The Distance, The Shadows

by Victor Hugo, Harry Guest (Translator)

Victor Hugo, the most prolific and versatile of the French Romantics, is one of the greatest nineteenth-century writers. Partly because of its enormous range and variety, his poetry has remained comparatively little known outside France. In this new edition of his acclaimed translations, Harry Guest convincingly brings into English many of Hugo's great his passion for social justice, his simple humanity and an imaginative breadth of vision which few poets have equalled. The book's usefulness is enhanced by the inclusion of the French texts, drawn as they are from so many different periods of Hugo's work. Harry Guest was born in Penarth in 1932. He read Modern Languages at Cambridge before beginning a career as a teacher in schools and universities in Japan and England. With his wife, Lynn Guest, a historical novelist, he now lives in Exeter. A Puzzling Harvest , his collected poems 1955-2000, is also published by Anvil.

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2011

About the author

After Napoleon III seized power in 1851, French writer Victor Marie Hugo went into exile and in 1870 returned to France; his novels include The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).

This poet, playwright, novelist, dramatist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, and perhaps the most influential, important exponent of the Romantic movement in France, campaigned for human rights. People in France regard him as one of greatest poets of that country and know him better abroad.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is aptly titled, as these poems are somber, Gothic meditations on darkness, solitude, death, and the spiritual connection to nature. Hugo constantly surprises me with his poetry, which strikes me as a dark and brooding forerunner to Baudelaire. But even then, these poems, arranged chronologically, take a striking turn in September 1843 with the death of Hugos’ eldest daughter, Léopoldine, who drowned at age 19 when she fell overboard from a boat while pregnant, her heavy maternity clothes dragging her down. Her husband also died attempting to save her. Hugo’s elegies for his daughter show a vast grief that lasted years and, along with his poems of exile in Jersey and Guernsey, are absolutely heartbreaking.