Summary
Summary of The Contemplations, Volume 2: Today
Key ideas
Key idea 1
A life divided by loss
Victor Hugo called The Contemplations the memoirs of a soul. Its two volumes give that soul a before and an after: Formerly looks back on youth, love and play, while Today begins after a death that broke him. His daughter Léopoldine drowned only months after her wedding.
Today follows the years in which grief becomes part of everything Hugo sees and thinks. Personal mourning, political exile and questions about God belong to the same life, rather than to separate worlds.
Key idea 2
Dates give grief a shape
Start free to read
Key idea 3
Small things carry a father's sorrow
Start free to read
Key idea 4
Private grief meets public wrong
Start free to read
Key idea 5
Grief opens questions about the universe
Start free to read
Key idea 6
Returning images keep thought human
Start free to read
Key idea 7
Faith keeps love beside loss
Start free to read
Key idea 8
Sorrow speaks without false comfort
Start free to read
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love poetry about grief, faith and doubt, and anyone drawn to French Romantic writing or to Hugo beyond his novels.
What this book is
Today is the second half of The Contemplations, the poetry collection Victor Hugo published in Paris in 1856. Hugo arranged it as the story of one life, with the poems dated from 1830 to 1855. He called the whole work the memoirs of a soul. The first volume, called Formerly, looks back on youth, love and play. This second volume, called Today, covers the years after a death that broke him.
In September 1843 Hugo's daughter Léopoldine drowned in the Seine at Villequier, only months after her wedding. Twelve years later Hugo was living in exile on the island of Guernsey, driven from France by Napoleon III. Volume two moves from that grief, through exile and struggle, to a vision of God, souls and the universe. You get three books of poems. They are called A Few for My Own, On the March, and On the Edge of the Infinite. Let us begin with the poet and the shape of the volume.
In this summary
- 1A grieving father builds a monumentFree
- 2Book Four mourns Léopoldine directly
- 3Exile turns grief into struggle
- 4Book Six looks into the infinite
- 5Images, forms and sounds that return
- 6How to read these poems and what they say
Key point 1 of 6
A grieving father builds a monument
The Contemplations was written over twenty-five years, but Hugo shaped it as a single book with a hinge in the middle. The first three books belong to Formerly. The last three belong to Today. Between them he places the date of Léopoldine's death as a dividing line. He writes that a gulf lies between the two halves, and the reader is meant to feel it.
Hugo was already the most celebrated writer in France when she died. He was travelling in the southwest when he learned the news from a newspaper. He had not known that her boat had capsized, and her husband Charles Vacquerie had died trying to save her. Hugo was devastated, and for a long time he wrote almost no poetry at all.
When he returned to verse, it came out of that silence. The poems of volume two were written over twelve years, through mourning, politics and flight from France. He gathered them in the Channel Islands, where he lived with his family and a few other exiles. The book was published in 1856 and sold well enough to buy him a house on Guernsey.
That is why the volume reads like a diary written in verse. The poems are dated, and the dates matter. A reader sees the same man at different moments of loss, anger and slow recovery. The book is a record of what grief did to him over time.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Check yourself
What event divides the two halves of The Contemplations?
Right. “Between them he places the date of Léopoldine's death as a dividing line.”Not quite. “Between them he places the date of Léopoldine's death as a dividing line.”
How does On the March extend Hugo's mourning?
Right. “For a reader today, this book shows how personal loss and public wrong can sit in one mind.”Not quite. “For a reader today, this book shows how personal loss and public wrong can sit in one mind.”
What do Hugo's beliefs about spirits and souls offer him?
Right. “They give him a way to keep loving someone who is gone.”Not quite. “They give him a way to keep loving someone who is gone.”
Questions about The Contemplations, Volume 2: Today
What is The Contemplations Volume 2 Today about?
It is the second half of Hugo's poetry collection. It covers his grief after his daughter Léopoldine drowned in 1843, his years of exile after 1851, and his spiritual poems about God, death and the soul.
Why is the second volume called Today?
Hugo split the collection into Formerly and Today, dividing it at the date of his daughter's death in 1843. Today holds the poems written under the weight of that loss and of exile.
Who is Léopoldine in The Contemplations?
Léopoldine was Victor Hugo's eldest daughter. She drowned in the Seine at Villequier in 1843, shortly after her marriage. Many poems in Book Four are addressed to her or are about her.
What does Pauca Meae mean?
It is Latin for a few for my own. It is the title of Book Four, a group of poems about Hugo's daughter and his mourning, meant as something close and personal.
Is The Contemplations hard to read?
The short poems of grief are direct and easy to follow. The long visionary poems of Book Six are denser, with strange images and spiritual ideas. Reading aloud and in order helps a great deal.
