8 h 8 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when a poet brings the same fierce feeling to a child, a tyrant, and a world of grief?
In Poems, Victor Hugo moves from the bright colours of youth to the tenderness of family life, the anger of exile, and the pain of loss. This collection gathers verse from across his long career. The poet familiar to readers of his novels speaks here through intimate feelings and a large, public voice.
Les Feuilles d'automne turns toward home and family, while La Légende des siècles reaches toward humanity and its stories. Elsewhere, Hugo confronts Louis Napoleon and mourns his daughter Léopoldine. Marriage, children, political upheaval, and bereavement give these poems their roots. Light and darkness return as images of hope and despair.
What you’ll discover
- Colour and daring Meet the young poet through bright verse alive with colour and sound.
- The room at home Discover how family life draws Hugo's attention from distant lands toward the familiar.
- A voice against power Feel the anger of a poet whose opposition to a ruler turns verse into protest.
- Grief for Léopoldine Encounter poems rooted in a father's pain after the sudden death of his beloved daughter.
- Light against darkness Follow recurring images that give hope and despair a vivid presence across Hugo's poetry.
Who will love it
For readers who know Hugo from his novels and want his voice in verse, and anyone who loves poems rooted in family, politics and grief.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A young poet seeks colour and daring
- Home and family become the subject
- Exile turns the poet into a fighter
- Grief for a daughter shapes his greatest book
- A vast poem of humanity and its stories
- Sounds, images and themes that return
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- 15-minute summary
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Poesie
by Victor Hugo
Hugo's verse moves from family love to fury at an emperor, bringing private sorrow and public duty together.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Victor Hugo is best known abroad for his novels, but in France he was first of all a poet. He wrote verse for more than sixty years, from the stiff odes of his teens to the visionary work of his old age.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A young poet seeks colour and daring
Hugo was born in 1802 and began publishing verse as a teenager. His early odes were loyal to the crown and the church, and they won him praise and a royal pension. But by the late 1820s he had changed. He became the leader of the French Romantic movement, which wanted freer forms, stronger feeling and a wider range of subjects than the old rules allowed.
The poems of this period show the change clearly. In Les Orientales, published in 1829, Hugo turns to the East, to Greece, Turkey and Spain. He had never travelled there, so the East is a land of the imagination, full of sultans, harems, battles and burning light. The collection was partly stirred by the Greek war of independence, which fired the sympathy of many European writers.
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What are Victor Hugo's best known poems?
Among the best known are the short poem about walking to a daughter's grave from Les Contemplations, the biblical scene of the sleeping Boaz from La Légende des siècles, and many of the angry satires in Les Châtiments.
Why did Victor Hugo write about his daughter Léopoldine?
Léopoldine, his eldest daughter, drowned in 1843 at the age of nineteen, shortly after her marriage. Hugo never recovered from the loss, and many poems in Les Contemplations come directly from his grief.
What is Les Châtiments about?
Les Châtiments, published in 1853, is a book of satirical and angry poems written in exile. It attacks Napoleon III, who took power by force in 1851, and calls on readers to resist tyranny.
The author
Victor Hugo
1802–1885 · French novelist, poet and playwright
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was a French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician. He was born in Besançon and died in Paris. He wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), Les Misérables (1862) and The Contemplations (1856). He lived in exile in Jersey and Guernsey between 1852 and 1870.
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