la légende des siecles

Les récits montrent l'un après l'autre leurs têtes,
Car les évènements ont leur cap des Tempêtes,
Derrière est la clarté. Ces flux et ces reflux,
Ces recommencements, ces combats sont voulus,
Au-dessus de la haine immense, quelqu'un aime.
Ayons foi. Ce n'est pas sans quelque but suprême
Que sans cesse, en ce gouffre où rêvent les sondeurs,
Un prodigieux vent soufflant des profondeurs,
A travers l'âpre nuit, pousse, emporte et ramène
Sur tout l'écueil divin toute la mer humaine.
(L'Année Terrible.)
See too the beautiful lines written when to public disaster was added private grief for
the loss of his son Charles, especially the passage, too long to quote here, in
L'Enterrement, beginning 'Quand le jeune lutteur....'
If, passing from the underlying conception to the actual material of the Légende, we ask
to what extent the poems can be regarded as history, the answer must be that they are
not history at all in the ordinary sense of the word. In his Préface Hugo remarks: 'C'est
l'aspect légendaire qui prévaut dans ces deux volumes.' As a matter of fact, there is not a
single poem in any of the series which is a narrative based upon actual fact. Of the
pieces in the present volume, Le Mariage de Roland, Aymerillot, and Bivar are founded
on legends. Éviradnus and La Confiance du Marquis Fabrice are inventions, and the
others are mostly embroideries woven upon ancient themes rather than historical or
even legendary pictures. These latter, of which La Conscience is the best instance in this
volume, suggest De Vigny's conception: 'Une pensée philosophique, mise en scène sous
une forme épique ou dramatique.' Of accuracy in detail and local colour, Hugo was
utterly careless. He possessed a capacious, but not an exact, memory, and, provided the
general impression produced by a description was the true one, he did not stop to
inquire whether every detail was correct. Nor did he always enjoy an extensive
knowledge of the epoch which he delineated. But he possessed to the full the poet's
faculty of building the whole form and feature of a past age out of a few stray fragments
of information. The historical colour of Ruy Blas is said to be based on two French
books, carelessly consulted, yet of Ruy Blas M. Paul de Saint-Victor, after making a
close study of the period, wrote: 'Ce fragment de siècle que je venais d'exhumer de tant
de recherches, je le retrouvais, vivant et mouvant, dans l'harmonie d'un drame
admirable. Le souffle d'un grand poète ressuscitait subitement l'ossuaire des faits et des
choses que j'avais péniblement rajusté.' 3
Footnote 3: (return) Quoted in Eugène Rigal's Victor Hugo, poète épique.