Les Contemplations

The Contemplations, which Hugo made appear in 1856, are in a double sense marked by distance and separation: because the proscribed one that in Chastiments came to defustiger Napoleon III, is in exile in Guernsey; but also because the collection, in its centre, bears the breakage of mourning, and its two parts – "formerly", "Today" – are separated by the tragic caesure of the year 1843 when Leopoldine, Hugo's daughter, disappeared drowned. The poetic word comes to birth in death, and "this book," says the writer, "must be read as the book of a dead man would read." But the Contemplations also construct a destiny. It may be that she borrows from the biography of the writer; yet it would be wrong to confuse her with her. For if Hugo's lyricism touches the universal, it is that the poet precisely stripped here the individual bark to reach the point of the time: the one who is his own and that of the reader who will find himself mirror himself in the same way as the one who will find himself in the mirror.