Selected Poems (Fyfield Books)
Victor Hugo
Language: English
Pages: 251
ISBN: 0226359816
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This generous, varied selection of poems by one of France's best-loved and most reviled poets is presented with facing originals, detailed notes, and a lively introduction to the author's life and work.
Steven Monte presents more than eighty poems in translation and in the original French, taken from the earliest poetic publications of the 1820's, through collections published during exile, to works published in the years following Hugo's death in 1883. The introduction provides helpful background information about Hugo's life and work, the selection, and what is involved in translating a poet whose effortless rhymes are central to the poetry's power. Detailed notes at the back of the volume offer information about the poems and their publishing and historical contexts. This is an ideal introduction to a poet whose work, for all its renown, remains for Anglophone readers undiscovered
A Day in the Country and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)
Vathek (Oxford World's Classics)
The Legend of the Centuries This collection was published in three separate series during Hugo’s lifetime (1859, 1877, 1883) before being joined into one large volume in 1883. Hugo called the poems in The Legend of the Centuries ‘little epics’; taken as a whole, the collection forms one massive epic that traces the history of humankind from creation to the present and beyond. The Legend of the Centuries is divided into sections with titles like ‘Between Giants and Gods’, ‘After the Gods, the
et debout sur sa grève sacrée, Et pensif, on attend l’heure de sa marée. To the People It resembles you. It is awe-inspiring and at peace. Its wrinkled plain dazzles and reflects infinities. It possesses movement and depth; it is immense. Softened by a sunbeam, ruffled by a breeze, It is harmony sometimes, and sometimes dissonance. Monsters are at home in its fathomless black. Waterspouts brew there; it’s an unknown abyss From which those who’ve braved it have never come back. Colossi
faut Me regarder un peu, de temps en temps, vous-même. Words Spoken in the Shadows She would say: ‘It’s true; I am wrong to want more. The hours are passed very sweetly this way. You are there. My eyes never leave your eyes in which I watch your thoughts come and go the whole day. To see you is happiness; I can never be full. And doubtless all of this only charms me the more! I stand guard, because I know what disturbs you: No annoying person can open your door. I make myself small in
Mets-toi cur ton séant, lève tes yeux, dérange Ce drap glacé qui fait des plis sur ton front d’ange, Ouvre tes mains, et prends ce livre: il est à toi. Ce livre où vit mon âme, espoir deuil, rêve, effroi, Ce livre qui contient le spectre de ma vie, Mes angoisses, mon aube, hélas! de pleurs suivie, L’ombre et son ouragan, la rose et son pistil, Ce livre azuré, triste, orageux, d’où sort-il? D’où sort le blême éclair qui déchire la brume? Depuis quatre ans, j’habite un tourbillon d’écume;
February 25. Birth of daughter, Adèle. 1831: Notre-Dame de Paris (novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Première of play Marion de Lorme. Sainte-Beuve and Madame Hugo begin affair. Feuilles d’automne (poems, Leaves of Autumn). 1832: Première of play Le Roi s’amuse (The King Takes His Amusement). 1833: Première of play Lucrèce Borgia. Juliette Drouet becomes Hugo’s mistress. Premier of play Marie Tudor. 1835: Les Chants du crépuscule (poems, The Songs of Daybreak). 1837: Les Voix intérieures
