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Created: April 10, 2003
Latest Update: April 10, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
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Victor Hugo and Edgar Allen Poe and the French Romantics
Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, April 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.
Poe and French Romanticism By Charles Lombard, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. E.A. Poe Society. Scroll down to about the last third of the file for this section: Link added April 10, 2003." A borrowing from Hernani is most likely, in view of Poe's comments on the American theater, which reflect a probable acquaintance with the Preface de Cromwell. With Hugo, he conceded that the stage "in its mechanisms" had made progress. Poe also shared Hugo's insistence on likeness On the question of plot, Poe wanted one so well-knit that it would be impossible to "detach from it or disarrange any single incident involved, without destruction to the mass." Judging from his approval of Nathaniel P. Willis' Tortesa and its involved story, Poe had in mind Hugo's concept of the unity of action with several distinct sub-plots related to the central plan ("The American Drama," XIII, 33-73). The uncompleted play Politian reveals the extent of Poe's attraction to Hugo's melodramas. Of further interest is an apparent reference in "The Landscape Garden" to Hugo's theory of the sublime and the grotesque. We are told that a natural setting does not need the symmetry of a Grecian temple. Instead, the proper combination of "strangeness, vastness, definitiveness, and magnificence" might easily inspire the angels, and a rugged country garden would, despite its wildness, still have a beauty satisfying the "instinct of the beautiful or sublime" (IV, 269-270) of the most exacting critic.Hugo's specific applications of this theory evidently impressed Poe especially where the grotesque was the predominant element. The jester Hop-Frog embodies physical and psychological traits common to Han d'Islande and Habibrah in Bug-Jargal. Similar to these two dwarfs Hop-Frog has a "distortion of his legs" and "prodigious muscular power" combined with a desire for revenge. There is also a resemblance to Quasimodo. At the close of the tale Hop-Frog, in partial imitation of the hunchback's rescue of Esmeralda, swings from a cord to set fire to the costumes of the king and his seven "privy-councillors" ("Hop-Frog," VI, 217-228). Thus having avenged a royal insult to Tripetta, he vanishes with her, never to be seen again, much in the manner Quasimodo disappears with Esmeralda's body. In addition, Poe inserts some incidents from Han d'lslande. Just as Hop-Frog destroys his enemies by fire, Han ignites the straw in his prison immediately before being executed. The resulting conflagration overwhelms his executioners. There remains "un amas d'ossements blanchis et de cadavres defigures" (11), much like Hop-Frog's victims, "a fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishable mass" ("Hop-Frog," VI, 228). Passing reference should perhaps be made to another possible borrowing from Han d'lslande. Poe's mummer disguised as the Red Death brings to mind Nychol Orugix, the executioner, clothed in "serge rouge" (II, 17).
Aside from fairly close parallels with incidents and characters in Hugo's novels, Poe's imagery and descriptions [page 34:] possess certain traits in common with his French contemporary. Both poets took delight in playing with the effects of light and shadow, fire and darkness. The hallucinatory landscape of "The Fall of the House of Usher," "a few white trunks of decayed trees" (III, 273), brings to mind the "rameaux tordus" (12) in the forest whose mysteries haunt the poet of "A Albert Durer." In "Metzengerstein" Poe has a horse disappear in a burning castle, only to re-appear in the form of a smoking image over the ruins (II, 195-196). Somehow we are reminded of "Soleils couchants" and Hugo's vivid word-portrait of a "grand crocodile au dos large et raye" formed by the clouds (13). The "multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances" in "The Masque of the Red Death" (IV, 251-254) created by the projection of the fire's rays on the tinted windows recalls in its general outlines the swarm of nocturnal spirits pictured by Hugo in "Les Djinns":
Ils vent tous pres! — Tenons fermee
Cette salle ou nous les narguans.
Quel bruit dehors! Hideuse armee
De vampires et de dragons! (14)The passage from "Les Djinns" represents that part of French Romanticism which mainly attracted Poe and manifested itself in his borrowings from Victor Hugo. In the plays, novels, and poems of Hugo, Poe found dramatic situations and vivid imagery in accord with his own literary tastes. To a certain degree even Sue was preferable to Chateaubriand and Lamartine whose immoderate sentimentalism wearied Poe. Emotionalism inspired by religiosity, unrequited love, or utopianism were all equally annoying to the American writer. For that reason, he rejected the idealized Indians of Chateaubriand, the melancholy lines of Lamartine, and the humanitarian aspirations of the French Romantics in general. At times, particularly in his earlier years, he was momentarily affected by the reflective and wistful moods of Chateaubriand and Lamartine. This frame of mind did not last long, and Poe embraced with greater enthusiasm the melodramatic elements of Hugo's plays and novels adaptable to his own short stories. In its overall effect, Poe's descriptive artistry resembles that of Hugo from the standpoint of imagery and color.
On the whole, Poe's interest in French Romanticism is a reflection of the time and the people he knew. Many of his opinions of individual French Romantics are personal assessments; others reflect the influence of his contemporaries, especially the literati of the Lynch salon. While Poe could either accept or reject their judgments, to ignore their influence and the current popularity of French Romantic drama would be an undue oversight. This does not minimize the originality of certain conclusions on Poe's part. It was not his practice to accept current literary fads without question. Instead, Poe read and evaluated the French Romantics and did not hesitate to borrow elements suitable to his own writing. From this standpoint, he was probably the first major American writer of the nineteenth century to study and imitate them to some extent.
The passage from "Les Djinns" represents that part of French Romanticism which mainly attracted Poe and manifested itself in his borrowings from Victor Hugo. In the plays, novels, and poems of Hugo, Poe found dramatic situations and vivid imagery in accord with his own literary tastes. To a certain degree even Sue was preferable to Chateaubriand and Lamartine whose immoderate sentimentalism wearied Poe. Emotionalism inspired by religiosity, unrequited love, or utopianism were all equally annoying to the American writer. For that reason, he rejected the idealized Indians of Chateaubriand, the melancholy lines of Lamartine, and the humanitarian aspirations of the French Romantics in general. At times, particularly in his earlier years, he was momentarily affected by the reflective and wistful moods of Chateaubriand and Lamartine. This frame of mind did not last long, and Poe embraced with greater enthusiasm the melodramatic elements of Hugo's plays and novels adaptable to his own short stories. In its overall effect, Poe's descriptive artistry resembles that of Hugo from the standpoint of imagery and color.
On the whole, Poe's interest in French Romanticism is a reflection of the time and the people he knew. Many of his opinions of individual French Romantics are personal assessments; others reflect the influence of his contemporaries, especially the literati of the Lynch salon. While Poe could either accept or reject their judgments, to ignore their influence and the current popularity of French Romantic drama would be an undue oversight. This does not minimize the originality of certain conclusions on Poe's part. It was not his practice to accept current literary fads without question. Instead, Poe read and evaluated the French Romantics and did not hesitate to borrow elements suitable to his own writing. From this standpoint, he was probably the first major American writer of the nineteenth century to study and imitate them to some extent.