VICTOR HUGO.
On Sunday, Feb 27, the eightieth anniversary of Victor Hugo’s birthday was observed at Paris. Hugo has enjoyed four score years of life, three score years of fame. The first volume of his odes and ballads, published when he was only twenty, gave him a reversionary interest in immortality. When he was twenty he took the French stage by storm with “Hernani” —a play which was a magnificently triumphant defiance of the classic conventionality of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire. After this in swift succession came “ Marion Delorme ” and “Le Roi s’amuse,” both of them written upon the same romantic lines. Victor Hugo is still as great as ever, but the popularity of Racine and Corneille has revived. Meanwhile, Hugo has a new rival in M. Zola, and the literary battle in France to-day is not between classicism and romanticism, but between romanticism and naturalism or realism. Such are the reactions of which the history of literature consists. M. Zola is now the rage of Paris, but “ Hernani ” is nevertheless likely to outlive “ Nana.”
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Patea Mail, 10 May 1881, Page 3
Word Count
175VICTOR HUGO. Patea Mail, 10 May 1881, Page 3
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