The Rhine (Le Rhin, 1838, 1839, 1840)

Hugo, Victor (1802–1885), translated by Kline, A. S. (contact-email)

Victor-Marie Hugo (1802 –1885) made three trips to the Rhineland with Juliette Drouet in 1838, 1839, and 1840, and the notes, letters and recollections of these excursions, plus added research, formed the basis of a collection of mainly fictitious letters, written so as to describe a single tour, published as ‘Le Rhin’ in 1842. The preface and conclusion to Hugo’s account were written to address the political issue of the left bank of the Rhine, ceded to Prussia, at France’s expense, in 1815, which was a topic of much debate in the late 1830’s. He sought a utopian compromise that would satisfy both countries, and yet maintain the rights of France, in a spirit of friendship between the nations.

This translation omits both preface and conclusion, though they reveal facets of Hugo’s character as well as his political thought, to allow the reader to enjoy his travel writing without major distraction. His portrait of Champagne, Belgium, and the Rhineland, well before the Franco-Prussian War and the two World Wars, is of great historical interest, as well as providing a charming and fascinating picture of those regions.

In this new, enhanced translation the proper names of people and places, and the titles given to works of art, have been fully researched, modernised, and expanded; comments in parentheses have been added here and there to provide a reference, or clarify meaning; and minor typographic or factual errors, for example incorrect attributions and dates, in the original text, have been eliminated.

Author Details

Victor-Marie Hugo (1802 –1885) novelist, poet, essayist, playwright, artist, and politician, became a leading light of the French Romantic literary movement, witnessed by the turbulent opening night of his play Hernani in 1830, which portrayed the Romantic hero as a figure in conflict with society, dedicated to love and driven by fate; and supported by the lengthy preface to his play Cromwell, which championed freer forms closer to Shakespearean drama, interweaving tragic, comic, and grotesque elements, rather than the rigid rules of previous French theatre. He later achieved wider fame with his poetry, and the novels Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables.

With the Revolution of 1848, Hugo was elected a deputy for Paris in the Constituent Assembly and later in the Legislative Assembly, where he adopted a position increasingly critical of the ruling powers. When in December 1851 a coup d’état inaugurated the Second Empire under Napoleon III, Hugo, opposed to political absolutism and authoritarianism, left France for Brussels. A twenty-year exile, mostly spent in the Channel Islands, ensued; initially enforced then voluntary. The French defeat in the Franco-German War, and the proclamation of the Third Republic in 1871, brought Hugo back to Paris, where he was received as a living symbol of republicanism and a national hero.

His poetry ranges over personal, philosophical, political and social themes. The personal aspects were deepened by the premature loss of his recently-married daughter in 1843 and his internal religious and philosophical struggles; the political and social aspects by his republican sympathies and the turbulent events of French nineteenth-century politics. In this selection the personal dominates, rather than the political or religious, revealing the calmer more introspective aspect of the poet invoked in Les Misèrables, particularly in the figure of Jean Valjean with whom he identified spiritually, rather than the polemical and rhetorical aspects which guaranteed his fame.

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Kline, A. S.

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