The fragile wrappers, bearing the statement “Édition Hetzel Spéciale pour la France, interdite pour l'étranger,” are preserved.
Les Contemplations contains 11,000 lines of verse. It reads as a kind of intimate diary in which, over twenty-five years, the poet entrusted “all the impressions, all the memories, all the realities, all the vague phantoms, laughing or funereal, that a conscience can hold” (Preface). This edition was printed and published simultaneously with the Charles Lelong edition issued in Brussels.
Human existence, “emerging from the enigma of the cradle and ending in the enigma of the coffin,” is the subject of this mature masterpiece, in which, as Hugo himself explained, the two volumes darken shade by shade before finally reaching the azure of a better life. Joy, that swift flower of youth, fades page by page through the first volume, Autrefois, which is hope, and disappears in the second, Aujourd’hui, which is mourning — true and singular mourning: death, the loss of loved ones. As Hugo put it, it is a soul recounting itself across these two volumes, separated by an abyss: the tomb.
A very attractive copy, finely bound and beautifully preserved.
Clouzot, Guide du Bibliophile français, p. 149; Carteret, Le Trésor du bibliophile romantique et moderne, I, pp. 416–419; “The earliest, rarest titles bear the name of Michel Lévy alone; later ones the names of Michel Lévy and Pagnerre (…). Generally speaking, this book is often found in good internal condition, but most often in rather plain bindings…”; Vicaire, Manuel de l’amateur de livres du XIXe siècle, IV, 320; En français dans le texte, no. 275: “One of the major collections of French poetry.”
From the library of Albert Natural, with bookplate (Paris, Pierre Bergé & associés, 2009, no. 220).