La Légende des Siècles
| Author | Victor Hugo |
|---|---|
| Original title | La Légende des siècles |
| Country | France, Belgium |
| Language | French |
| Publisher | Lévy, Hetzel |
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Publication date
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1859, 1877, 1883 |
| Media type |
La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Ages) is a collection of poems by Victor Hugo, conceived as an immense depiction of the history and evolution of humanity.
Written intermittently between 1855 and 1876 while Hugo worked in exile on numerous other projects, the poems were published in three series in 1859, 1877, and 1883. Bearing witness to the unparalleled poetic talent evident in all Hugo's art, the Légende des Siècles is often considered the only true French epic and, according to Baudelaire's formulation, the only modern epic possible.
The dreaming poet contemplates the "wall of the centuries," indistinct and terrible, on which scenes of the past, present and future are drawn, and along which the whole long procession of humanity can be seen. The poems are depictions of these scenes, fleetingly perceived and interspersed with terrifying visions. Hugo sought neither historical accuracy nor exhaustiveness; rather, he concentrated on obscure figures, usually his own inventions, who incarnated and symbolized their eras. As he proclaims in the preface to the first series, "this is history, eavesdropped upon at the door of legend." The poems, by turns lyrical, epic and satirical, form a view of the human experience, seeking less to summarize than to illustrate the history of humanity, and to bear witness to its long journey from the darkness into the light.
La Légende des Siècles was not originally conceived as the vast work it was to become. Its beginning, the original seed, was in a vague project entitled Petites Epopées ("Little Epics"), which features in the notes and jottings of Hugo from 1848, and which gives no indication of so vast an ambition.
After Les Châtiments and Les Contemplations, his editor, Hetzel, was perturbed by the submission of La Fin de Satan and Dieu, both of which were nearly complete. Seeing that Hugo was ready to proceed yet further down the metaphysical (or even eschatological) road mapped out by the final Contemplations, Hetzel became anxious at the probability of their failure with the public, and preferred the sound of the Petites Epopées which Hugo had mentioned, feeling they would be more in harmony with the spirit of the times. Even though these "epics" were still no more than sketches, in March 1857 Hetzel wrote to Hugo, rejecting Fin de Satan and Dieu, but accepting with enthusiasm the Petites Epopées.
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