself. And he took full advantage of it. Having started his career as an officer in the Napoleonic army, the father of the future writer became a supporter of Bonaparte, and then rose to the rank of general. Due to the service of Hugo Sr., the family constantly moved from place to place: Italy, Spain, France, the Mediterranean islands, Tuscany - the whole family followed Leopold Hugo to his new duty stations. These travels made indelible impressions on young Victor; in the future they will be reflected in his books.
Very little information has been preserved about the writer’s mother. All that is known for certain is that Sophie Trebuchet came from the family of a shipowner.
Personal life pages
A brief history indicates that in the 1820s the young writer was not deprived of female society, where he met Adele Foucher and fell madly in love with her. But this connection was sharply opposed by the mother of the young man, who therefore stopped thinking about the beauty for a while.
But in 1823, Sophie Trebuchet died, which was the reason for renewing her relationship with her father. The result of this turn of events in life was the appearance of “Ode to My Father.” The elder Hugo did not oppose his son’s chosen one at all. The marriage of the young people took place, they became the parents of five children: Adele, Leopoldina, Leopold, Francois Victor Hugo and Charles.
The writer's family has always been friendly and hospitable. It is not surprising that tea parties and large-scale literary evenings were regularly organized in their house. The main guests are her husband's colleagues, among whom Chaol Augustin de Sainte-Beuve should be highlighted. Soon after they met, he did not hide his feelings and confessed his love to Victor’s wife. Hugo was not angry, since he himself was seriously interested in the actress Juliette Drouet. He lived with her all his remaining years. Juliette died of cancer.
For Victor Hugo, the loss of his beloved woman was a real blow. Unable to cope with the misfortune, he left this world in 1885.
Family disagreements
The Hugo couple sought to raise their three sons (Abel, Eugene and Victor) with love and affection. But the personal worldview of Sophie and Leopold was often of a directly opposite nature, which is why quarrels often broke out in the married couple. Sophie Trebuchet shared the views of the royalists and Voltaireans and during the French Revolution wholeheartedly supported the Bourbon dynasty. While Leopold Hugo was completely devoted to Napoleon Bonaparte. And, to be completely honest, Sophie had an affair with General Victor Lagorie, which, of course, did not help strengthen family ties.
Due to the discord between their parents, the three sons lived alternately with their father and then with their mother. And in 1813 (Victor was 11 years old), Sophie and Leopold decided to divorce. Sophie Trebuchet moved to Paris with her youngest son, while the older sons remained with their father. In the future, the woman will regret this breakup and try to restore the family, but Leopold Hugo will not be able to forgive his ex-wife.
It is not surprising that the mother had a significant influence on the formation of the views and character of the future writer. It was from her suggestion that he forever learned that the Bourbon dynasty were adherents of freedom. And he created the image of an ideal monarch for himself from the books he read in his youth.
Childhood
Victor Hugo was born on February 28 in the French town of Benzason. His father served in Napoleonic army, and his mother taught music in one of the city schools. In addition to Victor, there were two more brothers in the family - Abel and Eugene, who later also followed in their father’s footsteps and were killed in one of the battles.
Due to the fact that Victor's father often had to go on business trips, the family moved from place to place every few weeks. So, the boy and his older brothers, almost from birth, traveled around Italy, major cities of France, were in Corsica, Elba and in many places where Napoleon’s military armies were serving at that time.
Many bibliographers believe that constant travel only broke the fate of little Victor, but the writer himself often mentioned that it was travel that allowed him to look at life differently, learn to notice the smallest details and subsequently compare them in his works.
Since 1813, Victor and his mother moved to Paris. At that time, the mother was having a stormy affair with General Lagori, who agreed to move his beloved and her son closer to him. So, Victor was torn away from the rest of his brothers, who remained with his father, and transported to Paris, where he began his education.
Victor Hugo - literature in his life
Hugo Sr. anticipated that Victor would become familiar with the exact sciences, because the boy showed early mathematical inclinations: he could count well and easily solve complex equations. Perhaps the world would have recognized Victor Hugo as an outstanding mathematician, but the young man had his own plans - he flatly refused to enter the Polytechnic University.
Painting of Hugo's hand
Young Victor's real passion was literature! He voraciously read poetry and prose, both in French and Latin. Since his youth, he himself began to compose odes and poems. His first poetic experiments date back to his studies at the Ludwig the Great Lyceum, where he entered in 1812. During school theater productions, Hugo often acted as the author of plays, and these improvisations and creativity inspired him incredibly!
At the age of 14, Victor acquired his first literary idol. It was the poet François Chateaubriand. Hugo dreamed of being like the great master and even said: “I will be Chateaubriand or nothing!” Later, when the future author of Notre-Dame de Paris was forced to rest for several weeks after being wounded in the leg, he filled 10 notebooks with translations of the works of Virgil, another of his idols. Such was the strength of his literary passion!
A little later, the young man, who was self-critical and incredibly demanding of himself, would find his early notes from his mother and mercilessly burn them, believing that he was capable of more. On the last notebook, Victor wrote the inscription: “Nonsense” and drew an egg with a chick sitting inside.
Hugo's first works
At the age of 15, Hugo tried his hand at a literary competition and presented the jury with “Ode on the Benefits of Science.” This work by the young author received rave reviews and admiration from the commission. Many members of the jury could not believe that the author of the poems was a young man, this work was so mature and deep.
Victor Hugo in his youth
Already at this time, Hugo openly presented to the public his royalist views and commitment to literary classicism. In his early works, the young poet praised the Bourbon dynasty. This did not go unnoticed: for his ode “For the restoration of the statue of Henry IV,” Hugo was rewarded not only with the favor of the authorities, but also began to receive a salary. This was absolutely not superfluous, since Leopold Hugo refused to financially support his son due to his refusal to enter the Polytechnic University.
Victor Hugo and his success
When Hugo turned 17, he and his brother Abel began publishing the magazine “Literary Conservative”. Its title spoke eloquently about the content of the publication. The collection of his own poems “Odes,” which he published in 1822, helped the young author to finally gain a foothold on the literary Olympus. From that moment on, Hugo became a recognized poet of France.
Hugo's books were a striking example of romanticism, they almost always contained political and social aspects, while Lord Byron's English romanticism was expressed in works that placed the human personality on a pedestal.
Rejection of injustice
Paris was already considered the city of love at that time, but this did not prevent beggary, slavery, social inequality, dirty alleys and dissolute women from coexisting with the romantic image of the city. Observation was Hugo's innate trait, and it was this that allowed him to notice not only the manifestations of the brilliant, sophisticated Paris, but also its dark sides. In his works, the author did not seek to get to the bottom of the origins of social strife, but tried to prove to readers that the problems of society will be solved only when people put morality and morality first.
Six characters of Victor Hugo. Canvas, oil. Museum of Fine Arts, Dijon
The writer did not avoid political topics. Thus, in his novel “The Last Day of a Man Condemned to Death,” Hugo quite specifically describes the idea of abolishing the death penalty. The novel was published in 1829 and became the writer’s first serious prose work.
Another novel by Victor Hugo, written in adulthood, had a similar philosophical concept - the novel “The Man Who Laughs” (the author initially planned to title it “By the Order of the King,” but his friends convinced him not to do this). The work is based on real events and fully gives an idea of the unlimited power of the noble elite over ordinary people. The novel describes the life of Lord Gwynplaine, who was kidnapped as a baby and mutilated - his ears stuck out, and cuts were made on his face, and when the wounds healed, it looked as if his face was constantly breaking into a smile. With such an appearance, the boy had no choice but to become a jester at the royal court. And no one, except his adoptive father and named sister, took him seriously - he was considered a second-rate person, not noticing either his innate talents or his kind heart.
Works of Hugo in other forms of art[ | ]
Victor Hugo began drawing at the age of 8. Now private collectors and museums have about 4,000 works by the writer (they are still successful to this day and are sold at auctions). Most of the works were written in ink and pencil between 1848 and 1851. He made sketches with pen and black ink on plain paper. Delacroix declared to Hugo: “If you became an artist, you would eclipse all the painters of our time” (Delacroix made costume sketches for Hugo’s first play “Amy Robsart”)[12].
Hugo knew many artists and illustrators, the Deveria brothers, Eugene Delacroix, and Louis Boulanger was his close friend. Admiration for the writer and poet resulted in deep mutual friendship; visiting Hugo’s house every day, Boulanger left a lot of portraits of people grouped around the writer. He was attracted to fantastic plots, inspired by the same poems by Hugo: “The Phantom”, “Lenore”, “The Devil’s Hunt”. Lithograph “Night Sabbath”, where devils, naked witches, snakes and other “evil spirits” appearing in Hugo’s ballad rush in an eerie and rapid round dance. A whole series of lithographs was inspired by Boulanger's novel Notre Dame.
Six characters of Victor Hugo. Canvas, oil. Museum of Fine Arts, Dijon
In March 1866, the novel “Toilers of the Sea” was published with illustrations by Gustave Doré. “Young, gifted master! “Thank you,” Hugo writes to him on December 18, 1866. “Today, despite the storm, I came across an illustration for “Toilers of the Sea” that was no less powerful than it. In this drawing you depicted a shipwreck, a ship, a reef, a hydra, and a man. Your octopus is scary. Your Gilliatt is great.”[13]
Rodin received the order for the monument to Hugo in 1886. The monument was planned to be installed in the Pantheon, where the writer was buried a year before. Rodin's candidacy was chosen, among other things, because he had previously created a bust of the writer, which was received positively. However, Rodin's work, when it was completed, did not meet the customers' expectations. The sculptor depicted Hugo as a mighty naked titan, leaning on a rock and surrounded by three muses. The nude figure seemed out of place in the tomb, and the project was eventually rejected. In 1890, Rodin reworked the original plan, removing the figures of the muses. A monument to Hugo was erected in the garden of the Palais Royal in 1909.
The most famous illustrator of Hugo's books is the artist Emile Bayard (Les Miserables). [ source not specified 849 days
] The emblem of the musical “Les Misérables” is a painting in which the abandoned Cosette sweeps the floors in Thénardier’s tavern.
In the musical, this scene corresponds to the song "Castle on a Cloud "
. Typically a cropped version of the painting is used, where only the girl's head and shoulders are visible, often with a waving French flag woven into the background. This image is based on an engraving by Gustav Brion, who in turn based a drawing by Emile Bayard.
In the USSR, his books were designed by P. N. Pinkisevich; the last book, which was illustrated by the famous engraving master A. I. Kravchenko, was “Notre Dame Cathedral” (1940)[14]. Also famous are the illustrations of the contemporary French artist Benjamin Lacombe
) (born in 1982).
(Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, Partie 1 -
2011,
Partie 2 -
2012. Éditions Soleil).
"Notre Dame Cathedral" Victor Hugo
The idea for this novel came from Hugo in 1828. And already in 1831 the book was published. After the work was published, Hugo gained fame not only as an excellent novelist, but also as an innovator - in French literature, no one before him had created novels with historical overtones.
Victor's inspiration was the writer-historian Walter Scott. It should be noted that Hugo also put a political motive into “Notre Dame Cathedral”: the writer was an ardent supporter of the reconstruction of cultural monuments and promoted this idea in society.
Quasimodo saves Esmeralda from the hands of the executioners. Mlle Henry (1790-1873). House-Museum of Victor Hugo
Therefore, it is not surprising that the Gothic cathedral, which the French authorities were simply going to demolish, became the central character of the novel. The work tells about the incredible cruelty of people and the eternal struggle between good and evil, like the world. The plot of the novel reveals to us the unhappy love of the ugly dwarf Quasimodo for the beautiful Esmeralda. Quasimodo literally idolized his beloved, because she was the only person in all of Paris who treated him like a human being, despite his repulsive appearance. Later, the novel inspired many directors to create feature films, theatrical productions and musicals. In addition, the novel attracted the attention of the world community to the preservation of historical cultural monuments, many of which subsequently received a “second life”: they were preserved and restored.
"Les Miserables"
Hugo presented the novel Les Misérables to readers in 1862, and this work became the pinnacle of the writer’s creativity. Later, a film was made based on the plot of the novel. The novel brings to the fore such social phenomena of Hugo’s modern life as poverty, hunger, the fall of women into selling love for the sake of a piece of bread, and the arbitrariness of the authorities in the person of the nobility.
Cosette is the heroine of the novel Les Misérables. Illustration by Emil Bayard
The main character of the novel, Jean Valjean, in his youth decided to steal bread from a bakery in order to save his family dying of hunger. He was caught and, despite the insignificance of the offense, tried to the fullest extent of the law. He served 19 years in prison. But even after being released, he could not live out his days in peace - everyone turned their backs on him, the man became a real outcast. However, the hero is not fixated on his misfortunes. His strength to live is supported by a bright dream of filling the fate of the homeless girl Cosette with joy.
Illustration by Gustave Brion for the novel Les Misérables, 1864
Most biographers are inclined to believe that the novel is based on real events. In 1846, Hugo witnessed a man being taken into custody for stealing a loaf of bread. Well, the writer’s thoughts and life experiences helped him develop this plot further.
Another famous story described by Master Hugo in the same novel is the story of the cheerful boy Gavroche, who died during the uprising of 1831.
Victor Hugo - personal life
Adele Foucher
Victor Hugo and his wife Adele
This side of the famous writer’s life cannot be called simple. Hugo married in 1822, when he himself was only 20 years old. The young writer married Adele Foucher, whom he had known since his youth. Adele came from a bourgeois family and had corresponding interests. For all the time she spent married to Hugo, she did not read a single line from his works!
The wife did not share the opinion of all of France that her husband was a talented writer, and therefore treated him very condescendingly, and at times even dismissively, and did not disdain having connections on the side. Due to the fact that the relationship between Adele and Victor completely deteriorated, their marriage, despite the birth of five children, eventually broke up. Although they never officially divorced. To justify Adele, we can say that Hugo was as jealous and despotic in the family as he was charming and affectionate during the courtship period. Living with him was incredibly difficult.
Victor Hugo with his son François-Victor (1836)
Juliette Drouet
Later, the writer begins an affair with the secular courtesan Juliette Drouet. At the time they met, the dazzlingly beautiful woman was in the pay of Prince Anatoly Demidov, with whom she was in a relationship. The prince, although he did not promise the girl an enviable future, was generous, allocating substantial sums for maintenance. But meeting Hugo changed everything. Juliet fell madly in love with the writer, and he, being a terrible jealous person by nature, demanded that the woman end her relationship with the prince. Juliet obeyed. However, Hugo himself was not even half as generous as Demidov, and from a brilliant beauty strewn with diamonds, Juliette turned into a tired woman in rags. Victor not only allocated a very modest amount for his beloved’s expenses, but also exercised strict control over every franc spent.
Victor Hugo and Juliette Drouet
Juliet served in the theater (where she met Victor), but always played minor roles. Hugo knew that Juliet had dreamed of becoming an actress all her life, but the writer not only did not make a single attempt to help his beloved bring her desires to life, but, on the contrary, forbade her to play in the theater. Years later, when Juliette's youth and beauty faded, Hugo did not deny himself the pleasure of meeting young girls for one night. For these meetings, he even organized a separate area in his office. Although at the same time he continued to live under the same roof with Juliet and swore that he only truly loved her.
In 1883, Juliette Drouet died of lung cancer. Only after her death did the writer realize what an important part of his life this woman was. He could only live without Juliet for two years.
Personal life
In the early 1820s, love settled in the writer’s heart - he fell madly in love with Adele Fouché. However, Victor’s mother was against their relationship, and for some time the young man had to forget about the girl. In 1823, Victor lost his mother, and a little later resumed communication with his father, writing the work “Ode to My Father” in the same year. By the way, the father was not at all against his son’s chosen one. The marriage to Adele produced five children: Leopold, Leopoldina, Charles, Francois-Victor and Adele.
The Hugo couple were distinguished by their friendliness and hospitality - literary evenings and tea parties were often held in their house, and the constant guests were, of course, their husband’s colleagues. Among them was Charles Augustin de Sainte-Beuve, who at one point simply could not hide his feelings for Hugo’s wife. At the same time, Victor himself became seriously interested in the actress Juliette Drouet, with whom he lived until old age. Juliette died in 1883, the cause of death being cancer. Victor had a hard time experiencing this loss. Unable to fully reconcile himself, he passed away two years later - on May 22, 1885.
Death of Hugo
Tombstone of Victor Hugo in the Paris Pantheon
The famous writer died in the spring of 1885. The cause of death was pneumonia, from which he could not recover. The news of Victor Hugo's death spread throughout France in a matter of days, and an unprecedented number of people gathered for the writer's funeral, according to average estimates - no less than a million.
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Death
The great writer died in the spring of 1885 from pneumonia. The news of the death of Victor Hugo instantly spread throughout France, millions of people mourned and participated in the funeral of the author of immortal novels.
Funeral of Victor Hugo
One of the favorite places of Hugo's fans was the island of Jersey, where Victor spent 3 happy years and discovered himself as a poet.
