Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
Les Misérables
Written in the same exile, and the public argument that runs alongside this private one.
Read our takeLes Contemplations
Victor Hugo
Les Contemplations
by Victor Hugo
Twenty-five years of poems split in half by a drowning: the book Hugo asked readers to treat as the work of a dead man.
- 1856
- 433
- Elegiac
- Melancholy
- lyrical
- intimate
- autobiographical
About Victor Hugo
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeVictor Hugo published Les Contemplations in 1856, in the middle of his exile, and arranged it around the death of his eldest daughter. Léopoldine Hugo drowned in the Seine at Villequier in September 1843, a few months after her wedding, and her husband Charles Vacquerie drowned trying to reach her. The collection runs in six books across two volumes, and the break between them falls at that death. The first half is called Autrefois, meaning formerly, and covers 1830 to 1843. The second is Aujourd'hui, meaning today, and covers 1843 to 1856. Hugo's preface calls the whole thing the memoirs of a soul, and asks that it be read as one would read the book of a dead man.
The story, in more detail
The preface is short and sets the terms. Twenty-five years are in these two volumes, Hugo writes, and says he let the book make itself inside him, life filtering through drop by drop. He then asks the reader a question and answers it: what are the Contemplations? What one might call, if the word were not a little pretentious, the memoirs of a soul. The sequence, he says, begins with a smile, goes on with a sob, and ends with the sound of a trumpet from the abyss.[1]
The six books are Aurore, L'Âme en fleur, Les Luttes et les rêves, Pauca Meæ, En marche, and Au bord de l'infini, followed by an epilogue addressed to the daughter who stayed behind in France. Books one to three make up Autrefois and books four to six Aujourd'hui.[1] Book four, Pauca Meæ, is the Léopoldine book, and runs to seventeen poems.[2]
The dates printed under the poems are part of the arrangement rather than a record of when Hugo wrote them. Several poems in Pauca Meæ are dated at Villequier on 4 September, the anniversary of the drowning, in four consecutive years from 1844 to 1847.[2] Library catalogues record the 1856 Paris issue with J. Hetzel, the publisher who handled Hugo's work through the exile.[3]
What's inside
Six books of poems in two halves. Autrefois, the first half, opens on childhood, the countryside, young love and literary argument. Aurore includes Hugo's long reply to the critics of his verse, Réponse à un acte d'accusation, and poems to and about his daughters. L'Âme en fleur is love poetry. Les Luttes et les rêves turns to poverty, politics and doubt.[1]
Aujourd'hui, the second half, begins with Pauca Meæ, whose seventeen poems are all about Léopoldine. The sequence works forward from her wedding on 15 February 1843, through the first shock of the news, to the habits of a house that still contains her, to the graveside. En marche then moves outward into the exile, the sea and the islands. Au bord de l'infini is the book of séances, spirits, God and the dark, and the collection closes with a long poem addressed to the dead daughter who is still buried in France.[2]
Two poems from Pauca Meæ are the ones French schoolchildren learn. Demain, dès l'aube is fourteen lines in which a father sets out at first light to walk to a grave, and the word grave arrives only in the last two lines. A Villequier, which follows it, is the long argument with God about the same death.[2]
Themes and analysis
A book with a death down the middle of it
Hugo built the table of contents to do the work a narrator would do in a novel. Six books of poems are divided into two volumes, Autrefois and Aujourd'hui, formerly and today, and the hinge between them is not a year in the ordinary sense. It is September 1843, when Léopoldine Hugo drowned at Villequier. Everything before the break is dated 1830 to 1843 and everything after it 1843 to 1856.
The arrangement is a construction, and it is worth knowing that before reading the dates as biography. Hugo moved poems and adjusted the years printed under them so that the sequence would run the way he wanted. Several poems in Pauca Meæ carry the date 4 September, the anniversary of the drowning, in four different years. A reader is therefore looking at a shaped account of grief rather than a diary, which is what Hugo announces when he calls the book the memoirs of a soul.
Read it as the book of a dead man
The preface gives the reader one instruction, and it is strange enough to be worth taking literally. This book, Hugo writes, must be read as one would read the book of a dead man. He was alive, in exile, and would live another twenty-nine years. The sentence is doing two things at once. It tells the reader that the voice in these poems has already lost what it had to lose, and it removes the author from any argument about the poems.
The preface then widens the claim in a way that explains the book's title. Is this the life of one man, Hugo asks, and answers that it is also the life of other men. None of us has the honour of a life that belongs to himself. My life is yours, he writes, and your life is mine. That is the licence for the private material. A reader is not being shown a bereaved father's papers as a curiosity, but being told that the bereavement is common property.
Fourteen lines that withhold one word
Demain, dès l'aube is the fourteenth poem of Pauca Meæ and the most quoted thing Hugo wrote. A man tells someone he will leave at dawn and walk all day, through forest and over mountain, because he cannot stay away any longer. He says he will walk with his eyes fixed on his thoughts, seeing nothing outside, hearing no sound, alone, hunched, hands crossed, and that the day will be like night to him.
For twelve lines the poem can be read as a man travelling to meet a living person, and the opening line, with its Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends, sounds like a note to someone waiting up. The last two lines name what is happening: he will lay on her grave a bunch of green holly and flowering heather. Nothing before that mentions a death. The poem carries the date 3 September 1847, the day before the anniversary of Léopoldine Hugo's drowning, which is the amount of time the walk would take.
The poems around the famous one
Pauca Meæ works as a sequence, and reading only the famous poem loses the design. The second poem is titled with the date of Léopoldine's wedding, 15 February 1843. A later one records the first moment of the news and says plainly that he was like a madman. Another stays with the smallest household evidence, the way she used to come into his room in the morning, a habit formed in childhood. A Villequier, the fifteenth, is the long argument with God, and the seventeenth is addressed to Charles Vacquerie, the son-in-law who drowned trying to save her.
Hugo's method through the sequence is to let ordinary domestic detail carry the weight and to keep the large statements for a few poems. The wedding date as a title, the morning habit, the empty chair: these are facts about a household. A Villequier is where he argues, and Mors, the sixteenth poem, is where he generalises death into a reaper walking through the world. Reading Pauca Meæ straight through puts the argument with God after four or five poems of small remembered detail, which is why it lands.
Quotes from Les Contemplations
Qu'est-ce que les Contemplations? C'est ce qu'on pourrait appeler, si le mot n'avait quelque prétention, les Mémoires d'une âme.
Ce livre doit être lu comme on lirait le livre d'un mort.
Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne, Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
Et, quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.
Why we recommend it
The most famous short poem in French, in its place
Demain, dès l'aube is fourteen lines that withhold the word grave until the end. Reading it inside Pauca Meæ, after the wedding-date poem and the poems about her morning habits, changes what the last two lines do.
A table of contents that carries the argument
Two volumes called formerly and today, hinged on a drowning in September 1843. Hugo makes the structure do the work a novelist would give to a narrator.
Hugo writing as himself
No Valjean, no archdeacon and no Gilliatt. The preface asks that the book be read as the work of a dead man, and calls it the memoirs of a soul.
Both halves are free in French
Project Gutenberg carries the complete collection in the two volumes Hugo published, ebooks 29843 and 29844, and the French text is out of copyright everywhere.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Léopoldine Hugo
Hugo's eldest daughter, married in February 1843 and drowned in the Seine at Villequier that September, aged nineteen. Book four of the collection is about her, and the epilogue is addressed to her.
Charles Vacquerie
Léopoldine's husband of seven months, who drowned trying to reach her. The seventeenth and last poem of Pauca Meæ is addressed to him.
Bring it to book club
- Hugo asks that the book be read as the work of a dead man. What does that instruction change about how you read the love poems in book two?
- Demain, dès l'aube never mentions a death until its last two lines. What is the poem doing for the twelve lines before that?
- Hugo adjusted the dates printed under his poems. Does knowing that weaken the grief in Pauca Meæ or clarify what kind of book this is?
- A Villequier argues with God and Mors turns death into a figure with a scythe. Which of the two does more for you, and why?
- The collection ends with a poem addressed to a daughter buried in a country Hugo could not enter. How does the exile change the elegy?
- Book one contains literary self-defence and book four contains a child's death. What holds the six books together?
Timeline
15 February 1843
Léopoldine Hugo marries Charles Vacquerie. The second poem of Pauca Meæ is titled with this date.
September 1843
Léopoldine Hugo drowns in the Seine at Villequier, aged nineteen, and Charles Vacquerie drowns trying to reach her. The collection's two halves divide here.
1847
Demain, dès l'aube carries the date 3 September, the day before the anniversary of the drowning.
1855
Hugo settles on Guernsey, where the poems of the second half were assembled for publication.
1856
Les Contemplations is published in six books across two volumes. Library catalogues record the Paris issue with J. Hetzel.
Book editions
- Paperback
- Gallimard
- 2010
- 9782070437283
- Paperback
- Flammarion
- 1999
- 9782080708434
Ebook
- Ebook
- Project Gutenberg
- 1856
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- J. Hetzel
- 1856
Reader reviews
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Les Contemplations: frequently asked questions
What is Les Contemplations?
A collection of poems by Victor Hugo, published in 1856 in six books across two volumes. The first volume, Autrefois, covers 1830 to 1843; the second, Aujourd'hui, covers 1843 to 1856. The break between them is the drowning of Hugo's daughter Léopoldine in September 1843.
Which poem is Demain, dès l'aube, and where is it?
The fourteenth poem of book four, Pauca Meæ, dated 3 September 1847. Fourteen lines in which a father walks all day to a grave, and the grave is named only in the final two lines.
Who was Léopoldine Hugo?
Victor Hugo's eldest daughter. She married Charles Vacquerie in February 1843 and drowned in the Seine at Villequier that September, aged nineteen. Her husband drowned trying to reach her. Book four of the collection is about her death, and the closing poem is addressed to her.
What are the six books called?
Aurore, L'Âme en fleur, Les Luttes et les rêves, Pauca Meæ, En marche, and Au bord de l'infini, followed by an epilogue addressed to the daughter who stayed behind in France.
Is there a good English translation?
Not a standard complete one in print in the way the novels are translated. English readers usually meet individual poems in anthologies. The French text is free and complete from Project Gutenberg.
Can I read it free?
Yes, in French. Project Gutenberg carries both halves as Hugo published them: Autrefois, 1830–1843 as ebook 29843, and Aujourd'hui, 1843–1856 as ebook 29844. Both are out of copyright.
Are the dates under the poems real?
Not reliably. Hugo shifted poems and adjusted their dates so the collection would read as a life moving forward. Several poems in Pauca Meæ carry 4 September, the anniversary of the drowning, in different years.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Les Contemplations, its publication, and its place in literary history.
3↑Les Contemplations — Open Library edition records (work OL1064110W)
WebsiteOpen Library, Internet ArchiveUsed forLibrary catalogue records for the editions, used for the 1856 Paris issue under J. Hetzel and for each modern ISBN.
4Victor Hugo
WebsiteEncyclopédie LarousseUsed forEncyclopédie Larousse on Hugo, for Léopoldine Hugo's death and the chronology of the exile.
5Victor Hugo: A Biography
BiographyW. W. Norton, 1997Used forGraham Robb's biography, for the flight from France and the years on Jersey and Guernsey.
6Visit the apartment today
WebsiteMaison de Victor Hugo, Paris MuséesUsed forThe Paris Musées record of Hugo's apartment on the Place des Vosges, the home he was living in when Léopoldine married and died.
7Les Contemplations
PoetryVictor Hugo, 1856Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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