Portraits · Poets · I of XIV

Victor Hugo

1802–1885 · Poet and novelist

Art is the second branch of Nature. Art is as natural as Nature.
Victor Hugo · William Shakespeare, 1864

Victor Hugo wrote this in William Shakespeare, the book he published in 1864 while in exile on Guernsey. Nature is the first station, he wrote, and art the second; the one grows out of the other.

William Shakespeare, Part I, Book II, 1864. Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, tr. Melville B. Anderson (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1886), pp. 36–37.

The originals

Photograph of Victor Hugo in old age, with white hair and a white beard — **The likeness**PHOTOGRAPHED BY ÉTIENNE CARJAT · 1876Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (Galerie contemporaine woodburytype, published 1876; Carjat died 1906; Commons: PD-old-100-expired).

A manuscript page headed Livre troisième, La boue, mais l'âme, with a crossed-out line and a list of chapters — **Les Misérables · the manuscript**The title page he wrote for Part Five, Book Three: "La boue, mais l'âme" (Mud, but the soul), an older title struck out beneath it, and the chapters listed below.Les Misérables, autograph manuscript, vol. II (parts four and five). Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAF 13380 (Gallica btv1b10088953q), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.