The Terrible Year, Part 1

This two-volume set is a poem cycle of epic length, in which the 68-year-old Victor Hugo, returning to Paris after two decades of exile, lives and witnesses the siege of his city by the Prussian army, his nation's humiliating surrender after bombardment and starvation, and then the chaos and violence of civil war. Members of the Paris Commune set Parisian historical and cultural landmarks on fire, and in the repression that followed, the new government carried out summary executions of as many as 15,000 French citizens. If the fall of Troy marked a "terrible year" for Homer, the disasters Hugo recounts from August 1870 through July 1871 are on a scale rivaling any epic of war and catastrophe.

No more than a quarter of this work has ever appeared in book form in English, despite Hugo's pre-eminence in poetry, drama, and fiction. The narrative poems in The Terrible Year pack the same power as Hugo's fiction, and some have an overwhelming emotional impact. For the more abstract poems in which Hugo meditates on the long flow of history and the immediate politics of his time, the translator has provided ample footnotes to provide context for allusions to persons, places, and events. Part 1 includes poems covering the months from August 1870 through January 1871.

Among the startling ideas that Hugo presents here are the concept of a United States of Europe, a stinging rebuke of organized religion, a rejection of monarchy and the Divine Right of kings, and, above all, a defense of the rights of the poor and downtrodden. He is against all reprisals, political banishments, and summary punishments.
At the time Victor Hugo returned to Paris in September 1870, no poet had ever been so important to his own country. He was greeted tumultuously, and thousands crowded into theaters to hear his long-banned poems. For nineteen years, he had hurled his Les Châtiments (Chastisements) across the English Channel into France, attacking the Emperor Napoleon III. As an account of the fall of an absolute dictator, the conflicts of civil war, a popular uprising, and a devastating series of reprisals, The Terrible Year has much to say to the current moment in U.S. and European history.
Illustrated with full-page wood engravings from an 1872 deluxe French edition.
A Yogh and Thorn Book from The Poet's Press. ... More