HUGO (Victor).

Lot 34
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Estimation :
2500 - 3000 EUR
HUGO (Victor).
Cromwell. Paris, Ambroise Dupont et Cie, 1828. In-8, fawn half-calf with small corners, spine decorated, marbled edges (Binding of the time). First edition of Victor Hugo's first romantic drama. This work of nearly 7000 verses, composed in the vein of Shakespeare, is considered unplayable and was never performed either during the author's lifetime or in the 19th century. A first performance took place in 1956 in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre, but in an abridged version. The preface (64 pages) is a veritable manifesto of the Romantic theatre; in it Victor Hugo sets out the theoretical ideas and claims of the young Romantics in the field of theatre, and defines a new genre, that of the Romantic drama: It was time. Another era is about to begin for the world and for poetry. [...] here is a principle foreign to antiquity, a new type introduced into poetry; [...] here is a new form that is developing in art. This type is the grotesque. This form is comedy. [...] We have now reached the poetic summit of modern times. Shakespeare is the drama; and the drama, which melts under the same breath the grotesque and the sublime, the terrible and the buffoon, tragedy and comedy, the drama is the proper character of the third era of poetry, of the present literature. Beautiful letter from Victor Hugo to the poet Gaspard de Pons (1798-1860), former regimental comrade of Alfred de Vigny and early member of the Romantic Cenacle: To my good and dear Gaspard, who could not die, his best friend, Victor. Light freckling.
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