Correspondance avec Victor Hugo

The first known letter from Victor Hugo to Alfred de Vigny is dated 31 October 1820: the two young men — respectively eighteen and twenty-three years old — had met shortly before, introduced by Émile and Antoni Deschamps.

In 1820, Vigny was pursuing a military career and had not yet published anything, while Hugo was already famous. In December, Le Conservateur littéraire, founded by the Hugo brothers, would publish Vigny’s first texts. The first letter in this collection is the very first exchange between them: the letter Vigny sent to Hugo on 22 October 1820, to which Hugo replied on the 31st. Hugo congratulates “Monsieur Victor” on his Ode sur la naissance du duc de Bordeaux: “You have produced a fine work on a subject where one always walks close to the vulgar, and your foot never once slipped.”

The friendship was genuine, built on letters, but also on brotherhood in times of tragedy: “What can I tell you, my good friend, except that I weep as you do? I do not know why the word consolation was invented, since the thing itself does not exist. There is none for those who feel misfortune in its entirety, as strong as it is. Your sorrows as a father have come very close to those of a son and a brother; you are overwhelmed by family grief, that natural gathering we believe to be our only source of happiness” (October 1823, on the death of the Hugos’ first son).

Louis Barthou undertook the edition of this correspondence in book form, previously unpublished, prefacing it with a critical study analyzing these eighteen autograph letters.

“My intention has not been to write this history, which does not end in 1831, but only to enrich it with documents believed lost. They prove that for eleven years, the fraternal friendship of the two great poets was never clouded. It does honor to their hearts and their genius […]” This study was published separately in La Revue des deux mondes (vol. 25, no. 3, 1 February 1925, pp. 513–537), then in book form by Émile-Paul in May.

Provenance: Louis Barthou (I, 25–27 March 1935, no. 420, with bookplate); Gérard de Berny (I, 27 November 1958, no. 121, with bookplate); Charles Hayoit (II, 29 June 2001, no. 328, with bookplate).