8 /10 1 Votes
Country France Publication date 1840 Originally published 1840 Genre Poetry | 4/5 Babelio Language French Media type Print Page count 278 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Original title Les rayons et les ombres Publisher Charpentier et Fasquelle Similar Works by Victor Hugo, Poetry books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Les rayons et les ombres victor hugo
Les Rayons et les Ombres ("Beams and shadows", 1840) is a collection of forty-four poems by Victor Hugo, the last collection to be published before his exile, and containing most of his poems from between 1837 and 1840.
Contents
- Les rayons et les ombres victor hugo
- Kf kempenbloei wmc 2013 les rayons et les ombres
- Fonction du pote
- La Tristesse dOlympio
- Oceano Nox
- References
One biographer (A. F. Davidson) noted that this book marks the first appearance of Hugo as "poet-prophet, whose function is to instruct kings and peoples about the problems of life." The critical success of Les Rayons may have brought about Hugo's election to the French Academy on 7 January 1841, when he took the seat of a deceased opponent.
The most famous poems are numbers 34 and 42, La Tristesse d'Olympio and Oceano Nox.
Kf kempenbloei wmc 2013 les rayons et les ombres
Fonction du poëte
Fonction du poëte ("Poet's Role", 1839) is the first in the collection, and represents a dialogue in which an argument for aloofness is presented, and then refuted.
La Tristesse d'Olympio
La Tristesse d'Olympio ("The Sadness of Olympio", 1837) describes a man returning to Bièvres, Essonne to revisit memories of an old love affair. The poem is linked to Victor Hugo's relationship with Juliette Drouet, the manuscript bearing a dedication to her. Sainte-Beuve disapprovingly compared it to Alphonse de Lamartine's similar and similarly famous Le Lac.
Oceano Nox
Oceano Nox ("Night on the Ocean", 1836) ponders the horror of death by drowning, particularly when the death is ambiguous or unnoticed and thus unmourned. On 16 July 1836 Hugo watched a storm off the coast of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, and this experience led him to write the poem. The title is from Virgil's Aeneid, Book II, line 250: Vertitur interea caelum, et ruit oceano nox. ("In the meantime, the sky revolves and night rushes from the ocean.") It is taken from Aeneas's description of the Trojans' misguided celebrations on the eve of their defeat.