Selected Poems of Victor Hugo: A Bilingual Edition [Paperback]

Victor Hugo (Author), E.H. Blackmore (Translator), A.M. Blackmore (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

Although best known as the author of Notre Dame de Paris and Les Misérables, Victor Hugo was primarily a poet—one of the most important and prolific in French history. Despite his renown, however, there are few comprehensive collections of his verse available and even fewer translated editions.

Translators E. H. and A. M. Blackmore have collected Victor Hugo's essential verse into a single, bilingual volume that showcases all the facets of Hugo's oeuvre, including intimate love poems, satires against the political establishment, serene meditations, religious verse, and narrative poems illustrating his mastery of the art of storytelling and his abiding concern for the social issues of his time. More than half of this volume's eight thousand lines of verse appear here for the first time in English, providing readers with a new perspective on each of the fascinating periods of Hugo's career and aspects of his style. Introductions to each section guide the reader through the stages of Hugo's writing, while notes on individual poems provide information not found in even the most detailed French-language editions.

Illustrated with Hugo's own paintings and drawings, this lucid translation—available on the eve of Hugo's bicentenary—pays homage to this towering figure of nineteenth-century literature by capturing the energy of his poetry, the drama and satirical force of his language, and the visionary beauty of his writing as a whole.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This satisfyingly fat collection has some definite virtues in tracking the poetic output of Hugo (1802-1885), France's monumental 19th-century scribe: it is organized chronologically, with prefaces that mark out his various phases, and the original French texts are included, which is a rare if necessary pleasure in understanding European poetry. Unfortunately, in terms of translation, this huge book is almost a total loss. The Blackmores (Six French Poets) are a freelance writer and a faculty member of Australia's Curtin University, respectively, and they have chosen to render Hugo's work by preserving the rhymes. What results loses almost all of Hugo's power, as his delicate combination of the plainspoken and grandiose is upset by the demands of English jingling. Perhaps Hugo's most famous lyric, "Tomorrow, at Dawn...," becomes: "I'll cross the woods, I'll cross the mountain-height./ No longer can I keep away from you.../ Alone, unknown, hands crossed, and back inclined;..." If the "mountain-height" and "inclined" seem odd, that's because they are inventions of the translators, in order to rhyme with "bright" and "mind" respectively. Hugo wrote a far simpler poem, about how he would "go by the mountain" with his "back bent" to pay his respects at his daughter's grave. It is not an isolated incident, and anyone who reads even a little French must wince at the constant unpoetic interventions in English. This is a particular pity, as the translators have clearly worked hard to set the poet's work in biographical context, even if a preface underrates his novels as "by-products of his career... in which his talents were only half involved." The rather skimpy notes and very limited bibliography are added disappointments. (Apr.) Forecast: As far as bilingual selections of Hugo's verse go, this is presently the only game in town, so university libraries and stores with larger poetry collections will be forced to act accordingly. The French versions and good intentions of the translators provide some succor.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

As Caesar straddled "the world like a colossus," according to Shakespeare's Cassius, Hugo straddles French literature. France's greatest and most monumental poet, he stretched the rules of French verse and the reach of French vocabulary as did no other poet, which makes him very difficult to translate. There are also the problems of Hugo's voluminousness and his integrity. Even excluding his verse plays, this book contains only four percent of his total poetic output, and he insisted that to select from his work was to betray it. A yea-sayer of the first order, he felt that a poet, a person, or the world, for that matter, must be taken whole, the bad with the good, to be appreciated. That said, it must also be affirmed that the Blackmores, by exploiting the metrical diversity of nineteenth-century English verse, have fashioned highly readable versions of Hugo from every volume of his poetry. They give far more than a hint of the giant who was Victor Hugo. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 664 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226359816
• ISBN-13: 978-0226359816
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #652,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant and Faithful Translation, September 17, 2003

By 

Manuel A. Tellechea (NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems of Victor Hugo: A Bilingual Edition (Hardcover)

A magnificent translation, worthy of the highest praise, which, unfortunately, the Blackmores will not receive because of the animus everywhere prevailing against the translation of rhymed poetry in rhyme. Yet it would make as such sense to deprive Hugo of rhyme as it would to inflict it on Whitman. Rhyme is not a frivolous adornment or a self-inflicted stricture in Hugo's poetry of which the helpful translator should make haste to free him. Rhyme is an integral part of Hugo's poetry: it enhances the sense rather than diminish it. The Blackmores, contrary to the opinion of Publisher's Weekly, are faithful translators. No two languages are exactly compatible; hence the need for translation. To expect a word for word correlation in a formal (or even a free translation ) is to elevate computer-translation to pre-eminence in the field. This translation does Hugo a greater service than that. It is clearly a work of love and reverence and almost of resurrection, since Hugo the novelist so completely overshadows Hugo the poet in The English-speaking world. It is also a most timely translation, for, inevitably and probably soon, the bile of modernism will finally dissuade anyone from undertaking the monumental task that the Blackmores have so admirably performed.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Victor Hugo was a great French poet, July 4, 2009

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Brett A. Pedersen "Brett Pedersen" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems of Victor Hugo: A Bilingual Edition (Paperback)

Although Victor Hugo is better-known as a novelist, he was actually among the greatest of the French poets in the pre-Baudelaire era.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good, January 20, 2008

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Kristina Vincent Schroer - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems of Victor Hugo: A Bilingual Edition (Hardcover)

This was a gift for a my little brother who is taking French Literature this year in college. He is happy with this book! That's all I really know.