William Shakespeare
1864
William Shakespeare
1864
Translated by A. (Amédée) Baillot
Victor Hugo wrote this passionate tribute to Shakespeare during his own exile on the island of Jersey, and that fact transforms what could have been a conventional literary biography into something far more urgent and personal. After Napoleon III's 1851 coup forced Hugo from France, he found himself a political refugee contemplating the life of another writer who had faced exile and artistic struggle. The book opens with Hugo and his son discussing the nature of displacement, setting up a meditation on what it means to create great art while estranged from one's homeland. Hugo positions Shakespeare not merely as a playwright but as a force of nature who transcended his era and station to become something approaching the divine. The work pulses with Hugo's own wounds as an exiled artist defending art's power to outlast political tyranny. This is criticism as love letter, biography as defense of genius.
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“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.””
— Victor Hugo
“Though she be but little, she is fierce!””
— Victor Hugo
“The course of true love never did run smooth; But, either it was different in blood,O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low. Or else misgraffed in respect of years, O spite! too old to be engag’d to young. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,O hell! to choose love by another’s eye.””
— Victor Hugo
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!””
— Victor Hugo
“And yet,to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.””
— Victor Hugo
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends.The lunatic, the lover and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.””
— Victor Hugo
“My soul is in the sky.””
— Victor Hugo
“If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended,That you have but slumbered hereWhile these visions did appear.And this weak and idle theme,No more yielding but a dream,Gentles, do not reprehend:If you pardon, we will mend:And, as I am an honest Puck,If we have unearned luckNow to 'scape the serpent's tongue,We will make amends ere long;Else the Puck a liar call;So, good night unto you all.Give me your hands, if we be friends,And Robin shall restore amends.””
— Victor Hugo
“Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream””
— Victor Hugo
