The Arcades Project - Operi

exclusive glory of the triumphant Bolshevik Revolution." Andre Breton, "La
Grande Actualite poetique," Minotaure, 2, no. 6 (Winter 1935), p. 61. [d2,1]
"Progress is the very footstep of' God." Victor Hugo, "Allniversaire de la revolution
de 1848," Fehruary 24, 1855 (on Jersey), p. 14. [d2,2]
"Victor Hugo is the man of the nineteenth century, as Voltaire was the man of the
eighteenth." " The nineteenth century thus comes to a close before its end. Its poet
is dead." Obituary notices for Hugo in Le National Republicain de l'Ardeche and
Le Phare des Charentes [Victor Hugo devant l'opinion (Paris, 1885), pp. 229,
. ]
Students of the schools of France,
Cheerful volunteers for progress,
Let us follow the people in its wisdom;
Let us turn our hacks on Mafthus and his decrees!
Let us light up the new roadways
Which labor shall open;
Fot· socialism soars on two wings,
The student and the worker.
Pierre Dupont, Le Chant des ewdiants (Paris, 1849). [d2a,1]
A. Michiels, Histoire des idees lithaires en France au XIX' siecle (Paris, 1863),
vol. 2, provides, in his portrait of Sainte-Beuve, an outstanding description of the
reactionary man of letters at midcentury. [d2a,2]
1 caused a revolutionary wind to blow;
I made the old lexicon don the insurgents' red cap.
No more high-flown words! No more uncouth words!
I raised a storm at the hottom of the inkwell.
Victor Hugo, cited in Paul Bourget, obituary for Victor Hugo in Le ]onrnal des
debats [Victor Hugo £levant l'opinion (Paris, 1885), p. 93]. [d2a,3]
On Victor Hugo: "He was . .. the poet not of his own sufferings ... but of the
passions of those around him. The mournful voices of the victims of the Terror . ..
made their way into the Odes. Then the trumpet blasts of the Napoleonic victories
resounded in other odes . . . . Latcr on, he felt obliged to let the tragic cry of
militant democracy pass through him. And what is La Legerule des siecles ... if
not the echo of the great turmoil of human history? . .. It often seems as though he
had collected the sighs of all families in his domestic verse, the hreath of all lovers
in his love poems . ... It is for this reason that, ... thanks to some mysterious
quality in him that is always collective and general, Victor Hugo's poetry possesses
an erie character." Paul Bourget, ohituary notice for Victor Hugo in Le ]onrnal
des debats [Victor lingo £levant l'opinion (Paris, 1885), pp. 96-97]' [d2a,4]