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The Fires
of Dawn The Revolution
of 1798 kicked off the beginning of a new era. This happened at
every level; be it politics or society or art or literature. In
fact, the undercurrent of the Revolution networked all these. It
metamorphosed them in a new 'movement' : in arts and aesthetics,
its repercussions impressing individuals and society at large. The pre-Revolutionary
France, with its social disquiet, was not without revolutionary
spirit. Yet love made its way through. Joseph Leopold Hugo, gallant
and a Bonapartist fell in love with Sophie, a lovely fair lady with
lovelier tastes in arts. They married. Sophie bore three sons -
Eugène, Victor and Abèl. Victor was born on February
26, 1802, in Besançon, NE France. He was week but survived,
for he would lead the literary future of France, he would create
a whole new genre by his writings. The father's
military missions made the family move from post to post, including
stints in Italy and Spain. Sophie resented this lifestyle. She did
not want to subject the little Hugos to the perils of a gypsy like
existence in accordance with Joseph's duties. The mother in her
wanted to be stationed in one place and raise the boys. She stayed
at home. Joseph remained out doors most of the time. The General,
with his professional goals, could not strike a rapport with his
personal life. His physical absence resulted in hostility. The love
affair had no 'love' in it any more and an unfortunate intimacy
developed between Sophie and General Lahorie, Joseph's former Commanding
Officer. Meanwhile, Joseph too took up with a local nurse, Catherine
Thomas.
The father and the young Hugos, especially Victor, admired Napoleon.
Joseph called him a 'mamaman' and Victor loved his mother a lot.
Young Victor wandered a lot due to his father's military upsurges
and parental confrontations. But he and his brothers utilized these
wanderings; observed the kaleidoscopic world. Victor had been through
many places : Corsica, Paris, Italy, and Spain. He had a first hand
experiences of the world.
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Outdoors
Victor saw the beauty of life and also witnessed the hazards of war. This memory would make a beautiful combination with the present later.
From time to time, the Hugo brothers remained with their father. Their parents had decided to separate since Sophie had discovered the husband's liaison with the nurse but the divorce was yet to be filed. The cold war between the parents ended with their untimely separation when Victor was 16.
His childhood impressions contained horrors of the death penalty, an obsession with torture and hanging. Victor loved gardens, and flowers like buttercups, daisies, periwinkles.He saw rats preying
on birds, birds on insects and insects on each other. He indulged
in cruel amusements, 'catching bumble-bees in the hollyhocks by
suddenly closing the flower upon them.' The world of universal slaughter
set his |
precocious beingarticulating. He was already inquisitive
and restless, an easy prey to enthusiasm. These activities and the
itineraries he undertook set his imagination afloat. His childhood
was in this way a mixture of the grotesque and the sublime.
Alma Mater
The moods of
parents kept the school at bay, but natural genius found its way,
exploiting the adverse circumstances into his favor. How free, wise,
smart enough he was to have a system of education without any rules
! He had a lovely and a poetic time. No conventional schooling with
constraints at every move. He was still a disciplined son and his
mother inspired the Hugo brothers to read. She nurtured an avid
fondness for poetry and sharpened their genius. They developed singular
respect for the written word. They were well bred because of their
mother's efforts. Madame Hugo
exercised an effortless control over the creative development of
her sons. Hence they, at times, tried their hands at verse. Victor
expressed things in classical rhythms. He read it aloud and self-corrected.
He knew no prosody and by trial he learnt the elements of meter,
rhythm, rhyme, caesura etc. He loved his
mother but his father was his role model. He too, hated tyranny.
Neither of the parents wanted to a break away from the children.
In this fight, sometimes the father won and sometimes the mother.
In 1814, their father boarded them out of Paris, to a boarding school,
in Santé-Marguerite. |
