/lit/ - Literature

I’ve never read Hugo, but I just read this and thought it was funny:
>In a January 1860 letter to an unknown correspondent, Baudelaire bemoans how Hugo "keeps on sending me stupid letters", adding that Hugo's continuing missives have inspired him "to write an essay showing that, by a fatal law, a genius is always an idiot".
It’s even funnier, and kind of sad, when you read the letters Hugo were sending him were full of praise:
>Hugo supported Baudelaire after the prosecution in August 1857, telling him that "your Fleurs du mal shine and dazzle like stars", and, in 1859, that "you give us a new kind of shudder".

>>22148907
He should have been severely punished for his involvement with the Paris Commune rebellion.

>>22148907
>Just as in Hugo there is a blatant misunderstanding of Shakespeare, so in Berlioz there is a misunderstanding of Beethoven; here and there the main object is a garish highlighting of detail. French poetry is blown-up prose.

>When we were talking about Hebbel’s Nibelungen yesterday, R. said: “V[ictor] Hugo is the father of all these German plays; even in the most horrible situations people still indulge in polished speech. And how dull are all the gruesome happenings! Shakespeare summons everything to his aid, storm winds, the song of a fool, the sight of a dagger, etc., but here it is all set in front of one so flat and naked.”

>I do not know what led us to purely human factors; R. said Goethe had also tried—in Tasso, for example—to dissociate his characters from historical costume, whereas a similar sort of Venetian play by Hugo is stuffed full of historical local color.

>Never for an instant does the [German] poet cease to strut as world sage and get himself displayed as such by his comedians, into whose mouth he drops the deepest-going comments on the action in its very thick. But the resulting compound is further planned to create the utmost theatrical Effect, and for this one loses sight of nothing the latest French school, with Victor Hugo in particular, has introduced upon the stage. There was some sense in the revolutionary Frenchman, in full revolt against the maxims of the Académie and classic Tragédie, deliberately dragging into vivid daylight everything they had tabooed; and though it led to a baleful eccentricity in both the construction and the wording of pieces, it was at once an act of vengeance most instructive for the history of our culture and a not uninteresting spectacle, since the Frenchman's indisputable talent for the theatre came out in even this. But what figure do Victor Hugo's "Burgraves" cut, for instance, when transposed into the German Nibelungenlied? So fatuous a one, that we may readily excuse the poet's and the actor's inclination to self-ridicule.

>>22148907
Victor Hugo was a great author. The english speaking world only talks of his novels but I find that to be among his weakest work. His plays are fantastic. Especially Le roi s'amuse, Hernani, Les Burgraves, and Lucrezia Borgia. But his magnum opus is La Légende des siècles, It is one of the greatest works of literature ever conceived. It's majestic and magnificent in scope. It chronicles history in a beautiful manner. I felt transcended while reading it. It's an experience. It isn't translated into english however so anglos may not have any luck. WIth that being said, if you're asking about Victor Hugo the person, he was a hypocritical narcissistic pompous asshole. He was absolutely insufferable as an individual and people who used to worship him (Baudelaire and Flaubert come to mind) later came to hate his guts because of his behavior.